Free Elizabeth Thornton by Whisper His Name

in Dover for her to pay duty on, she didn’t know what she would do. But how was she going to know what book to look for?
    She curved the fingers of both hands around her cup and stared at a solitary leaf that floated on the surface of her tea. Aunt Abigail would have told her that the tea leaf was a sign that a tall, dark, and handsome stranger was coming into her life. She didn’t want a tall, dark, and handsome stranger. She wanted a tall, fair-haired man she’d known forever. She wanted her brother George.
    “What is it, my dear?”
    Abbie blinked rapidly before looking at her companion. She tried for a smile, then thought better of it as pain began to spread along her lip and jaw. “I was just thinking,” she said, “that we never did get around to cataloging the books we bought in Paris. None of them stands out in my mind. I mean to say, was there anything unusual about any of them that you remember?”
    “Well, some of them looked promising, but nothing that would make our fortune or warrant paying the exorbitant duty on them, leastways, I don’t think so.”
    It was the answer Abbie expected, and despair and inertia settled over her like a wet blanket.
    Miss Fairbairn sighed. “And to think I had such hopes that it wouldn’t come to this.”
    “Come to what?”
    “Paying the exorbitant duty.”
    “How could we get out of it?”
    Miss Fairbairn gave a deprecatory laugh. “I wrote a letter of complaint to the foreign office right afterward, but so far they haven’t even acknowledged my letter.”
    “You never mentioned it to me.”
    “No. I was hoping to surprise you, you know, if they found in our favor, but as I said, I haven’t heard a thing.”
    “I didn’t know that customs is under the jurisdiction of the foreign office.”
    “I don’t think it is. No, I wrote a personal letter to Mr. Lovatt, who works at the British embassy in Paris. His name was on the flyleaf of the book I was reading. I asked our foreign office to pass my letter on to him, and I hoped he would use his influence to help us—if only to get his book back.”
    “What book?”
    “Oh dear, I’m not explaining this very well.” Miss Fairbairn’s hands were beginning to flutter, a sure sign that she was becoming agitated. “The book that that nasty customs officer snatched from my hand, you know, Homer’s
Iliad
in a French translation. I thought I mentioned it at the time. It had notations in the margins, but I couldn’t make sense of them.”
    Abbie vaguely remembered Miss Fairbairn engrossed in a book during their return journey across the English Channel. “I do remember something,” she said, “but not the name of the book you were reading.” She thought fora moment then went on, “I don’t remember purchasing a copy of the
Iliad
when we were in Paris.”
    “Perhaps it belongs to George. Perhaps Mr. Lovatt is his friend and loaned it to him. At any rate, it’s with all the other books we acquired.”
    Abbie’s heart began to pound. “And Mr. Lovatt’s name was on the flyleaf?”
    “Yes. It was a present from his wife.”
    Abbie swallowed the question that sprang to her lip. Olivia was looking at her anxiously, and when Olivia was anxious, she invariably lost the thread of what she wanted to say. There was only one way out of the fog and that was to stop pushing her, and let her tell the story in her own words. “I see,” was all Abbie said.
    Miss Fairbairn’s hands stopped fluttering, and she flashed Abbie a grateful look. “But whether the foreign office passed my letter on to him, I have no way of knowing.”
    “You asked the foreign office to pass your letter on to Mr. Lovatt at the British embassy in Paris?” said Abbie to clarify things in her own mind.
    “I thought it was worth a try.”
    “What did you say in your letter?”
    “Only that we had Mr. Lovatt’s book, but could not give it back to him until we’d paid the duty, and that wasn’t likely.…” She stopped. “I can’t