little deeper into that particular charitable impulse before you lose something precious without ever realising you had it.’
Tom felt his way along that sentence and found knots in it. There was a deep sadness in Peters’s expression he’d never thought he’d be allowed to see, and Tom fumbled to pretend he hadn’t seen that glimpse of the man’s private self Peters wouldn’t relish sharing with the likes of him.
‘Just as well you’re not me then,’ he said facetiously and saw Peters’s frown at his refusal to be counselled.
He might have learned to love his childhood home again, had even let the sad old house and grounds and the folk on the estate into his life as far as he could, but he wasn’t ready to give up everything he’d learnt about surviving in a hostile world. If he let himself care about everyone within his orbit he’d collapse. Too many people depended on him for him to risk burdening himself with a wife and a ready-made family and hadn’t he decided on his way here he had true friends in Luke and his family? So he should be able to look forward to the end of Virginia’s three months with the lightest of hearts.
Yet, despite her poverty and unconventional life, Polly Trethayne wasn’t a female he could stow in a neat little corner of his life labelled ‘mistress’ and forget the rest of the time. She wouldn’t fit, for one thing; for another he didn’t want to leave her less than she was now and embittered by his betrayal into the bargain. He wanted her with a passion he couldn’t recall being this fierce even as a spotty youth desperate to find out about sex and any female who’d let him have some with her. What he felt was a freakishly heated physical attraction that would burn out as soon as he got her out of his castle and as far away as he could put her. Even a few miles away would be good enough for now, though.
He felt the gap in his heart and mind at the idea of being a stranger to her and hers again. He licked his suddenly dry lips and tasted her on them, as if her lush mouth had only just parted from his instead of the gap of impossible that stretched between them. He was the one who walked away; he’d made that gap and would always have to make it.
Haunted by the idea he might look back on this time with the bitter regret Peters seemed to feel about some lost chance at love he regretted, he made himself remember where and what he was. With Peters probably noting the reminiscent smile Tom found himself giving at the thought of creeping through a dark and dusty mausoleum with Polly Trethayne’s hand in his, it was high time he remembered the Marquis of Mantaigne cared for nobody again, especially not for a female he’d never be able to ignore as so many of his peers did their wives once they’d got their obligatory heir and spare. And when had he jumped from mistress into marriage, even in his head? Heavens, but he’d been right after all; the woman was a danger to herself and everyone else and the sooner she left the better.
‘Anyway, we must make sure the felons plaguing my castle are run to earth,’ he said. ‘Neither of us can leave until we find out what the devil they’re up to.’
‘Until we catch them in the act again as you so nearly managed to that first night, or find out why they want to explore this dusty barrack of yours at any time of day, you would seem to be stuck here then, my lord,’ Peters said with a lack of respect Tom was beginning to admire. If the man ever did treat him with some, at least he’d know he’d earned it.
‘Hell’s teeth,’ he exploded with frustrated rage.
‘You have nigh on a month left on your slate, my lord,’ Peters pointed out less than helpfully.
‘And you know just what you can do with that happy reminder, don’t you?’ Tom asked sarcastically and decided he’d been tried enough for one day. ‘I’m going for a walk,’ he told the man with a glare that dared him to say it was nearly midnight and he needed to have a care until their night visitors were unmasked.
‘I hope your groom can put up with your moods better than I can whilst I’m in London, my lord, since it seems to me you need a bodyguard more than you do a lawyer at the moment.’
‘At least I’ll be able to cheer myself up with the thought of you ploughing through piles of dry and dusty documents and listening to tedious old gossip while I’m here and you’re in London though, Peters.’
‘I could ask Miss Trethayne for the details, I suppose and persuade her to confide her sad tale to me. It would save us both a great deal of time and trouble.’
‘Only if you don’t like the way your head currently sits on your shoulders, Peters,’ Tom told him grimly, an image of Peters and Polly Trethayne discussing her life so far as rain beat intimately on the mullioned windows and the outside world seemed far away punching into his gut like a fist.
‘I do. Lovely, spirited and unique though I think she is, Miss Trethayne is not for me and nor am I for her.’
‘Just as well,’ Tom said, ‘I’ll see if I can find out if anyone on the estate knows where Grably went when they removed him from Daybreak while you’re gone. Someone else might have heard him raving about his treasure and the most precious things at Daybreak he’d make sure I never got to lay my filthy little hands on.’
‘You’re sure that’s what he said all those years ago?’
‘He bellowed it loudly enough for half the village to hear him when Virgil demanded he returned everything he’d taken from me, but I’m in no humour to think of him right now. Get on with delving into the Trethayne family fortunes and tomorrow I’ll go through that mountain of rolls and boxes in the Muniment Room myself.’
‘It’s a full moon tonight and your villains won’t even need a lantern,’ Peters warned him as if he knew there were a pack of wild ideas skittering about in Tom’s head, but somehow the Trethaynes’ well-being seemed far more important than a few dusty objets d’art and mementos of a mother he had no memory of.
‘I’ll watch my step,’ Tom said as patiently as he could manage as he set off to reacquaint himself with Dayspring by moonlight.
At least the exercise might improve his temper and allow him a few hours of sleep uninterrupted by fantasies of a softly warm and satiated Polly Trethayne asleep at his side and tangled round him with sleepy-eyed ardour when they awoke together. Sometimes he couldn’t get her out of his head long enough to relax into oblivion for a few hours, but even when he could, waking up alone felt stark and lonely. Thinking about his light-hearted affairs of the past, he shook his head and wondered why this woman threatened to be essential as breathing to him.
He strode on through the silvered landscape and vividly remembered how magical this place was to the small boy he’d been when night and the moonlight offered him escape from his guardian’s thugs and mood swings and invited him to explore a new world. At night the place was alive in a very different way and Tom hoped the poachers and landers were staying home tonight in deference to the power of the nearly full moon.
Which thought brought him right back to where he started and the heady fantasy of returning to his own bed to find a sleepy-eyed goddess in it all warm and welcoming and murmuring unlikely promises. Drat the wretched woman, would she never give him a moment’s respite? Thinking of such impossible and significant souls as Polly Trethayne, he realised now why Virgil had never seemed quite content when Virginia was out of sight and sighed at the idea both of them would be highly amused by the sight of him acting the fool over a woman like this.
Once he’d sworn never to dance at another being’s bidding and here he was back at Dayspring on Virginia’s orders and pining for a woman he couldn’t have. At least he was trying to make peace with the past as Virginia must have intended when she sent him
