The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy (Montague Siblings #2)(37)

“What are you doing here?”

I spin around with a squeak. Sim is standing behind me, lurking in between two of the stacks and either unaware or unperturbed by the scare she just gave me. “Zounds, don’t do that.”

“Do what? Address you?”

“Sneak up on me like that! Or sneak around, full stop. People will think you’re up to something.”

“What people? You people?”

“Yes, me people. What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be a maid, remember? I’m fairly certain this room is off-limits.”

“I’m cleaning it.” She swabs a sleeve along the nearest shelf without looking at it. “There. All clean.”

“Have you found your birthright yet?” I ask.

It’s too dark to really tell, but I swear I hear her eyes narrow. “Have you talked to your Dr. Platt yet?”

“Is that it?” I point to the large leather book she’s got tucked under her arm, and she immediately pushes it behind her skirt.

“Is what it?”

“That book you’re ineffectively hiding. You can’t take it with you—no stealing, remember? That’s our agreement. Is it what you’re looking for?” She doesn’t say anything, so I hold out my hands. “May I?”

Reluctantly, she surrenders. It’s not a book, I realize as I carry it over to one of the reading stands with a lit lantern upon it, but more a folio. The cover is monogrammed with the initials SG and a date almost twenty years previous. Inside are intricate botanical drawings—cross sections of tulip bulbs and mulberry trees, the delicate veins of leaves mapped like tributaries and a whole page dedicated to the many ways of looking at a mushroom. It’s all done in the sort of minute detail that makes my hand shake just to think of attempting it.

I look up at Sim, standing on the other side of the lectern, watching me turn the portfolio pages with her teeth working on her thumbnail. “Did you come all the way here to look at a book about nature?” I ask.

She keeps her nail in her mouth, speaking through teeth gritted around it. “Why does it matter?”

“It doesn’t,” I say. “That’s just very much something I would do.”

She stops grinding her teeth, then a slow smile spreads over her lips. “And here you thought we’d have nothing in common.”

I turn another page and stare down at a sketch of a long snake moving through water, its nostrils bobbing above the surface. I can’t imagine what it is about this work that drew her from a continent away just to see it. I thumb the edges, realizing that, more than anything, it’s a relief. No matter Sim’s protestations otherwise, and that she came to me through Scipio, a small part of me had been chewing its fingernails with certainty that she was here to slit a throat or steal a diamond and I would be complicit for the access I provided.

“What’s so special about this book?” I ask.

“It’s not a book, it’s a portfolio,” she replies. “And it’s the only copy.”

“Well, yes, I assumed that if it existed elsewhere, you would have picked it up from a printer in London.”

“Of course you did.”

I look up, and through the sallow glow of the lantern, our eyes meet. In this light, her skin looks bronzed, something burnished and worn into battle by ancient warriors. “It would have saved you a lot of trouble.”

“Maybe I wanted the trouble.”

There’s a snap behind us as the latch of the library door clicks open. “Have a good evening,” someone calls, then the creak of hinges as it’s closed again. We’re out of sight, tucked between the shelves, but I can hear footsteps down the next aisle over, heading toward the fireplace. I nearly trip over myself in my haste to grab Sim and shove her out of the room. She tries to take the folio with her, but I slap it shut and shake my head. “No thieving.”

“I’m not thieving. I’m looking,” she hisses in return. “It’s not stealing just because you take something from where it belongs.”

“That is the actual definition of stealing,” I reply, my voice louder than I mean for it to be, for through the stacks, a man calls, “Is someone there?”

I usher Sim toward the door, but she’s already going, her slippers a soft tread on the rug. I straighten myself out as best I can in a dress that’s mostly dessert, toss my hair back over my shoulders so I will not be tempted to nervously fuss with it, then go the opposite way, toward the firelight.

Dr. Platt has taken off his wig and jacket and made a flop down in an armchair beside the mantelpiece. He kicks his feet up as he fishes in his jacket, emerging a moment later with the same snuff box he was fiddling with when I attempted to flag him down. He tips some of the powder into a cupped hand, crushes it with his thumb, and snorts it.

I have been lurking for too long to make my entrance anything less than invasive. I consider doubling back as silently as possible and then reentering the library loudly so as not to alarm him.

But then he looks up, and I’m standing there, and he startles, spilling snuff down his shirt, and I startle, and suddenly I remember there’s spiced wine all over my dress, and for some reason my brain decides clarifying that point is first priority, and I blurt, “This isn’t blood.”

“Goddammit.” He’s brushing the snuff off his front, trying to collect it into his hand and then tip it back into the box. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”