CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR #2
Ceci drew another line across the page. Hart to Rowe. Rowe to Voss. Voss to “German friend.” “German friend” to gossip that leaned on Edward and Wallis without naming either too loudly. It was all soft enough to deny and clear enough to function. She pushed back from the table.
“I need the guest books from the upper shelf,” she said. “The ones with the red spines. If he’s been here more than once, or if Hart has, I want the dates against this.”
Duncan looked toward the gallery rail above the shelves.
“I’ll get them.”
“No,” she said. “I can manage a ladder.”
Archie smiled. “I should pay to hear Margaret’s opinion of that sentence.”
“You should pay to hear Margaret’s opinion of your existence.”
“That feels deeply personal.”
Ceci was already moving toward the rail ladder before either of them could stop her. The library ladder stood ready along the shelving, polished by years of use. She caught the side with one hand and set her foot on the first rung.
“Ceci,” Duncan said.
She looked down.
“What?”
“Be careful.”
Archie leaned one forearm on the shelf and looked up at her. “I was going to say something much more encouraging, but apparently we’re being paternal this afternoon.”
Ceci smiled down at him.
“That seems to come naturally to both of you.”
Archie’s mouth curved. “Not naturally. With effort.”
Duncan made a sound that might have been impatience or the beginning of laughter.
Ceci climbed.
The upper shelves smelled different, dustier, warmer, more neglected.
From this height, the whole library changed shape.
The table below, the spread of names and paper, Archie looking up with one hand shielding his eyes from the light, Duncan standing back a little farther, all long lines and dark focus.
Two very different men.
Both were too aware of her. She found the first red spine and pulled it free, then the second.
The third had been pushed farther back than the others.
She reached for it and paused. There, on the shelf beside it, in the dust, was the clear mark of recent disturbance.
It wasn’t the pattern of old cleaning or ordinary use.
A line where something had been dragged out and shoved back in a hurry.
Her stomach tightened.
“Duncan.”
Below, both men looked up at once.
“What is it?” he said.
“I think someone’s been here.”
Archie straightened. “Where?”
“The top shelf. Something’s been moved.”
“Come down,” Duncan said.
Ceci shifted her weight to descend.
The ladder moved.
Not much.
Enough.
The wheels gave just enough along the rail to send a jolt through the whole frame. The books pitched in her arms. Her foot slipped against polished wood. For one sick second there was no floor anywhere in the room.
Then voices.
Archie was there first, one hand catching her hard around the waist as the books slid from her arms and thudded across the rug below. Duncan caught her lower arm and steadied the ladder with his other hand so sharply that the whole thing shuddered and stopped.
Ceci found herself half against Archie’s chest, half twisted toward Duncan, breathing much too hard with both of them touching her at once.
No one moved.
Archie’s hand was spread wide at her waist, firm and unmistakable. Duncan still had hold of her right arm just above her hand, his thumb pressed against the inside of her wrist where the feather lay hidden. The library had gone silent except for all three of them breathing.
“Oh,” Archie said, very softly. It was not clear whether he meant the fall or the position.
Duncan’s voice came lower.
“Are you hurt?”
Ceci tried to answer and discovered that speech had become more complicated than expected.
“No.”
Archie let out a breath that might have become a laugh in another situation.
“Well,” he murmured, close enough that she felt the words as much as heard them, “that was appallingly effective.”
Duncan looked at him.
“Archie.”
“Yes,” he said. “I know. Near death. Bad time.”
Ceci, still caught between them, laughed in one helpless burst and hated herself for it because the laugh shook her body and made the whole contact impossible to ignore.
Archie kept his hand at her waist a second longer than decency required, then helped her down fully and stepped back only once both feet were safely on the floor. That was when Ginger forced her way between them.
The spaniel nosed against Ceci’s skirt, whining low in her throat, then pushed her head beneath Ceci’s hand with the urgent insistence of a creature who had watched human beings mishandle a perfectly good library.
Ceci looked down.
Ginger looked back up at her with grave accusation. The absurdity of it nearly broke her.
“I’m fine,” Ceci told her.
Ginger sneezed.
Archie’s laugh came easier this time, though it still shook. “Even the dog objects to your evidence.”
Ceci’s fingers slid into Ginger’s soft ears. The warmth of her, the solid living weight at her knees, steadied something the men’s hands had only managed to catch. Duncan still had not released her.
Neither had Archie.
The realization moved through her. She was upright because both of them had reached for her without hesitation. That should have made the room safer. Instead, it made everything in it more dangerous.
Ceci bent for the nearest fallen book because she needed to do something with her hands before she did something much worse with her mouth.
Duncan stopped her.
“No.”
She looked up.
His face had changed entirely. Whatever else the moment had done to him, fear had cut through it first and left the rest less hidden than usual. He crouched by the ladder rail instead and ran his fingers along the mechanism. After a second, he looked up.
“The brake’s been released.”
Archie went still.
“What?”
Duncan rose and showed him the catch.
“I locked it this morning.”
Ceci felt the room go cold in a completely different way.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
Archie took the released mechanism from Duncan’s hand and examined it himself. “That isn’t age.”
“No.”
The three of them looked at the ladder, then at one another. The books on the rug suddenly seemed less like clutter and more like evidence.
Ceci picked up the volume she had nearly dropped from above. Its spine had cracked. Inside, between two pages, something smaller had fallen loose and slid halfway onto the carpet.
A photograph.
She bent and took it up. It wasn’t a properly mounted portrait, just something quicker and more recent.
A group on a terrace somewhere, all summer clothing and easy money.
Hart was there. Rowe. Two others she recognized from the papers.
And at the edge of the photograph, just half-turned toward the camera as if he had only entered the frame by accident, Matthias Voss. Ceci felt all the blood leave her face.
“Found him,” she said.
Duncan crossed to her in two strides. Archie was there just behind him, close enough again to make the air impossible. She handed Duncan the photograph. No one spoke for a moment. Then Archie said, very quietly, “Well.”
This time, no one laughed. Duncan looked from the photograph to the disturbed shelf above.
“He’s been in this house,” he said.
The words sat there.
Heavy. Clean. Impossible to soften. Ceci looked up at the top shelf again and felt the full shape of the danger at last. This was no longer abstract, theoretical, or confined to a drawing room
Closer than that.
Someone touched the ladder. Touched the shelf.
Left Voss in a photograph inside Duncan’s house and nearly sent her down hard enough to break something for the trouble of finding him.
Archie’s hand found the small of her back again, very lightly this time, only to steady her.
Duncan saw it and, for once, did not object.
Because he was still focusing on the photograph.
And Ceci, pulse pounding and body still treacherously aware of where Archie had caught her and where Duncan had held her, understood that the story had finally crossed into something worse. They were no longer studying proximity to danger. They had it in the room with them.