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

of her ways and drop your support. If you have half a brain, you will accept the substantial sum I’m offering you to take the next ship out. Leave before I humiliate the ladies by having you flung from the courtroom as the fraud you are.”

“Had you offered my mother that ten years ago, I might have taken you up on it,” Max acknowledged. “I have no use for you or civilization or juggling pounds and cents. I left in the first place so as not to humiliate my family. Instead of being grateful, you tried to rob my mother of her family home, you deprived her of income, and forced me to find Morgan to handle my affairs. And now you insult my intelligence. I’ll see you in court, sir, and you’d best pray the judge is lenient for I’ll not be.”

“That school will fall down on your mother’s head!” His uncle raged. “I am merely attempting to remove her to somewhere safe.”

“There’s a major civic development project scheduled for the property across from the school,” Blair offered. “A fortune can be made if those old tenements are torn down and replaced with modern buildings to house lawmakers and the like.”

Max sighed and studied his uncle with despair. “You have spent too much time with your accounting books, Uncle. You’ve forgotten that the point of money is not to watch it grow but to make people safe. Just as fair warning, my fiancée is the Malcolm librarian. She holds the family genealogy, and we have corresponded for years. Neither she nor anyone else who really knows me doubts my identity. It is your problem that you never took the time to learn who I am. Do you need a room for the night? I can ask Miss Wystan if she has a bed for you.”

“I’m staying with Crowley. He has a thing or two to say about Miss Wystan. Do not think you’ll be living here in comfort once the judge throws out your case. You’ll be fortunate you’re not both cooling your heels in prison for the next decade.” Slapping his wet hat back on his head, he stalked out of the hall.

Max fought a frisson of fear. Could Lydia’s neighbor prove the land wasn’t hers? Or was this an ugly reference to testing Lydia’s talent? How would his uncle know about that?

If Max had brought disaster down on the library, he had even more reason to marry and win his estate back. He’d need the wherewithal to fight her enemies.

Twenty-two

Two weeks later

“I do wish I could be on the champagne train with our guests.” Lady Agnes sighed while sorting through a basket of delicate lace. “It will be such a lovely party! But I love helping you with the gown and flowers and menu. I need to be two people.”

Lydia winced as the seamstress stuck a pin into her hip instead of a seam. “I hope you did not provide too much champagne. The men drank it with whisky at the engagement dinner and became much too boisterous.”

She feared the encounter with Max’s uncle had been the reason for the hilarity, not the formal announcement of betrothal. But Max had brushed off whatever had happened.

“Max said his funds are limited until the court frees them, so it was only one case. And that nice Miss Trivedi helped us find pink ribbons for a fraction of the cost. I know how to be frugal!” Triumphantly, she found the lace she wanted and pulled it from the basket.

Max had spent these last weeks practically living under the tower, except when he was down in the village ordering bricks or bringing laborers up the mountain. She knew he was sending telegrams to his friend in the city as well—avoiding asking her to do any more correspondence.

That was worrisome, but she had her own hands full with the wedding, staffing the castle, looking for a steward, and desperately attempting to answer letters without the use of the journals. She didn’t know how to approach him with her insecurities.

She feared that if the court didn’t accept the few witnesses who had responded to Max’s pleas, he would have wasted all his available funds on his mother’s dream of a magnificent wedding. Lady Agnes’s notion of frugality didn’t precisely correspond with Lydia’s.

Or maybe she was just excessively nervous.

“Have the trustees given you full possession of the trust yet?” Agnes asked, working out a tangle in a ribbon. “You wouldn’t have to fret so much about money then, would you?”

“They said I must be tested?” Lydia hadn’t had much time for studying all the documents, but those words had stayed in her head. They’d keep her awake nights if it weren’t for Max exhausting her.

“Tested?” The older lady frowned, stuffed the ribbon back in her basket, and shook her gray curls. “Foolish men. Tested.” She humpfed.

That did nothing to reassure Lydia, so she chose to block it from her mind, for now.

For fittings, they used one of the smaller rooms on the upper floor of the castle that may have once housed a seamstress, judging by the mirrors and wire dress form. Lydia was learning more about the sprawling fortress than she had ever known while working for Mr. C.

Max had expanded her world considerably.

She admired the full length of her wedding gown in the cheval glass. She’d insisted that it be plain, without an excess of frills. Lady Agnes wanted a train of lace flounces. The result was an elegant ivory silk that clung to her full figure in front and a detachable train covered in blond lace in back. She hoped she didn’t have to walk down many steps.

“I really must ask Mrs. Folkston if all the guest rooms are ready,” Lydia fretted. “They haven’t been opened as long as I have been here, and that’s been years.”

“Don’t fash yourself, as I’ve heard people say.” Lady Agnes opened what appeared to be a jewelry box. “Your servants know what to