A Lesson in Thorns (Thornchapel #1)(16)

There’s only understanding. His own vulnerability shining through.

“No,” he says softly. “I’m sorry.”

My shoulders droop. “Maybe one of the others . . .” I trail off. I don’t really believe that. I’m not sure what I believe, what I hope right now, but it’s not that the others will know something.

Auden hands the paper back to me, his eyes searching my face.

“It’s what I expected,” I say hopelessly, feeling suddenly and painfully tired. I need to sleep again. “I didn’t expect to find her. Or for anyone to know anything. I just thought . . . I don’t know. I guess I thought that I’d come here and the note would suddenly make sense. Like I’d find a giant stone plinth engraved with this Latin word and she’d be buried there.”

“Not knowing is the hardest,” Auden says.

I remember his mother, and what she did to herself, and I think our losses are cousins to each other. Like me, he’ll never know what his mother thought while she bore down into the pit of her addiction, and there won’t be any answers or closure. Just a seeping wound that sometimes bleeds and sometimes doesn’t.

I don’t know what to say, so I only nod and tuck the note back in my dress. To change the subject, I ask, “So you really don’t know how many books are in here?”

Auden cups the back of his neck with a hand, looking like he wants to say more about mothers and Latin, but he’s too well-bred to push, I suppose. “Yes, that’s right. There was a Victorian lady of the house, Estamond Guest, who undertook a partial survey when she married into the family, but she didn’t get very far. Cremer says he heard a family legend that she found some kind of heretical tract and it shocked her pious sensibilities, but I think it’s more likely that she was too busy having piles and piles of Guest babies to catalog old books.”

I wander over to one of the shelves opposite the fireplace and run my fingers along the spines. “Do you still have it? Estamond’s survey?”

“Oh yes, no one ever throws anything away at Thornchapel. It’s actually at the top of that shelf there, the one right in front of you. Do you see?”

I look up, and just as Auden said, there are two large books on the highest shelf—propped on top of the normal row of books. A big no-no, and I let out a disappointed huff at whoever did it. I slide that bookshelf’s ladder over to the middle and mount the first rung, flinching at the ominous wooden creak under my foot.

Auden, ever the gentleman, sweeps over to steady the base of the ladder as I climb—and presumably to catch my fall if the old ladder collapses. “Is it really necessary for you to get them right now?” he asks pleasantly.

“Yes.” I could explain about the additional weight and potential trapped damp of keeping the ledgers like this, or I could confess that I can’t even wait for the equipment to get delivered before I start assessing the library, but I’ve already got a hold of the ledgers and it’s taking all my concentration to lever them free and tuck them to my chest. They are mercifully dry, and my worries about damp are allayed.

They’re bound in a cloth that’s faded to the color of dried blood, and when I crack open the top book, I see a flowery, scribbled signature.

Estamond Guest. The m has an extra hump in it, like Estamond had dashed it out too fast to keep the letters neat.

Feeling victorious for no real reason, I turn to smile down at the gentleman holding my ladder and find that his eyes are not on my face but on my ass, which at this angle is surely visible from under my skirt. Conflicting reactions blaze through me—embarrassment, anger, lust—and when he drags his eyes away from my bottom to meet my gaze, I realize that he has only one look on his face.

Anguish.

Utter, violent anguish.

His beautiful mouth is tight at the corners but parted ever so slightly in the middle, and he’s breathing hard, hard enough that I can see the rapid rise and fall of his chest. His hands are gripping the ladder so hard that they’re blanched around the knuckles, and his eyes—

I think I might be burning alive from those eyes. Burning alive like a saint tied to a stake.

For a long minute, we do nothing but stare, and my body flames with awareness of him, with the want of him, but the moment collapses faster than I want it to and he pushes himself away from the ladder with much more force than necessary.

“I trust—” he clears his throat, not looking at me. “I trust you’ll be able to make it down on your own. I need to step out for a moment. Excuse me.”

And he’s moving to the door before I can say anything in response. Before I can even sputter a protest.

Do I want to sputter a protest?

No, no, of course not. Of course he should leave. He’s engaged and I’m not stupid, and there’s no world where he should have been looking at me like that regardless of those two things.

The others push through the door just as Auden’s trying to leave, and Delphine gives him a playful smack on the arm.

“The tea’s been ready forever! What was taking you so long?”

To Auden’s credit, the question doesn’t fluster him. He merely drops a quick kiss on Delphine’s cheek and murmurs an excuse as he slides out of sight. Becket watches him go, holding the tea tray and frowning.

“Everything all right?” Rebecca asks, looking between me on the ladder and the door.