The Blue Devil (The Regency Matchmaker Series) by Melynda Beth Andrews Page B
Authors: Melynda Beth Andrews
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nothingness, enjoying the fantasy she concocted—until she realized the handsome face hovering so breathlessly close to hers didn’t look like a dashing, young, faux pirate at all. No, it bore the striking, chiseled features of the Marquis of Blackshire!
Kathryn growled. That demon! Wasn’t it enough that he’d invaded her night dreams? Must she admit him to her waking dreams as well? Dreams with the memory of his scent . . . the feel of his hair slipping through her fingers . . . the warmth of his lips as they moved over hers and which—
Which were not what she should be concentrating on, no matter how exciting—albeit addle-pated—the incident had been.
Resolving to set Blackshire firmly from her mind, she fastened the last button and brushed her hair until it shone. If her strokes were a little more agitated than they normally were, then that was understandable. She had a right to be a little agitated. She was a burglar, after all. It had absolutely nothing to do with Blackshire. No, nothing at all.
The school hummed with activity but soon settled as the girls sat down to their morning lessons and Kathryn made her way to the library, the coins for her fare home clinking reassuringly in her pocket. Apart from Kathryn, the library was empty. Closing the doors behind her, she leaned against them for a moment. Then she got a good look around her.
She straightened, swallowed, and stared.
In the gloom of the middle of the night, she hadn’t been able to see very much detail. What she’d thought were tables last night now revealed themselves to be stacks of books. Huge stacks. She’d been right about there being no sofas in the library. There wasn’t any room for them!
Lady Marchman was clearly a bibliophile. The high-ceilinged chamber was enormous and lined with full shelves, but the rest of the library was in complete disarray. Books lay in stacks on top of and beneath several mismatched tables that had been crammed into the room. The floor was nearly unnavigable for all the jumbled piles choking the floor space. Each tall shelf was neatly marked according to subject: geography, botany, history, languages, and so on—but it appeared that any effort to keep the books in order had gone by the wayside long, long ago. The collection on each shelf was not homogenous by any means.
Kathryn examined the stacks of books on the floor and tables nearest her.
Complete mayhem. Not a shred of order. There were tens of stacks here, probably over a thousand books that were never going to be shelved! And there were several thousand more on the shelves themselves.
She blinked. If the diary were here, it would not be easy to spot.
How had Auntie described the thing? A plain, slim volume with an old, reddish-brown leather binding. Kathryn looked about herself in dismay. That described the vast majority of the books here. The diary could be anywhere: on a shelf, in a stack, under a table—if it was not already in Lady Marchman’s possession. Kathryn’s expectation of sharing a merry, triumphant luncheon in Grosvenor Square vanished.
It might take days to search the library.
Then again, the diary might be the first volume she picked up. A flash of Kathryn’s customary optimism overtook her, and she dug into the pile of books on the round table nearest the door. But she hadn’t got far when the doors opened, admitting Miss Mary and a small group of girls who engaged in a quiet discussion of literature. Kathryn was forced to abandon her search and flee to a window seat where she hid behind a curtain and pretended to read a book about the Roman gods and goddesses. Mythology was one of her favorite subjects, but in her impatience to get on with her search, she could not drum up any enthusiasm for it today.
The rest of the day was wasted just so, in frustration. A storm had blown in from the North Sea, and the incessant rain kept the entire school inside. One interruption after another kept Kathryn from her search: Miss
Kathryn growled. That demon! Wasn’t it enough that he’d invaded her night dreams? Must she admit him to her waking dreams as well? Dreams with the memory of his scent . . . the feel of his hair slipping through her fingers . . . the warmth of his lips as they moved over hers and which—
Which were not what she should be concentrating on, no matter how exciting—albeit addle-pated—the incident had been.
Resolving to set Blackshire firmly from her mind, she fastened the last button and brushed her hair until it shone. If her strokes were a little more agitated than they normally were, then that was understandable. She had a right to be a little agitated. She was a burglar, after all. It had absolutely nothing to do with Blackshire. No, nothing at all.
The school hummed with activity but soon settled as the girls sat down to their morning lessons and Kathryn made her way to the library, the coins for her fare home clinking reassuringly in her pocket. Apart from Kathryn, the library was empty. Closing the doors behind her, she leaned against them for a moment. Then she got a good look around her.
She straightened, swallowed, and stared.
In the gloom of the middle of the night, she hadn’t been able to see very much detail. What she’d thought were tables last night now revealed themselves to be stacks of books. Huge stacks. She’d been right about there being no sofas in the library. There wasn’t any room for them!
Lady Marchman was clearly a bibliophile. The high-ceilinged chamber was enormous and lined with full shelves, but the rest of the library was in complete disarray. Books lay in stacks on top of and beneath several mismatched tables that had been crammed into the room. The floor was nearly unnavigable for all the jumbled piles choking the floor space. Each tall shelf was neatly marked according to subject: geography, botany, history, languages, and so on—but it appeared that any effort to keep the books in order had gone by the wayside long, long ago. The collection on each shelf was not homogenous by any means.
Kathryn examined the stacks of books on the floor and tables nearest her.
Complete mayhem. Not a shred of order. There were tens of stacks here, probably over a thousand books that were never going to be shelved! And there were several thousand more on the shelves themselves.
She blinked. If the diary were here, it would not be easy to spot.
How had Auntie described the thing? A plain, slim volume with an old, reddish-brown leather binding. Kathryn looked about herself in dismay. That described the vast majority of the books here. The diary could be anywhere: on a shelf, in a stack, under a table—if it was not already in Lady Marchman’s possession. Kathryn’s expectation of sharing a merry, triumphant luncheon in Grosvenor Square vanished.
It might take days to search the library.
Then again, the diary might be the first volume she picked up. A flash of Kathryn’s customary optimism overtook her, and she dug into the pile of books on the round table nearest the door. But she hadn’t got far when the doors opened, admitting Miss Mary and a small group of girls who engaged in a quiet discussion of literature. Kathryn was forced to abandon her search and flee to a window seat where she hid behind a curtain and pretended to read a book about the Roman gods and goddesses. Mythology was one of her favorite subjects, but in her impatience to get on with her search, she could not drum up any enthusiasm for it today.
The rest of the day was wasted just so, in frustration. A storm had blown in from the North Sea, and the incessant rain kept the entire school inside. One interruption after another kept Kathryn from her search: Miss
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