Читать книгу The Regency Season Collection: Part Two - Кэрол Мортимер, Кэрол Мортимер - Страница 37

Chapter Six

‘What the devil was that?’ Tom demanded as the echo of a distant thud carried through the still night.

‘Damned if I know,’ she whispered, sounding more gruffly impatient than he was. ‘Someone has been getting into the closed-up wings of the house at night and we don’t know what they want or how they get in.’

‘Smugglers?’ he suggested grimly, knowing there was a risk the local rogues were emboldened by his hatred of the place to use it for their own ends.

‘You must know better than that, my lord. You spent your earliest years here, even if you now live as far away from the sea as a body can get.’

‘Aye, too much starlight,’ he agreed as he listened for any other signs they were not alone out here in the night and felt the prickle of her so closeness shiver against his skin in the intimate dark.

Confound it, but even listening for what shouldn’t be in the night wasn’t enough to divert him from this ridiculous consciousness of her so close and feminine and even more goddess-like than ever in her shabby and ill-fitting gown and old-fashioned petticoats.

‘News will have got about that you’re here by now as well,’ she warned, and he supposed she was right, given the network of gossip and intrigue that operated so effectively in any areas where the free-traders ran their illicit cargoes.

‘Maybe that’s what spurred them into action,’ he wondered out loud.

‘Then what brought them here last week or the one before?’

‘When did it begin, then?’

‘I felt there was something wrong before the turn of the year, but I wasn’t sure until a couple of weeks ago. Now I need to know how they get in and out and why they seem to be looking for something, rather than hiding it or fetching it away as you would expect the free-traders to do. Everyone knows the castle is all but empty and anything left behind is so heavy or useless it has no value, or it would have been taken away for safe keeping when the castle was closed up. Either they are curious youths hell-bent on some sort of secret carouse, or your second guardian did not clear out the newer parts of the castle as well as he did the older one where we live. I can vouch for the fact he did a very good job indeed on our quarters.’

‘Virgil Winterley was an efficient man. When he and my godmother decided to do something they always did it to the best of their ability—they took me on when anyone else would have blenched and run away at first sight of the sullen brat I was then.’

‘I find that difficult to believe, my lord.’

‘That I was sullen or a brat?

‘You are almost too much in control of your temper and I can’t visualise you as the furious and defiant urchin even my littlest brother can turn into at times.’

‘Oh, visualise it and multiply it by a dozen, Miss Trethayne,’ Tom told her softly, his thoughts in the past with the resentful, terrified boy he had been for the three years of his early life between five and eight when his first guardian controlled his young life with sadistic thoroughness. ‘I’m astonished Virgil didn’t bundle me up, drive halfway across the country and leave me on the madhouse doorstep for my old guardian to take back, however few wits he had left.’

‘So old Maggie was wrong about you being so angelic, then?’

‘You should have listened a little harder. She might have said I looked like an angel as a child, not that I ever behaved like one. From what little I recall before Philip Grably turned her off, my old nurse was far too honest to tell anyone her former charge was aught but a spoilt and hasty-tempered urchin.’

‘She did say you’d have turned out as proud as a turkey cock if that devil hadn’t tried to break your spirit, but she truly loved you, my lord. She was still mourning her inability to defy the man and stay with you last time we spoke.’

‘I don’t remember anything much of my life before my father died. It feels as if someone built a wall between before and after.’

‘You were very young, so little wonder that you can’t recall much.’

‘For all I know I could be my father’s bastard smuggled into the nurseries one night when his wife wasn’t looking, as my guardian told me I was on one memorable occasion.’

‘I think that unlikely.’

‘Aye, but a great deal about my life seems unlikely now I’m back here.’

‘Us included?’

‘You especially. You’re the most unexpected surprise of all.’

‘And not a very welcome one either, I suspect.’

‘Oh, no, you have rarely been more wrong. It’s not every day a man meets a goddess in breeches, and I wouldn’t have missed the experience for all my castles and unearned wealth put together.’

Tom felt her start at his clumsy reminder he was a vigorous and lusty man under all his fine plumage and she was a magnificent and very desirable female under her rag-bag of a wardrobe. He’d been doing so well until that moment as well and he cursed his normally glib tongue for failing him with a woman who felt a lot more important than any of the impeccably bred young ladies trailed under his nose by their hopeful mamas had ever been to him, try how they might to catch themselves a marquis. He felt as if every word they said had a significance that was almost terrifying as they whispered of the past out here in the now and listened for intruders into an empty and echoing mansion nobody wanted to live in. If he’d read about himself and his odd mix of feelings in a book he wouldn’t have believed a word of it, but here he was, senses more alert than he ever recalled them and every male cell in his body awake and alert towards the very female puzzle at his side.

‘We weren’t talking about me, my lord. I would like your help tracking down whoever is here under cover of darkness, but if you’re going to be facetious I’ll find out alone.’

‘That you won’t,’ he muttered as he cast his mind back to that first soft and distant thud as another fainter one carried across the yard on the clear night air.

‘Smugglers trying to remove a cargo before I can look closely at the place or employ a proper staff?’ he suggested as her tension told him there was no point pretending he hadn’t heard.

‘There have been lights on the upper floors now and again as well,’ she admitted reluctantly, as if she suspected local rumour would reach him sooner or later and he would wonder why she hadn’t told him about them.

‘Seen by those out in the night who should not be, I suppose?’ he asked laconically, remembering his own nodding acquaintance with the night-hawks from his childhood. ‘The local poachers didn’t betray me to my guardian although he’d have winked at their sins if they did; so why would I hand them over to the local magistrates now?’

‘Because you’re no longer a child and hold our fates in your hand?’ she said bitterly, and once again he felt the pull of connection between them as he saw how hard her life must have been these past few years and cared that she had suffered so much for the boys she obviously loved more than her own comfort.

The Marquis of Mantaigne famously cared for nobody and here he was teetering on the edge of worrying about a pack of strangers and one in particular. It wouldn’t do. He must find out what was going on here as Virginia asked and leave without a backward look. He might leave an echoing, half-empty barrack behind him, but it would be a well-run one if Peters had a say in the matter.

‘I’m just a man like any other, Miss Trethayne,’ he defended himself against her scorn and wondered why.

‘And you’re making too much noise,’ she muttered distractedly.

Her preoccupation with whoever was invading his castle in the dark clearly overcame any faint interest she might have had in him until someone trumped it. He felt piqued that she could so easily dismiss this wild curiosity to know more. He’d been so sure it was mutual, but perhaps he flattered himself. Maybe she was immune; his warmth and scent and the sound of his voice didn’t do anything spectacular to her senses, now her sight was blunted by darkness, as hers did for him.

He wanted to employ every sense he had to learn all about her, but could he really feel such strong attraction to a woman who only wanted him to keep quiet or go away? Unless he chanced a rebuff and violated the laws of hospitality by kissing a guest under his roof to find out, he’d never know. Now the idea was in his head it was the devil of a job to ignore the temptation to do just that and risk an Arctic reception to find out if she was as indifferent to him as she wanted to be. No, only a rogue would do that and he wasn’t quite one of those yet, so he exerted his brain and came up with an answer that almost made him groan out loud.

‘Surely you don’t intend to go and see for yourself?’ he asked incredulously and could have sworn he saw her bite her lip and silently curse that lucky guess. He hadn’t thought even she was that wild and reckless until that giveaway silence told him he’d hit a nail on the head.

‘Not if you won’t be quiet I don’t,’ she managed with a snap that wouldn’t carry on the night air.

‘And do what?’ he gritted as softly as he could between his teeth, shaken by the thought of her confronting some villain in the dark.

‘Find out,’ she muttered impatiently, as if it was so obvious she couldn’t imagine why he had to ask.

‘Not on your own you don’t,’ he was surprised into arguing as she took things into her own hands and stole away as silently as if part of the shadows herself.

He grabbed her hand and felt her start and get ready to demand he unhand her, as if she was royalty and he was committing treason by touching without permission. He smiled grimly into the darkness as he felt the firmness of her long, slender hand in his, the work-worn toughness of her skin and the realness of a woman who made her own way in the direst of circumstances. It felt right there, as if it belonged, and that would never do. A sharp bolt of awareness shot through him as it had at first contact with this warm, all too live woman against his skin back in the stable yard. Drat it, but he wanted her as he couldn’t recall wanting a woman so urgently since he was a desperate and callow youth and there wasn’t a hope of having her and being able to look himself in the face next day when he shaved.

You’re playing with fire, Mantaigne, he warned himself sternly, but he kept hold of her hand through her resistance, then silent acceptance he wouldn’t let her flit off into the night and tackle who knew what invaders on her own. Recalling all those illicit adventures he’d risked in the darkness of this very place when he crept down from his tower and evaded capture for a day or two, he felt as if a cold place in his heart had warmed as he set out with her.

You’re not alone at Dayspring this time then, Mantaigne? Virginia’s voice seemed to whisper out of the night as he crept along the darkest part of the courtyard and through the elaborate arch that gave access to the newer parts of the castle.

No, it seems the nights here are full of things that ought not to be, he replied in his head as he might if his beloved godmama were witnessing this unlikely adventure.

Good point, he almost heard her say, and his sense that Virginia was here vanished as he felt Polly Trethayne’s hand tense in his and the very alive woman at his side took up all his attention once more.

He sensed her impatience with him even as he felt her draw an arrow on his skin. Biting down on a gasp when it felt as sensuous as half-a-dozen nights in his current mistress’s bed, he reminded himself it was only her way of directing him in the dark. Anyway, it wasn’t right to lust after a lady he had only met today and who lived under his roof. It wouldn’t be right to lust after her if she’d been his best friend since childhood, he reminded himself with a wry quirk of his lips, but knowing it didn’t seem to stop him. Allowing himself be led for once, he peered through the shadows at the firmly closed side door he knew led into the grand wing.

Glad she couldn’t follow any stealthy intruders inside, he soon found out he’d misjudged her. He muffled a curse as she tried once again to wriggle her hand out of the grip he was having the devil of a job to make firm but not painful. Somehow he managed it and heard a soft grunt of frustration before she surprised him by dipping down to delve in a nigh invisible nook in the carved archway with her other hand to extract a key. All sorts of question about the keys to Dayspring Castle that were supposed to be lying in Peters’s trunk in the ancient castle armoury flitted through his mind. Best not to ask how she got this one, he supposed, as she bit off an annoyed hiss at his continued grip on her left hand and fitted the key in the lock with her right.

Tom did his best to put aside the thought of the fine pair of Manton’s best duelling pistols sitting uselessly in his own trunk. He supposed there was a faint hope Miss Trethayne might have a pistol concealed in the pocket of her ridiculously ancient gown, but he was probably giving the bird-witted female too much credit for common sense. She really needed to carry one if she intended to delve every mystery Dayspring held, but something told him she was as unarmed as he was.

Now she was silently turning the key in the modern lock his lawyers had probably ordered fitted when he abandoned this place to its ghosts. It must have been oiled, and he revised his opinion of her foresight up a notch as his anger at her for being even more reckless than he’d thought her went up several more. He was tempted to shout a challenge and hope it sent her quarry scurrying down whatever rat-hole they’d come from. He would do it if he sensed a threat the rat would turn and bite, then track the vermin another day, when she was busy interfering in someone else’s life. No, this was her life, more than it ever would be his, and now they were in here it behoved him to pay attention. The ifs and maybes of feeling some sort of connection with this wretched female that neither of them wanted might go away if he ignored them hard enough, except the low hum of excitement in his body as her hand tightened in warning on his told him that was very unlikely.

She nudged him to help her close the door as silently as she had opened it, then tried to push the key into his hand to let him know she wanted it locked again so she could flit off alone into the profound darkness in this part of the castle he hated most. He silently refused to take it. Hearing her huff an annoyed sigh, then turn it herself, he frustrated her as she tried to brush him aside again. She couldn’t afford to demand out loud he let her go so she could run her head into any reckless adventure that came her way uninhibited by his presence.

His senses reached past the exploration his baser instincts were urging him to make of this warm and reckless female, and he told himself any distraction must be welcome. He was almost rigid with need in this heavy darkness as parts of his imagination he couldn’t seem to control any more demanded an intimacy they should never have. If she felt even a tithe of the same affliction, she would never admit it. For all her outrageous attire, air of confidence and what he judged to be mature years for a single lady, there was a curious innocence about her. She had done all she could to keep the wary barrier of strangers between them.

Now they were here, he suddenly didn’t want that barrier there any more. It made him feel lost in this sense-stealing darkness. He had spent most of his life avoiding this place and now he was wilfully courting the worst parts of his nightmares with the most unlikely siren he’d ever encountered at his side. Any moment now she might find out what a coward he was at heart and somehow it mattered far more than it should what this penniless and vagrant female thought.

No, that was quite enough worrying about Miss Trethayne’s all-too-obvious contempt for the Marquis of Mantaigne; they were here now and might as well find out what they could. Apart from her, he scented only dust and disuse, and the droppings of generations of bats and mice on the air. For a moment he wished he’d brought his best spaniel with him to track the intruders, but a housebreaker would hear Rupert coming long before the eager animal could corner him. Tom tried not to miss Rupert’s eager good humour and liking for his master anyway, telling himself he hadn’t set out to endear himself to anyone who loved Dayspring Castle so could hardly be surprised Miss Trethayne only held his hand now because he refused to let her go.

He swallowed a curse as his knee connected sharply with the carved newel post and he held his breath as even that soft thud echoed in the empty hall. As it died away he only just stopped himself whispering an excuse, then tried to put his memories of the layout between them and the silent blackness inside this echoing barn. Shutters kept even the faint starlight out and it felt as if the house was listening. Fanciful nonsense, but anything could be lurking in those shadows and Tom’s heart thumped, then raced; remembered fear snapping at his heels as they crept up the steps. It felt for a moment as if his guardian might leap out of the night to shout out half-mad accusations and taunts, then try to beat him senseless again. Tom licked suddenly dry lips and forced his old fears aside. He was more than big enough now to knock the weedy little tyrant down these stairs and into Hades, if he wasn’t there already.

Lord Mantaigne boxed and fenced with the best; rode the finest horses as hard as if the devil was on his heels when the mood took him and famously drove to an inch. He was a Corinthian and, if he cared enough to lead anyone, he could lead his chosen pack wherever he decreed they should go. Reminding himself of his usual light-hearted indifference to the world, he still felt the warmth of Polly Trethayne’s hand in his as they stole up the marble stairway together and was grateful not to be alone here this time all over again. Over the smell of long years of neglect he caught traces of soap and woman and fresh air, as if she had brought the scent of the spring itself here with her.

With his other hand he trailed an exploring finger through twenty years of dust and found finely tooled mahogany under his fingertips. It felt smooth and oddly warm under his hand, as if the old place was wistfully welcoming him home despite all he’d had done to it since he came of age.

On the top step they paused to gauge the silence. Tom felt her brace as if ready to rush into whatever trouble might be waiting, but he tried to convey the fact he was listening intently and they needed to gauge the dangers ahead before they dashed towards them. There; he heard a faint creak of distant movement on the other side of the state rooms from where they stood. He frowned into the darkness, knowing from bitter experience it was impossible to creep down the oak-boarded enfilade undetected.

‘The back stairs are made of stone,’ he murmured, as close to her ear as he could get so nobody could overhear.

He felt her nod, the whisper of a fine curl against his skin, and could picture her as vividly as if she was lit by half-a-dozen flambeaux. Despite the old clothes and her impatience with all things feminine she would look magnificent in her outmoded gown, but he was the Marquis of Mantaigne and she was a beggar-maid. He would have to fight his blazing attraction to a reluctant goddess and get on with whatever he had to do here, then leave.

Knowing his way by the uncomfortable memory of all the times he’d crept in and out of the servants’ hidden passageways about the house, he pulled her away from a board that always creaked and wasn’t sure if he was glad or disappointed when the door to the servants’ stair swung silently on its hinges.

‘We’ll have to go down to come back up,’ he warned her, so close to temptation he could easily breach the fractions of an inch between them and kiss her, if he wasn’t such a noble man and didn’t know he’d get his face slapped if he did.

‘Hurry up, then, we’ll die of old age before we get there at this rate.’

Fighting the seductive feel of her breath so near to his own ear, he could sense her lush mouth close enough to set about a sensory exploration. He’d not dreamed how much he’d like his lover to embark on such an intimacy until tonight and ordered himself to forget it again. He went down the steps in front of her, to stop her dashing into any trouble she found at the bottom of them and leaving him behind.

They were at the foot of them now and in the dark and echoing passage, built broad enough to get a horse and cart through to the vast kitchens and storerooms a great household once needed. Miss Trethayne gave a small sound of impatience and softly muttered, ‘Shame on you’, as their steps were softened by years of dust and detritus. His feet seemed to slide out from under him as he turned to listen to her in the darkness and whatever he’d slipped on shifted and tumbled him in a heap with Miss Polly Trethayne dragged on top of him by their linked hands.

‘Oof!’ he barked involuntarily and managed to shift her weight slightly as he got his breath back, hoping she wasn’t aware how delightful he found the feel of her curves against his winded body.

Not even the listening silence all around them could divert him from the delicious feel of nigh six feet of Miss Polly Trethayne lying prone on his torso. For a long moment it seemed as if she felt it too; a breath-stealing anticipation; an odd belief she was uniquely right in his arms. He heard an unsteady sigh, felt her heartbeat thud against his own ribcage. He reached for her, cupped her head with reverent hands and drew her down until their lips met in a breath-stealing, open-mouthed kiss that made his world shift and left him desperate for more when she raised her head and made a soft sound halfway between a mew of protest and a regretful moan for more, then she was wriggling frantically to get up and he must act the gentleman again, somehow.

Her mouth had been so wondering and curious, then eager on his in those few moment that he felt a new world open up, then be snatched away. ‘Be still for a moment,’ he murmured, certain he’d embarrass them both by acting on this foolish urge to keep her here if she kept thrashing like a captured mermaid in his arms.

‘No, let me go,’ she demanded breathlessly, and he hastily opened his arms as soon as he caught a note of fear in her whispered voice, shame rising in a mortified flush he was glad neither of them could see in this musty gloom.

‘Precious little point in us going on now, I suppose,’ he observed as carelessly as he could while counting his bruises as he tried to calm his errant body.

‘Thanks to your clumsiness,’ she informed him crossly.

‘Indeed, I’m sorry my foot slipped in the dark. You would have done better without me,’ he admitted grumpily, wishing she seemed as deeply affected by that hasty kiss in the dark as he had been, and frustration thrummed through him like a fierce gale.

‘Nobody else knows this place as you do,’ she said as if she had to give the devil his due, even when she didn’t want to.

‘A misspent youth,’ he replied as lightly as he could. In truth, he used to creep down in the dead of night to sneak food, hoping his guardian’s lackeys were too drunk to drag him upstairs for a beating.

‘I heard you were just a boy when you left, so you hardly had time to indulge in one here,’ she argued softly.

He really didn’t want to talk about this when he already felt so vulnerable to her, as if he’d had a layer of skin peeled off him and had let her too close after that unwary kiss to fend off her questions as he’d like to.

‘I was eight,’ he admitted flatly.

‘Poor little boy,’ she murmured.

‘Not as poor as Lady Wakebourne’s waifs or even your own brothers would be without their fierce protectors. Do they know how lucky they are?’

‘When we march them to their lessons every day and they have to do without the ponies they want to pay for them? What do you think?’ she whispered.

It seemed education came before riding for boys lucky enough to live under this roof nowadays and yet he didn’t hear a hint of self-pity in her tone. Tom felt something heavy threaten to move in his chest and remake him. Simply being here had threatened to un-dam a torrent of feelings he’d kept to himself since leaving twenty years ago and now this.

Appalled by the idea this woman might come to mean far too much if he let her, he did his best to wall that wild notion up behind my lord’s facade of careless man about town, for her benefit as much as his. She was the oddest sort of lady he’d ever come across, but didn’t deserve to be shackled to a fool like him if they were discovered lurking in the dark. He scrambled to his feet, brushing down his once-fashionable attire and wrinkling his nose at the feel and smell of dust and dirt under his touch once again.

‘Dashed midden,’ he muttered grumpily, then tensed as stealthy footsteps sounded on the stairs from the other side of the building. Grabbing Polly’s hand out of sheer instinct and a worrying urge to protect her at any cost, he dragged her behind one of the great pillars that held the weight of the cantilevered stairs above and whispered to her to keep quiet. He felt her fury at his presumption and squeezed her hand in what he hoped felt like an apology as well as a plea to do as he asked for once. His pulse raced at the contact of her skin against his once more, even as he wondered at himself for not feeling on edge with apprehension instead of frustrated desire.

‘I tell thee I heard a noise down here,’ a strongly accented voice echoed down to them. Tom wondered how many felons were infesting a place no self-respecting burglar would walk half-a-dozen steps out of his way to break into.

‘It’s only rats,’ a more-educated voice informed him, and Tom shivered at a register in it he couldn’t quite place and didn’t like one little bit, then felt her fingers tighten about his as if she was trying to reassure him and that pulse of wanting turned into something far more dangerous.

‘They’re the biggest rats I ever did hear then, Guv’nor,’ the first man muttered as if not sure why he bothered arguing.

‘This whole place is an infernal rat-hole; what else would it be?’

‘One of them band of gypsies as lives here. I’m sure they heard us last time we was here, but still you keep coming back. They’ll inform on us if you ain’t careful.’

‘Not they—if they do they’ll be out of here faster than the cat can lick her ear. No magistrate will listen to a pack of vagrants.’

‘You’re lucky they’re only squatting here, then. I’d sooner be on the streets than live here myself, what with all them ghosts and witches they whispers about in the taproom of the Raven late at night.’

‘They’re nothing but a pack of smugglers, you superstitious fool, of course they tell tall stories to keep strangers away from the coast on dark nights so they can carry out their trade undisturbed,’ the other man said contemptuously.

Tom hesitated between a need to challenge him and a deeper one to keep Polly as far from this dark business as he could get her. From the tension in her fingers it felt as if she might be able to read his mind and that was a danger he really didn’t want to think about, so he worried about his castle instead. Reminding himself he didn’t care what happened to the place didn’t ring quite true now he was actually here. Perhaps he cared more than he wanted to, but if it wasn’t for this idiot he wouldn’t have had to come here and find out Dayspring meant something after all.

‘Tall tales or no, I can’t abide the place.’

‘Fool,’ the leader said with contempt that set Tom’s teeth on edge.

‘I ain’t the one spending every night you think the gentleman ain’t at work searching this old ruin for a pot of fairy gold, though, am I?’

‘It’s real, I tell you. The old fool raved about his treasury, insisted I get him in here so he could die with his riches around him.’

‘Shame he stuck his spoon in the wall before you did then, weren’t it?’

Tom stiffened as their whispered conversation sank in and he decided they were fools to discuss their mission where they could be overheard. His one-time guardian was put in a lunatic asylum once Virgil challenged his fitness to be anyone’s mentor. The man had ruled Dayspring for three years, though, and could have done what he liked here for all the trustees cared. Tom listed his larger assets in his head, but there was nothing important missing, so what had Grably convinced the more educated idiot was hidden in a house stripped of valuables when Virgil closed it?

‘Mind your tongue,’ the man said, and suddenly Tom knew why he’d shivered at the sound of his voice. Snapping orders like that, he sounded so like Tom’s guardian they must be related in some way.

‘Can you see aught?’ his reluctant companion asked, as if he sensed them in the shadows or thought some ghost the locals had scared him with was waiting to haunt him if he came closer.

‘No, there’s naught to see. You’re nervous as a spinster.’

Tom felt Miss Trethayne’s hand tighten involuntarily, as if it was a personal insult. He supposed she was unlikely to marry, penniless and responsible for her three brothers as she was. She might be at her last prayers by the time the last one flew the nest, but any woman less like the proverbial spinster he found hard to imagine. He was touched by her plight and wished he could see a way to offer her a respectable way out of it.

If he tried to settle a competence on her, she might find a suitor besotted enough to take on her three brothers, of course, but she wouldn’t accept it and they were not related so he couldn’t even suggest it. Paying a man like Peters to wed her stuck in his craw, even if he agreed to do it. Then there was this fierce desire he’d been struggling with since he set eyes on her in those outrageous, disreputable breeches of hers. Tom reminded himself his biggest ally in his fight to keep his hands off her was the lady herself, then remembered to listen to these housebreakers instead of worrying about things he couldn’t change just in time to catch their next bad-tempered exchange.

‘We’ve tramped up and down too often to see if anyone else has been down here,’ the second housebreaker was saying resentfully.

‘If I’d known we’d need to check this filth for footprints, I’d have flown across it like a bat. It was rats, I tell you, now get up here and help me search the state rooms before one of that ragtag band really comes to see what we’re up to.’

‘I don’t like the look in the old bruiser’s eye and he ain’t past milling either of us down, if you ask me.’

‘Fortunately I’m not that foolish.’