The Regency Season Collection: Part Two. Кэрол Мортимер
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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