Introducing Alexander St. Clare, Part 2

In my last post I showed you Alexander St. Clare, the hero of Discovering Miss Dalrymple, finding his father’s diaries hidden in a secret compartment in a desk. This time I’d like to take you a little further…

Alexander flicked through one of the diaries. There was an inscription on the first page: Leonard Aubrey St. Clare, Duke of Vickery. And underneath that: To be burned in the event of my death.

Alexander had a flash of memory so strong that he almost smelled his father’s deathbed—the camphor, the lavender, the beeswax candles. For a fleeting moment he could have sworn he felt his father’s hand in his: the cooling skin, the lifeless fingers. His throat closed. He needed to blink a few times, and then he gathered up the diaries and crossed to the hearth. A fire was laid there, but not lit.

He kindled the fire, watched the flames take hold—and found himself unable to burn the diaries. His father had been dead for two years, but this felt like a second burial; these pages held his father’s thoughts and emotions and experiences.

Alexander examined the diaries. The calfskin was scuffed in places, shiny in others, worn by his father’s hands. What could it hurt to read one entry? The day of his birth, nothing more. An entry that bound him to his father. And then he’d burn the diaries and lay the old man to rest again.

Okay, hands up everyone who thinks he’ll read more than one entry?

Here's a picture of Alexander thumbing through the diaries...



[Image courtesy of the Rijksmuseum collection of public domain images.]