‘May I open it for you then, my lady?’ the marquis’s deep, amused voice asked out of the gloom.
Polly wondered why instinct hadn’t made her nerves jump the moment they stepped out of the tower door into the darkness, since he was obviously strolling about the inner court, making what he could of his domain in the pitch dark.
‘Of course you can, Mantaigne, it’s your door.’
‘I apologise for its intransigence,’ he replied as if he’d escorted them home from the play and conducted them to their door as a proper gentleman should. He shifted the heavy iron latch the other side of the wrought handle with one hand and gently pushed open the door.
‘Well done, my boy,’ Lady Wakebourne said as if he had just achieved some hugely difficult quest and took advantage of the lamp left burning low in the little hallway to sail upstairs before Polly could follow her.
‘I suspect we’re being left to settle our differences and stop making her uncomfortable, Miss Trethayne,’ he said as she frowned after her so-called friend.
Differences could be good. Particularly if they kept you from having silly daydreams of what might be for her and this potent and infuriating lord if life had only been different. She would still be nigh six foot tall and he would be as armoured against her in a Mayfair ballroom as he was in the starlit darkness of a Dorset night. Any other reasonably young and not unattractive lady might tempt him to test her virtue once they were alone with the sea whispering on the shore and spring seeming to soften the very air around them, but Polly Trethayne was in no danger.
‘I don’t think we’ll ever be bosom bows, my lord. We have neither interests nor acquaintances in common,’ she said as distantly as she could when her foolish inner self wanted to rail about his immunity to her as every move he made seemed of unique interest to her.
‘We should give each other the benefit of the doubt until we know better, but if you’d like to confide your dearest secrets in me I’ll try not to broadcast them,’ he said so blandly she felt her palm itch to slap the smile off his face.
‘I would sooner tell them to a town crier,’ she muttered darkly.
It simply wasn’t acceptable to find his answering chuckle disarming. They had moved away from the circle of light cast by the lamp he’d hung on a hook by the old door to light her way back. Now it felt too intimate in the shadowy courtyard for her peace of mind.
‘Yet we must rub along over the next few weeks if I’m to do what I set out to here. If you and your friends remain here, we must reach some sort of truce and make it obvious Lady Wakebourne is your very strict chaperon. There is no other way we can live under the same roof without scandal, and I’m not the one gossip will reflect on most. This isn’t a fair world, Miss Trethayne, and we have to pretend we respect each other if we’re to stay at Dayspring with any appearance of respectability,’ he said soberly, and drat him for being right.
‘I suppose so,’ she admitted reluctantly, and that won her another soft masculine laugh that made her shiver with warmth and feel the natural order of things had been upended.
‘And I’m really not such a bad fellow if you ignore my shortcomings,’ he said as if he was coaxing a wary dog to like him.
Ridiculously offended he showed none of the caution he would have used toward any other lady of her age and single status, she squirmed at the prickly discomfort of being close to him. He was so oblivious to her as woman he’d hardly noticed she was one since that first heady moment when he seemed to see it very clearly indeed, but how stupid to feel piqued by his indifference now.
‘I’m sure your friends hang on your every word and deed, Lord Mantaigne, so you hardly need me to join in. I am squatting in your grand castle with my friends and family and your coming must change that, so you can hardly expect me to welcome you with open arms. You’ll turn us back into beggars and vagabonds sooner or later, however nicely you try to wrap it up in ifs and maybes.’
‘You’re not like any vagrants I ever came across,’ he muttered, as if his inability to slot them into convenient places troubled him.
‘I suspect they’re not like them either, if you can see past rags and desperation to the person underneath. I’ve had all the sneers and slights most beggars get thrown at them over the years, my lord, but words only sting for a while and blows are much harder to shrug off.’
‘Someone hit you?’ he asked indignantly as if it was an affront he would dash off on his charger to avenge in blood.
‘Of course, and attempted worse when I said them nay. I was a beggar woman with a babe in her arms and two children clutching at her skirts. Why else do you think I stopped wearing them in the end, my lord?’
‘For ease and to fit the hard labour you undertake, I suppose,’ he admitted with a shrug she could feel rather than see. ‘Maybe you’re right and I am only a man of fashion and not a deep thinker,’ he added.
‘If you truly believe that, you really are a fool,’ she said impatiently.
‘You are a very forthright female, Miss Trethayne.’
‘And you’re a cunning opponent, Lord Mantaigne. You deflect difficult questions so ably I don’t suppose your foes recall asking them in the first place.’
‘Yet you have an uncomfortable knack of clinging to them whatever hares I put up to divert you, but I really didn’t set out to be your enemy.’
‘Since you own this place and I’ve been living in it without your permission for nearly seven years, that makes us enemies whatever you set out to be.’
‘First I’d have to care about Dayspring and I’ll never do that. If you and your friends living here means I need never come back, you can all stay until doomsday as far as I’m concerned.’
‘For a man who doesn’t care you’re almost passionate about your birthplace, my lord,’ she pointed out slyly.
Polly saw him flinch now her eyes were accustomed to the faint starlight even in this dark corner of the courtyard. The idea she might have caused him pain gave her no satisfaction at all and sparked a little echo of his hurt in her own gut. It was worrying to feel such connection to a man far outside her reach and experience. She retreated into the darkest pool of shadows lest he could read her too easily back.
* * *
Tom caught the faint movement even as he tried to defend himself against her curiosity. No, that was harsh; he couldn’t accuse her of so simple a human failing. This odd mix of a woman now trying to hide her thoughts in darkness as she wouldn’t let him had lived her life shorn of the pretences, as well as the comforts, of her kind. No wonder she was impatient of the strategies he used to fend off anyone who wanted to know the Tom under his wealth, fashionable clothes and titles.
He felt a nigh overwhelming urge to let her find him and couldn’t recall feeling such connection with a stranger since the day Virginia had marched into his life and changed it for ever. His mouth quirked in a reluctant smile as he recalled how little he’d liked his godmother for breaching his defiant hatred of the world that could treat him as this one had so far. Virginia took no notice of his barricades either; she marched straight over them with one impatient shake of her still-handsome head and informed him he was to live with her from now on and everything would be different, beginning with a haircut and a bath. Even that threat didn’t stop something hard and brittle at the heart of him from cracking open to let a new Tom step out.
The man who grew out of that boy sighed for the awkward and mistrustful urchin he’d been and almost wished himself other than who he was now. Once he was gone Polly Trethayne could do what she wanted with Dayspring and he mustn’t wish he could be at her side, wanting it too.
‘What the devil was that?’ Tom