Buch lesen: «The Marquis's Awakening»

Chapter One

Tom Banburgh, Marquis of Mantaigne, thought the polite world was about to be bitterly disappointed. If the wolfish glint in Luke Winterley’s eye was anything to go by, he wouldn’t be letting the former Lady Chloe Thessaly out of his bed long enough for her to go to town for a very long time, so the ton wouldn’t be able to pass judgement on the new Viscountess Farenze until her new husband could spare her—some time in the next decade, if they were lucky.

‘Can’t this wait until after your wedding journey?’ he asked with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach as Lady Chloe took a sealed missive from the neat reticule she was carrying. He should have been suspicious of that, since Luke was waiting to whisk her off on their bride trip and she hardly stood in need of whatever ladies carried in them when she had a husband all too eager to provide for her every need, and a few she probably didn’t even know she had right now.

Feeling a fool for not remembering his godmother’s infamous will, even on this joyous day Virginia had done so much to bring about, he realised he’d stepped into the book room with the happy couple as naively as a débutante at her first grown-up party. As if they would have anything else to say to him before they left for Devon on their honeymoon but here you are; you’re next.

‘Here you are; you’re next, I’m afraid, Tom,’ Chloe said with a rueful smile to admit he wouldn’t be pleased to take it and how could a few bits of expensive paper feel so heavy? ‘Luke says we won’t be back from Devon for weeks, and you must begin whatever you have to do for Lady Virginia before then if you’re to get it done in the allotted three months.’

‘Dash it all, though, it’s the beginning of the Season,’ Tom managed to utter after a heavy pause as he fought off a craven urge to throw the letter back at his best friend’s new wife and refuse. ‘Ah, well, suppose I might as well get it over with,’ he said as lightly as he could while turning the letter over again, as if he might conjure it into someone else’s hand if he put off reading it long enough.

‘Look what my quarter of a year brought me,’ Luke told him with a besotted smile Tom did his best to find nauseating.

‘And can you see me neatly paired off at the end of whatever wild goose chase Virginia insists I carry out for her?’ he demanded past a nasty little suspicion that was exactly what his wily godmother intended to happen, if Luke’s adventures were anything to go by.

‘One day you’ll have to consider the succession,’ Luke said half-seriously.

‘I have and decided there’s nothing very wonderful about the Banburghs, so who cares if there are no more of us?’ Tom replied with a cynical smile that felt a lot better than the dread of being the next one on his godmother’s list.

He ordered himself not to squirm under the sceptical mother’s glance Chloe had perfected on her young niece. She and Luke would no doubt raise repellent quantities of brats in their joint images and be blissfully happy together for the rest of their lives, but he had no wish to follow in their footsteps and had managed without a family all his life.

‘True,’ Luke agreed with an impatient glance at the door. ‘Why not leave him to read it in peace now, love? A very small part of me would like to stay and watch Mantaigne perform like a dancing bear in his turn, but the rest can’t wait for us to begin our honeymoon.’

‘I doubt your best friend relishes the task in front of him though, Luke,’ she told her new husband sternly, then seemed to find it impossible to see anything but him once she’d turned her fascinated gaze his way.

‘Have you any clue to what my quest could be, Lady Chloe?’ Tom asked to remind the lovers he was still here, before it was he who needed to leave the book room in a hurry instead of them.

‘Oh, that quest. No, I only hand out the letters,’ Chloe said with a shrug that admitted she was so deep in love with Luke they were very poor company.

She flicked a glance at Tom’s name and titles inscribed on his last message from his godmother and he was in danger of being ambushed by grief all over again. It was such a stark absence, having to acknowledge Virginia’s wit, warmth and energy had left this world for the next. She and Virgil had lit up his life, and he felt the loneliness of losing both hit him anew.

‘I had such plans, very seductive and beautiful ones they were as well,’ he grumbled to hide his true feelings on such a joyful day.

‘Rakehell.’ Luke dismissed that objection with the wolfish good humour of a man about to have his own wildest fantasies come true. ‘And where would be the fun in my great-aunt being predictable in death as she never was in life?’

‘Fun for you, I suppose, Romeo, now your task is safely over.’

‘True, watching you squirm is a pleasant side effect of standing at my own Lady Farenze’s side while I watch three more idiots run about in their turn. If Virginia can see us from her place in heaven, I bet she’s enjoying the view even more than I am right now.’

‘Knowing her, it won’t be some simple task easily got through and back to town before anyone misses me either.’

‘Oh, I suspect those seductively beautiful plans of yours will, but we have to leave, and you need to discover whatever it is Virginia wants you to do in private,’ the new Lady Farenze intervened.

‘The fun’s just starting—do we really have to go when it’s getting interesting?’ her lord said with the easy humour of a man whose task had come to a deeply satisfying conclusion.

‘We do, Luke Winterley,’ Chloe said with a severe look that only made him laugh.

Tom hadn’t seen his friend and honorary brother this carefree since he was a dashing and hopeful youth, always game for a lark. The marriage his father arranged when Luke was barely twenty certainly knocked the youthful high spirits out of him far too young and he’d turned into a virtual hermit when the silly chit left him. After that Luke had locked himself away in his northern stronghold to raise their baby daughter and Tom blessed Virginia for managing to chip Luke out of frozen isolation, but he didn’t want to be next the next victim on her list all the same.

‘Well, we’ll leave you to it then, Mantaigne. Try not to miss us too much, won’t you?’ Luke said with a mocking grin at Tom and a hot look at his lady that made her blush, then stride ahead of him, clearly in nearly as much of a hurry to begin married life as he was.

The door shut after them with a soft snick and Tom was left with the last letter he’d ever receive from his godmother, wishing she was here to tell him what maggot had got into her head this time herself. He’d spent the best years of his boyhood in this house and sometimes wondered if he had imagined his stark early childhood as the true lord of an ancient castle and vast estates, but master of nothing.

* * *

‘Bonaparte’s Imperial Guard could be marching about on the cliffs tonight and we wouldn’t be any the wiser.’

Polly Trethayne shook her head, then remembered her companion couldn’t see her in the heavy darkness. ‘I really think we would,’ she whispered, wishing her friend and ally had stayed inside. ‘If it is smugglers, we really need to be quiet.’

‘Better for us not to know when they’re out and about, if you ask me,’ Lady Wakebourne grumbled a little more softly.

‘I didn’t and we can’t simply sit back and let them use Castle Cove to land cargo whenever they fancy. The riding officers are sure to find out and report it, and the last thing we want is for the Marquis of Mantaigne to take an interest in Dayspring Castle for once in his life. He’ll turn us out to tramp the roads again without a second thought and leave the poor old place to go to rack and ruin.’

‘Even if he wants Dayspring to tumble down as the locals say, I’m sure he’d rather we stay than leave it empty for any passing rogue who wants a hiding place.’

‘One or two may already be doing that and we are the rogues as far as the rest of the world is concerned. No, long may he stop away,’ Polly argued.

Meeting Lady Wakebourne and finding this place abandoned on his lordship’s orders was a small miracle and Polly had prayed every night for the last six and a half years for the man to stop away. Even the memory of how it felt to wander the world with a babe in her arms and two small boys at her heels for six long and terrifying months made her shudder.

‘I doubt if anything would wrench him away from the delights of a London Season at this time of year, so I don’t suppose we rogues need worry,’ Lady Wakebourne whispered with an unlikely trace of regret.

Polly shook her head at the idea her practical and forthright friend secretly dreamed of playing loo and gossiping with the tabbies and dowagers of the ton, whilst the glitter and scandal of soirées and balls played out round them. Deciding she must be a freak to think the whole extravagant business sounded appalling, she wondered fleetingly how she’d have fared in that world if she had been obliged to make her come out in polite society. The idea was so far removed from her real life it made her want to laugh, but she bit it back and reminded herself this was serious.

‘Surely you heard that?’ she whispered urgently, listening to the night with the uneasy feeling it was listening back. ‘I’d swear that was a window opening or closing on the landward side of the house.’

‘The wind, perhaps?’

‘There is no wind; nothing ought to be out here but foxes or owls.’

‘Some poor creature could have got in and not been able to get back out, then,’ Lady Wakebourne murmured.

‘I refuse to believe bats and birds can unbar shutters or open windows,’ Polly said as lightly as she could when this black darkness made her want to shout a challenge at whoever was out there.

‘Tomorrow we’ll go in and see for ourselves, but if you take another step in that direction now I’ll scream at the top of my voice.’

‘They will be long gone by then,’ Polly argued, although she knew Lady Wakebourne was right and she couldn’t afford to encounter an unknown foe in the unused parts of the castle.

Her three brothers had to grow up and be independent before she was free to have adventures, but it was so hard to fight her wild Trethayne urges to act now and think later. At least memory of her father’s recklessness reminded her to leash her own though; she was all that stood between her brothers and life on the parish, if they were lucky, and she had no plans to leave any of them in the dire situation Papa’s death had left her in as a very naive and unprepared seventeen-year-old.

‘At least we’ll find out if these felons of yours exist outside the pages of a Gothic novel. If they do we’ll have to get them to believe there really are ghosts at Dayspring Castle and leave us in peace with them.’

‘Perhaps I should cut my hair and borrow a fine coat, then ride up the drive and announce myself as the Marquis of Mantaigne come back to claim his own,’ Polly suggested as the most absurd way of scaring anyone out of the old place she could think of.

‘And perhaps you should stop reading those ridiculous Gothic novels the vicar’s sister passes on to us when she knows them by heart.’

‘Aye, they’re about as likely to come true as the idea Lord Mantaigne will ever come here without being kidnapped and dragged up the drive bound and gagged first. So ghosts it will have to be then,’ Polly agreed, reluctantly admitting there was nothing to be done tonight, and followed her fellow adventuress back to the castle keep and the closest thing she had to a home nowadays.

* * *

‘I should have sent the butler and housekeeper from Tayne on ahead of us, Peters. At least they might have found a few rooms at Dayspring undamaged after all these years of neglect and managed to make them habitable for us by now.’

Tom halted his matched team of Welsh greys at the gatehouse and wished himself a hundred miles away. Dayspring Castle was puffed up as his most splendid country seat in the peerages and guides to the county, but he felt a clutch of sick dread in his belly at the mere sight of it ahead, wrapped round the clifftop like a beast of prey from his worst nightmares.

‘They would have given notice,’ his companion argued. ‘It would need an army of servants to get such a place in any sort of order after lying empty so long.’

‘True, but wouldn’t that army need to be directed by my man of business?’ Tom retaliated against a not very-well-disguised rebuke for neglecting the wretched place until it became the ruin he’d once sworn to make it.

‘I like a challenge, my lord,’ Peters said, and wasn’t he a mystery of a lawyer now Tom came to think about it?

Nothing about this business was simple, though, and he supposed he’d have to admit the man had been useful to Luke in the part of the quest Virginia set him. According to James Winterley, who had a way of knowing things you didn’t expect him to, Peters had helped a variety of aristocratic clients sort out the skeletons in their rosewood cupboards, including the Seaborne clan, whose shrewdness Tom would back against a corps of wily diplomats. So Tom had no choice but to trust this man to watch his back, even if the fellow saw too much of what lay below the surface of life for comfort.

‘You’re only here for three months, and heaven knows why Virginia thought I needed you by my side the entire time. Perhaps she expected you to force me up the drive at pistol-point if I lose my nerve.’

‘The late Lady Farenze merely instructed me to meet you in Dorchester and accompany you here. I couldn’t say what your godmother had in mind, my lord,’ Peters said primly, but there was a world of disapproval in his gaze.

Perhaps the man was a Jacobin? Tom decided he didn’t care if he was hell-bent on revolution, so long as they got on with this wretched business and left as soon as they found out what was wrong. ‘I believe I mentioned my dislike of being “my lorded” at every turn when we first met,’ he replied with a preoccupied frown at the neatly kept castle gatehouse.

‘I’m supposed to be your temporary secretary here, not your equal, my lord.’

Tom found himself doubting that and how unlike him to look deeper into another man’s life than he wanted him to. Lord Mantaigne had spent most of his adult life skimming over the surface of life like a pond-skater, and Tom shook his head at the picture of himself not caring about anything very much. He’d loved his godmother and Virgil, but they were both dead now, and at least he’d managed to keep the rest of the world at arm’s length, except a voice whispered he’d let in Luke and his daughter and James. Now Lady Chloe and her spirited niece seemed to have chipped their way into a corner of what he’d thought was his cold heart, and how could he have been so careless as to let himself care about so many people without noticing?

He glared at a certain window high up in the ancient keep and stark memories rose up to whisper he was right not to come back until he had to. Virginia’s last letter had told him one of her legion of friends had written to tell her something was amiss at Dayspring and he must go and find out what was so wrong with the place, but all he could see wrong with it right now was that it was still standing. Only for the woman who had taken in the feral little beast who had once existed in that keep and loved him anyway would he revisit the place despite all his resolutions not to.

‘Whoever you intend to be, you’ll have a poor time of it here,’ he warned Peters as he slowed his greys to a walk.

‘I expect I’ll survive; I’m not faint-hearted.’

‘Just as well. My last guardian only kept a few servants here once he took control of the estate for me, and I paid them off when I came of age,’ Tom warned.

Peters shrugged as if he wanted to get on with his mission and leave, before he violated some lawyerly code and told a client exactly what he thought of his criminal neglect of such an historic property.

‘I expect there will be a couple of rooms we can make habitable for the few days I intend to spend here,’ Tom added glumly.

‘Indeed, although the castle looks very well preserved to me, despite your orders it should not be.’

‘And it’s evidently a lot less empty than it ought to be,’ Tom mused with a frown as he watched a plume of smoke waft lazily from a chimney in the oldest part of the castle.

The place had an air of being down at heel, but it wasn’t the echoing ruin it ought to be after being left empty so long. There were deep ruts in the road leading down to Castle Cove that made him wonder even more who had stopped it falling into the sea. Virginia was right to make him come here to find out what was going on, and he pictured her impatiently telling him she’d told him so from her place in heaven. He had to suppress a grin at the idea of her regarding him with still very fine dark eyes and a puckish grin that told the world Lady Virginia Farenze was still ready to jump into any adventure going with both feet.

He missed her with an ache that made him feel numb at times and furious at others. Lord Mantaigne was a care-for-nobody, but he’d cared more for Virginia than he’d let himself know until he lost her. Still, one of his childhood resolutions was safe; he would never marry and risk leaving a son of his alone in a hostile world. The Winterley family might have trampled his boyhood vow never to care about anyone in the dust, but that one wasn’t in any danger. He hadn’t met a female he couldn’t live without in all his years as one of the finest catches on the marriage mart, so he was hardly likely to find her in a dusty backwater like Dayspring Castle.

‘Some traffic clearly passes this way,’ Peters remarked with a nod at the uneven road in case Tom was too stupid or careless to notice.

Ordering Dayspring’s ruin on what must seem a rich man’s whim was one thing, but being judged stupid set Tom’s teeth on edge. Was he vain about his intellect as well as finicky about personal cleanliness and a neat appearance? Probably, he decided ruefully. The last Marquis of Mantaigne already seemed to be learning more about himself than he really wanted to know, and his three months of servitude had barely begun.

‘Heavy traffic as well,’ he murmured, frowning at the spruce gatehouse and well-maintained gates and wondering if there was a link between those carts and whoever kept it so neatly.

‘Perhaps we should follow in their hoof prints towards the stables? At least that way is well used, and the castle gates look sternly locked against all comers.’

‘Since there are clearly more people here than there ought to be, I’ll start as I mean to go on.’ Tom replied.

‘Maybe, but I don’t have any skill with the yard of tin so I’m afraid I can’t announce you in style.’

‘I knew I should have brought my head groom with me and left you to follow on one of the carts, Peters. Hand it over and hold the ribbons while we see what this idle fool can do with it instead.’

‘I never said you were a fool, my lord.’

‘Only a wastrel?’ Tom drawled as insufferably as he could manage, because being here prickled like a dozen wasp stings and why should he suffer alone?

‘I don’t suppose my opinion of anyone I work with during this year Lady Farenze decreed in her will matters to you.’

‘I’m sure you underestimate yourself, Peters.’

‘Do I, my lord? I wonder,’ the man said with his usual grave reserve.

Tom wondered why Virginia had thought he needed someone to watch his back in what should be a straightforward ruin by now. Perhaps she was right, though, he decided with a shrug when he considered his non-ruin and the rutted lane down to the sea, but he still played down to Peters’s poor opinion of him by raising an arrogant eyebrow and imperiously holding out a gloved hand for the yard of tin.

The greys accepted the change of driver with a calmness that surprised their owner as he produced an ear-splitting blast and, when there was still no sign of life, gave the series of emphatic demands for attention he’d learnt from Virgil’s coachman as a boy. He was about to give in and drive in the wake of those carts when the door slammed open and an ageing bruiser stamped into view.

‘Noise fit to wake the dead,’ he complained bitterly. ‘Yon castle’s closed up. You won’t find a welcome up there even if I was to let you in,’ he said, squinting up at them against the afternoon sun.

‘I don’t expect one here, so kindly open up before I decide it was a mistake not to have the place razed to the ground.’

‘You’re the Marquis of Mantaigne?’

‘So I’m told.’

‘Himself is said to be a prancing town dandy who never sets foot outdoors in daylight and lives in the Prince of Wales’s pocket, when he ain’t too busy cavorting about London and Brighton with other men’s wives and drinking like a fish, of course. You sure you want to be him?’

‘Who else would admit it after such a glowing summary of my life, but, pray, who am I trying to convince I’m the fool you speak of so highly?’

‘Partridge, my lord, and lord I suppose you must be, since you’re right and nobody else would admit to being you in this part of the world.’

‘What a nest of revolutionary fervour this must be. Now, if you’ll open the gates I’d like to enter my own castle, if you please?’ Tom said in the smooth but deadly tone he’d learnt from Virgil, when some idiot was fool enough to cross him.

‘You’ll do better to go in the back way, if go in you must. It’s a tumbledown old place at the best of times, m’lord, and there’s nobody to open the front door. These here gates ain’t been opened in years.’

Tom eyed carefully oiled hinges and cobbles kept clear of grass both sides of the recently painted wrought-iron gates. ‘I might look like a flat, Partridge, but I do have the occasional rational thought in my head,’ he said with a nod at those well-kept gates the man claimed were so useless.

‘A man has his pride and I’m no idler.’

‘How laudable—now stop trying to bam me and open the gates.’

Partridge met Tom’s eyes with a challenge that changed to grudging respect when he looked back without flinching. At last the man shrugged and went inside for the huge key to turn in the sturdy lock and Tom wasn’t surprised to see the gates open as easily as if they’d been used this morning. He thanked Partridge with an ironic smile and, as the man clanged the gates behind the curricle, wondered who the old fox was doing his best to warn that an intruder was on his way even he couldn’t repel.

‘I’m still surprised such an old building isn’t falling down after so many years of neglect,’ Peters remarked as Tom drove his team up the ancient avenue and tried to look as if he hadn’t a care in the world.

‘Some misguided idiot must have disobeyed all my orders,’ Tom said bitterly.

Memories of being dragged up here bruised and bleeding and begging to be let go before his guardian got hold of him haunted him, but he was master here now and thrust the memory of that ragged and terrified urchin to the back of his mind where he belonged.

‘Anyway, if I intended to let the place fall down without having to give orders for it to be demolished, I seem to have been frustrated,’ he managed to remark a little more calmly.

‘And I wonder how you feel about that.’

‘So do I,’ Tom mused wryly.

He accepted there was no welcome to be had at the massive front door and drove to the stable yard, feeling he’d made his point, if only to Peters and the gatekeeper. He saw two sides of the square that formed the stable blocks and the imposing entrance and clock tower were closed up and empty, paint peeling and a cast-iron gutter, broken during some tempest, left to rust where it fell. The remaining block was neat and well kept, though, and two curious horses were peering out of their stables as if glad of company.

‘More frustration for you,’ Peters murmured.

‘Never mind that, who the devil is living here? I ordered it empty as a pauper’s pocket and they can’t be any kin of mine because I don’t have any.’

‘How did you plan to look after your team when we got here then, let alone the carts and men following behind?’

‘The boot is full of tack, oats and horse blankets, so it’s your own comfort I’d be worrying myself about if I were you.’

‘I will, once we have these lads safely stowed in the nice comfortable stable someone’s left ready for them,’ Peters said with a suspicious glance about the yard that told Tom they had the same idea about such empty but prepared stables and what they might be used for this close to the coast.

‘Keep that pistol handy while we see to the horses,’ he cautioned.