Codex (15 page)

“Not at all,” he said stiffly.

She looked down at her papers again. Edward couldn't think of anything to say, but he didn't want to leave it at that. It was up to him to take this news like a good sport, but somehow he'd forgotten how to do that.
This is a lucky break,
he told himself.
You're off the hook.

“I'll write up a report,” he said finally. “I mean, on my work up till now. Unless you'd rather—”

“That won't be necessary.” She gestured dismissively.

“Listen, I apologize about bringing Margaret here, but you have to understand, she's an invaluable asset to this project.” He placed his fingertips on the edge of her desk in what he hoped was a gently assertive gesture. “I know I should have cleared it through you first, but I really think you should reconsider this.”

“It isn't that. I told you, that doesn't matter now. The fact is, I received a call from the Duke yesterday.”

“The Duke.”

“Yes. And he told me to stop work on the library immediately.”

“Oh,” said Edward, wrong-footed. “Well, I guess that settles it then. But I don't understand, why stop now? I was just starting to make some real progress.”

“I don't know.” She began briskly transferring piles of papers from one wire tray to another. “I just don't know.” He saw now that she really wasn't upset about Margaret. She was upset because Gervase could have been her ticket home, and he was slipping through her fingers. “It's not my business to question the Duke's decisions. Perhaps he's bringing the books back to England ahead of schedule. Perhaps he's decided they're not worth the trouble after all. Who knows? Maybe he'll just sell the lot and have Sotheby's do the catalog for us.”

Edward nodded slowly.

“How's his health?” he asked, with miserable politeness. “The Duke, I mean? You mentioned before that he'd been under the weather.”

She ignored the question.

“It's odd, isn't it?” she went on. “He called last night—it must have been three in the morning at Weymarshe. He doesn't usually speak to me directly, you know. Technically I only work for the Duchess.”

“Is that where they live? In Weymarshe?”

She gave him a funny look.

“Most of the time. Weymarshe is the name of their estate in England.”

“Is it a castle?” Maybe answering questions about the Wents would make her feel better.

“You might call Weymarshe a castle.” She went back to her papers. “It's been built over and added onto so many times, I don't know what you'd call it, really. It's a hodgepodge. Most of it was rebuilt in the late 1600s, after the revolution, but parts of it are very old—they say it was even built on some old earthwork fortifications. The academics are always wanting to dig it up, but the Wents won't let them.”

She looked up at Edward thoughtfully.

“You know, when you first came here I thought you might be after a career with the family. It's quite rewarding, you know. And of course I don't just mean financially.”

Edward blinked.

“You thought I was looking for a job with the Wents? A permanent position?”

He didn't know whether to be amused or insulted. Laura just shrugged.

“The Duchess has made arrangements like that before, with other young people. Particularly with young men.”

“What would that make me? A servant?”

“Well, call it what you like.” He considered, too late, the possibility that he might have just insulted her. “If you played your cards right you might never really have to work again. The Wents like to keep interesting people around, to advise them if something comes up. It's not for everybody—I mean, it's not a regular career—but some people consider it very glamorous. Especially the Americans, I find.”

“I'm sure they do.”

Edward let it drop. There was no point in offending her while he was on his way out the door. He let his eyes stray to Laura's desk. On it was a picture of a woman in a plain black frame—drastically foreshortened, from his oblique angle, but undeniably the Duchess. He recognized her wavy dark hair, her wide, sensual mouth. In the photograph she was even wearing the same cream sun hat he'd seen her wearing before, when he'd met her on the street. There was something maternal about her, but also something undeniably sexy as well. She was like your best friend's mom, the one you fantasized about in junior high before you knew any better.

“But I suppose that's all off now,” Laura was saying. “Look, I don't know what to tell you. The matter seemed so urgent when we made the initial arrangements, but now—well, everything's changed. I hope you aren't too disappointed?”

“No. No, of course not.” Edward's own voice sounded distant to him. He turned to go. “You'll get in touch, if there's any change?”

She gave him a thin, sympathetic smile.

“Yes, of course.”

“I'll just get my stuff from upstairs.”

He slipped back up the spiral staircase to the library, where Margaret was still writing busily in her notebook. The incunable lay open in the pool of light from the one lamp, and as she leaned over it the light shone through the curtain of her dark hair.

He cleared his throat.

“We should go,” he said.

She finished the sentence she'd been writing, dotted the period, then looked up.

“Why?”

“Change of plan. We're off the case.”

“The case?”

“The library. They're terminating the project.” He couldn't quite keep the frustration out of his voice. “I'm sorry, I had no idea this was going to happen. Word came down from the top, apparently. It's all extremely sudden. Even Laura seemed surprised.”

He felt embarrassed, but Margaret was outwardly unruffled. She simply nodded, closed the book, and dropped her notebook back into her bag. She stood up and straightened her skirt. Edward snapped off the lamp, and they made their way cautiously downstairs in the darkness. He looked around almost nostalgically. This was the last time he'd see the inside of the Wents' apartment. It was strange how attached he'd gotten to it.

“I just have to drop off the key,” he said, “then we can go.”

“Wait.”

In the darkness of the hallway, Margaret put her hand on his arm. It was a strange gesture, awkward and sincere at the same time. He didn't think she'd ever actually physically touched him before. At first he thought she was trying to cheer him up.

“Don't give them the key,” she said. Margaret felt around in her bag and took out a large jingling key ring. She wrestled with it until she managed to pull off a gray metal tube key. It was indistinguishable from the Wents' key. “Give her this instead.”

“What?” He dropped his voice to a hoarse whisper. “What are you talking about?”

“I need to have access to this collection.”

“What? Why?”

“I need to be able to get back in here. To examine these books.”

He just stared at her. She seemed to have no idea that what she was saying made no sense.

“Margaret,” he began, in what he hoped was a patient and reasonable tone, “these people are my clients. I narrowly escaped being in deep shit just for bringing you here. Whatever you have in mind—and I don't want to know what it is—if anybody found out about it—”

“They won't.”

She hadn't brushed away the dirt from the front of her dress, and there was a smudge of brick-red leather dust on her cheekbone like war paint.

“Margaret.”

“Look,” she explained, as if she were talking to a child. “The keys look exactly the same. This one goes to a bicycle lock. This one is the Wents'. If they notice, just say it was a mistake. They got mixed up.”

He just looked at her dumbly, rubbing his jaw. Sensing her moment, she deftly plucked the real key out of his hand and dropped it into her bag. Then, taking his free hand between both of her own, she pressed the other key into his palm and closed his numb fingers over it.

“There.” She let go. “All right?”

“This is insane.” He shook his head. It felt like it was full of buzzing bees swarming around in meaningless circles, lost and disoriented, queenless. “What—so you're going to break into their apartment every time you feel like checking out a book?”

“If necessary. If we can't come to some other agreement.”

“What other agreement? What are you talking about? Jesus Christ, they're probably taking the books back to England anyway. That's why they're kicking us out.”

“Maybe they won't.”

“That's beside the point.” He looked nervously over her shoulder for signs of Laura. How long was this going to go on?

“Listen, we're not doing this,” he said in a furious whisper. “It doesn't make any sense, and it's idiotic.”

“What are you going to do? Tell them that I have their key and I won't give it back?”

They stood and stared at each other.

“Edward,” she said earnestly. “It's time you got a grip on what's really important here. These are people who inherited their money. This collection represents a tiny fraction of their total worth, and for all we know they're getting ready to liquidate it with little or no regard for its intellectual and cultural value. Do you know what happens to books like these once they're sold?” Her eyes burned. In the past thirty seconds they had acquired an incandescent intensity. “They're disbound. Dealers dismantle them, cut them up and sell them off page by page because they're worth more money that way. Do you understand? They'll be gone forever. Dead. They'll never be reassembled.”

“I understand,” he hissed back, “I also understand that my career cannot end over some stupid sitcom hijinks. And I don't mean to sound harsh, but I don't see what's up there that's so important that I should risk my whole future over it. And I don't understand why you're getting so excited about a bunch of—”

“It doesn't matter why!” she answered fiercely, her face flushing. If her eyes had burned before, now they were radioactive. She took a step forward toward the elevator. He moved to block her path and she grabbed his wrist, squeezing it as hard as she could—which wasn't very hard—and staring into his eyes.

“You don't understand anything,” she whispered, articulating crisply, spitting the consonants. “You're an idiot and an ignorant greedhead! You don't care about books, you don't care about history, and you don't care about anything that's important. So if you're not going to help, then get out of my way.”

She flung his arm aside as an exclamation point. Taking a deep breath, she brushed back a strand of her hair out of her eyes.

“And I'm not getting excited.”

They glared at each other. It was a standoff. Edward should have been angry, but instead he had to suppress a hysterical giggle. He didn't know whether to slap her or kiss her or burst out laughing. It was insane, but there was something a little magnificent about her and her speechifying and her academic zealotry. He knew it was wrong, he knew he should be taking things more seriously, but he also knew he was experiencing a moment of temptation, and to make matters worse it was the most diabolical temptation of all: the temptation to do nothing, to sit back and let things happen and get completely out of control. What would happen if he let her keep the key? Maybe the Wents weren't through with him yet after all. A giddy feeling came over him, like vertigo, as if he were an empty-headed animated character in a video game, and somebody somewhere else was playing him.

Somewhere down the hall a vacuum cleaner was turned on.

“What are you going to do about your bike?” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“Your bike. Without the key. How are you going to unlock your bike lock?”

“Oh.” She flushed. “I have a spare key.”

“I have no knowledge of this. Do you understand?” Edward held up both hands, palms out. “I don't know anything. If it comes down to it, you overpowered me with a Vulcan nerve pinch and took the key away by main force.”

She looked at him blankly. The sudden intensity was gone; she was just Margaret again.

“I know you think you're being clever,” he added. “But you're not. This is very, very stupid.”

“All right,” she said flatly, in her old monotone. “All right.” She patted him on the shoulder as she walked past him down the hall, as an afterthought. “I'm sorry I said that. You're not an idiot.”

That, he thought, is where you're wrong.

T
HAT NIGHT AROUND
midnight Edward found himself in a cab with Zeph heading uptown on Broadway.

“What beer did you bring?”

Edward lifted a sweating six-pack of Negra Modelo out of a brown paper bag on the floor. Zeph shrugged.

“It'll have to do.” He folded his massive forearms and looked out the window. “These guys are real snobs about beer. They microbrew.”

“Where's this thing happening, anyway?” said Edward.

“Broadway and Fifty-first. Offices of Wade and Cullman, accountants-at-law, pillars of the financial community.”

Edward leaned back against the black upholstery and put his hands behind his head.

“What am I doing here?” he said, staring up at the cab's ripped fabric ceiling. “I was going to start packing tonight. I have to be in London in a week. A week.”

“You haven't started?”

“I've been working at the Wents.'”

“The Wents. That's a laugh. They're using you, man.” Zeph shook his fist in Edward's face. “
Why can't you see that?
”

Edward shrugged. “I'm kind of getting into working there. Some of those old books are really beautiful.”

“I generally judge the worth of a book by how deeply the letters on the cover are embossed. Anyway, you need a vacation.”