Page 40 of The Missing Pages

I WANTED TO SAFEGUARD ADA, PROTECT HER. I LOVED everything about her.

I loved her voice. I loved her intellect, how her mind never seemed at rest, how she was fueled by curiosity.

I admired her knowledge, not just on book-related topics, but about people and about the world.

For a woman who grew up in a small village east of London, she was neither sheltered nor naive.

She was a blend of sophistication and sweetness. I wanted to kiss her forever.

I stood there in leafy Holland Park, the magpies and mistle thrush chirping from high above, and for a moment everything stood still.

“Ada.” I said her name after my lips had parted from hers. “I have been thinking about doing that all afternoon.”

“Just the afternoon?” she teased.

My neck grew warm around my collar. “Since New York, really,” I said with a laugh.

Her gloved hand lifted to cover her mouth, but I still caught the edges of her smile. “Me too.”

Joy engulfed me. Her words rang in my ears. Love. This is what it felt like. I’d read about it on countless pages. I’d heard it in the lyrics of songs, the stanzas of poems. But now I finally understood.

I ran my arm down the length of her sleeve, feeling the limb beneath the cloth. Even that which I couldn’t see struck me as beautiful.

“I wish we had the park all to ourselves,” I said.

“It almost feels as though we do,” she said, her head now bowed, her voice a whisper.

“You feel like my very own secret.” I touched her gloved hand again.

“Do you have any others?”

“Just one other,” I confessed. “I had a secret drawer created in my desk back home. On the left side, a small ridge just beneath the top lip opens it. You just need to find it with your fingernail. No one knows it exists but me.” A cool breeze rippled over us. “And now you.”

She seemed delighted to learn something no one else knew about.

“And what do you keep in it?”

“I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed.”

“I won’t. I promise. Tell me.”

“A copy of Treasure Island.”

“Ah… Jim Hawkins,” she teased.

“Did I tell you in another life I want to be him?”

“But why keep it there? Even if it’s a first edition. Surely there are rarer, more expensive books to hide away?”

I shook my head. “It might sound absurd, but it’s the book that captured my heart. It made me want to be a collector. The edition I keep in the drawer is not a first edition or even a rare copy. It’s just the first copy I read as a little boy.”

“Ahh,” she said and her smile dazzled like sunbeams on water. “You keep your heart inside that drawer.”

“A different part,” I insisted. We had stopped walking. I took her hand in mine again, this time grasping it tighter. “My heart is very much here now with you.”

Her eyes answered for her. Without any more words between us, I sensed she felt the same way. I let the silence envelop us.

We strolled deeper into the park, and anyone else who crossed our path faded away.

We came upon a stone bench and decided to sit down. Soon our conversation returned to the Rossetti book.

“You must be anxious to get back to Miss Barrington?” I asked. I knew that in the past, it would have been difficult for me to leave a book I wanted on the negotiating table like that.

“It’s Saturday, and the acquisition of a book of Rossetti poetry is not important enough to disturb Mr. Quaritch on his weekend. It is something I know that will have to wait until Monday.”

“Very well,” I said. “So then there really is nothing else you can do now besides being with me?”

“There is always work to be done, Mr. Widener,” she said playfully.

“But surely you must be hungry? Neither of us has had lunch.”

“Are you offering to take me somewhere?” Her eyebrow rose.

“Well, you’ve already accepted my dinner invitation for this evening,” I said, smiling. “Would it be too bold to also ask you to lunch?”

“Can you tell me what time it is?”

I glanced at my wristwatch. “Nearly three o’clock.”

“We will have missed lunch service. But there are plenty of places nearby to have tea.”

We ate scones and nibbled on sandwiches. I let my tea grow cold as Ada talked about the books that had shaped her childhood, from Daisies and Raindrops to the fairy books she loved, much like the one I sent to her after she visited New York. I listened to her, mesmerized.

“And what was your childhood favorite?” she asked.

I didn’t need long to consider my answer. “A Children’s Garden of Verses,” I said. “Mother would sit on my bed and read one of the verses to me every night.”

“Ah, so that’s where your literary love affair with Robert Louis Stevenson began?”

“I suppose every great love has its early seeds sown somewhere,” I confessed. “Mine began in the nursery, when I had my mother all to myself. No maids. No nanny. Just my mother and me. With a book between our hands.”

“Go on,” she coaxed. “I want to hear more.”

“Well…” I drew out my words slowly. “My mother wasn’t a woman who played games or took me on long walks, as you might imagine.

But she loved books, and she loved reading to me when I was small.

As she turned each page, she made the words come alive.

Her voice transformed from the stiff, patrician one she used in the formal rooms of our house to another one entirely.

I can only describe it as a softening.” I paused.

“It was as if the mother I knew outside my nursery was carved in marble, but the one who pulled me onto her lap to read softened like flannel.”

“How beautiful,” Ada said.

“My father was the one who read to me. Those are the memories I cherish most now that he’s gone.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know.”

“It’s all right.” She tried to shrug it off. “I still have the books we read together. He’s there within the pages.”

Our teapots were empty. The sandwiches and scones were nearly gone.

“I probably should get back home before our dinner tonight.” Ada glanced at the clock on the tea salon’s mantel.

“Should I have the car fetch you at seven o’clock then?” I asked.

“That would be lovely,” she said. She stood up and adjusted the pleats of her skirt.

I paid the bill and we walked outside, waiting by the exit until a cab arrived.

“I can go on my own,” she said as the porter opened the car’s door.

“Absolutely not,” I insisted.

“I assure you it’s quite safe for me to go by myself. I do it daily.”

“That’s not the point,” I said as I slid in next to her. “I just wanted to spend a few more minutes with you.”

“Harry, the gentleman,” she said, smiling as she looked out the window. The afternoon sun had been replaced by clouds.

“Fifty-four Bayswater Road, please,” she told the driver.

In the backseat of the cab, I wished I didn’t have even one moment between now and dinner without her.

Our dinner reservation was only a few hours away, but if I’d been able to move the hours forward, there’s no doubt I would have.

I could hardly wait.