* * *
Polly tried to pretend she wasn’t there while Lord Mantaigne made the acquaintance of his woodsmen. She had no connection to the family who’d owned this land since the first Banburgh claimed it and built a stronghold. The truth was she was jealous of the current marquis’s ownership and his right to neglect it, then turn up and take it back while she, who loved it, would have to leave. The injustice of it might have made a Jacobin of her, if it hadn’t been for the memory of her French stepmother starting at shadows and paling whenever she recalled the Terror.
The rightful owner of Dayspring Castle had come into his own. That phrase had a ring to it she would have laughed over only yesterday, but today there was nothing funny about it. She could almost picture her father giving one of his careless shrugs and telling her blithely that nothing stayed the same for ever. He was probably right and she might not have been able to hold the castle and estate together for much longer. The late-night incursions into the castle had been troubling her for weeks, and she thought of last night with a shiver of mixed emotions that shot through her and sent poor Cloud dancing as he sensed her turmoil through the bit she forced herself to relax her grip on so she could at least conceal it from the fine animal she was riding and his equally fine master.
Now the wretch was climbing into his saddle with an easy word to his new employees and turning his chestnut gelding towards the ride where she and Mr Peters sat silently waiting. Lord Mantaigne had a knack for getting what he wanted, and she let herself wonder for all of a minute what he might want of her. A swift and trouble-free departure after she had explained how things stood here, she suspected. She slanted him a stern look as he followed in her wake, because she knew the way and he’d let himself forget it, and tried to behave like a rational woman.
‘Do you think they’ll stay?’ he asked once they were out of earshot.
‘Most have families to support. They don’t have much alternative,’ she told him as evenly as she could.
‘It’s thanks to you they’re usefully employed though, is it not?’
‘I’m sure someone would have suggested they could usefully tame your woodlands and perhaps sell the wood to make it worth their while sooner or later if I had not.’
‘And a wild wood makes a fine hiding place for vagabonds and villains the local magistrates could well do without,’ he said, and Polly wondered if he was remembering smugglers liked wild places and hidden tracks to hide the pony trains that carried goods away from the coast.
‘And those who like to avoid them might resent the loss of cover,’ Mr Peters said shrewdly.
‘I doubt that would be seen as a bad thing in Days Magna,’ she replied absently, wondering if he was right.
‘Are you telling me the free-traders are unwelcome round here, Miss Trethayne?’ his employer asked as if she was trying to muddy the waters.
She recalled how sharply his gaze had focused on a careless footprint left on one of the less-obvious tracks and how he’d frowned at the deeper-than-they-ought-to-be ruts on the road down to the sea. The man did his best to hide a rapier-sharp mind under that air of lazy indifference, but she was beginning to see through it to the real man underneath. She wondered if he knew how many of his talents and intelligence were wasted being the idle man of fashion he pretended he was.
He wouldn’t think it a waste, she answered herself cynically. Gambling and carousing and defying the devil was a game to him, along with seducing other men’s wives and charming anyone who wasn’t yet convinced the Marquis of Mantaigne deserved all the treasures and comforts he’d been born to.
She only just managed to bite back a tirade on the subject of gentlemen who thought they had a right to anything they laid greedy eyes on and decided to want. No, that was just being lazy. Wrong to add him to the leering beast who had thought a penniless female like her was fair game, she knew he wouldn’t dream of forcing himself on a woman without anyone having to say so. Yes, there was a hot glitter in his blue, blue eyes when they rested on her too long, but she felt a new excitement stir deep inside whenever that happened so she couldn’t deny it was a mutual wanting. It left her wondering how she would feel if they satisfied it, but that was never going to happen.
‘They are part of everyday life here, but sometimes it isn’t comfortable to know they pass too close,’ she replied to his question about the smugglers and hoped he thought her silence had been because she was considering her answer, not the chance of being anyone’s lover, but more especially his. ‘The villagers know they must either accept the fact the Trade runs through the area like a seam or leave it. Evading the duty on goods that puts them out of reach of all but the very rich is often seen as their God-given right as free-born Englishmen,’ she managed to say coolly.
‘So I’ve heard,’ Peters said grimly, and she hoped he wasn’t thinking of taking on the deeply rooted traditions of the whole area single-handed.
‘Even if the customs officials manage to catch them, the magistrates round here wouldn’t prosecute hard, and no jury would convict them if they did,’ she warned them, then squirmed under Mr Peters’s cool gaze and wished she’d held her tongue.
‘It’s not the Trade itself that vexes me, or even the ruthless nature of the smuggling business for anyone who gets too close, but Bonaparte’s use of his damned guinea boats to subvert our currency,’ Lord Mantaigne argued.
‘I doubt that’s the only reason he winks at the smuggling trade,’ Polly said and felt the tug of conflicting loyalties most people must, if they stopped to consider it as other than a local way of life that had been going on since anyone could remember. ‘I wouldn’t have wanted to live in the days when the Hawkhurst Gang and their like terrorised everyone for miles around, but I can’t roundly condemn a trade that puts a few luxuries in the hands of folk who labour for a pittance while their masters enjoy every indulgence they can think up, however foolish it might seem to the rest of us.’
‘You sound like a revolutionary, Miss Trethayne,’ his lordship drawled.
‘Do I, my lord? How very shocking of me,’ she replied lightly.
‘I know there is much that is unequal and unfair in this country and no wonder working folk look at what others have and want it for themselves, but consider how it would be if the French Emperor invaded us as he has so many others. For all their talk of liberty and equality they treat their conquered nations like vassals and plunder them of treasures and, worse, I should hate to be a young and attractive female under such a regime. Those who hail Bonaparte as a liberator and a lawmaker should take a closer look at Spain and see how it feels to live under his heel.’
Polly allowed herself a shudder and blessed the fact she wasn’t on her usual mount. Beelzebub would have bolted at the feel of her involuntary flash of terror as she thought of the fate so many women had met at the hands of victorious invading troops in this horrifying, never-ending war.
‘I would not wish to be an enemy nobleman in such a world either,’ she pointed out.
‘No, I think I’d better arrange to expire on the barricades if the worst should ever come to pass. I don’t relish the role of a craven captive, or trying to ransom myself at any cost while my tenants and workers look on with contempt.’
‘For heaven’s sake, will you stop joking about the things you care about the most, man?’ his usually meek secretary snapped, clearly as close to the end of his tether with the foppish aristocrat Lord Mantaigne pretended to be as Polly was.
‘It is deeply exasperating,’ she agreed.
‘My apologies, the last thing I ever set out to do was prove tedious. To relieve you both of the trouble of bearing with me any longer I will leave you and flit off on a selfish errand of my own. Why don’t you take my conscience here into Spring Magna instead of my unworthy self and introduce him to anyone who is interested for me, Miss Trethayne? I’m sure you can assure them everything they least wanted to hear about me is true and they must hope I shall depart