The Regency Season Collection: Part Two. Кэрол Мортимер
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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