Kitty had watched with trepidation as he made his way toward her. She hoped he would pass by and take his leave, just as eager to be gone as Lord Grayson had been.
He had not passed by. He had stopped in front of her and made commonplace conversation about the weather.
Comments about the likelihood of rain should not have affected her. But after he’d gone to see her father and been thrown from the house and just been accused of being Veritas, there was something deeply unsettling about it.
It seemed to her that any rational person must have either avoided her or raised one of those subjects. He acted as if nothing at all unusual had occurred. She was beginning to think that things that did not sit well with him were simply dismissed, as if they never existed at all.
And then, he seemed to take no notice of her mother’s icy stare! Could he not feel her irritation?
When he’d run out of comments about the weather, he’d said, “Miss Dell, there is an interesting volume on one of Mrs. Herschel’s shelves I would have you examine.”
No circumstance slowed him down at all! He came on like a runaway carriage.
The baroness had risen and said, very decidedly Kitty thought, “I think not, Sir John. My daughter and I are just taking our leave. In future, there can be no cause to pull Kitty aside for a book or anything else.”
Sir John had seemed on the verge of challenging Lady Penderton. She had stared at him as he stood in their way and said, “If you please?”
She’d said it in a tone Kitty had not heard from her mother. It was cold and steady and felt cloaked in animosity.
Sir John had reluctantly stepped aside and let them pass. Her mother had laughed about it in the carriage, but to Kitty it had felt a lucky escape.
Hidgson brought her mind back to where she was, safe in her own house. He’d softly knocked and now brought some letters into the drawing room. He held a package too and Kitty looked at it inquiringly.
“It is addressed to you, miss,” Hidgson said. “I will present it to Lord Penderton as soon as he emerges from his study.”
Kitty could well guess it was a book, and as she’d ordered several of them recently, from a variety of shops. Whenever she passed a shop window stacked with books, she could not help drifting in and inevitably found something she required. She saw no need for her father to review this particular package.
“I can take it, Hidgson,” she said. “It is not from any suitor, but one of the books I have been waiting for.”
Hidgson looked dubious and glanced down at the package. Kitty could see for herself that it did not have a return address.
“It will be the one from the tiny shop on James Street, I am sure of it,” Kitty said, reaching out her hand.
Hidgson handed it over, albeit reluctantly.
After he had closed the door, Kitty tore off the brown paper wrapping. If it were the obscure little book on Devon flora she’d ordered, perhaps that would engage her thoughts for an hour or so.
It was not that book at all. It could not be, the shopkeeper had expressed quite clearly that the book was bound in brown leather. This was some strange sort of very pale leather. Was it even leather? It was soft, and yet bumpy.
She opened the book and a note fell out. She unfolded it and read:
Found among the possessions of Sir John Kullehamnd.
A friend.
“What on earth,” Kitty whispered. She put the note aside and opened the book. There, inscribed on the first page:
An account by a faithful servant to Sir John Hill
Kitty began turning the pages. It was a diary of sorts, though an unusual one. Most diaries documented the writer’s experiences, this one documented somebody else’s.
That somebody else whose life unfolded on the page was John Hill.
Was it real? Had it really been found in Sir John’s things? If it had, why was it not still in Sir John’s things? Why had Sir John not mentioned anything of it? Who had sent it and how had they acquired it?
There were so many questions, and Kitty did not think she could begin to answer them before she had studied the book and was fully acquainted with its contents.
She stuffed her sewing things back in their basket and hurried up the stairs with the volume tucked under her arm.
