The Winterley Scandal. Elizabeth Beacon
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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.
* * *
‘So are you going to let me read my mother’s journals, Papa?’ Eve asked her father as soon as they were safely out of earshot.
‘Certainly not.’
‘You do know you can’t protect me from her sins for ever, don’t you?’
‘Yes, but please don’t expect me not to try. Even when we’re both old and grey, I shall still be your father and convinced it’s my role to keep my daughter safe.’
‘Nobody could guard me as carefully as you have done, Papa, but I am an adult now in the eyes of the law.’
‘I know that too well,’ he admitted with a frown that spoke volumes of his concern for her peace and future happiness.
Eve had to live with her mother’s many scandals hanging over her, but the world must deal with her as she was, not as they expected from her mother’s wild ride through life. ‘I do love you, Papa, and Chloe and Verity and the boys, but I need to live my own life.’
‘Your stepmother has told me time and again not to follow you about like a mastiff and glare at any young idiot who notices you are a woman. Don’t ever fool yourself, I like watching you hurt yourself on briars that aren’t of your setting though, my Eve.’
‘If I am to live any sort of life I must find my own way through them, though.’
‘I suppose so, but not right now. It’s high time we got back to indifferent wine and weak lemonade and rescued your stepmother since not even she and Polly Mantaigne could keep the curious at bay for the amount of time we have been gone. The poor girl will have talked herself into a headache again by now.’
‘You are a fine and remembering sort of husband; I do love you, Papa.’
‘Don’t try to wheedle your way round me with soft words, minx; I’m still not letting you read Pamela’s selfish outpourings.’
‘Spoilsport,’ Eve pronounced him and took a look at herself in one of the long mirrors placed at strategic points even along this dimly lit and seldom-visited corridor. She looked remarkably unscathed. ‘Aunt Derneley is the vainest woman I have ever encountered,’ she said after she twitched a frill back into place and brushed a piece of lint from her skirt.
‘Only because you didn’t know your mother,’ Lord Farenze said as he removed a cobweb from his daughter’s dark hair. They re-entered the ballroom to run up against a clever scold from Chloe for avoiding their social obligations and a frown of concern for the headache Eve didn’t know she had until now.
‘What’s he like then, Eve?’ Miss Verity Revereux demanded the next morning as she bounced on to Eve’s bed before staring wistfully at herself in the mirror across the room and wondering out loud if she was developing a spot.
‘What was who like? And it seems unlikely since you were blessed by far too many good fairies at your birth and never had a single blemish I know of,’ Eve said.
Then she remembered what a grim situation her honorary sister was born into. Her mother died as she gulped in her first lungful of air and poor Chloe was left with a newborn to care for at the tender age of seventeen as her twin sister died in childbirth. Eve groped about for a rapid change of subject and hit on the least welcome one to hand. ‘Whomever can you mean anyway?’
‘The man you met last night from the dreamy look on your face.’
Eve frowned and did her best to avoid the apparently guileless blue eyes Verity had inherited from her father. Neither Captain Revereux nor his beloved daughter were the innocents they appeared, so Eve hardened her heart against the plea in her best friend’s eyes and turned to her lady’s maid instead.
‘You were right, Bran, this colour looks better on me this morning,’ she said with her head on one side as she studied the choice of morning gowns on offer. ‘I’m not sure which sash to wear,’ she added, hoping to divert Verity with fripperies. She ought to know better, she supposed. Verity might look like an angel sent to humble lesser beings with her golden beauty, but looks could be deceptive. When her father was at sea they were all inclined to spoil her and Eve wished the gallant captain would hurry home and check his beloved child’s wilder starts before they got her into real trouble.
‘I can stay here all day if I have to, Eve dear,’ Verity told her. ‘Miss Stainforth has agreed to go and see a dentist at last, so I have all the time in the world to plague you until she is feeling better.’ Verity lounged back on the bed to prove it. ‘I loved it at school, but I’m so glad Papa insisted on hiring Miss Stainforth to teach me instead. Now I can be with you and Aunt Chloe and Uncle Luke all the time when he has to be out of the country and you can’t lie to me at a distance. I can’t see why you treat me like some artless child who must be kept in ignorance of the important things in life, Cousin dear. I preferred you before you made your curtsy to society and became so terribly worldly wise.’
‘No doubt your governess left you plenty to do, Miss Verity, and you ought to be doing it right now,’ Bran said sternly.
‘She was in so much pain she forgot and why should I have my head stuffed with more facts