Regency Rogues: A Winter's Night. Elizabeth Beacon
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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