The Crown And The Scholar Book 7: The Rivals

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The library at Ashby House in Russell Square was smaller than the libraries of

the great houses but better organised — her father had been a man of systematic

intellect and the library reflected this, the books arranged by subject and then

by date of publication in a system that Victoria had inherited and maintained

and expanded. She worked here every morning from six until ten before the social

obligations of the Season required her attention. Lord Blackmoor had called at

eleven on four separate occasions and had been informed she was in the library

on three of them. On the fourth occasion he had asked to be shown to the

library. She had not expected London to contain the things it had turned out to

contain — the Wednesday Circle, the commission, the specific quality of Lord

Blackmoor in the Egyptian antiquities room with genuine attention on his face.

She had not expected to be changed by London. She was changed. She was also, she

had noted, more herself than she had been before she came, which was what

happened when you encountered something that allowed the full use of what you

were. A rival for Victoria's commission.

He said, in the Egyptian antiquities room, without preamble: 'You are the first

person who has correctly identified the provenance of the Rosetta Stone

facsimile in this room.' She said: 'It is not a facsimile. It is the stone

itself. The one in the main hall is the copy.' He looked at the stone and then

at her. He said: 'You are right.' She said: 'I know.' He said: 'Most people

would not say so.' She said: 'Most people find false modesty more comfortable

than accuracy.' He said: 'And you do not.' She said: 'I find accuracy more

comfortable than most things.' He said: 'I begin to think we have that in

common.' It was the longest conversation he had initiated with a woman of the

ton in four Seasons and the most interesting thing he had said in three The

political world had an opinion about everything and an accurate opinion about

very little, and Victoria had learned to use this gap — the gap between what the

political world believed and what was actually the case — as her primary

operating space. Lord Blackmoor had been operating in the same gap for a decade

before she arrived. They had found each other in it, in the manner of people who

recognize a familiar method in an unfamiliar person, and had been refining their

combined use of it ever since

He had been falling in love with Victoria Ashby since the day she corrected him

on the provenance of the Rosetta Stone. This was not a poetic way of speaking —

he had fallen in love with her at that specific moment, in the specific instant

when she had said 'I know' with the calm certainty of someone for whom accuracy

was not a performance but a condition of existence. He had spent the following

nine months in the process of admitting this to himself, which was a longer

process than his political training should have permitted but which was, he had

concluded, appropriate — the admission required time because what he was

admitting was not temporary but entire. He was entirely in love with her. He had

been for nine months. He intended to remain so She had been building the case —

the case for what she felt, the case for what she believed he felt, the case for

what this would mean in practice — with the systematic care of a scholar

building any case: from evidence outward, acknowledging counterarguments,

testing the conclusion against the strongest available challenge. The strongest

available challenge was the political world's opinion of their union and her own

uncertainty about whether a woman of her particular quality could be loved in

the particular way she needed to be loved. She was resolving both

Lord James Hartwell, Earl of Blackmoor, is not what the political world

describes and is not what the ton describes and is, I have concluded after three

months of observation, something that neither group has the correct vocabulary

for. He is not a rogue — he is too principled. He is not a scholar — he is too

political. He is not a diplomat — he is too honest. He is a man who has decided

to be genuinely capable rather than apparently capable, which is rarer than it

ought to be in a world that rewards appearance. I find this quality remarkable.

I find him, I have admitted to myself in the privacy of my own library at six in

the morning, remarkable The work of the commission was the most intellectually

sustaining thing she had done in London and the second most sustaining thing she

had experienced in London overall, the first being the specific quality of Lord

Blackmoor's conversation on the subjects that mattered, which was a ranking she

had made without intending to and had found, on review, to be accurate. He spoke

about history and politics and natural philosophy and the management of the

estate he had inherited at twenty-two with the integrated intelligence of

someone who had never been required to keep his interests separate. She had

never been permitted to keep her interests integrated. She was integrating them

now, in this city, in this work, in his company

The ton observed them with the interest it gave to unusual pairings, which was

the specific interested disapproval of an institution that valued what it knew

and was uncomfortable with what it didn't. Lady Pemberton's column had three

times referred to them as an unlikely match. Victoria had read the column each

time with the expression of someone reading a document in a foreign language —

she could parse the words but the value system that produced them was entirely

external to her own. She was unlikely. He was unlikely. They were, she had

decided, exactly likely for each other

He was in the park at six in the morning and she was in the park at six in the

morning and neither of them had mentioned this to the other despite seven

mornings of identical timing, and the silence about it was itself a kind of

conversation — the conversation that two people have when they are both aware of

something and are waiting for the right moment to acknowledge it. She had

decided that the moment was approaching. The evidence was complete. The

conclusion was right. In the British Museum, on Tuesday, in the Egyptian

antiquities room, she would tell him what she had concluded. She would tell him

the conclusion was him

She returned from the park to the Russell Square house and went up to the

library and sat at her father's desk with the commission documents and her tea

and the specific contentment of a morning that had been spent correctly. She was

working. She was in love. She was in London. All three things were true

simultaneously and she had stopped finding their simultaneity surprising. She

began to write. Lord Blackmoor was in the next paragraph, as he was in most of

her thinking now — not because she had invited him there but because he had

arrived and proved himself worth the space. She wrote. The morning continued. He

would call at eleven. She intended to be in the library

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