The Regency Season Collection: Part Two. Кэрол Мортимер

but she refused to look at him.

      ‘Even I am permitted the occasional daydream, Lord Mantaigne,’ she told him as distantly as she could manage when his very presence in a room could make her heart race like Ariel after a rabbit.

      ‘Really? I wonder you find the time,’ he said with a long look that told her he’d noticed she went in the opposite direction to any he took of late.

      ‘They don’t take long,’ she lied, ‘and this rain give me an excuse to sit and twiddle my thumbs with a clear conscience.’

      ‘How would we English manage without the weather as our favourite topic of conversation, I wonder?’

      ‘Very ill, I should think. In better climates people must have to put so much more effort into the niceties of everyday life, don’t you think?’

      ‘On topics such as that one, I do my best not to think at all,’ he said with an impatience that made her look him in the face out of sheer surprise he could dismiss the very small talk he’d been using to fend off the rest of them since he got here.

      She blinked at the shock of seeing him anew. Every time he was out of her sight she dearly hoped her memory had exaggerated the impact of his looks and personality and every time he came back into it she knew what a vain hope it was.

      I really want to kiss you, she heard a wild and reckless part of herself long to murmur to him like a siren, as if there could ever be anything more than tolerance between them. Thank heavens her sensible side had control of her tongue today. She could just imagine the horror with which he’d hear such a blatant invitation.

      What if another Thomas Banburgh from this honourable idiot replied, And I want to do more than just kiss you back, Paulina—would she let him? Probably, so it was as well she hadn’t put either of them to the test.

      ‘Was there something you wanted, my lord?’ she made herself ask with such distant politeness he ought to take it as a hint and leave her alone again.

      Always, it felt like a whisper on the air as he met her gaze with more than she’d ever thought to see in the hot blue of his clear irises. Had he said it? Or was it wishful thinking? She heard a pair of masculine boots stamp outside the quiet room as silence stretched between them inside, and she cursed heartily under her breath. One kiss would not have made her into a wanton and it seemed a small comfort for all the years she would probably have to spend seeing my lord and his lady go by her new home, like a stray cat watching a king and queen.

      ‘Partridge wants to know where my guardian went after he left here, although why he can’t come in and ask you if you know himself is beyond me,’ the marquis said loudly. ‘Virgil told me it was best I didn’t know and he didn’t want to lest he be tempted to ride over and strangle him one dark night.’

      ‘Virgil was your new guardian?’

      ‘Yes, his wife was my godmother and they took me into their home and civilised me as best they could when they found out what a poor thing I’d become.’

      Polly’s heart ached for that small, vulnerable version of him. ‘My godmother sent me a book of stern sermons for my confirmation and I never heard from her again. Why worry about your guardian now, though?’

      ‘Not to wring the man’s neck—he’s already dead, so I couldn’t if I wanted to,’ he replied and raised his voice a little. ‘For pity’s sake, stop stamping about out there as if Miss Trethayne and I are discussing state secrets, man.’

      ‘It was my idea, see?’ Partridge told her when he finally sidled into the room as if she might bite.

      ‘What was?’

      ‘Folk here’ll talk to you as they won’t to his lordship or me,’ the man said awkwardly, and Polly was intrigued by an unspoken dialogue between the master of the house and his self-appointed gatekeeper they thought she didn’t know about.

      ‘So you’re taking all this trouble to find out where a lunatic spent the last few years of his life?’ she asked, and her old friend shifted and look uneasy, but neither attempted to answer her question. ‘Nobody ever mentions him anyway.’

      ‘I’d like to forget he existed myself,’ the marquis muttered, ‘but we need to know something now and it’s like trying to pin down a wraith.’

      ‘Old Mrs Allcott might be able to remember where he was taken, if she’s having one of her better days, or your lawyers would seem to be a safe bet to know where the man who did you and yours so much harm was put, don’t you think? What a shame Mr Peters is absent at the very moment you need to find out so urgently.’

      ‘Of course, her daughter-in-law said she was housekeeper here once and knew the place inside out,’ the marquis said with an impatient frown, as if he now felt a fool for trailing that question so temptingly in front of her on a rainy day when she’d just admitted to being bored.

      Then there was her niggling suspicion that Mr Peters had gone to London to find out anything he could about herself and Lady Wakebourne. She understood their past might affect Lord Mantaigne’s future wife’s tolerance of his dependents, but it felt intrusive and rude of them to delve about in the catastrophes that had overtaken them and led them to Dayspring when it was perfectly plain he didn’t want to set foot in the place himself.

      ‘What a shame you didn’t think of her before you asked me, my lord,’ she said blandly, a challenge in her eyes as she made herself meet his.

      She felt a fool for not realising that, while the smugglers moved on as soon as they knew he was back at Dayspring, the feeling they were not always alone here hadn’t gone with them. Adding that to her unease about the future and whatever he might stir up from her past, she was amazed at herself for being so wrapped up in trying not to want the man she’d almost forgotten how much depended on her being awake and alert for any threat that might hurt her brothers.

      ‘Yes,’ he agreed tersely, doing a very good job of concealing his thoughts from her so she felt more shut out of the real life of Dayspring than ever. ‘I can’t find the plans drawn up for improvements to the public rooms, which were due to be made just before my father died. Needless to say they never happened afterwards and I began to wonder if Grably took them away. I want the roof repaired this summer and it would save a lot of time if I had those drawings.’

      ‘True, and Partridge is going to be your clerk of the works, is he? How very sensible. I’m sure everything will go on splendidly with or without those plans,’ she said as if she almost believed them. ‘I don’t suppose the people left here when your former guardian was taken away would have let him take more than the shirt on his back. He may have burnt some of the estate papers before he went, of course.’

      ‘True, so that settles it then,’ Lord Mantaigne said with a heavy sigh.

      ‘It does?’ she said brightly, wondering what unlikely tale they’d invent next.

      ‘Yes, I’ll have Peters search the Muniment Room one last time when he gets back, but it seems likely the job must be done again.’

      ‘No reason I can’t look, is there, m’lord? I can read,’ Partridge offered.

      ‘I’m sure Peters would be delighted if you did.’

      ‘Least I don’t mind getting my hands dirty,’ Partridge said and stumped out to begin a task none of them quite believed in.

      Polly suspected they were looking for any secret ways in and out of the castle. The newer parts were built after a bloody civil war and a wary lord could well have ordered an escape route built to the sea in case it happened again.

      ‘We’ve offended him now,’ Lord Mantaigne said ruefully.

      ‘I expect so, but you do it so well, don’t you?’

      ‘I do, don’t I?’

      ‘One more way of keeping us lesser mortals at a distance, I suspect.’

      ‘Then