The New Tenants of Moorend Hall
Roland stepped out of the hip-bath, his supple and smooth ivory white body glistening in the firelight, and glanced wistfully around the room. All this, the grand house and the land beyond it had once been his, and owned by his proud family for almost three centuries before him. Now lost for good, and tomorrow he must leave for forever. How he regretted that last hand of cards, when he had wagered everything, and lost it all, in the arrogant belief, that his opponent, an elderly, white haired women, could never best him. But she had bested him and he was destroyed.
There was so much to regret, the whoring, the drinking, and the many bad deeds which even he, now sober balked at recalling. But it was too late for regrets, his ill deeds had brought him to this, as his tutors had warned him they would, He had lost everything, and there was nobody else to blame.
The new owners had already moved in and ensconced in all the grand rooms and bed chambers, unseen since they arrived the previous night. Whereas he, the previous owner was confined, by their charity, to this one room, for one final night, before he must depart, to face the world with nothing, but the clothes on his back. The very prospect terrified him.
It was then, at this moment of despair, that something twinkling caught his eye. There, in the grate next to the fire, his last servant had set for him. There was something there, made of glass, caught partly in a crevice. He stepped forward to take a closer look, and then he recognized it, an object which once see, could never be forgotten. His late Mother’s Fire of Kashmir sapphire necklace, a priceless gift from his also long dead father, which has been lost for years. It must have laid here in this seldom used room, unseen for all that time.
He gazed down at the necklace in stunned silence, grasping at this last minute possible salvation. It was too famous to sell in its original form, but broken down to it’s component parts of diamonds, emeralds and that stunning huge yellow sapphire, and sold desperately, would gain him a considerable small fortune, and stave off the poverty which he so feared.
He darted forward and grasped the glittering gems, the fire-heated stones hot in his hand.
Then he heard a floorboard creek behind him, and he froze, was someone behind him?
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