Lady Penderton was in the habit of entering a room where her family could be found, sizing the whole thing up, and issuing orders accordingly. On their first evening in town, she had come into the drawing room, stood for a moment, and said: “My dear husband, I can see your knees grow cold though you would not notice, being engrossed in a book as you are. I’ll have a blanket fetched. Kitty, your eyes grow tired, do stop reading for ten minutes to give them a rest. Frederick, do come away from the window. Miss Crimpleton will not pass by for wishing. You’ll feel better if you sit by me and tell me all about your last conversation with the girl. There, now. Have we all been sorted out?”
And of course, theyhadbeen sorted out. Lord Penderton’s knees warmed, Kitty’s eyes felt better, and Frederick relieved his feelings to his mother’s sympathetic ear. After that was accomplished, Lady Penderton wrote a long letter to Kitty’s younger sister, so that she might not feel left out, though she stayed behind in the country.
Lord Penderton often said he would end up starving if his wife did not direct him to the dining room at the appropriate hour. Kitty thought that was right. None of them would get on very well without Lady Penderton. She was not at all intellectual. She only occasionally picked up a book and then only a novel filled with haunted castles and the poor maidens who attempted to survive them. One might think a scholar such as Lord Penderton and a lady uninterested in libraries would not be well suited. And yet, they were. As Lady Penderton often said, “Knowledge is an excellent thing, but somebody must keep us all alive.”
Before Kitty and Frederick had left for the much-anticipated meeting of Mr. Lackington at Lackington & Allen, Lady Penderton had issued practical advice.
“Frederick, dear,” she said, “do keep a close watch on your sister. I understand the place is vast and as it is a vast place filled with books, I do not like to think of our Kitty getting lost in there. Your father was once disappeared into the place for so long that I had to send a footman in after him. He was eventually located, buried under a pile of books about the Roman Empire. It is still not clear whether they fell on him, or if he’d been reading them one by one.”
Since they’d set off, it had taken nearly an hour to reach Finsbury Square, though they would have easily covered the distance in half the time in the countryside. It seemed everybody in England was out in their conveyance and their own coachman had a time of it, weaving and dodging through the chaos.
Finally though, they had arrived. Lackington & Allen, Temple of the Muses. Frederick had helped her down to the sidewalk and Kitty took in the premises. Its arched windows and columns beckoned. She was nearly awestruck to contemplate what lay beyond its doors.
“Miss Dell! I say, Miss Dell!”
Kitty turned to the sound. To her surprise, Lord Grayson was at once waving and dismounting his horse. Kitty felt the familiar leap in her stomach at the sight of him, and then just as quickly dismissed it. It was one thing to look upon Lord Grayson’s fine person, but another to converse with him.
“Who?” Frederick said softly to her.
“Grayson,” Kitty whispered back.
“Miss Dell,” Lord Grayson said, handing off his horse to a boy and hurrying to them. “You are in town!”
“Most apparently, Lord Grayson, as you can see,” Kitty said.
“Yes, I see, indeed.” Lord Grayson looked curiously at Frederick.
Kitty stifled a sigh. “May I introduce you to Mr. Dell, he is my brother. Frederick, this is Lord Grayson.”
“Brother? Ah, very good. Of course, brother,” Lord Grayson said.
The lord, having understood that Frederick was Miss Dell’s brother, seemed to not require any more information about him. He turned back to Kitty. “May I escort you somewhere?” he asked.
“I am most obviously escorted by my brother, Lord Grayson,” Kitty said. “And, we have an appointment with Mr. Lackington and would not wish to be late.”
“Lackington?” Lord Grayson asked.
“Lackington,” Kitty repeated.
“Oh! Lackington. The shop. The shop right here. Books, of course. I have not forgotten your penchant for them.”
“And I have not forgotten your aversion to them,” Kitty said in a pleasant tone. “Now, we’d best be off.”
Frederick bowed to the lord and escorted his sister inside. “My God,” he said to Kitty, “You told me he was a dandy, but he makes your average peacock look positively dowdy.”
“That is Lord Grayson, Frederick,” Kitty said, “he is like a prettily wrapped box that once opened is discovered to be empty.”
“Wait a minute,” Frederick said, “he is not the fellow that, well, how do I say it? The one that…leads ladies on.”
“I would not be surprised,” Kitty said. “There can be no gentleman that surpasses Lord Grayson in inventing ridiculous compliments and high-flown phrases. I imagine some females might be taken in by it.”
“See that you are not one of them,” Fredrick said in his stern older brother tone. “I would not like it said that my sister was the victim of disappointed hopes.”
Kitty suppressed a giggle. “Frederick,” she said, “nothing could be less of a danger to me.”
Though Kitty might have said more of Lord Grayson, her thoughts were wholly captured by what lay before her. The massive circular counter with its high dome overhead, generously staffed, where anybody might pay for a book they had longed for, or perhaps had not even known existed. The bookshelves themselves, soaring toward the sky, their upper limits reached by rolling ladders. The people, everywhere, looking at a book or having an intense conversation about a book. Stairs leading to even more rows of books. It was glorious.
Frederick told a clerk their purpose and they were speedily escorted up those stairs and to one of the private apartments set aside for ladies and gentlemen requiring quiet.
