Читать книгу The Regency Season Collection: Part Two - Кэрол Мортимер, Кэрол Мортимер - Страница 39
ОглавлениеWhen they got to Home Farm he could see nothing wrong. Allcott was at the local market buying and selling cattle, but the neat-as-a-pin house and yard spoke of a diligent master. Yet Mrs Allcott didn’t meet his eyes when he complimented her on her hen yard and the neat gardens and the thriving orchards surrounding the ancient stone house.
‘Tell your husband I’m well content with his tenancy,’ he tried to reassure her.
‘Thank you, my lord, he’ll be glad to hear it,’ she said, her mouth in a tight line, as if it might say something it shouldn’t if she let herself relax.
‘Are you going to tell me why I might think Allcott an unsuitable tenant if I had actually managed to meet him, Miss Trethayne?’ he asked when they were in open country again.
‘He’s a fine farmer and a good man,’ she said defensively.
‘And?’
‘He was pressed into the navy as a lad and spent ten years at sea. They let him go after Trafalgar.’
‘And the navy don’t give up experienced seaman in times of war unless they can find no further use for them.’
‘No, Allcott was blinded as well as lamed in the battle,’ she replied as if she expected him to rescind the tenancy of Home Farm on the spot.
‘Then he’s an even more remarkable farmer than I thought,’ he said tightly, angry that she thought him such a shallow fool.
‘He knows more about soil and seed and weather with four senses than most men do with five,’ she said as if she needed to defend the man anyway.
Squashing another of those nasty little worms of jealousy, he nodded at the outskirts of Cable Wood ahead of them. ‘Is there anything I should know before I meet these woodsmen I’ve heard so little about?’
She couldn’t mean anything to him, or he to her, he reminded himself, so it didn’t matter that she thought him a hard-hearted monster. He only had to imagine the reception she’d get if he introduced her to the ton to shudder on her behalf. The fops and gossips would make her life a misery and the wolves would ogle her magnificent legs, raise their quizzing glasses to examine her lush breasts and tiny waist with leering attention, then pounce on her as soon as his back was turned.
He’d probably have to kill one or two to punish such disrespect, then flee to the Continent even though Bonaparte controlled most of it. No doubt she would follow, cursing his black soul while she lectured her brothers about the places they were seeing on their less-than-grand tour. No, the very idea of Miss Trethayne making the best of things at his side like that really wasn’t as seductive as it seemed and he had plenty to keep him occupied here for the next three months without fantasising over a woman who would like to pretend he didn’t exist.
‘What are you doing your best not to tell me this time, Miss Trethayne?’ he insisted wearily as she hesitated over answering his question honestly or leaving him to find out for himself.
‘One or two of them are a touch impaired,’ she said tightly.
‘Can they do their job?’
‘Of course, you only have to look around you to know that.’
‘Then why expect me to turn off men who keep the rides neat and my woods just so?’
‘Because they could get no work elsewhere.’
‘Until today not even my worst enemies have accused me of following the crowd, yet you seem to have done so before we even met, Miss Trethayne.’
‘You turned your back on a heritage most men would give their right arm to possess in a fit of pique. What did you expect the folk who depend on the castle and estate to think of you after that?’
A fit of pique? Oh, damnation take the dratted woman. Had she no idea what beatings and hardship the ragged little lord of all this had once endured? The old mess of rage and hurt pride and that feeling of being cut off from the good things in life threatened to spill out of him. If he let her, she’d wrench details out of him he hadn’t even confided to Virginia. No, if his beloved godmother couldn’t coax the details of his old life from him, he wasn’t dredging them up for the amusement of a vagabond Amazon queen determined to think the very worst of him.
‘How very tedious of me,’ he drawled as indifferently as he could manage.
‘Oh, why pretend? You watch every change here like a lover looking for changes in a beloved he hasn’t seen for too long, yet you expect us all to believe you hate the place and don’t care a tinker’s curse what happens to it? No, my lord, I don’t believe you and why should you stay untouched by life? You behave as if you are a summer butterfly; too gorgeous and empty to understand life isn’t only made up of sunny days and nectar.’
Tom felt Peters try to meld into the quiet wood like a green man. Part of him admired the trick, but the rest was busy fighting a ludicrous idea this woman had the right to rage at him. Tall and magnificent in her man’s saddle, she met his angry gaze as if it cost her nothing and if only life was different he might have agreed.
‘I don’t think I should care to start life as a caterpillar, or make a quick meal for a hungry bird or frog,’ he managed with a careless smile and a shrug that made his horse sidle, as if it sensed the turmoil Tom was trying so hard to ignore.
‘Perhaps you’re right, my Lord Mantaigne should be eaten by something nobler than a slimy little creature with a harsh voice.’
‘Aye, he ought, Miss Trethayne, but if it makes you feel any more charitable towards me, I’ll admit I have missed the Mantaigne lands, if not the castle that goes with it.’
‘I beg your pardon, my lord. I forgot our unequal stations and trespassed on your privacy,’ she said as if he’d intended a subtle rebuke by reminding her he was a marquis and she was only here because he hadn’t been for decades.
‘I think I preferred you in a rage,’ he said, her unexpected humility shocking the truth out of him.
‘I don’t suppose you’ll have to wait long for that. I’ve never been very good at minding my tongue,’ she admitted with an almost-smile even as her sharp eyes picked out the deep marks of a heavily laden cart on one of the cross-rides, and she veered off to examine them more closely.
‘I don’t think Miss Trethayne is concerned that your phantom woodsmen have been shirking their duties, do you?’ Peters muttered as if Tom might not have noticed.
‘No,’ Tom agreed, frowning as an image of similar ones leading to the cove at Dayspring reminded him this could be a dangerous coast for more reasons than unexpected currents and powerful spring tides.
He wished he’d listened harder when the subject of evading hefty government duties on so many things arose. This was his place, his heritage, and it was time he took some responsibility for it. He wondered about quizzing Polly Trethayne about the so-called free-traders, but something about her closed expression told him she would evade his questions. He decided Partridge would be his best source of information. Even if the old rogue wasn’t involved with the gangs who ran this stretch of coast, he wouldn’t be able to help himself finding out as much as he could about them.
* * *
The woodsmen were working on a tangled mess of dead trees and brambles he supposed he should be ashamed of. Most had strong backs and put the arms they had left to good use. Did Miss Trethayne really think he’d dismiss them for having served their country, then been discarded when the enemy fought back? From the sharp and defensively hunched shoulders that came his way once they realised who he was, she wasn’t alone in that view of him. Tom silently cursed his careless reputation and picked out the leader of the now-quiet foresters.
‘Good day,’ he said in a voice he knew would carry round the clearing.
‘Good day, milord,’ replied the giant who had been hefting a huge axe until he laid it down so carefully Tom knew he’d been tempted to swing it in his direction.
‘Aye,’ he said with a grin that acknowledged what a tempting target he made for an angry man, ‘it certainly seems to be.’
‘It’s spring and the sun’s shining.’
‘It is now,’ Tom said with a nod to the carefully cleared brambles and other brush waiting for the bonfire nearby. ‘You have let light in on years of neglect, so I must thank you for doing a fine job here.’
‘Must you, milord? That ain’t the way I heard it.’
‘I understand you doubt my intentions to the Dayspring estate, but I’m not used to having my words questioned when they’re hardly out of my mouth,’ Tom said evenly, holding the giant’s remaining eye steadily and feeling as if the man would like to challenge him, but didn’t quite dare.
He raised his voice so the other men could hear him clearly in the now-silent clearing. ‘You have obviously worked hard and, if you continue to do so, I won’t import my own woodsmen when they had far rather stay at home and do the job they know. Consider yourselves employed, gentlemen, and let me know honestly how many weeks’ pay you have done without. I am home and things will be different at Dayspring from now on.’
‘That’s what I’m afraid of,’ the leader said bravely, and Tom nodded at the reference to his boyhood determination to let the castle and estate go to rack and ruin.
‘I’m man enough now to realise a pile of stones and its lands have no part in the cruelties of men. I shall take a proper interest in the Dayspring estates from now on, even when I have to be elsewhere.’
‘Until yon castle falls into the sea?’ the man said with a gesture in the direction of the distant towers visible over the top of the tallest trees in the woods that protected Spring Magna from the harshest of winds from the sea.
‘Did you never say hasty things in your youth?’ Tom replied. ‘I’m not sure what I’ll do about the castle yet, but I want the estate put in order and kept that way.’
‘About time,’ his disrespectful head forester informed him sternly, but luckily Tom preferred plain speaking to toadying.
‘Aye, the Banburghs learn slowly, but do it well in the end,’ he admitted and thought he heard the odd murmur of approval. The man in front of him and Miss Trethayne seemed unconvinced, but Tom resisted an urge to demand what else they needed to hear, because he probably didn’t want to know.
‘Are you going to bring in a bailiff and outsiders to work the estate, my lord?’ this doubter asked.
‘I won’t bring in my own woodsmen if that’s what you mean. Why would I uproot men who want to stay at home and bring them here when they’re not needed?’
‘Because they’ve got all their arms and legs and everything else we left behind after we took the King’s shilling.’
‘I see work well done and, as long as you’re content, I’m happy to have you carry on. Some of you might prefer work more suited to your skills and experience, but that’s for a time when I’ve leisure to examine the fine details of how this estate should work in future.’
‘With some fancy new man you’ll bring in to run the Castle estate, my lord?’
‘Perhaps, but for now if you have a problem you will have to come to me.’
‘Where would I do that, then, milord?’ the man asked warily.
‘I’ll be at the castle for a while yet and intend to find a suitable manager before I leave. An estate this size can’t run well without someone at the helm.’
‘We have a captain,’ he said with a nod at Miss Trethayne that made her blush as no flowery compliment from a Bond Street Beau could.
‘I said a suitable manager,’ Tom said clumsily. She would hear his words as lack of confidence in her rather than a statement that it was too dangerous for her to ride about alone. ‘I’m very grateful to Miss Trethayne, but it’s not a burden I can leave on her shoulders for ever. You can come to me if a new man wants to make changes you don’t agree with and I’ll always give you a fair hearing.’
‘Sounds like paradise,’ one of the men joked sceptically, but sly smiles and the odd laugh greeted his sally all the same.
Tom thought his battle largely won, but the leader wasn’t convinced. Apart from the eye-patch over his damaged eye, it wasn’t until he moved that the halt in his gait made it a wonder he’d managed to keep both legs. Tom decided he wouldn’t want to be a naval surgeon who tried to take this man’s leg off if he wanted to keep it as the big sailor-cum-woodsman sneaked a glance at Miss Trethayne, and what a fool he was not to have seen it straight away. Of course, the man was in love with her.
Now he was home the big woodsman could either take up the role of head forester or chance his luck with the smugglers, while as for Miss Trethayne...
Yes, and what would Miss Trethayne do with herself if she left Dayspring? Even if she didn’t have her brothers to care for, Tom couldn’t see her as a lady’s companion or governess. He supposed she might catch a widower or a cit if he contrived a Season for her in one of the minor watering places, where her looks and goddess-like presence would eclipse her years, height and lack of fortune. Or he could shame Lord Trethayne into meeting his obligations. He doubted Miss Trethayne would take a penny-piece from the selfish old dog now, though, and he hated the idea of her having to lower her pride if she decided it was too expensive a luxury for a woman with three little brothers to provide for.
So what the devil was he going to do? He could marry her, but picturing her towering over every other female in a set of court feathers when she was presented at a Court Drawing Room as the new Marchioness of Mantaigne made him shudder. Yet how else could he rescue the stubborn female from the impossible situation she was in simply because he’d come home and she had nowhere else to go?
* * *
Polly tried to pretend she wasn’t there while Lord Mantaigne made the acquaintance of his woodsmen. She had no connection to the family who’d owned this land since the first Banburgh claimed it and built a stronghold. The truth was she was jealous of the current marquis’s ownership and his right to neglect it, then turn up and take it back while she, who loved it, would have to leave. The injustice of it might have made a Jacobin of her, if it hadn’t been for the memory of her French stepmother starting at shadows and paling whenever she recalled the Terror.
The rightful owner of Dayspring Castle had come into his own. That phrase had a ring to it she would have laughed over only yesterday, but today there was nothing funny about it. She could almost picture her father giving one of his careless shrugs and telling her blithely that nothing stayed the same for ever. He was probably right and she might not have been able to hold the castle and estate together for much longer. The late-night incursions into the castle had been troubling her for weeks, and she thought of last night with a shiver of mixed emotions that shot through her and sent poor Cloud dancing as he sensed her turmoil through the bit she forced herself to relax her grip on so she could at least conceal it from the fine animal she was riding and his equally fine master.
Now the wretch was climbing into his saddle with an easy word to his new employees and turning his chestnut gelding towards the ride where she and Mr Peters sat silently waiting. Lord Mantaigne had a knack for getting what he wanted, and she let herself wonder for all of a minute what he might want of her. A swift and trouble-free departure after she had explained how things stood here, she suspected. She slanted him a stern look as he followed in her wake, because she knew the way and he’d let himself forget it, and tried to behave like a rational woman.
‘Do you think they’ll stay?’ he asked once they were out of earshot.
‘Most have families to support. They don’t have much alternative,’ she told him as evenly as she could.
‘It’s thanks to you they’re usefully employed though, is it not?’
‘I’m sure someone would have suggested they could usefully tame your woodlands and perhaps sell the wood to make it worth their while sooner or later if I had not.’
‘And a wild wood makes a fine hiding place for vagabonds and villains the local magistrates could well do without,’ he said, and Polly wondered if he was remembering smugglers liked wild places and hidden tracks to hide the pony trains that carried goods away from the coast.
‘And those who like to avoid them might resent the loss of cover,’ Mr Peters said shrewdly.
‘I doubt that would be seen as a bad thing in Days Magna,’ she replied absently, wondering if he was right.
‘Are you telling me the free-traders are unwelcome round here, Miss Trethayne?’ his employer asked as if she was trying to muddy the waters.
She recalled how sharply his gaze had focused on a careless footprint left on one of the less-obvious tracks and how he’d frowned at the deeper-than-they-ought-to-be ruts on the road down to the sea. The man did his best to hide a rapier-sharp mind under that air of lazy indifference, but she was beginning to see through it to the real man underneath. She wondered if he knew how many of his talents and intelligence were wasted being the idle man of fashion he pretended he was.
He wouldn’t think it a waste, she answered herself cynically. Gambling and carousing and defying the devil was a game to him, along with seducing other men’s wives and charming anyone who wasn’t yet convinced the Marquis of Mantaigne deserved all the treasures and comforts he’d been born to.
She only just managed to bite back a tirade on the subject of gentlemen who thought they had a right to anything they laid greedy eyes on and decided to want. No, that was just being lazy. Wrong to add him to the leering beast who had thought a penniless female like her was fair game, she knew he wouldn’t dream of forcing himself on a woman without anyone having to say so. Yes, there was a hot glitter in his blue, blue eyes when they rested on her too long, but she felt a new excitement stir deep inside whenever that happened so she couldn’t deny it was a mutual wanting. It left her wondering how she would feel if they satisfied it, but that was never going to happen.
‘They are part of everyday life here, but sometimes it isn’t comfortable to know they pass too close,’ she replied to his question about the smugglers and hoped he thought her silence had been because she was considering her answer, not the chance of being anyone’s lover, but more especially his. ‘The villagers know they must either accept the fact the Trade runs through the area like a seam or leave it. Evading the duty on goods that puts them out of reach of all but the very rich is often seen as their God-given right as free-born Englishmen,’ she managed to say coolly.
‘So I’ve heard,’ Peters said grimly, and she hoped he wasn’t thinking of taking on the deeply rooted traditions of the whole area single-handed.
‘Even if the customs officials manage to catch them, the magistrates round here wouldn’t prosecute hard, and no jury would convict them if they did,’ she warned them, then squirmed under Mr Peters’s cool gaze and wished she’d held her tongue.
‘It’s not the Trade itself that vexes me, or even the ruthless nature of the smuggling business for anyone who gets too close, but Bonaparte’s use of his damned guinea boats to subvert our currency,’ Lord Mantaigne argued.
‘I doubt that’s the only reason he winks at the smuggling trade,’ Polly said and felt the tug of conflicting loyalties most people must, if they stopped to consider it as other than a local way of life that had been going on since anyone could remember. ‘I wouldn’t have wanted to live in the days when the Hawkhurst Gang and their like terrorised everyone for miles around, but I can’t roundly condemn a trade that puts a few luxuries in the hands of folk who labour for a pittance while their masters enjoy every indulgence they can think up, however foolish it might seem to the rest of us.’
‘You sound like a revolutionary, Miss Trethayne,’ his lordship drawled.
‘Do I, my lord? How very shocking of me,’ she replied lightly.
‘I know there is much that is unequal and unfair in this country and no wonder working folk look at what others have and want it for themselves, but consider how it would be if the French Emperor invaded us as he has so many others. For all their talk of liberty and equality they treat their conquered nations like vassals and plunder them of treasures and, worse, I should hate to be a young and attractive female under such a regime. Those who hail Bonaparte as a liberator and a lawmaker should take a closer look at Spain and see how it feels to live under his heel.’
Polly allowed herself a shudder and blessed the fact she wasn’t on her usual mount. Beelzebub would have bolted at the feel of her involuntary flash of terror as she thought of the fate so many women had met at the hands of victorious invading troops in this horrifying, never-ending war.
‘I would not wish to be an enemy nobleman in such a world either,’ she pointed out.
‘No, I think I’d better arrange to expire on the barricades if the worst should ever come to pass. I don’t relish the role of a craven captive, or trying to ransom myself at any cost while my tenants and workers look on with contempt.’
‘For heaven’s sake, will you stop joking about the things you care about the most, man?’ his usually meek secretary snapped, clearly as close to the end of his tether with the foppish aristocrat Lord Mantaigne pretended to be as Polly was.
‘It is deeply exasperating,’ she agreed.
‘My apologies, the last thing I ever set out to do was prove tedious. To relieve you both of the trouble of bearing with me any longer I will leave you and flit off on a selfish errand of my own. Why don’t you take my conscience here into Spring Magna instead of my unworthy self and introduce him to anyone who is interested for me, Miss Trethayne? I’m sure you can assure them everything they least wanted to hear about me is true and they must hope I shall depart as unexpectedly as I came amongst them,’ Lord Mantaigne said as coldly as if he truly wished the estate was desolate, his castle in ruins and himself a hundred miles away.
‘Well, that put us properly in our place,’ Mr Peters observed calmly as he watched the marquis ride away.
Polly couldn’t help but admire his horsemanship as his powerful, supple figure adjusted to the pace of his galloping steed as if by second nature. He confused and angered her by turns, yet felt an odd tug of sympathy for him haunt her as she exchanged a rueful glance with Mr Peters and considered how they’d been ordered to spend their afternoon without him.
‘It will put the local rumour mill in a fine spin if we go on together without him, Mr Peters. You could always ride on alone and introduce yourself to the folk of the Spring villages. They will be pleased with any sign the marquis is taking an interest in them and are sure to make you very welcome. I might as well return to the castle and help with the spring planting since I seem to be redundant here.’
‘That was not well done. Lord Mantaigne is a man of more impulsive character than he wants us to know at times, but I cannot let you ride alone. I may not be a native of this place, but I do have eyes in my head and can see that large groups of men have been marching about this land all too recently for my comfort. You must not take risks with your personal safety, and only think how Lady Wakebourne and your brothers will feel if anything untoward happens whilst you’re out alone.’
‘I have been out alone, as you call it, for years.’
‘Then it’s a very good thing we arrived when we did,’ the man argued, and Polly only just suppressed an unladylike grunt of disagreement.
‘I could learn to dislike you nearly as much as I should your employer if you insist on being right all the time, Mr Peters,’ she said half-seriously.
‘I fear it is a sad failing in my half of our species, Miss Trethayne,’ he replied with a mournful shake of his head that disarmed her and made her feel a fishwife for taking her fury with the marquis out on this man all at the same time.
‘And of mine to argue. You really are wrong this time as well, though, because for us squatters it isn’t a good thing at all. With your coming, we must leave the castle and it is never a good thing to be rendered homeless twice.’
‘However maddening his lordship might be, he won’t turn you out to wander the roads with your family and friends like the lost tribe of the Israelites. I can see signs of an unknown number of people determined to invade your sanctuary, though, and well before we turned up. It could be a very good thing the owner of Dayspring Castle arrived before they could succeed, despite your mixed views on the matter.’
Polly noted how neatly the man had his own plans for the afternoon running as they retraced their route from the castle even as she had half her mind on arguing with him. She went along with him, though, because she was safer in his company and it gave her time to think. Soon she would catch herself thinking it a good thing they were here as well, if she wasn’t careful.
If their lives were different, how would it feel to arrive at Dayspring as a guest of Lord Mantaigne with her stepmother and Papa? For all of a minute she indulged in an air dream of herself superbly dressed and elegantly coiffured, stepping down from the carriage to meet the warm blue gaze of an admiring Marquis of Mantaigne. In such circumstances it might be quite all right to feel the same rush of heat and wonder as when they actually did meet; in a stable, among the faded and patched up rags of Dayspring’s glory days. Instead of being dressed in silks and finest muslins she’d looked more like a scruffy youth—sweaty and weary and windswept after another busy day trying to keep the wolf from the door.
The differences of how they really were fitted neatly into that one scene. He was rich and powerful and unforgivably handsome; she was poor, powerless and awkward as a heron in a hen yard. That’s how my life really is, she told herself sternly, trying to focus on what her real and adoptive family were going to do now Lord Mantaigne was back in his castle after all these years. Or he would be if he hadn’t just galloped away from it in a temper, and suddenly the unease she’d been feeling for the past few weeks left her worrying about his safety instead of her own or her family’s.
He would make an irresistible target for a villain lurking in still-untamed parts of the woods, or he might stumble on one of the secluded coves the landsmen used to hide their illicit cargo until they could be carried inland under cover of darkness. Marquis or no, he might never be seen again if he was unlucky enough to come upon them taking goods inland by one of the hidden lanes that scored the remotest parts of this countryside. Sometimes a Revenue Cutter lurking offshore would spur men into taking unprecedented actions, like moving a cargo by day, or setting an armed guard over their most precious hiding places.
Even if he was simply set upon by a rogue on the lookout for an easy mark, he would yield a fine haul. His clothes and boots alone would bring in several months’ wages for a labouring man, even at a fraction of their true value, then there was that fine gold fob-watch she’d seen him consult earlier today and his signet ring as well as the plain gold pin in his spotless muslin neckcloth.
Before she got to the end of a list of things about my Lord Mantaigne that could be profitably marketed by an attacker they were in sight of the castle and she had to put aside her horrifying inner picture of him lying naked and unconscious by some distant roadside. Maybe he would be held for ransom, and how on earth would they raise the enormous sum any sensible villain would demand for his safe return?
No! She must stop this nonsense; he was nothing to her, and it was up to Mr Peters to look out for his employer and answer the marquis’s friends if he went missing, if he had any of course.
* * *
Once she was home again, Polly did her best to go about the normal business of her day as if she hadn’t a care in the world, or a marquis who ought not to be allowed out without a suitable chaperon on her mind. By the time he rode into the stable yard as darkness was all but on them, looking as if he hadn’t a care in the world, she had a thumping headache and decided to have an early night as Lady Wakebourne suggested with an anxious frown at Polly’s tense and pallid face. With any luck she wouldn’t dream at all and could forget about an annoying aristocrat without a care for anyone in his handsome head as easily as he had about her and Mr Peters this afternoon.
