Charlotte only lingered a moment longer, her expression unreadable. “Enjoy your lessons, Miss Ansley,” she said lightly.“And do not let Mrs. Blythe frighten you into embroidery too soon.”
With that, she was gone, leaving Jane in the silent schoolroom with her notes, her doubts, and the echo of a jest she could not understand.
* * *
Later that afternoon, Jane came at last to where she had most longed to be since her arrival. She hovered near the threshold of the library, overcome. A hush seemed to fall about her as she stepped inside, the kind of silence one found only in churches—alive, expectant, filled with an unseen presence. The very air carried the faint incense of vellum and leather bindings, as though time itself had left an offering here.
The room stretched on like a gallery, lined floor to ceiling with towering bookcases, their latticed doors gleaming with gilt fittings. In the spaces between, portraits of solemn dukes and powdered duchesses looked down, as though each generation watched over the legacy of words they had amassed. Every Duke of Westford, it seemed, had considered it his sacred duty to leave behind more than land and titles: to enrich this trove of knowledge, to adorn it with the best of every age.
Jane’s steps faltered. Awe pressed against her chest until she could scarcely breathe. To stand within these walls was to feel humbled, diminished, as though she had stumbled into the presence of the divine. More than ten thousand books—and yet each seemed to lean toward her, waiting to be opened, to speak. She felt her father’s absence and his presence all at once; he would have revered this place, a temple of learning as sacred to him as any chapel.
She moved slowly at first, as though afraid a hurried step might break the spell. Her fingertips drifted across the carved woodwork of the cases, brushing the brass handles as if they were relics. A catalog lay open on a lectern midway down theroom, its thick, yellowed pages ruled with neat columns of titles and authors, the whole library mapped with clerical precision.
Jane bent over it, her pulse quickening. She traced the entries with care, marveling at the sweep of thought contained here: philosophers of Greece and Rome, poets and dramatists, divines and moralists, even modern voices she had only heard named in passing. It was like gazing upon a chart of the heavens, each book a star burning with its own light.
And then her hand stilled. Ansley, Reverend Sebastian. Line after line. Nearly two dozen titles, each one his, preserved here as though he had never been lost. For a moment she could not move. The breath seemed pressed from her body.
She followed the catalog’s direction with shaking hands until at last she stood before the case. There they were—his works, row upon row, the bindings sober and worn, the lettering dim but still proud. Her gaze fell upon one in particular:The Moral Mirror of Antiquity. Her heart gave a sudden, painful leap.
It was the same volume she had kept hidden all this time, the one keepsake she had managed to save when her mother, forced by need, had sold the rest. The pages of her copy were softened by use, the margins filled with her father’s notes, the ink almost faded from her own touch. And here it stood again, not lost but enshrined, a twin to the one she guarded like a talisman.
Her fingers closed around it. She lifted the book free, the weight of it almost unbearable. Tears welled unchecked as she pressed it to her breast. In this vast cathedral of words, amid voices of ages long gone, her father’s voice endured. Not extinguished, not forgotten. Preserved among the watchful eyes of dukes of old, his sermons on ancient virtue and Christian truth had found a permanence he had been denied.
She bowed her head and whispered, almost a prayer: “Papa.”
Chapter 5
Life settled into a quiet routine, and the days slid gently into weeks. Jane gave herself wholly to her charge. Lady Margaret, though quick in mind, was starved of affection and prone to violent fits of temper; yet under Jane’s steady hand, and with her lessons fashioned to engage rather than weary, the child began to flourish.
In unguarded moments, Margaret confessed that no one cared for her. Her mother was seldom at home, present only for a few weeks each summer or briefly, in passing between society visits, preferring fashionable company to her only daughter.
Jane soon realized the girl’s mischief sprang less from willfulness than from loneliness, a desperate bid to be noticed by those who seemed determined to overlook her. When Margaret once burst out that even Charlotte completely ignored her, Mrs. Blythe, who happened to overhear, received the complaint with grave dignity. Lady Charlotte, she explained, had lived in mourning since the death of her betrothed at Talavera—a grievous blow which, in her view, had robbed the Court of its finest jewel.
Jane had difficulty repressing a smile at the pomposity of her words. To her mind, Charlotte did not resemble a woman sunk in grief. She herself still carried the weight of her father’s death and believed she would have recognized the same marks in another. Yet sorrow, she reminded herself, wears a different face for every soul.
Despite her days filling quickly with Lady Margaret’s schooling, Jane always found her way back to the library. It was the one privilege of her post she cherished above all else: unrestricted access to the wealth of centuries. Morning and evening, between lessons on letters and recitations, she slipped away to lose herself among the shelves.
Lady Charlotte had noticed. More than once she appeared, as if it were chance and not curiosity that drew her. This time she entered to find Jane at a long table near the window, a folio spread open before her, the light falling directly upon its Latin text. Jane’s brow was furrowed in concentration, her finger moving steadily along the lines.
“Miss Ansley,” Charlotte said, her tone half-teasing. “That tome you have chosen—surely it is in Latin?”
Jane started, rose at once, and dipped a curtsy. “My lady. Yes, it is Cicero’sDe Republica. I was reading theSomnium Scipionis—the Dream of Scipio.”
Charlotte stepped closer, clearly taken aback. “And you can understand it?”
“I know Latin, and Greek also, my lady. My father was a scholar. His works are here, in this very library. Essays on interpreting the ancients—how one might seek Christian virtue within their words.”
For the first time, Charlotte’s expression softened into something like genuine interest. “And he taught you himself? Your own father?”
Jane inclined her head. “Yes, my lady.”
“How unusual,” Charlotte murmured. She had been raised a duke’s daughter, though her own education had never touched the classics. A governess and a smattering of what passed for female accomplishments had been deemed sufficient. That a reverend had schooled his daughter in Latin and Greek—it unsettled and impressed her in equal measure.
“I confess,” Charlotte went on, with a thin smile, “I thought to find you bent overA Father’s Legacy to His Daughtersor some such text.” She crossed to a shelf on the far wall, her hand running lightly along the spines. “Here—something more fitting.” She drew down a neat, leather-bound volume and carried it back.An Enquiry into the Duties of the Female Sex, Thomas Gisborne.
“We have two editions,” she said dryly. “I think you will appreciate this one more.”
Jane accepted it with care. She knew the work well enough—its exhortations on modesty, obedience, meek virtue. Her father had taught her the classics; yet when she confessed, she longed for a life of learning, like his own, he placed such books in her hands instead, directing her intellect toward the sphere he deemed proper. Not that she had listened.
