Читать книгу The Regency Season Collection: Part Two - Кэрол Мортимер, Кэрол Мортимер - Страница 36
ОглавлениеFor a while it was quiet in the room while they ate hungrily after a hard day of toil and travel. The silence was testament to Prue’s fine cooking, Polly told herself as she slanted a look at Lord Mantaigne every now and again to make sure he was duly impressed. If he kept Prue on to cook for him, she and Jane would be safe. A plan to point out the skills and talents of her fellow interlopers took shape in her head as she tried to distract herself from his all-too-vivid presence next to her as everyone else had insisted, as if she was chatelaine and he the lord. He might employ them as a skeleton staff or caretakers if she convinced him how loyal and hardworking they were, despite the odd quirk that led to them being rootless in the first place.
‘Were you and Mr Peters on the road for long today, Lord Mantaigne?’ Lady Wakebourne asked politely.
‘Peters joined me at Dorchester, but the rest of us took the journey from Derbyshire slowly to pace my team and let the wagons catch up every day.’
‘They look fine beasts and your team are high-steppers, aren’t they? I don’t suppose they enjoyed being held back like a string of donkeys,’ Tobias declared, and Polly glared at her eldest brother for breaking his absorbed silence. How typical that the only thing to divert him from his dinner was the team of perfectly matched greys now happily settled in their stables.
‘The dray horses were bred for strength and not speed and can’t match the pace of my greys, so we made slow progress by the standards of a true whip, but it was an easy enough journey at this time of year,’ Lord Mantaigne said with a ready smile, and Polly had to stifle an urge to tell her brothers to be quiet and eat their dinner so it might be over with sooner.
They had little chance to converse with gentlemen, isolated as they were from local society by their poverty and dubious status as unofficial residents of Dayspring Castle. One day she must face the puzzle of finding suitably gentlemanly occupations for three quick and energetic boys who no longer enjoyed the privileges they’d been born to. For now she supposed it would do them good to see how easily a true gentleman conducted himself in company, but she hoped they didn’t learn any of the idle, rakish and expensive ways this one could afford to indulge in along the way.
She loved her little brothers fiercely and would never be without them, but it was hard to be father, mother and everyone else to them. The burden felt especially heavy now they must make a new life out of nothing again. Dayspring had given them a life of peace and usefulness after their lives became a wasteland. If they hadn’t stumbled on Lady Wakebourne in as sad a case as they were and this place so temptingly empty and forsaken, they would not have had it, though, and Polly sighed at the idea of taking to the roads again, in search of some other place to live until someone claimed it back. She fought a deep-down weariness at this constant struggle to keep her family happy, healthy and hopeful and told herself to count the blessing of a roof over their head and good food in their bellies for one more night.
‘Your sighs could rival the gusts even the shutters can’t keep out tonight, Miss Trethayne,’ Lord Mantaigne remarked.
‘It’s been a long day, my lord. I suppose I must be weary of it,’ she replied, refusing to squirm at the disapproving look Lady Wakebourne shot her to say she should remember her manners and make polite conversation.
‘I suppose you must be,’ he said blandly. ‘I could be a little tired of it myself if I let the idea take root.’
‘Aye, your lads from the wagons was worn to a thread. We took their share of stew and what bread we could spare to the stables so they didn’t have to wash and shave until morning,’ Dotty Hunslow said cheerfully.
Polly smiled a ‘thank you’ for that attempt to lighten the tension she’d caused with her edgy feeling they were walking on eggshells. By not being able to put her fear out her head that they were about to be homeless, she’d probably made it more likely they would be ejected than not.
‘My thanks for making Dacre and my stable lads comfortable, ma’am,’ Lord Mantaigne said as politely as if Dotty was a patroness of Almack’s Club. Polly had to admire his manners, even if they highlighted her poor ones. ‘I warned them not to expect much at the end of their journey, but you have made a liar out of me.’
‘Even though you hate the place?’ Sam Barker, the one-legged sailor who arrived here without a penny in the pocket of his ragged breeches, said from his seat with its back to the window where the worst of the draughts came in.
‘Even so,’ Mantaigne replied with a straight look. Sam met it with a challenge, then a nod, as if admitting this lord had backbone, despite his sins.
‘And who can blame you for that, my boy? Now, we’re at dinner, not the local assizes, Sam Barker. Let us talk of matters conducive to good digestion rather than past sins,’ Lady Wakebourne said gently, and Polly was almost ashamed of her own determination not to see good in the man. It would be dangerous to like the spoilt aristocrat at her side and that was that.
‘This is far too delicious a meal to mar with mine at any rate,’ Lord Mantaigne agreed, ‘but where has the artist who produced this fine meal hidden herself away?’
‘She’s not an artist, she’s Prue,’ Polly’s littlest brother, Josh, informed him with a nod to where the sisters were sitting, flushed with pleasure at such praise.
‘Then thank you, Mrs Prue. If the Prince of Wales gets word of your culinary skills, you’ll be gracing his kitchens at Carlton House as fast as he can carry you off.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t like that,’ Prue said shyly, and Jane nodded wisely by her side.
‘I’ll be grateful if you continue here then. Tomorrow I’ll find you a couple of assistants, though, as my arrival has doubled the number of people you cook for and more will have to be found if the old place is to be put in any sort of order.’
Lord Mantaigne offered such help so lightly Polly frowned, certain he meant his offer to have a limit. It sounded like a ‘for now’, until he decided what to do with this unwanted part of his splendid inheritance. Even if he ordered repairs to stop the castle from falling down, he would order it closed up again afterwards.
‘What about the rest of us?’ she blurted out and instantly regretted it.
Her sharp query arose from a stab of intense envy. He had so much while they could live on a small portion of it—if only he’d stay away. The others were shocked she had raised such a topic at the dinner table, gasped at her temerity, or sat in their seats, fearing they’d be turned out now she’d asked what no one else dared.
‘Well, really, Polly!’ Lady Wakebourne exclaimed.
‘Coo, Miss Poll, you ain’t half got a big mouth,’ Jago said admiringly.
‘A good question, but perhaps not an aid to good digestion,’ Mr Peters said wryly.
‘Do you ride, Miss Trethayne?’ Lord Mantaigne asked coolly when the murmurs of agreement or dissent had died down.
‘Of course I do,’ she said scornfully, before she remembered she always did so astride and had no ladylike habit, or even an old-fashioned and not particularly ladylike one such as this shabby and decades-out-of-date evening gown.
‘Then meet me in the stable yard after breakfast tomorrow and show me what you’ve been doing here. Once I know that, I shall be in a better position to decide what comes next.’
‘You can’t ride about the place dressed as a young man now his lordship is here, child,’ Lady Wakebourne put in with genuine distress in her voice. ‘You won’t have a reputation left to whistle down the wind if you gallop about the countryside alone with such a gentleman looking like some heathen amazon.’
‘Nonsense, ma’am, we shall take Peters with us. He’s more of a proper gentleman than I shall ever be, so nobody will dare to think ill of us in his sober presence. My consequence is much improved since he entered my employ; I preen myself on the appearance of virtue without the effort of reform.’
‘I am, of course, suitably grateful for your good opinion,’ Mr Peters said in his usual quietly ironic fashion.
Polly wondered at the steel under his words. Who was Mr Peters to dare challenge a man of rank and power, even if he did it so subtly it took sharp ears to notice it?
‘You need not fear for Miss Trethayne’s reputation in such company, Lady Wakebourne,’ Lord Mantaigne finished with an air of settling the question.
‘Since I don’t ride, I must be content with your word as a gentleman you will chaperon Miss Trethayne as effectively as I would, Mr Peters?’
Polly was touched by Lady Wakebourne’s concern for a reputation already in shreds, given her unusual mode of dress and the life she had lived these past few years.
‘Of course, my lady, it will be my pleasure,’ the enigmatic secretary agreed with the deference he refused his powerful employer.
‘Should I be feeling sadly cast down by your lack of faith in my gentlemanly instincts?’ the marquis mused with a smile in his eyes Polly mustn’t find disarming.
‘Probably,’ she replied and lowered her gaze to her plate in the hope Prue’s cooking would put tomorrow to the back of her mind.
‘You are about as easily cast down as a distant planet, young man,’ Lady Wakebourne muttered into her soup.
‘How well you seem to know me, ma’am—were you a long-standing friend of my godmother?’
‘Oh, no, she belonged to a more sophisticated set than I aspired to. My maiden aunt was one of her bosom bows, but she’s been dead for fifteen years or more now and I doubt you remember her.’
‘Virginia had a variety of terrifying friends who would interrogate me about my morals and intentions in life and the shameful state of my neck and hands when I was a grubby schoolboy. I dare say your relative was a sweet little lady with a doting fondness for small boys and would not dream of such an inquisition?’
‘I never found her heart of gold if she possessed one, which I doubt.’
‘Oh, dear, who was your particular tartar in petticoats, then?’
‘Miss Euphemia Badlerstone,’ Lady Wakebourne said with a shudder Lord Mantaigne echoed, and Polly felt it set off a twinge of heat and dangerous fellow feeling stir deep within her once more.
‘I remember her only too well: a lady of great perception, little patience and a devastatingly frank tongue.’
‘I would think less of you if you pretended she was sweet, gentle or charitable,’ Lady Wakebourne said indulgently.
Polly only just bit back a groan at the thought her friend was about to adopt another lone boy. This one was certainly not in any need of her fierce protection and frustrated maternal love. Lord Mantaigne was clearly able to take care of himself, and Polly couldn’t imagine how any woman would see his all-too-evident strength and boldness and feel in the least bit motherly, because she certainly didn’t.
Something told her he was even more complex than she’d first thought under his shell of indifference, so she tried to let his genial small talk wash over her as she ate her dinner. Then she went through the plans she had for tomorrow in her head in order to put them off for a day that might never come now he was here. This was the true business of her life: ensuring there was enough to eat and a safe place for her family to sleep. Things she grew up taking for granted were a vague memory for Toby and Harry and a myth to Josh and she was all that stood between them and destitution. She would keep standing there, though, and this feral attraction to a marquis could not be allowed to get in the way.
Heaven forbid her boys ever looked like Jago, Joe and Benjie did when Lady Wakebourne lifted them down from the cart she had driven back from London. None of them could blame their new friend for snatching three little exhausted climbing boys from their master one night as he lay drunk in the gutter on their earnings, but for a long time they lived in dread of someone connecting Lady Wakebourne’s last desperate appearance in polite society with their disappearance. She had gone to see if anything was left from the disaster her husband had wrought to add to what they could grow or make from a mouldering castle and its neglected gardens.
It was a reminder Polly must still fight to make sure her boys were never dependent on cold charity. Thank heavens all but Josh were too big for such a trade now, but it took months for the sores on Jago, Joe and Ben’s poor burnt and soot-encrusted feet to heal, longer for their shocked eyes to spark with mischief and to this day Jago had nightmares about being trapped in dark and ever narrowing chimneys. He was still only twelve years old, and Polly caught herself glaring at Lord Mantaigne for having so many chimneys in need of small climbing boys to clean them.
She had no right to judge him, she reminded herself. How would she have been by now if she had lived the life of a lady of quality? Ladies were not supposed to question the grand order of things and even the thought of such a little life made her yawn. Lady Wakebourne misread it as weariness and rose to her feet as if she had been waiting for someone else to wilt so she could too. Gathering her female troops about her, she was gracious as the men sprang to their feet.
‘I think we might as well retire, ladies,’ she remarked. ‘There is a great deal to do in the morning and no point wasting candles if we’re only going to nod over our needlework.’
‘Until the morning then, Lady Wakebourne; Miss Trethayne; ladies,’ Lord Mantaigne said with a bow that made no differences between them.
‘Boys, you might consider yourselves quite grown up and able to sit up half the night plaguing your elders, but I do not. Bedtime, my lads,’ Lady Wakebourne ordered.
* * *
‘Will he let us stay, Poll?’ Toby asked her quietly as soon as his younger brothers were asleep.
‘I doubt it,’ she had to admit because he was too old to be fobbed off with a shrug or a diversionary tactic.
‘We’ll come about somehow, though, Sis, don’t you worry,’ he said with a grave look that ought to be beyond a boy born to comfort and privilege, even if there was little of either in his life now.
Toby was the only one of her half-brothers old enough to fully remember how it felt to wander the world with nowhere to go and an ever-dwindling supply of money to do it on. Polly had tried so hard to make their new life an adventure; to encourage him to look forward to every day as full of hope and possibility instead of fear. She had felt enough of that for both of them and memory of it made her heart thump.
‘We shall be together, that’s all that matters,’ she replied with an attempt at light-heartedness he met with a brave smile.
‘I’m a man this time, Poll,’ he told her sleepily.
‘You are, love, but men still need sleep, and you’ve had a long day, so let tomorrow take care of itself.’
‘You will discuss anything important with me, won’t you?’ he asked, and yet again she had to face the reality her brothers were growing up without much more prospects in life than Jago, Benjie and Joe.
‘Of course, and we’re the bold and bad Trethayne family, don’t forget.’
‘Aye, of course we are,’ he mumbled with a sleepy sigh and slept as suddenly and completely as a boy must after a day of action and excitement.
‘Oh, love, may you dream of better things,’ she whispered softly, dousing the candle before tiptoeing out by memory.
‘Are they asleep?’ Lady Wakebourne murmured when Polly shut the door as softly as ancient oak and a heavy latch allowed.
‘Yes, it would take an army marching about the courtyard to wake them now.’
‘Then come to my chamber and talk while we take some of that claret Barker found in the inner cellar. I dare say you’ll get no sleep without it, despite what I said when we left the great room tonight.’
Polly and Lady Wakebourne crossed the courtyard to the women’s quarters together. No doubt Lord Mantaigne would find it amusing such barriers existed in such a ramshackle household, but it was a matter of pride to confound those who called them vagabonds and misfits—not that many villagers dared say so after they met Lady Wakebourne. Polly bore the lantern to light them to the stout door of the inner courtyard and a suite of rooms that once belonged to the castle steward.
‘Hold still, girl,’ her companion demanded, using both hands to try to raise the latch holding the ancient studded oak door firmly shut. ‘What’s the point of being half a foot taller than you should be if you can’t act the footman once in a while?’
‘None at all I dare say,’ Polly replied placidly, wondering why the lady’s blunt comments didn’t set her teeth on edge as any slight criticism by Lord Mantaigne did. ‘Would you like me to try?’
‘No, keep that light steady and I’ll do well enough.’
‘May I open it for you then, my lady?’ the marquis’s deep, amused voice asked out of the gloom.
Polly wondered why instinct hadn’t made her nerves jump the moment they stepped out of the tower door into the darkness, since he was obviously strolling about the inner court, making what he could of his domain in the pitch dark.
‘Of course you can, Mantaigne, it’s your door.’
‘I apologise for its intransigence,’ he replied as if he’d escorted them home from the play and conducted them to their door as a proper gentleman should. He shifted the heavy iron latch the other side of the wrought handle with one hand and gently pushed open the door.
‘Well done, my boy,’ Lady Wakebourne said as if he had just achieved some hugely difficult quest and took advantage of the lamp left burning low in the little hallway to sail upstairs before Polly could follow her.
‘I suspect we’re being left to settle our differences and stop making her uncomfortable, Miss Trethayne,’ he said as she frowned after her so-called friend.
Differences could be good. Particularly if they kept you from having silly daydreams of what might be for her and this potent and infuriating lord if life had only been different. She would still be nigh six foot tall and he would be as armoured against her in a Mayfair ballroom as he was in the starlit darkness of a Dorset night. Any other reasonably young and not unattractive lady might tempt him to test her virtue once they were alone with the sea whispering on the shore and spring seeming to soften the very air around them, but Polly Trethayne was in no danger.
‘I don’t think we’ll ever be bosom bows, my lord. We have neither interests nor acquaintances in common,’ she said as distantly as she could when her foolish inner self wanted to rail about his immunity to her as every move he made seemed of unique interest to her.
‘We should give each other the benefit of the doubt until we know better, but if you’d like to confide your dearest secrets in me I’ll try not to broadcast them,’ he said so blandly she felt her palm itch to slap the smile off his face.
‘I would sooner tell them to a town crier,’ she muttered darkly.
It simply wasn’t acceptable to find his answering chuckle disarming. They had moved away from the circle of light cast by the lamp he’d hung on a hook by the old door to light her way back. Now it felt too intimate in the shadowy courtyard for her peace of mind.
‘Yet we must rub along over the next few weeks if I’m to do what I set out to here. If you and your friends remain here, we must reach some sort of truce and make it obvious Lady Wakebourne is your very strict chaperon. There is no other way we can live under the same roof without scandal, and I’m not the one gossip will reflect on most. This isn’t a fair world, Miss Trethayne, and we have to pretend we respect each other if we’re to stay at Dayspring with any appearance of respectability,’ he said soberly, and drat him for being right.
‘I suppose so,’ she admitted reluctantly, and that won her another soft masculine laugh that made her shiver with warmth and feel the natural order of things had been upended.
‘And I’m really not such a bad fellow if you ignore my shortcomings,’ he said as if he was coaxing a wary dog to like him.
Ridiculously offended he showed none of the caution he would have used toward any other lady of her age and single status, she squirmed at the prickly discomfort of being close to him. He was so oblivious to her as woman he’d hardly noticed she was one since that first heady moment when he seemed to see it very clearly indeed, but how stupid to feel piqued by his indifference now.
‘I’m sure your friends hang on your every word and deed, Lord Mantaigne, so you hardly need me to join in. I am squatting in your grand castle with my friends and family and your coming must change that, so you can hardly expect me to welcome you with open arms. You’ll turn us back into beggars and vagabonds sooner or later, however nicely you try to wrap it up in ifs and maybes.’
‘You’re not like any vagrants I ever came across,’ he muttered, as if his inability to slot them into convenient places troubled him.
‘I suspect they’re not like them either, if you can see past rags and desperation to the person underneath. I’ve had all the sneers and slights most beggars get thrown at them over the years, my lord, but words only sting for a while and blows are much harder to shrug off.’
‘Someone hit you?’ he asked indignantly as if it was an affront he would dash off on his charger to avenge in blood.
‘Of course, and attempted worse when I said them nay. I was a beggar woman with a babe in her arms and two children clutching at her skirts. Why else do you think I stopped wearing them in the end, my lord?’
‘For ease and to fit the hard labour you undertake, I suppose,’ he admitted with a shrug she could feel rather than see. ‘Maybe you’re right and I am only a man of fashion and not a deep thinker,’ he added.
‘If you truly believe that, you really are a fool,’ she said impatiently.
‘You are a very forthright female, Miss Trethayne.’
‘And you’re a cunning opponent, Lord Mantaigne. You deflect difficult questions so ably I don’t suppose your foes recall asking them in the first place.’
‘Yet you have an uncomfortable knack of clinging to them whatever hares I put up to divert you, but I really didn’t set out to be your enemy.’
‘Since you own this place and I’ve been living in it without your permission for nearly seven years, that makes us enemies whatever you set out to be.’
‘First I’d have to care about Dayspring and I’ll never do that. If you and your friends living here means I need never come back, you can all stay until doomsday as far as I’m concerned.’
‘For a man who doesn’t care you’re almost passionate about your birthplace, my lord,’ she pointed out slyly.
Polly saw him flinch now her eyes were accustomed to the faint starlight even in this dark corner of the courtyard. The idea she might have caused him pain gave her no satisfaction at all and sparked a little echo of his hurt in her own gut. It was worrying to feel such connection to a man far outside her reach and experience. She retreated into the darkest pool of shadows lest he could read her too easily back.
* * *
Tom caught the faint movement even as he tried to defend himself against her curiosity. No, that was harsh; he couldn’t accuse her of so simple a human failing. This odd mix of a woman now trying to hide her thoughts in darkness as she wouldn’t let him had lived her life shorn of the pretences, as well as the comforts, of her kind. No wonder she was impatient of the strategies he used to fend off anyone who wanted to know the Tom under his wealth, fashionable clothes and titles.
He felt a nigh overwhelming urge to let her find him and couldn’t recall feeling such connection with a stranger since the day Virginia had marched into his life and changed it for ever. His mouth quirked in a reluctant smile as he recalled how little he’d liked his godmother for breaching his defiant hatred of the world that could treat him as this one had so far. Virginia took no notice of his barricades either; she marched straight over them with one impatient shake of her still-handsome head and informed him he was to live with her from now on and everything would be different, beginning with a haircut and a bath. Even that threat didn’t stop something hard and brittle at the heart of him from cracking open to let a new Tom step out.
The man who grew out of that boy sighed for the awkward and mistrustful urchin he’d been and almost wished himself other than who he was now. Once he was gone Polly Trethayne could do what she wanted with Dayspring and he mustn’t wish he could be at her side, wanting it too.
