The Regency Season Collection: Part Two. Кэрол Мортимер

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СКАЧАТЬ there’s soap all right,’ one of the skinny urchins Tom thought more at home on a London street than rural Dorset said gloomily, ‘more of it than a body should have to put up with in a whole lifetime, if you asks me.’

      ‘That’s because you’re a mudlark,’ Henry Trethayne said cheerfully.

      ‘Then at least I ain’t a pretty little gentleman.’

      ‘D’you still think I’m pretty now?’ Henry asked as he lunged for his friend and wrestled him to the ground.

      ‘Please ignore them, my lord,’ his elder brother said loftily, but Tom’s night vision was good enough to see him eyeing the pair with the wistfulness of an adult looking back on the pleasures of his youth. ‘They know no better, I’m afraid.’

      ‘Clearly,’ he said as solemnly as he could. ‘Now, about that soap and water? Could you point us in the direction of it so we’re rid of our dirt before the ladies see us? We’ll get a fine scolding if we venture inside looking like this.’

      ‘Hmm? Oh, yes, Josh will take you, won’t you, Josh?’ the boy said absently, weighing up how best to intervene as a third boy launched himself into the fray and maturity felt less important than evening the odds.

      ‘Come on then, Mr Lord,’ the youngest Trethayne ordered cheerfully.

      ‘You don’t want to join in?’ Tom couldn’t help asking as they walked towards the castle with the noises of battle fading behind them.

      ‘I’m the smallest and weakest. It would be foolish and painful to do so,’ the boy informed him as if he was the grown up.

      ‘True,’ Peters said with a heartfelt sigh.

      ‘Younger son?’ Tom couldn’t help asking.

      ‘Something like that,’ his companion replied in his usual guarded tone when Tom tried to learn more about this enigma of a man than the enigma really wanted him to know.

      Tom forgot his companions and everything else when Dayspring Castle loomed ever closer out of the half-dark. Its air of down-at-heel raffishness was hidden by the coming night and the feeling of malevolent power he recalled all too well from his childhood was in command once more. Then it had seemed to have a real, beating heart tucked away somewhere, hellbent on showing him he was as nothing compared to the grand history of Dayspring and its warrior lords.

      His breath shortened and his heartbeat began to race, as if he was on the edge of the same panic he’d felt every time he was dragged back here from an attempt to run away as a boy. Back then he’d usually betrayed his terror by being physically sick or, on one terrible occasion, losing control of all his bodily functions as his guardian and that terrifying pack of dogs bayed at him from the castle steps and he felt the snap of savage jaws held just far enough off not to actually bite, but close enough to be a boy’s worst nightmare come horribly true. Thank Heaven Peters knew nothing of that awful moment of weakness as he remarked what a fine place it was and how he might envy its owner, if it wasn’t close to ruin.

      ‘It’s not a ruin,’ Joshua Trethayne said as if he loved it. ‘The North Tower is dangerous and Poll says we’re not to go there, even if someone could die if we don’t. Jago says it’s haunted, so I don’t want to go up there anyway and Toby can say I’m a coward as often as he likes, but I really don’t want to know who the ghost is.’

      ‘Quite right,’ Tom said dourly. ‘He’s not worth meeting.’

      ‘I would consider meeting any ghost a memorable experience, even if their very existence is beyond the realms of logic to me,’ Peters argued.

      Tom was tempted to growl something disagreeable and stump off towards the laundry house he remembered as a warm, if damp, hiding place when he escaped his prison in the North Tower to roam about the countryside. Frightened of the smugglers and other unpredictable creatures of the night, he would come back here to sleep in the outbuildings and feed on scraps of food carelessly left out by the laundresses and grooms. With adult perception Tom realised that was done deliberately and felt a lot better about being back here all of a sudden. At least some of the people who once lived and worked here had cared enough about the ragged little marquis to leave him the means to stay free and safe for a little longer.

      ‘I was kept in that tower for several years by my wicked guardian, Master Trethayne. So, no, there are no ghosts up there I can assure you. I’d have been glad of their company, feral boy as I was back then.’

      ‘That’s what Poll said Jago was when Lady W. found him: a feral boy,’ Josh Trethayne said, and Tom could have kicked himself for saying too much about his past in front of this acute young gentleman, although there had to be rumours still flying about the area of shocking goings on up at the castle before Tom was taken away to be brought up by a very different guardian to the one he’d begun his career as an orphan with.

      ‘I dare say he and I would have got on well if we had met when I was young, then,’ Tom made himself say cheerfully as he tried to dismiss the past. ‘Right now I’m sharp set and filthy. Do you think your sister and Lady Wakebourne will mind if I eat in my dirt?’ he asked to divert the lad from what he’d revealed about his early life, lest he have nightmares of that long-lost boy shut up in the tower alone.

      ‘Yes, her ladyship says she has her standards, however low she’s fallen in life, and cleanliness costs only a bar of soap and some hot water, which is just as well since she can’t afford much more. We told her we’d be happy to save on the soap part to help out, but Poll insists it’s a price worth paying.’

      ‘Bad luck,’ Tom said sympathetically, recalling earnest arguments with Virginia on the same subject he’d been secretly relieved not to win when he looked back with a shudder on being filthy and on the brink of starvation at Dayspring Castle, before his life took an unexpected turn for the better with her arrival in it.

      * * *

      Polly stood up from stoking the fire in the communal room they’d made from the great parlour of long-ago lords of Dayspring Castle. It had been little more than a huge lumber room until they came, but now the oak-panelled walls and mix of ancient furniture gathered from other neglected chambers shone with beeswax.

      Richly coloured cushions made even awkward old oak chairs comfortable enough to sit and doze in on a winter evening. The fact they were made from the good bits of brocade or velvet curtains too old or damaged to repair probably wouldn’t go down well with the owner of this faded splendour, but she really didn’t care. No doubt Lord Mantaigne would condemn them for making a home here and turn them out tomorrow anyway, but today they had more right to be here than he did. Given the neglect he’d inflicted on his splendid birthright, if there was any justice he’d have no rights here at all.

      ‘Ah, there you are,’ the man observed from the doorway and she turned to make some sarcastic comment on his acute powers of observation.

      ‘Heavens,’ she said lamely instead and felt her mouth fall open at the sight of a very different Lord Mantaigne to the man polite society fawned on like fools.

      ‘I believe “Lawks” was how your cook put it,’ he said, and drat the man, but his grin was pure charm, and suddenly she understood all that fawning after all.

      ‘Prue’s not my cook, she’s a friend,’ she argued, but there was no bite in her tone as she gazed at perhaps the dirtiest nobleman she’d ever laid eyes on.

      He СКАЧАТЬ