The Librarian's Spell by Patricia Rice (ebook offline reader TXT) 📗

her midsection. “I’ll take time to think on it,” she whispered.

“I’d love to give you all the time you require, but I fear my mother is a force of nature. Perhaps I should take residence under the tower until she gives up and goes home.” His smile was rueful.

“We can hold a reception and invite her guests without a wedding,” she reminded him. “There is no reason to make such a drastic decision in a few weeks.”

“We just have to keep our hands off each other,” he said cheerfully, standing up. “The tower it is, then.”

He walked off, leaving Lydia disturbed in so many ways that she couldn’t count them all.

Seventeen

Max wished for the company of some of his sensible engineering friends so he could ask if he was losing his mind or if he was just desperate. Marriage? He was actually considering marriage? Why on earth would he do that? He was the most unsuitable person on the entire planet for committing to one woman and one place.

But he wanted Lydia, and he wasn’t so mad as to expect he could have her without vows. And maybe, just a little, he’d like to know he had a home he could visit occasionally without being bombarded by tears and accusations. His few days here had been among the most restful of his peripatetic career, despite the tilting tower, which was an interesting engineering challenge and not emotional quicksand. Lydia appeared to accept him as he was, and he could avoid civilization all he liked merely by locking the tower door.

That didn’t mean she wouldn’t change once she wore his ring and babies arrived, he reminded himself. Nesting women were an unreasonable lot, as he well knew.

Brooding, he climbed up to his chamber to change into his grubby work clothes. Bakari met him with excitement.

“My grandmother is here?” the boy asked, nearly bouncing. “May I meet her? I’ve never had a grandmother. She says she wants to meet me. Is she nice?”

Well, hell, that was to be expected. He’d never accomplish anything at this rate. “You’ve always had a grandmother. You just haven’t met her. She’s nice, which is why she wants to meet you. Just remember grandmothers are women, and they weep over silly things and get funny notions in their heads. Be polite and respectful, and you’ll be fine.”

Bakari nodded uncertainly. “Will you take me to her?”

“Have you finished the reading I gave you?” Max asked, trying to play the part of stern father.

Bakari nodded. “Those were easy words. Mr. Lloyd says there is a library. May I look for other books?”

His six-year-old son could read, probably better than Max. Max tried not to be too grumpy about that. This responsibility business was hard. “We’ll ask Miss Lydia, shall we? Let’s go down and meet your grandmother.”

One more encounter with his mother, and he really might go quite mad. Then he’d probably elope with Lydia to places unknown. Pondering whether madness was infectious, Max took his son’s hand and traipsed back downstairs again.

Despite the summer sun outside, the castle was chilly. His mother was comfortably ensconced in a padded chair near a small fire, her feet up on an embroidered stool, her shawls wrapped around her. She almost looked frail and elderly, until she glanced up and her blue eyes sparked with excitement. “Oh, my, aren’t you a handsome one? You have your father’s curls!”

A knot of tension relaxed inside him as Max made the introductions. He hadn’t thought his mother would be given to bigotry, but he didn’t know her well.

“Did you know you have a big brother?” his mother asked as she wooed Bakari into her snare. “I am hoping he will visit us here in a day or two.”

His son’s eyes widened in wonder. Max winced.

“We don’t know that Richard will come,” he reminded her. “Why don’t I ask Lydia if she has books Bakari might read while you two become acquainted?”

His mother waved regally. “There is an entire nursery full of books and things on the third floor. I’m surprised you do not keep him there. You do have a tutor for him, do you not?”

“This isn’t a permanent situation, Mother. Bakari needs to be in school. I’d rather he was near me until then.” And he wasn’t about to move into the main portion of the house where chambermaids roamed.

Although given the condition of the tower’s foundation, he should probably consider it.

“Well, you’ll be working here for a while, won’t you?” his mother demanded, sounding quite normal and not demented for a change. “I’ll just take Bakari up to the nursery and let him explore.”

The boy looked at him eagerly. His son had to be bored out of his over-active mind. Max gave in. “Fine then, although perhaps you should ask Miss Lydia first.”

Watching his mother and his son walk away, hand in hand, as he must once have at that age, Max suffered a prescient vision of his own. There walked the family he never thought to have—and might have with Lydia, if she didn’t kill him first.

Of course, if he didn’t fix the tower, there would be no library and Lydia would despise him.

Hearing a carriage on the drive, Lydia almost jumped up with expectation, thinking they might have visitors from the city. But then she remembered it was too early, and she pressed her lips together in a grimace. Only one local man would arrive with carriage and team.

She would like to refuse him, but she wasn’t comfortable with Mr. Cadwallader’s level of rudeness. Besides, she liked knowing what the enemy was plotting.

Zack eventually arrived bearing a card on a salver. “Lord Crowley to see you, miss.”

“Take him to the formal drawing room. Offer tea. I’ll be with him when I have time.” That seemed officious enough. And the two-story great hall was uncomfortably chilly and gloomy.

Of course, putting off the inevitable left her squirming in her chair. She thought she’d made herself clear the last time he was