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“You must be thrilled to inherit this collection.”
“It’s like a dream.” Her face fell. “But I can’t possibly read all of them. It keeps me up at night sometimes, knowing that I can’t read every book I own. An unread book is a terrible thing. You should see how many books are stacked beside my bed just waiting to be read. And I don’t have time to read them all.”
Her gaze caressed the books lovingly. “Don’t worry, my beauties. We’ll patch the roof and keep the damp away from you and build you a nice safe home,” she crooned.
The attention she was lavishing on the books made him feel restless and... jealous?
He was jealous of a bunch of old books. He must be losing his mind.
He cleared his throat. “If we’re finished with the tour, then I’ll be on my way.”
“Oh, no, we must see the bedrooms. I want you to assess any structural damage.”
“I think I’ve seen enough to make a report,” hebegan, but she was already out the door and heading upstairs.
The two small guest bedrooms were unscathed by damage of any kind. They moved to the master bedroom.
Take a glance at the walls and be on your way.
Ford turned his back on the spacious bed festooned with pink velvet curtains and peeled back a section of blue paper from the wall. There was a faint line of water, just as he’d known there would be from the condition of the paper. “If I trace this water upward, I’ll find the source of the leak, but it will often be in a different location than one would think.”
“I don’t understand. If the roof is leaking, can’t you just walk around up there until you find the loose tile?”
“Sometimes it’s that simple, but other times not. When slate roof tiles become cracked or dislodged, it’s often too minimal to see, but the water enters nonetheless. And water will always follow its own path throughout the frame of the building. In order to find the source of the breach, someone will need to translate this course upward through its pathway.”
“Within the walls?”
“In the walls, beneath the floor joists, under the beams.” He grabbed a pencil and notepad from a table beside the bed. “I’ll draw it for you.”
She stood closer, watching as he sketched.
He pointed at his drawing with the pencil. “When water enters through the roof, rather than flowing straight down it first follows beams horizontally,then flows down the rafters until it comes to a wall plate, flowing down the interior of the wall cavity and pooling in the base, or following the floor joists until it settles at the lowest point. That would be the leak in the showroom. I don’t think the damage has moved past the ground floor.”
She bowed her head to study the drawing. She smelled differently than she had at Thornhill. Instead of sweet and fresh, like apple blossoms after a rain, this was more of a city scent, heavily floral—a costly eau de toilette that her mother had chosen for her to dab behind her ears.
Ford had preferred the simple scent. As he’d preferred her hair loosely knotted with unruly curls escaping and framing her face, instead of this elaborately constructed tower.
She tilted her head and caught his eye. “You’re a talented draftsman. I wonder that you didn’t become an architect?”
Ford laughed harshly. “You make it sound easy, princess, as though I had all of the opportunities in the world. I’m the son of a carpenter who rents a cottage, and whose livelihood is dependent on the largess of a duke. First your father, and now your brother.”
He wasn’t ashamed of his humble origins. He wouldn’t pretend to be something he wasn’t.
“Oh.” Her pale lashes fluttered closed for a moment. “I didn’t think about what I was saying.”
“In case you haven’t realized, Your Ladyship, you and I are from two vastly different worlds.”
She inherited bookshops and treated it as a fun little diversion.Let’s transform this bookshop intoa clubhouse for lady knitters!Only a pampered and privileged lady would ever have a notion like that.
To own property, to own land, was to have power in this world.
Ford was an exile—from Cornwall, from London—his place was on a ship, drifting across oceans and touching land only briefly. But even so, his goal since he joined the navy was to earn enough money to purchase land near London and build a house. He wouldn’t live in the house very often, but his mother could use it when she visited, and it would be a symbol that he’d escaped the yoke of servitude his father wore.
“And yet the circumference of your life is wider than mine.” She traced her finger down the lines of his sketch. “My mother narrows the scope of my experience as much as possible. I can only follow prescribed, preapproved paths through life. While you’ve explored the world with the navy.”
“Mostly the Mediterranean. I was stationed off Greece for several years.”
“I’ve never left England’s shores and I probably never will.” She turned to study the portrait hanging over the bed. “This must have been Aunt Matilda’s bedchamber.”
