Page 6 of Diamond in the Rough (The Carmichael Saga #1)

S he was back. Sneaking about, and doing so as poorly as she’d done the first time he’d caught her in his circulating library.

It was a clear violation of the promise he’d made the lady’s sister, and yet, breach of agreement or not, the last thing he’d ever do was send away a patron.

Not as a matter of business—though he was known as being a shrewd businessman—but because he knew firsthand what it was to be denied books. As the illiterate boy from the streets taken in by the empathetic, altruistic former owner, Abaddon had resolved to see that anyone and everyone who wished to consume those books could and would.

He’d not cared whether his patrons were men, women, or children, and he’d certainly not cared what station they belonged to.

It was why, the moment he’d been stacking shelves at the back and caught sight of her hurrying inside, he’d not ordered her gone, reminding her she wasn’t allowed to be here without her elder sister’s appreciation.

Her elder sister. Lady Glain, who’d kissed with an abandon and heat he’d never expected of her.

And the memory of her fire and passion, filled him with a familiar rush of desire. She may be ice on the outside, but had proven to be all honeyed warmth on the inside.

“Aren’t you going to ask me what I’m doing here?”

That perturbed child’s voice slashed across those wicked remembering’s, bringing Abaddon back to the moment.

Clad in trousers as she’d been the first time she’d stepped foot inside the library, the girl had her hands on her hips, and scowled impressively up at him.

The better question was why she was here when he expected her sister. Her sister who’d not showed for their latest appointment. After he’d kissed her—that embrace, a fiery conflagration that would leave the lady burned and likely never to return—he’d thought it doubtful she’d find her way back. Even so, there was a wealth of disappointment.

“Did you hear me, Mr. Grim? I was speaking to you?”

Forcing his head out of the clouds, he grinned. “Ah, you want to be seen this time.”

“Yes,” she said with the direct honesty only an innocent child was capable of. “And it has taken you long enough to notice me.”

Oh, he’d noticed her.

He’d simply not addressed her.

“You know your sister doesn’t want you here.”

“Yes.” She gave a wave of her hand. “That doesn’t matter.”

“The lure of the books is a powerful one.”

“I’m not here about your books,” she said, no-nonsense. “Not this time.” She returned the book she’d been reading to the shelf. “I’m here about my sister…about Glain.”

He hooded his eyes. Glain who’d reneged on their agreement. “Oh?”

“She wanted to be here.”

Abaddon snorted and resumed tucking the books in his arm onto their proper place on the shelves. “That I highly doubt.”

“She did,” the girl insisted, with an adamancy fueled by the conviction in those two words. “You must believe me.” Opal touched a hand to his arm, staying his efforts. “She wanted to come here, and I never thought she would, because my sister is really, really, really proper.”

When it came to the flawless princess who’d entered his library two days ago, that might be one hundred ‘proper’s’ short of accurate.

“And I always judge her for it, Mr. Grim,” Opal went on in a quiet whisper. “But I saw when she returned home…she was holding a book close, the way only someone who loves a book does. She wanted to read it.”

Why did it not surprise him in the least that the girl had both overheard his arrangement with Glain and discovered Glain had shown up as promised for their first meeting? The king’s army would be better served if it had people like Opal among their ranks.

Opal’s eyes grew even more solemn. “She wanted to come back. She did .”

“But she didn’t,” he said as gently as he was able. Offering smooth reassurances wasn’t something that came natural to him, that deficit a product left over from his days on the streets.

“I know. But there is a reason for it, and I know she will keep her end of your arrangement. It’s just she’s ever so busy…”

Abaddon stared at her, waiting for her to continue, to explain what it was that kept her elder sister away.

“My sister is planning a dinner party for a prince.”

And there it was. The lady was too busy planning a formal affair, for royalty. Royalty hobnobbing with royalty.

“Ah, plans for the lady to wed a prince?”

“I expect that is it, exactly,” Opal answered. “He’s very important.”

As the girl went on with a lengthy list about the gentleman in question, Abaddon shook his head. It was to be expected. In fact, it fit with everything he’d have thought about a lofty one like Glain Carmichael.

Glain was the last manner of woman he should want, and the world she belonged to, even farther from where he had any wish to be. Far from it. Why, then, did the idea of the fiery beauty who’d come undone in his arms wed to some pencil-mustached prince make him want to gnash his teeth?

Because that fire had given him a glimpse of who she could have been had she been any other woman, born to any other station but the one she belonged to.

Hers was a world he wanted no part of.

Not that there was really a question of whether he would or could be part of that world. That was, beyond the services he offered and provided to the ladies and gentlemen unafraid to enlighten their minds.

Opal tugged on his sleeve, calling his attention away from his thoughts and back to her.

“It’s not her fault,” she repeated, her enormous eyes rounded and filled with sadness.

The girl desperately wished to see more in her sister. She wanted her to be more than she was. And perhaps that was why he managed to release his annoyance and anger.

“I kept your stack for when you came back,” he shared, and in an instant, the sadness vanished, replaced instead with a dazzling joy.

“Indeed?”

She sprung into step beside him as he guided her away from the wide front window where she’d be on display and over to the safer, secluded spot tucked in the corner of the room. A place where she could read and do so without prying eyes or the criticism of people who’d unfairly judge her for the simple sin of reading.

Nay, the station of lords and ladies was one he’d never understand, and one he didn’t want to bother trying.

Let them have their princes and fancy dinners.

Unbidden, however, came an unwanted image of a strikingly beautiful Glain with some high-in-the-instep prince from a far-flung land.

“Here,” he said, pulling out the chair for Glain’s younger sister, picking up the choice he’d made with her in mind. “Have you read this one?” He turned it over.

“ The Mysteries of Udolpho ,” Opal moved her lips silently. She lifted eager eyes to his once more. “Have you?”

“Want to know the truth?”

Wide-eyed, she nodded.

“I’ve read nearly every book inside this library.”

She howled with laughter. “Go on with you.”

Abaddon pressed a hand to his heart and made a cross there. “I would never jest about books,” he said with enough solemnity to that vow, he managed to quiet her boisterous explosion of mirth.

“Come on, now,” Opal whispered, this time more reverently.

“How else could I help patrons know where to find the books they are seeking? Or whether it would suit their interests?”

“Why not let them find them, themselves?” she asked curiously.

“Sometimes,” he explained, leaning in, “people are so used to being told what to read that they don’t explore anything beyond those types of books. Those people need help opening their eyes to the truth that there’s more out there.”

“Like my sister,” she said. Reaching inside the sack slung over her right shoulder, she fished out a small, familiar copy.

He skimmed the title. A Vindication of the Rights of Women .

“I saved this,” Opal said.

Saved it. His jaw hardened. “Did you?” He should have expected—

“My father discovered her with it,” the girl explained, so suddenly, so unexpectedly, Abaddon’s head came flying up with a force to wrench the muscles along his neck. “I told you she wanted to read it. I know because when the duke berated her for reading such books, and took it away, Glain looked like she was going to weep.”

With every word of the tragic scene she painted, a vise squeezed at his chest, until it was near impossible to get a pain-free breath in through his constricted lungs. It was somehow easier when he’d despised Glain for being a lofty sort who thought herself too good for the books here, than in knowing the truth—that she was in fact a woman who wished to read but was caught like some tragic butterfly tucked under a glass, her movements restricted, her flight stifled by the barriers wrapped around her.

“Do you know what I’ve learned, Mr. Grim?” Opal asked through the tumult of his thoughts.

He could only manage to shake his head.

“I’ve learned that the covers of books are quite unimpressive. Some are marbled leather. Some are speckled. Some old. Many have gold lettering. But they’re all the same, and yet…” She fanned the pages of the copy of The Mysteries of Udolpho . “It would be deuced unfair, and tragic even if one assumed all the contents within those pages were the same when there’s so very much more to them…if one just looks.”

There’s so very much more to them…if one just looks.

He smiled wistfully. “How did you get so wise?”

A slow, impish smile dimpled both her plump cheeks. “I read.”

He chuckled. “Clever girl.”

She beamed under that slight praise, and with all she’d imparted, the window she’d opened to her and her sister’s world, he wondered how sparse words of approval and affection had been conferred. He’d wager not at all. That glimpse Opal had given had also revealed precisely how and why Lady Glain Carmichael had become the woman she had.

“Will you read?” he invited, motioning to the book she held in her fingers.

Her smile widened. “I would be happy to, Mr. Grim.”

With that, Opal proceeded to read the book he’d provided her. How comfortable she was with it. How happy the reading of a simple story made her. And he wondered what Glain had been like before she’d been so shaped and molded by the heartless, cruel duke Opal had described. More, he wondered who she would be if she managed to break free of him and those constraints built by the gilded cage of Polite Society.

And dangerously, inexplicably, he had an urge to be the one who helped her.