‘Not to wring the man’s neck—he’s already dead, so I couldn’t if I wanted to,’ he replied and raised his voice a little. ‘For pity’s sake, stop stamping about out there as if Miss Trethayne and I are discussing state secrets, man.’
‘It was my idea, see?’ Partridge told her when he finally sidled into the room as if she might bite.
‘What was?’
‘Folk here’ll talk to you as they won’t to his lordship or me,’ the man said awkwardly, and Polly was intrigued by an unspoken dialogue between the master of the house and his self-appointed gatekeeper they thought she didn’t know about.
‘So you’re taking all this trouble to find out where a lunatic spent the last few years of his life?’ she asked, and her old friend shifted and look uneasy, but neither attempted to answer her question. ‘Nobody ever mentions him anyway.’
‘I’d like to forget he existed myself,’ the marquis muttered, ‘but we need to know something now and it’s like trying to pin down a wraith.’
‘Old Mrs Allcott might be able to remember where he was taken, if she’s having one of her better days, or your lawyers would seem to be a safe bet to know where the man who did you and yours so much harm was put, don’t you think? What a shame Mr Peters is absent at the very moment you need to find out so urgently.’
‘Of course, her daughter-in-law said she was housekeeper here once and knew the place inside out,’ the marquis said with an impatient frown, as if he now felt a fool for trailing that question so temptingly in front of her on a rainy day when she’d just admitted to being bored.
Then there was her niggling suspicion that Mr Peters had gone to London to find out anything he could about herself and Lady Wakebourne. She understood their past might affect Lord Mantaigne’s future wife’s tolerance of his dependents, but it felt intrusive and rude of them to delve about in the catastrophes that had overtaken them and led them to Dayspring when it was perfectly plain he didn’t want to set foot in the place himself.
‘What a shame you didn’t think of her before you asked me, my lord,’ she said blandly, a challenge in her eyes as she made herself meet his.
She felt a fool for not realising that, while the smugglers moved on as soon as they knew he was back at Dayspring, the feeling they were not always alone here hadn’t gone with them. Adding that to her unease about the future and whatever he might stir up from her past, she was amazed at herself for being so wrapped up in trying not to want the man she’d almost forgotten how much depended on her being awake and alert for any threat that might hurt her brothers.
‘Yes,’ he agreed tersely, doing a very good job of concealing his thoughts from her so she felt more shut out of the real life of Dayspring than ever. ‘I can’t find the plans drawn up for improvements to the public rooms, which were due to be made just before my father died. Needless to say they never happened afterwards and I began to wonder if Grably took them away. I want the roof repaired this summer and it would save a lot of time if I had those drawings.’
‘True, and Partridge is going to be your clerk of the works, is he? How very sensible. I’m sure everything will go on splendidly with or without those plans,’ she said as if she almost believed them. ‘I don’t suppose the people left here when your former guardian was taken away would have let him take more than the shirt on his back. He may have burnt some of the estate papers before he went, of course.’
‘True, so that settles it then,’ Lord Mantaigne said with a heavy sigh.
‘It does?’ she said brightly, wondering what unlikely tale they’d invent next.
‘Yes, I’ll have Peters search the Muniment Room one last time when he gets back, but it seems likely the job must be done again.’
‘No reason I can’t look, is there, m’lord? I can read,’ Partridge offered.
‘I’m sure Peters would be delighted if you did.’
‘Least I don’t mind getting my hands dirty,’ Partridge said and stumped out to begin a task none of them quite believed in.
Polly suspected they were looking for any secret ways in and out of the castle. The newer parts were built after a bloody civil war and a wary lord could well have ordered an escape route built to the sea in case it happened again.
‘We’ve offended him now,’ Lord Mantaigne said ruefully.
‘I expect so, but you do it so well, don’t you?’
‘I do, don’t I?’
‘One more way of keeping us lesser mortals at a distance, I suspect.’
‘Then it doesn’t appear to be working since I came here.’
‘You do yourself an injustice, milord, I feel I might as well be in the next county right now. Do you let anyone past that wall you keep round your heart?’
‘Not very often,’ he said with a shrug that said that was a good thing.
He also looked as if he had a hundred places he’d rather be, and Polly concluded he was only staying here because he wanted to distract her from the subject they had been discussing. He was doing quite a good job just by being here, but probably not the one he intended. She ought to be finding out what he and Partridge were really up to, but all she could think about was him. Silence stretched as he struggled not to tell her to mind her own business, and what right had a beggar like her to enquire into the state of a marquis’s heart in the first place?
He wasn’t going to admit he kept his essential self as shut up in that tower room as his guardian had the rest of him as a boy. Nor would he own up to the need that felt so strong she could almost touch it. And why would he when they were about as far apart as two people could be?
Yet only her presence had stopped him facing down those intruders that first night and, if she let him do as he wanted and keep her out of the way next time, he would take risks she couldn’t seem to think of without a chance the bottom might drop out of her world if he got himself murdered, just because he was such a stubborn great idiot. He would certainly take on the rogues himself rather than trust anyone else to do it for him.
‘Then you should,’ she argued with his determination to always walk alone. ‘You will never be truly alive if you don’t.’
‘Why, for Heaven’s sake? I’m perfectly happy as I am.’
Polly found his ignorance of all he might be more touching than any conscious attempt to garner sympathy, but my Lord Mantaigne didn’t need sympathy, did he? He didn’t need anything he couldn’t buy or charm out of those who only wanted to be charmed or bought, or so he obviously believed.
‘I suppose you’ll never know unless you try,’ she said huskily.
‘Don’t even think about it,’ he ground out as if denying what was there in the room with them and pushing them to explore a lot more than a mere friendship hurt him physically yet he couldn’t stop doing it. ‘Just don’t.’
‘All right then, I won’t,’ she whispered back, hoping Partridge really had gone to search through dusty piles of documents the lawyers hadn’t thought worth taking away. It was as well to only lose one man’s
