Chapter 14
“Access is seldom a question of merit, but of standing.”
From the private journal of Lady Isla Scott, lamenting that her husband’s heirs stood between her and a glorious legacy.
* * *
They encountered Cresswell on Broad Street, for which Nicholas cursed the gods and their eccentric humor.
He spotted Cresswell before Cresswell spotted them, which gave him approximately two seconds to choose his expression. He knew how to use them. He used them well. But this toad of a man was really starting to get beneath his skin.
Cresswell was crossing from the direction of the Bodleian entrance with his brimmed hat at the perfect angle, pale gray eyes moving along the street with a ferrety attentiveness born of habitual observation.
He was dressed impeccably, as he always was, dark coat and restrained white cravat and breeches and waistcoat and shirt absolutely where it ought to be.
He had the appearance of one who smelled like starch and sealing wax.
He spotted Nicholas, his expression arranging itself into warmth.
“Mr. Scott.” He inclined his head. “And Miss Metcalfe.” A slightly warmer inclination, calibrated to convey an established connection rather than mere acquaintance.
“What a pleasant coincidence. I had intended to call this week.” He addressed Millie with sympathy which did not quite reach the right temperature. “How is your father keeping?”
“Very well, thank you,” Millie said, in the tone she used for questions she considered adequately answered by the minimum information required.
Cresswell nodded with grave concern. “I am glad to hear it. His contributions to the field remain invaluable, of course. We speak of him often at the Bodleian.” He allowed a pause, and then turned to Nicholas with the ease of a man making a natural transition.
“And yourself, Mr. Scott. I see you have been making considerable use of the reading rooms. Progress on your research, I hope?”
The question had the surface warmth of interest, and Nicholas received it for exactly what it was, an inquiry he had been expecting and was entirely prepared for.
He has been in the request records, Nicholas thought with cynical certainty. He has no reason to look at the request records unless he is looking for something specific.
“Steady progress,” Nicholas said vaguely, feigning appropriate modesty.
“The Bodleian’s holdings are remarkable.
One finds rather more than one anticipated, which is of course the hazard of serious research.
” He said it with the irony of one scholar to another.
Cresswell received it with a smile that did not reach his eyes.
“And your primary area of interest?” Cresswell said. “If I may ask. One likes to know what draws scholars to the collections. Professionally speaking.”
“Medieval history,” Nicholas said. “Broadly construed.”
“Broadly,” Cresswell said, conveying that broad constructions were professionally unsatisfying though he was too polished to say so directly. “And Miss Metcalfe’s father? His research? I imagine working in proximity to such a distinguished collection has been illuminating.”
“Mr. Metcalfe is a remarkable scholar,” Nicholas said pleasantly. “One learns a great deal simply by being in the house.”
“His work on the Arthurian materials,” Cresswell said. “Quite specialized. I wondered whether he had made any progress before his …” He paused, selecting his words with thoughtful sympathy. “Before his current difficulties.”
“I really could not say,” Nicholas said. “I am a secretary, Mr. Cresswell, not a serious scholar.”
Cresswell smiled. “Of course,” he said. “Forgive me.”
He watched Cresswell’s pale gray eyes and thought about the vulture and the carcass.
Which was an indelicate analogy and entirely accurate.
Nicholas managed to convey absolutely none of what he was thinking, the one area in which his years of malfeasance, that had made his family blush with shame, had proved unambiguously useful.
Cresswell took his leave and walked on down Broad Street with his hands clasped behind his back.
Nicholas watched him go.
“You should be wary,” he said to Millie, keeping his voice conversational. “About solicitations for funds. From that man.”
Millie was already watching Cresswell’s retreating back, cocking her head as if she had been filing something for some time and had just added the most recent piece to the accumulating file. “Pike warned me about him in January,” she said. “When he first started calling.”
“Pike,” Nicholas said, “is an excellent judge of character.”
“That is what I have always found,” Millie said.
Nicholas’s mouth curved at that. A genuine smile rather than the satirical one. He held her gaze for a moment with the expression that had no derisive layer over it, and then he turned.
He left her on the street with Betty and turned toward the Merton gate.
His cane tapped on the cobbles, and his leg conducted a litany of complaints regarding the uneven ground, which he had been ignoring since they left the house and continued to ignore. He had somewhere to be and a limited amount of time in which to be there.
Merton sat at the end of the street with the self-contained authority of a college that had been there since the thirteenth century and did not require the city’s opinion on the matter.
The porter at the lodge received him with the cultivated courtesy of long practice, a man who had spent his professional life keeping people out and had developed a refined method for doing so that did not require rudeness.
Nicholas gave his name. The genuine one, along with a mention of his elder brother who had attended Merton. Fortunately, Millie was not familiar with the peculiarities of gaining entrance to the different colleges.
The porter regarded him with measured assessment. “Your business, sir?”
“Personal,” Nicholas said pleasantly, trying to think of a reason to be allowed in.
The porter said he would inquire, in a tone that declared he was doing no such thing.
Nicholas stood in the lodge and peered through the gate into the Mob Quadrangle and thought about twelve days of being Nick Scott.
About the kiss. About Millie on the street with her notebook and her coat buttoned to her chin.
About what was going to happen when the quest resolved and there was no longer an operational reason for him to be here.
He heard footsteps on the stone behind him.
“Good Lord. Is that not Blackwood’s boy?”
The voice was warm and dry and carried with it the air of long familiarity with stories that began with the words in our day for long enough that the phrase had become his natural mode of address. Nicholas turned.
Dr. Laurence Pembroke was slightly thickened at the waist, with the comfortable solidity of former athleticism reconciled to time’s editorial decisions.
Iron-gray hair brushed back, occasionally unruly at the crown where the Oxford damp had been at it. Laugh lines deeply established at the corners of his eyes. He had once been handsome and was now considerably more comfortable and rather more interesting.
He wore a good coat with the ease of someone who had long since stopped thinking about it, the cuffs slightly wine-stained in the way of a man who enjoyed his evenings.
And he smelled of tobacco and old port and the accumulated atmosphere of thirty years in the same set of rooms, enough time to take on their character.
Nicholas repressed the reaction toward Lord Blackwood’s boy.
“Dr. Pembroke,” he said. “Nicholas Scott. I am actually the current Blackwood’s youngest brother.”
Pembroke stopped in front of him and addressed him with evident pleasure at the unexpected family resemblance.
“The youngest! Of course, of course. Lord, how many of you were there? Your father was a remarkable man for heirs, I will say that for him.” He clapped Nicholas on the arm with the easy warmth of long familiarity with the family name translated directly into familiarity with every member of it.
“Three wives, was it not? Extraordinary. How is Lady Blackwood?”
Nicholas arranged his expression with care. “She died,” he said. “Some months ago. It was a terrible loss.” He forced himself to say it because it was what one said on such occasions.
Pembroke’s face produced the appropriate gravity.
“I am sorry to hear it. She was a striking woman. Your brother spoke of her with great fondness.” He shook his head in the manner of a man marking the passage of time and finding it moving faster than was comfortable. “And Blackwood himself? Holding up?”
“Lord Blackwood is well,” Nicholas said. “London keeps him occupied.” He paused. “You know how it is living in Town.”
“I do indeed.” Pembroke nodded with satisfaction. “And yourself? London, or —”
“Traveling,” Nicholas said. “As one does.” He moved on before Pembroke could pursue it further. “Your work … still the medievalism? I recall you had an interest in the chronicle tradition.”
“Never left it,” Pembroke said, with scholarly affection that had proved more durable than most acquaintanceships. “Thirty years and the chronicles still produce surprises.”
“I am glad to hear it,” Nicholas said. “As it happens, I have a matter I was hoping to discuss with someone who knows the Merton collection. I wonder whether you might have time for tea.”
Pembroke regarded him with perceptive eyes, having been a scholar long enough to recognize when someone wanted something, and then decided, on the basis of old affection for a shared acquaintance, that this was acceptable.
“Blackwood’s youngest brother comes asking about the collection,” he said, with dry amusement, apparently having seen worse propositions on less grounds.
“Come in, then. I dare say the porter has seen stranger.”
* * *