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

the inevitable knock sounded on her door. With a sigh, she set aside the journal.

Her mother and sister strode in bemoaning Lydia’s shabby gown and braid. Behind them followed the ladies Lydia had only recently come to know—Lady Phoebe, Lady Dare, and Olivia Blair, who lived half way to Glasgow and had children to mind, so didn’t visit often. She must have been on the early train.

The ladies descended on Lydia in exclamations of joy and admiration, steering her toward the bedchamber as if they’d lived here all their lives. Lydia began to feel a trifle better about her wedding day.

“We left our men outside with Max,” Phoebe said. “He has his sons leading tours beneath the tower. They’ll be digging up the Roman bath if we don’t start this ceremony soon!”

Lydia could only imagine. . . She almost laughed at the vision of Max and his best men walking up the aisle in mud-encased shoes or worse. “Surely the marquess and the earl aren’t out there, are they?”

“The marquess?” her mother asked in astonishment, stepping away from Lydia’s elaborately gowned entourage. “Surely a proper lord would not dig under the tower?”

“The earl is an Ives. I don’t know about the marquess, but Ives curiosity is greater than common sense.” Lydia hugged her mother. “Do not fear. We will all be as grand as you wish for a few hours.”

“Your hair, we must start with your hair!” Olivia cried happily. “I have brought an assortment of pins and combs and ribbons you can pick through as you like. I know you disdain ornament, but today, you must shine.”

“I was very shiny last night,” Lydia informed her. “Lady Agnes emptied her jewel box over my head.”

“I wish I’d had my camera here.” Lady Dare was setting up said camera. “In the future, we’ll all have glamorous portraits of our wedding days to hang on the wall. Real people, real memories, not artificial backgrounds and fake poses for a painter.”

“Posing for a camera is equally artificial,” Olivia pointed out.

They quarreled amiably as they brushed and pulled and tugged at Lydia’s hair. If she believed the ladies, her hair wasn’t as vulgar as she thought. They exclaimed over the color and the fineness and the frizzy curl as if it were a stack of gold instead of a haystack. Of course, Max claimed to like it, too, but he’d say anything to persuade her into bed.

She’d drifted off into a vision of their honeymoon night when another knock resounded on the outer door.

“That must be our tea.” Uninterested in hair or clothes, Lady Phoebe was rummaging through books on the bedchamber shelves. “I’ll fetch it.”

When she returned, she was grim and pale and holding a letter instead of a tea tray. “The trustees have sent the committee to test your librarian skills. Why would they do that on your wedding day?”

Lydia was in too much shock to even consider an answer.

Twenty-six

Torn between the assorted vexations threatening their wedding day, Max gave up blocking his uncle and ran after the two officious suits knocking at the front door. He’d find a dungeon cell and lock them in it. Why, by all that was holy, would the trustees send a committee to a wedding? On a Sunday. Without any warning.

The message Max inferred from this attack, especially delivered by Crowley, was sinister. The solicitors meant to prevent Lydia—and possibly Max—from taking over the property they wanted to sell. It was a modern version of storming the castle.

He dashed up the front stairs and into the great hall only to see the two strangers escorted out the other side. With his mind on the goal, he didn’t even notice the room full of women—until Susan intercepted him.

Panicked, he glanced around. Ladies everywhere, watching, easing closer. In a fit of frustration, Max grabbed a claymore off the wall, holding it like a shield in front of him. “Out of my way, Susan. Don’t come between me and my bride.”

Susan looked startled. Others tittered. No one stopped him as he rushed through the immense hall into the corridor beyond, just in time to see the footman steering the interfering bastards toward the guest library.

Pointing the sword in his hand, Max shouted, “Zach, stop right there! They are uninvited intruders. They might mean harm to Miss Lydia. Throw them out or lock them up!”

Both men turned and blanched at the sight of Max in his tweeds and leather breeches, wielding a sword almost as large as they were. They weren’t hefty invaders but paunchy, bespectacled, office sorts, the kind of civilized gentlemen who wielded paperwork like weapons. Max avoided the sort on principle. He wasn’t sorry to terrify them.

He could hear the ladies rustling into the corridor and knew they listened and watched and could suffocate him in silks and coos at any moment. A chill crept up his spine. His only allies were outside. He didn’t have time to sort this lot out, although he heard his mother speaking impatiently.

Trapped between women in silk finery and document-wielding businessmen, forced into the same uncomfortable position that had sent him fleeing as a lad, Max stood his ground. Even if no one else understood, he was confident that Lydia knew why he might lose his temper and behave uncivilly to women and bespectacled solicitors.

Max pointed the claymore at the cowering gentlemen. The footman watched Max nervously, as if he might go off his head. Maybe he would.

Amazingly, the ladies stayed behind him. He didn’t have time to ponder that curiosity. “Either you leave, sirs, or I’ll have Zach lock you in the wine cellar until Miss Wystan has time to ask the reason for your presence. And that will be sometime tomorrow, at best.”

“We haven’t come all this way to be put off,” the older, balding one protested. “It is Miss Wystan’s duty to subject to our testing. The position of executor may be appointed, but the library itself must be maintained by a true librarian.” He sniffed in disdain at