Perhaps I should have restrained my condemning thoughts about Miss Delafield after all. The universe did not care for the idea of me cursing my future bride and had punished me for it. “I’m alive, Hastings. How did you and the driver fare?”
“Well enough, sir.”
“Good,” I said under my breath.
With Hastings’s assistance, I was able to extract myself from the conveyance. The three of us stepped back and studied our plight under theunusually cool afternoon sun. Even the June weather was as off as I was. “Fortunately, the fall of the carriage was softened by that convenient row of shrubs,” I offered, unhelpfully. I slapped Hastings on the back. “And you look no worse for wear.”
“Unfortunately,” Hastings began, “the carriage wheel is decidedly broken.”
“Yes, there is that,” I sighed. Of all the rotten luck. At least in my anxious state, I had left home a few days early with time to spare.
“Stay here and rest, Hastings,” I directed. “As the horses were spared, I will ride to town for help.” I had no plans to go mad while sitting around waiting to be rescued.
“How good of you, sir,” Hastings said dryly, dipping his head in acquiescence. “The driver and I will unhitch the horses.”
A few minutes later, I was atop a gray mare and trotting down the unkempt road that had destroyed my carriage. Not more than a mile later, I was greeted by a crooked piece of wood labeled Quillsbury.
“Quillsbury it is.” With a fortifying breath, I followed the road until I reached the main street of town. I went straight to the nearest blacksmith and had a hand sent out to survey the damage to my carriage. After disposing of my horse at the mews, I attempted to dust off my disheveled attire and took in my first real glance of Quillsbury. It was quaint, to be sure. But was it too much to hope that I would not be stuck here long? With the way my friend Ambrose attacked his plans, he was likely well on his way to solidifying his own engagement. Even Leonard, shy and sullen as he was, was equally likely to find some smiling debutante to balance him. I hadn’t any time to lose.
I passed a country bank that Andrew Langford would have appreciated and shook my head. It seemed I was unable to keep my friends and the silly bet from my mind.
The sun at just past noon glimmered through the cloud cover against the sign of a small shop where a pleasant bench sat below a large bay window. I squinted to read the peeling paint: Inkwell Books Etc. A bookshop?
A sharp thrill of anticipation ran through me. It was highly unusual to see such a store in a small town. What luck! Every bookshop was a treasure hunt I could not resist. My feet were moving before I acknowledged them, and soon enough, I was across the street and reaching for the door handle. A bell rang to alert the store manager of a new customer. My eyes raked over the oak shelves stretching above my head, placed in neat lines through the confined space. I passed between two, only wide enough for a single person to cross at a time. I ignored the cheap chapbooks and fashion magazines and eyed a row of poetry. There was a decent collection, but nothing eye-catching.
Turning the corner, my eyes traced the myriad of books. This set of shelves was shorter, and my gaze drew up to a shelf on the row beyond mine. A line of books caught my attention—all Shakespeare. One spine in particular drew my gaze, even from across the room. It was not a hardback like the others. Paper covered it, tinted with age. It was too small to be a Folio or one of the newer prints. I grinned; I knew a treasure when I saw one.
Chapter 2
Arabella
The small town in the country was the perfect discreet location to bribe a man to be my husband. Bribe might be too strong a word. Coerce? Trick? Was there a ladylike word that suited my task? I stared at the neat row of leather spines in the quaint bookshop I had discovered on my first trip to Quillsbury and tried to find the right descriptive word in my head.
I blinked away my stupor. Words were not coming easily to me these days, which meant the poor heroine in the story I was writing was terrifically doomed. Alas, Penelope was imprisoned in a tower and would remain there until I convinced the elusive Mr. Clodwick to marry me and bring back my muse. I had exactly four days to secure a proposal before my return trip to Writcombe. If I failed, I would be forced to marry Mr. Ashworth, my childhood nemesis and up-and-coming literary critic. If that happened, I might as well bury my weeping muse in the church graveyard, for I’d never see it again.
I filled my lungs with the scent of books—earth and wood, glue and ink—letting the essence permeate my person, hoping it would cure me and knowing it would not. Marriage was not a trifling subject, and the anxiety of the matter was wearing me thin.
My eyes fell on a popular novel, and it immediately reminded me of Mr. Ashworth and the literary review he’d written about it in Papa’s magazine subscription. I frowned in disgust. I had disagreed completely.Though I had yet to finish some of the newer books Mr. Ashworth selected, the few harsh appraisals I had read had told me enough. He hadn’t changed at all. After all these years of not seeing him in person, it was quite obvious that he still had the same vexing personality he’d had since his adolescence.
Even Clodwick—dimwitted, tone-deaf, and boring—was a more suitable alternative to Ashworth. He, at least, knew how to be a decent human being. In my distracted state, I pulled a neighboring book from the shelf before remembering I had read it already and replaced it.
“You had better hurry!” Tabitha hissed from the end of a row of shelves. “You would not want to miss Mr. Clodwick when he finishes getting his hair cut.”
I bit back my own impatience. Tabitha hated reading and had been breathing down my neck since we had arrived. I should be grateful that my married sister had introduced me to Clodwick last year and had generously allowed me to visit her without notice. I should also be grateful that she had gone along with my mad scheme to secure a proposal and had accompanied me on this outing. But if I could not write words, I had to read them.
“Just a few minutes more,” I begged. “A good book will help me rally my courage to chase down Mr. Clodwick.”
She wrinkled her nose. “How can something so musty help anything?”
“Books are the perfect distraction. I can be braver when I pretend to be someone else. And it isn’t musty but the smell of fresh paper. It’s marvelous.”
Tabitha itched her petite nose, making her russet curls bounce. “Then fresh paper makes me sneeze.”
I resisted casting my gaze upward in petty frustration. “Very well, I will hurry. Wait for me outside.” If the smell of books could not help me, a gripping novel surely would—one with a spirited heroine who had men falling at her feet, someone I could emulate. Afterall, no one had come close to falling in love with me before, and I required all the help I could get.
I lifted my gaze to the top shelf and spotted a row of works by Shakespeare. Between the mass reprinted single volumes and multi-volumes of his collection, there was an unbound book—a thick pamphlet stitched together with a simple paper wrapper. My attention piqued. Could . . . could it be a Shakespeare’s first quarto? Good heavens, it might be. It was shorter than its neighboring spines and a degree narrower, just like all his first edition plays where the paper was folded into quarters, making eight pages per sheet. And it certainly appeared old enough.
All thoughts of marriage disappeared. This was the sort of rare book I had only ever dreamed of collecting. My heart soared, and I stood on my toes and reached for it. Instead of grasping the spine, my hand took hold of another hand—a very masculine one. A warm sensation crawled down my arm, causing me to shriek.