Regency Rumours (11 page)

She sent an interested, curious glance at the building, then shook her head. ‘We had better go back or we will be late for luncheon, will we not? Perhaps I can look at it tomorrow.’

Pleasure warred with temptation. They could be together safely, surely? He had self-control and familiarity would soon enough quench the stabs of desire that kept assailing him. It was too long since he had parted with his last mistress, that was all that ailed him. The challenge to make Isobel smile, make her trust him, was too great.

‘I am not too busy to walk with you. Or we could ride if you prefer?’

‘Oh, yes. If only it does not rain. I had better get
down.’ She lifted her leg from the pommel and simply slid, trusting him to catch her. Obviously his dangerous thoughts were not visible on his face. Her waist was slender between his hands. He felt the slide of woollen cloth over silk and cotton, the light boning of her stays, and set her down with care.

It took him a minute to find his voice again, or even think of something to say. ‘What have you done with your bonnet, you hoyden?’ Giles asked halfway down the hill as they walked back towards the lake. Isobel pointed to where the sensible brown-velvet hat hung on a branch beside the path. ‘And what are you going to say to Lady Hardwicke about your hair if she sees you?’

‘Why, the truth, of course.’ Isobel sent him a frowning look. ‘Why should I not? Nothing happened. We ran, my bonnet blew off, my hair came down. It is not as though we are in Hyde Park. Or do you think she will blame you in some way?’

‘No, of course not. She trusts you, of course—she would suspect no impropriety.’ Now why did that make her prim up her lips and blush?

‘Exactly,’ Isobel said, her voice flat. But when they reached the garden gate and Giles turned to walk Felix back to the stables, she caught his sleeve. ‘Thank you for chasing my nerves away at the bridge.’

‘That is what friends do,’ he said. That was it, of
course: friendship. It was novel to be friends with an unmarried woman but that was surely what this ease he felt with Isobel meant.

She smiled at him, a little uncertain. He thought he glimpsed those shadows and ghosts in her eyes still, then she opened the garden gate and walked away between the low box hedges.

A friend
. Isobel was warmed by the thought as she walked downstairs for breakfast the next morning. It had never occurred to her that she might be friends with a man, and certainly Mama would have the vapours if she realised that her daughter was thinking of an architect born on the wrong side of the blanket in those terms.

But it was good to see behind the supercilious mask Giles Harker wore to guard himself. After a few minutes as they walked and talked she had quite forgotten how handsome he was and saw only an intelligent man who was kind enough to sense her fears and help her overcome them. A man who could laugh at himself and trust a stranger with his secrets. She wished she could share hers—he of all men would understand, surely.

He was dangerous, of course, and infuriating and she was not certain she could trust him. Or perhaps it was herself she could not trust.

Giles was at the table when she came in, sitting with the earl and countess, Anne and Philip. The men stood as she entered and she wished everyone a good morning as the footman held her chair for her.

‘Good morning.’ Giles’s long look had a smile lurking in it that said, far more clearly than his conventional greeting, that he was happy to see her.

The morning was fine, although without yesterday’s sunshine. They could ride. Isobel did not pretend to herself that she did not understand why the prospect of something she did almost every day at home should give her such keen pleasure. Perhaps she felt drawn to him because Giles was of her world but not quite in it, someone set a little apart, just as she was by her disgrace. She wanted to like him and to trust him. Could she trust her own judgement?

‘Might I ride today, Cousin Elizabeth?’

‘This morning? Of course. You may take my mare, she will be glad of the exercise. I have been so involved with the endless correspondence that this change in our life seems to be producing that I have sadly neglected her. And it is not as though my daughters enjoy riding, is it, my loves?’

A heartfelt chorus of ‘No, Mama!’ made the countess laugh. ‘One of the grooms will accompany you, Isobel.’

Isobel caught Giles’s eye. ‘I…that is, Mr Harker is
riding out this morning, ma’am, I believe. I thought perhaps…’

She feared the countess would still require a groom as escort, but she nodded approval. ‘I will have Firefly brought round at ten, if that suits Mr Harker?’

‘Thank you, ma’am, it suits me very well. Shall I meet you on the steps at that hour, Lady Isobel?’

‘Thank you,’ she said demurely and was rewarded by a flickering glance of amusement. Was she usually so astringent that this meekness seemed unnatural? She must take care not to think of this as an assignation, for it was nothing of the kind.
Friendship
, she reminded herself. That was what was safe and that, she had to believe, was what Giles appeared to be offering her.

‘Mama, I have been thinking,’ Lady Anne said. ‘With Cousin Isobel and Mr Harker here we might have enough actors to put on a play. We could ask the vicar’s nephews to help if we are short of men. Do say
yes
, it is so long since we did one.’

‘My dear, it is not fair to expect poor Mr Harker to add to his work by learning a part. He and Papa are quite busy enough.’

‘You have a theatre here, Cousin Elizabeth?’ Isobel asked, intrigued.

‘No, but we have improvised by hanging curtains between the pillars in the Gallery.’

‘That was where we had the premiere performance of Mama’s play
The Court of Oberon,’
Lizzie interrupted eagerly. ‘And then it was printed and has been acted upon the London stage! Is that not grand?’

‘It is wonderful,’ Isobel agreed. Many families indulged in amateur dramatic performances, especially during house parties. She caught Giles’s eye and smiled: he looked appalled at the possibility of treading the boards.

‘Perhaps on another visit, Lizzie,’ the countess said. ‘I am writing another play, so perhaps we can act that one when it is finished.’

‘The post, my lord.’

‘And what a stack of it!’ The earl broke off a discussion with his son to view the laden salver his butler was proffering. ‘And I suppose you will say that all the business matters have already been dispatched to my office? Ah well, distribute it, if you please, Benson, and perhaps my pile will appear less forbidding.’

‘Feel free to read your correspondence,’ Lady Hardwicke said to her guests as her own and her daughters’ letters were laid by her plate.

After a few minutes Isobel glanced up from her mother’s recital of a very dull reception she had attended to see Giles working his way through half-a-dozen letters. He slit the seal on the last one and it
seemed to her, as she watched him read, that his entire body tensed. But his face and voice were quite expressionless when he said, ‘Will you excuse me, Lady Hardwicke, ladies? There is something that requires my attention.’

Isobel returned to her own correspondence as he left the room. It was to be hoped that whatever it was did not mean he would have to miss their ride. She told herself it was not that important, that she could take a groom with her, that it was ridiculous to feel so concerned about it, but she found she could not deceive herself: she wanted to be alone with Giles again.

The earl departed to the steward’s office, Philip to his tutor and Cousin Elizabeth and Anne for a consultation with the dressmaker. Isobel followed behind them a little dreamily. Where would they ride this morning? Up to the folly and beyond, perhaps. Or—

‘Lady Isobel.’ Giles stepped out from the Yellow Drawing Room. ‘Will you come to the library?’

It was not a request; more, from his tone and his unsmiling face, an order. ‘I—’ A footman walked across the hallway and Isobel closed her lips on a sharp retort. Whatever the matter was, privacy was desirable. ‘Very well,’ she said coolly and followed him through the intervening chambers into the room that was one of the wonders of Wimpole Hall.

But the towering bookcases built decades ago to
house Lord Harley’s fabled collection were no distraction from the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. Isobel could not imagine what had so affected Giles, but the anger was radiating from him like heat from smouldering coals.

‘What is this autocratic summons for?’ she demanded, attacking first as he turned to face her.

‘I should have trusted my first impressions,’ Giles said. He propped one shoulder against the high library ladder and studied her with the same expression in his eyes as they had held when he had caught her staring at him in the hall. ‘But you really are a very good little actress, are you not? Perhaps you should take part in one of her ladyship’s dramas after all.’

‘No. I am not a good actress,’ Isobel snapped.

‘But you are the slut who broke up Lady Penelope Albright’s betrothal. You do not deny that?’ he asked with dangerous calm.

When she did not answer Giles glanced down at the letter he held in his right hand. ‘Penelope is in a complete nervous collapse because you were found rutting with Andrew White. But I assume you do not care about her feelings?’

Isobel felt the blood ebbing from her cheeks. That foul slander…and Giles believed it. ‘Yes, I care for her distress,’ she said, holding her voice steady with an effort that hurt her throat. ‘And I am very sorry
that she chose such a man to ally herself with. But you must forgive me if I care even more that Lord Andrew mauled and assaulted me, ruined my reputation and that very few people, even those who I thought were my friends, believe me.’

‘Oh, very nicely done! But you see, I have this from my very good friend James Albright, Penelope’s brother—and he does not lie.’

‘But he was not there, was he? He knows only what Penelope saw when she came into my room that night: four people engaged in a drunken romp. Only one of them, myself, was not willing and the other three—the men—were set on giving a stuck-up spinster a good lesson, a retaliation for snubbing their patronising flirtation.

‘That is the truth and if you have not the perception to know it when you hear it, then I am sorry, but there is nothing I can do.’ Isobel turned on her heel. One more minute and she was going to cry and she was
damned
if she would give Giles Harker the satisfaction of knowing he had reduced her to that. A fine friend he had turned out to be!

‘Who would believe such a tale?’ he scoffed as he caught her by the arm and spun her back to face him. ‘No one there did and they were on the spot.’

‘You think it improbable they would be deceived?’
Yes, after all there
was
something she could do, something to shake that smug male complacency.

‘Of course,’ Giles began as Isobel threw herself on his chest, the suddenness of it knocking him off balance back against a bookcase full of leather-bound volumes. ‘What the devil—’

As he tried to push her away she used the momentum of his own movement to swing around in his grip until she was pressed by his weight against the books, then she threw her arms around his neck, pulled his head down and kissed him hard, full on the mouth.

For a moment Giles resisted, then he opened his lips over hers and returned the kiss with a ruthless expertise that was shocking and, despite—or perhaps because of—her anger, deeply arousing. Isobel had been kissed passionately by her betrothed, but that was four years ago and she had loved him. The assault of Giles’s tongue, his teeth, the fierce plundering exploration, fuelled both anger and the long-buried desire that had been stirring with every encounter they had shared. When he lifted his head—more, she thought dizzily, to breathe than for any other reason—Isobel slapped him hard across the cheek.

‘Now, if someone comes in and I scream, what will they think?’ she panted. His face was so close to hers that she could feel his breath, hot on her mouth. ‘What will they have seen? Giles Harker, a rake on
the edge of society, assaulting an innocent young lady who is struggling in his arms. Who will they believe? What if I tear my bodice and run out, calling for help? You would be damned, just as I was.

‘I do not have to justify myself to you. But I was sitting in my room, reading by the fireside in my nightgown, and three men burst in. I thought I could reason with them. I did not want a scandal, so I did not scream—and that was my mistake. And for that I am condemned by self-righteous hypocrites like you, Giles Harker. So now will you please let me go?’

For a long moment he stared down at her, then those gorgeous, sinful lips twisted. ‘Yes, I believe you, Isobel. I should never have doubted you.’

Kiss me again
, a treacherous inner voice said.
Listen to your body. You want him
. ‘You called me a slut. You just kissed me as though I was one.’ She did not dare let go of her bitterness.

‘I believe you now.’ He looked at her, all the anger and heat gone from his face. ‘I am sorry I doubted you. Sorry I called you…No, we won’t repeat that word. But I am not certain I can be sorry for that kiss.’

‘Unfortunately, neither can I,’ Isobel admitted and felt the blood rise in her cheeks. ‘You kiss very…nicely.’ And as a result her body had sung into life in a way it had not done for a long time. ‘No doubt you
have had a great deal of practice. But kindly do not think that is why I…why I did what I did just now. I could think of no other way to prove my point.’

‘Nicely?’ Giles seemed a trifle put out by the description. ‘We will not pursue that, I think. I should not make light of what has happened to you. I was wrong and you have been grievously slandered. What is your family doing about it?’

Isobel shrugged and moved away from him to spin one of the great globes that stood either side of the desk. It was easier to think away from all that intense masculinity. The man addled her brain. She had let herself be almost seduced into friendship and then he believed the worst of her on hearsay evidence. And instead of recoiling from her angry kiss he had returned it. He was not to be trusted. Not one inch.