The Regency Season Collection: Part Two. Кэрол Мортимер
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for his hands to shadow hers there and admitting for once how very much she wanted him as her lover. Even the thought made her breasts grow heavier and tighter, and she cupped them to push them up and wonder. How would it feel to have my Lord of Mantaigne seize one hot, tight nipple in his knowing mouth and suckle, even as his long fingers played with the other so it didn’t feel left out in the cold?
Polly gasped at where her wicked imagination was taking her, hastily snatched her hands away and reached for the rosemary-and-soapwort infusion Lady Wakebourne made up especially to clean the mud from her hair. She cleansed every lock until it squeaked, then poured the jugs of water over her head, adding the one of icy cold, drawn from the well lest any of the others proved too hot, for the last rinse of both her hair and her unruly body. There, that ought to chill the ardour out of her; shock her into seeing how impossible such a coupling was for both of them.
He would probably leave her with child and she would leave him with regrets and a duty to care for her and her by-blow for the rest of their lives. No, no and no. She would never do that to a man like him, one who would have to find a suitable marchioness one day. Pretend how he liked to be a care-for-nobody, he would suffer the guilt of the damned about any lady whose life he’d ruined in the eyes of the world, once the heady passion was spent and he woke up to find himself the other half of such an unlikely pairing with her.
Her tender smile wobbled at the thought of him arguing he hadn’t a soul for her to concern herself with, as he surely would if he was here and knew what sinful wonders she was thinking about. He knew so little about himself it shocked her. It was as if the neglected and abused boy he’d once been had taken the hard things his obnoxious guardian threw at him and secretly owned up to them, as if every word was true. She was sure that was too simple a way to explain it, but she ached for the boy he had been and the man he really was.
Was the ton really so wilfully blind they only saw the gilded nobleman he offered up for them to wonder at? She supposed it was a brilliant act; his pose of shallow and vain aristocrat, more concerned about the knot in his cravat than the state of the world or the well-being of his fellow man. Perhaps he showed up less as the man he really was there than he did here, set as he would normally be amongst the brilliant but shallow pleasures of the haut ton and pretending to be as indifferent as the next care-for-nobody to the affairs of ordinary humanity.
He’d offered work to those who wanted it here though. That smile played about her mouth again and it was as well there was no mirror in the women’s bath-house to show her how gentle it went at the thought of him pretending to be indifferent, even as he gave the local men a chance to wean themselves away from the smuggling trade or the sea, if they chose to take it.
If he really thought they would lose the chance of a night’s work as tub-men and gain luxuries a working man couldn’t dream of otherwise, he was probably doomed to disappointment. At least he was giving them a chance to earn an honest living, though, and it would be good to see the Banburgh estates worked as they should be once more, or at least it would be for everyone but the gangs who had used the neglected woods and byways as the ideal conduit from coast to warehouse.
There, she had got through roughly towelling the water from her heavy hanks of hair and drying her over-receptive body without longing for the impossible again, here with her, loving her as she secretly longed to be loved exclusively by him. Was that it? Was she afraid of falling in love with the marquis? Worse even than that disaster—was she already halfway there?
Well, if she was it was about as much use to her as a lunatic longing for the moon, so she had chosen a man who would do her no harm—since it would never even occur to him to love her back. She was nearly six feet tall with four and twenty years of life in her dish; had three beloved obligations who would need her until she was old and grey and she habitually wore breeches in preference to petticoats, for goodness’ sake. How could he consider her as a potential lover when she was about as ineligible even as his bedmate as a woman could be?
Seizing the delicately carved comb she had felt guilty about taking from one of the bedchambers in the closed-up and neglected part of the house, she began tugging at the tangles in her hair as if it was their fault she was undesirable. Not only was that ridiculous, but it hurt, so, taking a deep breath, she made herself begin at the ends and work towards her crown until every tangle was banished. As it began to dry the firelight picked out red and gold and russet lights in the curls it sprang into wherever Jane had cut the full weight of her heavy locks away.
It was stupid to be vain of a mane of hair she often thought couldn’t make up its mind how to be, but the weight of it on her naked shoulders felt silky and rich and sensual. Telling herself it was as well to be realistic about her own attractions, she unwrapped the bath towel, another of Lord Mantaigne’s luxuries she couldn’t bring herself to argue against using, and felt as if even her skin was more sensitive than it had been before he came here. She felt as if only his sigh against the softness of her shoulders, or the whisper of a fingertip on her arm, might set a blaze of something sensual and irresistible running over her like wildfire.
You are a deluded idiot, she chided herself as a hot shudder of wanting probably made it a good idea to plunge back into the rapidly cooling water and wash away the very idea. She’d been in here far too long already, though, and what if anyone suspected she had been preening and dreaming and longing for impossible things, instead of simply scrubbing herself clean and getting ready to face his lordship’s indifference once more with a mental shrug and roll of exasperated eyes?
For once Polly took some trouble about dressing for the evening ahead because she did have a certain amount of pride after all. She grimaced at the latest ill-fitting gown with its wide skirts and unfashionably long bodice. She’d snatched it from the usual attic as the only other one left that would be long enough for her without the wide hoops designed to make it the first stare of fashion decades ago when a fine Banburgh lady ordered it from her mantua-maker.
She looked a quiz, she decided as she fumbled her bare feet into the old-fashioned high-heeled shoes that added another few inches to her already impressive height. At this rate she would be given a torch and told to stand instead of a light on the headland to keep ships away in a storm. Well, this was the truth: Miss Paulina Trethayne in all her unadorned plainness. She felt a twinge of regret for the jewellery she’d been forced to sell to pay some of her father’s debts and feed the boys until she could beg, borrow or steal enough to keep them all from starving. Her mother’s gold locket or single row of pearls would have diverted one glance from the stark lack of style in anything she was wearing.
The magnificent diamond ring Claire had managed to keep hidden somehow throughout her frantic flight from the Terror in France was hidden safely away behind a neatly re-mortared stone in Polly’s bedchamber to be sold to help her boys one day. So far Polly had managed to tell herself not yet, but soon it would have to be now.
* * *
‘Ah, there you are, my dear,’ Lady Wakebourne said absently when she slipped into the dining parlour at the last moment before Prue would tell her she was too late and must make do with whatever she could forage in the kitchen.
‘I was too dirty to sit down to dinner without a bath,’ she told whoever might be interested.
‘You shouldn’t be slaving in the fields like a peasant girl,’ Prue said sternly, and her sister nodded a solemn agreement.
Toby frowned at the last of his rabbit stew as if it suddenly tasted less savoury and shot her a worried look. ‘We should help you instead of idling at the Vicarage all day,’ he told her as if he’d suddenly grown up and become the man of the household.
‘I’m not idle,’ Henry objected, ‘I work hard.’
‘No, but you’re a natural scholar, Hal, and love your dusty old books. I don’t see much point aping the little gentleman much longer and pretending I have the least bent for learning, though, because I haven’t.’
‘I doubt any of us struggled to provide you with an education in order for you to throw it in our faces, my lad,’ Lady Wakebourne chided with a glare at her own protégés that Jago returned with a shrug that said he wasn’t