“That won’t stop anybody welcoming Cato,” he said. “A fine, well-behaved canine. Not the handsomest fellow, but good-looking enough and intelligent. If he had been one of those vile little yapping dogs, I should have dragged you away—by force, if necessary—and left him to his fate.”
“In my experience, they become vile little yapping dogs because their owners spoil them,” she said. “But nothing excuses beating an animal. You would have had an interesting time trying to drag me away, I promise you.”
“Oh, I know I would,” he said. “I get delicious chills, contemplating the prospect.”
No one got delicious chills on Olympia’s account, and she had no business having delicious chills at the thought of causing them in him.
She’d spent too much time with him, that was the trouble. More time than she’d ever spent in the company of any man not a relative. He was infecting her brain and turning it silly and hopeful and waking up old wishes and dreams.
Time to turn boring.
“Do you know what gives me delicious chills?” she said.
“Let me guess.” He closed his eyes.
“I strongly doubt—”
“The ?sopi Fabulae, from Maioli’s Library,” he said.
She became aware of her jaw dropping, but not soon enough, because he chuckled.
“Uncle Charles was a great collector of books,” he said. “I learned some things.”
“He owned the ?sopi Fabulae?”
“From Maioli’s Library. I paid attention to that one, you see, because it was Aesop’s Fables, which is more entrancing to a little boy, as you might imagine, than bibles and codices.”
“I should love to see it,” she said. “Papa sold ours—or at least I think it was that book. He did not keep proper records—or any records—and my grandfather’s papers are not quite in the order I should wish. I should have made much better progress in my cataloguing if we had not had to come to London every Season. Hope springs eternal in the parental heart, you see. And Papa is not skilled at calculating odds. If he had been, he wouldn’t have needed to sell the Aesop, or any other valuable book.”
“They don’t always fetch as much as one would think,” he said. “My uncle acquired some ancient works at little more than one pays for a half year of ‘The Library of Romance.’”
“This one you refer to,” she said. “You speak generally, not specifically. In other words, you don’t buy romances.”
“But I do,” he said. “Every month.”
“For your sister.”
“Why would I do that? She can buy her own. And now she can make Blackwood buy them. Besides, we don’t like the same books. She prefers essays and other brain-taxing works. Her last letter mentioned Bulwer’s England and the English. I grew sleepy merely reading the title and the author’s name.”
“And what doesn’t make you sleepy is . . . ?”
“Schinderhannes, the Robber of the Rhine. Second volume coming August first. Victor Hugo’s The Slave-king. Sixth volume, also on August first. Ripping good stories. I can hardly wait. The booksellers sent them to me while I was abroad, along with lists of coming publications. Smith, Elder, and Co., Cornhill, if you can ever tear yourself away from the Gutenbergs and such.”
“I quite understand the sensational appeal of some of those books,” she said.
“Do you?”
“Of course. It’s a great thing to be swept away by a story.”
“It is,” he said.
“But do you not find some of them excessively sentimental or maudlin?”
“Yes, but I vastly admire the writer with the skill to bring tears to these jaded eyes, even when I know I ought to be laughing.”
Her mind wrestled with the Duke of Ripley as a romance aficionado. “Well,” she said, “this is an interesting side of you.”
“I have many interesting sides,” he said. “In fact, I’m a fascinating fellow.”
He was turning out to be more fascinating than was good for her.
“I suppose you must be, to have got away with so much for so long,” she said.
“A thriving dukedom helps,” he said. “And a good mind for finance if not for high intellectual realms.”
“I’ve often thought it would have been a good thing,” she said slowly, “if Papa had a mind for finance. Yet in fairness to him, he’s a doting husband and a kind and loving parent. There are worse things in life, much worse kinds of families.”
“So there are,” he said.
She caught a hint of something—a shift of mood, an emotion? Or maybe it was merely a pause before he went on, “But your library labors continue to intrigue me. You mentioned books being sold, yet you seem to have plenty to do.” He settled back in the seat and stretched out his long legs. “Why do I suspect that’s an exciting tale?”
“To me it is,” she said. “Rather too exciting at times.” So many narrow escapes from calamity. “To you, an altogether different matter.”
“I’m a fellow of unplumbed depths,” he said. “You must have realized that by now. I’ve astonished you more than once in our short acquaintance. I want to hear about the books.”
“To help you sleep?”
He shrugged. “Does it matter? We’ve hours to while away.”
Fifteen miles later
Indeed, Ashmont would have his hands full.
Lady Olympia Hightower was bookish, beyond question. But she was nothing like what bookish meant to Ripley. True, she seemed to have memorized most of the major book sales of the past twenty years, and she tended to forget her audience and slip into bibliophile jargon. But it wasn’t merely collecting to her. Her relationship to the books was passionate. And the passion drove her to . . .
“Wickedness,” he said. “You are a wicked, manipulative daughter.”
“Some people need to be saved from themselves,” she said. “Papa is truly good-hearted. He doesn’t mean to destroy his precious inheritance.”
Her paternal great-grandfather had bought the bulk of the collection. The present Earl of Gonerby, on the other hand, knew as much about a Grolier binding as the dog did. Before Lady Olympia was old enough to understand the collection’s value, several precious items went for the sorts of prices Uncle Charles had paid occasionally.
“It would have been more wicked to educate him,” she said. “He would have decimated the library in no time. He wouldn’t go there merely when he needed ready money quickly. It would be a wholesale slaughter.”
Unlike so many other debts, debts of honor—gambling debts, mainly—must be paid promptly. The library had been Gonerby’s way to get hard cash in a hurry.
“Thanks to his lack of interest as well as knowledge, I’ve been able to save many important works,” she said. “For instance, the Mazarin Bible printed by Gutenberg and Fust circa 1450—the first production with movable types!”
Her voice throbbed with excitement. The glow in her face was nearly blinding.
“Ashmont will buy it for you,” he said. And would receive in reward, beyond a doubt, a fine romp in bed or elsewhere.
Or Ripley could buy it as a wedding present and she would look at him with lustful blue-green-grey eyes and make Ashmont jealous of him, for once.
Do Luscious Lucius good, too.