Lady Agnes’s announcement of a wedding Max hadn’t publicly mentioned brought half of Edinburgh’s Malcolms to the castle door. Suffering a rush of embarrassing congratulations, Lydia was distracted by an odd commotion in the corridor. Lady Dare’s photography student must have heard also, for she studied the doorway with avid interest. The only unmarried woman in the group noticing. . .
Max.
“If you’ll excuse me for a moment,” Lydia murmured, rising.
The ladies had brought all her boxes of new clothes with them, and she’d tried on this one they’d called a visiting gown. The light fabric felt heavenly, and the bows and ribbons made her feel feminine, but for practical purposes, it was a nuisance. The long train required lifting and maneuvering and ladylike steps so she didn’t show her ankles while doing so.
Lydia knew perfectly well that her guests were dying of curiosity but were too polite to follow her. They were Malcolms, after all. Lady Agnes had apparently sent invitations to all her local family to help plan her son’s nuptials. While Lydia delighted in the company, she was terrified at how quickly the reality of a ceremony was coming together.
She was similarly terrified that perceptive Malcolms would discern her inadequacy as a librarian if she gave them too much of her time. Would they demand she be tested?
She rustled down the corridor to where Beryl waited between the guest bath and bedroom. The maid looked a little bewildered.
“Are you lost?” Lydia asked, equally confused. “Doesn’t Mrs. Folkston need you to help set up the guest chambers in the main house?”
Beryl blushed and curtsied. “I finished moving your clothes to the tower and put fresh linens on Mr. Ives’ bed and carried up his laundry. I’ll be on my way now.”
“Thank you, Beryl. With all these guests, we’ll have to hire more help, I know.” Lydia watched the maid rush away.
Lloyd should have been tending Max’s laundry and chamber.
Lydia tapped tentatively on the bathing room door. “Max? She’s gone.”
He stuck out his dusty head and leaned against the jamb in all his filth. “The guest room won’t work,” he said angrily.
“I can’t send Lloyd to move your clothes back upstairs,” she whispered. “You’ll have to do it. Your mother is interfering again.”
His expression didn’t soften. “Fine. I’ll do it, but I’m not coming down until all the women are gone.”
“You’re being ridiculous. Phoebe and Azmin won’t attack you. Their husbands are about somewhere. Find them once you’re decent or your mother will put together a wedding involving fireworks, the queen, and an army of pipers.” She abandoned him to return to her guests.
Max would abandon her soon enough, Lydia knew. She had to learn to keep their lives separate. And if his mother meant to move in while planning a circus, then he could very well play the part of son or host or whatever he was.
After everyone departed to their rooms to dress for dinner, with still no sign of Max, Lydia took the inside library stairs to her room—Mr. C’s room, Max’s room, her room. . . a blamed hotel suite. Had Max run away again? Terrified she—or the maids or her company—had driven him off, she stifled panic with anger. Her head was about to explode with all the tasks she must accomplish. Entertaining his family—his family, mind you—shouldn’t have to be her duty.
As she climbed the spiral stairs, the stacks whistled, whispered, and beckoned, taunting her, like bullies. She grabbed a volume sticking out from a shelf and stalked up in a fine snit.
She slammed into the suite’s parlor to find Max on the floor, sketching on a news sheet with black ink over the dense print, as if he were Bakari drawing the universe. He wore a clean shirt but most definitely wasn’t dressed for dinner. He’d left the shirt open at the throat, wore no coat or waistcoat, and his hair still hung in damp ringlets on his brow. She flung the book down at him. “I am not dressing for dinner with your relations if you’re not.”
She stalked back through the study—her study—now littered with Bakari’s drawings and Max’s scribbling. The globe had been relegated to the floor and the desk had become a playground of books stacked presumably to replicate the supports of the cellar. This was what it would be like to be married.
She swung on her heel and strode back to the parlor, where Max sat, rumpling his hair, holding the book she’d thrown, and looking puzzled. “I am to expect that you take over my house, my rooms, my person, unload all your family and problems, while you do nothing but play in mud because you’re afraid of the maids?”
He shoved up from the floor holding the book and looking as grim as she felt. “I am afraid of hurting you, shaming my family, and causing your friends to look at me in disgust and at you with pity. I am not suited for. . .” He gestured helplessly at the fussy parlor with its floral draperies and velvet couch.
Lydia almost softened at the thought of this big, confident man not wanting to hurt impervious her. Unfortunately, Max continued speaking.
“I can carve my way through a jungle with a machete, but I cannot carve my way through your maidservants and friends without harm. I cannot sit at your dinner table and converse about the latest news in the paper or novels or any of those other things civilized people do. I came to this place because I thought I wouldn’t have to.”
“Fine, then don’t.” Lydia snatched the book from his hand and swept out again. She’d known all this. It was her own fault for not understanding that it meant she’d have to do everything herself, as always. She hated being rushed into things because she never had time to think them through. Upheaval and chaos were always the result.
She would change out of this foolish gown and back into her old wool, forget their guests, and go down and work on correspondence as she was meant to do. Or read every book in the damned library so she knew where to find what without the books talking to her. Or—
Max caught up with her in a few strides. He grabbed the trailing bow down her back and halted her in her tracks. “How the hell did you get into this thing? I thought you were the queen of France or princess of Scotland, and all I could think of was how I could pry it off you.”
Lydia didn’t know whether to laugh or weep. Max thought of a gown’s construction, and not it’s fashionableness or how well it looked on her. Well, he had said she looked like a queen, but that was simply because she had dressed fancy for a change.
He truly wasn’t accustomed to civilization.
“Self-buttoning on the bodice, ties everywhere else,” she said in resignation. She had never been the kind of person who could stay mad. She was much too reasonable—and too busy. “I am supposed to try on the dinner gown. It is the whole purpose of the ladies arriving with the boxes. I believe your mother has given them to believe that the gowns are my trousseau and that we are making a formal announcement tonight. What did you mean, you don’t want to hurt me? You’re already hurting me by hiding up here.”
“It’s better than finding me in the arms of your dratted maid, or the schoolgirl I saw in the parlor, or any other female who might catch sight of me. I know you don’t believe me, but I have looked down the barrel of shotguns when women thought I was cheating on them or men thought I was after their wives. But what am I supposed to do when females develop the vapors in front of me? Let them fall on the floor? And if one grabs my cravat and kisses me? Fling her against the wall? I may not like civilization, but I’m not completely uncivilized.”
He had all her buttons unfastened by the time he finished his rant. Lydia shrugged out of the fitted tunic as she hurried through the bathing room and maid’s chamber to the bedroom. To her relief, someone had carried up all her boxes. She tried to imagine how she would feel if she found Max in another woman’s arms, but she was not an imaginative sort, and their liaison was too new for her to say she trusted him.
“A gentleman might not throw a strumpet against the wall, but I’m not averse to doing so,” she decided. “I do have some advantage over other women in that I am large and strong and don’t need a shotgun to remove unwanted pests.”
She untied ribbons and bows and pushed off the train, then the skirt and pannier bustle.
Max caught her waist and lifted her from the circle of fabric and wire. His hot hand scorched even through her exceedingly fine new elastic corset. “And you may stamp rats with those dainty boots and throw wolves over your pretty shoulder, but you should not have to do so for me.”
“Then learn to do it yourself,” she huffed.
His masculine proximity was too tempting, and she refused to fall at his feet like a schoolgirl. Escaping his embrace, she threw open box lids until she found what she sought. “You are asking me to go downstairs and entertain your sons, your mother, and all her guests, and their husbands. I do not know these people well, Maxwell. I am from England. They are not my family. They are yours. And you need their help if you are to prove that you are not dead.”
He yanked open the wardrobe door and removed a dinner coat. “Fine. I will embarrass the lot of you to prove I’m me. How many maids are serving?”
“Mrs. Folkston brought in her grand-niece, that is all. Mr. Folkston and Zach will do most of the serving. You will be fine. Lady Dare brought one of her photography students. They do wedding portraits. They are expecting you to make an announcement tonight. Since—among other things—Azmin captures malevolent spirits with her photographs, I suppose she is verifying that you won’t beat me when everyone has gone home.”
“Do you expect me to make an announcement?” he asked, rummaging for clothing from the stack he’d carried up.
“Your mother will if you don’t.” Lydia shook out the gold silk skirt with the dashing ruffled cream-and-russet underskirt. She had never worn impractical colors like these, but her heart sang at just the lovely lightness of the fabric. She concentrated on sliding into the trailing underskirt without wrinkling or tearing anything rather than look at Max dressing behind her.
They were sharing a bedchamber. She should be embarrassed, but they’d shared a great deal more than a room these last nights.
“What was the book you carried up here?” was his surprising reply.
“Book?” She spun around, vaguely remembering carrying a book. She was always carrying books. Distracted by the sight of Max in starched white linen, fastening his cravat at his throat, she almost forgot the question. Narrow-hipped, broad-shouldered, dark curls rakishly tumbling over his brow, Max reminded her quite forcefully why they were even having this conversation.
Fighting a surge of lust, she pounced on the book. Opening the pages, she frowned. “A journal from one of your ancestors. He was an Ives, although on the wrong side of the blanket. I wonder if my growing up in England is causing problems with this more Gaelic library. . . Perhaps I should have gone to the Wystan library in Northumberland.”
He tapped the pages impatiently. “Why this book?”
“Because it wasn’t in place.” She scanned the pages swiftly, flipping through until one leaped out at her. “The journal writer tells us his home included an ancient watchtower and Malcolm journals, apparently very old ones that his mother had collected. But she kept them in a proper library because the tower was crumbling. He tore down the tower and added windows where the doorways once were.” She showed him the sketch.
He studied it, then handed it back. “Very pretty. But your tower is in solid shape. There’s no need to remove it, unless you need windows in your study or more in the guest room.”
She felt a flutter of relief at that assessment. “His wife was a librarian, and he was an engineer of sorts, mostly mining, though. There is reference to a keystone that saved some structure. I don’t know why his journal is in this library and not wherever his is.”
He looked at the date of it. “This journal is well over a hundred years old. If his descendants did not keep up the property, the books may have been unsafe. Or they may have overwhelmed a normal library and been moved here.”
“He was an Ives. You are likely related to his descendants,” she said dryly. “That is probably why the book caught my eye.”
“Caught your eye, did it?” he asked, raising a knowing dark eyebrow. “Out of the thousands of volumes in there, the one about my engineering ancestor and his librarian wife simply leaped out at you?”
“Singular, but not useful.” With disappointment, she set the volume down and returned to dressing.
“You don’t analyze, do you?” Max buttoned his waistcoat. “You take everything at face value, not taking time to wonder why one book would catch your eye. You’re waiting for magic to happen. But that’s not how it works.”
Lydia hoped the corset she was wearing was tight enough for the new bodice and began struggling into the narrow sleeves. “How am I supposed to analyze an enormous library of whispering books?”
“I don’t know. I can’t read, remember? That’s your talent. I never saw anyone read and comprehend a book as swiftly as you just did.” He helped her with the stiff bodice, then shrugged into his tailored coat. It was country wear and not a fancy tailed coat, but the black emphasized his weathered bronzed complexion.
“Then I’ll just read the entire library. Although what good that will do if I can’t read Gaelic, I can’t say.” In a huff, she started pulling the pins from her hair so she might brush it into some semblance of order.
“How many languages does the library contain?” Max took the brush from her and gently pulled at the tangles. “I love your hair. It’s like holding sunshine.”
She wanted to melt at his romantic flattery, but she was too agitated. Her entire life, her home, depended on understanding a library that wouldn’t speak to her. “I don’t know. Mr. C could read Gaelic, Latin, Greek, and some Italian and French. I know Latin and Greek and can figure out many phrases in Italian and French, but I’ve not run across them often in the books I’ve seen. Gaelic is a problem. And if that is the basis of this library, then I don’t belong here. I will be found out any day and cast from the castle.”
Max grabbed a handful of hair and tugged her around to face him. He was large enough to almost make her feel small. Almost. He touched his nose to hers. “You belong here. Hire a steward. Live in the stacks. Figure it out. But do not leave, not ever. Understood?”
Never leave? While he traipsed the world with women falling at his feet.
She crushed his cravat in her fist, stood on her toes, and nipped his nosy nose.