moved. The fools had probably walked past it dozens of times and not even realised what they sought was right under their noses, but why they would be looking for it in the first place was beyond him.
Still, he heard a muffled grunt from the cupboard and shrugged in the darkness as he resigned himself to springing his trap a little before time. He hadn’t much stomach for hearing more and at least they’d given any accomplices time to crawl out of whatever worm-hole they used to enter the castle without being seen. These two were alone and he doubted very much they would put up much of a fight.
‘You’ve been deceived,’ he drawled as he stood upright.
Two more dark lanterns were hastily added to the total as the intruders felt the need to find out who was challenging them. Tom hoped the Trethaynes would realise the Mantons in his and Peters’s hands were primed and loaded and have the sense to stay where they were.
‘Mantaigne, what the hell are you doing here?’ the taller of the two asked as if he was the one with every right to ask questions.
‘Funnily enough, I thought I owned the place,’ Tom said lightly, circling the petrified figures to put himself between them and Polly, who saw what he was about and emerged from her hiding place to startle the intruders into stunned silence.
‘He does,’ she said with an emphatic nod that defied anyone to argue.
‘I heard about a giant doxy in breeches who lived here behind Mantaigne’s back, but I never thought you’d stay and warm his bed for him now he’s found courage to come back after all these years of cowering away in town.’
‘You take that back, she’s my sister and she’s not a doxy,’ Henry Trethayne ordered, in a fine brotherly fury Tom hadn’t thought the scholarly boy had in him.
‘Ladies don’t wear breeches or carry pistols,’ the nephew pointed out with a sneer, and Tom wondered if he had found some courage over the past two decades, until he reminded himself the fool probably didn’t believe she would actually shoot him, his mistake.
‘Yet still I have the pistol and you have a great deal of explaining to do,’ she said as coolly as most ladies of Tom’s acquaintance might if they were wielding a teapot and asking if an unwanted visitor would like more tea rather than brandishing a pistol he hadn’t even known she possessed.
‘I suggest you start now before one of us decides to shoot you for the hell of it,’ he said coolly, despite this mad impulse to grin like a fool because he’d suddenly realised exactly how complex and how simple his life was going to be from now on.
Arrogant of him to believe he would win her when Polly was about as predictable as the north wind, but something told him the chance was right here, ready to be seized and gloated over, and he really didn’t intend to waste it.
‘I, for one, am getting very bored,’ Peters said laconically and Tom had never liked the fellow better.
‘And I just wish someone would let me have a go,’ Hal said with an aggrieved look at his sister, who narrowed her incredible eyes and straightened her arm as if getting ready to pick which bit of villain to shoot first.
‘All right,’ the smaller of the two men said with a look of terror on his face. ‘I’ll tell you everything if you all promise not to shoot.’
‘I’m not set on it, at least not in your case,’ Tom said reasonably enough to his way of thinking.
‘I really don’t like the idea of them invading your house whenever they feel like it,’ Polly said calmly, and Peters just grinned and cocked his pistol as if he didn’t have to dislike a man to take a potshot at him.
‘Our house,’ Tom corrected as patiently as he could manage.
It was possibly the oddest proposal ever made, but she read it for what it was and let her gun arm waver for a breath-stealing moment. It was as well Peters seemed so deadly calm neither man moved an inch as he watched them with chilling indifference, since Tom was more interested in her response than their unwanted visitors.
‘Do you remember all those seaman’s knots Sam Barker has been teaching you to tie, Hal?’ Peters asked casually.
‘Of course I do. I’m not dexterous like Toby, but once I learn something I don’t forget it.’
‘Then tie one or two in these and make sure neither can get free. There’s a good chap.’
‘I can help,’ Josh said crossly, for being seven was clearly no excuse for missing out on anything interesting for the Trethayne clan.
‘You can keep your sister’s gun steady on the fat one, my friend,’ Peters said as if he didn’t think so either. ‘And I truly hope the sight of Josh Trethayne with a gun terrifies you as deeply as it does me, whoever you are,’ Peters said as he held his own aim rock steady and made sure neither man had any thoughts about seizing Hal and using him as a hostage against their own escape.
Luckily it seemed to do so and they kept still as statues. Tom and Polly were far too preoccupied with not looking at each other to be much use, although Tom always swore afterwards if he hadn’t had such an able pack of helpers he might have taken a much more active role in subduing the prisoners himself.
‘Deal with them, would you, Peters?’ he said absently as he took his eyes off Polly long enough to nod sagely at the others and let them leave without him.
‘Will they be all right?’ Polly asked as if she only had half her mind on the supposed business of the night as well.
‘I should imagine so. I know your pistol wasn’t loaded, even if Josh and that poor man he’s driving along like a cow to market have no idea,’ Tom replied.
‘What do you mean “ours”?’ she demanded in the semi-darkness from the single lantern the others had left them to light up a whole cavernous hallway and half an empty house.
‘I mean marry me, live with me, love me,’ Tom said a little desperately, for suddenly it didn’t seem quite so certain she would believe him after that ridiculous scene this morning when he made it very plain he wasn’t going to ask her to be anything in his life.
‘Why?’
‘Because I want you to?’
‘Not enough.’
‘Then do it because I think you the most extraordinary woman I ever met, because I can’t imagine how tedious my life would be without you and your brothers and your oddly assorted band of friends and because I love you more than I thought I had it in me to love anyone. Be everything to me that I always thought I couldn’t have, Paulina Trethayne. Please? Before I beg and embarrass us both.’
‘I can’t be meek and conventional and there’s no point trying to make me into a proper marchioness. I’m more suited to be your mistress, but I can’t do it. I can’t abandon my family.’
‘And if anything happened to me you would fight the devil himself back into hell to see that our whelps were safe. If I’m ever to have a wife and gamble on making children with her, she will just have to be you. I couldn’t dare the fates and risk making them with anyone else, Polly. No other woman on God’s earth has your courage and loyalty and that lioness’s heart of yours and at last I’ve had the good sense to realise I don’t want
