"Keep it that way." He picked up the next post. "And Samuel."
"Yeah."
"Tell me exactly what Mercer said. All of it."
Samuel told him. All of it. Nathaniel drove posts for another 20 minutes without speaking. Samuel stood there and let him. When he finally stopped, he said, "She's done nothing to deserve any of this."
"No," Samuel agreed. "She hasn't. She came here to work. She's been working. She was here before the sun was up on day two. And I'll wager she knows more about what's in that library than any of us have known in 30 years."
"Yes. And Mercer is doing this because I refused his daughter and this is the form his revenge takes." Nathaniel said it flatly, not as a question.
"That's my read on it."
Nathaniel was quiet again. Then, "Does she know?"
"I don't think so."
He nodded, set down the post. "She needs to know before she hears it wrong."
Samuel blinked. "You're going to tell her?"
"Somebody should."
"Most men in your position would let the staff handle something like that."
"Most men in my position," Nathaniel said, "are the reason she's going to hear it eventually anyway." He picked up his gloves. "Where is she now?"
"Library, I expect. Where else?"
He knocked on the library door, which he had not done before. He had always simply entered his own library because it was his library, and that had always been sufficient justification. He knocked this time.
"Come in," Eleanor said. She was at the table near the window with three open books spread around her and a lamp pulled close, though the afternoon light was still sufficient. She looked up when he entered, and something in his expression must have been readable enough because she sat down her pen. "What is it?" she said, not alarmed, just direct.
He pulled a chair and sat across from her. He didn't frame it or soften it because he had decided on the walk over that she would not want it framed or softened. "There is talk in the valley about why you're here." He said, "It's being suggested by at least one man... I know the source of that... your employment here was arranged for purposes other than the library."
Eleanor was very still.
"He's suggesting," Nathaniel continued, because there was no point stopping now, "that my grandmother brought you here as a stratagem to introduce a woman into this household who would, who I might," he stopped, said it plain, "who I might consider marrying."
Eleanor looked at him for a long moment. Then she said, "Did your grandmother arrange it for that reason?"
He had expected several responses. That one surprised him. "I..." He stopped. "I don't know. I believe she genuinely wanted the library organized. Whether she had additional reasons..." He said it honestly because she deserved honesty. "She is my grandmother. She has always had additional reasons for everything."
Eleanor absorbed this. "And you came to tell me because..."
"Because you should hear it from me before you hear it in a form designed to humiliate you."
She looked at him steadily. He looked back. The light from the south window was long and amber. "Mr. Whitmore," she said finally. "Do you believe I came here for a husband?"
"No," he said without hesitation. "I don't."
"Why not?"
I thought about how to answer that. He thought about the pre-dawn arrivals and the argument with the Latin manuscript and the conversation about biscuit chemistry and the way she held the Jefferson Almanac like it was something worth holding because he said, "You haven't looked at me long enough to form an opinion about whether I'd be worth having."
Something shifted in her expression. Not a smile exactly, but in the direction of one. "That's very self-aware of you," she said.
"I've had a great deal of practice with women looking at this house instead of me." He said, "I know the difference by now."
She was quiet for a moment. "I'm sorry you've had to learn that difference." The way she said it, not with pity, but with something level and real, landed somewhere he hadn't expected anything to land.