Читать книгу The Regency Season Collection: Part Two - Кэрол Мортимер, Кэрол Мортимер - Страница 42

Chapter Eleven

‘Someone was skulking about the castle again last night, my lord,’ Partridge the gatekeeper informed Tom about a week after Peters left for London and Miss Trethayne resumed her petticoats.

The idea he measured out his days by her actions disturbed him more than any rogues ambling about the disused wings of the castle in the dark. Unluckily for him, she looked even more magnificent in skirts than she did in breeches. Lady Wakebourne was obviously intent on torturing him, since each garment produced out of that accurst trunk in the rafters suited her protégée better than the last.

First there was that dratted habit, draped so delightfully about her long limbs and feminine curves he could hardly concentrate on staying in his own saddle whenever she was wearing it, let alone any of the places he was supposed to be taking such an interest in. Then there was a dark-crimson monstrosity, made from finest silk velvet with such a sneakily modest bodice he was certain its wearer had no idea how immodest it truly was. The colour suited her and the fine stuff clung to every sleek and lovely line of her and when she moved he badly wanted to know how it felt between his touch and the warm woman underneath.

He only just suppressed a groan at the very thought of her hips swaying gracefully in front of him as she’d preceded him into the makeshift dining room last night. As if that wasn’t bad enough, this morning she was wearing a deep-sapphire abomination of the very finest wool, made up into a morning gown, of all things, with a lawn fichu gathered almost to the neck that ought to be just what he’d been longing for last night, but was more of a disaster than the last instead. He was learning the magic of the hinted-at rather than the blatant whilst he tried to eat his breakfast now and he really hadn’t wanted to know how well a fashionably high waistline showed off her firm, high breasts and magnificent length of leg.

Had he groaned out loud at the shattering memory of her sitting at the breakfast table, greeting him as if not quite sure he was the urbane gentlemen everyone around her seemed to think him? Wise woman, he told himself distractedly, as he met Partridge’s speculative gaze with a rueful grin. He doubted much about his ridiculous preoccupation with Miss Trethayne’s artfully designed new wardrobe had escaped the shrewd scrutiny of yet another man outside his natural orbit. There were so many of them at Dayspring he almost added himself to the list, but a terrible feeling of belonging was creeping up on him unwanted.

A good job this man knew how to keep secrets then; Tom decided to ignore any minor crimes he’d committed in his hot youth and trust he hadn’t brought them with him from London. Partridge was the main reason the odd assortment of people living in his castle had gone unmolested for so long, so Tom could trust him where they were concerned, even if he was less certain about the man’s relationship to the free-traders and his supposed lord and master.

‘You’re quite certain this business has nothing to do with guinea boats or smuggling spies in and out of the country? I might wink at the Trade for the sake of my tenants and half the inhabitants of the south coast, but I won’t look the other way if they run traitors or Boney’s guineas in and out of Castle Cove.’

‘They wouldn’t do it now you’re here anyhow. Folk round here are more loyal than you deserve and they’d never tell the landers you don’t go in that part of the castle if you can help it.’

‘I’d hoped nobody would notice.’

‘I’ve lived a lot longer than you, my lord, and not much passes me by.’

‘Which would make you a good gatekeeper.’

‘So I’m told.’

‘Ah, so there is a lady in the case. I thought so somehow.’

‘Love gets to us all in the end, if we’re lucky enough. The real trick is to recognise it when it hits you between the eyes, my lord,’ the man said blandly.

‘And to know it for the passing joy it is,’ he muttered grumpily.

‘But then it wouldn’t be love in the first place, would it, my lord?’

‘No, damnation take it, it wouldn’t and it isn’t. We were talking about intruders and thieves, Partridge, not fairy stories.’

‘So we were, my lord. Then it’s high time we found out who’s getting into your castle and why they keep coming now you’re here and busy at long last.’

‘Perhaps we’d best find out what they’re looking for, then,’ Tom said, resigned to searching the part of the house he’d managed to avoid since his first day back.

‘Stands to reason they wouldn’t keep coming if there was enough of them to search properly in the first place.’

‘So it won’t take many of us to catch them.’

‘You want this kept quiet, milord?’

‘Yes, the place is all but empty and no sane felon would bother to break in.’

‘Aye, most everything was taken away years ago. They certainly ain’t busy picking apart state beds and all that fancy stuff you lords have built into your palaces. Folk round here are good at not seeing things, but they’d notice if the old place was being emptied bit by bit and the pickings trundled past their windows of a bright night when everyone’s at home where they ought to be for once.’

‘Or they’d have to get it past you,’ Tom said thinking that the most difficult part of the whole unlikely business.

‘True, so how many of your men can you trust, my lord?’

‘All of them, but they’re grooms and coachmen, not redbreasts or hedge creepers. I’d rather keep this to ourselves and plan a surprise my unexpected guests won’t be able to refuse.’

* * *

A couple more weeks crept by with the skies overcast and dull and sometimes a heavy shower of rain before the sun came out for a few brief moments to show how spring ought to be, in a more settled country. Polly wondered if the local smugglers were the only ones happy at the sight of dull skies as the Preventatives stayed by their fires even when the moon hid in the clouds. She stared out of the rain-soaked window one morning after breakfast and wondered why she was still here, almost a season on from Lord Mantaigne’s arrival at his castle and what should be her cue to leave.

The boys had gone to their lessons, and Polly didn’t know what to do unless the rain let up enough for her to go outside. She didn’t know what to do most of the time even when she was out nowadays anyway.

It was nearly June now and long past the usual time for spring cleaning, but Lord Mantaigne still wouldn’t let her hire a small army to sweep away the dust and grime of decades from the newer parts of this vast place. She didn’t know how he resisted the need to have the past purged from his castle, but somehow he still did and why it should matter to her was an even bigger mystery. Once he was free of the dust and shadows of the past, the marquis would be able to raise his family here. She could think of no better cure for the harsh memories of his childhood than a pack of well-loved and well-fed boys of his own to make him forget the deprived and resentful one he had once been himself.

Lady Wakebourne stubbornly refused to tell her what plans were being hatched for their futures, but part of her knew they needed to go. It was time for new beginnings, and she must be banished too, she decided, still with a huff of annoyance at them both for being so secretive. Apparently several of the middling houses in Castle Magna were being refurbished, and Polly wondered if the marquis had it in mind to put them in one of them. Close to the woods and with miles of coves and dunes to explore nearby, it would be ideal for the boys, but she really didn’t want to live so close to the castle. She would have to smile and be grateful and pretend she didn’t care when Lord Mantaigne wed a suitable lady and made her the mother of the children who would run wild at the castle instead of her brothers and their friends.

For weeks she’d been trying to come up with a plan to allow the boys to stay under Lady Wakebourne’s benign wing while she somehow found a place for herself with no carelessly irresistible marquises close by to make her feel a stranger in her own skin. In her opinion the marquis should be kept in Mayfair for the good of the female population of Dorset. It was ridiculous to feel uniquely drawn to him, to know no other man would ever touch the hidden feminine depths of her as he had done. Well, it might be ludicrous and on the edge of dangerous as well, but that didn’t mean she was going to stop feeling it because they no longer lived under the same roof.

She had hoped it was a silly infatuation she could get over as swiftly as it came, like a spring cold or a fever, but he’d been here nearly two months now and she longed for him more ridiculously with every day that passed. It was time she began to plan a life without him, more than time. If they shared a house much longer she’d let herself fall in love with the dratted man and that would be an even bigger disaster.

She was young and healthy as a horse; she knew more about running a large estate than a lady ought to and was capable of anything her sex allowed her to do. The fact that was such a pitifully small number of things could not stop her making plans. It hadn’t taken her long to realise she wouldn’t be a very good companion to the sort of nervous and fainting lady who usually needed one. Now Polly made up an ideal employer in her head and started her on a series of fanciful and raffish adventures that would keep them both well entertained without any need of tatting or reading sermons to snoring invalids. She was in the midst of planning her escape from the amorous attentions of her imaginary lady’s discarded lovers when Lord Mantaigne came in and found her staring out of the rain-soaked window as if spellbound by the dismal view.

‘Not even a Revenue Cutter would brave the Channel on such a day, so you can’t be staring at one of those,’ he remarked genially, but she refused to look at him.

‘Even I am permitted the occasional daydream, Lord Mantaigne,’ she told him as distantly as she could manage when his very presence in a room could make her heart race like Ariel after a rabbit.

‘Really? I wonder you find the time,’ he said with a long look that told her he’d noticed she went in the opposite direction to any he took of late.

‘They don’t take long,’ she lied, ‘and this rain give me an excuse to sit and twiddle my thumbs with a clear conscience.’

‘How would we English manage without the weather as our favourite topic of conversation, I wonder?’

‘Very ill, I should think. In better climates people must have to put so much more effort into the niceties of everyday life, don’t you think?’

‘On topics such as that one, I do my best not to think at all,’ he said with an impatience that made her look him in the face out of sheer surprise he could dismiss the very small talk he’d been using to fend off the rest of them since he got here.

She blinked at the shock of seeing him anew. Every time he was out of her sight she dearly hoped her memory had exaggerated the impact of his looks and personality and every time he came back into it she knew what a vain hope it was.

I really want to kiss you, she heard a wild and reckless part of herself long to murmur to him like a siren, as if there could ever be anything more than tolerance between them. Thank heavens her sensible side had control of her tongue today. She could just imagine the horror with which he’d hear such a blatant invitation.

What if another Thomas Banburgh from this honourable idiot replied, And I want to do more than just kiss you back, Paulina—would she let him? Probably, so it was as well she hadn’t put either of them to the test.

‘Was there something you wanted, my lord?’ she made herself ask with such distant politeness he ought to take it as a hint and leave her alone again.

Always, it felt like a whisper on the air as he met her gaze with more than she’d ever thought to see in the hot blue of his clear irises. Had he said it? Or was it wishful thinking? She heard a pair of masculine boots stamp outside the quiet room as silence stretched between them inside, and she cursed heartily under her breath. One kiss would not have made her into a wanton and it seemed a small comfort for all the years she would probably have to spend seeing my lord and his lady go by her new home, like a stray cat watching a king and queen.

‘Partridge wants to know where my guardian went after he left here, although why he can’t come in and ask you if you know himself is beyond me,’ the marquis said loudly. ‘Virgil told me it was best I didn’t know and he didn’t want to lest he be tempted to ride over and strangle him one dark night.’

‘Virgil was your new guardian?’

‘Yes, his wife was my godmother and they took me into their home and civilised me as best they could when they found out what a poor thing I’d become.’

Polly’s heart ached for that small, vulnerable version of him. ‘My godmother sent me a book of stern sermons for my confirmation and I never heard from her again. Why worry about your guardian now, though?’

‘Not to wring the man’s neck—he’s already dead, so I couldn’t if I wanted to,’ he replied and raised his voice a little. ‘For pity’s sake, stop stamping about out there as if Miss Trethayne and I are discussing state secrets, man.’

‘It was my idea, see?’ Partridge told her when he finally sidled into the room as if she might bite.

‘What was?’

‘Folk here’ll talk to you as they won’t to his lordship or me,’ the man said awkwardly, and Polly was intrigued by an unspoken dialogue between the master of the house and his self-appointed gatekeeper they thought she didn’t know about.

‘So you’re taking all this trouble to find out where a lunatic spent the last few years of his life?’ she asked, and her old friend shifted and look uneasy, but neither attempted to answer her question. ‘Nobody ever mentions him anyway.’

‘I’d like to forget he existed myself,’ the marquis muttered, ‘but we need to know something now and it’s like trying to pin down a wraith.’

‘Old Mrs Allcott might be able to remember where he was taken, if she’s having one of her better days, or your lawyers would seem to be a safe bet to know where the man who did you and yours so much harm was put, don’t you think? What a shame Mr Peters is absent at the very moment you need to find out so urgently.’

‘Of course, her daughter-in-law said she was housekeeper here once and knew the place inside out,’ the marquis said with an impatient frown, as if he now felt a fool for trailing that question so temptingly in front of her on a rainy day when she’d just admitted to being bored.

Then there was her niggling suspicion that Mr Peters had gone to London to find out anything he could about herself and Lady Wakebourne. She understood their past might affect Lord Mantaigne’s future wife’s tolerance of his dependents, but it felt intrusive and rude of them to delve about in the catastrophes that had overtaken them and led them to Dayspring when it was perfectly plain he didn’t want to set foot in the place himself.

‘What a shame you didn’t think of her before you asked me, my lord,’ she said blandly, a challenge in her eyes as she made herself meet his.

She felt a fool for not realising that, while the smugglers moved on as soon as they knew he was back at Dayspring, the feeling they were not always alone here hadn’t gone with them. Adding that to her unease about the future and whatever he might stir up from her past, she was amazed at herself for being so wrapped up in trying not to want the man she’d almost forgotten how much depended on her being awake and alert for any threat that might hurt her brothers.

‘Yes,’ he agreed tersely, doing a very good job of concealing his thoughts from her so she felt more shut out of the real life of Dayspring than ever. ‘I can’t find the plans drawn up for improvements to the public rooms, which were due to be made just before my father died. Needless to say they never happened afterwards and I began to wonder if Grably took them away. I want the roof repaired this summer and it would save a lot of time if I had those drawings.’

‘True, and Partridge is going to be your clerk of the works, is he? How very sensible. I’m sure everything will go on splendidly with or without those plans,’ she said as if she almost believed them. ‘I don’t suppose the people left here when your former guardian was taken away would have let him take more than the shirt on his back. He may have burnt some of the estate papers before he went, of course.’

‘True, so that settles it then,’ Lord Mantaigne said with a heavy sigh.

‘It does?’ she said brightly, wondering what unlikely tale they’d invent next.

‘Yes, I’ll have Peters search the Muniment Room one last time when he gets back, but it seems likely the job must be done again.’

‘No reason I can’t look, is there, m’lord? I can read,’ Partridge offered.

‘I’m sure Peters would be delighted if you did.’

‘Least I don’t mind getting my hands dirty,’ Partridge said and stumped out to begin a task none of them quite believed in.

Polly suspected they were looking for any secret ways in and out of the castle. The newer parts were built after a bloody civil war and a wary lord could well have ordered an escape route built to the sea in case it happened again.

‘We’ve offended him now,’ Lord Mantaigne said ruefully.

‘I expect so, but you do it so well, don’t you?’

‘I do, don’t I?’

‘One more way of keeping us lesser mortals at a distance, I suspect.’

‘Then it doesn’t appear to be working since I came here.’

‘You do yourself an injustice, milord, I feel I might as well be in the next county right now. Do you let anyone past that wall you keep round your heart?’

‘Not very often,’ he said with a shrug that said that was a good thing.

He also looked as if he had a hundred places he’d rather be, and Polly concluded he was only staying here because he wanted to distract her from the subject they had been discussing. He was doing quite a good job just by being here, but probably not the one he intended. She ought to be finding out what he and Partridge were really up to, but all she could think about was him. Silence stretched as he struggled not to tell her to mind her own business, and what right had a beggar like her to enquire into the state of a marquis’s heart in the first place?

He wasn’t going to admit he kept his essential self as shut up in that tower room as his guardian had the rest of him as a boy. Nor would he own up to the need that felt so strong she could almost touch it. And why would he when they were about as far apart as two people could be?

Yet only her presence had stopped him facing down those intruders that first night and, if she let him do as he wanted and keep her out of the way next time, he would take risks she couldn’t seem to think of without a chance the bottom might drop out of her world if he got himself murdered, just because he was such a stubborn great idiot. He would certainly take on the rogues himself rather than trust anyone else to do it for him.

‘Then you should,’ she argued with his determination to always walk alone. ‘You will never be truly alive if you don’t.’

‘Why, for Heaven’s sake? I’m perfectly happy as I am.’

Polly found his ignorance of all he might be more touching than any conscious attempt to garner sympathy, but my Lord Mantaigne didn’t need sympathy, did he? He didn’t need anything he couldn’t buy or charm out of those who only wanted to be charmed or bought, or so he obviously believed.

‘I suppose you’ll never know unless you try,’ she said huskily.

‘Don’t even think about it,’ he ground out as if denying what was there in the room with them and pushing them to explore a lot more than a mere friendship hurt him physically yet he couldn’t stop doing it. ‘Just don’t.’

‘All right then, I won’t,’ she whispered back, hoping Partridge really had gone to search through dusty piles of documents the lawyers hadn’t thought worth taking away. It was as well to only lose one man’s good opinion at a time, and she was very fond of the gatekeeper of Dayspring Castle.

‘I’ve tried so hard not to touch you or kiss you again, you do know that, don’t you?’ Lord Mantaigne said with a feverish glint in his eyes that confirmed it and made her feel a lot better about the brazen course of action she was about to take.

‘Be quiet, rattle-pate,’ she chided him gently and took it.

Well, she would regret it for ever if she didn’t, so she kissed him, since he was being such a gallant marquis they might be in their dotage before he got round to it. Wanting him so badly made her ache in places she hadn’t known a woman could ache for a man and she really had a lot of experience to make up in a hurry. Even so, this was playing with fire and it flashed and roared into a blaze even as he met her kiss for kiss. He tasted of rain and fresh air and himself and it was like all her birthdays as a child piling into a whirlpool of excitement and promise and hope all mixed together.

Then he took over the kiss and made it deeper; more sensual; unique. She had known, but not known. He was experienced and compelling and he knew how to make that fire slide under her skin and speak to the same force in him as they stood, mouth to mouth. Who needed words when there was such a use to put their tongues to? He slowed the pace, showed her how to enjoy the scenery on the way to a destination she’d never visited or expected to visit. It was subtle and somehow beautiful and how could he think himself isolated and unlovable when he had all this magic in him?

He gave a soft groan against her lips, and she felt the shake in his mighty body. Despite all that fine control of his, he needed her and that sucked her into another layer of wanting him altogether. He licked the swollen line of her lips with sensuous little darts of his tongue where they almost met, and she sighed with pleasure so he had a way to dart inside. This was so much more than a kiss now—more of a pagan dance he was showing her true, wild inner self as they explored and deepened and fed the heated delight that was taking over every inch of her body.

Even dancing wasn’t close enough now. Mind and body united; touch and thought all wrapped up in needing this one man as she never would any other. His arousing, worshipping hands explored her narrow waist, down over the lithe curve of her hip and rested on the neat softness of her feminine buttocks, and she wriggled shamelessly until the urgent evidence of his need of her rose emphatically against her hot, wet core even through his gentlemanly breeches. Her soft, clinging and light-as-air skirts were a fragile barrier between them now. She appreciated them as she never dreamed she could when she put them on this morning.

It would take only one flip of the fine-spun stuff and the gossamer petticoats underneath to leave her open to such pleasure it made her breath catch at the very idea of it. One more fiery impulse and he’d be there, inside her—doing something about the delightful pain that was winding her so tight it hurt not to have him there. Instead of held back and still apart, they could have everything, right now. They could soar into sweet, hot darkness together; dizzying and brilliant as racing up to the moon. It was there; on their tongues, in their reaching, exploring hands, in their lips; as if they had to take all there was to take and love every second.

A surge of heat and pleasure sang though Polly. She wanted to meld with the pure essence of Thomas Banburgh and forget he was a lord and she was a pauper. She swayed into their kiss to deepen it even further, because she knew he wasn’t going to let that happen and she desperately wanted him to spin beyond thought, beyond restraint with her. He was who he was and she was who she was and she felt him clamp fearsome self-control on the rigid need she could feel through his fine clothes and hers as well.

‘Noble idiot,’ she muttered reproachfully.

‘If I was that, I’d never have got so close to losing control,’ he said unsteadily, leaning his head against her bowed forehead as if he didn’t want to break contact, but being kissable and not beddable was an agony she wouldn’t share.

‘You didn’t, I did,’ she said wearily and heard the jag in her voice as she said goodbye to so much they could have been and faced reality.

‘I’d only harm you in the end and I’m not worth it.’

‘Don’t try to hide the truth behind your imaginary shortcomings. I am a nobody; less than that even as far as your kind are concerned. I was born a lady, but now I’m less than a beggar because I’ve fallen so far. Tell me I’m not a suitable mistress if you have to, but don’t hide it behind polite lies.’

‘How can I when it’s not true? You’re as good as any other woman I’ve ever met and I wouldn’t offer you so little,’ he told her with a fierce frown.

‘Damned with faint praise,’ she managed to say as his words sank in and she couldn’t find even a trace of lover-like adoration in them.

‘I lose any smooth words and easy compliments I ever had the use of when I’m with you. Maybe I left them at the castle gate the day I arrived and ogled at you like a looby,’ he admitted with a flush of colour across his hard cheekbones that made her hope he had been a little bit besotted with her after all, even if it was only at first glance and seemed to have worn off.

‘I’m not sure if I’m delighted or insulted by that lack.’

‘Neither am I,’ he said with a wry grin.

She felt a tug of temptation to smile back at him and pretend it didn’t hurt, but it did. ‘Don’t expect me to interpret your lack of a glib answer, I obviously have no idea what makes you lords of creation tick along to your own tune,’ she said as coolly as she could manage. She wanted to rage at him for rejecting what they could be to one another—and that was little enough, in all conscience—but she wasn’t going to give him an excuse to sidle away from her as if he’d been right not to trust her with much of himself.

‘And I really didn’t draw back because I wanted to insult you, but more because I didn’t, you know?’

‘Yet somehow you managed to without trying.’

‘Aye, well, clearly I’m a rogue of the worst kind.’

‘Are you, my lord? I wonder.’

‘Don’t, but you do make me wish myself otherwise,’ he said, so perhaps she’d made a small dent in his mighty defences.

His hand shook when he cupped the back of her head and drew her closer so gently she felt breakable. She looked up to meet his brilliant blue gaze defiantly and saw so many questions in it tears stung her eyes instead. No, she had her pride and made herself gaze back at him with desire bold and brazen and bare for him to see what she might have been with him, and what he could be with her, if he wasn’t denying all that made them right together in defiance of all the wrongs the world would whisper.

‘You’re not the man you think you are,’ she told him firmly.

‘And you’re not quite who you believe either, have you thought of that?’

‘No, but Partridge might be back any moment and the rain is stopping, so it’s clearly time for us to consider other things besides there not being a you and me for anyone to worry about, my lord.’

‘I will, if you will,’ he murmured and kissed her so gently it hurt.

‘Go away,’ she said unsteadily, the thought of a day spent dancing round each other as if nothing untoward had happened tearing at her like a battle wound.

‘Will you be all right?’

‘I’m always all right,’ she said, ‘it’s what I do best.’

‘There I have to argue, even with a lady,’ he told her with the ghost of his wicked smile.

‘Go and find your plans, my lord—even Partridge doesn’t deserve to search through some endless piles of documents alone for much longer.’

She thought she heard him mutter something uncomplimentary about the family archives, but went back to her window until he stamped out of the room in a show of masculine bad temper, as if she was the one who had put a stop to what could have been a glorious lovemaking and not him.

The great blundering idiot would probably ride himself and his unfortunate horse to a stand-still in the rain now and all because he wouldn’t admit he was subject to the same needs and emotions as the rest of humanity. Never mind what he felt or didn’t feel for her, he was grieving deeply for his beloved godmother and wouldn’t even admit it to himself.

Would a man who felt nothing for his own kind spend so much of his time finding out all he had omitted to do in the past two decades and do his best to put it right? Would he put himself out to find work for her mixed bag of fellow squatters if he was the care-for-nobody he did his best to pretend he was? No, and he wouldn’t try to find a place for Lady Wakebourne and herself to go to when they left either.

Sure enough, there he was, racing his beautiful bay gelding through the park as if the devil was on their heels. So much of her wanted to be out there with him, full of life and strength and risk, that she turned away from the last glimpse of them tearing into the rain-soaked landscape she had come to love so much with tears blinding her to anything closer by until she blinked them away and reminded herself she wasn’t the sort of female who sat indoors and cried for no reason on rainy days when the whole of nature seemed ready to weep with her.