Regency Rogues: A Winter's Night

Too late to avoid whoever it was now, she wasn’t about to run back to the ballroom with her braid trailing behind her, so she grasped the needle like a weapon and hoped it might work. Lord Derneley’s cronies were too soft and idle to fit into the narrow confines of the ladder-like stair she could see now her eyes were used to the dim light, so this was a less substantial person. Halting steps met the marble floor at last and she squinted against the candlelight and deep shadows it cast to see whom she must defend herself against this time.

Chapter Two

‘What the devil are you doing here?’ a gruff male voice rumbled as Eve froze, staring at the stiffly held figure and telling herself he wasn’t made of shadows.

He took a step forward and stared nearly as rudely back. He looked both old and young at the same time and she wondered how such a shabby gentleman could seem so arrogant it was as if he owned the room and not Lord Derneley’s creditors. His overlong hair was neither brown nor gold but a mixture of both and his nose had been broken once upon a time. There was an air of contained power about him that didn’t fit his modest shirt points and a very ordinary dark coat and breeches. He shouldn’t be in the least attractive to a lady like her and yet he was. Now he turned his head as if to listen for more intruders into his domain and the candlelight struck his face full on. She could see a still raw scar high on his forehead that made her gasp, then wondered how much damage his tawny pelt hid and if that explained why he let it grow. Something wary and proud in his unusual eyes stopped her answering his question with a casual put down from lady to upper servant. Even from several feet away and by weak candlelight those eyes looked dark and light at the same time. He came a little closer to peer down at her as if she was an exhibit in a museum and she gazed up and saw his irises were brown, but his pupils were rayed with flares of light gold that made them look paler.

Here was a man who kept his hopes and dreams hidden, but when their gazes met something sparked between them that she didn’t understand. It felt as if he was important to her somehow, but he couldn’t be so, could he? Looked at coolly he was a young clerk in shabby day clothes and had nothing in common with the Honourable Miss Winterley. Still she felt an eager leap of the heart she had heard about but never experienced before; the dawn of something huge she never believed in until now. It threatened to turn her world upside down as they gazed at each other as if under a spell. Which was just plain nonsense, wasn’t it? There might be enough mysteries in this stranger’s striking eyes to intrigue a flock of unwary young ladies, but she was Eve Winterley and he was an upper servant by dress, if not his arrogant manner as he silently dared her to set him down as nobody.

‘You took the words out of my mouth,’ she informed him huskily, doing her best to act the composed society lady in the face of his impudence.

‘Her ladyship’s ball is that way, Miss Winterley,’ he said and Eve felt that tingle of warmth she’d been trying to fight turn to ice. The coldness in his voice made her shiver and something like disapproval iced his gaze as he dwelt on her exposed ankles and calf, then he looked away as if she offended him.

‘You have the advantage of me, sir,’ she said stiffly.

‘Carter, ma’am,’ he said unenthusiastically.

‘And now I know?’

‘The Duke of Linaire engaged me to sort the Derneley Library and have it packed up and sent to Linaire House or the bookbinders.’

‘Well, it’s a fine collection and Lord Derneley is desperate,’ she said, then wondered what demon had got hold of her tongue tonight.

‘His father was a notable scholar,’ the man said as if every word must be paid for and he was unwilling to waste them on the likes of her.

‘Maybe his son is a changeling then,’ she said, her temper prickling. She refused to tell polite lies after the evening she’d endured so far and this man’s hostility seemed to be coming towards her in waves now he’d taken a good long look at Miss Evelina Winterley and decided he didn’t like her one little bit.

‘Lord Derneley is my host,’ he reproved her, as if she had no idea it was rude to make comments about one when you were under his roof.

‘And therefore above criticism? I shall employ you to sit in my father’s library and whisper my grace, talent and general omnipotence in my ear when I feel less than pleased with myself and the world.’

‘I shall be very ill occupied then,’ he said unwarily—so that was what he thought of her, was it? ‘I beg your pardon, I’m sure dozens of fashionable gentlemen queue up to praise your elegance, beauty and cleverness, Miss Winterley,’ he added patronisingly, as if that should make her feel better.

‘Since we seem to be jumping to conclusions about each other so freely tonight, you must be a cynic and a Jacobin, Carter. Why else would you take against a lady you don’t know, unless you hold a grudge against my family, of course?’ she demanded, suddenly very tired of being Pamela Winterley’s daughter. Tonight was bad enough without a stranger sniping at her as if she must deserve it.

Colm tried to rein in his temper, but the sight of her looking as if she had only just left the arms of her lover made him deaf to the voice of reason. Apologise, then bow politely and leave her to her sewing, you blundering idiot, it whispered, but this was a very different Eve Winterley from the one he saw enter Derneley’s hall tonight. Then she was pale and composed; a dark-haired version of the Ice Queen, so cool and distant she could have been made of bronze and cold painted. Now she was ruffled and flushed and he still wanted to touch her, not to find out if she was real this time, but to carry on the work of the lucky devil she must have been kissing in the long-disused conservatory at the end of this corridor.

He sounded like a jealous lover and how could that be when he didn’t even know her? He still wanted to be the one who tousled all that cool perfection, though. If he had sent her racing along dusty passage ways to find the least-used part of this rambling old place and set herself to rights after their amorous encounter, now that would be much more acceptable. Even the thought of being the one whose kisses set her delightful breasts rising and falling with every fast and shallow breath made him hard. Exploring even the edges of passion with her warm and willing in his arms wasn’t to be thought of. No, it really, really wasn’t, he argued with his inner savage.

Colm felt the gnawing of bitter envy as he let himself sneer ever so slightly at the difference between her public face and private morals. Miss Winterley was set fair to follow her disgraceful dam after all. He recalled Pamela’s shocking declaration that she was writing her diary wearing nothing but rubies and that did nothing to help his wild fantasies about seeing her daughter in a similar state of nature.

‘How can I feel anything about your family when I don’t know them?’ he asked as coolly as he could while he tried to shackle his inner sensualist.

‘I don’t know; how can you?’

‘Obviously I cannot.’

‘Yet you have your shallow prejudices about me and mine and seem to think it quite acceptable to show them off. For a mere librarian you are very daring, Mr Carter,’ she said with a pointed stare at the scar on his forehead he usually felt so defensive about.

‘Librarians do not spring fully formed from the head of Zeus like the goddess Athene, Miss Winterley.’

‘Waterloo?’ she demanded rudely and he supposed he’d asked for it by leaping to conclusions about her as well.

He nodded, still unable to talk about that terrible day. Not even Nell knew the terror he had felt, the dreadful urge to turn his back on his men and this hell of powder and shot and pounding artillery all around him and walk off into the woods to find peace. Now that his emotions seemed too close to the surface he was afraid he might let her see things he didn’t want any other human being to know about. She was his enemy; Winterleys and Hancourts had hated one another since his father ran off with her mother. It was probably his duty to think the worst of her, but as his lust and temper cooled he took a second look and wondered if he misjudged her.

‘I can see how a library might offer peace and quiet after that,’ she added as if she understood a bit too much. ‘Will this be enough for you after a life of action?’

‘I don’t know, Miss Winterley. No doubt I shall find out when these books are safely housed in my employer’s various houses.’

‘And rescued from the neglect of nearly half a century,’ she agreed rather absently, as if her real thoughts were elsewhere.

‘Indeed,’ he said, sounding stuffy even to his own ears. ‘I wonder they are not in worse condition.’

‘Fascinating as you find this topic, Mr Carter, I need to get back to the ballroom before people notice I have been away too long. Kindly turn your back, or go away, so I can finish sewing this braid back in place and go.’

‘I still have work to do tonight,’ he said, wishing he had pushed the open volume of Pamela’s diary he had kept out to read under something else, so there was no risk she might spot it if she wandered closer to the library table to see what he had been doing. ‘Here, let me move the candle so you can see better and be gone all the sooner,’ he offered ungraciously and moved it before she could argue. Then he meekly turned his back as ordered and hoped that was distraction enough from her mother’s appalling scribbles.

‘You are almost as eager to see the back of me as I am to go,’ she said, her voice muffled because she was paying close attention to her gown.

Colm was tempted to use the old mirror nearby to sneak another look at her fine legs and ankles as he fantasised about the thread pulling up her hem as she worked on the most awkward part of the braid once again. The unresolved question of who did that damage plagued him and he could still hear her move, feel her presence in this shadowed and oddly intimate room and long to be someone else.

‘You can’t marry a librarian if we are caught here in such a compromising position,’ he explained gruffly.

‘Even if you are a hero?’

Wouldn’t it be fine if they truly felt easy enough to laugh together? They never would if she knew who he really was. After tonight they could go back to different worlds. Except he thought Uncle Horace and his Duchess had plans that might make those worlds collide. Heaven forbid, he thought. He hated the idea of who he really was frosting Miss Winterley’s eyes when they met as polite strangers.

‘I am nobody’s hero, Miss Winterley,’ he said dourly. ‘They usually end up dead and not maimed like me.’

‘If that scar was on the back of the head I suppose I might believe you got it running away,’ she said as the faint sound of her needle penetrating the heavy satin of her gown reached his over-sensitised hearing and he held his breath against the quiet catch of her breathing and what it was doing to his dratted body.

‘Maybe I walked backwards from the guns?’ he said wryly and she chuckled. The warm sound of it brought back all the temptations he had been fighting since she walked into the room and he saw her all flustered and compelling from his perch at the top of the spiral stairs, before she even knew he existed.

‘And maybe a bullet bounced off somewhere else and hit you in the leg, but somehow I doubt it.’

‘I could have been devilishly unlucky.’

‘You could.’

‘Are you done yet?’ he asked sharply, because it felt dangerous to argue, then almost laugh with her.

‘Eager to be rid of me?’

‘Eager to keep my job, Miss Winterley. That will not happen if we are found alone here with the door shut.’

‘Yet the new Duke seems such a reasonable sort of man,’ she said as if he could be explained away with a careless smile and a shrug that said of course we were not up to anything untoward, how could a viscount’s daughter and a librarian be anything but strangers?

‘Your papa doesn’t look so where you are concerned.’

‘True, but he’s not here and now I’m set to rights he won’t need to be.’

‘Kindly hurry away then and make sure of that, if you please. Can I turn round, by the way?’

‘Yes, I am quite neat and unmarred again,’ she said and he frowned as he turned and met her challenging gaze. ‘I cannot say it has been a pleasure meeting you, Mr Carter.’

‘Good evening, Miss Winterley,’ he said curtly and wished she would go away and leave him in peace.

‘Good evening, Mr Car…’ she began, then faltered as the sound of hurrying feet sounded outside. ‘Where can I hide?’ she demanded urgently.

He darted a look at the alcove set aside for a clerk to catalogue new finds in the days when Lord Derneley’s father collected rare volumes from anywhere he could. Even that dark corner couldn’t conceal a young woman in pale and rustling silk. She gave him an impatient look and darted towards the narrow wooden stair he had climbed down so carefully only minutes ago. She scrambled to get out of sight and was lost to his view, if not to his senses, just in time not to be seen when the door opened and Lord Derneley sauntered in.

‘Thought you could have helped Lady Derneley with the wallflowers, Carter,’ he said distractedly, looking round as if this half-empty room was a surprise to him.

The thought of Miss Winterley standing so near and still made Colm tense as a drum. He breathed more shallowly for fear she might make a noise and be found and what on earth would they do then? An offer of marriage from him would hardly quiet the scandal. Yet there was something furtive in Derneley’s pale eyes that said he knew she had flown somewhere to set her appearance to rights and he intended to find her. That suspicion he had earlier that the man was up to something devious as far as his wife’s niece was concerned returned in spades. He felt a fierce need to protect her from whatever moneymaking scheme the rogue had thought up at Miss Winterley’s expense.

‘It seemed best that I not embarrass the young ladies, your lordship,’ he said and when the man looked baffled Colm pointed at his damaged leg.

‘Oh, aye, quite right. Forgot you’re a dot-and-carry one and can’t dance. Make the poor little things a laughing stock if you tried, I suppose.’ The man’s glassy gaze lingered on the scar high on Colm’s forehead, then flicked away as if he was being delicate about mentioning yet another reason he could not show his face in public.

‘Quite,’ Colm managed flatly, willing the girl hidden so precariously nearby not to move even a finger while this noble rat was in the room to hear her and force her to do whatever he had in mind.

‘I’ll tell her ladyship that’s why you’re hiding yourself away then, shall I?’

‘Thank you, my lord,’ Colm made himself say as humbly as a clerk should when invited to join the nobility at play, even if it was only to dance with wallflowers.

‘Ah, there you are, Derneley,’ Viscount Farenze said from the doorway.

Colm knew who he was because he was standing by his daughter’s side earlier, looking formidable and aloof and ready to challenge any man who put a finger on his eldest child against her will. Colm marvelled at Lord Derneley’s stupidity for thinking he would get away with whatever he was up to without being flayed alive. His fury sharpened as he wondered if Derneley had been forcing his attentions on a girl he shouldn’t even think of touching, but no, he looked too sleek and fashionable to have done anything so repellent. No doubt it would take hours to redress, so that was one horror he could discount. Which left his first thought when he saw Miss Winterley so disarrayed and seductive looking; she had a lover and Derneley knew. And wasn’t that a guilty secret she and her father would pay handsomely to keep that way?

Lord Farenze eyed Colm coolly before he took a quick scan of the room from the doorway, then stepped inside. Colm thought of Miss Winterley a few heartbeats away from disaster again and he didn’t want her to be found out, lover or no. A sneeze or a snatched breath could give her away and then where would they be?

‘Came to find Carter here,’ the master of the house said uneasily under his one-time brother-in-law’s stern gaze. He even managed to make it sound logical for the host to seek the humblest gentleman here in the midst of his own evening party.

Colm called on all his experience of hiding his feelings not to glare at the man. If it wasn’t Miss Winterley who was a hair’s breadth from disaster, he might be stifling laughter instead of a savage growl as the man let his gaze shift past half-empty book stacks and sharpen on the deepest shadows as if he was looking for her. There was something damned odd going on; he hadn’t been imagining things earlier. Colm couldn’t help wondering what Miss Winterley was thinking, standing in semi-darkness and wondering what Derneley was up to as well.

‘I’m weary of cards and gossip and my wife is deep in conversation with Lady Mantaigne, Derneley. I might as well keep Linaire’s librarian company for you, as you have a great many other matters to attend to tonight. You know how I dote on books and a good host can’t absent himself from his own party for long, can he?’ Lord Farenze said so genially Colm shivered. The man’s good humour had so much steel in it he was surprised Lord Derneley wasn’t shaking in his boots.

‘Always knew you were an odd fellow, Farenze, but I suppose you’re right. Best get back to m’wife’s party before anyone notices,’ Derneley agreed airily.

‘I’ll join you as soon as I’ve picked this learned young man’s brains,’ Lord Farenze replied and Colm eyed him uneasily as Lord Derneley finally ran out of reasons to stay in his own library and left with one last frustrated look round the room, as if he might spot Miss Winterley climbing a half-dismantled book stack, presumably desperate for a good read.

Chapter Three

‘Hold still,’ Lord Farenze murmured, as if he could see through all that finely carved wood and a wall to his daughter’s hiding place. Colm held his breath as Lord Derneley’s steps faded rather slowly down the marble-floored corridor and Lord Farenze finally shut the door on him. ‘It’s safe to come out now, Eve,’ he said softly.

‘How did you know I was here, Papa?’ she said and did so as if nothing much had happened.

Colm took a second look to be sure she wasn’t on the brink of hysteria. No, Miss Winterley’s blue-green eyes even had the hint of a smile in them now. If not for the way her fingers fisted into her palm on the side her father couldn’t see, he might think her calm as a millpond.

‘The same way I did at hide and seek when you were a child; you are in the place that makes the most sense,’ her father said.

‘Oh, I see,’ she said and Colm wondered why she still looked so white and strained now her father was here to make all right if another lord came in and caught them having a bookish discussion instead of dancing.

‘I wish you both goodnight, my lord, Miss Winterley,’ he said stiffly, feeling he was the invisible upper servant everyone thought and it hurt his pride somehow now he’d finally met Miss Winterley face to face.

‘First promise not to tell anyone I was alone here with you tonight.’

‘I am not a braggart, Miss Winterley,’ he argued before he could think straight. Colm saw Lord Farenze’s eyes harden and found it difficult to meet the steely distrust in the man’s level gaze, but he did.

‘If any scandal is whispered about my daughter, the person who spread it is likely to regret he was ever born,’ the Viscount threatened so quietly it was far more potent than if he’d shouted and shaken his fists.

‘Don’t, Papa,’ Miss Winterley said with a weary wave of her hand that touched Colm far more than feminine hysterics ever could. ‘I think we can trust him.’

‘I don’t trust any man with your safety and peace of mind tonight.’

‘Please give him your word as a gentleman not to reveal I was here alone with you, Mr Carter, or we’ll be here all night,’ she said with a pleading look Colm couldn’t resist, however little he’d wanted to be part of this scene.

‘I promise not to whisper scandal about Miss Winterley, my lord.’

‘You seem to be a man of words, Carter.’ The man gestured at the chaos of packed books and the stacks waiting to say Colm might not be beyond writing scandal even if he didn’t speak of it.

‘I wouldn’t write anything that damaged a young lady’s reputation either.’

‘I am suitably grateful,’ Miss Winterley interrupted their silent battle with rather magnificent irony.

‘And I have nobody much to write it to if I did,’ he told her as if that ought to make this better. He doubted it did from the chilly look she gave him. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about anyway.’

Lord Farenze looked hard at him. ‘Derneley is up to something and the servants will gossip, so you had better add a promise to tell me what they have to say about us to that gallant oath, Carter. Then I might trust you to leave my daughter’s reputation alone and let you leave this room in one piece.’

‘Very well, my lord. I vow to report faithfully what the servants are saying or not saying over breakfast. I hope that will be all?’

‘Not quite, I am also unreasonable enough to expect you to come to Farenze House tomorrow and tell me about it in person. Do not put anything in writing.’

‘I have work to do, my lord, but I dare say his Grace will spare me from it for an hour or so to take some air, if I ask him nicely,’ Colm said not quite humbly enough to be truly Mr Carter, who only wanted his bed and an end to this ridiculous situation.

‘Oh, come on, Papa. Leave the poor man be. Don’t forget someone I wish I had never set eyes on could be back in the ballroom by now and busily spreading rumours,’ Miss Winterley said with a pained look in the direction of the ballroom that said her ruin might be going on even as they dallied.

‘Even Derneley isn’t that stupid and I bloodied the nose of that someone else you are talking about. I doubt he’ll say anything for a while, let alone admit he was bested by a slip of a girl he thought to force himself on, then knocked out by her very irate father,’ Lord Farenze added matter of factly.

Colm went very still as he realised why Miss Winterley had really come in here to repair her gown. What a fool he was not to see the difference between a young woman dishevelled by her amorous beau and one attacked by a raddled old rake. His own convalescence in Brighton had given him the inside track on all the society gossip his breathless landlady gathered from friends who let out rooms or their houses for the Season. So he sorted through the guests he’d seen arrive tonight and came up with the ideal candidate. Sir Steven Scrumble was on the lookout for a wife with enough blue blood and powerful connections to drag him back to the heart of polite society. The man would pay generously for such a bride and Derneley must have sold him a perfect chance to rape Miss Winterley and force an April-and-December marriage on her. The very idea made his flesh crawl, so goodness knew what it did to hers. Scrumble was very rich, so selling a convenient accident to her gown and a neatly empty sewing room wouldn’t trouble Derneley’s conscience. He clearly didn’t have one. Then, with his ill-gotten gains and the money he got from the Duke for his father’s books, Derneley might have made it across the Channel and disappeared. Colm thought Derneley’s creditors would soon learn Lord Farenze wouldn’t lift a finger to save his one-time brother-in-law and they would foreclose. Serve the vicious sot right, Colm decided as the Viscount frowned as if he wished him a thousand miles away, then did his best to reassure his daughter.

‘I made it clear you won’t be marrying him if the whole world is baying for you to do so; I’ll kill him first,’ he told her.

‘I’m not dashing round the world evading justice even for you, Papa, and Chloe has had quite enough of living in shadows. What if he tells everyone anyway?’

‘And admit he was bested by a defenceless young lady? The man’s not that much of a fool.’ Lord Farenze went on with a sideways look at Colm that told him not to be one either, ‘Even in his cups he’ll remember what I threatened to do to him if he didn’t keep a still tongue in his head.’

Colm wanted to find the cur and add his fourpennyworth to the mix. He could hardly threaten to have the bastard drummed out of the clerks’ guild though, could he? Their inequality of power and rank would forbid the man fighting if Colm challenged him to meet at dawn, swords or pistols at the ready. Reminded how little he and Miss Winterley had in common, he used a trick he’d learnt in his youth and retreated into his thoughts until he was calm again. He went back to the table, realised Miss Winterley had put the candle back in the ideal place to highlight what he’d been reading before he got distracted and tried to slide Pamela’s journal under a sheaf of ancient letters.

‘Wait,’ Lord Farenze said sharply, catching that furtive movement as if he was the one who’d spent eight years sharpening his senses in the Rifles and not Colm. ‘What have you got there?’ he asked and came closer for a better look. ‘I’ve seen a notebook like that before and that looks like my late wife’s scrawl. Let me see.’

‘My employer paid a fair price for any item in this room he chose to take away, my lord,’ Colm protested half-heartedly.

‘And it pains me to see such a fine collection neglected, but if that’s truly a volume of my late wife’s scribbles then it isn’t Derneley’s to sell. As her husband I lay claim to it.’

‘Papa—’ Miss Winterley touched her father’s arm ‘—surely all her scandals are already out in the open by now? We really must go.’

‘I’ll not have them reawakened in the yellow press and we shall say you wanted to look at the portrait of your mother you knew Derneley had hidden away somewhere in this house. We can explain our absence to your stepmother when we return to the ballroom and the gossips will nod and whisper she has a great deal to bear, but I’m not leaving this room until you explain what you have there, Carter, and if there’s aught else I should know about in this musty old collection.’

‘I really couldn’t say, my lord. I only found the first Lady Farenze’s diaries hidden behind a shelf of sermons this afternoon.’

‘You have to admire her cheek, don’t you?’ he said to his daughter and Colm saw the man behind the stern mask before he sent Colm another challenging stare. ‘How much have you read?’ he asked menacingly, as if it was an intrusion he found hard to forgive.

‘Only this last one,’ he said, refusing to stand here like a schoolboy sent for punishment and say nothing in his own defence. ‘I certainly won’t tell her secrets to anyone else,’ he promised easily enough.

He had more reasons not to want them known than the Farenze family, and reading Pamela’s words really hadn’t got him any closer to his father. A woman that self-obsessed was hardly likely to waste pages describing her lover, was she? He would do better to put her and her entire family behind him forever the day he left this place and handing them over might help him do it. The sneaky thought that Pamela’s daughter was more difficult to forget nagged at him, but he did his best to ignore it.

‘Will you hand over anything else you happen upon before your work here is done?’ Miss Winterley asked as if she had caught her father’s distrust of him.

‘Anything that concerns you, yes,’ he said with a weary sigh.

‘Good, now we must leave the lad in peace, Eve,’ his lordship urged his daughter when she would have argued. ‘He can rehash this argument with me in the morning, but you’re right, it’s high time we returned to the ballroom.’

‘We can hardly carry a stack of my late mother’s diaries with us. Will you bring them to Farenze House for us, Mr Carter? I would be most grateful.’

Since she didn’t wheedle or make any attempt to charm him into doing her bidding, Colm saw no reason to object and delay their departure. ‘I suppose it’s easy enough for me to carry books in and out of here, so, yes, I’ll bring them when I call on your father tomorrow. Now please, will you both go? I don’t want to be caught up in the affairs of the great and the good any more than you want me to be.’

‘Thank you,’ she said and they were back to humble clerk and lady again.

‘Goodbye, miss, my lord,’ he said with a bow that would do a butler credit.

‘Goodbye, Carter,’ she replied with a dignified nod and took her father’s offered arm to be escorted back to civilisation.

He watched them go and wondered. How would it feel to stroll back into that ballroom with them, sauntering confidently at their side as an equal in birth and fortune? For a moment he thought wistfully of all he once had and didn’t regret it as much as he thought. The polite world looked bright and glittering and sophisticated from the outside, but he didn’t think it gave the Miss Winterleys of this world much joy. He had grown accustomed to a life where worth and courage counted for more than birth and fortune. When you were all hungry and cold and miserable, on the retreat through harsh country already ravished by French troops, birth and privilege didn’t count for much.

As for knowing young ladies like Miss Winterley outside the charmed circle of the ton, that was clearly impossible. He put the very idea behind him, limped back up those stairs one last time and packed the eight volumes he had found into a handy little box, stowed it under his arm and was glad neither Winterley was waiting below to see him descend on his clerkly behind as he needed one hand and his good leg to get him down again without disaster. Confound his weak leg and the suspicions Lord Farenze had put into his head about his fellow servants. They were probably too busy to search for such scandalous gems in the library their master had sold off tonight, but Colm turned the key in the lock and pocketed it when he left the library all the same.