Louise Allen

by Rumors

  ‘Of course, you may go and enjoy this lovely weather, just as long as you do not overtire yourself.’ She looked out of the window and nodded, as though she could understand Isobel’s desire to be outside. ‘Philip would join you, but his father has sent him to his studies—his tutor’s report on his Latin was very unsatisfactory, poor boy. And Anne has fittings with the dressmaker all morning—I declare she has not a single thing fit to wear for her come-out.’

  ‘Never mind. I do not mind exploring by myself,’ Isobel said. ‘It is such a sunny day and who knows how long the weather will hold at this time of year.’

  ‘Do you want me to send one of the footmen to go with you?’

  ‘Goodness, no, thank you. I will probably dawdle about looking at the view and drive the poor man to distraction.’

  The countess smiled. ‘As you wish. The park is quite safe—other than the lake! Mr Harker and my husband will be in a meeting this morning.’ She delivered this apparent non sequitur with a vague smile. ‘And now I fear I must go and have a long interview with the housekeeper about the state of the servants’ bed linen. Do not tire yourself, Isobel.’

  *

  Isobel came down the front steps an hour later, then stopped to pull on her gloves and decide which way to go.

  Over to her left she could glimpse the church with the stables in front of it. Time enough for viewing the family monuments on Sunday. A middle-aged groom with a face like well-tanned leather came out from the yard and touched his finger to his hat brim.

  ‘Roberts, my lady,’ he introduced himself. ‘May I be of any assistance?’

  ‘I was trying to decide which way to walk, Roberts.’ Isobel surveyed the long avenue stretching south. It would make a marvellous gallop, but would not be very scenic for a walk. The park to the north, towards the lake, she did not feel she could face, not quite yet. To the east the ground was relatively flat and wooded, but to the west of the house it rose in a promising manner. ‘That way, I think. Is there a good view from up there?’

  ‘Excellent, my lady. There’s very fine prospects indeed. I’d go round the house that way if I was you.’ He pointed. ‘Don’t be afeared of the cattle, they’re shy beasts.’

  Isobel nodded her thanks and made for the avenue of trees that ran uphill due west from the house. At the first rise she paused and looked back over the house and the formal gardens.

  Why, she wondered, had Cousin Elizabeth made a point of mentioning where Giles Harker would be that morning? Surely she did not suspect that anything had transpired between them beyond his gallant rescue?

  And what had happened? Gi…Mr Harker seemed to accept that she was not some airheaded flirt. She was, she supposed, prepared to believe that he suffered from an irritating persecution by women intent on some sort of relationship with a man of uncannily good looks. But that kiss in the shrubbery, the look in his eyes as they stood at the door of his room, those moments made her uneasily aware that she could not trust him and nor could she trust herself. He was a virile, attractive male and her body seemed to want to pay no attention whatsoever to her common sense.

  There was something else, too, she pondered as she turned and strode on up the hill, her sturdy boots giving her confidence over the tussocky grass. There was another man behind both the social facade and the mocking rake, she was sure. He had a secret perhaps, a source of discomfort, if not pain.

  Isobel shook her head and looked around as she reached the top of the avenue and the fringe of woodland. The less she thought about Giles Harker the better and she had no right to probe another’s privacy. She knew what it was to hold a secret tight and to fear its discovery.

  To her right was an avenue along the crest, leading to the lake and, beyond it, she could see the tower of the folly. To her left the view opened out beyond the park, south into Hertfordshire across the Cambridge road. A stone wall showed through a small copse. She began to walk towards it, then saw that it was the building she had noticed from the chaise when she had first arrived. As she came closer to the grove of trees it revealed itself as a miniature house with a projecting central section and a window on either side.

  It was set perfectly to command the view, she realised, but as she got closer she saw it was crumbling into decay, although not quite into ruin. Slates had slipped, windows were broken, nettles and brambles threatened the small service buildings tucked in beside it.

  Isobel walked round to the front and studied the structure. There was a pillared portico held up by wooden props, a broken-down fence and sagging shutters at the windows. The ground around it was trampled and muddy and mired with droppings and the prints of cloven hooves.

  And through the mud there were the clear prints of a horse’s hooves leading to where a rope dangled from a shutter hinge: a makeshift hitching post.

  Giles Harker’s horse? Why would he come to such a sad little building? Perhaps he was as intrigued by it as she was, for it had a lingering romance about it, a glamour, as though it was a beautiful, elegant woman fallen on hard times, perhaps because of age and indiscretion, but still retaining glimpses of the charms of her youth.

  But he was not here now, so it was quite safe to explore. Isobel lifted her skirts and found her way from tussock to tussock through the mud until she reached the steps. Perhaps it was locked. But, no, the door creaked open on to a lobby. The marks of booted feet showed in the dust on the floor. Large masculine footprints. Giles.

  With the delicious sensation of illicit exploration and a frisson of apprehension that she was about to discover Bluebeard’s chamber, Isobel opened the door to her right and found the somewhat sordid wreckage of a small kitchen. The middle door opened on to a loggia with a view of the wood behind the building and the door to the left revealed a staircase. The footprints led upwards and she followed, her steps echoing on the stone treads. The door at the top was closed, but when she turned the handle it opened with a creak eerie enough to satisfy the most romantic of imaginings.

  Half amused at her own fears, Isobel peeped round the door to find a large chamber lit patchily by whatever sunshine found its way through the cracked and half-open shutters.

  It was empty except for a wooden chair and a table with a pile of papers and an ink stand. No mysterious chests, no murdered brides. Really, from the point of view of Gothic horrors it was a sad disappointment. Isobel cast the papers a curious glance, told herself off for wanting to pry and opened the door on the far wall.

  ‘Oh!’ The room was tiny and painted with frescoes that still adhered to the cobwebbed walls. A day-bed, its silken draperies in tatters, stood against the wall. ‘A love nest.’ She had never seen such a thing, but this intimate little chamber must surely be one. Isobel went in, let the door close behind her with a click and began to investigate the frescoes. ‘Oh, my goodness.’ Yes, the purpose of this room was most certainly clear from these faded images. She should leave at once, they were making her feel positively warm and flustered, but they were so pretty, so intriguing despite their indecent subject matter…

  The unmistakable creak of the door in the next room jerked Isobel out of a bemused contemplation of two satyrs and a nymph engaged in quite outrageous behaviour in a woodland glade. She had heard nothing—no sound of hooves approaching the building, no footsteps on the stairs. The wind perhaps…but there had been no wind as she walked up the hill. The consciousness that she was not alone lifted the hairs on the nape of her neck.

  Chapter Seven

  ‘I know you are in there, Isobel.’ Giles Harker’s sardonically amused voice made her gasp with relief, even as she despised herself for her nerves and him for his impudence.

  ‘How did you know?’ she demanded as she flung the door wide.

  He was standing hatless in the middle of the room in buckskins and breeches, his whip and gloves in one hand, looking for all the world like an artist’s model for the picture of the perfect English country gentleman. He extended one hand and pointed at the trail of small footprints that led across the r
oom to the doorway where she stood.

  Isobel experienced a momentary flicker of relief that she had resisted the temptation to investigate what was on the table. ‘Good morning, Mr Harker. I came up here for the view, but I will not disturb you.’

  ‘I thought we were on first-name terms, Isobel. And I am happy to be disturbed.’ Was there the slightest emphasis on disturbed? She eyed him warily. ‘It is an interesting building, even in this sorry state. Whether I can save it, or even if I should, I do not yet know.’

  So this was what he was about, the rescue of this poor wreck. ‘It is charming. It is sad to see it like this.’

  ‘It was built as a prospect house and somehow was never used very much for forty years. Soane had suggestions for it some time ago, Humphrey Repton countered with even more ambitious ones. His lordship points out that it cost fifteen-hundred pounds to build, so hopes that I, with no previous experience of the place, will tell him what can be done that will not cost a further fifteen-hundred pounds.’ He smiled suddenly and she caught her breath. ‘Now what is it that puts that quizzical expression on your face?’

  ‘It is the first time I have heard you sound like an architect.’

  ‘You thought me a mere dilettante?’ The handsome face froze into pretended offence and Isobel felt the wariness that held her poised for flight ebb away as she laughed at his play-acting. Surely he was safe to be with? After all, he had let her sleep untouched when she was at her most vulnerable yesterday and the moment when they had stood so close and she had thought he was about to kiss her had been as much her own fault as his. But it had troubled her sleep more than a little, that moment of intimacy, the sensual expertise she knew lay behind the facade of control.

  ‘I knew Mr Soane would not associate with you, nor the earl employ you, if that was so. But you are the perfect pattern of the society gentleman for all that. You should not object if that is all you are taken for.’

  ‘Appearances are deceptive indeed. You should look out for the glint of copper beneath the plating when you think you are buying solid silver,’ he said with an edge to his voice that belied the curve of his lips. He turned to the table before she could think of what to reply. ‘You are that impossibility, it seems—a woman without curiosity.’

  ‘Your papers? Of course I was curious, but curiosity does not have to be gratified if it would be wrong to do so.’

  ‘Even if these are simply sketches and elevations?’

  ‘For all I knew they might be the outpouring of your feelings in verse or love letters from your betrothed or even your personal accounts.’

  ‘I fear I am no poet and there is no letter from a patient betrothed, nor even—do not think I cannot read that wicked twinkle in your eyes, Isobel—billets-doux from females of quite another kind.’

  ‘I have no idea what you are talking about,’ she said repressively. ‘Tell me about this house. Or is it not a house?’

  ‘A prospect house is a decoration for a view point, not for living in. As was fashionable when it was built, this room was designed as a banqueting chamber. It is rather splendid.’ He swept a hand around the space which was perhaps twenty feet square. ‘Repton’s plans would make this open for picnics. He proposed moving the pillars up from the front portico to frame the opening and turning the ground floor into an estate worker’s cottage.’

  ‘Oh, no.’ Isobel looked around her at the wide fireplace and the walls that had once been painted to resemble green marble. ‘I love this as it is. Could it not be repaired?’

  ‘I share your liking. But I fear the initial building was so poorly done that repair or alteration may be a positive money pit for the earl.’

  ‘And there I was imagining it renovated and turned into a little house. I love looking at houses,’ she confessed. ‘I think I must be a natural nest-builder.’ She could imagine herself, an almost-contented spinster, in a little house like this. But she would be alone with a cat, not with the sound of a child’s feet running towards her—

  ‘You found the painted room.’ He strolled past her and into the little chamber she had been examining. Isobel shook off the momentary stab of sadness and followed. She would not be a prude, she would simply ignore the subject matter of the tiny, intricate scenes that covered the mildewed walls. ‘The frescos are in the Etruscan style,’ he explained. ‘I think this room was intended for trysts, don’t you?’

  ‘Or as the ladies’ retiring room,’ Isobel suggested.

  ‘So prosaic! I hoped you would share my vision. Or perhaps you have examined the designs and are shocked.’

  It rankled that he should think her unsophisticated enough to be shocked. ‘Your vision is of a history of illicit liaisons taking place here?’ Isobel queried, avoiding answering his question.

  ‘Do you not think it romantic?’ Giles leaned his shoulder against the mantel shelf and regarded her with one perfect eyebrow lifted.

  ‘Thwarted young lovers might be romantic, possibly, but I imagine you are suggesting adulterous affairs.’ She could easily imagine Giles Harker indulging in such a liaison. She could not believe that he was celibate, nor that he repulsed advances from fast widows or wives with complacent husbands, however much he might protest the need to keep young ladies at a safe distance.

  ‘Not necessarily. How about happily married couples coming here to be alone, away from the servants and the children, to eat a candlelit supper and rediscover the flirtations of their courtship?’

  ‘That is a charming thought indeed. You are a romantic after all, Mr Harker. Or a believer in marital bliss, perhaps.’ She kept her distance, over by the window where the February air crept through the cracks to cool her cheeks.

  ‘Giles. And why after all? An architect needs some romance in his soul, surely?’

  ‘Yesterday your views on the relationships between men and women seemed more practical than romantic.’ Isobel picked at a tendril of ivy that had insinuated itself between the window frame and the wall.

  ‘Merely self-preservation.’ Giles came to look out of the window beside her, pushing the shutter back on its one remaining hinge. ‘How is it that you have avoided the snare of matrimony, Isobel?’

  Surprised and wary, she turned to look at him. ‘You regard matrimony as a snare for women as well as for men? The general view is that it must be our sole aim and ambition.’

  ‘If it is duty and not, at the very least, affection that motivates the match, then I imagine it is a snare. Or a kindly prison, perhaps.’

  A kindly prison. He understood, or could imagine, what it might mean for a woman. The surprise loosened her tongue. ‘I was betrothed, for love, four years ago. He died.’

  ‘And now you wear the willow for him?’ There was no sympathy in the deep voice and his attention seemed to be fixed on a zigzagging crack in the wall. Oddly, that made it easier to confide.

  ‘I mourned Lucas for two years. I find it is possible to keep the memory of love, but I cannot stay in love with someone who is no longer there.’

  ‘So you would wed?’ He reached out and prodded at the crack. A lump of plaster fell out, exposing rough stone beneath.

  ‘If I found someone who could live up to Lucas, and he loved me, then yes, perhaps.’ He would have to love me very much indeed. ‘But I do not expect to be that fortunate twice in my life.’

  ‘I imagine that all your relatives say bracingly that of course you will find someone else if only you apply yourself.’

  ‘Exactly. You are beset with relatives also, by the sound of it.’

  ‘Just my mother and my grandfather.’

  Which of those produced the rueful expression? she wondered. His mother, probably. He had described her as eccentric.

  ‘If this paragon does not materialise, what will you do then?’ Giles asked.

  ‘He does not have to be a paragon. I am not such a ninny as to expect to find one of those. They do not exist. I simply insist that I like him and he is neither a rakehell nor a prig and he does not mind that I have…a pa
st.’

  ‘Paragons of manhood being fantastic beasts like wyverns and unicorns?’ That careless reference to her past seemed to have slipped his notice.

  Isobel chuckled. ‘Exactly. I have decided that if no eligible gentleman makes me an offer I shall be an eccentric spinster or an Anglican nun. I incline towards the former option, for I enjoy my little luxuries.’

  Giles laughed, a crow of laughter. ‘I should think so! You? A nun?’

  ‘I was speaking in jest.’ How attractive he was when he laughed, his handsome head thrown back, emphasising the strong line of his throat, the way his eyes crinkled in amusement. Isobel found herself smiling. Slowly she was beginning to see beyond the perfect looks and the outrageous tongue and catch glimpses of what might be the real man hiding behind them.

  There was that suspicion about secrets again. What would he be hiding? Or was it simply that his faultless face made him more difficult to read than a plainer man might be? ‘I thought about a convent the other day when I was reflecting on just how unsatisfactory the male sex can be.’

  ‘We are?’ He was still amused, but, somehow he was not laughing at her, but sharing her whimsy.

  ‘You must know perfectly well how infuriating men are from a female point of view,’ Isobel said with severity, picking up the trailing skirts of her riding habit to keep them out of the thick dust as she went to examine one of the better-preserved panels more closely. Surely they could not all be so suggestive? It seemed they could. Was it possible that one could do that in a bath without drowning?

  ‘You have all the power and most of the fun in life,’ she said, dragging her attention back from the erotic scene. After a moment, when he did not deny it, she added, ‘Why is the thought of my being a nun so amusing?’

  Giles’s mouth twitched, but he did not answer her, so she said the first thing that came into her head, flustered a little by the glint in his eyes. ‘I am amazed that the countess allows this room to be unlocked. What if the girls came in here?’