Chapter Four
412 Words
His house in Mayfair was the kind of place that appeared in architectural magazines with captions like restrained grandeur and study in masculine refinement. It had seven bedrooms, four floors, a library that occupied an entire wing and staff who moved with the silent efficiency of people who understood that Julian Blackwood’s schedule was not a suggestion.
He put her in the east bedroom. The east bedroom was at the opposite end of the hall from the master suite, she didn’t comment on this neither did he.
Their arrangement established itself quickly. He left at seven, she had access to accounts for expenses. They attended two events per week— dinners, galas, a charity auction, at which she was introduced as his wife and stood at his side with a composure that impressed even him, though he didn’t say so. They shared breakfast when their schedules aligned. They didn’t share anything else.
They did argue, this started on day four when she reorganized his library. She had not been asked to reorganize his library. She had done it because she’d spent an afternoon in it and concluded that the categorization was — her word— unhinged. His word, delivered in the doorway of the library at six-forty p.m, when he found her on a ladder with an armful of first editions was infuriating.
“The Fitzgerald collection wha shelved under American Fiction,” she said, not coming down from the ladder. “The Fitzgerald collection should be together, chronologically. You had Tender is the Night between a Grisham and a cookbook.”
“I know where my books are.”
“You knew where your books were.” She descended. She was wearing one of his old Oxford shirts, oversized, over her trousers, because she’d been working, and something about the detail— the unselfconsciousness of it— derailed him for a moment. “The fiction is alphabetical now by author. History is thematic. You have an extraordinary collection, by the way. Some of these are first editions.”
“I know they’re first editions.”
“Then perhaps they deserve better than sitting next to a Grisham.”
He stared at her, she stared back. He left, he ate dinner alone in his study. He was furious.
He went back to the library at eleven p.m. and spent forty minutes in what was, grudgingly, the best-organized version of that room he had seen in years.
He did not tell her this.
- Writer
