With all the excitement over, Colman asked Ruby: "Are you alright? You looked pretty frightened when Gardiner yelled at you."
Ruby did not answer immediately. For a moment she looked Colman in the eye, an uncertain expression upon her countenance. She opened her mouth to speak, but yet no words came forth, causing her to look away, that look of uncertainty still upon her face.
Taking a seat upon a chair, Colman gestured to another chair. Ruby took her seat, yet still her look of uncertainty remained. Wherefore? Shouldn't Colman's question have been quite easy to answer? Would he himself have answered it so easily? That was something he himself was unsure of. Gardiner could be intimidating he knew that well. The first time Gardiner had ever gotten angry and yelled at him, Colman had believed he would be thrown out of the cathedral, be forbidden from ever setting foot there again.
"W-Will Gardiner send the city guard after me?" Ruby finally asked.
"I do not imagine so." Colman replied. "You are out of the cathedral, so I don't think there is any reason for him to target you." Besides, with Apollo as the Captain of the Guard, he probably would have let her go the moment Ruby was arrested. That womanizer was willing to do as he pleased as long as it meant he got to make love to a beautiful woman in the end. "At the very least, he did agree to look at your locket."
"He did?" Ruby inquired, a small look of excitement upon her front. "He said he would?"
"No, rather he just took the locket from my hands and walked off." Colman answered. He hoped that Gardiner was actually studying the symbol on the locket to discover what it was. His greatest fear was that Gardiner was going to have it melted down to turn into a crucifix. If his mentor did that, Colman heavily doubted that Ruby would ever want anything to do with him, be it as a friend or as a lover.
"Colman, how can you be a student of such a man?"
Ruby's question was one that Colman did indeed wonder himself. He had to be the greatest scholar in Dublin, but even then, Master Gardiner had a side to him, an unpleasant side that seemed to have replaced his hedonistic tendencies. That Colman was grateful for all that the clergyman had taught him was true, he was not grateful for some of Gardiner's other teachings. According to his mentor, there was no reason to look to the West, to the look to the New World. All there was in that accursed land was greed and death. Surely, that could not have been so… Colman may have wanted to see Cahir Castle again, but there was a piece of him that wanted to see the New World as well. There had to be more than just greed and death, there just had to be! And that was not all! Master Gardiner said that books of science, history and drama alone must be open to the public, but other such works had to be censored, if not banned completely. Wherefore? What made those three kinds of works so safe, but the others so dangerous? Colman could not understand it.
"I am not sure, Ruby." Colman finally answered.
"Do you view him as a father?"
"The only father I ever had was killed at Cahir Castle a decade prior."
Closing his eyes, the next thing that Colman felt was Ruby taking his hand. Upon opening his mismatched eyes, he found her staring into them with her reddish-brown orbs.
"I have never known a father, Colman." Ruby uttered. "Would you please tell me what yours was like?" Smiling, Colman did as Ruby asked. Though he had only known his father for six years, he told her all that he remembered.