The Regency Season Collection: Part Two. Кэрол Мортимер

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СКАЧАТЬ at the calm waters below and the cloudless twilight sky above them. ‘At least there’s no need to worry about smugglers tonight—it’s far too bright a moon for them to risk being out and about,’ he said, as they were a lesser problem than the one Miss Paulina Trethayne and Lady Wakebourne’s presence here had set him.

      ‘I don’t worry about them much on any night. There’s little point doing so when half the coast is actively involved in the trade and the other half wink at it.’

      ‘Aye, it would be a bit like trying to keep water in a sieve,’ Tom admitted with a frown at the calm scene that was so at odds with the turmoil inside him.

      ‘Which is why you don’t ride to certain coves or visit outlying farms at the wrong time of day, I suppose?’

      ‘I’ve never been one for tilting at windmills,’ Tom said with the uneasy feeling he might be lying.

      ‘And there’s trouble enough close to home.’

      It was more of a statement than a question, and Tom didn’t know if he least wanted to think about who was managing to invade his castle right under his nose, or what to do about a female unlike any other he’d ever encountered.

      ‘You are a clever lawyer, Peters, but Rich Seaborne tells me you’re an even wilier investigator of knotty problems certain rich and powerful men would rather you did not untangle.’

      ‘Does he, my lord? I wouldn’t have thought Mr Seaborne so ready to wag his tongue about the shady affairs of such men to anyone who asked him.’

      ‘Oh, don’t worry yourself on that head; I had the devil’s own job prising even that much information out of him. He only admitted to knowing you as anything other than a lawyer when I told him of my mission from my godmother and the fact she had engaged you to come here with me to guard my back and investigate my enemies. He said she wouldn’t have asked you to do so on a whim, nor would you have agreed to come here if it was as easy a task as it appeared.’

      ‘These incursions into a near-ruinous castle don’t have the feel of anything truly sinister about them to me,’ Peters said as if he was a connoisseur of the worst sort of criminal mind and this one wasn’t up to his mettle.

      ‘No, I suspect it’s a mean little affair, much like the rest my one-time guardian had running in his lifetime. His nephew seems even less effectual, if also slightly less mad, than he turned out to be.’

      ‘Yes, he does seem to have been a bully of the worst sort, but a coward with it, I suspect,’ Peters said as if that was all the world needed to remember of Philip Grably, and Tom wondered if he was right.

      ‘He was a twisted and devious coward and bully, though. All the tales I hear of my father when I ride about the estate and villages have made me realise he knew this place like the back of his hand. I can’t help remembering how Grably used to rave he loved my mother better than any other man and how dared my father lay his filthy hands on such a perfect and fragile woman when he wasn’t fit to black her boots? I suspect he might have murdered my father, for all the good that could do him when my mother was already dead. Perhaps he thought he was avenging her, or who knows what he thought when he pitched his supposed best friend down a two-hundred-foot drop onto the rocks below five years after she died?’

      ‘That’s a grim suspicion to live with, Mantaigne,’ Peters said with sympathy Tom would have felt uncomfortable with only weeks ago.

      ‘Aye, but it could explain how my father stumbled so close to the edge of a cliff-path he walked every morning and knew better than anyone.’

      ‘It could, but if so it’s a secret Grably took to his grave,’ Peters agreed quietly.

      ‘True,’ Tom replied with a frown at a certain window in the old part of the castle where the women had their quarters. ‘And the Trethaynes are alive and under my roof. Their welfare trumps old sins.’

      ‘Indeed,’ Peters agreed so blandly that Tom decided he didn’t care if the man thought he was a besotted fool or not.

      ‘Don’t you think it strange even a junior branch of such an old and powerful family was left to beg, borrow or steal their daily bread?’

      ‘Profligacy has brought many a rich man to ruin,’ Peters said with such austerity Tom wondered if that was a reason a clever and devious man might become a lawyer and whatever else the man was when he wasn’t busy.

      ‘I know, but Lord Trethayne’s fortune seems intact. I don’t know how the man could leave those children to starve when he should feel a moral duty to look after his nephew’s family, even if the idiot didn’t leave them to his care until they were grown. That seems the logical step for the nephew of a lord to take when he began to breed so many boys with his second wife, don’t you think?’

      ‘The late Mr Trethayne doesn’t sound like a sensible man.’

      ‘No, but his second wife fled to this country after the revolution in France. She must have known first-hand how it felt to lose everything and would have pushed the idiot to make some provisions for her children, however feckless he was otherwise,’ Tom confided the unease he’d felt about that destitution ever since he found the family here scraping a living on his land.

      ‘I believe his ruin began after the lady died, but it happened nearly a decade ago and I can’t recall any details. Nobody mentioned he had children when the tale of his rash dealings and sad end went the rounds, so I didn’t think it remarkable Lord Trethayne disclaimed all responsibility at the time. Now I can see that you’re right; it’s odd and needs looking into, if only to find out why he didn’t help them. I expect I will find out more in London at this time of year than I could at Trethayne’s country seat, so I’d best arrange to be summoned there urgently before the week is out if you truly wish me to take this any further.’

      ‘Aye, I do, and I’m sure the place is teeming with crimes and misdemeanours awaiting your attention by now,’ Tom said with a mocking grin to offset Peters’s knowing smile that he cared enough about the Trethaynes to go to so much trouble on their behalf.

      ‘At least I’ll be spared the tension in any room when you and Miss Trethayne are in it for the next few days. I half expect crockery or candlesticks to start flying round the room whenever you meet without one of Miss Trethayne’s brothers or Lady Wakebourne there to make you guard your tongues and tempers,’ Peters replied with a look that told Tom he also wondered if he was about to be punched in the nose.

      ‘Well, don’t, Miss Trethayne is too much of a lady to vent her temper on innocent bystanders. If I can remind Lord Trethayne of his duty to his family and the fact she and her brothers are his responsibility, at least they might be able to go home and excuse the rest of you such a state of civil war at the breakfast table.’

      ‘She will never agree to go anywhere near the old vulture after he left her to tramp the roads with three little boys when her father died,’ Peters cautioned as if warning him not to get his hopes up.

      ‘The trick will be to present things to her in the right terms,’ Tom said with a feeling finding those words wasn’t going to be as easy as he made out, especially as his best words seemed to desert him in Miss Trethayne’s company and all sorts of wrong-headed ideas took their place.

      ‘I doubt a poet could come up with those,’ Peters cautioned.

      ‘I can’t let her leave Dayspring with nothing in her pockets and an easy СКАЧАТЬ