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

lads and gardeners, after Lydia hired them again. The cistern held plenty and refilled easily.

Richard and Bakari ran out and laughed at him as he dunked his head to scrub his hair and came up sputtering. Several of the new arrivals glanced his way out of curiosity, but they had no reason to recognize an uncouth field hand bathing in his clothes. Max was grinning by the time he ordered the boys to fetch him a cloak to cover himself.

He dried off as best as he could with a horse blanket. Clothes dripping, he wrapped in a cloak and stomped in through the kitchen door. The servants froze at his entrance.

“You’ll have to mop up after me, I fear. It was either this or offend our guests.” Without further apology, Max traipsed across the stone floor and up the servants’ stairs. One of the young maids, naturally, followed at his heels with a mop. But apparently his stench put off any amorous inclinations. Huh, lesson number three—stink put women off.

Guests were already in the billiard room. The ancient table sagged. The room was lined with books and reading chairs instead of hunting trophies, but it was the closest imitation of a male refuge the castle possessed. The men glanced up as Max passed wrapped in a cloak and leaving a trail of slime, but they returned to their game, as if weird apparitions were normal. Ives then, and Max snorted in relief.

Ladies gathered in the great hall, sipping tea and delicately dining on cakes. They stared as he dripped down the carpeted corridor, rightfully so, of course. But they didn’t follow.

He was pondering muck and oil as a natural deterrent by the time he reached the tower, unmolested. Lloyd popped out of the guest room where Max still kept most of his wardrobe. He figured Lloyd and probably Marta had to know he was sleeping with Lydia, but for his mother’s sake, he kept up the pretense of occupying the lower chamber.

“I’ve taken the liberty of running a hot bath,” Lloyd said stiffly. “Your attire is in the bathing room with your shaving gear. Do you need any further assistance?”

That was the man’s way of saying You’re late, you stink, and you need a shave. Max appreciated his reticence. “I’ll be fixed up in a trice. Is Miss Lydia waiting on me?”

“Her mother and sister have arrived and are with her now. If you have no further need of me, I must see to Masters Richard and Bakari.” He bowed and hurried off, no doubt relieved Max didn’t need assistance as most gentlemen would.

Lydia’s family had arrived. This wedding really was happening.

It had seemed a fine idea a few weeks ago, before he knew all the insecurities lurking behind Lydia’s serenity. She presented a fine façade of strength and confidence that had everyone believing her foundation was sound, when it was as unstable as the tower she lived in.

He lacked experience in shoring up the foundations of ladies. . . Well, the emotional kind anyway. He was pretty good at corsets. Refusing to look backward, Max sank into the tub and scrubbed, creating an oily sheen in the water. Tomorrow, he would be a married man. Within the week, he hoped to be a wealthy one again. Planning any more future than that risked insanity.

“Here, wear this to dinner. It makes me feel like a princess.” Lydia adjusted the lace mantle over her mother’s rounded shoulders.

She’d hastily cleared away evidence of Max’s occupancy before bringing her family up, but they seemed too distracted by the lovely suite to notice small details, like the building blocks in the study.

“In that gown, you almost look like a lady,” her sister Sara said admiringly, with a touch of jealousy. “Being a librarian must be most lucrative.”

Lydia shook out the midnight blue skirt adorned with pale gold ruffles that she’d been told complemented her hair. “I have been saving my earnings for years. Open the wardrobe, and you’ll see what I’ve been wearing. But Mr. Ives is from a wealthy, noble family. I thought I should attempt to appear like a lady for his guests. Why don’t you borrow that shawl on the shelf? It’s a good color with your hair.”

Her mother and sister had darker red hair than Lydia. She was trying to learn about colors. The green shawl should work for both of them.

“Please do not take this wrong, dear,” her mother said hesitantly. “But why would a wealthy gentleman settle for a vicar’s plain daughter? Is there something you’d like to tell us?”

Her family had been with her only a few hours, and already they were eroding what little confidence she possessed. They meant well. Lydia knew they did. But they made her feel like an ugly stepchild. Perhaps they just raised the memories of her youth as a plain, overlarge misfit.

She did her best not to doubt herself—and Max. He’d not been particularly attentive these past weeks, but he’d been working hard, and so had she. Planning a wedding and learning to run an estate while desperately attempting to find the journals she needed consumed every minute of the day.

At night—that was a different story. Max certainly seemed to find her attractive in bed. That ought to be enough.

“You’ll have to meet Mr. Ives, Mama. You’ll understand. He’s not at all like the shallow gentlemen you’re thinking about,” she said, if only to bolster her confidence.

Sara admired the shawl in the mirror, then wandered through the adjoining rooms to study the office where Max had substituted wooden blocks for books in his effort to produce a copy of the tower supports. “Papa would have loved this office.”

Lydia had left all the trust documents Keya had sent on the desk. She’d studied them in hopes of learning more about testing her as librarian. She could find no mention of who did the testing or how, but there was certainly mention of it, proving the solicitors had done their homework.

Finding nothing reassuring, she’d