Page 30

It was one of her markers.

A person may be proud without being vain.

Simon had found several of these markers, bits of paper with quotes from the novel in question scrawled on them, in past volumes lent to him by Miss Brown. He had always found them fascinating but had let them be. He had no idea why he was bringing this one to her attention.

“Oh,” Miss Brown said, reaching for the scrap.

Simon found himself reluctant to give it up, but to refuse to return it would make him seem unreasonable. Petulant. He was trying to repair her opinion of him, not see it further eroded.

“’Tis a habit of mine,” Miss Brown said, “copying out a particularly striking excerpt. I use whatever scraps of paper are on hand, but then, as you see, I tend to forget my scribblings and am always finding them later when I reread books.”

“How do you decide which bits to copy down?”

“There’s no rigorous method. Just whatever strikes my fancy.”

“What struck your fancy about this one?”

She didn’t answer for so long, he assumed she wasn’t going to, that they were back to silence. He still didn’t have the acquittal he was after.

“Did you ever forget something but you didn’t really forget?” she asked suddenly.

Yes.

“What I mean,” she added, though he was not in need of clarification, “is, do you ever hold one fact, or belief, in your mind even as you simultaneously understand the opposite to be true? Do you ever have a thought, and its opposite, at the same time?”

Why else was he here to call on Archie even though he had known Archie wouldn’t be at home? “Yes, Miss Brown, I do.”

She seemed buoyed by his understanding. “I loved to read as a girl, and had access to a great many books. My family underwent a fall from fortune …”

Was he mistaken or was she eyeing him closely, monitoring him for any reaction to her recounting of this fall? He kept his countenance unchanged.

“For a number of years after that fall,” she went on, “I had only a handful of books at my disposal. I learned to value them highly, and I read them many times over. I used to enjoy finding those markers my younger self had left. I would try to remember why I’d copied down that particular passage, what it had meant to my old self, puzzling out if it was a message from her to me.”

The idea of sending notes to one’s future self was so simultaneously lovely and devastating that it took Simon’s breath away, and he was not prone to histrionics.

“A fall from fortune, you say?” the dowager asked, and Simon wished she weren’t here.

He didn’t want to talk about that. He wanted to know more about those notes from the past.

“Yes, unfortunately.” Diantha turned to Lady Harcourt. “If you hadn’t taken me on as your companion, I would be quite destitute.” She spoke matter-of-factly, with no shame whatsoever, which Simon found both remarkable and admirable. “You knew my mother, back when you and she were both girls, and though you never said as much, I think you offered me this position when you learned about the death of my sister, with whom I lived until I came here.”

“Oh, did your sister die? What happened?”

“She contracted scarlet fever.”

“And your parents are gone?”

“Yes. I am alone in the world.” She glanced at Simon and held his gaze for a beat before returning her attention to the old woman, and was he mistaken or had there been a flash of warmth in her expression?

Perhaps he had been forgiven.

“What did you mean, earlier,” Simon asked, “when you asked if I had ever forgotten something but not really forgotten? If I had ever held a thought, and its opposite, at the same time?”

“Oh, only that I used to say that I would ‘forget’ my little notes, but in retrospect, I can see that I left those notes for myself to find. I wasn’t truly forgetting.”

Did it then follow that she had left this note for him to find?

No. He was overthinking the matter, overthinking being one of his greatest talents.