The Regency Season Collection: Part Two. Кэрол Мортимер
Читать онлайн книгу.
do I have a forester?’ he turned in the saddle to ask.
‘Several, my lord,’ she said, and there was that sense she wasn’t telling him the whole story again to pique his interest and let him convince himself his interest was nothing personal.
‘Don’t expect me to believe they come from the same family who felled trees here from the dark ages on, then. I well remember my guardian railing that he couldn’t keep a male worker on the estate thanks to the press gangs and fishing boats and quarries robbing him of manpower.’
‘I suppose those alternatives were more attractive,’ she said so carefully he knew her thoughts were busy with all the rumours she’d probably discounted about him and Grably and how bad it had been at Dayspring once upon a time.
‘Yet they came of their own free will once I ordered the place kept empty? Perhaps they fell my timber for nothing out of the goodness of their hearts,’ he said blandly, and her gaze slid away from the challenge, as if she didn’t want him to read secrets in them.
‘Maybe they wanted to keep faith with the Banburghs?’ she suggested.
‘My father died, and I turned my back on them. I can’t see the locals feeling aught but contempt for the Banburghs,’ he admitted harshly, conscious of Peters’s shrewd gaze as well as her discomfort with the subject.
‘Maybe they felt guilty?’
‘I hope not; the fifth marquis is dead and I don’t care.’
‘No, of course you don’t,’ Peters said, and Tom sensed the two of them exchanging rueful glances behind his back and fought temper and something a little less straightforward—surely it couldn’t be jealousy?
To be jealous he’d have to want Miss Trethayne as irrationally as Luke and Chloe Winterley had wanted each other during their decade of estrangement. So that meant he simply could not be jealous. He didn’t want to ruin or marry her, so he must be immune to her smoky laugh and everything that made her unlike the pursuing pack of would-be marchionesses he dodged so carefully at ton functions.
‘No, I don’t,’ he echoed as coolly as he could. ‘So let’s stop dawdling like a trio of dowagers and get on with our day,’ he added to put an end to the conversation.
When 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,