Regency Rumours

by Louise Allen

  ‘None at all if you leave,’ Jane agreed. ‘And are silent about this.’

  ‘I will tell no one,’ Giles said. Then, ignoring both Jane and the gun, he went to stand in front of Isobel. He lifted the puppy from her arms and set it down before catching her hands in his. ‘Isobel, I thought you loved me.’ He spoke directly to her as though they were alone, so close she could feel his warmth, smell his familiar scent of clean linen and citrus and something that was simply Giles.

  ‘I—’ She stared into the green eyes and the farmyard seemed to vanish. Jane, the animals, everything faded away and there was only the two of them, handfast. She could not lie to him, not about this. ‘Yes, I love you. I try not to, but I cannot lie to you about it.’ And in his eyes she thought she read an answering love and all the doubt and fear vanished. ‘I love you, I trust you and I am sorry that my faith in you wavered for a while.’

  She waited for the words, but they did not come, only a shadow that clouded the clear green eyes and a twist of the mouth that she so much wanted to kiss. ‘Do you truly not love me?’ she had to ask at last when he did not speak. ‘Can I be so wrong in what I feel from you?’

  ‘I cannot allow myself to love you, Isobel. There is no future for us. Nothing has changed except that now I know you are too vulnerable with this secret to risk the slightest breath of scandal. The secret is safe, I promise you. There will be no risk, Isobel, because this ends here. This is where we part.’

  ‘I know.’ She had faced that finally on the long drive. There had never been any hope because a scandal would ruin him, would break her parents’ hearts, might even compromise Annabelle’s future in ways she could not foresee. ‘I know that. I give up.’ Her voice cracked and she controlled it somehow. ‘I just need you to tell me how you feel, Giles.’

  ‘No.’ His face was stark as he bent his head. ‘No, I will not say I love you, Isobel. Only that I care too much to make this worse than it already is.’ The kiss was gentle, achingly tender. His lips lingered on hers and she could taste the heat and the passion that he was holding in check, feel the tremor that ran through him when she raised her arms and curled them around his neck to hold him for just a moment longer.

  ‘Goodbye, Isobel.’ He turned and strode out of the yard and when she sank down onto the bale, her legs too weak to hold her, and looked around, she was alone. Jane had gone. Distantly there was the sound of carriage wheels, then silence.

  Something wet touched her hand and she looked down. The puppy that had been chewing Giles’s boot was licking her hand. It wasn’t the pup Nathaniel had chosen, but a skinny little female with a comical white patch over one eye. Isobel scooped her up and the puppy licked her nose.

  ‘Hello,’ Isobel said, her voice sounding thready in her own ears. Then she got up and walked inside with the dog in her arms. ‘One more day and then we are going to London,’ she said to it as it wriggled.

  ‘Isobel.’ Jane stood just inside the empty kitchen and hugged her and the pup together. ‘Oh, my dear.’ When Isobel just shook her head she said, ‘I would not have shot him, you know. Not the man you love.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Isobel said, her smile hurting. ‘I will go home tomorrow. May I take the puppy? I don’t expect trying to housetrain a dog in a post-chaise is easy, but I will manage. We will be fine.’

  ‘Of course you will,’ Jane said and her face showed that she knew it was not the puppy that Isobel was talking about. ‘Come and let Annabelle choose a name for it.’

  A puppy in a post-chaise was certainly an excellent distraction. Maude, as Annabelle inexplicably named the black-and-white bundle, proved to be ravenously hungry and ate and drank everything put in the dishes on the floor for her—with inevitable consequences. Jane had the foresight to give them a small sack of sawdust and a large roasting dish, so Dorothy climbed out to empty it at every stop, complaining vociferously.

  But Isobel would not let her chastise Maude, even when she started to chew shoes and the edge of the carriage rug. ‘She’s only a baby, Dorothy,’ she said, picking up the puppy and receiving a wet slurp on the nose for her pains. With a contented sigh the little dog went to sleep on her lap, worn out by her adventure.

  Which left all the stages from Gloucester still to sit through. They would not arrive in London until past ten that night after a six o’clock start in the morning. Dorothy started to doze, wedged in one corner against the jolting, but Isobel sat upright, cradled the puppy on her lap and let her mind wander where it might. She was too tired and too hurt to try to think sensibly. And besides, what was there to think about?

  Other than Annabelle, she realised with a smile that faded as the guilt took over once more. Her parents would adore her and yet they would never know they had a granddaughter.

  She realised she was about to drift off, and did not fight it. It would bring dreams, she supposed, but dreams were all she had left now.

  Trust…I trust you. The words she had said to Giles. But it was not his face in the dream, it was her parents, watching her anxiously. She woke, but the image did not fade. They had trusted her when she had fled to Hereford, loved her enough to leave her there a year when she wrote and begged not to be asked to come home. They had believed her when she was sent home in disgrace after the house party when virtually no one else had. If she could trust anyone, she could trust her parents, she realised. Perhaps, after all, some good could come of this unhappiness.

  Isobel curled into the corner of the chaise and went back to sleep.

  ‘God, she has courage, my Isobel,’ Giles said to himself as he sat at the writing table in his inn bedchamber.

  Isobel, so frank, so brave, so direct with the truth and with her love. She had known he would never act on his true feelings, never show her what was in his heart. The most she could hope for was his flirtation and his idle, thoughtless kisses. So she had shown him what love was.

  He screwed up what he had been writing and threw the paper on the fire. A letter would only do more damage. He had written the words he had wanted to say, the true words. But they were better as ashes—it would do Isobel no good to tell her he loved her.

  What was he going to do now? He was not going to marry Miss Holt, that was certain. Somehow he would have to make Geraldine accept that. She only wanted him to be happy and she found his independence infuriating. She wanted to arrange everything to her satisfaction, including his happiness.

  He would be happy again, one day, he supposed. One day.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  ‘MAMA. PAPA. MAY I speak with you?’

  ‘We have been speaking to each other for the last half hour,’ Lord Bythorn pointed out. But he folded his copy of the Morning Chronicle, laid it beside his breakfast plate and waited.

  ‘I mean, in private. In your study.’ Isobel’s chest felt tight, her breakfast—what little of it she had managed to eat—was sitting uneasily in her stomach and she was all too aware of her parents’ anxious attention.

  ‘Very well, if you can keep that confounded puppy of yours out of it. It has already destroyed my slippers and it has only been in the house twelve hours.’

  ‘Thank you, Papa.’ He was making a joke out of it, bless him.

  ‘Now, what is this about, eh, Isobel?’ He sat behind his big desk, Isobel and her mother in the two wing chairs in front of it. ‘This looks uncommonly like a confession.’

  ‘It is.’ Trust, she reminded herself. Too late to back out now. Just trust them, they love you. ‘In the last few weeks before Lucas was killed, we were lovers.’

  She heard her mother’s sharply indrawn breath. Her father’s face went blank, then, to her surprise, he said, ‘Shocking, but not so very unusual.’ There was the very faintest suspicion of a smile in the fleeting look he sent her mother. Isobel opened her mouth to blurt out a question and shut it hurriedly.

  ‘After he died, I discovered I was pregnant.’ This time the breath was a gasp and her father’s face lost its smile as the colour ebbed out of his cheeks. ‘Th
at was why I stayed with Jane. She is not the mother of twins: her daughter is mine. Your grandchild.’

  The silence was broken only by her mother’s sob, quickly stifled with her hand. Isobel reached out her own hand, hesitated, then withdrew it.

  ‘You could not trust us to look after you?’ her father asked with a gentleness that warned her he was keeping a tight rein on his emotions.

  ‘No,’ Isobel admitted. Only the truth would serve now. ‘I was not thinking very clearly. I wanted Lucas and he was gone—I was frightened that the child would be taken from me. I could not trust anyone except Jane.’ The tears were running down her mother’s face now. This was as bad as she feared it would be—she had hurt them dreadfully. ‘I am so sorry. I did it for the best.’

  She turned and this time took her mother’s hand. It stayed in hers and, after a moment, the fingers curled around her own. ‘Her name is Annabelle.’ It was her grandmother’s name.

  ‘Why now? Why are you telling us now? Is something wrong with her?’ Her mother clutched her hand with a desperate urgency.

  ‘She is perfect and she is well. No, it is not that. I realised I am never going to marry and have a family. And I saw that I was depriving you of your grandchild and that was wrong. And I have been thinking a lot about trust, these past few days—and I knew I should have trusted you from the beginning.’

  ‘Who knows about the child?’ her father asked.

  ‘Jane’s old family retainers, but they would never betray her secrets and they adore Annabelle. The doctor, and he is a family friend.’ She saw their relief and knew she had to shatter it. ‘And the Dowager Marchioness of Faversham and her son, Giles Harker.’

  ‘What! That wanton creature? How in blazes did she discover this?’

  ‘She feared I would marry Giles and that there would be a great scandal which would harm him. She uses enquiry agents all the time, it seems, so she set a man to find what secrets I might have. Her intention was to blackmail me into giving up Giles.’

  ‘Marry him? Give him up?’ Her mother stared, aghast. ‘You are not having a liaison with that man?’

  ‘I am in love with that man,’ Isobel corrected gently. ‘But, no, we are not lovers and I will not marry him—she is quite right, the scandal would ruin him. He will not admit he loves me because he thinks it would ruin me.’

  ‘You love him? He is a—’

  ‘So is our granddaughter,’ Lord Bythorn said and her mother gave a gasp of dismay. ‘Will he and that woman hold their tongues?’

  ‘Oh, yes. She had no other motive than to protect her son, she will wish me no harm once Giles has convinced her I am no threat to his standing or his career.’

  ‘Hah!’ Lady Bythorn said, swiping ineffectually at her eyes with a tiny scrap of lace.

  ‘Mama, he saved my life when I would have drowned. He was scarred defending my honour.’

  ‘True enough,’ her father admitted. ‘Can we see Annabelle? Or must you keep her from us?’

  ‘No! Of course I will not. But we cannot acknowledge who she is, you must see that. Her prospects are good now—her birth seems perfectly respectable, she will grow up without any stain, a Needham. And her supposed father was Lucas’s half-brother, after all.

  ‘But we can visit. She calls me “Aunt,” so it is only natural that you should take an interest in her. Jane can visit us here and bring the children.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Lady Bythorn brightened, sat up and rubbed her palms over her wet cheeks. ‘My granddaughter! Oh, my goodness.’

  ‘And what of you, Isobel?’ her father asked.

  She shook her head. ‘I cannot marry. I cannot hide this from my husband and even if I did find someone, I dare not risk Annabelle’s reputation by telling him before I am wed.’ She added, ‘I will finish this Season, I do not wish to cause any further talk.’

  ‘Oh, my dear.’ He sighed and shook his head, but when he looked at her there was a smile lurking under the heavy dark brows. ‘But thank you for my grandchild.’ As she got up he rose too and came round the desk to embrace her. ‘I had hoped, after Needham’s death, you could have found a good man who would love you.’

  ‘I did, Papa,’ she said. ‘But it seems I cannot have him. I must write to Jane.’

  The Season was in full swing now. Isobel hurled herself into it as though the sea of frivolity and pleasure could wash away the pain and the longing. Only her parents’ delight in hearing about Annabelle kept her spirits up and the arrival of some portrait sketches that Jane had asked the village schoolmaster to make had them in a frenzy of planning for a visit just as soon as the summer came.

  Taking tea after dinner a week after her return, Isobel overheard her father in conversation with their host. ‘…remodelling the entire West Wing of the Priory,’ Lord Roehampton said. ‘Got a very promising young architect working on it—Harker. But I was forgetting,’ he added, lowering his voice. ‘He’s the man who stood up for Albright over that wretched business your daughter fell victim to. Good show, that. His mother’s a menace in society, but he can’t help that and, to do him credit, he stands by her. Loyal, as I said to Lady Roehampton when she was cavilling about employing him. The man’s got the instincts of a gentleman.’

  ‘Yes,’ Lord Bythorn said slowly. ‘It seems he has.’

  Isobel stared at her father, a hope forming in her mind so improbable, she hardly dared try to think it through. As the three of them sat in the carriage on the short ride home through the streets of Mayfair she said abruptly, before she could give herself time to lose courage, ‘Papa, if Giles Harker came to you now and asked for my hand in marriage, what would you say?’

  ‘My love, he would not do such a thing. He knows it would cause a scandal. I think I’ve discovered enough about the man by now to know he won’t hurt you,’ her father said gruffly.

  ‘But if he did, would it cause a scandal if you said yes?’ she asked. ‘I know it would if you forbade the match and we ran away together. But if it was seen that you approved, would that not make all the difference?’

  ‘Isobel!’ her mother interjected. ‘You cannot marry a man born out of wedlock.’

  ‘Why not? I am not going to marry any other man and it seems to me that if it does not hurt anyone else, then I may as well be happy as not! It is not as though I wish to be received at court again or spend my time at Almack’s. Papa—if you gave us your blessing, would there be a scandal? One that would hurt you and Mama, be difficult for Frederick at school? One that would ruin Giles’s business?’

  Her mother moaned again at the word business, but her father said, after a pause, ‘You heard me talking to Roehampton? I must confess, I see Harker in a different light now, with all that has happened. No, I do not think it would cause more than a seven-day wonder, not if I gave it my blessing and your mother received him. You have enough of a reputation for eccentricity already, my dear.’

  ‘Oh, Papa!’ She launched herself across the carriage and hugged him, squashing his silk hat. ‘Thank you!’

  ‘But he will not ask me, will he?’ Lord Bythorn said gently, setting her back on her seat. ‘The more he cares for you, the less likely he is to approach you again.’

  ‘No,’ Isobel agreed. ‘So I will just have to ask him.’

  Her mother subsided against the squabs with a moan. ‘I knew I should have brought my smelling bottle!’

  The first thing was to find out where Giles was, Isobel decided as she sat up in bed the next morning nursing a cup of chocolate in her hands. The work at Wimpole could not have been completed yet, but she assumed that, like Mr Soane, he would have several commissions in hand at any one time. Some she knew about, such as Lord Roehampton’s West Wing, but Giles could be anywhere.

  There was only one person in London who might know, and Mama would have the vapours if she thought her daughter was going anywhere near her. It did not seem to have occurred to her parents that if she married Giles then the Scarlet Widow would be her mother-in-law, which was probably a sign that t
hey believed there was little chance that such a thing would ever happen. Well, time to worry about that later, she thought philosophically. Just at the moment it was the least of her worries.

  ‘Will you fetch me a London directory please, Dorothy?’ she called.

  ‘Yes, my lady. Just one moment. This dratted dog has chewed the tassel on the curtain tie.’ The maid sounded exasperated, but Isobel knew full well that she doted on Maude and sneaked biscuits to her in her basket.

  ‘Here we are.’ Dorothy bustled out of the dressing room with the book in her hands. ‘Heard about an interesting shop, have you, my lady?’

  ‘Er…no. I am just looking up the address of a new acquaintance.’

  Lady Faversham lived not so very far away in Bruton Street. Close enough, in fact, not to need the carriage. ‘My blue walking dress and the dark blue pelisse and the velvet hat this morning, Dorothy. I have some calls to make, but I can take one of the footmen with me, so you can carry on with those alterations.’

  An hour and a half later, at an unconscionably early hour to be making a call, Isobel was admitted to Lady Faversham’s elegant hall by her equally elegant butler.

  ‘I am sure that if it is a matter concerning Mr Harker her ladyship will wish to receive you,’ he said, admirably concealing any trace of speculation. ‘If you would care to wait in here, my lady, I will enquire.’

  Giles’s name did indeed open doors. Isobel was received by her ladyship who was reclining on a chaise in her boudoir in a confection of lace and sea-green gauze that roused a pang of envy in Isobel’s breast.

  ‘What do you want with my son now?’ the Widow demanded, narrowing ice-green eyes at her.

  There did not seem to be any point beating about the bush. Isobel took a deep breath and said, ‘To tell him that if he asks for my hand my father will give it to him willingly. There will be no scandal, he will be welcomed into the family.’