Louise Allen

by Rumors

  ‘The whole building has been locked up for years. Lady Hardwicke told the children that they were not to disturb me here and I have no doubt that her word is law.’

  ‘I think it must be, although she is a very gentle dictator. So—will you recommend that the place is restored?’

  ‘I do not think so.’ Giles shook his head. ‘It was badly built in the first place and then neglected for too long. But I am working up the costing for the earl so he has a fair comparison to set against Repton’s ambitious schemes.’

  ‘But that would be such a pity—and you like the place, do you not?’

  ‘It is not my money. My job is to give the earl a professional opinion. I am not an amateur, Isobel. I am a professional, called in like the doctor or the lawyer to deliver the hard truths.’

  ‘But surely you are different? You are, after all, a gentleman—’

  Giles turned on his heel and faced her, his expression mocking. ‘Do you recall what you called me when I kissed you?’

  ‘A…bastard,’ she faltered, ashamed. She should never had said it. It was a word she had never used in cold blood. A word she loathed.

  ‘And that is exactly, and precisely, what I am. Not a gentleman at all.’

  ‘But you are,’ Isobel protested. He was born out of wedlock? ‘You speak like a gentleman, you dress like one, your manner in society, your education—’

  ‘I was brought up as one, certainly,’ Giles agreed. He did not appear at all embarrassed about discussing his parentage. Isobel had never heard illegitimacy mentioned in anything but hushed whispers as a deep shame. How could he be so open about it? ‘But my father was a common soldier, my grandfather a head gardener.’

  ‘Then how on earth…? Oh.’ Light dawned. His eccentric mother. ‘Your mother?’ His mother had kept him. What courage that must have taken. What love. Isobel bit her lip.

  ‘My mother is the Dowager Marchioness of Faversham.’ Isobel felt her jaw drop and closed her mouth. An aristocratic lady openly keeping a love child? It was unheard of. ‘She scorns convention and gossip and the opinion of the world. She has gone her own way and she took her son with her.’ He strolled back into the large chamber and began to gather up the papers on the table.

  ‘Until you left university,’ Isobel stated, suddenly sure. A wealthy dowager would have the money and the power, perhaps, to insist on keeping her baby. Not everyone had that choice, she told herself. Sometimes there was none. ‘She did not want you to study a profession, did she?’ She made herself focus on the man in front of her and his situation. ‘That was when you went your own way.’

  ‘Perceptive of you. She expected me to enliven society, just as she does.’ He shrugged. ‘I am accepted widely—I know most of the men of my age from school and university, after all. I am not received at Court, of course, and not in the homes of the starchier matrons with marriageable girls on their hands.’

  Isobel felt the colour mount in her cheeks. No wonder he was wary of female attention. If his mother was notorious, then he, with his looks, would be irresistible to the foolish girls who wanted adventure or a dangerous flirtation. Giles Harker was the most tempting kind of forbidden fruit.

  ‘Of course,’ she said steadily, determined not to be missish. ‘You are not at all eligible. I can quite see that might make for some…awkwardness at times. It will be difficult for you to find a suitable bride, I imagine.’

  ‘Again, you see very clearly. I cannot marry within society. If I wed the daughter of a Cit or some country squire, then she will not be accepted in the circles in which I am tolerated now. There is a careful balance to be struck in homes such as this—and I spend a lot of my time in aristocratic households. We all pretend I am a gentleman. A wife who is not from the same world will not fit in, will spoil the illusion.’

  ‘It will be easier as your practice grows and your wealth with it.’ Isobel bit her lip as she pondered the problem. ‘You could wed the daughter of another successful professional man, one who has the education and upbringing to fit in as you do.’

  Giles stopped in the act of rapping a handful of papers on the desk to align them. Isobel’s reaction to his parentage was undeniably startling—it was almost as though she understood and sympathised. ‘Do you plot all your friends’ lives so carefully for them? Set them all to partners?’

  ‘Of course not. It is just that you are a rather different case. Unusual.’ She put her head on one side and contemplated him as though trying to decide where to place an exotic plant in a flower border or a new ornament on a shelf. ‘I would never dream of actually matchmaking.’

  ‘Why not? It seems to be a popular female preoccupation.’

  Now, why that tight-lipped look again, this time accompanied by colour on her cheekbones? ‘Marriage is enough of a lottery as it is, without one’s acquaintances interfering in it for amusement or mischief,’ she said with a tartness that seemed entirely genuine.

  ‘You are the victim of that?’ Giles stuffed his papers into the saddlebag he had brought up with him.

  ‘Oh, yes, of course. I am single and dangerously close to dwindling into a spinster. It is the duty of every right-thinking lady of my acquaintance to find me a husband.’

  There was something more than irritation over being the target of well-meaning matchmaking, although he could not put his finger on what it was. Anger, certainly, but beneath that he sensed a deep unhappiness that Isobel was too proud to show.

  ‘Ah, well,’ Giles said peaceably, ‘we are both safe here, it seems. The Yorke girls are well behaved and well chaperoned and there are no eligible gentlemen for the countess to foist upon you.’

  ‘Thank goodness,’ Isobel said with real feeling. ‘But I am disturbing you when you have work to do. I will go on with my walk now I have admired the view from up here.’

  ‘I do not mind being disturbed.’ He thought he had kept the double meaning out of his voice—he was finding her unaccountably disturbing on a number of levels—but she bit her lower lip as though she was controlling a sharp retort. Or just possibly a smile, although she turned abruptly before he could be quite certain. ‘Where are you going to go now?’

  ‘I do not know.’ Isobel stood looking out of the window.

  ‘The avenue running north from here is pleasant. It skirts the wood.’

  ‘And leads to the lake.’

  ‘That frightens you?’

  ‘No. No, of course not.’ The denial was a little too emphatic.

  ‘Then you did not dream?’ Giles buckled the saddlebag, threw it over his shoulder, picked up his hat and gloves and watched her.

  ‘No…yes. Possibly. I do not recall.’

  ‘I will come with you,’ he said. ‘I have been sitting too long.’

  ‘But your horse—’

  ‘I will lead him. Come and see the best view of the Gothic folly.’

  Isobel followed him down the stairs and out into the sunshine, allowed him to take her hand as they negotiated the mud and then retrieved it as she fell in beside him. They walked beneath the bare branches of the avenue, Felix plodding along behind them, the reins knotted on his neck, the thin February sunlight filtering through the twigs.

  Chapter Eight

  Afterwards Giles found it difficult to recall just what they talked about on that walk. His memories seemed to consist only of the woman he was with. Isobel seemed to be interested in everything: the deer grazing in the park, the lichen on the tree trunks, the view of the roofs of the Hall, complex and interlocking, the reason why he had named his horse as he had and what an architect must learn. He made her laugh, he could recall that. She stretched his knowledge of botany with her questions and completed his verse when he quoted Shakespeare. But under it all there was still a distance, a wariness. She was no fool, she knew she was playing with fire being with him, but it seemed, just now, as if she was suspending judgement.

  She held her bonnet against the breeze. ‘A lazy wind—it does not trouble itself to go around,’ she said. ‘Oh.’
The lakes spread out below them in the valley, chill and grey.

  ‘And there is the folly.’ Giles pointed to the tower on the opposite hill to bring her eyes up and away from the source of her apprehension. ‘Shall we go and look at it?’

  If you fell off a horse, then the best thing was to get right back on, and the narrow bridge where the broken timbers showed pale, even at this distance, was her fall. ‘Of course, if you are too tired…’

  Isobel’s chin went up. ‘Why not?’

  They followed the path down into the stock ditch and through the gate in the fence at the bottom. Felix’s hoofprints from the previous day were clear in the turf. It had been a good jump, Giles thought as they climbed out at the other side.

  Isobel was silent as they walked down the hillside towards the lake. Then, as the muddy patch where they had clawed their way out came in sight, she said, ‘I thought she had drowned. I thought I was not going to be able to save her. What if you had not heard us?’ The words tumbled out as though she could not control them and he saw her bite her lip to stem them. Her remembered fear seemed all for Lizzie, not for herself, and he recalled how she had cradled the child on the bank. For the first time it occurred to him that a single woman might mourn her lack of children as well as the absence of a husband.

  ‘Don’t,’ Giles said. ‘What-ifs are pointless. You did save her, you found her and hung on until I got there. Now run.’

  She gasped as he caught her hand and sprinted down the last few yards of the slope, along the dam, on to the wooden bridge, its planks banging with the impact of their feet. Moorhens scattered, piping in alarm. A pair of ducks flew up and pigeons erupted from the trees above their heads in a flapping panic. Giles kept going, past the break in the rail and on to the grass on the other side.

  He caught Isobel and steadied her as she stopped, gasping for breath. ‘You see? It is quite safe.’ Felix ambled in their wake.

  ‘You—you—’ Her bonnet was hanging down her back and she tugged at the strings and pulled it off. She was panting, torn between exasperation and laughter. ‘You idiot. Look at my hair!’

  ‘I am.’ The shining curls had slipped from their pins and tumbled down her back, glossy brown and glorious. Her greatest beauty, or perhaps as equally lovely as her eyes. Isobel stood there in the pale February sunlight, her face flushed with exertion and indignation, her hair dishevelled as though she had just risen from her bed, her breasts rising and falling with her heaving breath.

  Kiss her, his body urged. Throw her over the saddle and gallop back to the Hill House and make love to her in the room made for passion. ‘You are unused to country walks, I can tell,’ he teased instead, snatching at safety, decency, some sort of control. ‘I will race you to the folly.’ And he took to his heels, going just fast enough, he calculated, for her to think she might catch him, despite the slope.

  There was no sound of running feet behind him. So much the better—he could gain the summit and give himself time to subdue the surge of lust that had swept through him. Just because Isobel was intelligent and poised and stood up to him he could not, must not, lose sight of the fact that she was a virgin and not the young matron she often seemed to be.

  The thud of hooves behind him made him turn so abruptly that his heel caught in a tussock and he twisted off balance and fell flat on his back. Isobel, perched side-saddle on Felix’s back, laughed down at him for a second as the gelding cantered past, taking the slope easily with the lighter weight in the saddle.

  God, but she can ride, Giles thought, admiring the sight as she reached the top of the hill and reined in.

  ‘Are you hurt?’ Her look of triumph turned to concern when he stayed where he was, sprawled on the damp grass.

  ‘No, simply stunned by the sight of an Amazon at full gallop.’ He got to his feet and walked up to join her. ‘How did you get up there?’ She had her left foot in the stirrup and her right leg hooked over the pommel. Her hands were light on the reins and she showed no fear of the big horse. Her walking dress revealed a few inches of stockinged leg above the sturdy little boot and he kept his gaze firmly fixed on her face framed by the loose hair.

  ‘There’s a tree stump down by the fence. Felix obviously thought someone should be riding him, even if his master was capering about like a mad March hare.’

  ‘Traitor,’ Giles said to his horse, who butted him affectionately in the stomach. ‘Would you care to explore the folly, Isobel?’

  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 hersel
f 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.