“Sit down and drink your tea, put your feet up,” Max ordered. “We’ll have the tale of the pair before we decide.”
“Well, Ives?” Phoebe asked, sipping her tea. “Do we have to pry it out of you?”
“History isimportant,” Iona murmured, daringly trailing her fingers over her husband’s thigh. She thought Gerard needed more touching. He’d been carrying his burdens alone too long. “Would you leave those books for rats to nest in?”
“After four or five centuries, if they’re not already rat nests, they’ll last a few more. And there’s no proof that they’re still hidden or that we can determine where.” His cynicism sounded hollow to Iona’s ears. He was as eager to explore as she was.
“Illuminated manuscripts are extremely valuable,” Rainford noted from his chair by the fire. “If the castle holds them, Lydia stands to make a fortune.”
“I couldn’t sellbooks,”the Malcolm Librarian said in horror.
“As Iona said, illuminated manuscripts are works of art.” Gerard added more whisky to his cup, then squeezed her hand. “Ancient, possibly historical, works of art should be shared by the public in museums.”
“Or one could charge to see them,” Iona suggested. “I should imagine they’d require care and that would be costly.”
“Just tell us the tale, for all that’s holy!” Max bellowed. “Making up fairy tales is futile.”
“Fairy tales are literary parables,” Gerard taunted. “Something you would not understand.”
Iona pinched her husband’s hard thigh. It wasn’t easy. In retaliation, he poured whisky in her tea, and she sputtered, setting the nasty stuff aside.
He launched into their tale of barbarian invaders and dark-haired Ives’ defenders and most likely blond Malcolm women at their side. The vision had shown them illustrated manuscripts being hidden, but it hadn’t told more. What seemed certain was that all this had taken place here, in Calder Castle, as it was being built.
By the time he finished, his audience was enrapt. Like any good lawyer and politician, her husband had a smooth way with words.
Iona knew Gerard was uncomfortable with the questions that followed. Possessing a few more years of experience in discussing oddities with her family, she put a halt to his torment. “Lydia, Phoebe, I know you have experience living with your gifts. I don’t know about Max and Rainford. Would anyone like to explainhowtheir gifts work?”
The men remained stubbornly mute but interested. Lydia and Phoebe made several false starts and gave up.
“That is why we have journals,” Iona pointed out. “We write down what weexperiencebecause we can’t really explain how we do it. There is no sense pestering us for what we cannot tell you.”
Iona sensed Gerard relaxing a fraction. She stroked his thigh encouragingly, loving that she had the right to touch him like this. He seemed to respond to tactile sensation the same way she did scent.
She grasped that what they’d done was strange to him, and he hated explaining himself. His position of authority had led him to expect people to take his word as law. That was an enlightening realization.
People wouldn’t question an earl, but they were bound to doubt a Mad Malcolm.
“Gifts aren’t tort law or contracts.” Gerard admitted his inability to explain.
“Where did you see them hiding the books?” Max demanded, going straight for the practical. “We’ll hunt them down.”
“That’s hard to say. The new tower was only partially built and there was no castle.” Gerard gestured at the room they sat in, just outside the tower. “The women stayed between what appeared to be an old watchtower and the partial wall of the new one they were building. The old watchtower walls were probably sealed in when they finished the new one.”
Ignoring male frustration, Iona turned to the librarian. “Lydia, if you would be so good as to look up references to the manuscripts—and perhaps to mausoleums or catacombs? That might be simpler than tearing down a tower over a vague vision.”
The librarian nodded thoughtfully. “Perhaps in the interest of showing how gifts work instead of explaining, I should demonstrate how some of mine works. It’s quite hard to describe how books speak to me.”
Iona sensed her husband’s tension relaxing even more. She had never really used her sense of smell for more than identifying flowers her bees might like or avoiding people in ugly moods. Using it tohelpadded an exciting dimension.
Gerard had been right—isolation affected how she learned, not always in a good way.
“Are you inviting us to see your library?” she asked in excitement.
“You and Gerard, not these other heathens who tend to mock what they don’t understand. They’ve seen it.” Lydia rose with stately grace and led the way out.
Eagerly, Iona clasped Gerard’s hand as they crossed to Lydia’s office, where Isobel sat with stacks of books. Her twin glanced up and stood, looking puzzled.
“We didn’t tell your sister you went missing,” Lydia explained. “She is a little too anxious.”
