LITMIR.BIZ

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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 and Peters here to find out what had gone amiss at Dayspring. That ought to be enough even for his ever-interfering godmother, and at last Tom saw the joke was on him as he paused by the lake to moodily skim stones across its otherwise mirror-like stillness.

      A moorhen shrieked a protest, then hastily fell silent as a hunting barn owl scoped the edge of the trees on silent wings and a vixen barked to her cubs to behave themselves and come away from somewhere close by. They were noises of the night he’d been so familiar with once upon a time he marvelled that he’d forgotten how good it felt to enjoy the freedom of his own land in the dark, when nobody else but smugglers and poachers and creatures of the night wanted it and a forlorn boy could feel free of all that made his days hideous. Even though he’d hated the castle back then because his guardian lived in it, he’d loved the land and still did. Another lesson learnt, he decided with a resigned sigh as he wondered if that was another reason for his godmother’s demand he spend a season here and never mind all those childish oaths never to set foot in the place again.

      ‘Damn it, Virginia, I’m here, aren’t I? Shouldn’t that be enough for you when I swore I’d never set foot in the place again until you went and died on me and left that confounded list of things to do behind you,’ he murmured into the night air. He could have deceived himself into thinking he heard her argue less than the best was never good enough for her godson, thank you very much. ‘God, I miss you so much,’ he whispered to the now-still lake and the moonlit shadows and decided restlessly wandering the cliff-paths all night wouldn’t do anyone much good and he couldn’t avoid his bed for ever because there was no Polly Trethayne in it, waiting for him to come home and make love to her in the heady shadows of my lord’s currently humble bedchamber.

      * * *

      Polly had been out of sorts for the rest of the evening. When the fire was burning low and conversation lulled to a sleepy murmur she looked up from a reverie about what lords and their secretaries talked about when nobody else was listening and caught Lady Wakebourne’s eyes resting on her. For a while she tried to join in the relaxed chatter after the day’s work until her thoughts took over and she lapsed into silence again.

      If Mantaigne was here, no doubt he’d manage to annoy her in all sorts of subtle ways. And yet... And yet nothing; he was just a man and much like any other. Under his fine clothes and fastidious grooming he was still only another son of Adam. For a supposedly idle man he had a set of very powerful muscles on that lean body of his, though, and she had a feeling he was as impressive without a stitch on as he was with all that fine tailoring and spotless linen not doing a very good job of concealing his manly perfections from the eyes of the world.

      He swam in the sea every morning whatever the weather, just for the sheer pleasure of pitting himself against the elements so far as she could tell. Then there were all those long hours spent in the saddle and it really wasn’t quite right for her to long for an excuse to ride at his side and simply watch the play of his well-honed muscles over that long body of his as he moved as one with his horse. He might have helped her out in her quest to find fault with him, she decided crossly, but, just when she was ready to find him as idle and frivolous as he wanted her to, he would do something that showed how unlike the image he worked so hard to portray he was underneath those fine clothes.

      She

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