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

board into place to act as temporary brace. He’d just asked Lydia to marry him, and his mother was already notifying half the kingdom. He whacked the board again. His meddling mother might have been another reason he’d run away from home. He couldn’t run now.

Wiping his sweaty brow, Max watched his sons—his sons—hauling in more lumber. Richard was doing all the lifting, but Bakari ran after him as fast as he could go, steering the ends so they didn’t hit the walls.

He should have Lydia look up fatherhood in the journals, but he feared that would be a year’s worth of reading. Hands-on practice would have to do. “Don’t walk where I’ve marked,” he warned. “There’s an old tunnel under this dirt.”

They carefully stacked the boards where he indicated, avoiding the rope he’d hung to block off the crumbling part of the floor.

“How will we bring bricks down here?” Richard asked.

“Excellent question. We’ll need men and wheelbarrows. If we had time, I’d construct a track similar to ones used in coal mines. But we have more people than time, so wheelbarrows it is. You’ve done a good job, thanks. Did Lloyd promise you a riding lesson?”

Bakari nodded eagerly. Richard shrugged. He seemed more interested in the construction than horses, Max thought. Both were important lessons. He dusted himself off and set down his tools. “Let’s go up and see how those old animals are faring. Once we know how well you ride, we’ll look into fancier livestock.”

Bakari peered worriedly through the doorway into the black interior beneath the library proper. “I think a dragon sleeps in there, and we are waking him.”

Interesting insight. Remembering the ghost walking through that wall and Lydia’s question about saints and dragons, he wondered what fed their fantasies. “I hope not, but I suppose dragons guard hoards, and Miss Lydia has a hoard of books.”

“May I see them?” Bakari asked.

“You’ll have to ask Miss Lydia. These are very special books and not everyone can read them. That is why she’s the librarian, and we’re not.” Max hoped she learned to read them, anyway. He hated to see her fretting over her inability to find what she sought. He knew what it was like not to have access to vital information because his eyes and brain didn’t communicate.

Once he was outside in the fresh air and sunlight, Max enjoyed a few hours of testing the mares on country lanes with his sons. Bakari wasn’t big enough to manage mule or mare, but he bravely attempted it for a while, then settled for riding in front of Max so they could explore. Richard decided they needed a map to know their boundaries, and Max concurred. If this was to be his home now, he needed to know his parameters.

By Friday, Max had had more time to think about staying in one place with wife and children. It still terrified the stuffing out of him, but it probably wasn’t any worse than being fifteen and sailing away with strangers to foreign lands. He simply had more sense now and knew enough to fear.

Thinking about Lydia in his bed smothered common sense and fear. These last nights had been a revelation he savored—and wanted to repeat. In many different ways. Just imagining all the ways he could take Lydia. . . would cripple him.

When his work was done for the day, he led his troop back to the house to wash and change for dinner. His mother had rearranged his accommodations again, sending the boys to the main block and ordering Max to the guest room, where he belonged.

“Lydia needs her privacy,” Lady Agnes said sternly. “And she needs access to her library at all hours. You will simply have to learn to live with servants the way civilized people do.”

Lydia was nowhere to be seen to protest this commandment.

Since he’d be sleeping with Lydia, Max didn’t object, too much. Entering the guest chamber to change out of his filth, he found the cheerful, round-faced chambermaid theoretically tidying the bed. Instead of quietly departing, she immediately sat down and bounced on the mattress. “The sheets are clean, sir. Would you care to test them?”

“No,” he replied curtly, stepping back into the hall.

She pouted and swayed toward him, tapping him on his filthy waistcoat. “I could help you bathe.”

Well, so much for hoping that bonding with Lydia would end this magnetism. What did he have to do to build a bond with Lydia that marked him off-limits?

And was he fooling himself to think it might happen?

Perhaps he could persuade Lydia to hire only male servants. Or aging crones.

Rather than deal with the seductive chambermaid, Max stalked off in search of Lydia, hoping she might find insight to his predicament in the library. Maybe if he joined her in the stacks as he had last time. . .

He followed her voice to the guest parlor—where she entertained a gaggle of females. Max froze in the corridor to study the scene.

Lydia was wearing colors! And a dress so fashionable she outshone the other ladies. Light blue-and-white striped underskirts covered all but the toes of pretty, blue shoes. A dark blue silky tunic thing clung to her lovely bosom and curves. Shiny braid and bows adorned the long bodice lapping over the skirt, and Max wondered how in hell he’d get her out of it.

She sat there, sipping tea as if she were the queen in the company of her ladies-in-waiting, very much in command of her own household. Max didn’t even bother identifying her guests. In his muddy, reeking clothes, he backed away. Even so, one of the younger women glanced up eagerly and seemed ready to rise.

The patter of small boots warned the chambermaid was on his heels. Cursing, he darted into the guest bath and locked the door. If he ever needed proof that civilization was not for him, it rattled at the latch now.

Twenty

Lady Agnes’s announcement of a wedding Max hadn’t publicly mentioned brought half of Edinburgh’s Malcolms to the