Page 46 of The Librarians
Most images online showed him escorting one of two slim, beautiful women to various fancy occasions. One woman was apparently his college sweetheart, someone whose appellation starts with the word “Lady.” The other one looks weirdly familiar until the caption informs Astrid that she was on an extremely popular show—not one Astrid watched but very much in the zeitgeist for nearly a decade.
For Perry wasn’t just Perry but the Honorable Heneage Pericles Bathurst. Although, contrary to what she’d first supposed when faced with a name like that, the family title—his father is Baron Bathurst—isn’t that old. It was granted only after WWII, among the last hereditary peerages ever created in the United Kingdom.
She wonders whether he was saddled with a try-hard name to make the other aristocrats forget how recently the family arrived at the party.
But it wasn’t as if they held it against him, since he went everywhere and dated women with marquesses for fathers and former prime ministers for grandfathers—the actress appears to be from a family both older and posher than his.
Mortification sears Astrid. Would she have bared her soul to him had she known about the kind of life he’d led and the confident, sophisticated women in his past? What could he possibly have thought when she prattled on about how happy she was not faking being Swedish?
She forces herself to browse on and reads an article about his parents’ separation. She remembers his bewilderment.Four children and almost thirty-five years together—down the drain.
She told him then of her parents’ divorce, which happened when she was fifteen. Really, at that age, what could they do thatwouldn’tbe disappointing and disillusioning? Her newly freed parents each went on a semi-epic search for love and companionship. But given the demographic trends of their hometown, there was no one available among the five hundred or so residents who hadn’t already been rejected for one reason or another.
Commiserating about their scant luck out there brought them back together, but not to a rom-com happy ending. Her parents live in separate parts of the house and haven’t bothered with a new marriage license—it’s just that they are no longer motivated enough to seek replacements.
Perry sighed.Listening to you makes me realize, for the first time, that I should try to be happy for my parents. It’s not such a bad thing that they don’t have to settle for each other if they don’t want to. And it’s not such a bad thing that at their age they can still look ahead to a different and perhaps better life.
Some of the shame gnawing at Astrid fades away. Maybe she is a naive bumpkin who has made a lot of stupid choices in life, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t, however briefly, a genuine connection between them.
She caresses a rare solo photo of his that somehow found its way to the interwebs.
But Perry’s parentage and dating history offer no clues as to why he came to Austin.
Astrid sets more search parameters by suppressing coverage fromTatleror anything having to do with romantic relationships or the social scene. Now up pops a database maintained by the UK government that provides information on limited companies.
Perry was apparently a director of no fewer than half a dozen business entities.
Astrid clicks through to each company and discovers that most are under the umbrella of the Bathurst family holdings—Perry was being groomed to take over at some point.
A point that will never come now.
There is one company, however, that doesn’t seem related to the family businesses. It has a different address and features a codirector who is at least a fresh name.
Valerian de Villiers.
Someone sits down next to her. Hazel.
“Hi!” Astrid, happily surprised, side-hugs Hazel. “How are you? I thought you didn’t work today.”
“I don’t. My grandmother went to a potluck without me so I’m picking up some food next door.” Hazel looks Astrid over. “You look…energized.”
“Do I? I guess I feel energized.”
She turns her laptop toward Hazel. “Look what I found. Perry was involved in a bunch of companies related to his family’s holdings. But then there is this outlier.”
“Valerian de Villiers,” Hazel murmurs.
“What do you think—a man or a woman?”
“A man, I would say. Have you ever readValerian and Laureline?”
Astrid shakes her head.
“French space-opera comic—I read the English translation when I was twelve or thirteen. In that, Valerian is definitely a dude.”
“Okay.” Astrid feels silly to be relieved that for Perry’s sole venture outside the family aegis, his partner was not a woman—but she is relieved nevertheless.
Hazel turns the laptop toward Astrid again. “Good work.”
