Page 77 of Entrancing the Earl
Iona hugged her twin. “We have been exploring. Marriage is quite exciting. You should avoid it.”
“I’m sure I shall.” Isobel regarded them in her studious manner. “Balmoral will be more than my nerves can handle. I’ve been thinking you should go in my stead, pretend you’re me. Did you need the office? I can leave—”
“No, dear, I’m showing your brother-in-law that history is important.” Lydia opened a hidden door behind the desk and gestured for them to enter.
Iona gasped as they stepped inside what had once been an ancient watchtower—the one in their vision?—and saw a stairway spiraling to the roof.
Around the stairway, books were almost leaping off shelves, jiggling as if in anticipation.
Thrilled, Iona practically danced in delight. “It’s magical! They’re so eager to see you, Lydia!”
The librarian smiled shyly. “It’s more like, I’m so happy to hear them speaking to me, that they want to leap into my hands.” She pulled one out from one of the lowest shelves. “This would be the lady who lived here while the fortress was built. I only read her earlier journal that described her new home when I was helping Max. I think she may be trying to tell us about manuscripts.”
Gerard took the tome and the others Lydia handed him that mentioned mausoleums, crypts, and—visions.
“It will take weeks to translate all these,” Iona protested, opening one of the journals. “I think this one is French.”
“I can take the French and Latin ones.” Gerard juggled the stack trying to open pages. “Gaelic is beyond me.”
Lydia pulled out a few more books from further up the stacks. “I can hear what the journals say, no matter the language. And they’ll open up to where we need them, so we needn’t read everything.”
“A much more useful gift than talking to bees,” Iona said in admiration.
“But it means I can never live anywhere else. It’s difficult, because Max loves traveling and can find jobs in exciting places—” Lydia opened the study door and led them out.
“Our gifts have downsides,” Iona agreed. “My mother was tied to her hives. But with the new frames, I can carry my queen wherever I like.” She glanced up at Gerard. “That is fortunate, since not everyone enjoys drafty castles in the north.”
“I’d follow you anywhere but there,” he whispered into her hair.
She poked his ribs and followed Lydia out of the library, into the study where Isobel waited with interest.
Even her twin followed as they carried the stack of books back to the parlor. Lydia held up the oldest one. “Manuscript first?”
After a general clamor of agreement and ordering a new round of refreshments, Lydia opened to the appropriate page and began to read aloud, translating as she went.
Silence ensued after she finished. Iona studied her husband worriedly. She sensed a slight odor of excitement, but his gentlemanly layer of duty was more pronounced.
“If I am understanding correctly—a Malcolm bride carried the books from Wystan as her dowry?” Gerard asked cautiously.
Max grunted. “Aye and that would figure. Books as riches—as if we can eat the blamed things.”
Iona chuckled. Rainford glared. Lydia intervened. “They were Bibles. She’d learned the art from a priest in her household. She had a gift for art. They could have earned income from her talent.”
“Except it says she occasionally inserted passages that weren’t in the Bible and her artwork tended toward prophesy,” Rainford said dryly. “Both could have her burned at the stake. Her husband might have been an ignorant brute, but he was right to protect her by refusing to show them.”
“I want to see those books,” Iona cried. “Max, does the description of the hiding place tell you anything?”
“That she was furious with the lout and didn’t want him to find them,” he grumbled.
Lydia held up another tome. “This one was written by her sister and was written at a later date.”
“The sister she left the manuscripts to?” Gerard squeezed Iona’s hand.
Now, she could sense his excitement taking over.
“The sister who understood the prophesies, yes.” Lydia read the passages where the younger woman described moving the precious but dangerous manuscripts to her sister’s burial vault in the newly-constructed chapel.
“We can probably find that.” Max lumbered to his feet.
