‘At least we’ll find out if these felons of yours exist outside the pages of a Gothic novel. If they do we’ll have to get them to believe there really are ghosts at Dayspring Castle and leave us in peace with them.’
‘Perhaps I should cut my hair and borrow a fine coat, then ride up the drive and announce myself as the Marquis of Mantaigne come back to claim his own,’ Polly suggested as the most absurd way of scaring anyone out of the old place she could think of.
‘And perhaps you should stop reading those ridiculous Gothic novels the vicar’s sister passes on to us when she knows them by heart.’
‘Aye, they’re about as likely to come true as the idea Lord Mantaigne will ever come here without being kidnapped and dragged up the drive bound and gagged first. So ghosts it will have to be then,’ Polly agreed, reluctantly admitting there was nothing to be done tonight, and followed her fellow adventuress back to the castle keep and the closest thing she had to a home nowadays.
* * *
‘I should have sent the butler and housekeeper from Tayne on ahead of us, Peters. At least they might have found a few rooms at Dayspring undamaged after all these years of neglect and managed to make them habitable for us by now.’
Tom halted his matched team of Welsh greys at the gatehouse and wished himself a hundred miles away. Dayspring Castle was puffed up as his most splendid country seat in the peerages and guides to the county, but he felt a clutch of sick dread in his belly at the mere sight of it ahead, wrapped round the clifftop like a beast of prey from his worst nightmares.
‘They would have given notice,’ his companion argued. ‘It would need an army of servants to get such a place in any sort of order after lying empty so long.’
‘True, but wouldn’t that army need to be directed by my man of business?’ Tom retaliated against a not very-well-disguised rebuke for neglecting the wretched place until it became the ruin he’d once sworn to make it.
‘I like a challenge, my lord,’ Peters said, and wasn’t he a mystery of a lawyer now Tom came to think about it?
Nothing about this business was simple, though, and he supposed he’d have to admit the man had been useful to Luke in the part of the quest Virginia set him. According to James Winterley, who had a way of knowing things you didn’t expect him to, Peters had helped a variety of aristocratic clients sort out the skeletons in their rosewood cupboards, including the Seaborne clan, whose shrewdness Tom would back against a corps of wily diplomats. So Tom had no choice but to trust this man to watch his back, even if the fellow saw too much of what lay below the surface of life for comfort.
‘You’re only here for three months, and heaven knows why Virginia thought I needed you by my side the entire time. Perhaps she expected you to force me up the drive at pistol-point if I lose my nerve.’
‘The late Lady Farenze merely instructed me to meet you in Dorchester and accompany you here. I couldn’t say what your godmother had in mind, my lord,’ Peters said primly, but there was a world of disapproval in his gaze.
Perhaps the man was a Jacobin? Tom decided he didn’t care if he was hell-bent on revolution, so long as they got on with this wretched business and left as soon as they found out what was wrong. ‘I believe I mentioned my dislike of being “my lorded” at every turn when we first met,’ he replied with a preoccupied frown at the neatly kept castle gatehouse.
‘I’m supposed to be your temporary secretary here, not your equal, my lord.’
Tom found himself doubting that and how unlike him to look deeper into another man’s life than he wanted him to. Lord Mantaigne had spent most of his adult life skimming over the surface of life like a pond-skater, and Tom shook his head at the picture of himself not caring about anything very much. He’d loved his godmother and Virgil, but they were both dead now, and at least he’d managed to keep the rest of the world at arm’s length, except a voice whispered he’d let in Luke and his daughter and James. Now Lady Chloe and her spirited niece seemed to have chipped their way into a corner of what he’d thought was his cold heart, and how could he have been so careless as to let himself care about so many people without noticing?
He glared at a certain window high up in the ancient keep and stark memories rose up to whisper he was right not to come back until he had to. Virginia’s last letter had told him one of her legion of friends had written to tell her something was amiss at Dayspring and he must go and find out what was so wrong with the place, but all he could see wrong with it right now was that it was still standing. Only for the woman who had taken in the feral little beast who had once existed in that keep and loved him anyway would he revisit the place despite all his resolutions not to.
‘Whoever you intend to be, you’ll have a poor time of it here,’ he warned Peters as he slowed his greys to a walk.
‘I expect I’ll survive; I’m not faint-hearted.’
‘Just as well. My last guardian only kept a few servants here once he took control of the estate for me, and I paid them off when I came of age,’ Tom warned.
Peters shrugged as if he wanted to get on with his mission and leave, before he violated some lawyerly code and told a client exactly what he thought of his criminal neglect of such an historic property.
‘I expect there will be a couple of rooms we can make habitable for the few days I intend to spend here,’ Tom added glumly.
‘Indeed, although the castle looks very well preserved to me, despite your orders it should not be.’
‘And it’s evidently a lot less empty than it ought to be,’ Tom mused with a frown as he watched a plume of smoke waft lazily from a chimney in the oldest part of the castle.
The place had an air of being down at heel, but it wasn’t the echoing ruin it ought to be after being left empty so long. There were deep ruts in the road leading down to Castle Cove that made him wonder even more who had stopped it falling into the sea. Virginia was right to make him come here to find out what was going on, and he pictured her impatiently telling him she’d told him so from her place in heaven. He had to suppress a grin at the idea of her regarding him with still very fine dark eyes and a puckish grin that told the world Lady Virginia Farenze was still ready to jump into any adventure going with both feet.
He missed her with an ache that made him feel numb at times and furious at others. Lord Mantaigne was a care-for-nobody, but he’d cared more for Virginia than he’d let himself know until he lost her. Still, one of his childhood resolutions was safe; he would never marry and risk leaving a son of his alone in a hostile world. The Winterley family might have trampled his boyhood vow never to care about anyone in the dust, but that one wasn’t in any danger. He hadn’t met a female he couldn’t live without in all his years as one of the finest catches on the marriage mart, so he was hardly likely to find her in a dusty backwater like Dayspring Castle.
‘Some traffic clearly passes this way,’ Peters remarked with a nod at the uneven road in case Tom was too stupid or careless to notice.
Ordering Dayspring’s ruin on what must seem a rich man’s whim was one thing, but being judged stupid set Tom’s teeth on edge. Was he vain about his intellect as well as finicky about personal cleanliness and a neat appearance? Probably, he decided ruefully. The last Marquis of Mantaigne already seemed to be learning more about himself than he really wanted to know, and his three months of servitude had barely begun.
‘Heavy traffic as well,’ he murmured, frowning at the spruce gatehouse and well-maintained gates and wondering if there was a link between those carts and whoever kept it so neatly.
‘Perhaps we should follow in their hoof prints towards the stables? At least that way is well used, and the castle gates look sternly locked against all comers.’
‘Since