Page 46

The loch was surrounded by mountains on either side, brown and green and barren above the trees, and a fluffy straight line of mist hung in the cool morning air, halfway up the hillside. Cassie wasn’t sure she had ever seen any landscape as beautiful.

The walls of the room were lined floor to ceiling with bookshelves, and the furniture was arranged on a large rectangular rug in the center of the floor—armchairs and side tables and a coffee table, all of these also piled with books. A large cast-iron fireplace was a wailing mouth at the edge of the room, and next to it a side table was piled with whisky bottles and tumblers.

“This is my library,” Drummond said, his voice quiet as he ran his eyes around the room.

He reached out to the bookshelves by the door and brushed them with his hand lightly, an affectionate gesture. Then he walked over to the table by the fireplace and poured himself a whisky. He downed the measure in one and then sighed in satisfaction. “Whisky still good. Thank god. I might have cried.”

Cassie was slowly pacing the length of the bookcase against the opposite wall, reading the spines, pulling out a book here and there with a curious finger. These books were old, she saw, antiques probably, the sort of books with dense, small text and a pleasantly sweet smell when you opened them.

She reached the large bay window and stood there, admiring the view.

“It’s beautiful,” she said, and then she turned around and faced the room. “And this...” She gestured with a hand. “This place is... it’s just right. It’s perfect. It’s everything a private library should be.”

Drummond frowned for a moment, considering that assessment. Then he nodded in agreement. “It’s my home,” he admitted. He smiled then, but it was a sad expression, and Cassie thought there were maybe tears in the man’s eyes. “I used to spend all my time here. And then my friends, they’d come, and we’d just sit and enjoy our books. Or we’d drink and talk late into the night. There’d be music and food and we’d get the fire going. Laughter, lots of laughter. Meetings in the Fox Library, they were always my favorite times.”

He shook his head, as if all of these memories were crazy, impossible, and wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand.

“It feels like a happy place,” Cassie reflected, her eyes roving the bookshelves on the other wall. “To me at least. Safe and happy.”

Drummond nodded, taking Cassie’s words as a compliment, and poured himself another drink.

“Are the other special books here?” Cassie asked, inspecting the nearby shelves.

“They’re here,” Drummond said. “Not in this room.” He walked over and handed her a tumbler with a measure of whisky. “Drink.”

“I don’t really like whisky,” Cassie admitted, peering into the glass dubiously.

“I love it,” Drummond replied. “My three favorite things in the world: whisky, cakes and pastries, and books.”

Cassie coughed a laugh despite herself. “Cakes and pastries?”

He nodded seriously. “I’m not embarrassed by it. What’s better than a good book and a slice of cake?”

“I suppose,” Cassie said, peering at the whisky.

“You don’t have to like it,” Drummond said. “But drink it. It’s good for you, just like the croissants in Lyon.”

She debated for a moment, and then sipped the amber liquid. It roared down her throat and made her cough.

“It’s like fire,” she spluttered, handing him back the glass.

“I know,” he said, grinning like she had given the drink a compliment. He placed the glass on the windowsill and they stood in awkward silence for a moment.

“I’m really truly sorry about Izzy,” he said, his dark eyes watching her.

She nodded. “Okay,” she said.

“You want to see the other special books?” he asked, and he looked excited, like a boy wanting to show off his newest toy.

She nodded. “I do.”

“Okay,” he said.

Drummond walked across to the bookshelf on the wall by the window, and then reached down the side of the bookcase. She heard a click and then the bookcase swung out on a hidden hinge, revealing a small doorway and curving stone steps within a tower.

Drummond gestured and smiled, twitching his eyebrows up and down. “Where else would I keep special books but in a secret room at the top of a hidden tower?”

Up the steps a small wooden door opened onto a large circular room with windows on two sides looking east and west from the house, toward the road and toward the loch. This was the top of the tower Cassie had seen from outside, she realized.