The Marquis's Awakening

Chapter Three

Polly watched the castle’s official reception committee behave in character and sighed. It was too much to hope the man would be scared of Lunar’s mighty build and need to protect them to his last breath. She had sensed fear in the tall figure at her side and tried to convince herself it made him less of a man, but then he’d sauntered out of the stables in her wake as if he hadn’t a care in the world and confounded her again. How could she not admire a man who confronted his fears with such style, even if she didn’t want to like anything about him?

Cherry decided a pantomime of what she wanted wasn’t doing the trick and yipped a command in his lordship’s direction, so he bent to give the pup a full belly rub she enjoyed so much she let out a little moan of delight and threatened to surge to her feet and jump at him in an excess of joy.

‘No!’ Lady Wakebourne ordered firmly, so Cherry simply demanded more fuss, and Polly felt the rich echoes of his laugh prickle like a warning along her spine.

‘Misbegotten hound,’ Lady Wakebourne said, and Cherry wagged her tail as if it was a huge compliment.

‘Go get the boys,’ Polly ordered Lunar and Zounds, and they bounded off, or at least Lunar bounded. Zounds skittered after him as fast as his uneven gait would allow, and Ariel weighed his options and decided he would like a run, so he streaked after them like the wind. Cherry saw she was being left behind, gave Lord Mantaigne an apologetic lick and dashed off as well.

‘The pump?’ his lordship asked Polly with one of those exceptionally irritating eyebrows of his quirked in an imperious question.

‘There is no pump, only a bucket on a rope,’ she said to him with a nod at the most deeply shadowed corner of the yard.

This was no time to soften towards him and join in the mighty clean it would take before the empty stable block was at all usable. Polly fetched the giant key to the tack room on the other side of the quadrangle, daring him to complain at the decay he’d caused in the first place. They’d fought his wilful neglect since the first day they happened on the castle, so he could see for himself how hard that struggle was for an hour of his soft life.

He didn’t look soft as he turned the key in the ancient lock without apparent effort. It was beyond her strength to move it without both hands and much cursing and swearing, and Polly told herself it was wrong to ogle his magnificently displayed physique as blatantly as he had done hers and sighed under her breath. His coming here would change everything, and all the wishing him away in the world wouldn’t alter the fact he was home at last. An untamed part of her was intrigued and even a little bit triumphant about the fact he’d been well worth waiting for.

Well, he didn’t know about the Polly she kept well hidden, and she certainly wasn’t going to tell him. Nor was he going to lord it over them; not after neglecting this wonderful old place so shamefully a battalion of thieves could have hidden here without any risk of being challenged. She recalled her father telling her nobody could make her feel small and insignificant unless she let them and bit back a smile as she wondered what her adventurous parent would make of his tall and all-too-significant daughter now.

Not a great deal, a sneaky voice whispered in her ear, but she hid her self-doubts behind the mask of confidence Papa had taught her to use to outface her enemies. Except she couldn’t afford to be headlong and reckless and arrogant as he’d been the first to admit a true Trethayne was by nature and intent. He had lost every penny they ever had, and a good few they didn’t; then he died during an insane midnight race across the moors to try to recoup his losses with a mad bet on his favourite horse.

Claire, her stepmother, had died when her smallest brother was born, so seven years on from Stephen Trethayne’s reckless and untimely death Polly and her little brothers lived on whatever they could grow or make at Dayspring Castle, which went to show what happened when Trethaynes refused to rein in their wilder impulses. At times she had longed for a life of passion and adventure instead of hard work and loneliness, but Polly only had to recall how it felt to be seventeen with three little boys to raise on nothing and the urgency faded.

Yet a dart of something deep and dangerous had shot through her at first sight of this handsome golden-haired Adonis, staring back at her as if she was water in a desert. It still sang somewhere deep down inside her as if he’d branded her with warm lightning. She shivered at what might be, if she wasn’t four and twenty and father, mother and every other relative they had never had to three little brothers, and if Lord Mantaigne wasn’t one of the richest and most powerful aristocrats in the land.

She shook her head at the ridiculous idea of him wanting her as other than a passing fancy she was not willing to be. Trying to distract herself, she wondered how many horses and servants were on their way with the luxuries he would demand as his right. She could imagine him a great lord or prince in medieval times on a grand progress about the land with a huge entourage of brightly arrayed courtiers and an army of servants to answer his every need along the way. If Dayspring Castle was once capable of housing such a household, it certainly wasn’t now. She scaled down his retinue to a couple of carriages and a few carts laden with boxes of superbly cut clothes to deck him out in style.

He would need a valet to keep such splendour bandbox fresh and wasn’t it lucky the thought of him mincing down Bond Street carrying such an item after a visit to the milliner made her want to laugh? Whatever she thought of him, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to know what that was; even she couldn’t accuse him of being effete.

She would like to, of course, but she couldn’t delude herself so badly. Not with his powerful breadth of shoulder and heavily muscled arms on show when he stood there in his shirtsleeves ready to begin his Herculean task. He had narrow flanks and long and sleekly muscled legs, finishing in those damned boots of his that made him look more like a tidied-up pirate than the mincing marquis her imagination had painted him.

His hair might have started out the day in neatly ranked waves or even the artful disorder some of the dandies affected, but now his golden locks were in such disarray he must be as impatient of a hat on such a fine spring day as she was herself. Which didn’t mean they had anything in common. The fine cut of his immaculate waistcoat; the stark whiteness of his linen shirt and beautifully tied neckcloth all argued the Marquis of Mantaigne was used to the finest money could buy. Miss Paulina Trethayne had long ago resigned herself to life shorn of all her kind took for granted and sniffed, as if doubtful he could lift a pitchfork, let alone wield one.

‘You’ll get very dirty,’ she warned, as if he couldn’t see the dust and smell the unused staleness of the air inside long-neglected stables for himself.

‘I’ll wash,’ he said indifferently, letting her implied insult pass as he surveyed the dust of ages in front of him. ‘We’ll need those buckets and something to scrub with as well as more hay and straw, if it can all be got at short notice.’

‘Enough of both are in the barn and there’s more in the rickyard,’ she said, and he raised his annoying eyebrows again, as if surprised they were so organised. He might not be so pleased when he realised animals and crops came ahead of people in their household and there would not be enough to feed him in style.

‘Good, we’d best get on with it then, if you’ll tell us where a couple of decent brooms and buckets are, then leave us to our labours, Miss Trethayne?’ he said, as if he swept and washed down stables every day dressed in Bond Street’s finest and with that fallen-angel smile never wavering for a second.

Mr Peters eyed the blanket of stale dust and detritus overlaying everything and looked as if he had better places to be. Moved by his mournful look at his neatly made coat as he took it off, as if he was bidding goodbye to his sober raiment and tidy appearance for ever, Polly went to make sure fires were lit under the vast coppers in the laundry to provide baths for the lord as well as his man. If there was only water for one, doubtless the marquis would take it all and let his fastidious aide sleep in his dirt, so there was no point trying to make him even more eager to leave by skimping on such necessities after their hard labour.

* * *

Tom and Peters were almost unrecognisable as the lord of this ancient pile and his supposed secretary by the time all four cartloads of luggage and provisions rolled down the rutted drive. It was dusk and on the edge of true darkness by then and the grooms and stable lads seemed delighted to be at journey’s end, even if it didn’t promise more than a roof over their heads against the coming night. Their calls to each other and exclamations at the state of the roads and their new lodgings made the yard livelier than it must have been for decades. Tom shook his head as if he was Lunar trying to dislodge a persistent fly and dust and old cobwebs threatened their handiwork with a new sprinkling of ancient history.

‘Hercules had the River Styx handy to divert through the Augean Stables,’ Peters remarked gloomily as he swept up the dislodged dust and followed his broom outside into the fading daylight, before Tom could make more work.

‘And the nice warm Aegean to bathe in when he was done,’ Tom said with a grin at his once-pristine companion. ‘You look as if you’ve been pulled through a hedge backwards, rolled in the dust and trampled by a herd of wild horses.’

‘I feel filthy,’ Peters said disgustedly, and Tom laughed.

‘Ah, but you must admit the place is full of surprises,’ he said.

‘Aye, it’s confounded us so far,’ the man said as if that wasn’t a good thing, but hard work had settled some of the tension of the past few days, and Tom didn’t intend to fall into a gloom again.

‘At least there’s not much chance of being bored for the next few weeks.’

‘Boredom can be a good thing, given the alternative,’ Peters said with a sigh, but Tom turned to greet his head groom and managed to ignore him.

‘There’s good news and bad, Dacre,’ he informed the man cheerfully once Dacre reported a smooth journey and they had compared notes on the roads and the state of the horses after the easy run they’d had today.

‘I can see the bad part of it, milord, so what’s to be happy about?’

‘Mr Peters and I have swept and scrubbed the unused stables as best we can, so we can house the horses in reasonable comfort and safety. If your lads go and fetch bedding and feed from the barns over yonder, I dare say the nags will be as happy as we can make them, even if I don’t hold much hope for the rest of us. I trust you didn’t push the teams so hard we can’t water them when you find a few more buckets?’

‘Not I, but it’s as well we brought plenty with us, my lord,’ Dacre said with a disapproving look at their handiwork.

Tom’s head groom always disdained anything he hadn’t ordered himself on principle, but, since Amazonian Miss Trethayne had sent her three young brothers and other assorted urchins to ‘help’, Tom knew they had achieved a lot. Luckily the lads had soon grown bored with sweeping up choking clouds of ancient dust and cleaning windows and melted away to find more amusing things to do.

‘Never mind, Dacre. Barnabas will be here with the riding horses any moment, he can help you restore order in the morning,’ Tom said.

‘I’ll try to be grateful for small mercies then, my lord.’

‘For now the horses need your attention and I hope you find all their gear on the wagons in the dark. A few moth-eaten brushes and a curry-comb with every other tooth missing won’t do the job after their journey.’

‘Very true, my lord. Now you leave the beasts to me while you go and turn yourself back into a gentleman.’

‘Of course. Why else would I pay you so handsomely? Even when you think it’s your duty to set me down like a scrubby schoolboy with every other word.’

‘Somebody has to do it, my lord,’ Dacre replied dourly. ‘Her ladyship trusted me with the job when you was a lad, and I’m not done hoping you’ll toe the line one day quite yet.’

‘Do let me know when you consider me mature enough to run my own life, won’t you?’ Tom said cheerfully.

Knowing he could relax and leave his horses and men in good hands now, he wondered if he and Peters would have to make do with a very quick dip in the still not-very-warm April sea he could hear whispering against the foreshore of the cove below the castle. There was no chance of him getting a wink of sleep if he tried to bed down in all this dirt, even if it was in a stable, so the sea it would have to be and what else had he expected of the wreck he’d made of his former home?

‘Polly said we were to bring lanterns to light you and Mr Peters inside,’ little Joshua Trethayne’s childish voice piped up as the glow of them softened the fast falling darkness in the stable yard. ‘But you’re to be careful because the whole place will go up like a tinder box if you let one fall, or so Lady W. says. Oh, and you’re not to be late for supper if you have to scrape the dirt off to be in time.’

‘Bagpipe,’ Master Henry Trethayne condemned his little brother in his halfway between child-and-man voice. ‘Lady Wakebourne said we’re to say there’s enough hot water for two baths in the coppers, but you’ll have to take them in the laundry house, because there’s nobody to carry water up and down stairs for you.’

‘And there’s the biggest pie we ever saw ready for dinner and we’re starved,’ the boy Tom thought was called Joe said from behind the three brothers.

‘We’d best hurry, Peters,’ Tom told his filthy companion, wondering if he had that much dust and dirt on his once-immaculate person as well. ‘Do you know if there’s any soap to spare, boys? Or must I search the wagons before we come in?’

‘I sincerely hope not, my lord,’ Peters said as if he’d experienced quite enough misplaced optimism for one day, ‘you would get dust and dirt on everything.’

‘Aye, there’s soap all right,’ one of the skinny urchins Tom thought more at home on a London street than rural Dorset said gloomily, ‘more of it than a body should have to put up with in a whole lifetime, if you asks me.’

‘That’s because you’re a mudlark,’ Henry Trethayne said cheerfully.

‘Then at least I ain’t a pretty little gentleman.’

‘D’you still think I’m pretty now?’ Henry asked as he lunged for his friend and wrestled him to the ground.

‘Please ignore them, my lord,’ his elder brother said loftily, but Tom’s night vision was good enough to see him eyeing the pair with the wistfulness of an adult looking back on the pleasures of his youth. ‘They know no better, I’m afraid.’

‘Clearly,’ he said as solemnly as he could. ‘Now, about that soap and water? Could you point us in the direction of it so we’re rid of our dirt before the ladies see us? We’ll get a fine scolding if we venture inside looking like this.’

‘Hmm? Oh, yes, Josh will take you, won’t you, Josh?’ the boy said absently, weighing up how best to intervene as a third boy launched himself into the fray and maturity felt less important than evening the odds.

‘Come on then, Mr Lord,’ the youngest Trethayne ordered cheerfully.

‘You don’t want to join in?’ Tom couldn’t help asking as they walked towards the castle with the noises of battle fading behind them.

‘I’m the smallest and weakest. It would be foolish and painful to do so,’ the boy informed him as if he was the grown up.

‘True,’ Peters said with a heartfelt sigh.

‘Younger son?’ Tom couldn’t help asking.

‘Something like that,’ his companion replied in his usual guarded tone when Tom tried to learn more about this enigma of a man than the enigma really wanted him to know.

Tom forgot his companions and everything else when Dayspring Castle loomed ever closer out of the half-dark. Its air of down-at-heel raffishness was hidden by the coming night and the feeling of malevolent power he recalled all too well from his childhood was in command once more. Then it had seemed to have a real, beating heart tucked away somewhere, hellbent on showing him he was as nothing compared to the grand history of Dayspring and its warrior lords.

His breath shortened and his heartbeat began to race, as if he was on the edge of the same panic he’d felt every time he was dragged back here from an attempt to run away as a boy. Back then he’d usually betrayed his terror by being physically sick or, on one terrible occasion, losing control of all his bodily functions as his guardian and that terrifying pack of dogs bayed at him from the castle steps and he felt the snap of savage jaws held just far enough off not to actually bite, but close enough to be a boy’s worst nightmare come horribly true. Thank Heaven Peters knew nothing of that awful moment of weakness as he remarked what a fine place it was and how he might envy its owner, if it wasn’t close to ruin.

‘It’s not a ruin,’ Joshua Trethayne said as if he loved it. ‘The North Tower is dangerous and Poll says we’re not to go there, even if someone could die if we don’t. Jago says it’s haunted, so I don’t want to go up there anyway and Toby can say I’m a coward as often as he likes, but I really don’t want to know who the ghost is.’

‘Quite right,’ Tom said dourly. ‘He’s not worth meeting.’

‘I would consider meeting any ghost a memorable experience, even if their very existence is beyond the realms of logic to me,’ Peters argued.

Tom was tempted to growl something disagreeable and stump off towards the laundry house he remembered as a warm, if damp, hiding place when he escaped his prison in the North Tower to roam about the countryside. Frightened of the smugglers and other unpredictable creatures of the night, he would come back here to sleep in the outbuildings and feed on scraps of food carelessly left out by the laundresses and grooms. With adult perception Tom realised that was done deliberately and felt a lot better about being back here all of a sudden. At least some of the people who once lived and worked here had cared enough about the ragged little marquis to leave him the means to stay free and safe for a little longer.