The Queen's Librarian (8 page)

Lucas was caught between annoyance that no one would believe he hadn’t been fighting, indignation that they apparently didn’t think he could, and delight that Nan had somehow turned it all back on Laurie better than even Alex had managed.

“Aunt,” Laurie said, a bit fraught in response to the narrow look Mother was giving him, “I swear, I only arrived this morning, I wasn’t—”

“Oh, don’t worry, Laurie,” Alex put in. “No one would believe for a moment that
you’d
be the cause of any trouble. I mean, it was one little baking shed, after all.” He craned his neck around to look at Lucas over his shoulder, opening an opportunity for Anice to turn with him and smear biscuit goo in sticky handprints all down the left lapel of his waistcoat. “What was that other thing just last month?” Alex asked, as if he didn’t know. “Something about someone breaking that priceless stained glass on the southern side of the bailey. Almost as though someone had been trying to sneak out or something. But again. Not Laurie. Of course.”

“Of course,” Lucas agreed and grinned at Laurie.

“I hate you both,” Laurie groused with a scowl but accepted with better grace the handful of linty rock candy Stillwell retrieved from his pocket and held out to him. He gave Stillwell a smile and even put one of the less linty pieces in his mouth. “Stillwell loves me, at least.”

“Stillwell, I told you to bin that,” said Nan sternly. “We do not eat things we found on the ground.”

“I’m not eating it.” Stillwell blinked at his mother, all innocence. “I just wanted to see if he would.”

Laurie was looking a little green. “I think I swallowed an ant.”

“Ah, Nan!” Kaelyn smiled brightly as she came in and pecked Mother on the cheek then took a writhing Violet from Nan’s arms. Kaelyn’s hair was still knotted up in rags and she hadn’t yet dressed, but Mother’s sigh of long-suffering at her daughter appearing in front of royalty in only her morning dress and hair rags didn’t dim Kaelyn’s grin as Violet immediately began twiddling with the bright silk ties of her bodice. “I thought I heard the little earthquakes.” Kaelyn grinned and rubbed noses with a giggling Violet then turned back to Nan. “Rosalie wants help with her hair, and Tress swears she’s going to absolutely
perish
if Pippa doesn’t show up soon with the pearls she borrowed.”

Lucas frowned. Tress had pearls? And she was loaning them
out
?

“Where did Tress get pearls?” he blurted, his voice a little more quavery than he would’ve liked, but oh God—”She didn’t charge them, did she?”

Alex, unaccountably, had gone rigid and alert.

“A gift from Mister Booker,” said Nan with a sly look as she pulled herself elegantly up off the floor and took Violet back from Kaelyn.

Lucas had to have heard wrong. He leaned down to blink his confusion at Alex. “You gave my sister pearls?”

“No!” said Alex. “It wasn’t—” His mouth flapped for a moment before he clamped it shut and glared at Kaelyn.

“Oh dear,” said Kaelyn with a grin, “he
still
doesn’t know?” Inexplicably, every woman in the room—and there were more here than in most rooms—started to giggle. Even Violet joined in. Even Mother!

“What?” demanded Lucas. He poked rather harshly at Alex’s shoulder. “
What
? What don’t I know?”

More to the point: did he really want to know? By the mirth leaking all over his sisters like some kind of contagion, and judging by Alex’s reaction, Lucas wasn’t so sure. At least Laurie seemed to be as much in the dark as Lucas was. It was a sad, sad day when Lucas took solace in the fact that at least Laurie was losing as badly as he was.

“They
are
quite lovely,” Mother said, her eyes bright and her smile girlish. “It’s rather a shame that young men don’t exchange such things. Imagine what Alex might have been moved to offer our Lucas.”

“But, Mother,” Kaelyn chimed in with a conspiratorial wink at Lucas, “I thought you didn’t want them to court. Unless….” She looked at Alex with a lift of her eyebrows. “Has there been some sort of miracle and you can now give my mother grandchildren?”

She was trying to be nice. She was trying to help. Lucas should
not
throw a lamp at her.

“Well, I could probably give them to her,” Alex retorted with a lift of his chin. “But their parents would likely want them back eventually.”

Right. This was a subject even worse than the one about Lucas getting drunk and fighting in taverns. And Lucas wanted nothing to do with it.

“We’ve rather gotten off the point,” he said a little loudly. “Who exactly is giving pearls to Tress, and why are we referring to this person as ‘Mister Booker’?”

Oh. Wait. No, that couldn’t be right. Alex wouldn’t… but then again, Lucas had rather “stolen” Alex away from one sister….

“Alex?” Lucas’s voice wasn’t quite as firm as it had been a moment ago. “Why is my sister getting pearls from Mister Booker?”

Alex set Anice on her feet then stood abruptly, opened his mouth again, but then merely started brushing at the mashed-up biscuit clinging to the silk of his waistcoat. “It wasn’t mine to tell,” he finally told Lucas, sullen and… embarrassed, perhaps. “And they… well, they made me promise.”

Lucas peered around the room at all of the giggling women—and really, no good could ever come of a roomful of giggling women—then let his gaze settle on Stillwell, who merely gave him a very grown-up-looking shrug and a look that said
girls—what can you do
? Lucas shook his head then leveled a glare on… no, Kaelyn would never be cowed, but Nan might at least feel sorry for him if he let his scowl pull into more of a pout and adjusted his eyebrows to crook ever so slightly into an angle of appeal and then did that thing with the lip that always got Miss Emma to sneak him an extra dollop of gravy on his potatoes so he could have something in which to dip his parsnips so he could choke them down more eas—

“Oh, all
right
,” said Nan with a sigh and a roll of her eyes. “It isn’t as though it merits such drama, and they really should have told you by now.” She cut a quick glance at Alex with a lift of her eyebrow, but Alex merely jutted his chin like he was making room for the hangman’s noose and looked straight ahead. “Mister
Anson
Booker gave Tress a small string of pearls. Some cynical soul”—again, she shot a look at Alex—“might describe such a thing as a bribe, but Mister
Anson
Booker was quite careful to describe it as a hopeful gift.” She paused. “Being Tress’s guardian and brother, I imagine you, Lucas, would likely describe it as a courting gift.”

A… courting gift. Lucas frowned then tilted his head. A
courting
gift?

He looked at Alex. “Your brother wants to court my little sister?”

It was… was it a relief? Lucas couldn’t tell. On the one hand, Tress wasn’t trying to steal—and apparently succeeding in stealing—Alex away from Lucas, but on the other hand….

Anson Booker.
Anson
Booker.

“Well,” said Alex and cleared his throat, “she’s not your
little
sister. I mean, she’s three years older than you, and it’s not as though… right. Shutting up now.”

Lucas’s eyes were narrow little slits. “And you didn’t
tell
me?”

“Lucas,” said Alex, taking a half step back before Bramble got in his way and almost knocked him off his feet. “Lucas, I swear, I gave them ’til the end of the week, and I said if they hadn’t told you by then, I was going to, but Anson said it was his place to ask, and Da said so too, and truly, what could I do, and Tress said she’d die if the whole thing wasn’t done properly and you ended up refusing, but really, I said, Lucas loves you and he’s such a lovely man and kind, and he wouldn’t ref—”

“Yesterday was the end of the week, Alex,” Lucas said calmly.

“—use because he’s just generous that way, you, I mean,
you’re
generous that way, and I didn’t….” Alex trailed off. “Ah,” he said. “Yes. So it was.” And then he didn’t say any more. He looked a little sick. Lucas didn’t know whether to feel sorry for him or deck him.

Laurie snorted, which rather settled the quandary. Alex might be in for it later, but Lucas wasn’t about to give Laurie the satisfaction of a show.

Lucas kept his tone even. “Well, then. I see. I imagine you can tell me all about it later, when—”

“Lucas!” Footsteps pounded on the stairs as Clara’s voice rang through the entirety of the house. “
Lucas Tripp
!” She threw herself into the room, tear-streaked, hair half-curled and dressing gown thrown over nothing but a corset and lacy blue bloomers. She shook a crumpled piece of paper clutched in her tight fist at Lucas. “What did you do to him?”

Lucas had to blink to make sure his eyes weren’t popping right out of their sockets. “Clara!” he cried and almost took a step toward her to cover her up, but she growled at him, which made the yelp it surprised out of him sound more shrill and shriek-ish than it really was, so he stayed where he was. “You’re half-dressed!” he hissed, like the other men in the room might not have noticed, but Lucas made himself not look, because if Laurie and Alex were seeing his sister in very nearly the altogether, he really didn’t want to think about it. “What are you doing running about like… like
that
, and what the
deuce
are you shouting—?”

Clara shook the paper at him again, tears flowing and face screwed up. “He’s gone!” she cried. “He’s left!”

“
Who’s
gone?” Lucas demanded.

“Declan!” Clara wailed. “He’s left and he’s never,
ever
coming back!”

Chapter 4

M
Y
DEAREST
,
darling Clara—

I know this will cause you distress, and it pains my heart like a thousand arrows. But I have looked desperately for another way, and I have failed. I am so very sorry. I must away for a time. Please believe that there is no other way right now, but if a way can be found, I shall brave fire and danger and all the portals of the Netherworld itself to find it.

Please, my darling, don’t cry. Remember that I worship you, I love you with everything in me, and you humble me with your presence and your laughter and your beauty and your love. Just knowing you exist gives me the strength to go on and do what I must do.

Don’t lose faith in me, my love. I will return. If you cannot forgive me, and if you will not wait for me, know that I will understand, though it breaks my wretched heart. I love you, my darling, and so I want you to be happy, even if it is not I who brings you that happiness. Though I desperately hope that it will be.

Yours forever,

Declan

L
UCAS
scowled then turned to Clara, who was sobbing on Nan’s shoulder with Mother hovering behind them, distraught. “But….” Lucas waved the letter then let Alex take it from him to read for himself. “He specifically says that he’ll be back.” Lucas pointed at the letter. “‘I will return.’ It says it right there.”

Clara only cried harder. Nan looked at Lucas like he imagined she’d look at Bramble for weeing on the carpet—a withering mix of annoyance, pity, disgust and disappointment.

“Honestly, Lucas,” she said, “have you never received a letter like that from a man?”

“The… um… well, no.” Lucas blinked. Was that a good thing or a bad thing? On the one hand, he’d never been jilted. On the other, it rather drove home the point that he’d never actually been in the position to have been jilted, which meant every one of his sisters—who were all wearing the same look as Nan—had apparently had more experience with men in general than Lucas had.

…Clearly that was a line of thought that could lead nowhere Lucas wanted to go. Maybe he should go lie down for a moment.

“They’re all the same,” Tress said, moving from the doorway where she’d been watching it all since she’d followed a shrieking Clara down the stairs. She came to join the rest of the women in a protective circle around a still weeping Clara. “They’ll tell you you’re lovely and perfect with their clumsy attempts to not hurt your feelings, and ‘truly, darling, if I had my way, we’d be together forever,’ and all while they’re running away because they just realized that ‘forever’ means ‘the rest of their miserable lives’ and perhaps you’re not lovely and perfect enough after all.”

This from the woman who was accepting not-really-courting gifts from Anson bloody Booker.

Clara wailed harder and louder, and Lucas scowled at Tress. “Did you miss the part where we’re trying to
comfort
her?”