‘I suppose you could be him,’ a very different keeper of Dayspring Castle admitted begrudgingly and wrenched his thoughts back to the present. ‘You’re the right age, but Maggie said his little lordship looked an angel fallen out of Heaven and you don’t look angelic to me.’
‘You know my one-time nurse then?’ he said, sounding far too eager. That reminder of the one constant in his life after his father had died, until his guardian sent her away, caught him unawares.
‘I knew Lord Mantaigne’s childhood nurse before she died,’ she said, eyeing him as if unsure his word could be trusted or not.
Not, Tom concluded, at least not if she was aware of her own allure as she stood in the shadowed gloom of the stables and stared at him as if she could read his sooty soul. Not, if she was possibly the most unlikely virgin lady he had ever met, with her mannish garments, unmanly figure and a mass of unruly hair barely held by the tail she’d plaited it into some time during the last week.
An unforgivably urgent desire to see the heavy weight of it about her naked shoulders like rumpled silk taunted his body and his senses. Half hiding and half enhancing a figure he knew would be as perfect in real human flesh as any classical statue of a two-thousand-year-old goddess carved in ancient Greece, he could picture it rippling over the fine skin he suspected was creamy and satin smooth where the sun hadn’t reached her not-quite-redhead’s skin and tinted it pale gold.
Considering nothing about her seemed quite sure how to be, she was a very definite snare for a man who liked his ladies bold and confident of their own charms. Her hair wasn’t quite red, brown or blonde and he’d already had that silly discussion with himself about her eyes. He could feel Peters’s cool gaze on him as he realised what the unwary goddess wouldn’t let herself see—that she was in the presence of a lone wolf and could be very unsafe indeed. If not for where they were and what he’d been sent here to do, she would be in more danger than Peters realised, but Tom couldn’t afford distractions until he got to the bottom of a very odd barrel of fish.
‘Knew her?’ he asked after he’d racked his brains to recall what they were talking about before he got distracted again.
‘She died five years ago,’ his mystery snapped.
‘I have no resident agent here,’ he said stiffly. ‘Nor have I kept in contact with anyone in the villages.’
‘Something they know all too well,’ she condemned, and he suddenly felt impatient of his would-be judge and jury.
‘Something they can now complain about directly to me, if I ever manage to leave these stables and meet any of them,’ he said wearily.
‘Is he really the Marquis of Mantaigne?’ she asked Peters, as if unable to trust his word, and Tom bit back an impatient curse.
‘Ask yourself if he could be anyone else, ma’am, and I suspect you’ll have your answer. I’m his employee, so you can’t trust me to tell the truth. Lord Mantaigne could terminate my employment if I was to argue against him.’
‘As if I would dare,’ Tom allowed himself to drawl and felt he’d almost won back the detachment he prided himself on.
‘He looks useless enough to be a marquis, or he might if he was wearing that dandified coat,’ she allowed with a nod of contempt at a once-exquisite example of Weston’s fine work.
‘Do you think there might be a compliment hiding somewhere in that sentence if I look hard enough for it, Peters?’ Tom asked as if they needed a translator.
‘I wouldn’t bet your rent rolls on it, my lord.’
‘Paulina! Oh, Polly! Wherever are you hiding yourself this time?’ a brisk soprano voice called before being drowned out by what sounded like a pack of large and hungry dogs barking as if they were eager to sink their teeth into any passing stranger—be he a marquis or a commoner.
Tom’s guardian used to hunt him down with his pack when he thought he’d had his freedom for too long. Remembered fear made him cast a swift glance in the direction of the hunt kennels his guardian had built far enough away for their howls not to keep him awake at nights. Luckily his companions were too busy to see it and he clamped adult self-control on childhood fears and reminded himself he’d learnt to like and trust dogs since then.
‘I know you’re in the stables because these misbegotten hounds insist you are, so who does the curricle belong to?’ that brisk voice added from much nearer at hand.
‘Which question would you prefer me to answer first, Lady W.?’ the goddess shouted over the hubbub.
Paulina-whoever-she-was sounded as calmly unruffled as any woman could with such a commotion going on in her stable yard, but shouldn’t that be his stable yard? And why did he feel a need to claim the property he’d been tempted to destroy all his adult life?’
‘How many times have I told you not to call me by that repellent nickname?’ the newcomer demanded.
‘So many I wonder you still bother,’ Paulina replied as Tom peered over her shoulders and managed to meet the lady’s shrewd blue eyes. ‘He claims he’s the Marquis of Mantaigne and this is Lady Wakebourne,’ Paulina said as if not quite sure how to introduce a possible impostor.
‘Lady Wakebourne,’ he said, searching his memory for clues to how the lady fitted into the complex patchwork of the ton.
He dredged up the tale of a certain Sir Greville Wakebourne, who had bankrupted a great many people before putting a bullet in his brain several years ago. This lady, who had evidently been a true beauty in her youth, was probably his widow, but it was impossible to tell if she mourned the swindler or not. She didn’t look as if she dwelt on him or anything else in the past, so vivid and vital was her presence in the here and now.
‘Lord Mantaigne,’ she greeted him with such superb assurance he was in mid-bow before his brain reminded him he was the host here and not the other way about, but he carried on anyway.
‘Weren’t you one of my godmother’s coven of regular correspondents, my lady?’ he asked and felt Polly-Paulina’s gaze fix accusingly on him, as if he’d been trying to deceive her about his identity instead of trying to convince her he really was rightfully lord and master here.
‘Please accept my condolences on her death and desist from using such terms in future,’ Lady Wakebourne told him with a firmness that told him she was every bit as stubborn as the goddess.
‘Is he really the Marquis of Mantaigne?’ Polly-Paulina asked, sounding so disgruntled she must be taking him seriously.
‘Of course he is—why would anyone else admit to being a notorious rake and dandy?’ Lady Wakebourne replied before he could say a word, stern disapproval of his chosen way of life plain on her striking countenance.
‘They would if it meant getting his possessions along with his reputation,’ Paulina-whoever-she-was muttered.
Outraged barking had waned to a few vague snuffles and the odd whine as the owners of those formidable canine voices sniffed about the curricle for concealed villains. Now two huge paws hit the bottom half of the door and a shaggy head joined Lady Wakebourne’s attempts at blocking out daylight. The creature appeared comical until its panting revealed a set of strong white teeth the hounds of hell could be justly proud of.
‘Get down, sir,’ Lady Wakebourne ordered the enormous animal irritably. ‘If you must take in any stray lucky enough to cross your path, Polly, I wish you would train them not to dog my footsteps as if I actually like them.’
‘But you do,’ Polly said, seeing through Lady Wakebourne’s frown as easily as the large hound seemed to, given he was now watching her with dogged adoration.
An impatient bark from lower down said the hell-hound was blocking the view, so he sank back to sit next to a busy-looking terrier with a thousand battle scars and a cynical look in the one eye he had