Regency Rumours (2 page)

‘My lady.’ They bowed as one. Isobel was fairly certain that she had shut her mouth again by the time they had straightened up. Mr Soane was in his late forties, dark, long-faced and long-chinned, his looks
distinctive rather than handsome. But Mr Harker was, without doubt, the most beautiful man she had ever set eyes upon.

Not that she had any time for handsome bucks these days, but even a woman who had vowed to spurn the male sex for ever would have had her resolution shaken by the appearance of this man. He was, quite simply, perfection, unless one would accept only blond hair as signifying true male beauty. His frame was tall, muscular and elegantly proportioned. His rich golden-brown hair was thick with a slight wave, a trifle overlong. His features were chiselled and classical and his eyes were green—somewhere, Isobel thought with a wild plunge into the poetic, between shadowed sea and a forest glade.

It was preposterous for any man to look like that, she decided while the three of them exchanged murmured greetings. It was superfluous to be quite so handsome in every feature. There must be
something
wrong with him. Perhaps he was unintelligent—but then, the earl would not employ him and Mr Soane, who had a considerable reputation to maintain and who had worked for the earl at Hammels Park before he succeeded to the title, would not associate with him. Perhaps he was socially inept, or effeminate or had a high squeaky voice or bad teeth or a wet handshake…

‘Lady Isobel,’ he said, in a voice that made her think of honey and with a smile that revealed perfect teeth. He took her hand in a brief, firm handshake.

Perfection there as well. Isobel swallowed hard, shocked by the sudden pulse of attraction she felt when she looked at him. A purely physical reflex, of course—she was a woman and not made of stone. He would be a bore, that was it. He would talk for hours at meals about breeding spaniels or the importance of drainage or the lesser-known features of the night sky or toadstools.

But the perfect smile had not reached his eyes and the flexible, deep voice had held no warmth. Was he shy, perhaps?

The two architects drew back as the countess gave instructions to the butler and the earl asked for details of her journey. Isobel realised she could study Mr Harker’s profile in a long mirror hanging on the wall as they chatted. What on earth must it be like to be so good looking? It was not a problem that she had, for while she knew herself to be tolerably attractive—
elegant
and
charming
were the usual words employed to describe her—she was no great beauty. She studied him critically, wondering where his faults and weaknesses were hidden.

Then she saw that the remarkable green eyes were fixed and followed the direction of his gaze, straight
to her own reflection in the glazing of a picture. She had been staring at Mr Harker in the most forward manner and he had been observing her do it.

Slowly she made the slight turn that allowed her to face him. Their gazes locked again as she felt a wave of complex emotion sweep through her. Physical attraction, certainly, but curiosity and a strange sense of recognition also. His eyes, so hypnotically deep and green, held an awareness, a question and, mysteriously, a darkness that tugged at her heart. Loneliness? Sadness? The thought flickered through her mind in a fraction of a second before they both blinked and she dismissed the fancy and was back with the social faux pas of having been caught blatantly staring at a man. A man who had been staring at her.

The polished boards did not, of course, open up and swallow her. Isobel fought the blush that was rising to her cheeks with every ounce of willpower at her disposal and attempted a faint smile. They were both adult enough to pass this off with tolerable composure. She expected to see in return either masculine smugness coupled with flirtation or a rueful acknowledgement that they had both been caught out staring. What she did
not
expect was to see those complex and haunting emotions she had observed a moment earlier turn to unmistakable froideur.

The expression on Mr Harker’s face was not simply
haughty, it was cold and dismissive. There was the faintest trace of a sneer about that well-shaped mouth. She was no doubt intended to feel like a silly little chit making cow’s eyes at a handsome man.

Well, she was no such thing. Isobel lifted her chin and returned his look with one of frigid disdain.
Insufferable arrogance!
She had hardly been in the house five minutes, they had exchanged a handful of words and already he had taken a dislike to her. She did not know him from Adam—who was he to look at her in that way? Did he think that good looks gave him godlike superiority and that she was beneath him? He no doubt produced an eyeglass and studied women who interested him without the slightest hesitation.

‘Shall we go up?’

‘Of course, ma’am…Cousin Elizabeth,’ Isobel said with the warmest smile she could conjure up. ‘Gentlemen.’ She nodded to the earl and Mr Soane who were in conversation, ignored Mr Harker, and followed her hostess through into the inner hall and up the wide staircase.

That snub on top of everything else felt painfully unjust. What was wrong with her that men should treat her so? Isobel stumbled on the first step and took herself to task.
She
had done nothing to deserve it—
they were simply unable to accept that a lady might not consider them utterly perfect in every way.

There was a faint odour of paint and fresh plaster in the air and she glanced around her as they climbed. ‘Mr Soane has done a great deal of work for us, including changes to this staircase,’ the countess remarked as they reached the first-floor landing. She did not appear to notice that her guest was distracted, or perhaps she thought her merely tired from the journey. ‘There was a window on the half landing on to an inner court and that is now filled in and occupied with my husband’s plunge bath, so Mr Soane created that wonderful skylight.’ She gestured upwards past pillared balconies to a view of grey scudding clouds. They passed through double doors into a lobby and left again into a room with a handsome Venetian window giving a panoramic view across the park.

‘This is your sitting room. The view is very fine when the sun shines—right down the great southern avenue.’ Lady Hardwicke turned, regarding the room with a smile that was almost rueful. ‘This was one end of a long gallery running from back to front until Mr Soane put the Yellow Drawing Room into what was a courtyard and then, of course, the upstairs had to be remodelled. We seem to have lived with the builders for years.’

She sighed and looked around her. ‘We had just
got Hammels Park as we wanted it and then Philly’s uncle died and he inherited the title and we had to start all over again here ten years ago.’

‘But it is delightful.’ Lured by sounds from next door, Isobel looked in and found that her pretty bedchamber had an identical prospect southwards.

Dorothy bobbed a curtsy as they entered and scurried through a door on the far side to carry on unpacking. Isobel saw her evening slippers already set by the fire to warm and her nightgown laid out at the foot of the bed.

‘Catherine, Anne and Philip will have been sorry not to be here to greet you.’ The countess moved about the room, shifting the little vase of evergreens on the mantelpiece so it reflected better in the overmantel mirror and checking the titles of the books laid out beside the bed. ‘We did not expect you to make such good time in this weather so they went out after luncheon to call on their old governess in Royston.’

‘Cousin Elizabeth.’ On an impulse Isobel shut the connecting door to the dressing room and went to catch the older woman’s hand so she could look into her face. ‘I know you wrote that you believed my account of the affair—but was that simply out of your friendship for Mama? You must tell me honestly and not try to be kind. Mama insisted that you would never expose your daughters to a young woman who
had participated in a veritable orgy, but I cannot help but wonder if you perhaps think that there was no smoke without some flicker of fire?

‘Do you believe that I am completely innocent of this scandal? I feel so awkward, thinking you might have reservations about my contact with the girls.’ She faltered to a halt, fearful that she had been gabbling. Guilt for sins past and hidden, no doubt. But this scandal was here and now and the countess, however kind, had a reputation for strict moral principles. It was said she did not even allow a beer house in the estate village.

‘Of course I believe you would never do anything immoral, Isobel.’ Her conscience gave an inward wince as the countess drew her to the chairs set either side of the fire. ‘But your mother was so discreet I have no idea exactly what transpired. Perhaps it is as well if I know the details, the better to be prepared for any gossip.’

Isobel stared into the fire. ‘When Lucas died I was twenty. I stayed in the country for almost a year with my old school friend Jane, who married Lucas’s half-brother. You will recall that he drowned in the same accident. Jane was pregnant, and their home was so remote: it helped both of us to be together.

‘I wanted to remain there, but Mama felt strongly that I should rejoin society last year because I had
missed two Seasons. I hated it—I was older than the other girls, none of the men interested me in the slightest and I suppose I allowed it to show. I got a reputation for being cold and aloof and for snubbing gentlemen, but frankly, I did not care. I did not want to marry any of them, you see.

‘Mama thought I should try again this year and, to ease me in, as she put it, I went to the Harringtons’ house party at Long Ditton in January. I knew I was not popular. What I did not realise was that what might have been acceptable in a beauty with a vast fortune was merely regarded as insulting and irritating in a tolerable-looking, adequately dowered, second daughter of an earl.’

‘Oh, dear,’ Lady Hardwicke murmured.

‘Quite,’ Isobel said bitterly. ‘It seems that instead of being discouraged by my snubs and lack of interest, some of the gentlemen took them as an insult and a challenge and resolved to teach me a lesson. I was sitting up reading in my nightgown late one night when the door opened and three of them pushed in. They had all been drinking, they had brought wine with them and they were bent, so they said, on “warming me up” and showing me what I had been missing.’

A log collapsed in a shower of sparks, just as one had in the moment before the door had burst open that night. ‘I should have screamed, of course. Afterwards
the fact that I did not seemed to convince everyone that I had invited the men there. Foolishly I tried to reason with them, send them away quietly before anyone discovered them. They all demanded a kiss, but I could see it might go further.

‘I pushed Lord Halton and he collapsed backwards into a screen which smashed with the most terrific noise. When half-a-dozen people erupted into my room Halton was swigging wine from the bottle where he had fallen, Mr Wrenne was sprawled in my chair egging on Lord Andrew White—and he had me against the bedpost and was kissing me, despite my struggles.

‘One of the first through the door was Lady Penelope Albright, White’s fiancée. No one believed me when I said I had done nothing to encourage the gentlemen, let alone invite them to my room. Lady Penelope had hysterics, broke off the engagement on the spot and has gone into such a decline that her parents say she will miss the entire Season. Lady Harrington packed me off home at dawn the next day.’

‘Oh, my dear! I could box Maria Harrington’s ears, the silly peahen. Had she no idea what the mood of the party was? I suppose not, she always had more hair than wit.’ Lady Hardwicke got to her feet and paced angrily to the window. ‘And what now? Do
your parents think this will have died down by mid-April when we go to Ireland and you return home?’

‘They hope so. And I cannot run away for ever. I suppose I must face them all some day.’ Isobel put a bright, determined smile on her face. The thought of going into society again was daunting. But she could not live as a recluse in Herefordshire, she had come to accept that. She had parents and a brother and sister who loved her and who had been patient with her seemingly inexplicable desire to stay away for far too long.

She might wish to be removed from the Marriage Mart, but not under these humiliating circumstances. And London, which she enjoyed for the theatres and galleries, the libraries, the shops, would become a social minefield of embarrassment and rejections.

‘That is very brave,’ the countess said. ‘I could call out all those wretched young bucks myself—such a pity your brother is too young to knock their heads together.’

‘I would certainly not want Frederick duelling at sixteen! It is not as though I feel any pressing desire to wed. If I had found a man who was the equal of Lucas and this had caused a rift with him, then I would have something to grieve over, but as it is…’
As it is I am not faced with the awful dilemma of how much of my past life to reveal to a potential husband
.

CHAPTER TWO

I
SOBEL STARED INTO
the fire and finally said the things she had been bottling up inside. She had tried to explain at home, but it seemed her mother would never understand how she felt. ‘I suppose I should be fired up with righteous indignation over the injustice of it all. I was so hurt and angry, but now I feel no spirit for the fight any more. What does it matter if society spurns me? I have not felt any burning desire to be part of it for four years.’

She bit her lip. ‘The men believe I am putting on airs and think myself above them, or some such foolishness. But the truth is, even if I did wish to marry, they all fail to match up to my memories of Lucas. I still remember his kindness and his intelligence and his laugh. People say that memory fades, but I can see his face and hear his voice.’

‘But you are no longer mourning him, only regretting,’ the countess suggested. ‘You have accepted he is gone.’

‘Oh, yes. I know it, and I have accepted it. There
was this great hole full of loss and pain and now it is simply an empty ache.’ And the constant nagging doubt—had she done the right thing in those months after Lucas’s death? The decisions had seemed so simple and yet so very, very hard.