HOUSED in a dignified turn-of-the-century stone building that was the twin of the Town Hall situated on the opposite side of the Market Square, the Edgewater Memorial Library had somehow managed to survive the passage of time unscathed. Its high-ceilinged rooms were cooled by old-fashioned fans in the summer and heated by a set of clanking old radiators in the winter.
Wire baskets, lined with moss and stuffed with seasonal flowers, hung at precise two-foot distances from each other along the eaves of the front portico. Dilys Steach, the head librarian, measured to make sure they didn’t deviate by so much as an inch either way. ‘I expect certain standards,’ she was fond of pronouncing.
‘Certain standards’ included discouraging gossip. Other people might relish passing along the latest dirt, but Dilys never did. It was the senior librarian’s unbending adherence to this principle that had saved Madeleine after Martin’s chicanery had been exposed before the whole town.
‘This is not a coffee-house, erected for your backbiting pleasure,’ she had declared sourly to those people who, in the aftermath of the scandal, had whispered together behind their hands and flung meaningful glances Madeleine’s way whenever she happened to come across them in the book aisles or the reading-room. As a result, the library had become her retreat, its quiet rooms, with that slightly musty odour of vellum and old leather peculiar to Victorian libraries, a sanctuary of peace and order.
Monday was her day off but on Tuesday following her lunch with Nick, Madeleine showed up for work with a smile on her face that refused to go away. It was still firmly in place when Sadie Brookes, her friend and secretary to the mayor, popped in for her daily visit during her morning coffee-break, even though doing so was guaranteed to elicit Dilys’s frosty disapproval.
‘Thought you’d want to hear the latest,’ Sadie whispered, leaning over Madeleine’s desk. ‘Council has been spared having to expropriate the Tyler Resort. The tax arrears were paid in full yesterday.’
‘How nice.’ Finding it difficult to bring her mind fully to bear on the information, Madeleine continued to smile dreamily. ‘We all know what an unpopular move land seizures are.’
Sadie groped for the glasses that spent most of their time perched on top of her head and propped them on her nose, so that she could take a closer look at Madeleine. ‘You’re not your usual alert self today, my dear. I’ve just told you that your precious lodge won’t be put on the auctioneer’s block and snapped up by some money-grubbing tycoon with no soul. I expected that, as president of our revered Heritage Society, you’d be jumping up and down with glee. What’s the matter? Have you fallen in love or something?’
The absurd question sent Madeleine’s thoughts winging back to Sunday and for one preposterous moment she almost answered ‘yes’.
Nick had shown up on her doorstep precisely on time, with a bottle of wine in his uninjured hand. Memory, she’d quickly discovered, had not played her false. Even allowing for the fact that this time she was half prepared for the impact of him, he still struck her as the most formidably attractive man she’d laid eyes on in all her thirty-two years.
She stood five feet nine in her bare feet, closer to five-ten in the shoes she’d been wearing at that moment. He’d towered over her, lithe, muscular, powerful. His hair gleamed damply from a recent shower, his smile captivated, his eyes seduced. But, more than all those things, she’d experienced again that same muffled detonation inside, that sense of having been poleaxed by the magnetic force surging between them.
Once more overcoming the inclination to stammer and drool like some half-baked teenager, she’d ushered him inside and, after an initial moment or two of awkwardness, conversation had come easily. Lunch was no more than half over before he knew that she was a librarian and had worked at college level for five years prior to resuming her career in her home town. And she knew that he had majored in political science and journalism, and traveled all over the world as a foreign correspondent.
‘Sort of polar opposites, aren’t we?’ he’d remarked later, as she showed him around the house.
‘We don’t seem to have much in common,’ she’d replied, all the while excruciatingly conscious of the attraction arcing between them.
‘Apart from our mutual appreciation of old houses, no.’ He’d run an admiring palm over the satin-smooth mahogany of the stair banister, but his eyes had lingered on her mouth. ‘Sometimes, though, it’s the differences that…weld a relationship.’
She’d heard confusion in his voice, and she’d understood why. It defied logical explanation that two strangers could come face to face for the first time and seem to recognize each other. As if, rational intellect notwithstanding, their hearts had said, ‘You’re home. The searching’s over.’
Yet, rational or not, attraction, awareness—call it what you like—had stretched between them, a fine, indestructible line fraught with sexual repercussions.
But still, in love?
‘Of course not,’ she said, not quite meeting Sadie’s probing gaze.
Never one to be easily put off if she scented romance, Sadie smirked. ‘Got a hot date lined up, then?’
To her chagrin, Madeleine almost smirked back. ‘No,’ she said, deciding that a lie of omission was justified in this case. An invitation to join Nick in a simple dinner cooked over a fire on the beach next Friday hardly qualified as hot, after all—except, perhaps, in the most literal sense. ‘What makes you ask?’
‘You’ve got the same sappy grin on your face that that benighted Peg Leg wears all the time,’ Sadie said.
‘There’s no law against smiling, Sadie.’
’There is in your case.’ Sadie hooted, not in the least deterred by Dilys’s ‘Tsk tsk!’ of censure. ‘You’re a librarian and you’re supposed to look smugly academic—though now that I take a closer look, maybe “smug” does fit your description after all, along with “besotted”, and a few other words I can think of. And I’d bet my last dollar that Andy Latham isn’t the one responsible for the change.’
‘Andy’s a nice man, Sadie.’
‘And about as comfortable as an old boot. There’s no spark between the two of you, Madeleine, so quit trying to fool me into thinking there is.’
‘Andy and I enjoy a mutually rewarding… friendship. He takes me out for dinner at least once a week, and we often catch a movie in Dunesport.’
‘I visit my grandma every Sunday afternoon and have a whale of a time,’ Sadie said scornfully, ‘but it no more sends my blood-pressure soaring than your sitting across from Andy and watching him scoff a steak puts yours into overdrive. You have stars in your eyes, my dear, and roses in your cheeks. In fact—’ she stood back and planted her hands on her hips ‘—you present a disgustingly blithe picture of what my old dad used to call “feminine pulchritude” and I have only one piece of advice for you: make the most of whatever—or whoever—is causing it. You’ve spent enough time lamenting the con-artist’s betrayal, my friend, and if something better’s shown up on the horizon, then “Hallelujah!" I say.’
Andy, however, disagreed, as Madeleine discovered after work that same afternoon. She was in the parking lot behind the library, fishing in her purse for her keys, when his patrol car cruised to a stop beside her. ‘Got time for coffee with an overworked cop before you head home?’ he asked, poking his head out
