Page 6 of A Season for Scandal

“I think I’ll head off to the library,” I said, forcing a smile. “I have time before my meeting this afternoon with Mrs Birch about the arrangements for her dinner party, and there’s a new book on landscaping I wanted to borrow. Time to start looking for some more new ideas.”

Mother looked relieved by my decision not to tell Grandfather just yet, flashing me a look of agreement. He only rubbed his hands together and started telling me that the last book I’d taken out on propagating roses had clearly been written by an imbecile, with the cheerful confidence of a man who knew everything there was to know about flowers.

“Oh, Mari, you’re so clever, filling your head with all those gardening facts,” Daisy cut in, beaming at me, and even going so far as to bat her eyelashes.

“And what are you after?” I asked suspiciously.

Daisy’s finger traced a pattern on the sofa. “Nothing, really – only if you’re going to the library anyway, I wondered if you could pick up a book for me.”

“After the fine you cost me last time?” I bit my lip, trying to look stern.

Grandfather chuckled.

“It’s not my fault I dropped the book in the bath.” Daisy pouted. “Honestly, I was just so scandalized.” She shivered with gleeful appreciation. “Rodrigo had just come across Isabella’s hiding place in the woods and…”

“Stop! Stop!” Mother held her hands to her ears. “You know I haven’t got that far yet. It’s taking me much longer to read, with the words smudged as they are. I spent several pages convinced they were discussing radishes rather than the potential ravishing of the heroine, and I found the sudden interest in root vegetables to be most confusing…”

Her complaint was cut short by Grandfather and Daisy’s abrupt shouts of laughter. After a moment, Mother joined in too. I tried to laugh as well, and watched the three of them guffaw, spurring each other on, with a giddy mixture of love and worry. My family. They were depending on me.

“Radishes!” Daisy snorted from her position sprawled face down on the sofa, which only set the others off again. The fist that had wrapped around my heart gripped harder.

Trying not to draw attention, I slipped out with a murmured goodbye, the sound of their laughter chasing me down the stairs.

I wouldn’t let them down, I swore, remembering the feeling of Mr Earnshaw’s fingers on my skin. I would find a way to fix this.

CHAPTER FOUR

Mudie’s, the circulating library, was busy as ever with a seemingly endless stream of people moving through the doors. These stood beneath a discreet sign, in an unobtrusive building on the corner of New Oxford Street and Museum Street, and gave little indication of the dizzying space tucked behind them.

As I stepped inside, I was greeted not only by the sight of hundreds of thousands of books but that blissful, comforting smell of them – the sweet mustiness of crackling, ageing paper and leather binding.

The central hall in the library was a vast circle, with a soaring, domed ceiling. It felt almost like a theatre with its gilt and decorative plasterwork, but instead of stalls and velvet seats, the walls were lined with polished, wooden shelving extending up, up, up to the roof. A balcony ran round the room so that the shelves were split into two separate floors, though the rows stretched so high that you needed ladders to reach the books at the top.

In the middle of this space were a number of desks in a maze of concentric circles, at which librarians assisted readers with enquiries or checked out their books. To the sides were more desks, dark and heavy, where people could sit and read or study. Off to the left of this central room was a warren of other shelves, labyrinthine stacks twisting away into the rest of the building.

People from all walks of life frequented Mudie’s, and I passed quickly between the group of young girls gossiping over the latest titillating three-part novel, and the gentleman who was arguing with a clerk about the historical records for one of the city’s fish markets. I was greeted, casually, by one or two of Bloom’s regular customers, who were browsing.

It was one of the things I valued most about Bloom’s, the feeling that it was part of a community. We lived in a vast and ever-changing metropolis, a sprawling city that grew bigger every day, and yet here people knew my name. They bought flowers from me, and flowers – to my way of thinking – were deeply personal. I didn’t just know the customers’ names; I knew their birthdays, the names of wives and lovers, and I knew when they fell into infatuation or wanted to impress their in-laws. I knew when they argued and made up, when they lost the ones they loved and were grieving, and when new life arrived and they celebrated. It was a gift: all of life came through our doors.

I was smiling over the thought as I slipped deeper into the maze. I didn’t need to consult the floor plans to know in which corner the horticulture books were squirrelled away, and I made my way unerringly to the correct section. It was quiet here, empty – a rather neglected bit of the library, but that suited me just fine. The buzz of conversation receded. Calmness reigned and to my busy mind it was as welcome as a cool, clear draught of water.

I hadn’t lied about wanting to borrow a book – there was a new title on the theory and practice of landscape gardening that I was keen to pick up, despite the fact that I had done as much as I could to create the garden space at Bloom’s. We simply didn’t have the room to keep up with all my ideas, but it was nice to dream, wasn’t it? I scanned the shelves, running my fingers over spines.

The solution would come, I told myself. There was always something that could be done, some plan to be hatched, some scheme to set in motion. I simply had to find it.

I had a brief flash of memory, back to two years ago, when my grandfather had had his first dizzy spell and ended up falling down the stairs, breaking his leg. Everything had been chaos, Mother had been hysterical (which naturally wound Daisy up as neatly as a clockwork mouse), and Grandfather had been cross and pale and helpless, confined to his bed. It had been a difficult, overwhelming time … and yet the world didn’t stop spinning. The business had to go on, day by day.

And that meant I had to take care of it. I had sat beside Grandfather’s sickbed and drawn up a list with him, and then I had crossed each item off it. Once that was done, I made my own list and crossed everything off that one too. I had fixed things before. I would fix them again. And perhaps the answer lay in the garden, some clever way to bring in more money … something one of these books could help with.

Of course it came as no surprise, given the way that my day was going, that the book for which I had come in was on one of the highest shelves, and there was no clerk in sight. Glancing around to make sure the coast was clear, I rolled the ladder along to the spot where I needed it and clambered up. You weren’t supposed to, and I knew it was precisely the sort of thing Simon would call unbecoming behaviour, but it seemed foolish to waste my time and somebody else’s when I could simply do the task myself. I was perfectly capable.

Although…

Now that I was up here, it was quite a lot higher than I’d thought. Very high, in fact. And – truthfully – I wasn’t keen on heights. I made the mistake of looking down and the floor (which was suddenly quite far away) seemed to tip a little.

I stood frozen for a moment or two, had a firm word with myself and then, carefully, I withdrew the book and began to climb back towards earth. My knees were trembling pathetically, and my free hand clung so hard to the side of the ladder that my knuckles were raised white peaks. My progress was humiliatingly slow.

I was concentrating so intently on the steps that the angry voice below me took me more by surprise than it should have done.