Mrs. Patton looked at her, looked at the stacks of books already sorted into three distinct piles around the table, looked at the careful notations in the open notebook. "I'll bring you coffee," she said.
"That would be very kind," Eleanor said. "Thank you."
Mrs. Patton went back to the kitchen. She told the kitchen girl what she'd seen, and by mid-morning, the story had traveled, the way stories do in a house, from the kitchen to the stables, and up to where Nathaniel was meeting with his foreman about the fence line. He didn't say anything when he heard it. He just nodded and moved on to the next item of business, but that evening he walked past the library door on the way to his study.
The south shutters had been opened. The late light was coming in at a low angle, throwing the shelves into golden shadow. Eleanor Bennett was standing at the far end of the room with a very old book open in her hands, reading with a quality of attention that had nothing performed about it. She didn't hear him, or if she did, she gave no sign. He stood in the doorway for a moment. He wasn't sure how long. Then he walked on to his study. He sat at his desk. He looked at the papers in front of him. He thought about the quality of attention she gave to a book. He picked up his pen. He set it down. He thought with a clarity that surprised him. I cannot remember the last time someone looked at anything in this house like it was genuinely worth looking at. And then he went back to work because that was what he did. That was what he had always done. But the thought stayed with him. It sat in the corner of everything else for the rest of the evening, quiet and inconvenient, and refused to leave.
On the fourth day, he went into the library, not for any particular reason he was prepared to name. He needed to find a land survey document that might have been misfiled in his grandfather's papers, which were in fact stored in the library. That was a reasonable explanation. A complete explanation. He found the land survey within 4 minutes of looking. He stayed for another 20.
Eleanor was at the far table, her back partly to him, working through a stack of correspondence that had apparently been stored between the pages of a bound journal. She was sorting it, setting pieces aside, making notes. She had not acknowledged his arrival beyond a brief, "Good morning, Mr. Whitmore," delivered without turning around. When he came through the door, he found himself looking at the shelves. His grandfather's law books. His father's collection of surveying texts. Three volumes on agricultural methods he didn't recognize.
"Those three," he said without entirely deciding to, "the ones on the left. I don't recognize them."
Eleanor glanced over at the shelf. He was indicating the agricultural texts. "Yes, they're a collection on soil management from around 1800, 1801, 1803. They're actually quite good." She turned back to her correspondence. "Whoever purchased them had good judgment about practical science."
"My father." She paused in her sorting. A brief pause. "I'm sorry for your loss," she said. Straightforward, not performed.
"It was 8 years ago. That doesn't necessarily change the weight of it." He looked at her back. She had already gone back to work.
"No," he said, "it doesn't."
A silence settled between them. Not an uncomfortable one, which surprised him. He was not a man who was comfortable with silence in company. He usually filled it or left. He didn't either.
"The Jefferson Almanac," he said, "from 1795. You mentioned it to my grandmother."
"It's on the preservation shelf." She nodded toward the east wall where a separate table held a small collection of items she had apparently flagged. "Would you like to see it?"
He walked over. The almanac was small, the leather worn to softness. He opened it carefully, the way she had apparently taught him to without saying anything, by watching how she handled the books. The handwriting inside the front cover stopped him.
"Thomas Jefferson, Monticello, June 1794. For the consideration of good farming men."
"It was a gift," Eleanor said from across the room. She hadn't looked up. "He gave several to farmers he respected. The inscription is what makes it significant. Anyone could have a copy of the Almanac. Not anyone could have that one."
Nathaniel closed it with the same care, set it back. "Miss Bennett," he said.
"Yes, Mr. Whitmore."
"Why did you take this work?"
She was quiet for a moment, long enough that he thought she might not answer. "Because someone needs to do it," she said. "And I'm good at it. There's no other reason." She turned then, looked at him with that direct, unperformed gaze. "What other reason were you expecting, Mr. Whitmore?"
He didn't answer. She held his eyes for a moment, then turned back to her work.
"I'm trying to find some order in what's here," she said. "These books have been waiting a long time for someone to pay proper attention to them. That seems worth doing."
He stood there in his own library with land survey documents under his arm and 80 years of his family's collected knowledge arranged around him in careful piles by a woman he had known for days. He thought, "No one has ever said anything like that about something in this house before." He thought, "She is talking about books." He thought, "I know she is talking about books."
He left the library. He went back to his study. He stared at the land survey for 20 minutes without reading a word of it.
It was Mrs. Patton who told him what was happening in the valley. She didn't mean to. She was relaying household news the way she always did. He had made it a point to know what moved through his own house because a man who didn't know what moved through his house didn't actually own it. He was just living in it. And she said it as part of a longer list of things.
"And folks in town have got their notions about Miss Bennett. Of course."
He set down his pen. "What notions?"
Mrs. Patton had the look of a woman who now wished she'd stopped three sentences sooner. "Just talk, Mr. Whitmore. You know how they are."
"Tell me what they're saying."
She folded her hands, unfolded them. "Some folks think she's only here for what she can get out of the family. That a woman like her from her kind of circumstances, she wouldn't take a job like this without, well, without an eye toward a different kind of position."