“Everyone knows him. Why do you think he wants this book?”
“It’s really his Do—” I stop myself from saying the word Domme, switch to something else. “It’s his girlfriend that wants it, really. She didn’t say why. Just that they’d pay for me to come out here and fetch it.”
“Mm,” Sidney says, clearly cataloging all this away. “So you search the library until you find this book and you’ll bring it back to Merlin, and then what?”
“I don’t have another job lined up after this, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“It is what I’m asking,” he says, a bit tersely, and then turns back to his work.
I stare at him for a minute, a little stunned, and yet under the astonishment there’s the feeling of an itch being scratched, the familiarity of a curt dismissal from a powerful man. It’s so known to me, so recognizable, that I’m smiling a little as I head to the far corner of the library, where I plan to start my search for Tristram and Iseult. In a way, it’s like working with Ash again.
Three hours later, and my lack of success has only made me more determined. I’ve gotten through a good tenth of the shelves, but it’s slow, tedious work, slower than I could have ever imagined. First of all, there’s no real order to the library, no sections or classifications, or any kind of organizational scheme at all. There’s no records, no catalogs, no metadata I can use to make my search any easier. And secondly, there’s not enough light to see what the hell I’m doing. The snow has grown worse, thicker and faster, and even with a lamp dragged along behind me, the gloom is so thick that I have to use my phone flashlight to see.
And complicating it all is the aged state of the books themselves—some of them without titles on their spines, some with titles but with the lettering peeling off and rendering the title unrecognizable. I have to pull most books off the shelf and check the front page to see what they are, and it’s so fucking time consuming.
I finish another row and pause to stretch, re-evaluating all the project flow-charts I’d made in my mind yesterday. People often think that being methodical and being efficient are synonymous, but that’s not the case. Sometimes efficiency requires creativity rather than logic, it requires vision; I pride myself on seeing the shortcuts other people miss.
So I take a minute to examine the library once again, now that I’m more familiar with it. I take in the huge fireplace to one side, the dusty reaches of the upper story, the ladders and stairs giving access to high shelves and balconies in a baroque tangle of dark wood.
And of course, my gaze is pulled to the elegant arch of Sidney’s neck over his mysterious papers, to the contrast of his strong, cut jaw against his black turtleneck. From this angle, the cashmere-covered planes of his shoulders and biceps are framed by the rows of richly colored books just beyond him, and—
Ah. Interesting.
On that same bookshelf in front of Sidney, I spy two large items that look more like ledgers than books. When I head over to investigate, I realize I’m going to have to climb the little ladder to reach them, and with a sigh I do, very aware that my jeans are not made for climbing things. With each rung, I can feel the denim pulling indecently tight around my ass and thighs. I just pray Sidney of the Impeccable Tailoring isn’t looking at me right now.
“Do you need help?” he asks from behind me. He’s gotten up and moved with such silent, catlike grace that I had no idea he was there.
“Um, I’m fine,” I say, reaching for the books and trying to get myself down to where he can’t see all the anatomical detail my jeans are currently revealing. But before I can take a single step down, Sidney’s on the ladder behind me, reaching for the books in my hand.
“Don’t move,” he orders, and I don’t move.
There’s the light tap of his Derby shoes reverberating through the wood, the gone-too-soon press of him against my back, and then he has both books in his hand and is climbing back down.
The ghost of all that lean warmth keeps me frozen for a long second, long enough for him to say from the floor, with a touch of wry amusement, “Do you need help down?”
“No,” I say quickly, not wanting him to see how much he affects me. “No, I’m completely fine.”
“Hmm,” he says, setting the ledgers on the table and going back to his work, and his hmm sounds like he’s not entirely fooled by my act.
But just a moment later, when I’m moving the ladder back to where I found it, he lets out a ragged breath, and when I turn, he has his eyes closed and his hand in a fist on the table.
Like it’s taking all of his control to remain right where he is.
5
“So these were Estamond’s records?” Auden asks, as I set the books on the sofa next to him. It’s after dinner, and the four of us have repaired to the library with whiskey to enjoy the big fireplace and the snow still fluttering past the windows in the dark.
“As far as I can tell. It doesn’t look like she got anything close to having the whole library surveyed, but some of it is here.”
Auden flips through the brittle pages, eyes running over lines and lines of browned, century-old ink. “Fascinating.”
Sidney, who’s standing at the arm of the sofa and looking down over Auden’s shoulder, moves away to the window. The firelight in the shadowy room dances everywhere, dances over the subtle lines of muscle and spine on his cashmere-covered back. “I still think you should consider hiring someone to take care of this,” he says as he goes.
Auden doesn’t look up from the amateur library catalog. “I don’t even know what that means,” he says. “I’m not sure if I care.”
“You could at least finish Estamond’s work and properly catalog the library,” Cremer says from the far sofa across the coffee table. “You could even arrange for the digitization of books that haven’t been digitized in other libraries yet. Think about it, Auden. If that Tristram and Iseult is the only copy left in the world and it’s here, how many other rare things are held hostage in Thornchapel’s walls?”
It’s the boldest I’ve ever heard Cremer speak, and I suspect it has something to do with how little scotch is left in his glass.
