Regency Rumours (16 page)

He guarded his feelings well at the best of times, except for his betraying eyes. But now, with his face so damaged and his eyes bruised, she was not at all sure she could read him at all. Except to know he was unhappy.
Good
, she thought, and went back to chasing a corner of pickled plum tart around her plate with no appetite at all.

In the general stir at the end of the meal Isobel found herself beside James Albright. ‘I hope you have a safe journey home, Lord James.’

‘Rest assured I will make your innocence known to Penelope and all my family,’ he said. ‘And we will ensure the facts are spread far and wide. Unless, of course…’ he lowered his voice ‘…you would prefer to stay ruined?’

‘Whatever can you mean, sir?’

‘It might widen your choice of marriage partner, perhaps,’ he suggested with a slight smile.

‘Are you suggesting what I think you are?’ Isobel
demanded.
Marriage?
‘There is no question of a match between myself and…and anyone.’

‘No? Of course
anyone
would say that, too, and, if…er,
anyone’s
defences were not down, he would never have got himself into a position where he betrayed his feelings to me quite so blatantly, as I am sure you realise.’

‘As we are speaking very frankly, Lord James,’ Isobel hissed, furious, ‘the feelings betrayed to me were not those which lead to a respectable marriage—quite the opposite, in fact!’

‘Oh, dear. Hard to believe that anyone could make such a mull of it, let alone my friend. He is usually more adroit,’ Lord James observed. Isobel glanced round and found they were alone in the room. His sharp hearing must have told him that also, for he raised his voice above the murmur he had been employing. ‘If I am mistaken in your sentiments, Lady Isobel, then pray forgive me. But if I am not, then you are going to have to fight for what you want. Not only fight your parents and society, but fight Harker as well.’

‘I have no intention of throwing myself at a man who only wants me for one thing,’ she said. ‘And I do not want him at all, so the situation does not arise.’

‘You know him better than that. Try to forgive him
for his clumsiness this morning. If his feelings were not engaged he would have been…smoother.’

‘How did you—?’ She took a deep breath. ‘My feelings are not engaged.’

‘I found him in some agitation of mind. He told me he had erred and distressed you—I could fill in the rest. He let himself dream and hope and then woke up to the problems which are all for you, not for him. Giles Harker has a gallantry that will not allow him to harm you, so, if you want him, then you must take matters into your own hands.’

‘Lord James—are you insinuating that I should seduce him?’ Isobel felt quite dizzy. She could not be having this conversation with a man who was a virtual stranger to her.

The unfocused eyes turned in her direction. ‘Just a suggestion, Lady Isobel. It all depends what you want, of course. Forgive me for putting you to the blush, but Giles Harker is an old and dear friend and I will happily scandalise an earl’s daughter or two if it leads to his happiness. I wish you good day, ma’am.’

With Lord James’s departure the men went back to their meeting and Lady Hardwicke swept up Catherine, Anne, Lizzie and Isobel, ordered them into bonnets, muffs and warm pelisses and set out for the vicarage to call on Mrs Bastable, the vicar’s wife.

‘I have sadly neglected my parish duties these past few days and it is Sunday tomorrow,’ she remarked as she led her party down the steps. ‘What with Lizzie’s drama and all our preparations for the move and the pleasure of having Isobel with us and now Mr Harker’s accident, the Clothing Fund has been sadly neglected.’

‘Was it an accident, Mama?’ Lizzie demanded. ‘Mr Harker, I mean. You said it was footpads who broke his nose and cut his face like that.’

‘It was accidental in that he fell amongst criminals who tried to hurt him,’ her mother said repressively.

‘And Lord James was the Good Samaritan who rescued him?’

‘I rather think he was rescuing himself quite effectively,’ Isobel said, then closed her lips tight when Anne shot her a quizzical glance.

‘And the bad men?’

‘Have been taken up and will stand their trial, as all such wicked persons should,’ her mother pronounced.

‘The wages of sin is death,’ Caroline quoted with gruesome relish.

‘Really, Caro!’

‘It is from the Bible, it was mentioned in last Sunday’s sermon,’ Caroline protested. ‘Mr Harker is very brave, isn’t he, Cousin Isobel?’

‘Very, I am certain.’

‘And he was very handsome. Miss Henderson said he’s as handsome as sin. But will he still be so handsome when they take the bandages off?’

Lady Hardwicke’s expression did not bode well for the governess, but she answered in a matter-of-fact tone, ‘He will have scars and his nose will not be straight. But those things do not make a man handsome: his morals and character and intelligence are what matter.’

She pursued the improving lecture as they made their way across the churchyard and through the wicket gate into the vicarage garden. Isobel brought up the rear, her mind still whirling from that extraordinary conversation with James Albright.

Had he really meant that Giles was in love with her? Worse, he seemed to believe she shared those emotions.

The vicar’s wife was grateful for help with the results of a recent clothing collection and, after serving tea, set her visitors to work that was familiar to Isobel from her own mother’s charitable endeavours.

Isobel helped sort clothing into a pile that would be reusable by the parish poor after mending and laundering. The remaining heaps would be organised by the type of fabric so that when they had been washed the parish sewing circle could make up patchwork
covers, rag-rugs or even suits for small boys from a man’s worn-out coat.

It was worthy work and the kind of thing that she would be organising if she married a wealthy landowner, as she should. Lord James had spoken of marriage. An architect’s wife would not have these responsibilities, although Giles had said he had a small country estate, so perhaps there were tenants. What would the duties of an architect’s wife be? Not organising the parish charities, or giving great dinner parties or balls, that was certain. Nor the supervision of the staff of a house the size of Wimpole Hall, either. Not any of the things she had been raised to do, in fact.

This was madness. She would not marry save for love—on both sides—and Giles Harker wanted one thing, and one thing only.

‘Cousin Isobel, you are daydreaming again,’ Anne teased. Isobel saw she was waiting for her to take the corners of a sheet that needed folding. ‘What on earth were you thinking of? It certainly made you smile.’

‘Of freedom,’ Isobel said and took the sheet. They tugged, snapping it taut between them, then came together to fold it, their movements as orderly as a formal minuet.

‘Goodness, are you one of those blue-stockings?’ Anne put the sheet in the basket and shook out a
much-worn petticoat. ‘I do not think this is any use for anything, except perhaps handkerchiefs.’

‘Me, a blue-stocking? Oh, no. And I was not thinking of freedom from men so much as from expectations.’ Anne looked blank. ‘Oh, do not take any notice of me, I am wool-gathering.’

‘I think everyone is behaving most strangely,’ Anne said and tossed the petticoat onto the rag pile. ‘There is the fight Mr Harker was involved in—and Lord James. I do not believe for a moment that it was simply bad luck with footpads, do you? Then you are daydreaming all the time and Mama is lecturing and there are peculiar conversations that seem to be about one thing, but I don’t think are, not really. Like you and Mr Harker talking about the census and honesty.’

‘Well, you know why I am here,’ Isobel said. ‘I have a lot on my mind, so I suppose that makes me seem absent-minded. And men are always getting into fights. It was probably over a game of cards or something. And I expect Cousin Elizabeth has a great deal to worry about with your father’s new post, so that makes her a little short. And as for peculiar conversations, I cannot imagine what you mean.’

Anne looked unconvinced, but went back to sorting shirts while the countess tried to persuade the vicar’s wife that she could take over judging the tenants’
gardens for a prize, as Lady Hardwicke did every year.

Isobel picked up some scissors and began to unpick the seams of a bodice, letting Mrs Bastable’s protestations that she knew nothing about vegetable marrows and even less about roses wash over her head.

Was she falling in love with Giles? Had Lord James, with whatever refined intuition his blindness had developed in him, sensed it when she could only deny it? Had Lord James really been serious when he had told her to take the initiative? Now Giles was no longer in shock, half-drugged and in so much pain, he would not take the first step—whatever his feelings, his defences were up.

I don’t want to fall in love with him! That
can’t
be what I feel
. She had not felt like this over Lucas, so torn, so frightened and yet so excited. But then, Lucas had been completely eligible, there had been no obstacles, no secrets. No reasons to fight against it. Or was she simply in lust with the man and finding excuses for her desires?

‘Cousin Elizabeth, I would like to speak to Mr Harker alone after dinner, if you will permit. He will not let me thank him properly for what he did—perhaps if I can corner him somewhere I can say what I need to.’

The countess put down her hairbrush and regarded Isobel with a frown. ‘That will be all, Merrill.’ Her dresser bobbed a curtsy and went out, leaving the two women alone in the countess’s bedchamber.

‘He has certainly put you in his debt and a lady should thank a gentleman for such an action, I agree,’ Lady Hardwicke said, a crease between her brows. ‘But a tête-à-tête is a trifle irregular.’

‘I have been alone with him before,’ Isobel pointed out.

But the countess was obviously uneasy. Perhaps she suspected, just as Lord James did, that there was something more between Isobel and Giles. ‘A walk or a ride in the open are one thing, but in the house…Oh, dear. Perhaps one of the downstairs reception rooms would not be so bad—if you can persuade him to stand there long enough to be thanked! But for a man determined on escape there is a way out of all of them into another room. Unless you speak to him in the antechapel—there is no way out of that except into the gallery of the chapel and no one could object to a short conversation in such a setting.’

‘Thank you, Cousin Elizabeth. Now all I have to do is lure him in there.’

Isobel left the countess shaking her head, but she did not forbid the meeting.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

G
ILES SCHOOLED HIS
face into an expressionless mask when Isobel, assisting the countess at the after-dinner tea tray, brought him a cup. He wanted to look at her, simply luxuriate in watching her, not have to guard every word in case he made things even worse.

He braced himself for murmured reproaches, or even hostility. ‘Have you formed an opinion on the crack in the antechapel wall?’ she asked without preamble. ‘It sounds quite worrying, but perhaps the earl is refining too much upon it.’

‘What crack?’ It was the last thing he expected to hear from her lips. Giles put the cup down on a side table and the tea slopped into the saucer.

‘Oh, he was saying something about it before dinner. I understood that he had asked you to look at it.’ Isobel sat down beside him in a distracting flurry of pale pink gauze and a waft of some delicate scent. Now he did not want to look at all: he wanted to hold her, touch her. Did she not realise what she was doing
to him? Was she trying to pretend nothing had happened in the Long Gallery?

‘I was not aware of it,’ he said, forcing his brain to deal with structural problems.

‘Perhaps he did mention it and the blow to your head has made you forget it,’ she suggested.

That was a disturbing thought. His memory was excellent, but then, he had believed his self-control to be so also and that episode with Isobel had proved him very wrong on that score.

‘Or perhaps he meant to ask you, then decided it was not right while you feel so unwell,’ she said with an air of bright helpfulness that made him feel like an invalid being patronised.

‘I will go and look at it now.’ Giles got to his feet and went into the hall. He took a branch of candles from the side table and opened the door into the chamber that led to the family gallery overlooking the chapel.

Once the room had been the State Bedchamber, but the great bed had long been dismantled and was somewhere up in the attics. Giles touched flame to the candles in the room and began to prowl round, trying to find cracks in the plaster, not think about Isobel’s soft mouth, which seemed to be all he could focus on.

There in the left-hand corner was, indeed, a jagged
crack. It would bear closer investigation in daylight, he decided, poking it with one finger and watching the plaster flake.

‘Is it serious?’

‘Isobel, you should not be in here.’ In response she closed the door behind her, turned the key in the lock and slipped it into her bodice. ‘What the devil are you doing?’ Behind him was the double door into the gallery pew. Short of jumping fifteen feet to the chapel’s marble floor, he was trapped, as she no doubt knew full well.

‘I need to talk to you.’ She was very pale in the candlelight and the composure she had shown over the tea cups had quite vanished. Giles saw with a pang that her hands were trembling a little. She followed his gaze and clasped them together tightly. ‘About this morning.’

‘I am sorry—I allowed my desires to run away with me. I had no right to kiss you, to hold you like that. It will not happen again.’

‘That is a pity,’ she said steadily. ‘I would very much like you to do it again. I think I am in love with you, Giles. I am very sorry if it embarrasses you, but I cannot lie to you, I find. Not even to salve my pride.’

He stared at her, every bone in his body aching to go to her, to hold her, every instinct shouting at him to tell her…What? That he loved her? Damn James for
even suggesting it. Of course he was not in love—he simply could not afford the luxury of hopeless emotion. But he did not want to hurt Isobel. ‘I am very sorry, too,’ he said, staying where he was. ‘I never wanted to wound you.’