“Did I startle you?” His voice was amused now. “Forgive me. But you really must try to keep quiet. What if someone should overhear you and come looking for us before you are able to pick the lock?”
Clementine refused to respond. She turned the hair pin, pressed forward, and found the right spot. The lock opened.
“Thank heavens,” she said on a sigh of relief. “You see, Dorset? Thisis,in fact, the library, just as I told you.”
But her relief and jubilation were short-lived. For as the library door swung open, it revealed they were not alone in the dimly lit room with its two-tiered walls of books. Thankfully, it was only young Ewan within. His eyes went wide at the sight of Clementine and Dorset arriving from the moonlit gardens. Clementine was sure her eyes looked the same, for Ewan was wearing a hat that was too large for his little head and brandishing a rather menacing looking sword.
“Ewan,” she squeaked out. “Why are you not asleep at this late hour, and what in heaven’s name are you doing with that sword?”
“Mine now,” announced the scamp.
“That is my hat you are wearing, you little beggar,” Dorset groused from behind her.
“You must put down the sword,” Clementine told Ewan, ignoring the marquess’s outrage in favor of seeing to the boy’s safety. “You could do some serious damage to yourself or another with that blade.”
“En garde!” he exclaimed, demonstrating his newfound swordsman skills by making a wild swing with the weapon that sent it crashing into a nearby table laden with bric-a-brac.
Porcelain figurines and half a dozen framed pictures flew to the carpets to the sound of breaking glass. Ewan froze for a moment before dropping the sword to the Axminster. It landed with a heavy thud alarmingly near to Clementine’s toes. But before she could complain or further chastise the young boy, he dashed away, running from the room with one hand clamped over the hat.
“Well,” Dorset drawled at her side. “This evening has certainly been filled with excitement. Perhaps we ought to find our way to our respective chambers before I ruin you further or that young hellion sets the entire house ablaze.”
“For once, we are in accord,” she said, thinking she would need to summon a maid to at least tidy up the mess Ewan had made and see that a footman hid the sword out of reach of naughty young lads.
“I would say we were in accord earlier,” Dorset told her, winking like the devil he was.
Where was her bow and arrow when she needed it?
“I would disagree,” she told him coolly. “You had better go before we are found alone. I will see to it that the domestics are aware of the mess.”
He inclined his head and sketched a mocking half bow. “As you wish, my lady. I am off to see if I can catch that lad and regain my deuced hat. I shall see you tomorrow at breakfast.”
* * *
Dorset wasin an odd mood as he made his way back to his chamber for the night. Naturally, the scamp who had made off with his hat and then had decided to play avenging crusader with their host’s medieval sword was nowhere to be found. Nor was his blasted hat.
It was a favorite hat.
But the loss of the headwear, old news by now, was not what had set him on edge, and he could admit that much as he passed through the portrait gallery where it felt as if a dozen pairs of eyes watched him. Judging.
He wanted Lady Clementine Hammond.
There it was, plain as the nose on his face. A stark, unexpected, and decidedly unpleasant truth. Tonight’s revelations had gone a long way toward explaining her incessant matchmaking schemes.
Now, he understood she had a heart.
And somehow, that knowledge had made his own heart—frigid these last four years since Anna’s defection—soften. The vexing lust he had experienced for Clementine from the moment of his arrival had deepened and…
Changed.
Mayhaphehad changed.
Certainly, those kisses had changed.
He was so caught up in the whirlwind of his thoughts that Dorset nearly collided with a fellow guest as he rounded the bend in the hall following the portrait gallery.
“Forgive me,” he apologized briskly to the other fellow before recognition set in. Red hair—an O’Shea. “Carnlough. I did not see you there in my haste.”
The other gentleman gave him a curious look, his mouth tipping in a half smile. “I cannot claim to be the earl, my lord, and you needn’t apologize for your haste. The hour is late, and I should not have taken this route. Indeed, I would not have done except…” The man allowed his words to trail off, apparently thinking better of them before his shoulders straightened. “I am Lord Carnlough’s valet, my lord.”
