The Book of the Seven Delights (39 page)

Everything came to a halt as every eye in the room turned on Abigail.

She couldn't help the way her face reddened at his snidely worded identification of her, but she could behave in a way that lessened the impact of both.

"Yes, of course," she said, coolly and calmly, reserving the icicles in her gaze for the vicious little Pratt. "I was employed briefly at the British Museum. In acquisitions. I found it a most enlightening—though not altogether pleasant—experience."

Maunde Thompson straightened and came over to see her for himself.

"Acquisitions, eh?" He seemed a bit uncomfortable under Sir Henry's gaze. "Odd choice for a young woman."

"Don't you recall, Director Thompson"—Pratt seized his moment, intending to make an impression by putting the upstart female in her place—"everyone talking about whether there really was a woman in the basement and making wagers? Old Richter, one of the watchman, made a tidy bit of coin taking folks around to prove that she was really down there." His laugh came out more of a giggle than he would have liked, but it did seem to draw a few muffled sounds of derision from the gathering.

For a moment all was silent. Then Director Thompson pulled out his pocket watch and gave it an uncomfortable glance.

"I really do have… a pressing engagement…"

"I really should be going as well," Lord Amos Greenley said putting down with an air of regret the magnifying glass he was holding.

Abigail felt Apollo at her side, felt the tension in his frame and when she glanced down saw the fists he had balled and ready. She quickly covered one with her cold fingers, entreating him to hold his temper.

"I say. Sir Henry." Thompson glanced at her father in dismay, having just recalled how she came to be hired in the first place. "This must be your daughter… I mean… what do
you
think of…" Words failed the garrulous director, so he swept the amphora and the journals with an encompassing wave.

Abigail couldn't breathe. Couldn't blink.

She stood before the father she no longer knew… recalling the years and choices that had put such distance between them. Choices so heartbreakingly similar that it was almost as if Fate had brought them around a second time… revisiting them on him… and on her for their own cruel entertainment.

Long ago, when presented with his wife's brilliance and achievement and told to deny it, he had chosen—however reluctantly—the safe and expected route of male superiority, cloaked as academic

"rigor" and "purity." He had chosen his career and ambition over his love, his wife, and in the end, his daughter.

Would he do the same again?

Would desire for the esteem of his peers cause him to shun the daughter he didn't know and whatever she had achieved?

"She is my daughter," Sir Henry said, looking as if every word cost him a piece of a vital organ. Abigail's heart began to sink.

No. Please God. Not again…

"But were she a total stranger," he continued in a more emphatic voice, "I would
still
be eager to examine her work and to see the insides of those amphora. Good Lord, if what she says is true—and I have no reason yet to doubt it—then think of it! The Great Library!"

A wave of relief went through the room as Sir Henry turned to Pratt with a raptorlike gaze. "I don't believe I took your name sir. And be sure, I want to remember it."

"Pratt." The little worm had difficulty swallowing. "Assistant to the director, Jonas Pratt."

"
Pratt
," Sir Henry said in a way that made it sound like he was spitting. Then he turned to Thompson, who was edging toward the door and fixed a razorlike gaze on him. "So you put her in the basement, did you?" One of his eyebrows hiked a notch and the entire room inhaled. "Well, everyone has to start somewhere, eh Maunde? Even in the bloody basement. I expected my daughter to be given a chance"—he looked straight at her and met her suddenly moist gaze with a trembling smile—"but I also expected her to earn her way. And by God, I think she has!"

She wasn't even aware of making her way to him… her hands outstretched… her eyes rimmed with tears. He grabbed her hands tightly and held them for a long silent moment before releasing them.

"And now let's have a look at these amphora!"

It was dark outside and the electrical lights had been turned on in the salon before the last of the guests exited and Abigail was able to turn to her father in private. Her heart was full enough to overflow through her eyes.

"Do you have any idea how much you look like your mother?" he said to her, his eyes brimming, too.

She couldn't speak, only nod.

But words weren't necessary as he opened his arms and she walked into them. He had stood up for her… demanded respect for her and her achievement by showing her that respect. And it was the pain of his heart, later, to learn that he would never have a chance to redress the injustice he had done to his young wife years ago. He wept at the news of her death, and Apollo and Abigail helped him upstairs to their suite and comforted both him and themselves with talk and stories and news… and the whole, true story of their "expedition" and their partnership-become-marriage.

They talked until the wee hours, and Abigail insisted he stay the night with them. The next morning, over breakfast, they both broached the topic uppermost in their thoughts.

"You have to be careful not to take the first bid," Sir Henry advised. "Museums are notoriously stingy…

that Maunde Thompson's still wearing the first pair of socks his mother ever knitted him. Make them all wait a bit. And make them show you something of their plans to build an exhibit around your books…

make that part of the deal."

"Sounds like good advice," Apollo said, winking at Abigail, who was glowing after a wildly celebratory bit of
Control
and
Surrender
with some champagne and
Tasting
thrown in.

"We're planning another expedition… to retrieve the artifacts buried in the tunnel." Abigail spoke what was on her mind with her eyes shining. She reached for her husband's hand across the tabletop. "Apollo and I discussed it… and we want you to come with us."

"Me? On an expedition?" He seemed more dismayed than intrigued by the prospect. "Not me. I'm strictly a library and letters sort of academic. None of that pith and dash the field men have."

"Don't be silly. You've got plenty of
dash"
she said adamantly.

"And pith," Apollo added dryly.

"Come on… what have you got to lose? You have to live life to the fullest." Abigail heard herself saying and thought the words sounded astonishingly familiar. "You're way too young to closet yourself away with books and papers year after year. You need to do something wild and wonderful. Something bold and memorable. Something… adventuresome!"

"Good God," Sir Henry said to Apollo, looking strangely both alarmed and entranced. "She sounds just like her mother, too."

"So that's their story," Leigh Merchant Smith said, closing the book she'd been reading aloud to her fiance. "My great, great grandmother and grandfather's adventure. What do you think?"

"Quite a yarn," the young man said, clearly striving for diplomacy.

"It's a true story, Michael. Okay—maybe embellished a bit for print, here and there, but basically that's what happened. That's the start of the Merchant-Smith family legacy."

They sat together on the leather sofa in her father's book-lined study, wearing jeans and sweaters. It had been a relaxed weekend… as relaxed, anyway, as it could be when meeting prospective in-laws for the first time.

She set the book aside and snuggled against him, pulling his arm from the back of the sofa around her.

"It's why the women of our family always become librarians and always seem to fall for… adventurers."

"Venture capitalists," he corrected her. "I work for a venture capitalization firm, remember. I do the back-room stuff… research… financial projections… the boring details."

"Oh. Yes. Sorry. The blazing off to Singapore and Berlin and Paris at a moment's notice sometimes makes me forget what a dull job you have."

"Well, if the story is true," he said, staring at the ornately bound book on the coffee table, "then where are these wonderful manuscripts from the Great Library now? Why hasn't their discovery changed the world. I mean, if it was all that groundbreaking, wouldn't we have learned about it in Western Civ 101 or something?"

"Well, after the auction—which was won by the Metropolitan Museum, by the way—the amphora containing the manuscripts were shipped to New York and were opened with great ceremony by a gathering of eminent scholars."

"And?" He slid to the edge of his seat.

"The scrolls were taken out and conserved and read… and found to contain books by some of the most famous classical masters. Aristotle, Epicurus, Ptolemy…"

"And?"

"And"—she sighed—"it turned out most of the books were already in existence. They had come down to us through other sources. The few new parts were mostly reformulations of earlier texts. Epicurus's
De
Natura
… Aristotle's
The Constitution of Athens
… Galen's
Book of Medicine
.. ."

"That was it?" he said.

"I'm afraid so. It was a bit of a disappointment to Great, Great Grandma Abigail. But Great, Great Grandpa Apollo, being a devout pragmatist, drew the only sensible conclusion from it, wrote a book detailing their adventure, and plunged into a new round of explorations."

"What was his conclusion?"

She slid up onto his lap, her eyes twinkling.

"That as time had marched on, so had knowledge. Despite the efforts of some to hoard or limit or even destroy learning, it had not only survived, it had thrived. Wisdom, it seems, will always find a way. It has a life of its own and refuses to be imprisoned or restricted or even 'preserved' into irrelevance.

Knowledge, pulled out of the stream of ideas, even for safekeeping, slowly withers and becomes obsolete." She laughed, watching his expression changing as those ideas—so familiar to her—took root.

"It's a shame that Gram and Gramps aren't here to see the Internet," she continued. "They would have loved to see how it's breaking down barriers and disseminating knowledge… changing the world."

"So this is the family legacy you talked about. This love of wisdom and learning. This passion for knowledge. And libraries."

"Part of it."

She studied his face and the telltale crinkle between his eyebrows that always appeared when he was dubious about something. Michael Phillips made one terrible poker player.

"You still don't believe all this, do you?" she said.

"I'll take your word for it," he said, the crinkle smoothing, replaced by an irresistibly boyish smile.

"You'll do better than that," she said, sliding off his lap and heading for the credenza behind her father's big mahogany desk. Behind the heavy wooden doors was the front of a substantial safe. She opened it and withdrew a rectangular wooden box that she placed on the desk.

"What's this?" He shoved up out of his chair and joined her.

"The seventh scroll."

He glanced at the book now on the coffee table. "I thought you said the scrolls went to the Metropolitan Museum."

"They did. All but this one. This one Grandma and Grandpa kept. It's the most revolutionary of all of them. They were determined this one wouldn't be buried in some vault somewhere and never read."

She carried it to the desk, cleared things aside, then donned a curator's cotton gloves, opened the airtight box, and removed a sheepskin covered scroll of parchment. Then with great care, she unrolled the tattered end and began to read… first in Greek, then in English…

"The Book of the Seven Delights."

He stared at her and then at the obviously ancient document.

"They kept a scroll? They really did find the Great Library of Alexandria?"

"Exactly like they said they did. They didn't mention in their book that they kept this scroll themselves…

shared it quietly with others… and passed it down from mother to daughter for five generations."

She could see he was rethinking all of his conclusions and assumptions.

"So, that's your family secret and legacy. An ancient scroll from the Great Library of Alexandria. This
Book of Seven
..."

"Delights," she supplied, watching him closely. "It's a path to wisdom through the joining of the sexes in pleasure."

"A sex book?" His jaw dropped. "You mean, like the
Kama Sutra
?"

"It's a wisdom book, it just happens to use sex as it's method of enlightenment." She grinned. "And trust me, it's
better
than the
Kama Sutra
. When we're married, you'll get your own personal translation. But, that's not quite all."

While he was staring at the scroll, she began to unbutton her blouse. When he looked up she pulled it open to reveal a bra made of metal… ornate, provocative cups held on with chains covered by scalelike plates of what appeared to be real gold. His jaw dropped. When he could pull his gaze from it to look at her, she was grinning.

"If you're very, very good, Mister Phillips, I'll show you how the latch works."

New York Times
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Betina Krahn

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