Martha stood with a hand over her mouth. “What is all this about?” she asked. Her voice was distant and detached. “Why were these men here? Lucy, I do not understand. I don’t understand anything, and I am so afraid.”
Lucy took her sister’s arm. “Martha, you must trust me. You must have faith that I do what I must and what is right. Now, are father’s old books in the library yet?”
“Yes, of course.” Martha looked away from the bondmen. “Father’s books and many of Mr. Buckles’s too.”
“May we look through them?”
Martha nodded. “Yes. I suppose. I mean, I cannot say.”
Martha gave every sign of swooning, so Lucy took her hands. “I know all of this is strange to you. It is strange to me too. Soon, I think, everything will be different, and better. It is what I hope. For now there is much I must do, and I cannot speak of it. I ask only that you trust me.”
Martha began to tear up once more. “You are so altered, Lucy. I hardly know you.”
“These years since father died have been hard on all of us. It must change us.”
Martha nodded. “Yes, we must all change, but we do not all change for the better. We do not all become stronger. I have diminished and you have become… I don’t know how to say it. You have become who you were always meant to be.”
Lucy hugged her once more, and as they all turned their backs upon the bondmen Lucy, Mr. Morrison, and Mrs. Emmett followed Martha to the library.
When they reached the closed door of the library, Mr. Morrison put up a hand before Lucy. “A moment,” he said. He opened the door, and proceeded to run his hand along the doorjamb, moving slowly, as if feeling for something underneath the wood. He did this several times, his face screwed up in concentration, and then he gave a quick nod to himself.
Reaching into the pocket of his coat, he removed a penknife and began to dig into the wood in a spot at about the height of his shoulder. Martha appeared horrified, and he turned to smile at her, and then went back to his work. Finally, he found something embedded in the wood. It was a small pouch, made of stained white linen, about the size of a grape, and—like Byron’s curse—tied with some kind of hair.
Mr. Morrison sniffed at the bag. “Dried spiders, mixed with the ash of unhatched goose egg, if I’m not mistaken. Powerful stuff, designed to interfere with your concentration.” He strode into the library and tossed the pouch in the fire. “But that’s all behind us. Apologies about the door, Mrs. Buckles.”
“How did you know that was there?” Martha asked.
“Lucky guess,” he said, smiling quite happily.
Martha looked at the damage to the door, then at Mr. Morrison, then at Lucy. Apparently she decided there was nothing to be gained by further comments. Instead, she offered them refreshment, which they refused.
“We only need some time,” Lucy said.
In the distance they heard the shrill wail of an angry infant. At least it would sound like an infant to Martha, and perhaps to Mr. Morrison. She did not know.
“I hardly even hear it any longer,” Martha said in response to the unasked question. “I have hired a wet nurse, you know. I hate that I have, but I cannot any longer endure it. My own daughter. I suppose that makes me a horrid mother, but I feared I must lose my mind, but she is so altered.”
“You are a wonderful mother,” said Lucy. “You can never doubt that.”
Martha glanced over at Mrs. Emmett who was standing near the fire, examining the cut pages of a book with her index finger, and humming softly to herself. “Perhaps your woman would care to wait in the servant’s quarters.”
“No,” said Mrs. Emmett. “Not a bit of it. Run along now, girl.”
Martha stood with her mouth open.
“She is odd,” said Lucy softly, “but harmless. We will keep her here.”
Martha nodded and left the library, closing the door behind her.
They were alone. Lucy turned to Mr. Morrison. “How did you do those things—make your cudgels and chalk appear out of nothingness, and that symbol you drew upon the floor? I must know.”
He gestured vaguely. “The cudgels and chalk were but a bit of theater, nothing more than the same sort of misdirection I use to pull eggs out of ears or make coins vanish. I have found that combining my technique with a bit of spectacle gives me but one more advantage in combat. And as for the symbol, well, that’s very dark magic, soul-blackening stuff. I don’t recommend using it, and I only trifle with that sort of thing when the stakes are unusually high.”
“And what is at stake here?” asked Lucy.
Mr. Morrison looked at her directly. “You are.”
She could not bear to hold his gaze, so she began to walk the room, bright and well lit, looking at the tall shelves of books—thick folios, tiny sixteenmos, and everything in between. She ran her fingers along the spines, thinking that this one or that had been a book she had seen in the hands of her father as he sat in that red velvet chair by the window, his glasses perched on his nose, reading away the long afternoon, oblivious to the commotion in the house around him.
Lucy closed her eyes and quieted herself, trying to feel if there were pages in the room, and at once she felt their closeness. Indeed, they were in the library, she had no doubt of it, but she could not tell where, and she did not know how to sort through all the books to find them.
“Mrs. Emmett,” Lucy asked, “can you, by any chance, detect the pages?”
“Me? They are yours, not mine.” She continued her strange humming.
Lucy looked at Mr. Morrison. “Were you ever with my father here in this library?”
“Yes, of course. Many times.”
“Then you must see what I see,” said Lucy. “I did not come in here again after I moved away. When I visited, I avoided the room, for it reminded me too much of him, but here, all around us, is the evidence.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Morrison, as he walked about the room, looking at the various books. “It was said that he had to sell his library to pay his debts, but here is the library, right before us. Either Mr. Buckles bought it himself or bought it back or…” He did not choose to finish.
“He never sold it nor paid for any of it,” said Lucy.
“Of course,” said Mr. Morrison. “He is in possession of your father’s books, but they do not belong to him. This explains why everything comes back to you. Mrs. Emmett—she said as much just a moment ago. I almost didn’t hear it, but now I understand why you are at the center of everything.”
32
LUCY SAT AT A WRITING TABLE, AND MR. MORRISON SAT NEXT TO her. “I’ve long suspected, but been unable to prove, that Mr. Buckles defrauded you of your inheritance. Of course, I wondered why he would trouble to do so. He was to inherit the house, and after he married Martha he would receive half of your father’s wealth. The amount he could gain through fraud could hardly be worth the risk of discovery—not when his future was secure and his patronage from Lady Harriett left him without want.”
“He wanted the books,” said Lucy, who saw it as well.
“Your dealings with your father changed in that last year. That is why he left you what you see around us— his library. These are your books, Lucy. Mr. Buckles cared nothing of the money he stole from you. Perhaps he took it because he could or because he believed you would be less dangerous if you were even more impoverished, but in the end it was but a distraction. What he wanted was these books.”
She could hear Mary’s voice in her head.
“It is mine,” said Lucy. “The book was mine all along. They took it from me, and they tore it to pieces, but they dared not destroy it.”
“They did not take it apart,” said Mr. Morrison. “Your father ordered it done, and I believe he gave the task to
