There was even an entire section of William Beckford, which was impressive because Zeb had thought the man had only written one book. The shelves held copies ofVathekin French and English, plus a couple of satirical novels that looked rather deadly, travel memoirs and letters ditto, and an album full of sketches and images of Beckford’s great, doomed edifice, Fonthill Abbey. He took that last carefully to the desk and leafed through it with fascination.
“Hello?” A hand waved between him and the page.
Zeb blinked. He’d been deeply absorbed, and it took him a disconcerting moment to pull his thoughts from spires and echoing halls and Mr. Beckford’s nightmare-dream, and fully register that there was someone next to him.
“Hello,” the voice said again. It was light, female, unfamiliar. “Goodness, you were concentrating, weren’t you? What are you doing?”
Zeb looked up and saw the young lady who had run from the house in her shift last night. She looked decidedly more respectable now, with her dark hair pinned up and a proper dress on,albeit one that looked to Zeb rather like a schoolgirl’s frock. He was no aficionado of women’s fashions, though, and she was very pretty despite the dress: nothing like Elise’s cool elegant beauty, but she had a heart-shaped face, a charming smile, and sparkling eyes. He couldn’t see much Wyckham in her features, but that could only be a good thing. She looked like the heroine, Zeb thought, and smiled back.
“You must be my cousin Jessamine. I’m Zeb. Zeb Wyckham. Well, obviously Wyckham, we all are, aren’t we, except Dash. Although his name is Wyckham Dash, isn’t it, so he’s definitely—anyway, good morning.”
“Good morning!” She clasped her hands together and looked at him with big eyes. “I’m very happy to meet you. I’m not precisely your cousin, you know.”
“Well, you’re some number removed, but I was never much good at mathematics,” Zeb said, eliciting a peal of laughter. “I’d be honoured to be your Cousin Zeb, if you’d care for that.”
“I would like it very much, Cousin Zeb. Is it never Zebedee?”
“Never. Is it always Jessamine?”
“Always,” she said, mimicking his firm tone, and they exchanged smiles. This was already the most pleasant interaction he’d ever had with a relative.
“But what are you doing?” she asked, looking at the desk. “Is that a building plan? Are you an architect?”
“It is a plan, but not mine. I was just taking a look around Cousin Wynn’s shelves and came across this. It’s all sorts of pictures of Fonthill Abbey. That was a magnificent house built byWilliam Beckford, who was a terribly rich man.” He was talking to her as if she were a child, he realised, and he wasn’t sure why, except his own ineptitude with women. Well, that and her expression of saucer-eyed interest, which made her look very young indeed. “Beckford wrote a Gothic novel,Vathek.I don’t know if you’ve read it?”
She shook her head. “Novels like Great-grandfather’s?”
“Like Walter Wyckham, yes, though Beckford only wrote the one. This was Fonthill.” He leafed back to the famous print of Beckford’s magnificent, selfish fantasy in stone.
“Oh.” She clasped her hands again. “How utterly beautiful. But how haunting. And that picture, as though it was drawn in a storm. It looks like a place where terrible things were done.”
Define ‘terrible’, Zeb thought, since rumour had it Beckford had harboured a harem of attractive young men in his Wiltshire isolation. That sounded like fun, at least for Mr. Beckford. Probably less so for the harem. “Well, he was a very odd fellow. According to a note in here, he only ever had guests to dinner once in the whole time he lived there, and that was a party made up of Lord Nelson, Lady Hamilton, and Sir William Hamilton.Thatmust have been awkward.”
“Must it?” she said. “I’m afraid I don’t know them.”
Wynn had said he’d tried to give the girl a sheltered upbringing. If she hadn’t heard of the complicated private life of England’s Hero, he’d clearly succeeded. Not that Zeb could see the point of sheltering a girl from talk of mistresses and adultery, and then introducing her to Hawley, Bram, and Elise, but here they were.
“I don’t suppose he had much time for parties,” he said. “Fonthill fell down shortly after it was finished.”
“Oh. Is it a ruin now? I love ruins. The ancient sadness of them—the knowledge one is treading through history. To imagine the medieval monks at their prayers, in their splendid isolation—”
“There weren’t any monks at Fonthill, and it wasn’t medieval,” Zeb pointed out. “It was just a pastiche, like this place. I do think the Georgian obsession with faked Gothic architecture—”
“This house is not faked!”
“Well, no, it’s a real house, and a very impressive one of its kind, I didn’t mean otherwise. Just rather newer than its architecture suggests.”
“It is notfaked,” Jessamine repeated, ignoring his efforts. “And it isn’t new!”
“Well, it depends how you look at the matter,” Zeb tried. “I realise it’s more than a century old. I only meant that it’s not as old as it appears.”
“The land is old.”
“Well, yes, Dartmoor—”
“The site of the house,” Jessamine said. “Walter Wyckham built Lackaday House on the site of a monastery that was torn down.”
“Oh, really? Was that in the Reformation?”
