Miranda's Mount (3 page)

A middle-aged
woman in a Barbour jacket, leaning on a stick, appeared under the archway leading into the armoury.

‘What the blazes is going on here?’

Miranda’s heart sank into her trainers. ‘Lady St Merryn! I’m so sorry this has disturbed you. An intruder broke into the armoury.’

‘Intruder?’ The man snorted.

‘Shut your mouth,’ growled Reggie

‘As you can see, we have the incident under control now,’ said Miranda.

Reggie hauled the man to his feet. ‘He’s probably on drugs.’

The man glared at Ronnie. ‘I’m not on drugs. Not these days anyway.’

‘I advise you to keep quiet, mate,’ said Reggie.

‘I’m not your
mate
.’

Lady St Merryn shot the intruder a look normally reserved for the castle cat when it dropped a half-eaten mouse on her drawing room Axminster.

‘I really don’t know how he managed to stay in the armoury after the castle had closed,’ Miranda said, tucking a rogue strand of hair behind her ear as if that made everything OK again. ‘We did a thorough sweep of the site as usual but this man appears to have been missed. I can assure you it won’t happen again, Lady St Merryn.’

It definitely wouldn’t happen again; never mind the CCTV system, Miranda was already planning a root and branch review of the Mount’s security procedures. Several staff clearly needed to go on refresher courses, including herself.

Lady St Merryn waved a hand dismissively and frowned at her. ‘Never mind me, Miranda. How are you? I do hope this miscreant hasn’t hurt you. If he has I’ll take it out on his hide myself.’

Miranda was
astonished. Lady St Merryn was known for her fiery character but Miranda hadn’t thought she’d resort to violence. Mind you, it was a very rare cutlass. It had belonged to the fifth Lord, Jasper St Merryn, who was rumoured to have captured it from a pirate ship off Tortuga in 1721.

‘There’s no need for that, Lady St Merryn. The team will deal with him now.’

They hauled the man to his feet. ‘We’ll press charges,’ said Ronnie.

‘What for? I wasn’t stealing the cutlass.’

Reggie snorted. ‘Only because Miss Marshall caught you. We can do you for threatening behaviour, assault, trespass …’

‘Nothing I haven’t faced before.’

Miranda was speechless. She didn’t know how he could be so arrogant knowing he was about to be arrested and possibly sent to prison. With a face and body like his, she thought he’d have a very hard time there. She tried to feel sorry for him and failed.

Ronnie’s face was grim. ‘I’ll call the police,’ she said.

Lady St Merryn gave a sigh. ‘Untie him.’

Reggie tightened his grip on the man’s bicep until the skin turned white. ‘We can’t do that. He could be a nutter, madam.’

‘Oh, he’s definitely a nutter, Reggie, but please untie him.’

Miranda stepped
forwards, astonished. ‘Lady St Merryn …’

Lady St Merryn tapped her way to Miranda and patted her arm. ‘Don’t worry, my dear. It’s fine. I won’t say you’re perfectly safe with this idiot but I don’t think he’s about to run you through with a cutlass. I, however, may be taking a horsewhip to him.’

Miranda was speechless. She’d expected Lady St Merryn to be outraged at some oik trying to make off with her heritage, but as for simply letting him go? Yes. She’d let the teenager off but this was different.

Grumbling, Reggie undid the cable ties and, scowling, the man rubbed at his wrists.

‘Hurts a bit, does it?’ said Reggie with undisguised relish.

‘Well, normally, I rather enjoy a little light bondage but not usually at the hands of a man.’

Miranda tried desperately to remain composed, which was difficult considering she’d gone all hot and cold as the man turned his eyes right on her. Suddenly, he gave a little bow in her direction before stepping forwards and planting a kiss on Lady St Merryn’s cheek.

Lady St Merryn kissed him back then scowled. ‘It will take a damn sight more than that to get round me, Jago.’

He shook his head and gave a weary sigh. ‘Delighted to see you too, Mother, you haven’t changed a bit.’

Miranda replaced
the cutlass on its stand, frowning at the fingerprints marking the blade. The sword would need cleaning too now, but that could wait until tomorrow when the conservator arrived. She stepped back and looked around the armoury. Her heart rate had slowed and the throbbing pulse in her head had subsided.

Miranda hadn’t been able to take her eyes off Jago St Merryn as he’d kissed his mother, her frail figure seeming childlike in his embrace. Despite her harsh words and sarcasm, Miranda knew Lady St Merryn well enough to tell that she was happy, relieved – grateful – to have her son back home. Even if he was a son she never talked about and hadn’t even seen – if all the rumours were to be believed – since he’d left university ten years before.

On a day-to-day basis, Lady St Merryn was in charge of the Mount but it was her son, Jago, who had inherited the property and the title from his father, Patrick. He was the heir and it should have been his duty to be in charge of it now. Instead Jago St Merryn had considered it his duty to scarper and leave the castle to be run by his mother and a handful of underpaid, and almost stupidly loyal, residents and staff.

Miranda
made her way back down to the harbour where the offices were housed in converted buildings on the quayside. The cottages, strung along the harbour, were home for the thirty staff and their families who lived on the island. Most of the buildings had been there for at least three hundred years, providing accommodation for the ferrymen, servants and trades people and their families, who had once served the Mount or still did.

She walked into her office and opened the filing cabinet. In the bottom drawer, she found a half-bottle of ‘medicinal’ Ardbeg hidden behind a copy of
Debrett’s
. She checked her watch. It was one minute past six and she was officially off duty. She unscrewed the cap, sloshed a generous measure in her Mount St Merryn mug and sank back into her office chair.

‘How are you?’

She smiled as Ronnie appeared in the doorway. ‘I think I’ve got over it. Whisky?’

‘Unfortunately, I’m still on duty. My shift doesn’t end until ten. But if I wasn’t, I’d join you in a flash. Hell of a shock, wasn’t it?’

‘I didn’t actually think Jago St Merryn would run me through with the cutlass.’

‘I didn’t mean the cutlass. I meant it’s a shock that bloody Jago’s deigned to come back to the Mount, at all.’

‘I
suppose we should have guessed he’d be back one day, no matter what’s gone on between him and his mother. He does own the place after all, but just turning up like that, I admit, it was unconventional.’ Miranda clamped her lips together. It wasn’t her place to speculate on the private lives of her employers; she left that to the rest of the staff when they thought she was out of earshot. She still enjoyed eavesdropping.

The look that Jago had given her as Reggie had set him free was also burned into her brain. She gulped down a slug of whisky and wished she had a fan in the office. The May evening was unseasonably warm.

‘Handsome bastard, isn’t he?’ said Ronnie, as if reading her thoughts. ‘Bit of the gypsy in there if you ask me.’

With his earring and bravado, Jago had reminded Miranda more of the Corsairs, the pirates who attacked enemy ships for the French kings.

‘You know he left for university and never came back?’ asked Ronnie.

‘I’d heard rumours but Lady St Merryn never talks about him.’

That was an understatement. In fact, Jago might as well have
not
existed. While there were dozens of portraits of the St Merryn ancestors displayed throughout the castle, Jago’s handsome face was nowhere to be found. Even in Lady St Merryn’s private chambers, Miranda could only recall one photo of him, and that was a print of a sullen little boy, standing by the harbour, holding a fishing net.

‘No wonder her ladyship won’t speak his name. After the last lord passed away, Jago went straight up to Cambridge from boarding school. He hardly ever came home, from what I can work out and, after that, he disappeared off round the world. Reggie reckons he was banged up in some South American jail for a while.’

Disappeared
off round the world. Miranda thought that sounded about right for the man she’d just met. In past times, the sons of great families were often despatched abroad, either to do the Grand Tour and broaden their minds or because they’d done something unspeakable and had to get away until the heat died down. In Jago’s case, the unspeakable option seemed more likely. But what could you do these days that was truly ‘unspeakable’? The possibilities shot through Miranda’s mind. She pictured Jago in a Hogarthian scene of debauchery, lolling on a couch with an opium pipe in one hand, a gin bottle in the other and bare-breasted wenches lifting their skirts in his face.

Yikes. She downed the rest of her whisky. ‘I thought you said he’d been working in Australia?’

‘He has been for the past couple of years. The landlady of the pub in the village has a cousin who runs a bar in Bells Beach in Victoria. She reckons Jago used to hang out in his bar for a while. But I don’t think he’s been actually working, unless you call surfing “work” and I think there was some trouble with women but I don’t know the details.’

Trouble with women, plural? That seemed feasible. Jago probably only had to flutter an eyelash to have girls queuing up to see his enormous inheritance.

She sipped her whisky, feigning indifference to Jago’s alleged charms. ‘And he’s never been back to see his mother?’

‘Not while you’ve been around, no, and I can’t recall ever seeing him since I’ve started. I think his graduation ceremony was pretty much the last Lady St Merryn saw of him.’

Now he was back, Miranda had hoped he might have changed his ways but her first impressions weren’t very promising.

Ronnie carried
on. ‘God knows why he’s crawled out of whatever stone he was hiding under and come back to the Mount.’

‘Yes, I’m wondering why I bothered myself.’ Jago loomed in the doorway to the office. His T-shirt, dusty from the armoury floor, had seen better days but clung to a torso in its prime. His hair, freed from the ponytail, was tousled from sun, surf and a scuffle with two sarcastic security guards. ‘Veronica isn’t it?’

Ronnie glared at him. ‘Everybody calls me Ronnie.’

‘I’m not everybody.’

The hostility crackled through the air and yet Miranda simply couldn’t take her eyes off him. He glared back at her from dark eyes fringed by lashes that had no need of the mascara wand. She knew then, how D’Artagnan might have looked if Levis had been invented.

He loomed over above the desk. ‘OK, Veronica, do you mind leaving us alone? Ms Marshall will be quite safe. As you can see, I am unarmed.’

Acting as if Jago didn’t exist, Ronnie patted Miranda’s arm. ‘Are you OK, hun?’

‘Of course.’

‘And you’re fine with me leaving you alone with
him
?’

‘She is,’ Jago cut in.

‘I’m fine and, anyway, I’m sure Lord St Merryn doesn’t plan on staying down here in the office for long.’

Jago grinned. ‘There you are then, Veronica. Miranda isn’t afraid of me.’

Ronnie
banged down her mug. ‘Well, you know where the panic button is if you need me.’ She marched out, slamming the door to the office behind her.

Jago raised his eyebrows as the partition wall vibrated. ‘What charming staff. Pray, tell me what people skills course do you send them on?’

Miranda didn’t tell him that people skills courses were beyond the Mount’s budget too but she still winced at the war raging between her best friend and her new boss. Jago obviously wasn’t here on a charm offensive but then again, Ronnie
had
sat on him.

‘I’m sorry if you find us all a little off guard,’ said Miranda, heating up at the thought of being astride Jago, ‘but your arrival was rather unexpected.’

‘So I’ve gathered. It was rather unexpected to me too.’

‘I think Ronnie’s secretly rather embarrassed at having pinned you to the floor.’

‘And you’re embarrassed at having called security on me?’ His dark-brown eyes crinkled at the corners and his mouth twitched in a half-smile. Miranda decided he’d seemed less threatening while he’d waved a sword at her.

‘Actually, no. You might have been dangerous for all I knew. I followed the correct procedures and if you’d said who you were from the start, I wouldn’t have had you restrained.’

‘Come on, would you have believed me if I had said who I was? Do I look like a lord?’

‘No. You’re far too scruffy, but you could have tried to convince me.’

He rested
a jeaned buttock on the edge of the desk. ‘I’m genuinely sorry for frightening you. Once you’d found me, I had an inkling of what would happen and I knew I had no means of proving who I was. Alas, I have no royal birthmark on my backside that I could whip out to show you.’

‘Or a passport? Driving licence?’ she managed, trying not to envisage Jago whipping out anything in front of her.

‘I have both, as a matter of fact, but they’re in my rucksack up in the tower. When I got off the boat, I came up the back route to the living quarters, dropped my stuff in my old room then went straight to the armoury once the castle had closed.’

‘But why choose the armoury?’

‘Perhaps because I’m a closet serial killer? I really have no idea.’

‘And you didn’t think to introduce yourself to anyone?’ Miranda went on, feeling more and more like a headmistress telling off a naughty student. She didn’t care; Jago deserved all he got.

He shrugged. ‘Actually, I didn’t see anyone. The place was as deserted as the
Mary Celeste
.’

‘That’s because we were doing a property sweep to check there was no one left behind.’ Miranda thought it better not to mention the almost-stolen bestiary to her new boss. ‘Fortunately, the team spotted us on the CCTV system.’

‘Yes, and I was almost having fun until the Kray twins arrived.’

‘They were only doing their job.’

He shifted
his other cheek onto the desk, obscuring a memo from the Health & Safety Executive. Miranda pushed her mug away from his bottom, a little uncomfortable at being found drinking, even if it was off duty. She didn’t want Jago to think he’d unsettled her for a moment but inside, her stomach was churning and not only because she fancied the aristocratic pants off him. After hardly setting foot in the place for ten years, he must have a very good reason to return now, and she had a feeling that it couldn’t be anything pleasant.