Page 12 of The Viscount’s Second Chance (The Lovers’ Arch: Later in Life)
"A re there any orders set aside for Miss Elizabeth Bexton?”
Thomas had guided Nora back to the front of the bookstore and immediately headed to the counter with long, confident strides. A soft-looking clerk with round spectacles and a kind smile excused himself to check their stacks of orders after Thomas provided Beth’s name. Nora’s heart thudded heavily in her chest all over again and each second felt like an hour.
“Could it really be this simple?” “Sometimes the simplest solutions are the answers.” He looked down at her warmly, the silver at his temples glinting in the daylight streaming through the store’s front windows, and her heart missed one of its heavy beats.
“Apologies, My Lord, but there is no order for Miss Bexton.” The clerk looked sincerely disappointed that he was unable to assist them, but no one was more deflated than Nora.
“Blast,” she muttered.
Thomas’s eyes widened slightly. She thought he’d been about to chide her for her language, but he turned back to the clerk and said, “An order for Miss Nora Allen, then?”
The clerk excused himself, seeming entirely unperturbed at being sent on another search. Nora couldn’t help the tapping of her foot, but everything in her seized when Thomas’s hand covered hers—even her lungs. She’d been so excited about showing him the letter that morning that they hadn’t yet discussed what occurred between them the prior day. Nora certainly hadn’t forgotten… Everything Thomas did and said was no different than when they’d last been out in public; it made her wonder if he considered it no more than a moment of weakness and wished to simply brush it under the rug. Was that what she wanted as well? She—
The clerk returned with a neat stack of books wrapped in brown paper and tied together with Thorpe it was never to be delivered. I must say we’d begun to speculate what would become of it.”
Nora could only stare dumbly at the package and was grateful that Thomas was there to be sensible. “How much for the order?”
“Nothing, My Lord. It’s been paid for since the date it was bought, wrapped, and stored.” He held up a handwritten receipt that had been tucked beneath the ribbon.
“How long?” Nora rasped and then cleared her throat. “How long ago was the purchase made?”
The clerk adjusted his spectacles and examined the receipt. “The fifteenth of July.”
Almost three months prior. Beth had worked quietly and kept this to herself for months before her death. The realization was sobering. Had she known what was coming?
“We appreciate your assistance,” Thomas said and attempted to hand the clerk a coin, but the man declined politely. Regardless, Thomas left the money on the counter for the man and he lifted the package from the table.
“I think we should take these home to look over.” His words were gentle as he bundled the package beneath his arm and guided her toward the door with one hand on her back. Nora could only nod.
She was immediately led back to the Bexton carriage and he had the driver return them to Nora’s Townhouse. The entire journey, she stared mutely at the package set on the seat beside him, wondering what it held. Her excitement from earlier that morning had been unexpectedly dimmed by the discovery of the next clue. Surely, this was not the last one that would lead them to The Lovers’ Arch.
Once they arrived, Nora and Thomas eschewed the comforts of the main living areas and, instead, went directly to the kitchens.
“Where and when did you learn to boil water and prepare tea?” Thomas asked. His tone was torn between awe and confusion as he watched her move about the kitchen.
“There were nights when Beth couldn’t sleep. I asked the cook to teach me how to warm milk and prepare tea so I wouldn’t have to wake someone to do it for us.”
“That is what they are hired for.” His word was more a statement of fact than an insult. “I don’t like the thought of you accidentally injuring yourself in the process.”
“I have two capable hands and I enjoy learning new things, no matter how trivial.” Nora set the kettle on to boil above the flames and sat beside Thomas at the spotless wooden table in the center of the room.
“You took such good care of Beth,” Thomas said, his voice barely above a gruff whisper.
Nora’s breath hitched when she replied, “She did the same for me.”
Thomas’s smile was sad before he slid the package from Thorpe you should be the one to open it.”
Exhaling a bracing breath, Nora tugged at the end of the ribbon and began unwrapping the parcel. Four books were inside. The top was the complete collection of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus , then Lord Byron’s Don Juan Cantos I through XI, followed by Stendhal’s De l’amour , and Walter Scott’s The Pirate . That was it. Each was new with unbroken spines and spotless pages, and smelled comfortingly of parchment, ink, and dyed leather. Nora flipped through the pages and examined the inside covers, but there were no markings, no notes, no bits of ribbon to mark specific passages. They were just books.
“I don’t understand,” she muttered with a frown.
“Were these stories you desired to own?” Thomas asked, picking up Byron’s work and examining it.
“I already own Mrs. Shelley’s piece. Beth would have known that.” Tears of frustration stung the backs of her eyes and she dropped her head into her hands. “I don’t know where to go from here, Thomas. I don’t understand.”
“Nora,” he murmured soothingly as he dropped to his knees before her and took her hands in his. “We will sort this out. Together.”
She gave him a watery smile. “Beth did say you would be helpful in my search, though I’ve no idea why she placed so much faith in your skills.”
“Harpy,” Thomas said with infinite affection and pressed her palms to his lips one after another…and something shifted between them.
The kettle had reached the proper temperature, so Nora removed her hands from his and began preparing the tea to let it steep an appropriate amount of time. She turned back to discover that Thomas had laid out the books before in him in the order they’d been packaged. The furrow between his dark brows was unerringly charming.
“What do these titles have in common?” he pondered aloud in a soft enough tone that she wasn’t certain whether he spoke to her or not. She pulled her chair closer to his and sat beside him. His thigh relaxed and pressed against hers, sending jolts of lightning through her nerves.
At the contact, her mind naturally returned to its earlier tangent. Not a single word had been said about their passionate interlude from the previous evening, and she was uncertain whether it was a relief or an annoyance. She knew he’d missed her, still desired her, but that did not mean he still wanted a future with her. For that matter, what did she want from him? She’d cut him deeply when she’d walked away from him all those years ago. Thomas was a good man, but even he must have limits to his forgiveness.
Nora gave herself a mental shake and refocused upon the task at hand.
“They are works by Brits, save the one by Stendhal,” she said thoughtfully.
“What do we know of the plots?” Thomas asked next before touching Shelley’s novel. “A commentary and personification of one’s own demons, and social analysis of mores and constraints.” He gestured to Byron’s work second.
“Stendhal’s title translates to ‘On Love’, though I’ve not read it.”
“And Scott’s story is about a pirate who travels to the Scottish Isles to start a new life.”
Nora shook her head. “To consider anything overlapping with all of them would be a grand stretch.”
Thomas’s elegant fingers drummed the table. “What about the titles, themselves? Do they mean anything?”
Nora nibbled on her lip for several minutes before replying. “Beth was reading Mrs. Wollstonecraft the first time I met her and she was the mother of Mrs. Shelley.” A smile tugged at Thomas’s lips and his entrancing blue eyes became unfocused, as if recalling just how he’d had that work re-bound and given to Beth. “She also gifted me with a lovely embossed copy of it shortly after it was released in its entirety. We stayed up all night as I read it to her.”
“ Don Juan is one of my favorite pieces of literature,” he said softly.
“Is it really?” Nora’s head whipped toward him. “I did not know that.”
Thomas nodded. “Beth gifted me a copy of each of the Cantos as they were released.”
Nora barely managed to swallow past the lump in her throat. “What about Stendhal?”
“I think it is less about the story and more about the title.” His fathomless eyes met hers. “Love.”
Nora felt her cheeks warm and her heart flutter. “A—And The Pirate ? You haven’t taken up a life of crime on the high seas in the past few years, have you?”
Thomas chuckled. “Hardly. I become quite seasick on anything larger than a rowboat.” Another thing she hadn’t known about him. She pondered all the things they’d missed and hadn’t learned about one another in their time spent apart. How different were they from the people they’d once been—and how well would the people they were now mesh together? Were they even compatible? To her, it had once felt as if they were complementary halves of the same whole, each one making the other stronger, more fulfilled. Now…who knew what changes time had wrought.
Nora excused herself with a thoughtful sound and finished preparing the tea, pouring it, and setting out a small selection of scones and biscuits the maid had delivered from the baker just that morning.
“What could the word ‘pirate’ possibly mean?” she pondered aloud as she nibbled one of the crumbly shortbread biscuits. “If your suspicions are correct and the first book alludes to me, the second, to you, the third to…us…” Nora’s cheeks flared; “then what does ‘pirate’ have to do with anything?”
Buzzing thoughts and the sounds of slowly savored tea and sweets filled the kitchen. Nora had long ago retrieved parchment and writing implements so the two of them could scratch out their thoughts before dismissing them and dashing them off with violent spatterings of ink. The light filtering through the kitchen’s sole window had grown dim by the time Thomas finally stood and stretched his back. He’d removed his coat to save it from ink and his broad arms and trim waist were on display. Nora did her best to cast only glances beneath her lashes at him, but it was nearly impossible with her body screaming at her to stare her fill.
“Perhaps we should set this aside for tonight,” Thomas suggested with a bit of a groan. Sitting hunched over a table for long hadn’t done his bones and muscles any favors.
“You may leave for Ivy House if you wish; I will continue working.” She looked back down at the marked-up page before her until Thomas placed his hand over hers.
“You’ve done enough for today; the mystery will keep ‘til morning.”
“I’ve nothing better to do with my time,” she replied, forcing the words out through her tight throat.
“Don’t you?” Thomas asked in a tone just above a suggestive growl, his blue eyes fixed on her and deepening in hue by the second.
“Thomas!” she chided him only half-heartedly and dropped her quill. She supposed that was as good a time as any to finally address things. “What happened last night in the library—” She stopped abruptly. The library at Ivy House. It was decorated with nautical bits and bobs, not to mention the artwork. Several ships in various forms existed in that space…and Nora and Beth had always called them pirate ships.
Nora lurched to her feet, so surprising Thomas with her sudden upward trajectory that he actually took a step back.
“The library!” she all but shrieked. “At Ivy House!”
The mixture of concern and puzzlement in his face gradually transformed to one of understanding. “The ships…” His handsome face split into a grin. “You are bloody brilliant, Nora.”
She couldn’t help herself. Nora stood on her toes, threw her arms around his neck, and brought her lips to his.