‘Noise fit to wake the dead,’ he complained bitterly. ‘Yon castle’s closed up. You won’t find a welcome up there even if I was to let you in,’ he said, squinting up at them against the afternoon sun.
‘I don’t expect one here, so kindly open up before I decide it was a mistake not to have the place razed to the ground.’
‘You’re the Marquis of Mantaigne?’
‘So I’m told.’
‘Himself is said to be a prancing town dandy who never sets foot outdoors in daylight and lives in the Prince of Wales’s pocket, when he ain’t too busy cavorting about London and Brighton with other men’s wives and drinking like a fish, of course. You sure you want to be him?’
‘Who else would admit it after such a glowing summary of my life, but, pray, who am I trying to convince I’m the fool you speak of so highly?’
‘Partridge, my lord, and lord I suppose you must be, since you’re right and nobody else would admit to being you in this part of the world.’
‘What a nest of revolutionary fervour this must be. Now, if you’ll open the gates I’d like to enter my own castle, if you please?’ Tom said in the smooth but deadly tone he’d learnt from Virgil, when some idiot was fool enough to cross him.
‘You’ll do better to go in the back way, if go in you must. It’s a tumbledown old place at the best of times, m’lord, and there’s nobody to open the front door. These here gates ain’t been opened in years.’
Tom eyed carefully oiled hinges and cobbles kept clear of grass both sides of the recently painted wrought-iron gates. ‘I might look like a flat, Partridge, but I do have the occasional rational thought in my head,’ he said with a nod at those well-kept gates the man claimed were so useless.
‘A man has his pride and I’m no idler.’
‘How laudable—now stop trying to bam me and open the gates.’
Partridge met Tom’s eyes with a challenge that changed to grudging respect when he looked back without flinching. At last the man shrugged and went inside for the huge key to turn in the sturdy lock and Tom wasn’t surprised to see the gates open as easily as if they’d been used this morning. He thanked Partridge with an ironic smile and, as the man clanged the gates behind the curricle, wondered who the old fox was doing his best to warn that an intruder was on his way even he couldn’t repel.
‘I’m still surprised such an old building isn’t falling down after so many years of neglect,’ Peters remarked as Tom drove his team up the ancient avenue and tried to look as if he hadn’t a care in the world.
‘Some misguided idiot must have disobeyed all my orders,’ Tom said bitterly.
Memories of being dragged up here bruised and bleeding and begging to be let go before his guardian got hold of him haunted him, but he was master here now and thrust the memory of that ragged and terrified urchin to the back of his mind where he belonged.
‘Anyway, if I intended to let the place fall down without having to give orders for it to be demolished, I seem to have been frustrated,’ he managed to remark a little more calmly.
‘And I wonder how you feel about that.’
‘So do I,’ Tom mused wryly.
He accepted there was no welcome to be had at the massive front door and drove to the stable yard, feeling he’d made his point, if only to Peters and the gatekeeper. He saw two sides of the square that formed the stable blocks and the imposing entrance and clock tower were closed up and empty, paint peeling and a cast-iron gutter, broken during some tempest, left to rust where it fell. The remaining block was neat and well kept, though, and two curious horses were peering out of their stables as if glad of company.
‘More frustration for you,’ Peters murmured.
‘Never mind that, who the devil is living here? I ordered it empty as a pauper’s pocket and they can’t be any kin of mine because I don’t have any.’
‘How did you plan to look after your team when we got here then, let alone the carts and men following behind?’
‘The boot is full of tack, oats and horse blankets, so it’s your own comfort I’d be worrying myself about if I were you.’
‘I will, once we have these lads safely stowed in the nice comfortable stable someone’s left ready for them,’ Peters said with a suspicious glance about the yard that told Tom they had the same idea about such empty but prepared stables and what they might be used for this close to the coast.
‘Keep that pistol handy while we see to the horses,’ he cautioned.
It didn’t take long to remove the harness and lead the now-placid team into four waiting stalls and rub them down. Once they were cool enough, Tom and Peters hefted the ready-filled water buckets so the horses could drink after their leisurely journey, then they left them to pull happily at the hay-net someone had left ready. Tom was enjoying the sights and sounds of contented horses when the shaft of mellow afternoon sunlight from the half-open door was blocked by a new arrival. Pretending to be cool as the proverbial cucumber, he cursed himself for leaving his coat and pistol out of reach and turned to face the newcomer with a challenge that rapidly turned to incredulity.
‘Ye gods!’ he exclaimed, stunned by the appearance of a shining goddess with no shame at all, at Dayspring of all places.
‘Minerva or Hera?’ he heard Peters murmur in the same bewildered tone and felt a glimmer of impatience that the man was ogling the woman he urgently wanted himself. He could hardly wait to wrap those endless feminine legs about his own flanks and be transported to the heights of Olympus as soon as he could get those scandalous breeches off her.
‘You should at least get Greece and Rome sorted out in your head before you make such foolish comparisons in future,’ the vision said crossly, proving she had acute hearing, as well as a classical education and the finest feminine legs Tom had ever seen, in or out of his bedchamber, and he badly wanted this pair naked in one as soon as he could charm, persuade or just plain beg her to let him make love to her.
‘I’ll be happy in either so long as you’re with me, Athene,’ Tom recovered himself enough to offer with a courtly bow she should find flattering.
‘And I have no time for such nonsense and nor do you, Mr Whoever-You-Might-Be. You’re going to be far too busy reharnessing those fine horses of yours to that pretty little carriage and driving them back the way you came to indulge in such ridiculous fancies.’
‘Why would I do that?’
‘Because I demand you remove them from our stables immediately.’
‘Our stables?’ Tom’s mind latched on to the possessive word among so many he could argue with and he wondered why it seemed so important she had no intimate other to pair herself with instead of him.
‘Ours, mine, whatever you prefer. I’d certainly prefer you to go quickly and stop staring at my legs.’
‘If you don’t want them leered at, you should resume your petticoats. We males can’t resist eyeing such fine feminine charms when they’re so temptingly displayed without them.’
‘A true gentleman wouldn’t look,’ she informed him, looking haughtily down a nose Hera or Minerva would have been justly proud of.
‘Oh, but he would, wouldn’t