The Regency Season Collection: Part Two. Кэрол Мортимер

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СКАЧАТЬ Paulina Trethayne had long ago resigned herself to life shorn of all her kind took for granted and sniffed, as if doubtful he could lift a pitchfork, let alone wield one.

      ‘You’ll get very dirty,’ she warned, as if he couldn’t see the dust and smell the unused staleness of the air inside long-neglected stables for himself.

      ‘I’ll wash,’ he said indifferently, letting her implied insult pass as he surveyed the dust of ages in front of him. ‘We’ll need those buckets and something to scrub with as well as more hay and straw, if it can all be got at short notice.’

      ‘Enough of both are in the barn and there’s more in the rickyard,’ she said, and he raised his annoying eyebrows again, as if surprised they were so organised. He might not be so pleased when he realised animals and crops came ahead of people in their household and there would not be enough to feed him in style.

      ‘Good, we’d best get on with it then, if you’ll tell us where a couple of decent brooms and buckets are, then leave us to our labours, Miss Trethayne?’ he said, as if he swept and washed down stables every day dressed in Bond Street’s finest and with that fallen-angel smile never wavering for a second.

      Mr Peters eyed the blanket of stale dust and detritus overlaying everything and looked as if he had better places to be. Moved by his mournful look at his neatly made coat as he took it off, as if he was bidding goodbye to his sober raiment and tidy appearance for ever, Polly went to make sure fires were lit under the vast coppers in the laundry to provide baths for the lord as well as his man. If there was only water for one, doubtless the marquis would take it all and let his fastidious aide sleep in his dirt, so there was no point trying to make him even more eager to leave by skimping on such necessities after their hard labour.

      * * *

      Tom and Peters were almost unrecognisable as the lord of this ancient pile and his supposed secretary by the time all four cartloads of luggage and provisions rolled down the rutted drive. It was dusk and on the edge of true darkness by then and the grooms and stable lads seemed delighted to be at journey’s end, even if it didn’t promise more than a roof over their heads against the coming night. Their calls to each other and exclamations at the state of the roads and their new lodgings made the yard livelier than it must have been for decades. Tom shook his head as if he was Lunar trying to dislodge a persistent fly and dust and old cobwebs threatened their handiwork with a new sprinkling of ancient history.

      ‘Hercules had the River Styx handy to divert through the Augean Stables,’ Peters remarked gloomily as he swept up the dislodged dust and followed his broom outside into the fading daylight, before Tom could make more work.

      ‘And the nice warm Aegean to bathe in when he was done,’ Tom said with a grin at his once-pristine companion. ‘You look as if you’ve been pulled through a hedge backwards, rolled in the dust and trampled by a herd of wild horses.’

      ‘I feel filthy,’ Peters said disgustedly, and Tom laughed.

      ‘Ah, but you must admit the place is full of surprises,’ he said.

      ‘Aye, it’s confounded us so far,’ the man said as if that wasn’t a good thing, but hard work had settled some of the tension of the past few days, and Tom didn’t intend to fall into a gloom again.

      ‘At least there’s not much chance of being bored for the next few weeks.’

      ‘Boredom can be a good thing, given the alternative,’ Peters said with a sigh, but Tom turned to greet his head groom and managed to ignore him.

      ‘There’s good news and bad, Dacre,’ he informed the man cheerfully once Dacre reported a smooth journey and they had compared notes on the roads and the state of the horses after the easy run they’d had today.

      ‘I can see the bad part of it, milord, so what’s to be happy about?’

      ‘Mr Peters and I have swept and scrubbed the unused stables as best we can, so we can house the horses in reasonable comfort and safety. If your lads go and fetch bedding and feed from the barns over yonder, I dare say the nags will be as happy as we can make them, even if I don’t hold much hope for the rest of us. I trust you didn’t push the teams so hard we can’t water them when you find a few more buckets?’

      ‘Not I, but it’s as well we brought plenty with us, my lord,’ Dacre said with a disapproving look at their handiwork.

      Tom’s head groom always disdained anything he hadn’t ordered himself on principle, but, since Amazonian Miss Trethayne had sent her three young brothers and other assorted urchins to ‘help’, Tom knew they had achieved a lot. Luckily the lads had soon grown bored with sweeping up choking clouds of ancient dust and cleaning windows and melted away to find more amusing things to do.

      ‘Never mind, Dacre. Barnabas will be here with the riding horses any moment, he can help you restore order in the morning,’ Tom said.

      ‘I’ll try to be grateful for small mercies then, my lord.’

      ‘For now the horses need your attention and I hope you find all their gear on the wagons in the dark. A few moth-eaten brushes and a curry-comb with every other tooth missing won’t do the job after their journey.’

      ‘Very true, my lord. Now you leave the beasts to me while you go and turn yourself back into a gentleman.’

      ‘Of course. Why else would I pay you so handsomely? Even when you think it’s your duty to set me down like a scrubby schoolboy with every other word.’

      ‘Somebody has to do it, my lord,’ Dacre replied dourly. ‘Her ladyship trusted me with the job when you was a lad, and I’m not done hoping you’ll toe the line one day quite yet.’

      ‘Do let me know when you consider me mature enough to run my own life, won’t you?’ Tom said cheerfully.

      Knowing he could relax and leave his horses and men in good hands now, he wondered if he and Peters would have to make do with a very quick dip in the still not-very-warm April sea he could hear whispering against the foreshore of the cove below the castle. There was no chance of him getting a wink of sleep if he tried to bed down in all this dirt, even if it was in a stable, so the sea it would have to be and what else had he expected of the wreck he’d made of his former home?

      ‘Polly said we were to bring lanterns to light you and Mr Peters inside,’ little Joshua Trethayne’s childish voice piped up as the glow of them softened the fast falling darkness in the stable yard. ‘But you’re to be careful because the whole place will go up like a tinder box if you let one fall, or so Lady W. says. Oh, and you’re not to be late for supper if you have to scrape the dirt off to be in time.’

      ‘Bagpipe,’ Master Henry Trethayne condemned his little brother in his halfway between child-and-man voice. ‘Lady Wakebourne said we’re to say there’s enough hot water for two baths in the coppers, but you’ll have to take them in the laundry house, because there’s nobody to carry water up and down stairs for you.’

      ‘And there’s the biggest pie we ever saw ready for dinner and we’re starved,’ the boy Tom thought was called Joe said from behind the three brothers.

      ‘We’d best hurry, Peters,’ Tom told his filthy companion, wondering if he had that much dust and dirt on his once-immaculate person as well. ‘Do you know if there’s any soap to spare, boys? Or must I search the wagons before we come in?’

      ‘I sincerely СКАЧАТЬ