скачать книгу бесплатно
‘I work for my living, Lady Isobel, and do it well. And I do not relish indolence,’ he added to his curt rejoinder. He would have little trouble maintaining a very full, and equally scandalous, social life at the Widow’s side, but he was not prepared to follow in her footsteps as a social butterfly. Society would have to accept him as himself, and on his own terms, or go hang if they found him too confusing to pigeonhole.
‘You had an education that fitted you for this work, then?’ Lady Isobel asked, her tone still inquisitorial, as though she was interviewing him for a post as a secretary. Her hands were white, her fingers long and slender. She ran one fingertip along the back of the knife lying by her plate and Giles felt a jolt of heat cut through his rising annoyance with her, and with himself for allowing her to bait him.
Stop it, there is nothing special about her. Just far more sensuality than any respectable virgin ought to exude. ‘Yes. Harrow. Oxford. And a good drawing master.’
Lady Isobel sent him a flickering look that encompassed, and was probably valuing, his evening attire—from his coat, to his linen, to the stick-pin in his cravat and the antique ruby cabochon ring on his finger. Her own gown and jewellery spoke of good taste and the resources to buy the best.
‘What decided you on architecture?’ she asked. ‘Is it a family tradition?’
No, she quite certainly did not know who he was or she would never have asked that. ‘Not so far as I am aware. My father was a soldier,’ Giles explained. ‘I did not realise at first where my talents, if I had any, might lie. Then it occurred to me that many of the drawings in my sketchbooks were buildings, interiors or landscapes. I found I was interested in design, in how spaces are used.’ His enthusiasm was showing, he realised and concluded, before he could betray anything more of his inner self, ‘I wrote to Mr Soane and he took me on as an assistant.’ He lowered his voice with a glance down the table. ‘He is generous to young men in the profession—I think his own sons disappoint him with their lack of interest.’
And now, of course, many of his commissions came from men he met socially, who appreciated his work, liked the fact that he was ‘one of them’ and yet was sufficiently different for it not to be an embarrassment to pay his account. Giles was very well aware that his bills were met with considerably more speed than if he had been, in their eyes, a mere tradesman. And in return, he stayed well clear of their wives and daughters, whatever the provocation.
‘So, have you built your own house, Mr Harker?’
‘I have. Were you thinking of viewing it, Lady Isobel?’
‘Now you are being deliberately provocative, Mr Harker.’ Her dark brows drew together and the tight social smile vanished. ‘I am thinking no such thing, as you know perfectly well. This is called making polite conversation, in case you are unfamiliar with the activity. You are supposed to inform me where your house is and tell me of some interesting or amusing feature, not make suggestive remarks.’
‘Are you always this outspoken, Lady Isobel?’ He found, unexpectedly, that his ill temper had vanished, although not all his guilt. He was enjoying her prickles—it was a novelty to be fenced with over dinner.
‘I am practising,’ she said as she sat back to allow the servants to clear for the second remove. ‘My rather belated New Year resolution is to say what I mean. Scream it, if necessary,’ she added in a murmur. ‘I believe I should say what I think to people to their faces, not behind their backs.’
Ouch. There was nothing for it. ‘I am sorry that you may have overheard some ill-judged remarks I made to Mr Soane earlier, Lady Isobel. That is a matter for regret.’
‘I am sure it is,’ she said with a smile that banished any trace of ease that he was beginning to feel in her presence. If she could cut with a smile, he hated to think what she might do with a frown.
‘However, I do not feel that any good will be served by rehearsing the reason you hold such…ill-judged opinions.’ Giles took a firm grip on his knife and resisted the urge to retaliate. He had been in the wrong—not to feel what he did, but to risk saying it where he might be overheard. Now he must give his head for a washing. He braced himself for her next barb. ‘You were telling me about your house.’
Excellent tactics, he thought grimly. Get me off balance while you work out how to knife me again. ‘My house is situated on a small estate in Norfolk. My paternal grandfather lives there and manages it for me in my absence.’ It was also close enough for him to keep an eye on his mother on those occasions she descended on the Dower House of Westley Hall for one of her outrageous parties, causing acute annoyance and embarrassment to the current marquess and his wife and scandalised interest in the village. When she was in one of her wild moods he was the only person who could manage her.
‘Your father—’
‘He died before I was born.’ It had taken some persuasion to extract his grandfather from the head gardener’s cottage at Westley and persuade him that he would not be a laughing stock if he took up residence in his grandson’s new country house. ‘My grandfather lives with me. His health is not as robust as it once was.’ Stubborn old Joe had resisted every inch of the way, despite being racked with rheumatism and pains in his back from years of manual labour. But now he had turned himself into a country squire of the old-fashioned kind, despite grumbling about rattling around in a house with ten bedchambers. Thinking about the old man relaxed him a little.
‘How pleasant for you,’ Lady Isobel said, accepting a slice of salmon tart. ‘I wish I had known my grandfathers. And does your mama reside with you?’
‘She lives independently. Very independently.’ Things were relatively stable at the moment: his mother had a lover who was a year older than Giles. Friends thought he should be embarrassed by this liaison, but Giles was merely grateful that Jack had the knack of keeping her happy even if he had not a hope of restraining her wilder starts. To give the man his due, he did try.
‘She is a trifle eccentric, perhaps?’
‘Yes, I think you could say that,’ Giles agreed. How quickly Lady Isobel picked up the undertones in what he said—No wonder she was able to slip under his guard with such ease when she chose.
‘My goodness, you look almost human when you grin, Mr Harker.’ She produced a sweet smile and turned to join in the discussion about the Irish language the earl was having with his eldest daughter.
You little cat! Giles almost said it out loud.
He had succeeded—far more brutally than he had intended—in ensuring he was not going to be fending off a hand on his thigh under the dinner table, or finding an unwelcome guest in his bedchamber, but at the expense of making an enemy of a close friend of the family. Now he had to maintain an appearance of civility so the Yorkes did not notice anything amiss. He could do without this—the tasks he had accepted to help Soane were going to be as nothing compared with the challenge of keeping his hands from Lady Isobel’s slender throat if she continued to be quite so provocative.
She was idly sliding her fingers up and down the stem of her wine glass as she talked. The provocation was not simply to his temper, he feared.
Giles took a reviving sip of wine and listened to young Lizzie lecturing John Soane on the embellishments she considered would make the castle folly on the distant hill even more romantic than it already was.
That was one possibility, of course: wall up Lady Isobel in the tower and leave her for some knight in shining armour to rescue. Which was a very amusing thought, if it were not for the fact that he had a sneaking suspicion that through sheer perversity she would never wait around for some man to come to her aid. She would fashion the furniture into a ladder, climb out of the window and then come after him with a battleaxe.
She laughed and he turned to look at her, the wine glass halfway to his lips. That laugh seemed to belong to another woman altogether: a carefree, charming, innocent creature. As if feeling his regard, she turned and caught his eye and for a long moment their glances interlocked. Giles saw her lips part, her eyes darken as though something of significance had been exchanged.
A stab of arousal made him shift in his chair and the moment was lost. Lady Isobel turned away, her expression more puzzled than annoyed, as though she did not understand what had just happened.
Giles drank his wine. He knew exactly what had occurred; two virtual strangers had discovered that they were physically attracted to each other, even if one of them might not realise it and both of them would go to any lengths to deny it.
There were people in her bedroom. Voices, too low to make out, a tug on the covers as someone bumped into the foot of the bed. Isobel opened her eyes to dim daylight and a view of lace-trimmed pillow. With every muscle tensed, she rolled over and sat up, ready to scream, her heart contracting with alarm.
There was no sign of the party of rowdy bucks who had haunted her dreams. Instead, three pairs of wide eyes observed her from the foot of the bed, one pair so low that they seemed on a level with the covers. Children. Isobel let out a long breath and found a smile, restraining the impulse to scoot down the bed and gather up the barely visible smallest child and inhale the warm powdered scent of sleepy infant. ‘Good morning. Would one of you be kind enough to draw the curtains?’
‘Good morning, Cousin Isobel,’ Lizzie said. ‘I knew it would be all right to wake you up. Mama said you should sleep in and eat your breakfast in your room, but I thought you would like to have it with us in the nursery.’
The contrast between her own dreams of drunken, frightening bucks invading her bedroom, of the presence of Giles Harker somewhere in the mists of the nightmare, and the wide, innocent gaze of the children made her feel as though she was still not properly awake.
‘That would be delightful. Thank you for the invitation.’ Isobel rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and regarded the other two children as they came round the side of the bed. ‘You must be Caroline and Charles. I am very pleased to meet you.’
Charles, who was four, if she remembered correctly, regarded her solemnly over the top of his fist. His thumb was firmly in his mouth. He shuffled shyly round the bed to observe her more closely. Isobel put out one hand and touched the rosy cheek and he chuckled. She fisted her hands in the bed sheets. He was so sweet and she wanted…
Caroline beamed and dragged the wrapper off the end of the bed. ‘You’ll need to put this on because the passageways are draughty. But there is a fire in the nursery.’
The children waited while she slid out of bed, put on the robe, ran a brush through her hair and retied it into a tail with the ribbon before donning her slippers. ‘I’m ready now.’
‘We can go this way, then we will not disturb Mama.’ Lady Caroline led her out of the door on the far side of the bedchamber, through the small dressing room and out of another door on to what seemed to be the back stairs. ‘We just go through there and up the stairs to the attic—’
There was the sound of whistling and the soft slap of backless leather slippers on carpet. Across the landing a shadow slid over the head of the short flight of stairs that must lead to the suites at the back of the house. Someone was coming. A male someone. Trapped in the doorway, with a chattering seven-year-old in front of her, a small boy hanging on to her skirts and Lizzie bringing up the rear, Isobel just had time to clutch the neck of her wrapper together as Mr Harker appeared.
He stopped dead at the sight of them, his long brocade robe swinging around his bare ankles. His face was shadowed with his unshaven morning beard, his hair was tousled and an indecent amount of chest was showing in the vee of the loosely tied garment. He must be naked beneath it. ‘Good morning, Lady Isobel, Lady Lizzie, Lady Caroline, Master Charles. I hope you do not represent a bathing party.’
Cousin Elizabeth had said something about a plunge bath in this area, so that was presumably where he was going. He might have had the decency to have turned on his heel the moment he saw them, Isobel thought, resentment mingling with sensations she tried hard not to acknowledge. Now she was in the position of having to exchange words with a scarcely clad man while she was in her nightwear. The fact that her wrapper was both practical and all-enveloping was neither here nor there.
‘We are going to the nursery for breakfast,’ she said, her gaze, after one glimpse of hair-roughened chest, fixed a foot over his head. ‘Lead the way, please, Caroline.’
‘Good morning, Mr Harker,’ the children chorused. Isobel scooped up little Charles as a shield and they trooped across the landing, past the architect and through into the sanctuary of the door to the attic stairs. She was furiously aware that she was peony-pink and acting like a flustered governess. All her anger-fuelled defiance of him over dinner was lost in embarrassment.
They climbed the stairs and Caroline took them around the corner and on to a landing with a skylight overhead and a void, edged with rails and panelled boards, in the centre. As she tried to orientate herself Isobel realised it must be above the inner hallway her room opened on to, with the snob-boards to prevent the servants looking down on their employers.
‘Papa had Mr Soane make him a plunge bath in the old courtyard that used to be behind the main stairs.’ Lizzie waved a hand in the general direction. ‘I think it would be great fun to learn to swim in it, but Mama says it is for Papa to relax in, not for us to splash about.’
Now I have the mental picture of Mr Harker floating naked in the warm water…Thank you so much, Lizzie.
‘Here we are. This is where Caroline and I sleep, and here is Charles’s room and here is the nursery. Nora, we have brought Lady Isobel, I told you she would like to have breakfast with us.’
A skinny maid bobbed a curtsy. ‘Oh, Lady Lizzie! I do hope it is all right, my lady, I said you’d be wanting to rest, but off they went…’
‘That is quite all right. I would love to have breakfast here.’ The children and their staff appeared to occupy this entire range of south-facing rooms with wonderful views over the long avenue and the park towards Royston. A pair of footmen carried in trays. Charles twisted in her arms and she made herself put him down.
‘I told them to bring lots of food because we had a special guest. Those are my designs for the tower—Mr Soane says I show a flair for the dramatic,’ Lizzie pronounced, pointing at a series of paintings pinned on the wall. ‘I expect I get that from Mama. She writes plays, you know and sometimes when we have a house party they are acted in the Gallery. Papa says she is a veritable blue-stocking. We will go for a walk this morning and I will show you the tower.’ Lizzie finally ran out of breath, or perhaps it was the smell of bacon that distracted her.
‘That would be very pleasant, provided your mama does not need me.’ Isobel sat down at the table. ‘It would be wonderful to get out in the fresh air and it looks as though the morning will be sunny, which is such a relief after yesterday’s drizzle.’ And there was the added advantage that if she was out of the house she would be at a safe distance from Mr Harker’s disturbing presence.
While she ate she contemplated just how maddening he was. He was arrogant, self-opinionated, far too aware of his own good looks, shockingly outspoken and did not do his robe up properly. He was, in fact, just like the drunken bucks at the house party, only sober, which was no excuse, for that meant he should know better. He also made her feel strangely unsettled in a way she had almost forgotten she could feel. There was no doubting that his relaxed, elegant body would strip to perfection, that his skin would feel—
Isobel bit savagely into a slice of toast and black-currant conserve. What was the use of men except to make women’s lives miserable? She contemplated Master Charles, chubby-cheeked, slightly sticky already, full of blue-eyed innocence. Little boys were lovely. She felt a pang at the thought of what she was missing.
Kind fathers and husbands like her own papa, or Lord Hardwicke, were obviously good men. Lucas had been almost perfect. But how on earth was one to tell what a candidate for one’s hand would turn out to be like? Most males, by the time they turned eighteen, appeared to be rakehells, seducers, drinkers, gamblers…
Perhaps she could become an Anglican nun. They did have them, she was sure, and it sounded safe and peaceful. A mental image of Mr Harker, laughing himself sick at the sight of her in a wimple, intruded. She would look ridiculous and she would be quite unsuited to the life. Besides, she would not be free to travel, to visit Jane and the children. An eccentric spinster then. She had enough money.
Only she did not want to be a spinster. She would rather like to fall in love again with a good man and marry. Her daydream stuttered to a halt: he would doubtless want children. But where did she find one she could trust with her heart and all that was most precious to her? And even if she did find this paragon, was he going to want her when he knew the truth about her?
CHAPTER FOUR
‘MORE COFFEE, COUSIN ISOBEL?’
‘Thank you, Lizzie.’ Her mind was going round in circles. Isobel forced herself into the present. ‘At what time shall we go for our walk?’
‘Shall I meet you in the garden at ten o’clock?’ the girl suggested. ‘I must explain to Miss Henderson, my governess, that I am going on an educational nature expedition with you.’
‘You are?’
‘There are the lakes—we will see all kinds of wild birds,’ Lizzie said with irrefutable logic. Isobel found herself experiencing a pang of sympathy for the unfortunate Miss Henderson.
A visit to Lady Hardwicke’s unusual semi-circular sitting room, almost next to her own, reassured Isobel that her hostess did not require her assistance, and that Lizzie was permitted to escape from French conversation for one morning.
Isobel snuggled her pelisse warmly around herself as she stepped out into the garden that lay between the north front and the parkland. It wanted at least fifteen minutes until ten o’clock and there was no sign of Lizzie yet. The bleak, wintry formal beds held little attraction, but the shrubbery that lay to one side behind the service wing looked mysterious and worthy of exploration.
A glimpse of a small domed roof intrigued her enough to brave the dense foliage, still dripping on to the narrow paths after yesterday’s drizzle. The building, when she reached it down the twisting paths, was small, low and angular with an odd dome and no windows that she could see. It looked vaguely classical, but what its function might be, she had no idea. The gloomy shrubbery seemed an odd place for a summer house. Perhaps it was an ice house.
Isobel circled the building. Under her boots the leaf mould yielded damply, muffling her footsteps as she picked her way with caution, wary of slipping.
The sight of a pair of long legs protruding from the thick clump of laurel bush that masked the base of the structure brought her up short. The legs were visible from midthigh, clad in brown buckskin breeches. The polished boots, smeared with mud, were toes down—their owner must be lying on his stomach. As she stared there was a grunt from the depths of the bush—someone was in pain.
A keeper attacked by poachers? A gardener who had fainted? Isobel bent and pushed aside the branches with her hands. Even as she crouched down she realised that gamekeepers and gardeners did not wear boots of such quality. She slipped, landed with an ungainly thump, threw out a hand and found she was gripping one hard-muscled, leather-clad thigh.
‘Oh! Are you all right?’ The man was warm at least—perhaps he had not lain there very long. There did not seem to be any room to move away now she was crouched under the thick evergreen foliage.
The prone figure rolled over and she went with him in a tangle of thin branches to find herself flat on her back, her body pinned under the solid length of a man who was quite obviously neither fainting nor wounded, but very much in possession of his senses. All of them.
‘My dear Lady Isobel, have you come to assist me with the plumbing?’ Harker drawled as he looked down at her through the green-shadowed gloom. After a fraught moment he raised his weight off her and on to his elbows.
‘Plumbing?’ Isobel stared at him. ‘What on earth are you talking about? Let me go this—ouch!’
‘You are lying on a hammer,’ he explained. ‘If you will just move your shoulder a trifle…There. Is that more comfortable?’
‘No, it is not. Will you let me up this instant, Mr Harker!’
‘The ground is quite dry under these evergreens and you are lying on sacking.’ There was the hint of a smile tugging at one corner of those sculpted lips. ‘You are being very demanding—I really do not feel you can expect anything better if you will insist on an alfresco rendezvous with me in early February.’
Isobel tried to sit up and succeeded merely in pressing her bosom against his chest. Harker’s eyes darkened and the twitch of his lips became an appreciative smile. She fell back, opened her mouth to scream and then remembered Lizzie—the last thing she wanted was to frighten the child by bringing her to this scene.
Furious at her own powerlessness, she put up her hands and pushed against his shoulders. He did not shift. Isobel felt her breath become shorter. Oh, the humiliation—she was positively panting now and he doubtless thought it was with excitement. Even more mortifying was the realisation that he would be right—her instincts were responding and she was finding this exciting. This was her punishment for daydreaming about his body. The reality was just as deliciously hard and lean and—
‘Get off!’ She felt aroused, flustered and indignant, but she did not feel afraid, she realised as the green eyes studied her. ‘I have not the slightest intention nor desire of making a rendezvous with you, Mr Harker, inside or outside.’
‘Then whose thigh did you think you were fondling?’ he asked with every appearance of interest.
‘Fondling? How dare you! I lost my balance.’ The feel of those taut muscles under the leather was imprinted on her memory. ‘I thought a gardener had fainted, or hit his head, or a gamekeeper had been attacked by poachers or something.’ His body was warm and hard and seriously disturbing to a lady’s equilibrium, pressed against her just there…and the wretch knew it. He shifted slightly and smiled as she swallowed. Oh, yes, he was finding this very interesting. No doubt she should be flattered.
‘And there I was, thinking that the sight of me in my dressing gown was enough to lure young ladies into a damp shrubbery,’ Harker said. ‘I was, of course, about to decline what I assumed was your most flattering offer.’
‘Decline?’ She stared at him. That he could imagine for one moment that she had actually followed him there in order to…to…canoodle…Indignation became fury. ‘Why—?’
‘Why? Because well-bred virgins are far more trouble than they are worth.’
‘Oh!’ The insufferable arrogance of the man!
‘This is probably madness, but as we are here, it seems a pity to waste the moment.’ She realised too late that her hands were still on his shoulders and tried to pull herself away, but there was nowhere to go. He bent his head and took her mouth, all with one smooth, well-practised movement.
The last man to kiss her had been both drunk and clumsy. Harker was neither. His mouth was hot and demanding and sent messages straight to her belly, straight to her breasts, as though wires connected every nerve and he was playing with them. Panic at her own response threatened for a fleeting moment and then she got one hand free, twisting as she did so. The smack of her palm against the side of his face was intensely satisfying.
‘You…you bastard,’ she spat, the moment he lifted his head. The word seemed to rock him off balance. The green eyes darkened, widened and he pushed himself up and away from her. The wave of anger brought her to her feet, shoving against him for balance as she crashed out of the shrubs onto the path. ‘Is this revenge because I took you to task for your insulting words to Mr Soane last night? You arrogant, lustful, smug bastard!’ It was a word she never used, a word she loathed, but now she threw it at him like a weapon.
‘Cousin Isobel? Are you in the shrubbery?’ Lizzie’s voice sounded as though she was coming towards them.
‘Stay there,’ Isobel said fiercely, jabbing a finger at him. ‘Just you stay there.’ Harker straightened up, one hand rubbing his reddening cheek, his mouth twisted into a rueful smile. The mouth whose heat still seemed to burn her own.
Isobel turned on her heel and almost ran along the twisting path to meet the child. The tug of the ribbons at her throat stopped her in time to rescue her bonnet. She brushed leaf mould from her skirts, took a deep breath and stepped out onto the lawn.
‘Here I am. I went exploring.’ Somehow her voice sounded normal, if a little over-bright.
‘Oh, I expect you found the Water Castle. Castello d’Aqua, Mr Soane calls it. He had it built to supply the boiler when the plunge bath was put in, but it hasn’t been working very well.’ Lizzie chattered on as she led the way across the garden and out of the gate into the park. ‘Papa said the pressure was too low and the steward should call a plumber, but Mr Harker said he’d see if he could free up the valve, or something. I expect having a bath this morning reminded him.’
That must have been what he was doing in the bushes, not lying in wait for passing females to insult. Apparently he could manage to do that with no prior warning whatsoever.
They let themselves out of the iron garden gates and Lizzie led the way across the park that lay between the house and the hill surmounted by the folly tower. A small group of deer lifted their heads and watched them warily.
‘What a delightful park.’ Isobel kept her side of the conversation going while she forced her somewhat-shaky legs to keep up with Lizzie’s exuberant pace.
Harker had leapt to the most indecent conclusion about her motives—her desires, even. He had not let her get more than a word out, he had taken advantage of her in the most appalling way.
She had stood up to him last night—was this then to be her punishment? To be taken for a lightskirt? Or was this insult simply retaliation for her refusal to meekly treat him as wonderful? That made him no better than those wretched bucks who had invaded her bedroom and she realised that that was disappointing. Somehow, infuriating though he was, she had expected more of him.
She had responded to him, she thought, incurably honest, as she trudged in Lizzie’s exuberant wake through a gate and across a narrow brick bridge crossing a deep stock ditch. Had he realised? Of course he had—he was experienced, skilful and had slept with more women than she had owned pairs of silk stockings. So now she could add humiliation to the sensations that would course through her when she next saw Mr Harker and he, no doubt, would use it to torment her mercilessly for as long as the game amused him.
