Page 80 of The Librarian Spy

“If you’ve read Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage by Lord Byron, the poem was about this very estate.” James tilted his head and added, “Before the current updates by the new owner.”

Ava looked at the vegetation around them through the lens of Byron’s narrative, awed to be walking the same steps he once had. There was a natural look to the landscape that cast away the rigid, boxed-in appearance of the plants and lent the area a wild beauty. She could easily imagine it overrun as Byron had described as she breathed in deeply, relishing the fresh, verdant aroma of prevalent flora and rich, wet earth.

“What does it remind you of?” James asked. “Aside from Lord Byron, of course.”

She looked around, flexing her mind to account for the many books she had consumed in her life. “Robinson Crusoe with some of the junglelike trees. And, of course, Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden.”

James nodded. “The latter is what I anticipated you’d say.”

“And you’ve read it?”

“I have.”

She looked at him with fresh eyes, reconsidering this man who knew Byron and spouted sonnets by moonlight and had read The Secret Garden.

“I believe my mother read it to me in a bid to keep me well-behaved.” He put his free hand into his pocket, his gait loose and casual as he chuckled.

“Did it work?”

He shook his head. “Instead, I aspired to be like Dickon and came home so filthy from attempting to frolic about with the denizens of the forest that she swore she’d never let me read it again.”

It was a strange thought to imagine James running about in the woods, trying to befriend birds and squirrels, and she couldn’t help but laugh. The act felt peculiar somehow after the melancholic fog she’d been in following Otto’s death.

“And how about you?” he asked.

“I read it with my mother.” Ava recalled how they had discussed the story together over tea when she was a girl and how very grown-up she felt relaying her thoughts and opinions. “I enjoyed the book immensely. I thought Mary was a brat but hated that her parents had died. Even before I’d lost mine.”

James pulled his arm from her hand and smacked his palm to his forehead. “What a dolt. Ava, forgive me for not—”

“No, it’s fine.” She gently tugged his arm back into place and tucked her hand against the warmth of the inside of his elbow. “The truth is that Mary being so awful actually did help me. After my parents died, I had to go live with Daniel, as I told you before.”

Their pace slowed during the conversation, and their feet crunched over the gravel path. The sun had quickened its descent toward the earth, leaving a bluish wash over the garden around them, enough to see James’s nod.

“What I didn’t tell you is how terrible I was to poor Daniel.” Ava winced. “All I could think of was how hurt I was, how lonely, how I had to uproot my life to accommodate his. Never once did I think about what he had sacrificed to care for me, a young man with this whole world ahead of him, saddled with a thirteen-year-old sister he didn’t know.”

“I really do think Daniel is a saint,” James interjected.

Ava playfully elbowed him.

He grinned.

“He was though,” she agreed. “One night, I was missing my mother and picked up The Secret Garden. In reading it, Mary was suddenly different in my mind. Not a spoiled girl, but a wounded one with a hard shell walled up around her. And I realized in my foul behavior, I was behaving exactly as she had.”

“Perhaps that is the draw of books.” James put his hand over hers. “To show us the way even when we think the path is too dark to see.”

Ava didn’t move her hand from beneath his, instead reveling in the connection of their touch as well as their minds.

A fountain came into view before an exquisite building aligned with columns and a grand, arched entrance. The windows were peaked at the top like the main door, all with such delicate carvings, it appeared to be made of fine lace, a combination of Indian influence with Moorish accents.

“It’s beautiful,” Ava breathed.

“You’ll love the inside even more.” James led her up the short flight of stairs and through the open door where the subtle notes of a piano trickled out into the night air. They found themselves in an octagonal room with hallways leading in four different directions. To the right and left were most impressive, with corridors of arabesque-engraved arches cascading down its length and what appeared to be pink marble columns running along either side.

James pointed upward. Ava dropped her head back as she gazed to the building’s cupola, which was also carved with arabesque and backlit with a glow of red.

“James.” A man’s voice interrupted Ava’s awed exploration as she turned her focus to the gentleman striding toward them.

“Walter.” James shook the man’s hand. “So good to see you again, old chap.” He indicated Ava. “Mr. Walter Kingsbury, allow me to introduce you to Miss Ava Harper.”