The Marquis's Awakening. Elizabeth Beacon

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СКАЧАТЬ There were deep ruts in the road leading down to Castle Cove that made him wonder even more who had stopped it falling into the sea. Virginia was right to make him come here to find out what was going on, and he pictured her impatiently telling him she’d told him so from her place in heaven. He had to suppress a grin at the idea of her regarding him with still very fine dark eyes and a puckish grin that told the world Lady Virginia Farenze was still ready to jump into any adventure going with both feet.

      He missed her with an ache that made him feel numb at times and furious at others. Lord Mantaigne was a care-for-nobody, but he’d cared more for Virginia than he’d let himself know until he lost her. Still, one of his childhood resolutions was safe; he would never marry and risk leaving a son of his alone in a hostile world. The Winterley family might have trampled his boyhood vow never to care about anyone in the dust, but that one wasn’t in any danger. He hadn’t met a female he couldn’t live without in all his years as one of the finest catches on the marriage mart, so he was hardly likely to find her in a dusty backwater like Dayspring Castle.

      ‘Some traffic clearly passes this way,’ Peters remarked with a nod at the uneven road in case Tom was too stupid or careless to notice.

      Ordering Dayspring’s ruin on what must seem a rich man’s whim was one thing, but being judged stupid set Tom’s teeth on edge. Was he vain about his intellect as well as finicky about personal cleanliness and a neat appearance? Probably, he decided ruefully. The last Marquis of Mantaigne already seemed to be learning more about himself than he really wanted to know, and his three months of servitude had barely begun.

      ‘Heavy traffic as well,’ he murmured, frowning at the spruce gatehouse and well-maintained gates and wondering if there was a link between those carts and whoever kept it so neatly.

      ‘Perhaps we should follow in their hoof prints towards the stables? At least that way is well used, and the castle gates look sternly locked against all comers.’

      ‘Since there are clearly more people here than there ought to be, I’ll start as I mean to go on.’ Tom replied.

      ‘Maybe, but I don’t have any skill with the yard of tin so I’m afraid I can’t announce you in style.’

      ‘I knew I should have brought my head groom with me and left you to follow on one of the carts, Peters. Hand it over and hold the ribbons while we see what this idle fool can do with it instead.’

      ‘I never said you were a fool, my lord.’

      ‘Only a wastrel?’ Tom drawled as insufferably as he could manage, because being here prickled like a dozen wasp stings and why should he suffer alone?

      ‘I don’t suppose my opinion of anyone I work with during this year Lady Farenze decreed in her will matters to you.’

      ‘I’m sure you underestimate yourself, Peters.’

      ‘Do I, my lord? I wonder,’ the man said with his usual grave reserve.

      Tom wondered why Virginia had thought he needed someone to watch his back in what should be a straightforward ruin by now. Perhaps she was right, though, he decided with a shrug when he considered his non-ruin and the rutted lane down to the sea, but he still played down to Peters’s poor opinion of him by raising an arrogant eyebrow and imperiously holding out a gloved hand for the yard of tin.

      The greys accepted the change of driver with a calmness that surprised their owner as he produced an ear-splitting blast and, when there was still no sign of life, gave the series of emphatic demands for attention he’d learnt from Virgil’s coachman as a boy. He was about to give in and drive in the wake of those carts when the door slammed open and an ageing bruiser stamped into view.

      ‘Noise fit to wake the dead,’ he complained bitterly. ‘Yon castle’s closed up. You won’t find a welcome up there even if I was to let you in,’ he said, squinting up at them against the afternoon sun.

      ‘I don’t expect one here, so kindly open up before I decide it was a mistake not to have the place razed to the ground.’

      ‘You’re the Marquis of Mantaigne?’

      ‘So I’m told.’

      ‘Himself is said to be a prancing town dandy who never sets foot outdoors in daylight and lives in the Prince of Wales’s pocket, when he ain’t too busy cavorting about London and Brighton with other men’s wives and drinking like a fish, of course. You sure you want to be him?’

      ‘Who else would admit it after such a glowing summary of my life, but, pray, who am I trying to convince I’m the fool you speak of so highly?’

      ‘Partridge, my lord, and lord I suppose you must be, since you’re right and nobody else would admit to being you in this part of the world.’

      ‘What a nest of revolutionary fervour this must be. Now, if you’ll open the gates I’d like to enter my own castle, if you please?’ Tom said in the smooth but deadly tone he’d learnt from Virgil, when some idiot was fool enough to cross him.

      ‘You’ll do better to go in the back way, if go in you must. It’s a tumbledown old place at the best of times, m’lord, and there’s nobody to open the front door. These here gates ain’t been opened in years.’

      Tom eyed carefully oiled hinges and cobbles kept clear of grass both sides of the recently painted wrought-iron gates. ‘I might look like a flat, Partridge, but I do have the occasional rational thought in my head,’ he said with a nod at those well-kept gates the man claimed were so useless.

      ‘A man has his pride and I’m no idler.’

      ‘How laudable—now stop trying to bam me and open the gates.’

      Partridge met Tom’s eyes with a challenge that changed to grudging respect when he looked back without flinching. At last the man shrugged and went inside for the huge key to turn in the sturdy lock and Tom wasn’t surprised to see the gates open as easily as if they’d been used this morning. He thanked Partridge with an ironic smile and, as the man clanged the gates behind the curricle, wondered who the old fox was doing his best to warn that an intruder was on his way even he couldn’t repel.

      ‘I’m still surprised such an old building isn’t falling down after so many years of neglect,’ Peters remarked as Tom drove his team up the ancient avenue and tried to look as if he hadn’t a care in the world.

      ‘Some misguided idiot must have disobeyed all my orders,’ Tom said bitterly.

      Memories of being dragged up here bruised and bleeding and begging to be let go before his guardian got hold of him haunted him, but he was master here now and thrust the memory of that ragged and terrified urchin to the back of his mind where he belonged.

      ‘Anyway, if I intended to let the place fall down without having to give orders for it to be demolished, I seem to have been frustrated,’ he managed to remark a little more calmly.

      ‘And I wonder how you feel about that.’

      ‘So do I,’ Tom mused wryly.

      He accepted there was no welcome to be had at the massive front door and drove to the stable yard, feeling he’d made his point, if only to Peters and the gatekeeper. He saw two sides of the square that formed the stable blocks and the imposing entrance and clock tower were closed up and empty, paint peeling and a cast-iron gutter, broken СКАЧАТЬ