Armand borrowed a leaflet from a man who was seated beside us and handed it to me.
‘A Christmas Gift to a Dear Child in Memory of a Summer Day.’ I had simply adored his book as a child and was surprised to learn that Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll), a mathematician at Oxford, had lovingly penned and illustrated the little book in 1864 as a gift to the Liddell family. The story went that on a boat trip down the Thames, he first told his surreal story to the daughters of the dean, Henry Liddell. Eventually, he was persuaded to publish the work and the rest was history.
‘This is fascinating!’ I said, having completely forgotten my ardent thoughts of a moment earlier.
‘There are rumours that the bidding could exceed ten thousand pounds.’
Barely noticed in the crowd was a small, elderly woman in a black dress. Armand pointed her out as Alice Liddell Hargreaves.
I turned to him and said, ‘You don’t mean … it couldn’t be!’
He nodded, gratified by being the one in the know.
‘She is the original “Alice”. She held on to the manuscript all this time, but since the death of her husband, she has been drowning in tax bills.’
‘Not Reginald Hargreaves, the cricketer?’ They were a high-profile couple in London society. It must have pained her greatly to put the manuscript up for auction. She sat at the very front, her head erect and her pride intact.
The bidding began hesitantly, as it often does, while the buyers get the measure of each other. There’s a certain amount of poker playing in the auction room and no one wished to show their hand too soon.
‘Eight thousand, five hundred to the man in the alcove,’ announced the auctioneer, as I felt Armand’s hand go up.
‘You never said you were bidding,’ I whispered.
‘On behalf of a client,’ he said, always with that mysterious air. Another wealthy client; he seemed to collect them like snowdrops in springtime.
As the bidding rose higher and higher, attention focused on a short, well-dressed man with an unmistakable air of authority.
‘Fifteen thousand pounds,’ he announced, in a strong American accent, as though to bring this charade to a close.
‘Who’s that?’ I asked.
‘Merde! That, my dear Opaline, is the Terror of the Auction Room.’
The gavel came down with a decisive bang and the tense silence shattered into a cacophony of voices. Some in wonderment, most aghast that such a quintessential English work was now lost to an American. The man wiped his glasses, as some bidders went to congratulate him.
‘He has outbid me at every auction this year,’ Armand said, in a thorny tone that suggested begrudging admiration for the man. As we passed by him on our way out of the room, the two men nodded to each other.
‘Mr Hassan, tell the baroness she will have to do better next time.’
Armand bristled at his gloating and attempted to bustle me out of the room.
‘And who is your companion? Are you not going to introduce us?’
‘Abe Rosenbach, may I present Mademoiselle—’
‘Gray,’ I interrupted him again. ‘I am a book dealer from Ireland,’ I said, loving how that sounded.
‘Is that so? Here, let me give you my card,’ he said, procuring one from his pocket. ‘You never know when we might do business together.’ He had a smile heavily laden with innuendo that I tried to ignore.
‘Congratulations on your acquisition, Mr Rosenbach.’
‘Thank you, Miss Gray, but this is not simply an acquisition. I have wanted this manuscript for a very long time. You see, it was the book my dear departed mother read to me when I lay ill in bed with chickenpox. I suppose, with my fever, I had a fancy that she was telling me a story about her childhood. I thought she was Alice. She died shortly afterwards and I’ve read this book every night since.’
I was almost moved to tears by his story. Even Armand seemed affected.
‘Hah! Don’t be ridiculous,’ Rosenbach bellowed. ‘Never trust a book dealer who lets sentimentality get in the way. I had to own it because there is only one of it in the world – that’s all there is to it. If I own it, then no one else can. I have known men to hazard their fortunes, go long journeys halfway about the world, forget friendships, even lie, cheat, and steal, all for the gain of a book.’
‘Mr Rosenbach, you had me completely fooled!’ I said, annoyed at having been lured in by his tale.
‘Apologies my dear, I couldn’t resist. After love, book collecting is the most exhilarating sport of all.’
‘What a cad,’ I whispered to Armand as we left the auction room, but he did not answer. They were made of the same stuff, Rosenbach and he. They felt no guilt, no remorse, and would do whatever it took to get what they wanted. It frightened and fascinated me in equal measure, like standing too close to a flame and hoping that I would not be consumed by its heat.
Chapter Twenty-Three
MARTHA
‘What has you looking like the cat who got the cream?’ Madame Bowden asked while I dressed her bed. It kept happening – I’d be in the middle of the most mundane task and I’d think about Henry kissing me and my cheeks would hurt from smiling so much.
‘Just happy, I guess,’ I replied.
‘Nonsense. The only reason a woman blushes like that is a man. It’s the scholar, isn’t it?’
After the bookshop, he had taken me back to his B&B, but it turned out that it was the landlady’s birthday and the house was full to bursting with a surprise party.
‘Maybe.’
He walked me home after but I didn’t invite him in. Things were still a bit new and I took the birthday party fiasco as a sign not to rush into anything. I did kiss him goodbye though. When I thought of that kiss, that’s when my cheeks hurt the most because it was the most romantic kiss of my life. Under a streetlamp, his hands in the pocket of my coat, mine under his sweater, his lips slowly finding their way down my neck and to my collar bone. I’d never been kissed like that, with a tempting kind of tenderness, like he was telling me there was much more to come. That tickling sensation in my lower belly was threatening to unglue me completely. I had to focus on something mundane.