Regency Rumours

‘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.