The Regency Season Collection: Part Two. Кэрол Мортимер

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      They had little chance to converse with gentlemen, isolated as they were from local society by their poverty and dubious status as unofficial residents of Dayspring Castle. One day she must face the puzzle of finding suitably gentlemanly occupations for three quick and energetic boys who no longer enjoyed the privileges they’d been born to. For now she supposed it would do them good to see how easily a true gentleman conducted himself in company, but she hoped they didn’t learn any of the idle, rakish and expensive ways this one could afford to indulge in along the way.

      She loved her little brothers fiercely and would never be without them, but it was hard to be father, mother and everyone else to them. The burden felt especially heavy now they must make a new life out of nothing again. Dayspring had given them a life of peace and usefulness after their lives became a wasteland. If they hadn’t stumbled on Lady Wakebourne in as sad a case as they were and this place so temptingly empty and forsaken, they would not have had it, though, and Polly sighed at the idea of taking to the roads again, in search of some other place to live until someone claimed it back. She fought a deep-down weariness at this constant struggle to keep her family happy, healthy and hopeful and told herself to count the blessing of a roof over their head and good food in their bellies for one more night.

      ‘Your sighs could rival the gusts even the shutters can’t keep out tonight, Miss Trethayne,’ Lord Mantaigne remarked.

      ‘It’s been a long day, my lord. I suppose I must be weary of it,’ she replied, refusing to squirm at the disapproving look Lady Wakebourne shot her to say she should remember her manners and make polite conversation.

      ‘I suppose you must be,’ he said blandly. ‘I could be a little tired of it myself if I let the idea take root.’

      ‘Aye, your lads from the wagons was worn to a thread. We took their share of stew and what bread we could spare to the stables so they didn’t have to wash and shave until morning,’ Dotty Hunslow said cheerfully.

      Polly smiled a ‘thank you’ for that attempt to lighten the tension she’d caused with her edgy feeling they were walking on eggshells. By not being able to put her fear out her head that they were about to be homeless, she’d probably made it more likely they would be ejected than not.

      ‘My thanks for making Dacre and my stable lads comfortable, ma’am,’ Lord Mantaigne said as politely as if Dotty was a patroness of Almack’s Club. Polly had to admire his manners, even if they highlighted her poor ones. ‘I warned them not to expect much at the end of their journey, but you have made a liar out of me.’

      ‘Even though you hate the place?’ Sam Barker, the one-legged sailor who arrived here without a penny in the pocket of his ragged breeches, said from his seat with its back to the window where the worst of the draughts came in.

      ‘Even so,’ Mantaigne replied with a straight look. Sam met it with a challenge, then a nod, as if admitting this lord had backbone, despite his sins.

      ‘And who can blame you for that, my boy? Now, we’re at dinner, not the local assizes, Sam Barker. Let us talk of matters conducive to good digestion rather than past sins,’ Lady Wakebourne said gently, and Polly was almost ashamed of her own determination not to see good in the man. It would be dangerous to like the spoilt aristocrat at her side and that was that.

      ‘This is far too delicious a meal to mar with mine at any rate,’ Lord Mantaigne agreed, ‘but where has the artist who produced this fine meal hidden herself away?’

      ‘She’s not an artist, she’s Prue,’ Polly’s littlest brother, Josh, informed him with a nod to where the sisters were sitting, flushed with pleasure at such praise.

      ‘Then thank you, Mrs Prue. If the Prince of Wales gets word of your culinary skills, you’ll be gracing his kitchens at Carlton House as fast as he can carry you off.’

      ‘Oh, I wouldn’t like that,’ Prue said shyly, and Jane nodded wisely by her side.

      ‘I’ll be grateful if you continue here then. Tomorrow I’ll find you a couple of assistants, though, as my arrival has doubled the number of people you cook for and more will have to be found if the old place is to be put in any sort of order.’

      Lord Mantaigne offered such help so lightly Polly frowned, certain he meant his offer to have a limit. It sounded like a ‘for now’, until he decided what to do with this unwanted part of his splendid inheritance. Even if he ordered repairs to stop the castle from falling down, he would order it closed up again afterwards.

      ‘What about the rest of us?’ she blurted out and instantly regretted it.

      Her sharp query arose from a stab of intense envy. He had so much while they could live on a small portion of it—if only he’d stay away. The others were shocked she had raised such a topic at the dinner table, gasped at her temerity, or sat in their seats, fearing they’d be turned out now she’d asked what no one else dared.

      ‘Well, really, Polly!’ Lady Wakebourne exclaimed.

      ‘Coo, Miss Poll, you ain’t half got a big mouth,’ Jago said admiringly.

      ‘A good question, but perhaps not an aid to good digestion,’ Mr Peters said wryly.

      ‘Do you ride, Miss Trethayne?’ Lord Mantaigne asked coolly when the murmurs of agreement or dissent had died down.

      ‘Of course I do,’ she said scornfully, before she remembered she always did so astride and had no ladylike habit, or even an old-fashioned and not particularly ladylike one such as this shabby and decades-out-of-date evening gown.

      ‘Then meet me in the stable yard after breakfast tomorrow and show me what you’ve been doing here. Once I know that, I shall be in a better position to decide what comes next.’

      ‘You can’t ride about the place dressed as a young man now his lordship is here, child,’ Lady Wakebourne put in with genuine distress in her voice. ‘You won’t have a reputation left to whistle down the wind if you gallop about the countryside alone with such a gentleman looking like some heathen amazon.’

      ‘Nonsense, ma’am, we shall take Peters with us. He’s more of a proper gentleman than I shall ever be, so nobody will dare to think ill of us in his sober presence. My consequence is much improved since he entered my employ; I preen myself on the appearance of virtue without the effort of reform.’

      ‘I am, of course, suitably grateful for your good opinion,’ Mr Peters said in his usual quietly ironic fashion.

      Polly wondered at the steel under his words. Who was Mr Peters to dare challenge a man of rank and power, even if he did it so subtly it took sharp ears to notice it?

      ‘You need not fear for Miss Trethayne’s reputation in such company, Lady Wakebourne,’ Lord Mantaigne finished with an air of settling the question.

      ‘Since I don’t ride, I must be content with your word as a gentleman you will chaperon Miss Trethayne as effectively as I would, Mr Peters?’

      Polly was touched by Lady Wakebourne’s concern for a reputation already in shreds, given her unusual mode of dress and the life she had lived these past few years.

      ‘Of course, my lady, it will be my pleasure,’ the enigmatic secretary agreed with the deference he refused his powerful employer.

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