Chapter 9 #2
By mid-afternoon, the Leland volumes and four adjacent books were stacked beside him in a neat, considered manner, as a scholar would who knew what he was seeking and was going through his research properly.
The section of the lower shelf behind them was bare.
From below, anyone glancing up would see a man with several volumes stacked in front of him, working.
The books effectively blocked any direct view of the lower shelves from below.
He drew the folder knife from the folio portfolio he had brought with him. Narrow blade, short handle. Unremarkable in a scholar’s kit. He inserted it at the back edge beneath the shelf.
He did not lever. He did not force. He applied steady, careful pressure along the seam, moving the blade in increments so small they were nearly imaginary, easing the edge just enough to admit his fingers.
He coughed to cover the faint sound of it.
Three minutes. Perhaps four. The space opened a fraction.
He reached two fingers into the recess.
Oilcloth.
Twine.
There you are.
He did not pull immediately. He confirmed the full shape of the package.
Made certain nothing else was attached. That the retrieval would be clean, soundless.
The journal lay lengthwise beneath the shelf at the back.
His leg screamed at him, shooting his nerves with steel-tipped daggers, but he suppressed the pain and kept working firmly until he was able to bend the package slightly so he could draw it out.
It came free without resistance.
He slid it inside his coat and pressed it against his ribs.
Used a fingertip to wiggle the edge of backboard into place until it sat as it had been.
He stood up gingerly, praying his leg would not give out after being cramped up, and waited several minutes before moving.
In his mind, he tried to use his knee too quickly and sprawled onto the floor in an embarrassing heap.
The mere notion of it was sufficient to force his patience, and he counted the books on the shelf to distract himself from his aching predicament.
When he was certain he could move without making a fool of himself, he replaced the first Leland volume. Then the second. Then the third. He replaced the adjacent volumes in their original order and straightened his papers and stood at the gallery rail for ten minutes more and appeared to read.
The package pressed against his hammering heart. He had not anticipated the hammering. He had thought himself calm about it.
Apparently not.
He was discovering there was a distinction between the performance of calm and the actual state of it, and that the distinction made itself felt in the gut in a way that was rather difficult to ignore.
He stood at the gallery rail and breathed and acted like a man with all afternoon available and no definable reason to hurry, and his heart continued its enthusiastic commentary on the whole affair regardless.
He descended. The staircase was still narrow, still steep, still difficult to climb. His leg still had criticisms about all of it. He ignored them with noticeably more success than he had managed on the way up. The journal was inside his coat. His leg was going to have to shut up.
He walked toward the exit. The attendant did not look up.
Nicholas exited into the afternoon.
The cold air struck him at the threshold, and he walked two blocks with the cane on the cobbles and the March cold and the weight of the package against his ribs.
His heart was beginning to conduct itself with more decorum now that the building was behind him.
He did not exhale fully until Oxford Street, where Millie was waiting.
She was standing with Betty on the far side of the street, her notebook in her hands. He could see from half a street away that she had not been writing in it. She was watching for his approach. Then she saw him.
The expression on her face was not what he had expected.
He had expected relief, or the gratification of a determined woman whose plan had been successfully executed.
What actually arrived was warmer and considerably less defended, moving across her face in the unguarded way emotions moved across it when she was thinking deep thoughts.
Oh, he thought. That is not going to make any of this simpler.
She crossed the street toward him with the quick, purposeful step that was her only available pace, and he drew the package from inside his coat and held it out to her; she took it in both hands and exhaled deeply in satisfaction.
She held it with care, understanding what she was holding.
The oilcloth wrapping and the narrow twine and the inch of thickness that contained whatever her father had spent years of his diminishing mind on before the clarity became unreliable.
She held it for a long moment without speaking.
Which was sufficiently unusual that he felt its weight more than he had felt the weight of the journal itself.
Then she beamed up at him.
There it is again.
That warmth he did not have an accurate name for and was not pressing for one. Not yet.
“We have it,” she said. A statement, not a question. The confident tone she used for facts that were accurate and required acknowledgment before anything else could proceed.
“It was where you said it would be,” he said.
She nodded. Her hands on the oilcloth were entirely steady, as they always were, which he had come to understand was not the absence of feeling but the presence of competence under pressure. She had been managing her feelings for a very long time and had developed reliable methods of doing so.
“Thank you,” she said.
It was the same plain, undecorated gratitude he had offered her in the firelit room nights ago. She said it in the same direct way he had said it then. It landed with the same weight for the same reason—it was entirely heartfelt.
Betty, beside her, was smiling. He had not seen Betty smile before.
Not fully. It was warmer than her customary neutral expression from employment requirements that included not remarking on the happenings of the day.
She appeared to have made an exception. He found he was rather pleased about it, which surprised him mildly and did not, upon reflection, surprise him at all.
He thought about the argument that had been in the middle of the room when he walked into the Camera this morning.
It had moved itself again without asking his permission, as was its habit.
It was somewhere considerably further back now.
It appeared to have found itself a comfortable chair and settled in with the air of a thought that could bide its time until the moment was right.
He thought about what he had told himself in Cirencester.
Accompany Millie to Oxford. Help retrieve the journal. Help retrieve the manuscript. Learn what I can. Leave.
It had been a clean, rational plan. It had seemed entirely achievable at the time.
Standing in the Oxford street, with Millie holding her father’s prized journal in both hands and regarding him the way she was, Nicholas found the plan had acquired an element it had not previously had.
It had become something he did not want to do.
He gazed at her, head bent down, and the scarlet ribbon vivid at the back of her neck, and thought about the Cresswell visit that morning.
A woman managing considerable troubles alone.
Mr. Metcalfe’s lucid moments. The journal and an ill father and the Dominus.
A mystery still unresolved and pointing toward Oxford.
I want to stay.
He did not say it. It was not the moment for it. But he thought it with a quiet conviction, as a man who had landed somewhere and decided, for once, not to argue with himself about it.
She glanced up from the journal and found him watching her.
“We should go home,” she said. “I want to read it in Papa’s study.”
“Yes,” he said.
They turned toward the house, Millie and Betty and his cane on the Oxford cobbles, and the package in her hands.
The March afternoon was gray and cold and entirely satisfactory.
Nicholas walked beside her and thought about nothing of interest with a contented inattention because he had just understood something, and had the considerable good fortune to understand it before he did something irretrievably foolish.
Considering the years he had wasted running from his life, it was a novel experience.