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
