Snyder relaxed; as she had suspected, his unease had been caused by the fact that he did not know where to place her in the household hierarchy. Now he did.
I'm somewhere above a servant, just below a guest, and not a member of the demimonde, which I expect was what he was afraid of. She smiled at him, and was glad she had chosen to wear one of her more severe and business-like walking-suits. She looked like a serious scholar, and she knew it.
"Chicago! That's a cold part of the country, this time of year, ma'am," Snyder said. "Gracious, they must be knee-deep in snow by now! I hope you aren't missing the colder weather."
She shivered, and smiled. "Not at all, I assure you. If your university here accepts female students, I may well remain here when my work for Mr. Cameron is complete. I had not been aware that this part of the nation was so lovely."
Snyder beamed, an odd expression on that long, melancholy face. "It's a great deal like North Carolina, where I come from, ma'am," he told her, as if imparting a precious secret.
Well, that explains his accent.
He coughed. "Now, I hope you'll forgive me again. I've been asked to advise you that it wouldn't be wise to go out at night—except straight to the theater and back—without taking me as an escort. Parts of the city are pretty rough after dark, and you don't know where they are."
So are parts of Chicago—but I didn't go out at night much, and never without Father. She nodded an absent assent; the hills of San Francisco rose all about them now, covered with buildings—for someone used to a flat cityscape, the effect was both strange and delightful. She couldn't get enough of looking. The houses, rising in two, three, or four stories, all seemed to be painted in shades of sand, peach, pink, or pale blue. They were like something out of an illustrated children's book, vaguely hinting at the Arabian Nights.
"Is it safe to visit China-town?" she asked, trying to see everything at once, failing, and not caring.
"Only by broad daylight, and not without an escort," he warned her. "I know what parts there are safe, and what are not. Perhaps you could make up a list of what you are interested in, ma'am, and I can arrange excursions for you."
She sighed with a little regret; she had wanted to go exploring unencumbered, but—
But I also don't want to find myself stowed away in the hold of a ship bound for the Orient, either. Tales of white slavery might be lurid and sensational, but there must be some truth in them or they would not persist.
"That's probably the best," she admitted, and Snyder relaxed a bit more. Obviously he had been anticipating resistance on her part.
I can understand that, and I really hope that some day I will know the city well enough to walk about alone—but that time is not now.
She looked her fill, as the carriage-horses labored up and down the hills; poor things, this was not a very heavy conveyance, and they were still toiling in the traces.
Snyder removed a small, leather-bound book from his breast-pocket and consulted it. "Your occulist appointment is in the morning, tomorrow," he told her. "Around nine. Is there anything you'd care to see this afternoon before you dine? There's just time enough before the shops close."
"A bookshop?" she asked hopefully. "A really good bookshop? And a stationer's?"
I can select ancient books from a catalog easily enough, but how can I select contemporary books without browsing?
He nodded, as if that was precisely what he had expected. Perhaps it was, once he knew she was a scholar. "We'll just leave your trunk at the townhouse for Miss Sylvia, the maid, to unpack, and go straight there. It's Master Cameron's favorite store, Miss Hawkins, and the stationery-supply is right next door. We can certainly arrive there before they close." implicit, though not overtly stated, was that for someone connected with Jason Cameron, both stores would gladly remain open long past their ordinary closing-times.
She bit her lip, wondering if she ought to change her mind. If the shop was Cameron's favorite, the selection would be extensive—and expensive.
"You are to put your purchases on Master Cameron's account, of course, at both establishments," Snyder continued, as if it was a matter of course. "He left orders to give you access to his shop accounts, just as Mr. du Mond does."
Another reason why Snyder was uneasy about my position in the household, no doubt.
"He's never seen me in a bookstore," she said wryly. "He may live to regret his generosity."
Snyder looked at her for a moment with open astonishment, then actually unbent enough to laugh, though he would not tell her why.
They stopped at the townhouse just long enough to leave the trunk with a burly fellow who appeared to do all the heavy work about the place, and then proceeded straight on. And the moment that Rose walked through the door of the bookstore, she was in heaven.
The interior of the shop was all of polished wood and brass, a reddish wood she could not immediately identify. The bookshelves, which ran from floor to ceiling, were placed as closely together as possible and still permit passage of customers. It was at least as large as Brentano's in Chicago, and just as well-stocked. There actually were a few "frivolous" writers whose work she admired—Lord Dunsany, for one, though she thought she might die of embarrassment if Cameron actually caught her reading one of his fantasies of the Realms of Faery and if she ever got a chance to read for pleasure instead of research, she wanted to have a few things on hand. For the rest, there were some reference works she thought might come in handy that were not on Cameron's shelves. Then again, there was no real reason why they should be, for ordinarily one did not associate the works with Magick; not hard-headed things like engineering texts from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, nor herbals, nor some of the theological works she wanted.
But there were hints in there, clues to alternate translations, that she thought might be very, very useful. Cameron approached his texts as a pure Magician, but she thought the approach might be aided by attempting to replicate the world the writer was brought up in, and see possible meanings through his eyes. There were shades to the meanings of words and phrases then that might not occur to a modern man—and as for slang, it could be as much of a code as anything devised for the purpose.
She kept finding more books she wanted every time she looked at a new case. She simply gave up the struggle against temptation after a while; she consoled herself with the promise that many of her selections would be remaining in the Cameron library when she left. She collected quite a tidy pile of volumes before she was finished; it took two boys to carry them to the carriage, but Snyder didn't raise a brow over it at all. Evidently Cameron's expeditions to this place yielded similar harvests.
Perhaps that was why he laughed. She thought about the library, and realized that this must look like a perfectly normal shopping expedition to Snyder.
Next door at the stationer's, she purchased several blank, leather-bound books of the sort used for sketching and journals. Those would become her reference books, where she would organize her own gleanings. With them, she gathered up reams of foolscap and boxes of pencils; Cameron had nothing but pens available, and with all the notes she would be taking, she was not going to risk oversetting inkwells. Nor was she going to waste good paper on scribblings.
Then, strictly because she saw them and lusted after them, she acquired a supply of soft, colored pencils and watercolors for sketching. They were beautiful—"From Japan," the clerk said. The colors were fabulous, rich and saturated, and she craved them the moment she saw them.