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I turn to find Lady Marchmont in a tweed suit and a long coat striding towards me atop black pumps.
“I thought I’d beat you here. I even stayed at our place in town last night so I could be here first.” She snaps open her black handbag and pulls out a brass key. “Oh well, this might be better. You will be the first to enter.”
She twists the key in the lock, and when the door doesn’t give way, she bumps it open with her hip. She steps back and sweeps her arm inside. “Go on.”
“The first to enter what?” I step past her into the space.
It’s one room, possibly twenty-five feet square with a large mahogany counter at the back wall, set about three feet from it. The walls are lined with bookshelves—floor to ceiling—and the ceiling is almost as high as Marchcourt’s library but not quite.
“It’s wonderful, but what is it?” I turn back to her.
“A bookshop, of course. Or it will be once you get going.”
“I’m to get this going?”
“Who else is going to do it? It’s your shop.” She starts walking around the room. Her heels make solid pings on the wood floor. It’s a wonderful sturdy sound.
“My shop? How?” I can’t imagine Mr. Wainright signing on for this much expense.
“Well . . .” Lady Marchmont widens her eyes and grins. “The Service is paying you a salary for a couple years. It’s not enough, because they really do owe you, but you need something more than a job, my dear. You need something you can really dig into for a career, and why shouldn’t you have one? So I thought a bookshop.” She looks around. “Something a bit larger than your corner at the general store.”
“Mr. Wainright approved this?”
“Goodness, no.” She flicks a gloved hand as if swatting a pesky fly. “He was horrified, but that doesn’t matter a fig. This is my idea. My investment, and I think it’s a fine one. But I don’t want you to think I’ll be breathing down your neck. I won’t. It’s truly yours, and if at some point you want to purchase it from me, that’s up to you as well.” She put a finger to her lips. “I’ll be the most silent of silent partners. I promise.”
“It’s too much.”
“Not really.” She steps towards me.
I wiggle my nose, about to cry. No one’s made an “investment” in me before. But as soon as that thought rises, another calls it down for the lie it is. Charlie did—at least it feels like he hoped to. And that starts the tears.
“Now, now. We can’t have that.”
I swipe at my eyes. “I’ve been doing this a lot lately.”
She opens her handbag again and hands me a handkerchief, one with such a lovely lace edging I fear using it. She flaps a hand at me. “Go on.”
I dab my eyes—scrub at them more like—as she continues. “It will get easier. I promise. The tears will dry up, and you’ll start smiling again, sooner than you think.”
I nod, and she turns away, as if to give me a private moment, and starts to circle the shop again. After a few moments of me sniffling and sniveling, she turns to me once more.
“What are you going to call it?”
A smile breaks across my face, broad, open, and if I could see into a mirror, I expect all my teeth are showing. There is only one name, and I came up with it the week I was recovering in bed, the week I was dreaming of Ursula, Charlie, Peggy, and more . . .
“It’ll be a mystery bookshop. The Undercover Bookshop.”
Lady Marchmont clucks her tongue. “We have our hands full with you, my dear. I love it. It’s absolutely perfect.”
Chapter 31
Monday, 5 June 1950
Three months later the inventory is in, the shop has had its grand opening and is running well, and I’ve made friends with the other shop owners along the row. Lady Marchmont was right about life not feeling too poorly—I won’t jump to rich and vibrant yet, but I’m on my way.
She was right about the tears too. They stopped sooner than I anticipated, and the smiles broke out earlier than I expected. An early and sunny spring also helped move things along. And Peggy was right about the meaning of home. “It’s the people,” she once whined at me, exasperated I thought it was anything else. And it is. I’ve found a group of friends in those who work in the shops around my flat, camaraderie here in Cecil Court, and even a few older friends who have become something akin to beloved aunts and uncles.
As I, too, hip-bump my way into the shop—the door sticks a touch first thing in the morning, but I won’t fix it as it’s our little “hello”—I now recall the good of those few months in Great Rollright rather than the loss. The little brass bell on its blue string above my shop’s door, just like the one at Hastings General Store, reminds me of that time and all those blessings as well with each and every lovely light chime.
