Ghosts by Gaslight - Jack Dann [127]
Her eye traveled around the room, pausing to take in the tumbled shelves and the scattering of volumes on the table.
“Hawthorne is a man of books,” Theron said by way of explanation. “Being that most perilous of creatures, an author, he just couldn’t wait to pay homage to my grandfather’s collection.”
I was surprised by this bit of subterfuge. Although Theron had been a jokester as a boy, he was scrupulously honest.
“I am fond of reading,” Patience Hobbs said, “though sad to admit that I do not care much for stories.”
“No?” It always surprises me when people utter such sentiments, as though we were not all enmeshed in one great, tangled tale.
“Perhaps I prefer the realm of the possible,” she said. “Often stories are merely fanciful pipe dreams without any ground underneath.”
I gave a short bow, effectively silenced by the firmness of her assertions.
The dark-haired girl gave me a smile of sheer witchery as she paused in the open door; then she vanished. As if in reproach, Daphne Mathers drifted into my mind: I recalled her standing near the open grave in the wind, her blond hair loosening from its black-ribboned knot and tumbling onto her shoulders. She bent to retrieve a fallen comb, her eyes going to Theron’s as she rose up.
Only once previously had I met Daphne, when I found her a laughing, quick-witted girl—a fit wife for Theron. Judging from the little Saxton nieces clinging to her skirts, she seemed the sort of person who attracts children and knows how to amuse them. Daphne had taken to me immediately, no doubt for Theron’s sake, and later in the day she walked with me in the park, taking my arm and confiding her love for rambles in the woods, her fondness for animals and for gardening, and the little jokes she and Theron liked to play on each other.
“And now for breaking the fast,” Saxton said, “and afterward I wouldn’t refuse a tot of Geneva and water with sugar and lemon to send us off for a nap.”
The voice startled me, for I had gone far from the room in memory, and my nerves were on edge from travel and lack of sleep. “Yes,” I said, “we should nap and rise again when the women leave the house.”
Theron cocked his head, staring at me.
“Not that I suspect anything,” I added, “but it is always helpful to have a free hand when searching without a clear object.”
Although the breakfast was hearty enough to set me nodding and the featherbed proved soft, I woke as the carriage rattled from the yard. My friend Theron slept on; I poked my head in his room and heard the sighing of his breath, as though he grieved even in sleep, and decided not to wake him. I wandered around the house, feeling that I hardly knew what I was about, other than to glance at books and papers. In the kitchen I found a few ancient receipt books, nothing of interest.
The pantry gave up a more exciting result, for there my hand closed on a foxed, leather-bound tome on which I made out the title On the Nature and Activitie of the Various Spirits. I cried out in pleasure that was, alas, immediately abated on finding that the chosen volume was a sort of antique cookbook for distillers and brewers.
On peering into the women’s chambers, I saw nothing that would not have been at home in my wife’s dressing room. A heap of sad-colored cloth and a tumble of scarlet trimmings seemed the makings for a new gown, no doubt chosen to accentuate the dark, flushed complexion of Patience Hobbs. Climbing to the low-ceilinged third storey of the house, seldom used and secret, I felt closer to my quarry, whatever it was. Footsteps in the dust led to a workroom piled with fabric and notions. Methodically I began removing bolts of cloth. A pink light was filtering between the trees before I laid my hand on Unholy Spirits, Being the Devout Man’s Handbooke and Medecine Cabinet for Those Unfortunates Afflikted with Apparitions, Ghosts, and Kindred Spirits. The book had been shoved to the rear of the shelf, along with several books on the art of millinery, and was obscured by baskets