Page 80 of Impetuous

Cassandra rode in the carriage with her aunt and cousin, while Philip rode his horse. The times when they stopped to rest or eat, she and Philip ignored each other, speaking only whatever was absolutely necessary. Joanna, predictably, was elated by the obvious chill between Cassandra and Philip, and she spent much of the trip trying to pry out of Cassandra what had happened to make Philip look so coldly furious. When she could get no gossip out of Cassandra, she spent her time speculating on her gauche cousin’s various odd ways, which would naturally offend most men.

Joanna seized the opportunity of the silence between Philip and Cassandra to fill the air at their meals with her own conversation, flirting madly with Philip all the while. Cassandra was too miserable to care about her cousin’s bold coquettishness. She ached for the old companionship she and Philip had shared, for the laughter and good talk and even hearty disagreements. She ached as well for the pleasures that had more recently been theirs. She would not have thought she could so miss something that she had known for such a short time. She wished that the night in the windmill had never happened; she wished she could toss aside her doubts and tell Philip that she trusted him absolutely. But she could not lie to him, and she could not keep the doubts from intruding. Her heart did not believe him capable of wrongdoing, but her head could not dismiss the insistent logic of her reasoning, either.

At any other time she would have admired the spacious symmetry of the Neville’s town house, a graceful white building on a secluded crescent in Mayfair. It was smaller than Haverly House, of course, its bedrooms closer together, but the elegance of its decoration more than made up for that. Cassandra’s bedroom looked out over the small garden in back, and at night the scent of massed roses drifted up alluringly to her open windows, reminding her of that night in the rose garden when Philip had kissed her and led her down to the gazebo. She found herself wishing that her room faced the street instead.

The morning after they arrived in London, Philip took her to the offices of his business manager, one Mr. Staley, a prosperous-looking man of forty-odd years. He pointed out to them that he had no personal knowledge of the transaction, as it had been his father, unfortunately now deceased, who had handled the Neville business at that time. He had, however, immediately started looking through the company’s records for any mention of the sale of books for Sir Philip’s father. As yet he had found nothing. It was difficult, he explained, because Lady Neville had been unable to remember the exact year of the sale, only a vague period of three or four years.

Sir Philip nodded. “I expected as much. But keep looking, will you, Staley?”

“Of course, sir, of course.”

“I don’t suppose that there was a particular bookseller that my father used?” he queried.

The other man’s look of amazement was almost comical, but he quickly wiped it from his face. “No, Sir Philip. I am sorry. But I do not believe that your father dealt much in books.”

Their next stop was the shop of Perryman Simons, the bookseller with whom Cassandra’s father had dealt. He came bustling forward from the back of the store to greet Cassandra, a huge smile splitting his face.

“Miss Verrere! How wonderful to see you. Aren’t you looking lovely today?” Simons was a short, rotund man with a balding head, spectacles and a perpetually jolly expression. He bowed to each of them in a funny, jerky motion. “It’s been so many months. I was afraid that I would not see you again.” His gaze slid curiously to Sir Philip. “I was so sorry to hear about your father. A good man. A true scholar.”

“Yes, he was. Thank you.”

“Could I interest you in a book today?” he asked, gesturing around him at the store. “You know that you are always free to browse.” Again his eyes went to Sir Philip.

“Actually, we are looking for a particular book, Mr. Simons.” She introduced Sir Philip to Simons, satisfying the man’s curiosity. “Sir Philip is looking for a book that once belonged to his family. It was sold during his father’s lifetime, but it was a valuable book. We were hoping that perhaps you had heard about it.”

“Why, certainly. I will help you if I can. Come back to my office.” He led the way through the narrow walkway, lined on both sides with shelves, and into a small cubicle at the end of the store. He spent some time fussing over the chairs, clearing one of books and flicking invisible dust from the other before he judged that they were in good enough condition for such important visitors to sit in. “There, now. Could I get you some tea, perhaps?”

“No, we’re fine, thank you. We only wanted to know about the book.”

“Yes, yes, indeed.” The chubby proprietor adjusted his round spectacles and beamed at her encouragingly. “What is it you are looking for?”

“It is a prayer book that once belonged to Queen Elizabeth. It has been in the Neville family for generations,” Philip told him and proceeded to describe the jeweled cover.

The book dealer’s eyes started to glow. “My, what a treasure! Oh, indeed, I wish I did have a book like that. Unfortunately, it has never crossed my path. I would remember it. Yes, indeed, I would.” He nodded his head so vigorously that his cheeks wobbled like a baby’s. “Let me see, let me see… Samuel Arrington might have knowledge of such a book. He quite often deals in rare books. Then, of course, there is Cohn and Sons.”

They left his store a few minutes later with the addresses of three other dealers in old or rare books clutched in Cassandra’s hand. They spent the rest of the day going to the booksellers, all with the same disappointing results. None of them had ever heard of a book such as Philip described. Cassandra felt rather depressed as they returned to Neville House, and it did not lighten her spirits any to sit through another gloomy dinner with Philip. She went to bed feeling that the situation was, indeed, hopeless.

The following morning she was in the sitting room, waiting to set out to see another round of book dealers, when a footman entered and told her that Sir Philip requested her presence in his study. “A Mr. Staley is with him,” the footman added.

“Really?” Suddenly Cassandra’s spirits lightened.

She rushed down the hallway and into Philip’s study. Philip looked up and smiled, and for an instant it was as if the past few days had never happened. A warmth bloomed in Cassandra’s chest, and she smiled back without a second’s hesitation. Something flickered in Philip’s eyes, and the smile dropped away.

He stood up, saying formally, “Miss Verrere. Staley came to me this morning with some news, and I thought you would like to hear it.”

“Of course,” Cassandra replied politely, though all the joy had spilled out of her as Philip’s face changed.

“Go ahead, Staley. Tell us what you found.”

“There was a ledger book going back twenty years. In it, I found records of selling a number of items for your father. Most of them were described as simply valuables, but a few were more specifically detailed, a certain statue, a Queen Anne table, and so forth. And a jeweled book. It did not give the name, but I remembered that you had said the prayer book you were looking for had jewels on the spine.”

“Yes. Excellent! But did it say who the buyer was?”

“A bookseller by the name of Harrington Jones. He deals, I believe, primarily in rare and antique books, and his shop is still in operation.”

“Staley, you deserve a reward for this. You have saved us fruitless days at bookshops. Now, if you will excuse us, I think we need to find this Mr. Jones. Cassandra?”

With their shared excitement, the walk over to the bookstore seemed almost like old times. The stiff constraint that had lain between them for the past few days was largely gone, and though they did not talk much, the silence did not feel forced.