The Lost Bookshop(45)

‘He has outbid me at every auction this year,’ Armand said, in a thorny tone that suggested begrudging admiration for the man. As we passed by him on our way out of the room, the two men nodded to each other.

‘Mr Hassan, tell the baroness she will have to do better next time.’

Armand bristled at his gloating and attempted to bustle me out of the room.

‘And who is your companion? Are you not going to introduce us?’

‘Abe Rosenbach, may I present Mademoiselle—’

‘Gray,’ I interrupted him again. ‘I am a book dealer from Ireland,’ I said, loving how that sounded.

‘Is that so? Here, let me give you my card,’ he said, procuring one from his pocket. ‘You never know when we might do business together.’ He had a smile heavily laden with innuendo that I tried to ignore.

‘Congratulations on your acquisition, Mr Rosenbach.’

‘Thank you, Miss Gray, but this is not simply an acquisition. I have wanted this manuscript for a very long time. You see, it was the book my dear departed mother read to me when I lay ill in bed with chickenpox. I suppose, with my fever, I had a fancy that she was telling me a story about her childhood. I thought she was Alice. She died shortly afterwards and I’ve read this book every night since.’

I was almost moved to tears by his story. Even Armand seemed affected.

‘Hah! Don’t be ridiculous,’ Rosenbach bellowed. ‘Never trust a book dealer who lets sentimentality get in the way. I had to own it because there is only one of it in the world – that’s all there is to it. If I own it, then no one else can. I have known men to hazard their fortunes, go long journeys halfway about the world, forget friendships, even lie, cheat, and steal, all for the gain of a book.’

‘Mr Rosenbach, you had me completely fooled!’ I said, annoyed at having been lured in by his tale.

‘Apologies my dear, I couldn’t resist. After love, book collecting is the most exhilarating sport of all.’

‘What a cad,’ I whispered to Armand as we left the auction room, but he did not answer. They were made of the same stuff, Rosenbach and he. They felt no guilt, no remorse, and would do whatever it took to get what they wanted. It frightened and fascinated me in equal measure, like standing too close to a flame and hoping that I would not be consumed by its heat.





Chapter Twenty-Three





MARTHA





‘What has you looking like the cat who got the cream?’ Madame Bowden asked while I dressed her bed. It kept happening – I’d be in the middle of the most mundane task and I’d think about Henry kissing me and my cheeks would hurt from smiling so much.

‘Just happy, I guess,’ I replied.

‘Nonsense. The only reason a woman blushes like that is a man. It’s the scholar, isn’t it?’

After the bookshop, he had taken me back to his B&B, but it turned out that it was the landlady’s birthday and the house was full to bursting with a surprise party.

‘Maybe.’

He walked me home after but I didn’t invite him in. Things were still a bit new and I took the birthday party fiasco as a sign not to rush into anything. I did kiss him goodbye though. When I thought of that kiss, that’s when my cheeks hurt the most because it was the most romantic kiss of my life. Under a streetlamp, his hands in the pocket of my coat, mine under his sweater, his lips slowly finding their way down my neck and to my collar bone. I’d never been kissed like that, with a tempting kind of tenderness, like he was telling me there was much more to come. That tickling sensation in my lower belly was threatening to unglue me completely. I had to focus on something mundane.

‘Do you have anything for washing?’ I asked, realising that she had been staring at me with a wicked grin on her face the entire time.

I gathered up the laundry and took it down to the utility room just off the kitchen. Separating the whites from the darks, my thoughts turned to my mother. In a house full of spoiled men, we always did the housework together. That’s when I would practise my sign-language with her and my people-reading. But she didn’t like me reading her too much. She said it wasn’t right for a daughter to know too much about her mother’s life. I never even asked why, but when I got older I tried to break that rule. Unlike everyone else I met, though, my mother was prepared for this kind of intrusion and kept herself guarded. There was something she was hiding from me, that was for sure. And so I began to hide things from her too. By the time I met Shane, our relationship had become distant and there was a different kind of silence between us. She told me I was making a mistake, that she didn’t trust him, but by then it was too late. As if I was trying to prove a point, or punish her (or myself), I sleepwalked into my marriage like stepping out into oncoming traffic. And I had no one to blame but myself.





I was setting the fire in the living room when I thought I saw a movement at the window. I immediately thought it might be Henry and rushed, then slowed, to the front door. As I was opening it, I realised that Henry would never come to the front door, he always tapped on the basement window. The thought came too late. Before I had time to react I felt the hard blow against my cheekbone and it knocked me sideways against the wall. Shane. As I looked up, he threw a scrap of paper into the street before slamming the door shut behind him. I touched my face and felt the wetness, then saw the blood. His hard expression and clenched jaw told me everything I needed to know. He was in charge now.