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

the vicarage to others, she’d seen the necessity of moving on. Her younger sisters were married and had families of their own. Her mother wished to retire to her sister’s home. Not wanting to be the maiden aunt, Lydia had packed her bags, taken her small savings, and traveled from Northumberland to Edinburgh. There, she’d asked the ladies at the School of Malcolms if they could use a housekeeper or secretary with no talent except an affinity for books. They had perceptively sent her to Mr. Cadwallader. She had slipped into his life quietly and been content with her role of assisting his voluminous correspondence and researching requests.

Once he’d become ill. . . she’d assumed the responsibility of maintaining the castle and library and a minimal role of librarian—when she hadn’t any gift for it. Weeping and wailing at the fates wouldn’t pay the servants or answer the letters pouring in from around the world. So far, she’d stuttered along with Mr. C’s limited aid and her photographic memory.

But losing the library entirely. . . Her heart nearly stopped at just the thought.

How could she possibly move centuries of fragile journals, handwritten by thousands of Malcolms, volumes with aging papers and fading ink that needed special care? And to keep them in order. . . the task was Sisyphean—even if she knew where to move them! Which she didn’t.

And Maxwell Ives wanted to use those precious volumes to shore up a tower! He might as well ask that her bones be ground to dust and used to fill the carriage road. She just might be ill. She held her aching middle as she hurried up the library stairs.

The books whispered and called to her, but she could not understand the words as Mr. C did. She was afraid to misplace even one volume for fear it would upset his ability to locate the exact book needed. He could still find his way around the books, with aid. Perhaps he knew the answer to the tower problem?

Lloyd was just cleaning up after breakfast. “Mr. C is a little agitated this morning, miss. I think he senses our visitor.”

Lydia heard the question in Lloyd’s voice. “Mr. Ives has been corresponding with us. He’s here to deliver his journals.” His unwritten journals, she recalled with disapproval. The man had used that excuse to hide away up here.

She glanced at her employer, who wore a dressing robe over his shirt and trousers. Mr. C was alert and listening. He was physically frail, but his mind was unharmed. If anyone had the knowledge needed, it was the librarian. She addressed him directly. “Mr. Ives says the tower foundation is crumbling, and that we need to move the library.”

It was impossible to tell his reaction from his sagging facial muscles. But he dropped the pencil in his fist to the wooden floor and watched it roll.

Lydia watched it too. The pencil rolled all the way across the—apparently slanted—floor. “How long have you known?” she asked in dismay.

In answer, he pushed himself from his chair with the use of his one good hand and a cane.

Lloyd grimaced. “It’s too much to ask that he climb those stairs.”

“I know,” Lydia said in sorrow. “But he has the answers and cannot give them without the books.”

She shook back her hood and opened the hidden doorway so she could descend first, holding firmly to the metal rail. Lloyd held up Mr. C as best as possible. Should the frail librarian fall, she would break his descent. These days, he weighed less than she did.

The ancient tower had once been a medieval keep. The stone stairs for archers were on the outer wall. Chambers for knights had been converted to servants’ rooms. Mr. C occupied the solar on the top floor.

But behind the seemingly solid walls of those servants’ rooms was a whole different world accessed only from Mr. C’s parlor at the top and the office on ground level. In the unseen interior of the tower, a spiral gallery spooled around the circular shelves of books lining the walls. The vast Malcolm library was merely an arm’s length away from any point of the walkway.

The trick was knowing where to find the tomes one wanted. Only Mr. C knew for sure. Lydia had memorized the placement of the various books he’d given her to research, but those were only an insignificant number among the murmuring pages filling the tower’s center.

Mr. C didn’t attempt to reach for the volume he wanted. He merely pointed the cane tied to his hand and let Lydia pull it down.

She knew the routine. She opened the spine flat on her palms, letting the pages riffle in the draft until Mr. C steadied himself. He abandoned the cane to flip pages until he found the passage he required.

After that, she was expected to understand what he wanted. He couldn’t communicate otherwise. He tapped the open page and turned around to shuffle back up. Lydia waited where she was until he was safely in his room again.

Then she memorized the writing on the pages indicated, the writer and date, the location of the volume if she needed it again, and returned the book to the shelf.

He’d chosen a volume from the 1700s so she could at least understand the English, except for a few words in Gaelic and mathematical formulas that she didn’t comprehend. Her education had not been very scientific—not because she was a woman but because her father had been her teacher.

She hurried down the stairs to Mr. C’s private study. Sliding open the concealed door, she stepped into the exterior office where the servants expected to find her. She folded the cloak and tucked it beneath the desk so their guest wouldn’t see it.

It was wasteful writing out what was in her head, but she had a feeling Mr. C wanted her to show the pages to Mr. Ives. Did he know Mr. Ives couldn’t read? It was a curious phenomenon that turned up occasionally in the males of that