style="font-size:15px;"> “And now you have. Let’s go back up to bed.”
The girl looked from Alex to Chase. “Why are you down here in the middle of the night?”
“Oh, we were merely talking. About . . .” Alex rummaged through her brain for a topic. “Needlepoint.”
Which would have been an excellent reply, had Chase not simultaneously said, “Antlers.”
Daisy’s face scrunched with confusion.
“Antlerpoint,” Chase said with authority. “It’s a traditional handicraft in the Finnish Lapland.”
Alex looked at him. Antlerpoint?
He shrugged. “I’ve been looking into the schools there, as you know. So it’s an important educational matter. One that couldn’t wait until morning.”
Alexandra went to her young charge. “Why are you out of bed, darling?”
“Millicent has a small bowel obstruction.”
“Goodness. We’d better make her an infusion of buckthorn, now hadn’t we?” She looked cautiously at Chase. “Would you care to join us for a cup of tea?”
“Thank you, no.”
The words had Alex feeling deflated. Perhaps Daisy’s interruption had changed his mind, and he’d be calling off their arrangement before it had scarcely begun.
Instead, he searched out and lifted his hammer. “I have a lock to install. The fourth.”
“Oh.” Alex smiled and nodded. “Good.”
Alex woke in the night again—trembling all over, her lips cracked with thirst.
Somehow the episodes came and went in an insidious rhythm, disappearing just long enough that she could almost forget and feel safe, before crashing back with a cruel vengeance. The past had a hold on her, and she’d long given up on breaking free. The best she could do was keep a full glass of water next to her bed. She hastily drained the largest share of it—saving a little bit to wet a cloth and dab the perspiration from her neck.
Dawn had begun its slow creep through the house. She wouldn’t be able to fall asleep again, and her charges wouldn’t wake for a few hours more—she hoped.
Since she was awake, she decided to dress and have a stealthy wander downstairs. Even after all these weeks, there were parts of the house she still hadn’t explored.
Namely, the library.
The room called to her. Any roomful of books called to her, but this particular library wailed like a bevy of sirens.
Maybe—just maybe—somewhere in those shelves was her lost copy of Messier’s Catalogue of Star Clusters and Nebulae. The book he’d absconded with after their collision in Hatchard’s. The one she’d imagined him to have kept tucked in his breast pocket for months, desperately hoping to see her again.
At the memory, she inwardly cringed.
She began her search on the lowest shelf, scanning the full breadth of the bookcase before working her way upward. By the fourth shelf, she was straining on tiptoe to make out the titles. The fifth—and topmost—was hopelessly beyond her reach.
She looked about for a book stair or stepstool, but her search proved fruitless. Undeterred, she pushed an ottoman toward the shelves and climbed atop that.
Much better.
“Good morning.”
Alexandra lost her footing on the ottoman. Her hands closed on the bookshelf. For a moment, she dangled, feet twisting in the air. There was only one option—to let go and drop to the floor. Her body would survive the fall, even if her dignity didn’t. It was only a matter of two feet to the ground.
Go to it, then. The longer you dangle, the more ridiculous you look.
However, in the same instant that she released her grip, the shelf—already groaning with books—caved under the added weight of her body.
She fell to the carpet in a heap. And then a shelf’s worth of books fell atop her.
Alex curled into a ball, tucked her head beneath her crossed arms, and waited for it to be over. She winced as volumes pelted her from above. A few of the weightier tomes landed with a force hard enough to make her yelp.
At last, the blows came to a halt.
She cautiously lifted her head and peered upward. Perhaps the bookcase had vomited up the last of its leather-bound knowledge.
No. It hadn’t. There was one book more. A formidable, encyclopedia-sized volume bound in crimson leather. And as she watched with horror, it slid off the unhinged walnut shelf—plummeting directly toward her head.
Alexandra ducked, squeezed her eyes shut, and braced herself for the worst. However, instead of the skull-crushing thwack of oblivion, she heard only a soft thud.
“Good God. Tell me you’re alive under there.”
“I am,” she said weakly. Though she rather wished she weren’t. As deaths go, it would have been a kind one. There were worse ways to meet one’s demise than being buried alive in literature. Daisy could have named dozens of them.
As she attempted to sit up, Alex found herself aided by a large, strong hand hooked under her upper arm.
Chase.
He cast aside the book he’d caught, and Alex watched it land atop the heap. He must have caught the thing an instant before it bashed in her brains.
It wasn’t an overstatement to say he might have saved her life. At the very least, he’d saved her a splitting headache.
He crouched before her. “Anything broken?”
“I don’t think so.”
He searched her gaze. “What month is it?”
“July.”
“And what day of the week?”
“Wednesday.”
“How many tiny buttons on the back of your frock?”
“I don’t know. Who counts such things?”
He shrugged unrepentantly. “I do.”
“Of course you do.” She tucked a stray wisp of hair behind her ear. “I’m fine, thank you. You merely startled me.”
“I expect so. Chase Reynaud, in a library? Searching for missing estate ledgers, no less? Who wouldn’t topple with surprise.”
“I
