Poetic Justice (3 page)

She watched over the staircase till Damien was almost out the door, and then called after him, "I hope the flies are biting and the fish aren't!"

Men. They were so eloquent in calling for sacrifice, as long as the sacrifice was being done for them and not by them. Uncle Emory was just the same, expecting her to sacrifice both marriage and the collection—and for what? To ease his conscience, that was all.

She retrieved her shoes from under the hall settee, but by the time she had slipped them back on she was still too angry to confront her uncle. So she had to wait outside his study door, breathing deep until the passion seeped away. Only then could she greet him with a level voice and the polite inquiry, "Have you a moment to talk, Uncle?"

Lord Parham looked up from the papers at his desk. His eyes still held a martial light from the battle, not that Damien had put up much of a fight. She took the seat across from him, and took a moment to compose her angry thoughts into civil words. Her aunt and uncle were kindly people, but they expected filial deference, especially from the niece they had raised these last half-dozen years. She would earn no points by shouting and stamping her feet, no matter how much she might like to do so.

A statement of fact seemed the most inoffensive opening. "Uncle, Damien tells me that you refused his suit."

"Yes, I did."

"He didn't say why, though."

"Hmm, I imagine he didn't."

Lord Parham shuffled the pages on his desk, took one out, studied it significantly, and dropped it on top of the blotter. Without craning her neck, she couldn't read the lines, but she could see that the message was written in elaborate old-fashioned cursive. "Another poison-pen note, I suppose. Uncle, you have known Damien all his life. Surely you won't believe some vicious gossip that claims he is unworthy."

"I went to the trouble of checking this information, and found it accurate. Indeed, the young man as much as admitted that he was an opium-eater and kept a mistress in Richmond Park."

It would be just like Damien, Jessica thought, to set his mistress up in some picturesque but inconvenient place like Richmond. The poor girl must have perished from the isolation. "He isn't an opium-eater. He told me he tried a bit of the hookah on his grand tour of the East, but didn't like it. And as for the mistress, why, all the young men have them. They're like high-perch phaetons, just a fashionable item for the young beaus." Jessica wasn't actually quite so nonchalant about Damien's fashionable item, but her uncle brought out the cynic in her. "Once we are properly engaged, he will give her up, if he hasn't already."

"He is a rackety young man, you can't deny it."

"He is a perfectly pleasant young man, and a very good poet," Jessica retorted, "and he will settle down well when we marry."

"When you marry?"

Lord Parham fixed her with a stern gaze, and, with a sigh, she looked away. "If we. marry." Then, in despair, she cried, "Oh, Uncle, I thought this one you would approve. This is Damien. You know him, you know his family, he took a first at Oxford, he has a respectable fortune, he hasn't any insane great-uncles, he doesn't beat his servants, he doesn't gamble. How can I do better?"

"You have done better."

His face was bleak. Trevor again. Always. Involuntarily she glanced up at the miniature of her cousin on the bookshelf. Trevor had been a true Seton, as Jessica was, slender and blonde and delicate of feature. The sight of him in the scarlet and gold infantry uniform never failed to disorient her, for he had been the unlikeliest of soldiers. He had been, however, the most dutiful of sons.

But now was no time for recriminations. Carefully she softened her tone. "I know, Uncle. I was meant for Trevor. But he is gone. And I shan't find his like, you know that. But I have had many fine suitors, and you haven't considered one of them worthy, even though—" Bitterness crept into her voice, no matter how she tried to prevent it. "Even though each of them managed to win a bride after you dismissed them for me."

"Well, that's it, isn't it?" Parham was triumphant, as if she had given him the trump card. "They couldn't have loved you very well, as they were so quick to find another. And you—how many fine suitors have you brought before me? A half dozen, at least! If you felt the least real devotion to any of them, you wouldn't have entertained the next. Or you would have ignored my disapproval."

"Surely that's not what you want! For me to marry a man out of hand? Without your consent?"

"No. That is not what I want." Lord Parham added significantly, "But perhaps that is what you should want."

But then I would lose the collection
. It seemed so simple to her, but she realized despairingly that her uncle, like Damien, didn't understand. True love, that was what he meant she should feel. But since he had got it fixed in his head that she could feel true love only for Trevor, she could hardly win by professing undying devotion for another. She couldn't win at all, not with her uncle making the rules.

Falteringly, she said, looking down at her clasped hands, "I fear I haven't such high standards any longer. I want to marry, and have children, of course. But I don't seek a perfect husband. A pleasant man, with an even temper and worthy pursuits, is enough for me. He needn't even care so much for the collection, as Trevor did, for I am eager to take that on myself. I would be pleased with just a good man, whom I can respect, and who will respect me. You know I have never been very romantic, Uncle."

But her humble admission didn't move him. "That's as it may be. But you'll have to do better than Damien Blake, to expect my approval."

Jessica gave way to panic. "Then tell me! Just tell me! Name the man you will approve, and if he will have me, I will—" She swallowed back her rash promise, and when she could speak again, she added in a low voice, "My twenty-third birthday is but two months away. I cannot wait very longer to find one you approve."

Lord Parham had the grace to look guilty just for a moment, but then his brow cleared and he resumed his Old Testament patriarchal expression. "Perhaps if you thought less about the collection and more about your duties, I would have greater respect for your judgment in these matters."

"Duties? I will perform whatever duties you require, if you will only—"

"Your aunt told me you refused to accompany her to Parham Hall yesterday, because you had made an appointment to visit Montagu House. She was most distressed and couldn't understand your decision."

Jessica was naturally outspoken, and might, at an earlier age, have retorted that perusing Henry VII's land grants at the British Museum seemed a better use of her time than laying flowers on a grave and watching Aunt Martha weep. But she had learned that her aunt and uncle did not appreciate such candor. "We had just been out there on Trevor's birthday. And we will be going again on the eighteenth next." June eighteen would be the third anniversary of the battle of Waterloo, a day the Setons spent, like the families of the other fallen soldiers, in subdued commemoration. Her uncle shook his head sadly, and Jessica sighed, knowing that he didn't consider that sufficient.

"I will try not to upset Aunt Martha again. But Uncle, please consider that Trevor would never have wanted the collection to pass out of the family."

That it was a mistake, she knew before the words were out of her mouth. Her uncle's expression shuttered, and he seized the letter that indicted Damien Blake and stuffed it back into a folio. He didn't look up as he said coldly, "The collection won't pass out of the family. It will merely go in a trust, administered by the family attorneys, and managed by the curator your father appointed before his death."

"Alfred Wiley." She couldn't keep the distaste from her voice. "If Father saw how he 'manages' the library, he might have changed his mind."

But her uncle was no intellectual, and seldom set foot in the library. He only knew what he had heard about Wiley, most of it, she was sure, from Wiley himself. "He is the kingdom's leading Bacon scholar, and the library has an extensive Bacon holding. Besides," he added brusquely, "that was your father's wish."

"My father's wish was that I inherit the library!"

"Only if you married Trevor. He wanted Trevor to have it, as he had no son of his own."

"No! If that is what he had wanted, he would have left it to Trevor alone!"

But there was a cold obstinacy at the center of her uncle, one that she glimpsed only when she tried to defy him. "He expected you to marry Trevor. That is why he gave me consent power over your marriage. He never meant for you to marry another."

"But he didn't know that Trevor would become a soldier. How could he have expected that? Or that we wouldn't have a chance to marry? Uncle, my father loved me. He would never have meant the sort of future you intend for me—no husband, no children, not even the collection! Trevor is dead and yet I—"

"That's enough! You have said enough!" Her uncle rose, scattering papers across the desk. His anger was so palpable, blazing across the study like a flame, that she couldn't catch her breath to finish her sentence. Instead she sat silent, still, as her uncle stood over her. "You don't need to tell me my son is dead! Do you think an hour passes without my remembering that?"

"No," she answered, adding silently, not in this house of death, not with every room holding a little shrine to him, and Aunt Martha still in mourning clothes after three years. They thought she should do that too, mourn Trevor every moment, sacrifice her life to remember his death.

Suddenly she knew she had to leave, before she said something unforgivable to her uncle, before she broke her aunt's heart with some thoughtless act, before she gave up and accepted the life of a widow without having ever been a wife.

So she rose and faced her uncle. "Ada Rush has invited me to accompany her to Dorset with her. I am going to accept. Her brother will be escorting us, and I will take Mimi along."

"You mean to miss the Waterloo anniversary after all then."

"There is a church in Bincombe. I will observe it there."

He turned away, dismissing her. But as she went through the door, she heard him mutter, "Godspeed then, child."

***

The door to the library was cracked open, too powerful a lure to be resisted. Jessica inched open the door and slid through the opening into the reading room, breathing in the unique combination of dust and leather that meant old books. There was more dust than leather, unfortunately. She had spoken only the truth when she said that Wiley was no librarian.

Oh, here in the reading room, he made a good show of it, with the glass cases displaying the more picturesque of the manuscripts, and comfortable leather chairs with lamps positioned nearby for illumination. But though the room was dim, the lamps were unlit. There were no patrons to need light for reading. Alfred Wiley had continued his benefactor's policy of keeping the library closed even to scholars. Her father had been a shy man, reclusive by nature; Wiley, she thought, just wanted to keep all the Bacon artifacts to himself.

She moved quietly through the reading room and paused at the door that opened to the main collections area. Either the librarian had gone to dinner, or he was in the storeroom along the back of the second level. Otherwise, as he always did, he would have emerged from his office to ask her in that courteous voice whether she needed his assistance.

But the library remained silent, welcoming. Alone, if only for the moment, with her collection! She slipped into the main collection room, reaching into her reticule for a handkerchief as her passage stirred up a cloud of dust. A sunbeam from the distant window filtered through the motes, and her nose began to tickle. Sternly she ordered the sneeze away and walked purposefully if surreptitiously along the narrow corridor.

Here, where the books were kept, Wiley's deficiencies were most apparent. Disorder marked the vast room and its crisscrosses of mahogany bookcases, with boxes of documents heaped in the aisles. She bent to pick up a book on the top of a stack blocking her way. The title was spelled out in gilt on the leather cover:
Moll Flanders, Volume One
. She leaned against the end of a bookcase and leafed through the old book, smiling when she found the faint remains of a stain on the tenth page. How angry her parents had been when they found her at the breakfast table, reading this book out loud to Trevor! Her mother had warned her that the story was too advanced for a young girl, and too stimulating for a young boy. Her father was more concerned about the jelly that had dripped from Jessica's toast on to the page. He had made her clean it herself. It was her first restoration job, and not a very good one at that. She had learned a good deal since then.

She glanced around for Wiley, and when she reassured herself that she was quite alone, dusted the book and stuffed it into her reticule. Later, in the little laboratory that used to be her dressing room, she would daub at the spot with a special solution, and, while she was at it, oil the cover and check the binding. When it was pristine enough to have passed her father's stringent standards, she would replace it where it belonged on the Defoe shelf. While she was at it, she would reorganize the Defoe items and make a list of those needing repairs.

And with those few acts, she would be doing more curating in one day than Alfred Wiley did in a year.

It always broke her heart to come here and see the chaos and deterioration. Wiley might tell her ingenuous uncle that so many books were boxed because they were scheduled to be restored, and that the long-promised catalogue was only a few months away. Jessica knew better. As long as her father lived, Wiley had performed his duties well. But he had taken advantage of the laxer supervision of her uncle to focus his attention on one part of the collection. Now, if a book had nothing to do with Sir Francis Bacon, it had nothing to do with Alfred Wiley.

When I inherit, she thought fiercely, the first thing I will do is discharge Wiley. Without a reference! And then I will open it to scholars, especially other Bacon scholars. When I inherit—