Page 57 of A Season for Scandal

The single chair, the single glass sitting beside the brandy decanter made something in my chest ache. Oliver might claim that he didn’t care for company, but I thought about what Beth had said the evening before, just outside this room. That Oliver needed someone on his side. Was he lonely?

I moved to his desk, which was enormously untidy, trailing my fingers along the edge. There were stacks of papers, and I deliberately didn’t look at them. This wasn’t a search, like it had been in the Lavignes’ rooms. I didn’t knowwhatthis was, really, but certainly the rules were different.

Still, I saw opened boxes of charcoal, a scattering of chewed pencils. An artist? I wondered. Did he draw?

I made my way to the bookshelves, eyeing the titles, which covered an enormous variety of subjects, from natural history to Elizabethan theatre, to an entire section on jewellery design and something called “gemology”. There was also a huge number of well-thumbed novels, which I knew Daisy and Mother had devoured. I smiled at that. Oliver Lockhart was a secret romantic, after all.

If I hadn’t been looking so carefully, I would never have noticed it, but somewhere on that long, long wall of books was one that was different to the rest. It was a slim volume, and it had been handled so much that the title on the spine had worn away completely. All that I could see was an embossed design that looked like a foxglove.

Foxglove.Digitalis.Meaning: riddles and secrets.

I reached out and pulled the book from the shelf, only it didn’t come away in my hand. Instead, the top of the book moved, but the bottom remained stubbornly in place. Puzzled, I pulled again, harder, and then a strange, mechanical whirring sound filled the air.

I jumped back with a gasp as an entire section of the bookcase lurched towards me.

Raising a hand to my pounding heart, it took me a moment to understand what I was seeing. It was a door.

Tentatively, I gripped the edge, and pulled it towards me. It swung open easily, on silent hinges, and beyond the opening it created I saw a steep flight of stairs, leading down into darkness.

Naturally, I went down them.

However, as I got further down the stairs, it got darker and darker, the only light filtering in from the open door I had walked through. I stopped on one of the steps, waiting for my eyes to adjust, and in the gloom I realized I had just about reached the bottom, and that beyond the stairs was a single, large room filled with dark, bulky shapes.

There must be lights in here, I reasoned, as I stepped gingerly forward. Candles somewhere, perhaps? I began feeling around in search of them.

“Oof!” I exhaled, as I crashed into something. I put my hands out. It was some sort of table, and as my fingers moved across it they closed over something cold and hard.

“What are you doing in here?” a voice demanded from behind me, and suddenly the room was filled with light.

I whipped round to find Oliver frowning at me.

In my hand I held the biggest diamond I had ever seen.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

“I – what? You’re … back?” I babbled. “Is this … adiamond?”

Oliver folded his arms across his chest. “It is. Indulging in a spot of jewel thievery, Bloom?”

“No!” I exclaimed, practically hurling the jewel at him in my sudden panic. “Of course not!”

He caught the diamond in his hand as casually as if it were a tennis ball and placed it on the workbench beside him.

“Then might I ask again… What you are doing down here?” His voice was mild, and I couldn’t decide if he was angry or not.

“I was in the library,” I began, and then I trailed off.

“I am following the story so far.” Oliver nodded.

“And I pulled a book off the shelf,” I continued slowly.

“Mm-hmm.” He motioned with his hand that I should go on.

“And then a door opened in the wall and there were stairs, leading into the dark.”

“So naturally you went down them.”

I looked at him in bewilderment. “Of course I went down them,” I said. “There was adoorin thewall. A secret door. In a library!”