The Regency Season Collection: Part Two. Кэрол Мортимер

I was right, wasn’t I?’

      ‘If you make your own connections, I suppose it wouldn’t break the letter of any agreement we might have made to keep quiet about Lord Mantaigne’s early life for his own sake.’

      ‘Cunning of you.’

      ‘Yes, isn’t it?’

      ‘And you didn’t recall this place was empty by an inspired chance either, I suppose?’

      ‘No, and I made Virginia no promises on that front. She made sure the right backs were turned when I appealed to her for a chance for us to make some sort of a life for ourselves here since we had nothing. It wasn’t as if his lordship wanted anything to do with the place and she agreed we were better than some villainous gang of rascals taking the place over.’

      ‘Rather than the rascals who live here now?’

      ‘Aye, we are something of a mixed bag, are we not?’

      ‘At times I can’t help feeling sorry for Lord Mantaigne for having to endure our ramshackle company,’ Polly admitted ruefully.

      ‘Don’t waste your pity; he’s enjoyed it, for the most part, and it distracted him from brooding on things he’d rather forget.’

      ‘I suppose he does like the boys and seems to get on remarkably well with Barker and Partridge and one or two of the others. You could be right.’

      ‘Of course I am; it’s one of the privileges of middle age. Another is noticing it isn’t only the boys and those two rogues he likes.’

      ‘He does get on well with Jane and Prue and I’m sure if Dotty was twenty years younger he’d like her far too much.’

      ‘If you say so, my dear.’

      ‘She must have been lovely in her prime, don’t you think?’

      ‘Not if I can help it, for goodness knows what she got up to back then.’

      ‘I hate to think.’

      ‘Best if you don’t, but you have so little grasp of your own attractions it might be dangerous if your marquis wasn’t nearly as bad. I never came across two people more genuinely ignorant of their own qualities that sometimes I feel as if I’m in the midst of one of Shakespeare’s comedies.’

      ‘Except it’s not very funny.’

      ‘If I had charge of the ending, it would be,’ Lady Wakebourne said with the happy ending she would write onto their sad little tale in the almost-smile she gave Polly as their eyes met in an admission it was nigh impossible.

      Polly looked away to try to tell them both it wasn’t even worth speaking of and tried to recall what had got them on to this dangerous ground in the first place. ‘You still haven’t answered my original question,’ she said as she retraced their steps and remembered her theory about those moonlight nights.

      ‘Which was?’

      ‘If those intruders you have always done your best to pretend you didn’t believe in come here at the best times to avoid being spotted by the smugglers? I suppose that says either they are afraid of them or think they’d be recognised.’

      ‘Either I suppose, if they exist at all outside your fancy, my dear.’

      ‘Oh, they do, Lord Mantaigne and I heard them inside the closed-up wing the first night he was here, so at least now I know my ears do not deceive me.’

      ‘And I know you two are reckless and headstrong as a pair of runaway horses.’

      ‘Don’t change the subject, although while we’re on the subject of who knows what and when, did you really contrive to get word to Lady Virginia there was something wrong here before she died?’

      ‘I’m sure she had her sources in the area. The late Lady Farenze had a wide circle of friends.’

      ‘If she was half as all-knowing and infuriating as you, she could have run a spy ring for all anyone else would have known about it.’

      ‘Lady Virginia was far more of everything than I am, Paulina. Such a shame you never knew her, for you have much in common.’

      ‘I think not,’ Polly said stiffly, horrified at the image of a formidable lady looking down her aristocratic nose at her.

      ‘If nothing else, you could have compared notes on Lord Mantaigne, since you both dote on him.’

      ‘I certainly do not dote on that stiff-necked idiot of a man,’ Polly ground out gruffly and wished her ladyship a brusque farewell until later so she could go and watch out for him to return from his afternoon of avoiding her in peace.

      * * *

      Later that afternoon Mr Peters rode back up the drive in time to meet his employer coming the other way. Polly wasn’t watching for either of them by then, of course, but she happened to glance out of the a window overlooking the coast road and wondered how two gentlemen could be so wet and muddied and yet so vital she longed to be out there with them just to find out what they were talking about. Whatever it was that kept them out there longer than any sensible creature should be on such an inclement evening, it must be of absorbing interest, or so confidential they didn’t wish to be overheard.

      How might it feel if she happened to be the true lady of this ancient castle? Perhaps one of the previous ladies of Mantaigne had stood at this very window, watching for her lord to return from court or some foreign war and seen him at last on the horizon. She could have waited with breathless longing for it to be really him, this time, at last. Imagine how that lady would feel knowing he was safe and back with her again, joy surging through her at the sight of him, breathless with longing to lie in his arms all night again, desperate to be held close and told how deeply he had missed her every moment they were apart and she had held his fortress for him in his absence.

      It seemed that dreaming of another time and different ways of being lords and ladies had let her think of herself as his lady as she never had in the here and now. The how she might have been as Lady Paulina of Mantaigne was queenly and proud instead of beggarly and defiant, her carriage fluid and assured as she swept down the stone stairway from the Great Parlour to greet her lord. She knew he adored her just as she was; that he knew she would defend his lands and his people and their children like a she-wolf protecting her cubs. A mighty lord needed an independent lady then, for how else could he know his lands and people were safe when he was not at home?

      She shook her head and told herself not to be a fool. Not only was that then and this now, but here and now was real and there and then was not. Something about Peters’s and his lordship’s earnest conversation told her they believed some important problem had been solved by that mysterious trip to London, and it made her shiver to think that would be that. Now his lordship would leave and perhaps never come back. Even that phantom lady of his queening it over the neighbourhood seemed better than never setting eyes on the wretched man again, or only once in a long and weary decade when he might come back to see if his castle had fallen into the sea quite yet. Lady Wakebourne was right to accuse her of doting on the man and knowing it at least gave her the sense to distance herself from him.

      If it was in any way mutual, he wouldn’t have been able to turn his back on her and ride away from her this morning. She had offered herself to him so blatantly and he had all but blushed and said a polite ‘no, thank you’. Shame rushed into her cheeks in a hot flood of colour, and she leant one on the cold window pane to cool it and saw with horror his lordship’s rain-dark head raise as he caught sight of her. Gasping a denial she had been watching for his return like some faithful hound, she jumped away and refused to look back, but it was too late—the image of him soaked to the skin and his fine clothes plastered to his body as if they couldn’t love him enough was stamped on her mind’s eye.

      Even from so far away she’d seen the intensity in his blue gaze as if not even that much rain would douse the heat in it. Drat the man, but he called to the wild instincts and hot blood in her. Her heart was pounding, her body roused and