Regency Rumours

She toyed with the idea of telling Cousin Elizabeth, then realised that she did not come out of the incident well herself, not unless she was prepared to colour the encounter so she appeared a shrinking violet and he a ravisher.

‘See—is it not splendid?’ Lizzie gestured to the tower and ragged length of curtain wall that crowned the far hill. ‘But I think Papa should have Mr Soane build an entire castle. Or Mr Harker could do it. He is younger so perhaps he is more romantic. It would not be an extravagance, for all the gamekeepers and under-keepers could live in it, which would be a saving in cottages.’

‘Do you not think the keepers might find it uncomfortable?’ Isobel enquired as they took the winding sheep path down towards the sheet of water. She resisted the temptation to remark that, in her opinion, Mr Harker was as romantic as a ravaging Viking horde.

‘That had not occurred to me. You are very practical, Cousin Isobel.’ Practicality did not seem to appeal much to Lizzie. She frowned, but her brow cleared as the lake opened out in a shallow valley before them. A long narrow ribbon of water ran away to their right. Ahead and to the left was a smaller, wider lake.

‘When Mr Repton was here to do the landscaping he said we should have a ship’s mast on the bank of the lower lake.’

‘A rowing boat or a skiff, you mean?’

‘No, a proper big ship’s mast so the tops of the sails would be seen from the house and it would look as though there was an ocean here.’ Lizzie skipped down the somewhat muddy path. ‘Papa said it was an extravagant folly. But I think it would be magnificent! I liked Mr Repton, but Papa says he has expensive ideas, so Mr Sloan and Mr Harker have come instead. You see, there is a bridge here.’

As they got closer Isobel could see that the valley had been dammed and that the smaller lake was perhaps fifteen feet above the lower one, with a bridge spanning the point where the overflow ran from one to the other.

Lizzie gestured expansively. ‘Mr Repton said we need a new bridge in the Chinese style.’ She ran ahead and leaned over the rail to look into the depths below.

Isobel dragged her mind away from trying to decide whether she ought to tell Cousin Elizabeth about Mr Harker’s kiss, however badly it made her appear. ‘That does look a trifle rickety. Do be careful. Lizzie!’

As she spoke the rail gave a crack, splintered and gave way. Lizzie clung for a moment, then, with a piercing shriek, tumbled into the water and vanished under the surface.

‘Lizzie!’ Isobel cast off her bonnet and pelisse as she ran. ‘Help! Help!’ But even as she shouted she knew they had seen no one at all in the broad sweep of park, let alone anyone close enough to help.

Could the child swim? But even if she could, the water was cold and muddy and goodness knew how deep. There were bubbles rising, but no sign of Lizzie. Isobel ran to the edge, waded in and forced her legs, hampered by her sodden skirts, through the icy water. She couldn’t swim, but perhaps if she held on to the bridge supports she could reach out a hand to Lizzie and pull her up.

Without warning the bottom vanished beneath her feet. Isobel plunged down, opened her mouth to shriek and swallowed water. Splinters pierced her palm and she lost her hold on the wooden supports. The light was blotted out as the lake closed over her head.

Giles cursed under his breath and held the grey gelding to an easy canter up the sweeping slope. Had he completely misread her? Had Lady Isobel simply chanced to come upon him in the shrubbery and lost her balance as she maintained? He had thought it a trick to provoke him into kissing her and that her protests had been merely a matter of form. But now his smarting cheek told him her protests had been real enough. So had her anger last night. He had let his desires override his instincts and he had completely mishandled the situation.

Bastard. He had learned to accept and ignore that word, to treat it with amusement. But for some reason it had stung more from her lips than the flat of her hand on his cheek had done

He should seek her out and apologise. Hell. If he did, then she would either slap his face again or she would be all too forgiving and…and might kiss him again with that delicious mixture of innocent sensuality and fire.

No. Too dangerous. Concentrate on work and forget one provoking and unaccountably intriguing woman who, it was becoming painfully clear, he did not understand. She was no schoolroom miss—she would soon forget it, or at least pretend to.

He reined in as the grey reached the earthworks that marked the base of the old windmill. From here there was a fine view north over the lakes to the Gothic folly and, stretching south along the edge of the woodland, an avenue of trees leading to his destination, the Hill House.

The avenue stretched wide and smooth, perfect for a gallop. Giles gathered up the reins, then stopped at the sound of a faint shriek. A bird of prey? A vixen? He stood in his stirrups and scanned the parkland. There was nothing to be seen.

‘Help!’ It was faint, but it was clear and repeated, coming from the direction of the lakes. A woman’s voice. Giles dragged the gelding’s head round and spurred down the slope, heedless of wet grass, mud and thorn bushes. The deep stock ditch opened up before them and the grey gathered his hocks under him and leapt, then they were thundering down towards the lake.

As Giles reined in on the flat before the dam he could see no signs of life—only a bonnet and pelisse lying discarded at the water’s edge.

There were footprints in the mud, small woman’s prints, and a disturbance, bubbles, below the centre of the bridge where the rail was broken. Giles flung himself out of the saddle, wrenched off his coat and boots and strode into the lake. The muddy water churned and two figures broke the surface for a few moments, the larger flailing desperately towards the bridge supports, the smaller limp in her grasp before they sank again. Lady Isobel and Lizzie.

It took a dozen strokes to reach them. Giles put his head down and dived under, groped through the muddy water and touched a hand, so cold that for a moment he thought it was a fish. He kicked and broke the surface hauling the dead weight of both woman and child after him.

‘Take her,’ Isobel gasped as they broke the surface and she thrust the child’s body into his reaching arms. When he tried to take hold of her too, she resisted. ‘No, there’s weed tangled round her. I couldn’t…You’ll need both hands to pull her free.’

Treading water, Giles wrenched and tugged and the slight body was suddenly floating in his arms. ‘Hang on!’ he ordered Isobel as though he could keep her afloat by sheer force of will. He towed Lizzie back to the shore, dumped her without ceremony and turned back to Isobel. She had vanished.

CHAPTER FIVE

NUMB, SHAKING WITH cold and fear for Isobel, Giles launched himself back into the water in a shallow dive. She was beyond struggling now as he caught one slender wrist and pulled her, gasping and choking, back to the surface again.

As soon as they reached the shallows she managed to raise herself on hands and knees and shake off his hold. ‘Go and see if she’s breathing. Help her—I can manage.’

Giles stumbled to the shore and dragged Lizzie farther up onto the grass, turned her over his knee and slapped her hard between the shoulder blades. ‘Come on, breathe!’ She coughed, retched up quantities of muddy water, then began to cry.

‘Lizzie, it is all right, Mr Harker rescued us,’ a hoarse voice croaked beside him. ‘Come here now, don’t cry.’ Somehow Isobel had crawled up the bank to gather the child in her arms, petting and soothing. ‘There, there. We’ll get you home safe to your mama, don’t worry.’

Giles found his coat and wrapped it round them. Lady Isobel’s hair hung in filthy sodden curtains around her face, her walking dress clung like a wet blanket to her limbs and she was shuddering with cold, but her voice was steady as she looked up at him. ‘Please, go for help, Mr Harker.’ She dragged the coat off her own shoulders and around the child.

He stared at her for a moment, a bedraggled, exhausted Madonna, somehow the image of desperate motherhood and feminine courage. ‘Felix will take all of us at a walk, it will be faster.’ He dragged on his boots and unsaddled the gelding to make room for the three of them. ‘Let me get you up first, then I’ll hand Lizzie to you. Can you manage?’

Lady Isobel let him drag her to her feet, then boost her onto the horse. She ignored the display of bare flesh as her skirts rode up her legs and held out her hands to steady Lizzie as the child was put in front of her. Giles vaulted up behind.

Felix, well trained and willing, plodded up the slope with his burden while Giles tried to hold Isobel and Lizzie steady as their shivering increased. Through his own wet shirt he could feel how cold Lady Isobel was growing, but she did not complain. He could hear her murmuring reassurance to Lizzie, the words blurred as she tried to control her chattering teeth.

‘Thank God you can swim,’ he said as the house came in sight. He steered Felix towards the service wing where there would be plenty of strong hands to help.

‘I c-can’t.’

‘Then why the hell did you go in?’ Giles demanded, his voice roughened with shock.

‘I th-thought I might be able to reach her if I held on to the bridge supports. She did not c-come up, you see. By the time I had got to the house and brought help she would have drowned. But the bottom shelved and I was out of my depth—as I went down I found her.’ She broke off, coughed, and he did his best to support her until the racking spasms ceased. ‘I untangled enough of the weed to push us up to the surface, but then I could not keep us there.’

Every other female of his acquaintance would have stood on the lakeside and screamed helplessly while the child drowned. ‘Isobel, that was very brave.’

She did not react to the way he addressed her—she was probably beyond noticing such things. ‘There didn’t seem to be any other option—she was my responsibility.’ The retort held a ghost of her tart rejoinders of the night before and Giles smiled with numb lips even as a pang of shame reminded him how easily he had judged this woman.

She seemed to slump and Giles tightened his arms around them. ‘Steady now.’ Isobel let her head fall back on his shoulder and she leaned against him as though seeking for the slight heat he could give her. He wanted to rip off their clothes, hold her against his bare flesh to force his remaining warmth into her. ‘Almost there now, my brave girl.’

As they rode into the yard the boot boy gawped, a scullery maid dropped an armload of kindling, but one of the footmen ran forwards shouting, ‘Here! Everyone—quick—and bring blankets! Hurry!’

Hands reached for Lizzie and Isobel and he let them be taken before he threw a leg over Felix’s withers, dropped to the ground and ran to find the countess.

Isobel rather thought she had fainted. One minute she was held against Mr Harker’s comfortingly broad chest, and he was calling her his brave girl, the next hands were lifting her down and then she found herself in the countess’s sitting room with Cousin Elizabeth ordering hot baths and towels and more coals for the fire and no recollection of how she had got there.

‘I’m sorry,’ she managed to say when the hubbub subsided enough to make herself heard. Her voice sounded raspy and her throat was sore. ‘The rail on the bridge broke and Lizzie tumbled in. Mr Harker…’

Mr Harker had saved her and the child. She looked at Lizzie, white-faced, her vulnerable, naked body and thin little arms making her look much younger than her years. She wanted to hold her, convince herself the child was safe, but that was not her right. Lizzie had her mother to hold and comfort her. Her mother was with her, every day, saw every change in her growing child, felt every emotion…

‘Mr Harker said you went in after Lizzie even though you cannot swim,’ Cousin Elizabeth said. She looked up from the tub where she was on her knees helping the nursery nurse rub her daughter’s pale limbs amidst clouds of steam. Isobel blinked back the tears that had blurred her vision and with them the pang of jealousy towards the older woman with her happy brood of children all around her. ‘She owes her life to you both.’ The shock was evident on the countess’s strained face, even though she managed to keep her voice steady.

‘Let me help you into the bath.’ Lady Anne, who had been peeling off Isobel’s sodden, disgusting clothes, pulled her to her feet and urged her towards the other tub set before the fire. ‘Papa insisted on sending his valet to look after Mr Harker. Tompkins went past just now muttering about the “State of Sir’s Breeches” in capital letters. One gathers that Mr Harker’s unmentionables may never be the same again.’

As Anne must have intended, the women all laughed and Isobel felt herself relax a little as she slid into the hot water. To her relief Lizzie began to talk, her terrifying brush with death already turning into an exciting adventure. ‘And Mr Harker galloped up like a knight in shining armour and dived into the lake…’