The Regency Season Collection: Part Two. Кэрол Мортимер

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       Chapter Twelve

      ‘Has it ever struck you that the intruders we thought were prowling round the Stuart wing of the castle could be choosing moonlit nights to avoid the free-traders, Lady W.?’ Polly asked Lady Wakebourne over the luncheon Prue insisted they took in the ‘Drawing Room’ while the rest of the self-appointed staff had theirs in the kitchen.

      For a while Polly had tried to insist nothing had changed with the marquis’s homecoming, but the air of restraint and discomfort in the otherwise cosy kitchen had soon defeated her. Now she reluctantly bowed to the divisions that seemed to have grown up between gentry and working folk once more. It was tempting to blame his lordship, but fairness made her admit he’d done nothing to put those barriers up, he had given in to the fact they existed much as she had herself.

      ‘I do my best not to think about the smugglers who infest this coast, or anyone else who might be wandering about in the night when I’m in bed. And don’t call me Lady W. in that vulgar fashion.’

      ‘If you really mean to adopt me as well as your mixed quantity of urchins so Lord Mantaigne can get us out of his castle, then you’ll have to let me to call you something other than “your ladyship”.’

      ‘As if you ever did treat me with much respect,’ Lady Wakebourne scoffed.

      ‘Yet I still respect you and might even have admitted to loving you now and again, if you recall?’

      ‘You know it’s mutual,’ Lady Wakebourne said. Polly felt her own smile wobble as it occurred to her it wasn’t only Lord Mantaigne who had held back his feelings these past few years.

      ‘I also know you stood with me when the rest of the world turned its back and without you I would have been so lonely I can’t even bring myself to think about it. Besides that, who else can understand the things that concern me most? I love my brothers far more than they like me to admit now they’re so grown up and manly, but they aren’t interested in where their next pair of breeches is coming from or how to keep them well and happy on nothing a week.’

      ‘You’re far too young for that to be the beginning and end of your ambitions now, my dear, so at seventeen you were unforgivably youthful to be left to bring them up without a penny to bless yourself with. I would be a very hard-hearted female if I’d turned my back on you and those three little boys then.’

      ‘And you’re certainly not one of those, are you? Do you ever intend to tell Lord Mantaigne how your great-aunt somehow contrived to interfere in his young life, my lady? No, don’t try pretending she had nothing to do with his timely rescue from his awful guardian because I know you as well as anyone can by now. Hearing how it was done might help him live here and not see that monster around every corner when the rest of us must leave.’

      ‘And you take a humane interest in the man’s welfare, I suppose? Do you really take me for such a fool, Paulina?’

      ‘No, but you know as well as I do it’s all I will ever share with him.’

      Lady Wakebourne gave Polly a steady look as if she would like to argue, then sighed and shrugged her agreement that there was no future for a lady of no means at all and a rich and powerful marquis. ‘Nevertheless, I am always here if you need to talk to someone about it. Carrying your burdens alone as you have had to all these years has made you both older than your years and at the same time as inexperienced as a débutante at her first ball. Promise me you’ll come to me if you need a woman’s advice or even a sympathetic ear?’

      ‘If I ever come up against a problem Lord Mantaigne doesn’t resolve before I have a chance to make my own decisions, I will,’ Polly said bitterly and knew how much she had betrayed when she saw the look in her acute friend’s dark eyes.

      ‘How very ham-fisted of him,’ the lady said with a glint of unholy satisfaction in her gaze that left Polly torn between agreeing and feeling even more hurt.

      ‘We are better having as little to do with each other as possible when we must live under the same roof.’

      ‘If you say so, my dear,’ Lady Wakebourne said so equably Polly gave her a suspicious glare.

      ‘Anyway we were not talking about me and the lord and master of this poor old place, we were discussing how your relative came to intervene in his childhood.’

      ‘Well, no, we were not if we intend to be strictly accurate. You made an unsubstantiated observation and I didn’t deny it.’

      ‘That’s splitting hairs.’

      ‘No, I once made a promise and I don’t easily go back on one of those.’

      ‘But 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 СКАЧАТЬ