Page 24 of Marie’s Merry Gentleman (The Bookshop Belles #2)

CHAPTER 1 - LOUISE IN CHARGE

Hertfordshire, 1814

Louise In Charge

L ouise Baxter, second-to-youngest but indisputably the tallest—and certainly the most capable, at least in her own opinion—of the four Baxter sisters, stood at the edge of the muddy roadway. She waved a brisk farewell as the post-coach carrying her sister Marie rattled away, its wheels kicking up dirty clumps of earth that speckled her boots and hem. The coach was bound for the north, and with each lurch and sway, it carried Marie further along the first leg of her long journey to Cumbria. Louise kept her posture erect, her shoulders squared, and her chin tilted high, determined to appear resolute until the coach disappeared entirely from sight. She owed her sister that much, at least.

Only when the coach vanished around a bend in the road did Louise allow her shoulders to slump. A sigh, long and heavy, escaped her lips as though it had been bottled up there for hours.

“What a lot of work this is going to be,” she muttered, turning towards her youngest sister, Bernadette, who stood at her side. The two of them were ankle-deep in the muck of the roadway, the cold damp seeping through their sturdy boots.

“She had to go,” Bernadette pointed out practically. Her tone was light, even if her expression was not. Together, they trudged back toward Baxter’s Fine Books, the family business that had consumed nearly every moment of their lives since they were old enough to dust shelves and arrange displays. Before stepping inside, they paused at the bootscraper outside the Red Lion Inn next door, scraping away the worst of the mud with practiced efficiency.

“The Earl of Demanding ordered nearly a hundred and fifty pounds’ worth of books,” Bernadette continued, shaking her skirts free of mud droplets. “But, we had to deliver them personally.”

“He thought he was writing to our father!” Louise’s voice took on a sharp, frustrated edge, her words clipped as though she were biting them off before they could escape entirely. “I hope he still pays up when it’s Marie who turns up on his doorstep!”

“Oh, don’t be such a worrywart,” Bernadette chided. “He’s getting his books, isn’t he? It’s not as though we’ve shortchanged him. Marie will charm him, no doubt, and she’ll be back in time for Christmas—with her pockets jingling full of coin.”

Louise gave an exasperated snort. “And in the meantime, we’re left to do all the work!” Her boots thudded against the floorboards as they stepped inside the shop and closed the door, shutting the cold and damp outside.

It wasn’t just Marie’s absence that weighed on her. They were already one sister down, with their eldest, Estelle, having married Mr Yates and gone off to Ireland to visit his mother. Estelle wouldn’t return until spring at the earliest.

Still, as Louise glanced around the bookshop, her irritation softened into something warmer. The shop felt like home, as it always had. It smelled of musty paper and old leather, a scent she thought might linger in her memory forever, underpinned with the sharp, tangy notes of fresh glue. The light filtering in through the windows was scant, most of the panes long since covered over with bookshelves crammed to bursting. Instead, the shop’s many corners and nooks were illuminated by carefully shielded oil lamps hanging from beams and mounted in strategic locations. Their golden glow brought the shelves and stacks to life, casting shadows that danced across the walls.

Ruth Millings, their young assistant, was busily sweeping the floor when Louise and Bernadette entered. Her father, the fiery Reverend Silas Millings—known privately among the Baxter sisters as “Old Brimstone”—had made it abundantly clear that Ruth was to behave with the utmost propriety. Ruth had only been permitted to take the job on the condition that her wages went directly into the church’s collection plate each Sunday.

“I didn’t go behind the counter yet,” Ruth said tentatively as Louise and Bernadette peeled off their coats. Her voice was soft, almost apologetic, and her hands tightened nervously around the broom handle.

“That’s all right,” Louise replied with a reassuring smile. “I’ll take care of it.”

She fetched the small dustpan, scraper, and rags they kept specifically for this task and stepped behind the counter. There, waiting as always, was the morning’s ‘gift’ from Crafty, the bookshop’s resident cat.

Crafty, whose full name was Wollstonecraft when she was in serious trouble, had been a vital member of the shop’s operations for years. She was a skilled huntress, keeping the mice that threatened to nibble at the book paper firmly in check. However, her habit of leaving partially eviscerated ‘presents’ for her mistresses behind the counter was less than endearing. Recently, her son Pie—a young cat with his mother’s talent for hunting but none of her discretion—had joined in the habit, doubling the number of unpleasant surprises Louise had to clean up each day.

“Ugh, Crafty,” Louise muttered, wrinkling her nose as she scraped up the offending mess and took it outside to bury in the midden. “And Pie, too! Between the two of you, I’m not even sure the mice are worth it.”

Once the floor behind the counter was clean, Louise washed her hands, dried them briskly on her apron, and returned to her post. This had once been Estelle’s regular domain, then Marie’s. Now, with both of them gone, Louise and Bernadette took turns managing the counter.

The bell above the door jingled, and Louise glanced up, expecting a customer. Instead, it was Rosie, the young maid Mr. Yates had hired for them before taking Estelle away to Ireland. Rosie helped Mrs. Poole, the housekeeper, with the cooking, cleaning, and laundry, which freed the sisters from the household chores they had previously split amongst themselves.

“Good morning, Rosie,” Louise said warmly. “Mrs. Poole will be glad to see you when you go on upstairs.”

Rosie bobbed a quick curtsey, her cheeks pink, before scurrying off toward the staircase. Louise’s gaze lingered on her for a moment, and she felt a pang of envy. How nice it would be to escape upstairs herself, to the quiet sanctum of her bookbinding workshop! There were several projects waiting for her attention—books with cracked spines and fragile pages that needed careful rebinding. It was work she enjoyed, work that required focus and precision, and she longed to lose herself in it.

But someone had to keep an eye on the customers, and Bernadette was busy this morning, out visiting women who needed her herbal expertise. So Louise stayed put behind the counter, ready to greet the steady trickle of patrons who would inevitably wander in.

A steady flow of customers came into the shop, and then young Brutus Baxter arrived. The middle son of their cousins, he was a nice boy afflicted with a terrible name courtesy of his awful parents. He spent time in the bookshop to escape his home, where he was neglected by his parents and bullied by his dreadful older brother.

“Any books to bind today, Cousin Louise?” Brutus asked eagerly. He was showing an interest in book-binding, and Louise was happy to teach him the craft.

“Indeed.” Louise thought about it. There were quite a few tasks they might be able to do at the counter, especially with Brutus to be an extra pair of hands. “Mind the counter for a moment. I’ll go and fetch down some things.”

Mrs Poole came down the stairs, bubbling over with excitement. “You’ll not believe what I’ve just heard from Rosie, Louise!”

“I probably would not, no,” Louise agreed dryly. The maid barely ever said a word in Louise’s hearing but seemed to be full of Hatfield gossip for Mrs Poole.

“There’s been a fire!”

“A blocked chimney or something?” Louise asked, without much interest. Fires weren’t exactly uncommon in the winter; everyone needed fires for heat!

“No, deliberately lit!”

Now that was newsworthy. Louise gave Mrs Poole her full attention. “Where? Did they catch the culprit?”

“You know that little cottage on the St Albans road, the one just out of town, with the roof falling in?”

Louise did not, in fact, know the cottage. Bernadette was the one who went tramping all over the place visiting people with her herbs; Louise preferred to stay closer to home. But she nodded, because otherwise Mrs Poole would spend all day trying to make her think she did know it.

“Well, nobody lives there now of course, it’s not fit, but some of the returned soldiers were sleeping rough there.” Mrs Poole made a bit of a face.

They were very grateful to the brave soldiers who had defeated Napoleon and thwarted the looming threat of the French, of course, but there did seem to be somehow more of them hanging around Hatfield than had ever left to go off to war. Certainly more of them than were jobs for men during the winter. Louise didn’t quite understand why they didn’t go back to wherever it was they’d originally come from, or to towns who’d lost a lot of their men in the fighting.

“Was it one of the soldiers who set the fire?” she asked, though she wasn’t sure who’d be silly enough to set fire to a building they were trying to live in.

“No! They woke up in the night to someone throwing a lamp in at them! It smashed and lit fire to the straw they were sleeping on, so they had to get out in a hurry. Lucky nobody was burned!” Mrs Poole nodded wisely.

“It seems like perhaps the culprit is someone who didn’t want the soldiers here,” Louise suggested. “That seems the most obvious motive.”

“Listen to you, talking about culprits and motives! Have you been reading novels about murderers again?”

Louise pretended she hadn’t heard the question. She did have rather a penchant for novels, the more thrilling the better, and she had a particular weakness for a novel with a good murder to solve. “I hope the returned soldiers find somewhere better to sleep,” she said.

Unable to excite her to further speculation over the fire, Mrs Poole left to find someone better to gossip with, and Louise returned to work.

“What are we doing, Cousin Louise?” Brutus asked excitedly as she put down her supplies on the counter.

“Yet another set of Shakespeare folios, I’m afraid,” she said. “If I never see another set, it will be too soon. Every aspiring gentleman seems to think it an essential addition to his library.”

“The colour’s nice,” Brutus said, running gentle fingers over the green-dyed calfskin.

“Yes, and being calfskin, it’s not cheap, so we need to do a good job with it, with as little waste as possible. Let’s get measuring and cutting…”

“Measure twice and cut once,” Brutus said in a sing-song fashion, making Louise smile.

“An excellent motto, I’m glad you’ve been listening to my instructions!”

They busied themselves with the work, Ruth handling the customers who came in unless they wanted something out of the ordinary or required recommendations.

Bernadette returned in the early afternoon with a basket full of food items folk had given her in trade for her herbs, so they sat down and feasted on fresh crusty bread with butter and honey.

“Would you mind very much if I went back out this afternoon instead of working the counter?” Bernadette asked hopefully, eyeing the neat piles of cut green calfskin on the desk. “I still have some people I’d like to see…”

Louise nodded. “Go on, so long as you’re back by closing to help me add up the accounts. You know they make my head hurt. Brutus and I are going to start sewing the sections to the bands this afternoon.”

Brutus looked quite excited that she was going to let him help with this specific task, which could be quite tricky and required accuracy. Louise smiled fondly at him as Bernadette scooped her basket up and took it back upstairs to refill.

Soon after Bernadette left again, Benjamin Baxter barged in with the air of someone who believed the world owed him deference, immediately setting his sights on Brutus.

Louise had been in the middle of clamping one of the folios behind the counter when she overheard Benjamin’s jeering tone. She looked up to see Brutus shrinking back, his face pale, while Ruth stood frozen nearby, her expression caught somewhere between embarrassment and dread. With a few sharp words, Benjamin had managed to turn the air in the shop sour, his insults aimed at his brother before pivoting to Ruth with a sly tone.

Louise wasn’t even entirely sure what some of the words Benjamin said next even meant—though the suggestive tone made their nature clear enough—but she knew they were entirely inappropriate. Without a second thought, she seized the broom leaning against the counter and marched toward him.

“Out,” she barked, holding the broom like a soldier might hold a bayonet. “This is a bookshop, Benjamin, not a tavern—and certainly not a place for such foul language.”

Benjamin’s retort was cut short as Louise raised the broom an inch higher, her expression leaving no room for argument. “Would you like me to tell your father what you said to Ruth? Or should I let Reverend Millings hear it first?” she asked, her voice cold and clipped. She gave the broom a small, purposeful jab forward. “Out.”

Benjamin’s bravado crumbled in the face of her sternness. With a muttered curse, he backed toward the door.

“You’ll regret this,” he said, but his attempt at menace fell flat as Louise advanced another step.

“I sincerely doubt that,” she replied.

As the door swung shut behind him, Louise gave it an extra push for good measure. “And stay out!” she called after him, before turning back to Ruth and Brutus. She sighed, setting the broom aside. “Dreadful behaviour,” she muttered, shaking her head.

Ruth, still standing near the shelves, wiped away a silent tear.

“Are you all right?” Louise asked, her voice softening.

The girl nodded quickly, though her hands twisted nervously in her apron. “Yes, thank you, Miss Baxter. You were jolly brave, standing up to him like that!”

“Spiffing,” Brutus chimed in, his wide-eyed admiration making Louise chuckle despite herself.

“Most bullies will back down if you stand up to them,” Louise said, her tone firm but encouraging. She glanced at Ruth, appraising her carefully. The girl was sweet-natured, but far too timid. “And a firmly wielded broom—or a correctly applied knee—can make even the more stubborn ones reconsider.”

Several days later, the weather had turned utterly foul, heavy rain intermixed with sleet. It was so wet that the fire in the small stove in the centre of the shop - safely set far away from any bookshelves - went out in the middle of the afternoon.

“I’ll clean the grate,” Brutus volunteered, “and we can lay a new fire with fresh wood.”

“I don’t suppose we have much choice.” Louise shivered, picking up her winter coat and shrugging into it. Bernadette was upstairs in the kitchen mixing herbal teas, no doubt enjoying the warmth from the kitchen stove. “We need the shop to be warm, or nobody will browse books long enough to buy anything!”

Brutus set to with a will, scooping out half-burned, damp sticks of wood and ash into the ash pan before taking them out and dumping them in the midden in the back yard. He laid the fire quite expertly and soon had it going again.

“A good job, Brutus,” Louise praised. “Best keep an eye on it, though. Use as much extra wood as you need to keep it hot enough so it won’t go out again, but don’t forget to keep the fireguard in front of it.”

“Can I sit here by it and read a book?” Brutus asked hopefully.

“Of course you can. Choose any book you want.” She ruffled his hair fondly on her way back to the front counter. Brutus’ father, Joshua, was too pinch-penny even to buy a subscription to the circulating library they maintained; he certainly wasn’t about to spend money on books for his disregarded middle son. Louise was happy for Brutus to read all the books he pleased in the bookshop; his help was well worth it.

“Wash your hands first,” she warned, seeing his ashy fingers. The boy gave her a grin before rushing off to take care of that business.

Settling down again at the counter, Louise picked up the day’s correspondence and began working through it. A few orders in response to their last advertisement in The Times, a note from the printer to please collect the next batch of Shakespeares to bind… Louise groaned. More Shakespeare! The green calfskin batch were still drying in the book presses! Well, she’d send Brutus over in the morning.

The doorbell jangled, and she glanced up with a frown as a damp, chilly draught blasted across her, ruffling the papers on the desk. It was only Mrs Poole coming in, though, and Louise nodded to her and returned her attention to the correspondence.

It was a quiet afternoon, not too many folk straying far from their homes on such a miserable day. The post-coach roared past in a great clatter of hooves and rattle of wheels before turning into the inn-yard, the driver shouting for fresh horses.

It must be almost four, then. Louise sighed, reaching for the sales ledger. Time to add up the day’s takings. Although the afternoon had been quiet, they had made a lot of small sales that morning, she noticed, and laboriously began to add them up, hoping her sister would come down and check her workings.

The church clock struck four, and Louise was about to call out to Ruth to lock the door and turn the little sign to say CLOSED, when the shop door opened again. Words of welcome died in her throat as she saw a tall man almost wholly blocking the door with his sheer size.

From the corner of her eye she spotted a black shape darting for the open door, and cried out “Crafty, no!”

The huge man in the doorway lifted a massive boot, neatly fended off the would-be escapee, and shut the door behind him, before coming to stand in front of the counter. Louise stared up at him, quite mesmerised. There were few men in the district who could even meet her eye-to-eye, but this man was a near-giant; he would be a full head taller than she if not even more.

“Where should I put this?” he rumbled, and it was then that Louise noticed he had a crate balanced on one broad shoulder.