Ghosts by Gaslight - Jack Dann [126]
Although Saxton assured me that any delving could wait, he soon fetched a lantern and led me across the hall to a vast comfortable room with library tables and ladders, set about with wing chairs and so many birdcage Windsors that I suspected there must have been an indentured carpenter in the house at some time. Cabinets for books had been built into the walls, but all was higgledy-piggledy and in need of a librarian. Magnalia Christi Americana hulked uncomfortably between The Rape of the Lock and The Travels of William Bartram, and Samuel Johnson was forced to sulk in the shade cast by the preaching Mrs. Augusta Pennyfeather and her Sermons in Brooks and Stones, volumes I–IX.
For a long time Saxton and I scanned the shelves, the lantern fastened to a ladder, without finding much to our purpose. The light swung gently back and forth, and I found myself eyeing the polished brass to detect whether I could find a gleam of the third face on its surface. A mirror, mummied in blackness, loomed from the far wall. I felt a wash of ecstatic terror at the thought of Edward Saxton’s head locked behind the grid of the loose weave. Perhaps the eyes, the only living element in that face, were awakening.
“I have searched before, you know, without finding anything to help,” Saxton said in a low voice.
The first light of dawn had gradually infiltrated the room. I yawned heavily and sat down, overcome by sleepiness.
A young woman with a pan of coals entered the library, gave us a glance, and seemed as if about to retire.
“Come in, it’s all right.” Saxton waved her inside, and I noticed that she seemed not at all disconcerted by finding a stranger in the house. She dropped a little curtsey but with a roguish air that seemed to say that she knew very well we were equals.
“This is Mr. Hawthorne, Patience. He will be visiting for a few days . . . You must be as gracious to him as you were to my own brother, for he is a great friend of mine and has done me a kindness in attending me so quickly.”
Saxton informed me that Patience was Mrs. Molebury’s granddaughter, recently graduated from the Beadle Seminary for Young Ladies, where she had won several prizes for her needlework. She had on a loose muslin gown, topped by a short fitted jacket, no doubt a species of her handiwork. I thought privately that Patience must be famous for her beauty as well, for she was light-footed and tall with perfectly proportioned features, although there was a touch of sharpness to her nose and cheekbones that suggested that time might transform her into a bony-faced old woman. No doubt she was a village enchantress now, though, and I wondered whether she had cast the spell of allure on my friend. She wore no cap on her black hair, so that all the glory of its shining cat’s cradle of coils and twists was visible, knotted at her neck, a snare to catch a man’s gaze.
“Miss Hobbs is no maid but has come to help her grandmother. She was of much assistance to me in the last weeks of Edward’s life. Soon she will be away, and then Mrs. Molebury and I shall be as dull as before.”
Patience Hobbs was kneeling at the hearth as he spoke, her straight back toward us. In a very few moments, she sat back on her heels as the fire consumed the little palace of splinters she had raised and then caught on the logs. I would not have been surprised to learn that she was as quick at everything she did. When she stood, I thought her even lovelier, cheeks flushed from the fire.
“Are you going to town with your grandmother?” Theron was asking. Evidently the pair of women had the afternoon free.
“If you need me, I will be glad to stay—”
“Do not worry about us,” he said. “After a meal, I have no doubt that we shall sleep like a pair of tops, our minds spinning and humming with dreams. By the time you