‘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