‘It’s only rats,’ a more-educated voice informed him, and Tom shivered at a register in it he couldn’t quite place and didn’t like one little bit, then felt her fingers tighten about his as if she was trying to reassure him and that pulse of wanting turned into something far more dangerous.
‘They’re the biggest rats I ever did hear then, Guv’nor,’ the first man muttered as if not sure why he bothered arguing.
‘This whole place is an infernal rat-hole; what else would it be?’
‘One of them band of gypsies as lives here. I’m sure they heard us last time we was here, but still you keep coming back. They’ll inform on us if you ain’t careful.’
‘Not they—if they do they’ll be out of here faster than the cat can lick her ear. No magistrate will listen to a pack of vagrants.’
‘You’re lucky they’re only squatting here, then. I’d sooner be on the streets than live here myself, what with all them ghosts and witches they whispers about in the taproom of the Raven late at night.’
‘They’re nothing but a pack of smugglers, you superstitious fool, of course they tell tall stories to keep strangers away from the coast on dark nights so they can carry out their trade undisturbed,’ the other man said contemptuously.
Tom hesitated between a need to challenge him and a deeper one to keep Polly as far from this dark business as he could get her. From the tension in her fingers it felt as if she might be able to read his mind and that was a danger he really didn’t want to think about, so he worried about his castle instead. Reminding himself he didn’t care what happened to the place didn’t ring quite true now he was actually here. Perhaps he cared more than he wanted to, but if it wasn’t for this idiot he wouldn’t have had to come here and find out Dayspring meant something after all.
‘Tall tales or no, I can’t abide the place.’
‘Fool,’ the leader said with contempt that set Tom’s teeth on edge.
‘I ain’t the one spending every night you think the gentleman ain’t at work searching this old ruin for a pot of fairy gold, though, am I?’
‘It’s real, I tell you. The old fool raved about his treasury, insisted I get him in here so he could die with his riches around him.’
‘Shame he stuck his spoon in the wall before you did then, weren’t it?’
Tom stiffened as their whispered conversation sank in and he decided they were fools to discuss their mission where they could be overheard. His one-time guardian was put in a lunatic asylum once Virgil challenged his fitness to be anyone’s mentor. The man had ruled Dayspring for three years, though, and could have done what he liked here for all the trustees cared. Tom listed his larger assets in his head, but there was nothing important missing, so what had Grably convinced the more educated idiot was hidden in a house stripped of valuables when Virgil closed it?
‘Mind your tongue,’ the man said, and suddenly Tom knew why he’d shivered at the sound of his voice. Snapping orders like that, he sounded so like Tom’s guardian they must be related in some way.
‘Can you see aught?’ his reluctant companion asked, as if he sensed them in the shadows or thought some ghost the locals had scared him with was waiting to haunt him if he came closer.
‘No, there’s naught to see. You’re nervous as a spinster.’
Tom felt Miss Trethayne’s hand tighten involuntarily, as if it was a personal insult. He supposed she was unlikely to marry, penniless and responsible for her three brothers as she was. She might be at her last prayers by the time the last one flew the nest, but any woman less like the proverbial spinster he found hard to imagine. He was touched by her plight and wished he could see a way to offer her a respectable way out of it.
If he tried to settle a competence on her, she might find a suitor besotted enough to take on her three brothers, of course, but she wouldn’t accept it and they were not related so he couldn’t even suggest it. Paying a man like Peters to wed her stuck in his craw, even if he agreed to do it. Then there was this fierce desire he’d been struggling with since he set eyes on her in those outrageous, disreputable breeches of hers. Tom reminded himself his biggest ally in his fight to keep his hands off her was the lady herself, then remembered to listen to these housebreakers instead of worrying about things he couldn’t change just in time to catch their next bad-tempered exchange.
‘We’ve tramped up and down too often to see if anyone else has been down here,’ the second housebreaker was saying resentfully.
‘If I’d known we’d need to check this filth for footprints, I’d have flown across it like a bat. It was rats, I tell you, now get up here and help me search the state rooms before one of that ragtag band really comes to see what we’re up to.’
‘I don’t like the look in the old bruiser’s eye and he ain’t past milling either of us down, if you ask me.’
‘Fortunately I’m not that foolish.’
The housebreakers’ voices faded as they went back up the stair arguing. Tom felt Miss Trethayne tense as if getting ready to creep after them and wondered if the wretched female had some sort of death wish.
‘Let them go,’ he murmured as urgently as he dared.
‘Coward,’ she accused in a bitter little whisper, and he was surprised how sharply the accusation stung.
‘If you were a man, you’d meet me for that,’ he replied gruffly.
‘Then go after them before they can get away,’ she said, quite unimpressed by his offended dignity, and this time he had to muffle a startled laugh.
‘And do what?’ he demanded laconically.
‘Find out what they are doing here.’
‘Oh, why didn’t I think of that? Let’s just go and ask the nice housebreakers why they’re searching an empty house in the middle of the night and how they got in to do it in the first place then, shall we?’
‘I admit they won’t want to tell us, but I’m sure you can awe them into it.’
‘And what will you do while I’m busy?’
‘I could hold your sword if only you’d thought to bring one,’ she mumbled crossly, as if seeing the foolishness of her scheme, but still refusing to admit it.
‘How remiss of me,’ he murmured as he stifled the fantasy of impressing her by confronting two villains with bare fists and the few wits she’d left him.
‘Yes, it was,’ she agreed and surely that wasn’t a huff of suppressed laughter?
‘Next time we embark on one of your nocturnal adventures, I’ll make sure I’m armed to the teeth,’ he said solemnly, and her hand relaxed in his as they fumbled their way back the way they’d come. ‘First we’ll plan it a little better,’ he added when they were by the side door again, and she fumbled for the key.
‘I want to know how they get in and out.’
‘Patience, Miss Trethayne, we need to know who our enemies are before we let them know we’ve smoked them out at the time that suits us best.’
‘Why not catch them first and ask questions after?’
‘At least I know now that the legendary impulsiveness of the Trethaynes hasn’t been exaggerated,’ he murmured, determined not to admit he was unwilling to let her risk injury and worse at the hands of an unknown foe. Nothing was more likely to send her smashing recklessly back into the house to confront danger than knowing she was being kept out of it for her own good.
‘They made me angry,’