Louise Allen (3 page)

Now she was rested from her journey she was much improved, he
thought, hiding a connoisseur’s assessment behind a bland social smile. Her
straight nose was no longer pink at the tip from cold; her hair, freed from its
bonnet, proved to be a glossy brown with a rebellious wave that was already
threatening her hairpins, and her figure in the fashionable gown was well
proportioned, if somewhat on the slender side for his taste.

On the other hand her chin was decided, her dark brows strongly
marked and there was a tension about her face that suggested that she was braced
for something unpleasant. Her mouth looked as though it could set into a firm
line of disapproval; it was full and pink, but by no stretch of the imagination
did the words
rosebud
or
bow
come to mind. And she was quite definitely in at least her fifth
Season.

Lady Isobel took up the glass, sipped and finally turned to him
with a lift of her lashes to reveal her intelligent dark grey eyes. ‘Well?’ she
murmured with a sweetness that did not deceive him for a second. ‘Have you
studied me sufficiently to place me in your catalogue of females, Mr Harker? One
well-bred spinster with brunette plumage, perhaps? Or do I not quite fit into a
category, so you must bring yourself to converse with me while you decide?’

‘What makes you think I have such a catalogue, Lady Isobel?’
Giles accepted a glass of claret from the earl with a word of thanks and turned
back to her. Interesting that she described herself as a spinster. She was
perhaps twenty-four, he guessed, five years younger than he was. The shelf might
be in sight, but she was not at her last prayers yet and it was an unusual young
woman who would admit any danger that she might be.

‘You are studying me with scientific thoroughness, sir. I half
expect you to produce a net and a pin to affix me amongst your moth
collection.’

Moth
, he noted.
Not butterfly. Modesty? Or is she seeing if I can be provoked
into meaningless compliments?

‘You have a forensic stare yourself, ma’am.’

Her lips firmed, just as he suspected they might.
Schoolmarm disapproval
, he thought.
Or embarrassment,
although he was beginning to
doubt she
could be embarrassed. Lady Isobel seemed more like a young matron than an
unmarried girl. She showed no other sign of emotion and yet he could feel the
tension radiating from her. It was strangely unsettling, although he should be
grateful that his unwise curiosity had not led her to relax in his company.

‘You refer to our meeting of eyes in the hall? You must be
tolerant of my interest, sir—one rarely sees Greek statuary walking about. I
note that you do not relish being assessed in the same way as you study others,
although you must be used to it by now. I am certain that you do not harbour
false modesty amongst your faults.’

The composure with which she attacked began to nettle him.
After that exchange she should be blushing, fiddling with her fan perhaps,
retreating from their conversation to sip her drink, but she seemed quite calm
and prepared to continue the duel. It confirmed his belief that she had been
sounding him out with an intention to flirt—or more.

‘I have a mirror and I would be a fool to become swollen-headed
over something that is due to no effort or merit of my own. Certainly I am used
to stares,’ he replied. ‘And do not welcome them.’

‘So modest and so persecuted. My heart bleeds for you, Mr
Harker,’ Lady Isobel said with a sweet smile and every appearance of sympathy.
Her eyes were chill with dislike. ‘And no doubt you find it necessary to lock
your bedchamber door at night with tiresome regularity.’

‘That, too,’ he replied between gritted teeth, then caught
himself. Somehow he had been lured into an utterly shocking exchange. A
well-bred unmarried lady should have fainted dead away before making such an
observation. And he should have bitten his tongue before responding to it,
whatever the provocation. Certainly in public.

‘How trying it must be, Mr Harker, to be so troubled by
importunate members of my sex. We should wait meekly to be noticed, should we
not? And be grateful for any attention we receive. We must not inconvenience, or
ignore, the lords of creation who, in their turn, may ogle as much as they
please while they make their lordly choices.’

Lady Isobel’s voice was low and pleasant—no one else in the
room would have noticed anything amiss in their conversation. But Giles realised
what the emotion was that had puzzled him: she was furiously angry. With him.
Simply because he had reacted coldly to her unladylike stare? Damn it, she had
been assessing him like a housewife looking at a side of beef in the butchers.
Or did she know who he was and think him presumptuous to even address her?

‘That is certainly what is expected of ladies, yes,’ he said,
his own temper rising. He’d be damned if he was going to flirt and cajole her
into a sweet mood, even if Lady Hardwicke noticed their spat. ‘Certainly
unmarried ones—whatever their age.’

Her chin came up at that. ‘A hit, sir. Congratulations. But
then a connoisseur such as yourself would notice only ladies who offer
irresistible temptation
. Not those who are
on the shelf and open to advances
.’

She turned her shoulder on him and immediately joined in the
laughter over some jest of Philip’s before he had time to react to the emphasis
she had put on some of her phrases. It took a second, then he realised that she
was quoting him and his conversation with Soane a few minutes earlier.

Hell and damnation
. Lady Isobel
must have been outside the door. Now he felt a veritable coxcomb. He could have
sworn he had seen the glitter of unshed tears in her eyes. Now what did he do?
His conscience stirred uneasily. Giles trampled on the impulse to apologise. It
could only make things worse by acknowledging the offending words and explaining
them would simply mire him further and hurt her more. Best to say nothing. Lady
Isobel would avoid him now and that was better for both of them.

Chapter Three

‘D
inner is served, my lady.’ There was a general stir as the butler made his announcement from the doorway and the party rose. Giles made a hasty calculation about seating plans and realised that ignoring Lady Isobel might be harder than he had thought.

‘We are a most unbalanced table, I am afraid,’ the countess observed. ‘Mr Soane—shall we?’ He went to take her arm and the earl offered his to Lady Isobel. Giles partnered Lady Anne, Philip, grinning, offered his arm to fifteen-year-old Catherine and Lizzie was left to bring up the rear. When they were all seated Giles found himself between Lady Isobel and Lizzie, facing the remaining Yorke siblings and Mr Soane. Conversation was inevitable if they were not to draw attention to themselves.

Lizzie, under her mother’s eagle eye, was on her best behaviour all through the first remove, almost unable to speak to him with the effort of remembering all the things that she must and must not do. Giles concluded it would be kinder not to confuse her with conversation, which left him with no choice but to turn and proffer a ragout to Lady Isobel.

‘Thank you.’ After a moment she said, ‘Do you work with Mr Soane often?’ Her tone suggested an utter lack of interest. The question, it was obvious, was the merest dinner-table conversation that good breeding required her to make. After his disastrous overheard comments she would like to tip the dish over his head, that was quite clear, but she was going to go through the motions of civility if it killed her.

‘Yes.’ Damn it, now he was sounding sulky. Or guilty. Giles pulled himself together. ‘I worked in his drawing office when I first began to study architecture after leaving university. It was a quite incredible experience—the office is in his house, you may know—like finding oneself in the midst of Aladdin’s cave and never knowing whether one is going to bump into an Old Master painting, trip over an Egyptian sarcophagus or wander into a Gothic monk’s parlour!

‘I am now building my own practice, but I collaborate with Soane if I can be of assistance. He is a busy man and I owe him a great deal.’

Lady Isobel made a sound that might be interpreted, by the wildly optimistic, as encouragement to expand on that statement.

‘He employed me when I had no experience and, for all he knew, might prove to be useless.’

‘And you are not useless?’ She sounded sceptical.

‘No.’
Hell, sulky again
.
‘I am not.’ Deciding what to do with his future during that last year at Oxford had not been easy. It would have been very simple to hang on his mother’s purse strings—even her notorious extravagances had not compromised the wealth she had inherited from her father, nor her widow’s portion.

Somehow the Dowager Marchioness of Faversham kept the
bon ton
’s
acceptance despite breaking every rule in the book, including producing an illegitimate child by her head gardener’s irresistibly handsome soldier son, ten months after the death of her indulgent and elderly husband. She was so scandalous, so charming, that Giles believed she was regarded almost as an exotic, not quite human creature, one that could be indulged and permitted its antics.

‘I work for my living, Lady Isobel, and do it well. And I do not relish indolence,’ he added to his curt rejoinder. He would have little trouble maintaining a very full, and equally scandalous, social life at the Widow’s side, but he was not prepared to follow in her footsteps as a social butterfly. Society would have to accept him as himself, and on his own terms, or go hang if they found him too confusing to pigeonhole.

‘You had an education that fitted you for this work, then?’ Lady Isobel asked, her tone still inquisitorial, as though she was interviewing him for a post as a secretary. Her hands were white, her fingers long and slender. She ran one fingertip along the back of the knife lying by her plate and Giles felt a jolt of heat cut through his rising annoyance with her, and with himself for allowing her to bait him.

Stop it, there is nothing special about her. Just far more sensuality than any respectable virgin ought to exude.
‘Yes. Harrow. Oxford. And a good drawing master.’

Lady Isobel sent him a flickering look that encompassed, and was probably valuing, his evening attire—from his coat, to his linen, to the stick-pin in his cravat and the antique ruby cabochon ring on his finger. Her own gown and jewellery spoke of good taste and the resources to buy the best.

‘What decided you on architecture?’ she asked. ‘Is it a family tradition?’

No, she quite certainly did not know who he was or she would never have asked that. ‘Not so far as I am aware. My father was a soldier,’ Giles explained. ‘I did not realise at first where my talents, if I had any, might lie. Then it occurred to me that many of the drawings in my sketchbooks were buildings, interiors or landscapes. I found I was interested in design, in how spaces are used.’ His enthusiasm was showing, he realised and concluded, before he could betray anything more of his inner self, ‘I wrote to Mr Soane and he took me on as an assistant.’ He lowered his voice with a glance down the table. ‘He is generous to young men in the profession—I think his own sons disappoint him with their lack of interest.’

And now, of course, many of his commissions came from men he met socially, who appreciated his work, liked the fact that he was ‘one of them’ and yet was sufficiently different for it not to be an embarrassment to pay his account. Giles was very well aware that his bills were met with considerably more speed than if he had been, in their eyes, a mere tradesman. And in return, he stayed well clear of their wives and daughters, whatever the provocation.

‘So, have you built your own house, Mr Harker?’

‘I have. Were you thinking of viewing it, Lady Isobel?’

‘Now you are being deliberately provocative, Mr Harker.’ Her dark brows drew together and the tight social smile vanished. ‘I am thinking no such thing, as you know perfectly well. This is called
making polite conversation
, in case you are unfamiliar with the activity. You are supposed to inform me where your house is and tell me of some interesting or amusing feature, not make suggestive remarks.’

‘Are you always this outspoken, Lady Isobel?’ He found, unexpectedly, that his ill temper had vanished, although not all his guilt. He was enjoying her prickles—it was a novelty to be fenced with over dinner.

‘I am practising,’ she said as she sat back to allow the servants to clear for the second remove. ‘My rather belated New Year resolution is to say what I mean. Scream it, if necessary,’ she added in a murmur. ‘I believe I should say what I think to people to their faces, not behind their backs.’

Ouch
.
There was nothing for it. ‘I am sorry that you may have overheard some ill-judged remarks I made to Mr Soane earlier, Lady Isobel. That is a matter for regret.’

‘I am sure it is,’ she said with a smile that banished any trace of ease that he was beginning to feel in her presence. If she could cut with a smile, he hated to think what she might do with a frown.

‘However, I do not feel that any good will be served by rehearsing the reason you hold such...
ill-judged
opinions.’ Giles took a firm grip on his knife and resisted the urge to retaliate. He had been in the wrong—not to feel what he did, but to risk saying it where he might be overheard. Now he must give his head for a washing. He braced himself for her next barb. ‘You were telling me about your house.’

Excellent tactics
, he thought grimly.
Get me off balance while you work out how to knife me again
. ‘My house is situated on a small estate in Norfolk. My paternal grandfather lives there and manages it for me in my absence.’ It was also close enough for him to keep an eye on his mother on those occasions she descended on the Dower House of Westley Hall for one of her outrageous parties, causing acute annoyance and embarrassment to the current marquess and his wife and scandalised interest in the village. When she was in one of her wild moods he was the only person who could manage her.

‘Your father—’

‘He died before I was born.’ It had taken some persuasion to extract his grandfather from the head gardener’s cottage at Westley and persuade him that he would not be a laughing stock if he took up residence in his grandson’s new country house. ‘My grandfather lives with me. His health is not as robust as it once was.’ Stubborn old Joe had resisted every inch of the way, despite being racked with rheumatism and pains in his back from years of manual labour. But now he had turned himself into a country squire of the old-fashioned kind, despite grumbling about rattling around in a house with ten bedchambers. Thinking about the old man relaxed him a little.

‘How pleasant for you,’ Lady Isobel said, accepting a slice of salmon tart. ‘I wish I had known my grandfathers. And does your mama reside with you?’

‘She lives independently. Very independently.’ Things were relatively stable at the moment: his mother had a lover who was a year older than Giles. Friends thought he should be embarrassed by this liaison, but Giles was merely grateful that Jack had the knack of keeping her happy even if he had not a hope of restraining her wilder starts. To give the man his due, he did try.

‘She is a trifle eccentric, perhaps?’

‘Yes, I think you could say that,’ Giles agreed. How quickly Lady Isobel picked up the undertones in what he said— No wonder she was able to slip under his guard with such ease when she chose.

‘My goodness, you look almost human when you grin, Mr Harker.’ She produced a sweet smile and turned to join in the discussion about the Irish language the earl was having with his eldest daughter.

You little cat!
Giles almost said it out loud.

He had succeeded—far more brutally than he had intended—in ensuring he was not going to be fending off a hand on his thigh under the dinner table, or finding an unwelcome guest in his bedchamber, but at the expense of making an enemy of a close friend of the family. Now he had to maintain an appearance of civility so the Yorkes did not notice anything amiss. He could do without this—the tasks he had accepted to help Soane were going to be as nothing compared with the challenge of keeping his hands from Lady Isobel’s slender throat if she continued to be quite so provocative.

She was idly sliding her fingers up and down the stem of her wine glass as she talked. The provocation was not simply to his temper, he feared.

Giles took a reviving sip of wine and listened to young Lizzie lecturing John Soane on the embellishments she considered would make the castle folly on the distant hill even more romantic than it already was.

That was one possibility, of course: wall up Lady Isobel in the tower and leave her for some knight in shining armour to rescue. Which was a very amusing thought, if it were not for the fact that he had a sneaking suspicion that through sheer perversity she would never wait around for some man to come to her aid. She would fashion the furniture into a ladder, climb out of the window and then come after him with a battleaxe.

She laughed and he turned to look at her, the wine glass halfway to his lips. That laugh seemed to belong to another woman altogether: a carefree, charming, innocent creature. As if feeling his regard, she turned and caught his eye and for a long moment their glances interlocked. Giles saw her lips part, her eyes darken as though something of significance had been exchanged.

A stab of arousal made him shift in his chair and the moment was lost. Lady Isobel turned away, her expression more puzzled than annoyed, as though she did not understand what had just happened.

Giles drank his wine. He knew exactly what had occurred; two virtual strangers had discovered that they were physically attracted to each other, even if one of them might not realise it and both of them would go to any lengths to deny it.

* * *

There were people in her bedroom. Voices, too low to make out, a tug on the covers as someone bumped into the foot of the bed. Isobel opened her eyes to dim daylight and a view of lace-trimmed pillow. With every muscle tensed, she rolled over and sat up, ready to scream, her heart contracting with alarm.

There was no sign of the party of rowdy bucks who had haunted her dreams. Instead, three pairs of wide eyes observed her from the foot of the bed, one pair so low that they seemed on a level with the covers.
Children
.
Isobel let out a long breath and found a smile, restraining the impulse to scoot down the bed and gather up the barely visible smallest child and inhale the warm powdered scent of sleepy infant. ‘Good morning. Would one of you be kind enough to draw the curtains?’

‘Good morning, Cousin Isobel,’ Lizzie said. ‘I knew it would be all right to wake you up. Mama said you should sleep in and eat your breakfast in your room, but I thought you would like to have it with us in the nursery.’

The contrast between her own dreams of drunken, frightening bucks invading her bedroom, of the presence of Giles Harker somewhere in the mists of the nightmare, and the wide, innocent gaze of the children made her feel as though she was still not properly awake.

‘That would be delightful. Thank you for the invitation.’ Isobel rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and regarded the other two children as they came round the side of the bed. ‘You must be Caroline and Charles. I am very pleased to meet you.’

Charles, who was four, if she remembered correctly, regarded her solemnly over the top of his fist. His thumb was firmly in his mouth. He shuffled shyly round the bed to observe her more closely. Isobel put out one hand and touched the rosy cheek and he chuckled. She fisted her hands in the bed sheets. He was so sweet and she wanted...

Caroline beamed and dragged the wrapper off the end of the bed. ‘You’ll need to put this on because the passageways are draughty. But there is a fire in the nursery.’

The children waited while she slid out of bed, put on the robe, ran a brush through her hair and retied it into a tail with the ribbon before donning her slippers. ‘I’m ready now.’

‘We can go this way, then we will not disturb Mama.’ Lady Caroline led her out of the door on the far side of the bedchamber, through the small dressing room and out of another door on to what seemed to be the back stairs. ‘We just go through there and up the stairs to the attic—’