A Lesson in Thorns (Thornchapel #1)(13)
“I promise to show you everything else soon,” he’s saying as we walk. “But if you’re anything like me, you’ll want to see the work first. And there’s so much to be done, and I still can’t believe that we’ve found you to do it. The odds of that are . . . well, they’re staggering.”
It is strange. It’s been one of those things I haven’t looked too closely at since Auden’s lawyer called to offer me the job. To tell me that the estate wished to hire a specialist to archive their family library, and that I’d come personally recommended. That it would be at least a year of cataloging, scanning, annotating, and arranging for the repair and stabilization of any damaged or decaying volumes. It could possibly be many more years, since no formal survey had ever been undertaken of Thornchapel’s library and no one could say for certain exactly how many books were in there.
And of all the lengths I’ve gone to in order to try to come back to Thornchapel—even going so far as to book a plane ticket once during my sophomore year in college until I confessed to my father and he convinced me not to go—I have to say that concentrating my master’s in the digital preservation of rare books was not one of them.
“I’m damned lucky Ryan Belvedere recommended you,” Auden says as we walk down a narrow walkway lined with arched windows. It leads from the main hall to the Jacobean portion of the house where the library is.
Ryan who? “I don’t know who that is.”
Auden pauses and looks back at me. “You don’t?”
I shake my head.
“How curious,” he murmurs. “He came here looking for a book last month, for a someone named Merlin. We had someone else in at the time to put together a catalog for an auction house—all the old art, you know—and he mentioned the state of the library was appalling. Which it is, you’ll see soon enough for yourself. And that’s when Ryan said we should call you. And obviously when I realized it was you—well, it just had to be you.”
“I’m glad it’s me,” I say.
“So am I,” he says and then he takes my elbow again.
I let him. There’s something electrifying about having him touch me like this, in this sort of peremptory, possessive way. Half like he’s a gracious host and half like I’m getting hauled off to be punished. I adore being hauled off and punished, and the bruises on my thighs and ass sing to me again, ready for Auden to add to their number.
This time my blush actually burns my cheeks. I use my free hand to tug at the hem of my skirt again, keeping all those singing spots on my body hidden.
Stop. It. Poe. You. Pervert.
He has to let go and turn away as we approach the library’s double doors. It’s the first chance I’ve had to study his body without the fog of exhaustion clouding my eyes, and it’s doing nothing to help my blush.
He’s taller than me—well, everyone is taller than me—but he’s objectively tall, at least six feet. He’s that heady combination of lean but muscled, with the curves of his biceps and shoulders swelling under his sweater, and the flat of his stomach leading into narrow hips hugged by expensive trousers and an equally expensive leather belt that would hurt like hell on someone’s backside. His trousers cling to firm thighs and an equally firm and tantalizingly pert ass. The kind of ass that would have dents in the sides when he stood still.
But even all of that isn’t enough to explain the pull of Auden Guest—even the hazel eyes and crooked grin and sad, rich-boy disposition aren’t enough.
I can’t say what it is that makes Auden so . . . so Auden, and that’s professionally irritating. I’m a librarian. I like to catalog things. How can I annotate his metadata on my mental card catalog if I don’t know what to annotate? If I don’t know how to describe him or his effect on me?
Looking like something out of a men’s fashion magazine, Auden gives me a smile over his shoulder and pushes open the doors. And then all my other thoughts fade away as I take in the room I’ve flown across an ocean to see.
Northerly light, pale and diffuse, fills the room from the dark wooden floor to the delicately plastered ceilings above. The center of the room is open all the way to the top, a full two stories, and the sides are flanked by rows of bookshelves like marching soldiers, both on the bottom level and the top, with ladders studded at intervals to assist in getting things from the highest shelves. The top level is ringed by narrow galleries and accessed by small but elaborately carved staircases near the stretch of multi-paned windows at the end of the room.
A massive fireplace yawns against one side, disrupting the otherwise symmetrical layout of bookshelves, and several chairs and a couple sofas have been arranged cozily around it. A drinks bar and random spills of throw blanket finish off the inviting space, and I lose myself to a momentary dream of curling up and reading while the fire and the window-glass keep the winter at bay outside.
The narcoleptic in me can’t help but think of all the lovely naps to be had here. The librarian in me notes the generous stone hearth and the healthy distance between it and all the books.
There are two long tables stretching down the length of the room, a massive Victorian globe, and a few glass cases with motley collections of Roman coins and artifacts of metal and bone. And other than the ornate ceiling—all white, but molded in what appear to be geometric patterns of roses and branching thorns—the only real decoration is the books themselves. Leather spines of claret, cinnabar, and citrine, clothbound tomes of sapphire and sage . . . and the requisite scatterings of umber and filemot and terra-cotta, which are the very picture of Serious Books with their sepia colors and peeling lettering.