If only the floor would open up and swallow her. But it didn’t, so she forced herself to take another bite of her toast.
Her father dabbed his face with his napkin. “I noticed you were going through the bookcases yesterday, Rosalind.”
She froze, her breath suddenly feeling like it scraped over a thousand jagged shards of glass as she sucked it into her lungs.
“I assume the books sitting in a pile on the floor are for the library donation,” he went on. “I trust you weren’t being careless with what you chose to donate. Some of the books in the library are quite valuable.”
“I only took ones that I know neither of us have any interest in.” She tried to keep her voice neutral, tried not to give away any of the fear roiling inside her, but she wasn’t sure she succeeded. “Would you like to go through them before I donate them?”
“That won’t be necessary. Just avoid sorting through the books on the bottom rows. I’ve had the servants shelve some of my personal favorites there, and I don’t want those donated. Understood?”
The bottom rows? So he hadn’t noticed she’d removed some of the books, taken the ledgers from behind them, and then put them back? “Yes, sir.”
“Make as large a donation as possible. Perhaps the library can even shelve the books we donated in its own section with our name on it.”
Her fingers clenched beneath the tablecloth. The library was already getting named after them. Wasn’t that enough? “I’ll bring it up at the next board meeting. I’m not sure getting our own section of the library will be possible, but I could probably talk the board into placing a stamp on the inside fold of the book stating who donated it.”
As long as the library also placed similar stamps on the books that came from donors. But she wasn’t going to tell her father that.
“Books,” Leeland muttered around a mouthful of food. “Not much good unless they’re ledgers or legal records.”
“You think that because you’re a man of business, but my daughter prefers stories. Most of them are nothing but dreams.”
Rosalind took a slow sip of tea. The ledgers she’d touched last night certainly weren’t a dream, even if she’d found them hidden behind a stack of novels.
Avoid sorting through the books on the bottom rows,he’d said. As in, all of the bottom shelves?
She had looked through the books on only one bottom shelf, but the library was filled with wall-to-wall shelves. What if there were more records hidden behind the other shelves? What if her father had been falsifying seal-harvest numbers for more than just past year? Or what if there were records of other illegal activities, like bribing the Marshal?
She needed to search all the lower shelves in the library, and maybe some of the upper ones too. But that shouldn’t be hard. She often sat in the library. With its soaring windows thatoverlooked the town and the harbor, it was the most peaceful room in the house.
She just needed to make sure her father was distracted and the door was locked before she looked.
She picked up her toast and lifted it to her mouth.
A meaty hand gripped her wrist. “Don’t take another bite.”
She looked up to find Leeland glaring down at her. “I’m sorry?”
“You’ve eaten enough.” He tightened his grip on her wrist until it hurt. “It’s unbecoming for a woman to overindulge.”
Heat crept up her neck. She hadn’t even touched the ham on her plate. Only the slice of toast and half a poached egg.
“Leeland,” her father said mildly, “you’ll have her for a lifetime. Let her enjoy breakfast.”
Leeland gave a slow shake of his head. “She’ll thank me when her corset closes without a struggle. No man such as myself should accept a bride with anything more than a sixteen-inch waist. I’m sure you’d expect the same if you were to remarry.”
“My corset closes just fine,” Rosalind breathed.
“Only because it’s not laced tightly enough.” He glared down at her. “A woman of your station is expected to have an hourglass figure.”
Rosalind shifted. “I have an hourglass figure.”
“Not one with a small enough waist, which is why you need to restrict your food intake.”
Rosalind stared down at her plate, trying to ignore the pangs of hunger in her stomach. She’d had friends back in Washington, DC, who insisted on having tiny waists, some of them even insisted on getting their waists down to sixteen inches. It was quite fashionable in the city, but those friends would get the worst stomachaches after eating a fancy meal, and the laces on their corsets were drawn so tight around their ribs, she swore half of them had trouble breathing. She didn’t need to be adoctor to know that forcing a woman to maintain such a small waist wasn’t healthy.
If she married Leeland, would she be expected to maintain that shape for the rest of her life? Even after bearing children?
