Elizabeth Beacon - The Marquis's Awakening

Thank goodness the self-appointed castle laundress was middle-aged and didn’t continue with her life’s work in quite the same way nowadays. The image of his lordship in his tub with a very willing and gleeful female seemed utterly disgusting somehow, as the one of him in it with the likes of her that hesitated on the edge of her thoughts never could be, even though her everyday self wished it was.

‘Oh, no, the valise!’ she yelped and ran out of the room to find Sam Barker before there was the slightest risk of the marquis carrying out his implied threat to parade about the castle naked if someone didn’t produce his clothes in time. ‘Useless dandy,’ she grumbled as soon as she’d run Sam to earth in the kitchen and met his amused gaze as he reassured her the master of the house had already been safely reunited with his clothes and there was nothing for her to panic about.

‘That’s what he thinks,’ she mumbled to herself as she went back upstairs to put out a few of their precious store of wax candles in honour of their unwanted guest.

* * *

‘So, what do you think?’ Tom asked his supposed secretary-cum-agent-cum-lawyer half an hour later.

‘Nobody would think you even knew what a broom looked like now, let alone how to use one,’ Peters told him distractedly as he did his best to shave by the light of a flickering candle.

‘That’s not what I meant,’ Tom told him grumpily, wondering why the world thought him such a peacock. ‘I was asking your ideas about the self-appointed keepers of my castle.’

‘From what I’ve seen so far, they seem a very mixed bag.’

‘True, but I’m ready to defer to your superior knowledge of the criminal classes. Do you think any are active law-breakers?’

Peters seemed to consider that question more seriously as he wiped the last of his whiskers from the blade of his razor and was himself again, whoever that might be. ‘I doubt it,’ he said, as if the fact surprised him as well.

‘So do I,’ Tom said with a preoccupied frown as he used the square of mirror his confederate had vacated to brush his hair back into gleaming order. ‘I suspect Lady Wakebourne would have them marched out of here faster than the cat could lick her ear if she had the slightest suspicion any had gone back to their old ways.’

‘It’s not just that. They respect her and Miss Trethayne. Even that battered old rogue in the gatehouse seemed more concerned about them than his own doubtful claim to employment and a roof over his head.’

‘So why are two ladies living in what should be an abandoned barrack with a pack of reformed rogues and criminals?’ Tom mused as he decided he was ready to face the world outside the castle laundry once again.

‘Some don’t seem the type to have ever been out-and-out rogues, so maybe they were all victims of an unlucky fate.’

‘Maybe, but what sort of circumstances would set two ladies so far apart from their kind? They must have been dire to leave them squatting in such a bleak old barn of a place, scratching a living from whatever they have managed to find here to sustain some sort of life on.’

‘Dire ones indeed,’ Peters said starkly, confirming Tom’s own conclusions.

He frowned at his now-immaculate reflection and came to terms with the idea he couldn’t simply come here, take a look round and walk away again as he had half-hoped when he was given Virginia’s letter ordering him to come here, find out what was amiss, then make up his mind if he wanted to demolish the castle or accept the duties and responsibilities that went with being born the heir of Dayspring Castle.

‘Dire indeed if I meant to bring in a full staff and live here, since they would then have to leave the place.’

‘And you don’t?’

‘Of course not, man. Would I have avoided it like the plague all these years if I had the slightest desire to settle in and play lord of all I survey here?’

‘I really couldn’t say, my lord,’ the supposedly quiet and unassuming Mr Peters said, as if he had his own opinion about Tom’s feelings for the place but was keeping it to himself.

‘Good,’ Tom drawled, squaring his shoulders at the suspicion the man might be right.

* * *

‘Is Lord Mantaigne’s bedchamber ready yet?’ Lady Wakebourne asked Polly from the doorway of the great parlour.

‘It would take an army to make that echoing barrack room ready for him,’ Polly snapped back and felt the new tension in the air now the rightful owner was back in his castle. ‘They can both sleep in the South Tower with the rest of the men,’ she added, knowing all the same that nothing here was ever going to be the same again. ‘We can’t get them into the staterooms fast enough for my taste, but lodging the man in a musty and bat-ridden chamber in the empty part of the house won’t endear us to him in any way.’

‘And we don’t want him to feel more uncomfortable than he has to here.’

‘No, indeed,’ Polly agreed with a weary sigh.

‘Nor should we allow him the chance to form any wrong ideas about a lady residing under his roof, my dear. You must resume your petticoats in the daytime as well as at nights now, Paulina, whether you like them or not.’

‘I don’t. They’re confoundedly restricting and make it well-nigh impossible to for me to do any work,’ Polly complained, knowing her ladyship was right.

Casting a last glance round the comfortable room at the odd family they had made out of a pack of rootless strangers used of an evening, she wondered how many would stay in their own quarters tonight to avoid the puzzle of how the sweepings of the King’s Highway dined with a marquis. Biting back a wistful sigh for yesterday, when they had no idea the impossible was about to happen, she nodded her agreement and bit her lip against a furious protest against the darker whims of fate.

‘Never mind, my dear, it won’t be for long. The boy must loathe the place, given the terrible things the locals whisper about what he endured here as a boy, and this is the first time he’s been near Dayspring in twenty years. He probably won’t be back for another twenty, once he’s done whatever it is he came here to do.’

‘And whatever that might be, he certainly didn’t expect to find us here,’ Polly answered glumly. ‘I can’t imagine why you wrote to his godmother about whatever is going on here. You must have done that months ago, since the old lady has been dead three months,’ she said sharply, as all those nights when she had lain awake worrying about whoever was making incursions into the castle at night reminded her Lady Wakebourne was a devious woman.

‘He is the only person who can tell them to go, my dear. I wasn’t going to risk you losing your temper one day and confronting them, then maybe leaving those boys of yours even more alone in the world than they are already.’

‘Oh, then I suppose I can see your point,’ Polly conceded reluctantly, knowing she had a tendency to act first and think later, although of course a measured risk was perfectly acceptable and she had weighed that one up already and decided she needed more information before taking it.

‘And I am very fond of you, my dear. I want you to be safe and happy as much as any of us.’

‘Thank you, I am very fond of you to,’ Polly admitted.

‘Then there is no harm done between us?’ The lady actually sounded anxious about that and Polly had to nod and admit it.

‘No, but I now know you are a splendid actress and will be very wary of you in future.’

‘I don’t think I’ll take to the stage to repair my fortunes even so. Now run along upstairs and put some petticoats on, my dear, if only for my sake.’

‘Very well, but I still hate them.’

Going back across the courtyard to the women’s quarters, she climbed the stairs to her lofty room and washed hastily. Trying not to give herself time to think too much, she bundled herself into the patched and fraying quilted petticoat, wide overskirt and unfashionably long bodice she wore when she absolutely had to. It felt ancient and impractical, and she hated the corsets she had to wear to make the bodice fit and the curb the heavy skirt put on her long stride so she must mince along or hold them so high they were indecent and defeated the purpose of wearing them in the first place. Without the hoops and panniers the gown was designed for, it hung limply about her long legs, but it was the only gown she’d found that wasn’t so short on her it was more revealing than her breeches, so what couldn’t be cured must be endured.