The Regency Season Collection: Part Two. Кэрол Мортимер
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refuse a reasonable offer for her favourite when she would soon be homeless.
‘I wouldn’t suggest he might find a home with my friend if I doubted his ability to tell a rogue from a spirited beast with his worst masculine traits intact.’
‘There’s a lady present, Mantaigne,’ Mr Peters protested, and Polly set him a little lower in her estimation and his master a little higher.
‘Miss Trethayne doesn’t want to discuss the latest fashions or how many fools crowded into Prinny’s last squeeze at Carlton House, Peters.’
‘I might,’ Polly heard herself say as if someone else had taken over her tongue.
‘I beg your pardon, ma’am. Then I must rack my brains for the details as best I can at this hour of the day.’
‘You must know I have no knowledge of either subject,’ she said gruffly. ‘I would look ridiculous in London fashions and feel like a fish out of water at Carlton House, but a cat can still look at a king.’
‘I know what you mean,’ Mr Peters said with a wry look that won back some of Polly’s respect and seemed to sink him in his employer’s. ‘I often wonder if Prinny wouldn’t be happier if he’d been born on a fairground instead of in a royal bed.’
‘It must make a fine spectacle, but I would hate to take part.’
‘It’s hot as Hades and noisier than a parliament of crows. I’d certainly give a good deal not to sit through another of Prinny’s never-ending banquets,’ the marquis said with what looked like genuine revulsion for all that show and waste Polly had read about in the discarded newspapers that sometimes came her way at third-or fourth-hand from the local squire.
‘If your entrée to such places was withdrawn, I dare say you would feel the snub all the same,’ Mr Peters said quietly.
‘I expect you’re right, but if we’re all finished we might as well adjourn to the stable yard before the morning has gone, if you agree, Miss Trethayne? I hope you will ride one of my horses today. Although he will be nowhere near as fast or fiery as your own mount, you would be doing us a favour. A full stallion will never tolerate the presence of our hacks without a lot of fire and brimstone.’
He was right of course; Polly had been hoping Beelzebub’s antics at the proximity of other males, even if they were geldings, would put a premature end to the tour. She resigned herself to hours in the disturbing man’s company as both gentlemen stood back for her to lead the way, then carefully didn’t look at anything less than six feet off the ground lest they be accused of ogling.
Dotty Hunslow was sitting on the granary steps, smoking a short pipe and exchanging flirtatious glances with a wizened little man who looked like a former jockey. He jumped to his feet and did his best to look as if he’d been busy all morning, and a warning glint sharpened Dotty’s knowing gaze.
Unease prickled down Polly’s spine as all the risks of having too much contact with a lord like this one ran through her mind screaming. No, he wouldn’t give her a second glance if she was properly dressed and that was just as well. He could ruin her and her brothers’ slender prospects in life if she wasn’t very careful, and the throaty murmur of her inner wanton whispered it would be a very pleasurable descent, before sensible Paulina dismissed the idea as completely impossible. No, she would have to find time to search the attics for skirts long enough to hide her legs from him and his fellow rakes so he would turn his hot blue eyes elsewhere.
‘Please saddle the grey for Miss Trethayne, Dacre,’ his lordship ordered as if it was an everyday occurrence for a lady to ride astride.
‘He’s feeling his oats,’ the little man argued.
‘Miss Trethayne usually rides the black cob, so Cloud will seem like a docile pony in comparison.’
‘Cloud it is then, ma’am,’ the small groom said with a nod of limited approval.
‘Thank you,’ she said, trying not to feel self-conscious in front of the stable lads while she waited for the animal to be saddled. ‘Oh, you’re a handsome lad and a true gentleman, aren’t you, sirrah? I warrant you’d hunt all day if you had to,’ she greeted the powerful-looking animal as he arched his neck at her like a circus horse and waited to be admired.
He was as big a rogue as his master from the look of him and her opinion of Lord Mantaigne rose as he laughed at the grey’s antics and told him not to be such a commoner. He sobered as he cupped his hands to take her booted foot and boost her into the saddle.
‘I don’t hunt,’ he said, eyes flicking in the direction of the tumbledown kennels Polly knew lay on the far side of the yard so as not to disturb anyone in the castle with the restless baying of the hounds.
‘You don’t enjoy the exercise then, my lord?’ she asked a little breathlessly, trying not to be impressed as he boosted her into the saddle as easily as if she was a foot shorter and as slender as a fashion plate.
‘Perhaps I pity the quarry,’ he said lightly.
She was still wondering about that remark as they set off. She’d heard whispers that a miserable childhood had led to his hatred of Dayspring, but all that had mattered then was that he stayed away. Eyeing the powerful figure of the now very real Marquis of Mantaigne, Polly tried to see past it and wonder about the man under the careless elegance.
He was relaxed in the saddle of his fine horse as if he hadn’t a care in the world, but she sensed wariness in him, an unwillingness to feel the appeal of this fine place on such a beautiful spring morning. Would a bright but abused boy learn to guard his thoughts and emotions from his persecutor? Yes, she decided, and any woman tempted to love him would have to fight her way past the shield wall he still kept them behind. She pitied her, whoever she turned out to be. To throw your bonnet that far over the windmill would mean being prepared to risk everything without any guarantee he would even want her once she’d done it.
* * *
Tom expected the parkland to be overgrown and small forests to blur the beautiful landscaped gardens his grandfather had paid Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown to design for him. Instead the park was close-cropped by sheep and a herd of cows grazed the meadow by the lake that dreamed under the spring sun as he remembered it doing on days when he’d escaped his prison to wander his own land like a poacher in constant fear of discovery.
Not even that sense of such freedom being short and forbidden spoiled the joy of a spring morning in this wide landscape then, but that was quite enough of the past. Today the trees looked as if they’d been kept tidy by foresters. He ought to ask Miss Trethayne how that could be when he didn’t have any, but he let himself feel all the promise of spring about them instead and saved the argument for later.
‘Where are we going?’ Peters asked and saved him the trouble.
‘To the Home Farm, through Cable Woods, then down into Days Magna,’ Miss Trethayne said concisely.
‘A neat slice across the closest parts of the estate,’ Tom conceded and saw from the tightening of her lush mouth how his pompous reply annoyed her.
Since he couldn’t make her his mistress, and she was nothing like any marchioness he’d ever come across, he told himself it was good to see the look of impatient contempt back in her fine eyes. He must do his best to keep it there for the next couple of weeks and then he could return to London or Derbyshire, leaving them both more or less unscathed.
‘Who has the Home Farm?’ Peters asked, and it was a reasonable enough question, so why did Tom feel jealous, as if he was the one who should be having easy conversations with Miss Trethayne and not Peters?
Perverse idiot, he condemned himself and urged his horse a little ahead, so he could leave them to talk while he watched this once-familiar landscape for changes. Yet he took in very little of it for listening to their conversation and keeping enough attention on the road in front of them to make sure he didn’t fall in the dust and make himself even more of a fool than he already felt as he fought the need to have all her attention