London, Present Day

“SO, ANY LUCK FINDING my book?” said Winston as they settled into a table in the back of the Lamb and Flag. Sophie loved dark-paneled pubs—they felt almost like libraries—and was happy to discover this cozy example just a short walk from her new job.

“Did you really expect me to find it on the first day?”

“Not really,” said Winston. “But I thought maybe you’d try to impress me.”

“The fact is,” said Sophie, blushing, “I did try to impress you, but I can’t find any sign of Mr. Mansfield or his little book of allegories anywhere. Even the British Library only has a first edition.”

“But you’ll keep looking,” said Winston.

“It’s in the ‘want’ file,” said Sophie, “so there’s always a chance. But I wouldn’t get your hopes up.”

“You seem awfully young to know so much about the antiquarian book world,” said Winston.

“I’m not that young,” she said—hoping, at least, that she was not too young for him to consider . . . well, she wasn’t quite sure what just yet; she just hoped she wasn’t too young.

“Let me guess,” said Winston. “Fresh out of Cambridge, you read history and worked in the library and so you thought you’d work in a bookshop for a while.”

“It’s nothing like that,” said Sophie. “I’m fresh out of Oxford; I read English literature and worked in the library.”

“Can’t believe I was so far off the mark.”

“But that’s not why I came to Boxhill’s,” said Sophie. “That was because of my uncle.”

“Boxhill is your uncle?”

“No, my uncle was named Bertram Collingwood,” she said, and by the time she had told Winston the whole story of how Bertram had helped her fall in love with books, she had finished her pint and it was time for Winston to order another round.

“And his books are just gone?” asked Winston, when he had settled back in his chair.

“Gone,” said Sophie. “I’ve found a few of them, but even if I could find them all, I certainly couldn’t afford to buy them back.” She did not mention her acquisition of the Principia.

“So you’ll build your own library. What do you collect?”

Uncle Bertram had asked her the same question earlier that summer when they were sitting together in Hyde Park reading. She was deep into Jude the Obscure—one of the few Hardy novels she had not yet read, and he was reading a new translation of Pindar’s Odes, making pencil notes in the margin whenever he disagreed with the translator. Their peace had been disturbed by a sudden outburst from the ducks on the Serpentine, and Bertram had laid down his book and turned to Sophie.

“What sort of books would you like to collect?”

“You always told me to buy whatever appeals to me at the time,” said Sophie. “That’s what I’ve always done. That’s how you did it, isn’t it?”

“True, but as much as I love my library, sometimes I wish I had started with a little more focus. What do you like to read?”

“You know that,” said Sophie. “I like stories. I like characters and plots and intrigue and romance and not knowing what’s going to happen next. I seem to be less interested in nonfiction these days. If I want that, I can just go outside. And I like corsets and Empire waistlines and poorhouses and debtors’ prisons and the countryside. I could never get excited about novels written after the Great War. Except mysteries, of course.”

“So you’ll collect novels,” said Uncle Bertram. “Victorian novels. Or perhaps I should say nineteenth-century, so you don’t miss out on Jane Austen.”

“I suppose I already do collect novels,” said Sophie, thinking of her room in Oxford. “If you read English literature, you can’t really help it.”

“But be honest, my dear,” said Uncle Bertram. “Are your books anything like the books of any other student of English literature?”

“No,” said Sophie, who never settled for the cheap paperback editions at Blackwell’s. Whether it was Dickens, or Austen, or Hardy, she always managed to find a secondhand hardcover copy—the older the better, as far as she was concerned. One girl in her tutorial had complained of the moldy smell wafting off Sophie’s copy of Little Dorrit, and Sophie had retorted, “This is the first book edition. Without the mold it would have cost me twice as much.”

“You’ve always been a collector,” said Uncle Bertram. “But now, beware, Mr. Dickens and Mr. Trollope and Miss Brontë and especially Miss Austen, for Sophie Collingwood is on your trail and she will not rest until she has caught you.” And Sophie had laughed and Uncle Bertram had joined her, and the ducks had flown up off the water, the sound had startled them so.

It was the last day she had spent with her uncle.

—

“I COLLECT NOVELS,” SAID Sophie to Winston. “Nineteenth-century, mostly, but some later. Mysteries are my guilty pleasure. I always rather fancied myself a sleuth. But mostly English lit. You know, ‘The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.’”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” said Winston. “I prefer nonfiction myself, and I don’t think I’m intolerably stupid.”

“It’s a quote,” said Sophie. “It’s from Northanger Abbey. You know—Jane Austen.”

“Never read her,” said Winston.

“You’ve never read Jane Austen?”

“We didn’t do her at school. We did Dickens, though.”

“I’d love to own a Dickens novel in the original monthly parts,” said Sophie, trying to ignore the fact he had never read any Jane Austen. “Can you imagine what that must have been like, to be reading David Copperfield and to have to wait a month for the next installment?”

Winston nodded, taking a sip of beer. “Hey, I just found out this was Charles Dickens’s favorite pub,” he said. “There’s a sign behind the bar.”

Sophie almost choked on her beer as she suddenly remembered accusing Eric of whisking women off to Charles Dickens’s favorite pub. She thought for a split second that Winston was using the same ploy—but something about his nonchalance told her that not only had he not known this was Dickens’s favorite pub; he didn’t care.

“Dickens’s parts are a bit out of my price range,” said Sophie, regaining her composure, “but if I ever had a set I would read them. I never could understand collectors who lock up their books in glass cases and don’t read them.”

“Me neither,” said Winston.

“But listen to me, going on and on about my uncle and his books and my books and books I don’t even own yet and will probably never own. What about you? What do you collect? Why do you collect?”

“Maybe that’s a question for the second date.”

“So is this the first date, or is this just drinks?”

“I was hoping this was the first date. I would ask you to dinner, but my father is up from the country house and he expects me to take him out.”

“Oh, your father is up from the country house, is he?” said Sophie, affecting a posh accent.

“Sorry, that sounded pompous. My father’s a solicitor in Gloucestershire, but he comes to London so often for business that he finally bought a little flat in St. John’s Wood. So now, I’m living in the flat and when Father’s in town I get to sleep on the sofa and take him out to dinner.”

“And when Father’s not in town?”

“I suppose it becomes my bachelor pad, though so far that’s mostly meant me home alone watching the footy.” Sophie doubted this very much. It couldn’t possibly be that difficult for a drop-dead gorgeous, charming, intelligent man like Winston to find women willing to visit his flat.

“And since Father’s in town I have to take myself home?” she said.

“I’m sorry about that,” said Winston. “I promise the next time we’ll have a proper date. Dinner and everything.” Sophie was afraid to ask what “everything” included.

“And when do you propose we have this proper second date?” she said.

“Well, today is Tuesday and if I call you tomorrow it will look like I’m overeager and desperate, so how about Thursday?”

“I’ll have to check my engagement calendar,” said Sophie teasingly. “And if it’s a proper date, I’ll need to change out of work clothes and fix my hair and put on proper nighttime makeup.”

“I think you look lovely,” said Winston, and Sophie blushed for the second time that day. She did not mind a bit.

She reached into her handbag for a pen and wrote Uncle Bertram’s address on a napkin. She slid it across the table to Winston. “Pick me up at seven?”

“I thought you had to check your engagement calendar.”

“I’m sure I can squeeze you in,” she said. And she was just getting up and hoping this was the perfect exit line when Winston leaned over and picked something up off of the floor.

“You dropped something,” he said, holding up the postcard of the Eiffel Tower. Sophie snatched it out of his hand before he could look at it.

“A postcard from my sister,” she said quickly. “See you on Thursday.” It wasn’t quite the flirtatious exit she had hoped for, but she had at least avoided any awkward questions about Eric Hall.