the old place was being emptied bit by bit and the pickings trundled past their windows of a bright night when everyone’s at home where they ought to be for once.’
‘Or they’d have to get it past you,’ Tom said thinking that the most difficult part of the whole unlikely business.
‘True, so how many of your men can you trust, my lord?’
‘All of them, but they’re grooms and coachmen, not redbreasts or hedge creepers. I’d rather keep this to ourselves and plan a surprise my unexpected guests won’t be able to refuse.’
* * *
A couple more weeks crept by with the skies overcast and dull and sometimes a heavy shower of rain before the sun came out for a few brief moments to show how spring ought to be, in a more settled country. Polly wondered if the local smugglers were the only ones happy at the sight of dull skies as the Preventatives stayed by their fires even when the moon hid in the clouds. She stared out of the rain-soaked window one morning after breakfast and wondered why she was still here, almost a season on from Lord Mantaigne’s arrival at his castle and what should be her cue to leave.
The boys had gone to their lessons, and Polly didn’t know what to do unless the rain let up enough for her to go outside. She didn’t know what to do most of the time even when she was out nowadays anyway.
It was nearly June now and long past the usual time for spring cleaning, but Lord Mantaigne still wouldn’t let her hire a small army to sweep away the dust and grime of decades from the newer parts of this vast place. She didn’t know how he resisted the need to have the past purged from his castle, but somehow he still did and why it should matter to her was an even bigger mystery. Once he was free of the dust and shadows of the past, the marquis would be able to raise his family here. She could think of no better cure for the harsh memories of his childhood than a pack of well-loved and well-fed boys of his own to make him forget the deprived and resentful one he had once been himself.
Lady Wakebourne stubbornly refused to tell her what plans were being hatched for their futures, but part of her knew they needed to go. It was time for new beginnings, and she must be banished too, she decided, still with a huff of annoyance at them both for being so secretive. Apparently several of the middling houses in Castle Magna were being refurbished, and Polly wondered if the marquis had it in mind to put them in one of them. Close to the woods and with miles of coves and dunes to explore nearby, it would be ideal for the boys, but she really didn’t want to live so close to the castle. She would have to smile and be grateful and pretend she didn’t care when Lord Mantaigne wed a suitable lady and made her the mother of the children who would run wild at the castle instead of her brothers and their friends.
For weeks she’d been trying to come up with a plan to allow the boys to stay under Lady Wakebourne’s benign wing while she somehow found a place for herself with no carelessly irresistible marquises close by to make her feel a stranger in her own skin. In her opinion the marquis should be kept in Mayfair for the good of the female population of Dorset. It was ridiculous to feel uniquely drawn to him, to know no other man would ever touch the hidden feminine depths of her as he had done. Well, it might be ludicrous and on the edge of dangerous as well, but that didn’t mean she was going to stop feeling it because they no longer lived under the same roof.
She had hoped it was a silly infatuation she could get over as swiftly as it came, like a spring cold or a fever, but he’d been here nearly two months now and she longed for him more ridiculously with every day that passed. It was time she began to plan a life without him, more than time. If they shared a house much longer she’d let herself fall in love with the dratted man and that would be an even bigger disaster.
She was young and healthy as a horse; she knew more about running a large estate than a lady ought to and was capable of anything her sex allowed her to do. The fact that was such a pitifully small number of things could not stop her making plans. It hadn’t taken her long to realise she wouldn’t be a very good companion to the sort of nervous and fainting lady who usually needed one. Now Polly made up an ideal employer in her head and started her on a series of fanciful and raffish adventures that would keep them both well entertained without any need of tatting or reading sermons to snoring invalids. She was in the midst of planning her escape from the amorous attentions of her imaginary lady’s discarded lovers when Lord Mantaigne came in and found her staring out of the rain-soaked window as if spellbound by the dismal view.
‘Not even a Revenue Cutter would brave the Channel on such a day, so you can’t be staring at one of those,’ he remarked genially, but she refused to look at him.
‘Even I am permitted the occasional daydream, Lord Mantaigne,’ she told him as distantly as she could manage when his very presence in a room could make her heart race like Ariel after a rabbit.
‘Really? I wonder you find the time,’ he said with a long look that told her he’d noticed she went in the opposite direction to any he took of late.
‘They don’t take long,’ she lied, ‘and this rain give me an excuse to sit and twiddle my thumbs with a clear conscience.’
‘How would we English manage without the weather as our favourite topic of conversation, I wonder?’
‘Very ill, I should think. In better climates people must have to put so much more effort into the niceties of everyday life, don’t you think?’
‘On topics such as that one, I do my best not to think at all,’ he said with an impatience that made her look him in the face out of sheer surprise he could dismiss the very small talk he’d been using to fend off the rest of them since he got here.
She blinked at the shock of seeing him anew. Every time he was out of her sight she dearly hoped her memory had exaggerated the impact of his looks and personality and every time he came back into it she knew what a vain hope it was.
I really want to kiss you, she heard a wild and reckless part of herself long to murmur to him like a siren, as if there could ever be anything more than tolerance between them. Thank heavens her sensible side had control of her tongue today. She could just imagine the horror with which he’d hear such a blatant invitation.
What if another Thomas Banburgh from this honourable idiot replied, And I want to do more than just kiss you back, Paulina—would she let him? Probably, so it was as well she hadn’t put either of them to the test.
‘Was there something you wanted, my lord?’ she made herself ask with such distant politeness he ought to take it as a hint and leave her alone again.
Always, it felt like a whisper on the air as he met her gaze with more than she’d ever thought to see in the hot blue of his clear irises. Had he said it? Or was it wishful thinking? She heard a pair of masculine boots stamp outside the quiet room as silence stretched between them inside, and she cursed heartily under her breath. One kiss would not have made her into a wanton and it seemed a small comfort for all the years she would probably have to spend seeing my lord and his lady go by her new home, like a stray cat watching a king and queen.
‘Partridge wants to know where my guardian went after he left here, although why he can’t come in and ask you if you know himself is beyond me,’ the marquis said loudly. ‘Virgil told me it was best I didn’t know and he didn’t want to lest he be tempted to ride over and strangle him one dark night.’
‘Virgil was your new guardian?’
‘Yes, his wife was my godmother and they took me into their home and civilised me as best they could when they found out what a poor thing I’d become.’
Polly’s
