Regency Rumours (4 page)

‘You are studying me with scientific thoroughness, sir. I half expect you to produce a net and a pin to affix me amongst your moth collection.’

Moth
, he noted.
Not butterfly. Modesty? Or is she seeing if I can be provoked into meaningless compliments?

‘You have a forensic stare yourself, ma’am.’

Her lips firmed, just as he suspected they might.
Schoolmarm disapproval
, he thought. Or embarrassment, although he was beginning to doubt she could be embarrassed. Lady Isobel seemed more like a young matron than an unmarried girl. She showed no other sign of emotion and yet he could feel the tension radiating from her. It was strangely unsettling, although he should be grateful that his unwise curiosity had not led her to relax in his company.

‘You refer to our meeting of eyes in the hall? You must be tolerant of my interest, sir—one rarely sees Greek statuary walking about. I note that you do not relish being assessed in the same way as you study others, although you must be used to it by now. I am certain that you do not harbour false modesty amongst your faults.’

The composure with which she attacked began to nettle him. After that exchange she should be blushing, fiddling with her fan perhaps, retreating from their conversation to sip her drink, but she seemed quite calm and prepared to continue the duel. It confirmed his belief that she had been sounding him out with an intention to flirt—or more.

‘I have a mirror and I would be a fool to become swollen-headed over something that is due to no effort or merit of my own. Certainly I am used to stares,’ he replied. ‘And do not welcome them.’

‘So modest and so persecuted. My heart bleeds for you, Mr Harker,’ Lady Isobel said with a sweet smile and every appearance of sympathy. Her eyes were chill with dislike. ‘And no doubt you find it necessary to lock your bedchamber door at night with tiresome regularity.’

‘That, too,’ he replied between gritted teeth, then caught himself. Somehow he had been lured into an utterly shocking exchange. A well-bred unmarried
lady should have fainted dead away before making such an observation. And he should have bitten his tongue before responding to it, whatever the provocation. Certainly in public.

‘How trying it must be, Mr Harker, to be so troubled by importunate members of my sex. We should wait meekly to be noticed, should we not? And be grateful for any attention we receive. We must not inconvenience, or ignore, the lords of creation who, in their turn, may ogle as much as they please while they make their lordly choices.’

Lady Isobel’s voice was low and pleasant—no one else in the room would have noticed anything amiss in their conversation. But Giles realised what the emotion was that had puzzled him: she was furiously angry. With him. Simply because he had reacted coldly to her unladylike stare? Damn it, she had been assessing him like a housewife looking at a side of beef in the butchers. Or did she know who he was and think him presumptuous to even address her?

‘That is certainly what is expected of ladies, yes,’ he said, his own temper rising. He’d be damned if he was going to flirt and cajole her into a sweet mood, even if Lady Hardwicke noticed their spat. ‘Certainly unmarried ones—whatever their age.’

Her chin came up at that. ‘A hit, sir. Congratulations. But then a connoisseur such as yourself would notice
only ladies who offer
irresistible temptation
. Not those who are
on the shelf and open to advances.’

She turned her shoulder on him and immediately joined in the laughter over some jest of Philip’s before he had time to react to the emphasis she had put on some of her phrases. It took a second, then he realised that she was quoting him and his conversation with Soane a few minutes earlier.

Hell and damnation
. Lady Isobel must have been outside the door. Now he felt a veritable coxcomb. He could have sworn he had seen the glitter of unshed tears in her eyes. Now what did he do? His conscience stirred uneasily. Giles trampled on the impulse to apologise. It could only make things worse by acknowledging the offending words and explaining them would simply mire him further and hurt her more. Best to say nothing. Lady Isobel would avoid him now and that was better for both of them.

CHAPTER THREE

‘D
INNER IS SERVED,
my lady.’ There was a general stir as the butler made his announcement from the doorway and the party rose. Giles made a hasty calculation about seating plans and realised that ignoring Lady Isobel might be harder than he had thought.

‘We are a most unbalanced table, I am afraid,’ the countess observed. ‘Mr Soane—shall we?’ He went to take her arm and the earl offered his to Lady Isobel. Giles partnered Lady Anne, Philip, grinning, offered his arm to fifteen-year-old Catherine and Lizzie was left to bring up the rear. When they were all seated Giles found himself between Lady Isobel and Lizzie, facing the remaining Yorke siblings and Mr Soane. Conversation was inevitable if they were not to draw attention to themselves.

Lizzie, under her mother’s eagle eye, was on her best behaviour all through the first remove, almost unable to speak to him with the effort of remembering all the things that she must and must not do. Giles concluded it would be kinder not to confuse her with
conversation, which left him with no choice but to turn and proffer a ragout to Lady Isobel.

‘Thank you.’ After a moment she said, ‘Do you work with Mr Soane often?’ Her tone suggested an utter lack of interest. The question, it was obvious, was the merest dinner-table conversation that good breeding required her to make. After his disastrous overheard comments she would like to tip the dish over his head, that was quite clear, but she was going to go through the motions of civility if it killed her.

‘Yes.’ Damn it, now he was sounding sulky. Or guilty. Giles pulled himself together. ‘I worked in his drawing office when I first began to study architecture after leaving university. It was a quite incredible experience—the office is in his house, you may know—like finding oneself in the midst of Aladdin’s cave and never knowing whether one is going to bump into an Old Master painting, trip over an Egyptian sarcophagus or wander into a Gothic monk’s parlour!

‘I am now building my own practice, but I collaborate with Soane if I can be of assistance. He is a busy man and I owe him a great deal.’

Lady Isobel made a sound that might be interpreted, by the wildly optimistic, as encouragement to expand on that statement.

‘He employed me when I had no experience and, for all he knew, might prove to be useless.’

‘And you are not useless?’ She sounded sceptical.

‘No.’
Hell, sulky again
. ‘I am not.’ Deciding what to do with his future during that last year at Oxford had not been easy. It would have been very simple to hang on his mother’s purse strings—even her notorious extravagances had not compromised the wealth she had inherited from her father, nor her widow’s portion.

Somehow the Dowager Marchioness of Faversham kept the
bon ton’s
acceptance despite breaking every rule in the book, including producing an illegitimate child by her head gardener’s irresistibly handsome soldier son, ten months after the death of her indulgent and elderly husband. She was so scandalous, so charming, that Giles believed she was regarded almost as an exotic, not quite human creature, one that could be indulged and permitted its antics.

‘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.