Titan pulled her black mantle from a hook on the back of the door and held it open for her.
“If you could have the coach sent ’round?”
“Right away,” Titan said, bowing slightly before taking his leave of her office.
As he made his way down the stairs, he secretly wished he could be a fly on the wall at the Temple of the Muses. He wanted to discover exactly how the matchmaker was going to convince the librarian to consider her offer.
Surely a learned woman would know better than to marry an earl in debt.
Chapter Nine
Two Women, One Proposition
An hour later, at the Temple of the Muses, second floor
Stepping back fromthe first bookshelf on the left beyond the stairs, Catherine Kingston wiped her cotton gloves on her apron and regarded the empty shelves with a sense of relief.
Although she had hoped to begin rearranging the shelves with as little disruption as possible—there were already customers milling about—she soon discovered she required room to work, and the volumes that had occupied the top three shelves were now stacked on the floor.
She held the small label that had been tacked at the top and winced. The letterAcould have referred to an author’s last name or the subject matter of a book—without context, it meant nothing. Discovering books that pertained to neither had her wondering if those who had stocked the shelf could even read.
Worse were the novels she found interspersed with non-fiction books. Was it someone’s idea of a joke that a horror novel was next to a book about recent advances in surgery? Or that a book about blooming flowers was tucked in the middle of several novels featuring stories of love?
Given the number of fictional books she had pulled from the three shelves, she knew she had to separate them from the non-fiction volumes. They would have their own home on the opposite side of the room.
Having already perused the other bookshelves on the first floor, she had determined how many titles might be included in a section on “Anatomy” by pulling them from their shelves and stacking them in yet another pile on the floor.
Catherine was in the middle of arranging them on the top shelf, ordered by the authors’ last names, when she felt the hairs at the back of her neck prickle. Glancing to her left showed only the landing for the stairs. To her right, a bespectacled older man was holding an open book in one hand as he used the finger of his other hand to turn the pages.
When she looked over one shoulder, she noticed two younger women tittering over an illustration. Finally, she turned slightly in the other direction and discovered she was subject of the attention of a woman wearing widow’s weeds and a wide-brimmed hat with a netting that completely obscured her features.
“Oh, pardon me. May I be of assistance?” Catherine asked, thinking the widow was waiting for her to step aside so she might gain access to the books on the lower shelves.
From the way the hat suddenly angled to one side, Catherine had the distinct impression she was being studied, much as the subjects in the anatomical illustrations found in the books she was arranging.
“Possibly,” the woman replied. She stepped forward and offered her right hand. “Mrs. Bessie Dove-Lyon,” she stated.
Catherine was careful to keep her expression passive. She recognized the name almost immediately. She had seen it in print on the calling card Eliza had given her the day before in the coach. “Miss Catherine Kingston,” she replied, shaking the woman’s hand. “It’s very good to meet you.” She struggled with keeping a question from sounding in her introduction.
“Kingston? As in… Kingston Publishing?”
Catherine nodded. “My father’s business, yes.”
The older woman glanced about the room. “I don’t wish to interrupt your work, nor get you into any sort of trouble with your employer, so I will be brief,” she said in a quiet voice. She held out a calling card, and Catherine gingerly took it, immediately recognizing the script. “I’m a matchmaker with a client who might suit you,” she added.
Blinking in surprise, Catherine allowed a quiet guffaw. “I rather doubt that. I am, uh, a spinster,” she said.
“But not yet thirty years of age.” The comment wasn’t a question.
“True,” Catherine replied. “I am eight-and-twenty.”
“You have been running your father’s household?”
“Yes.”
“Acting as his hostess?”
Catherine’s suspicion had her hesitating before she said, “Yes.”
