Page 84 of Threads that Remain

Cecilia added, “And new gloves, a great many pairs, for they will not survive the dancing; slippers to match whatever we settle upon for the ball gowns; and a bonnet each that is not the one you wore last autumn, however good a bonnet it was, for I am told London remembers a bonnet a great deal longer than it remembers a face.”

“That is a very great deal of commissioning,” said Anne excitedly.

“It is the whole of a Season, my dear, and you will be very glad of every article of it by the second week of May, I promise you.” Cecilia held up the length of silver-grey silk against Anne’s fair colouring and stood back to consider the effect with real satisfaction. “This, I think, for you — it will do beautifully by candlelight, and your mother’s own eyes could not ask for a better foil. And for Sarah — ”

“Something with a little more colour,” said Margaret, without looking up from the fabric she had, despite her protestations, been quietly sorting through the whole time. “She has always had more spirit than most other girls, and I do not see why her gown should not say so.”

“A green, I think,” said Elinor, considering her daughter with the particular fond, assessing look of a mother who has watched a girl grow from a child in a treehouse into a young woman about to be properly seen.

“I entirely agree,” said Cecilia, already reaching for a fresh length of silk, “and I have exactly the thing, if Madame Beauchamp has not sold the whole bolt to somebody less deserving; and we had better go to her directly, all of us, this very morning, before the best of the season’s silks are gone to duller girls with less imagination. Meg, you may come too and tell me honestly whether you think the blue becomes me, for Thomas will say yes to anything I put in front of him and is consequently of no use whatever as a critic.”

“I think you should have the blue,” said Meg, looking up from her book, “and I think you already know it, and are only asking to be told so a second time.”

“She has my temper,” said Cecilia, to the room at large, with enormous pride, “and, I begin to fear, rather more than her share of her father’s good sense besides”; and it was in a general burst of laughter, and a great deal of gathering of shawls and bonnets, that the whole party set off, within the half-hour, for Madame Beauchamp’s establishment in Bond Street, to begin, in earnest, the serious and delightful business of a London Season.

While the women were away for the day, Henry thought to show the library properly to Colonel Brandon, Edward, and Ned.

They had been passing through the room since their arrival, of course. Edward had already discovered the writing desk, the Colonel had noticed the books, and Ned had been seen on more than one occasion standing in the doorway with the expression of a boy who had just discovered that another country existed on the other side of a mountain.

Henry, observing this, had at last said, one afternoon after luncheon,

“You are all welcome to use the library whenever you please. And if there is anything among the books you would like to borrow, take it. I cannot imagine I shall have any objection.”

Ned looked at him.

“Anything?”

“Within reason.”

“How much reason?”

Henry smiled. “I knew there was a difficulty coming.”

Edward laughed. “You have made a mistake. He will now attempt to determine precisely what you mean by it.”

Henry led them upstairs.

The library was quiet in the afternoon light, the tall windows standing open to admit the mild air from Berkeley Square. The shelves rose almost to the ceiling, interrupted only by the occasional cabinet and the great mahogany desk which stood beneath the centre window.

Ned stopped just inside the door.

“I have never seen so many books in my life.”

“There are rather a lot,” Henry admitted.

Edward moved slowly along one of the shelves.

“It is everything one could want in a library.”

“That was the intention.”

“And these were all your great-uncle’s?”

“Most of them. Some were here when he inherited the house, and I believe a few were added by my aunt when she stayed here after he died.”

Colonel Brandon had already taken down a volume.

He turned it over in his hands, examined the spine, and opened it.