Louise Allen (6 page)

‘Because I do not need to mollycoddle myself. And grateful as I am to you for rescuing me, I did not give you the use of my name.’

‘If you desire to thank me for getting wet on your behalf, I wish you will let me use it. My name is Giles and I make you free of that,’ he said as he lifted one hand and laid the back of it against her cheek. ‘You are barely warm enough, Isobel. I am sorry for this morning, and last night. I have become...defensive about single ladies. I was wrong to include you with the flirts and, worse, upon no more evidence than a very frank stare and a willingness to stand up to me.’

Somehow his hand was still against her cheek, warm and strangely comforting, for all the quiver of awareness it sent through her. If her limbs felt so leaden that she could not move, or brush away his hand, then at least she could speak up for herself. ‘Surely you are not so vain as to believe that good looks make you somehow superior and irresistible to women? That every lady who studies your profile or the width of your shoulders desires you?’ Oh, why had she mentioned his shoulders? Now he knew she had been looking.

He did not take her up on that revealing slip. ‘Unfortunately there are many who confuse the outer form, over which I have no control, and for which I can claim no credit, for the inner character. And, it seems, there are many ladies who would welcome a certain amount of...adventure in their lives.’ He shrugged. ‘Men are just as foolish over a pretty face, uncaring whether it hides a vacuous mind or fine intelligence. You must have observed it. But the pretty young ladies are chaperoned,’ he added with a rueful smile.

‘And no one protects the handsome men?’ Isobel enquired. She had managed to lift her hand to his, but it stayed there instead of obeying her and pushing his fingers away. She felt very strange now, not quite in her own body. There was a singing in her ears. She forced herself to focus. ‘You are telling me that you are the victim here?’

‘We men have to look after ourselves. I am vulnerable, certainly. If I acquire a reputation for flirting, or worse, with the unmarried daughters of the houses where I work, I will not secure good commissions at profitable country estates.’ His mouth twisted wryly. ‘Repelling single young ladies has become second nature and a certain cynicism about the motives of those who show an interest is, under the circumstances, inevitable.’

‘What circumstances?’

Giles had caught her left hand in his, his fingers long and strong as they enveloped it. ‘You do not know? Never mind.’ Isobel thought about persisting, then restrained herself—probably this was something that would reveal her as painfully naive. Giles drew her closer and slid his hand round to tip up her chin. ‘You are exhausted and probably in a state of shock. Why will you not rest?’

‘I do not want to dream,’ Isobel confessed. ‘I have night...’ The man must be a mesmerist, drawing confessions out of her as she stood there, handfast with him. She should go at once, stop talking to him about such personal matters. If only her body would obey her, because she wanted to go. She really wanted...

‘You suffer from nightmares?’

‘When I have a lot on my mind.’ Her voice sounded as though it was coming from a long way away. She stared at Giles Harker, who was moving. Or perhaps the room behind him was. It began to dawn on her that she was going to faint.

‘You are in no fit state—’ Harker caught her as her knees gave way and gathered her against his chest. He ought to put her down because this was improper. She should tell him... But he was warm and strong and felt safe. Her muddled brain questioned that—Giles Harker was not safe, was he?

There was the sound of footsteps on the great staircase below them, muted voices carrying upwards. Giles stepped back into his room, pulling her with him, and closed the door. ‘Damn it, I do not want us found by a brace of footmen with you draped around my neck and me half dressed.’ His voice was very distant now.

‘Put me down, then,’ Isobel managed as she was lifted and carried into another room, deposited on something. A bed?

‘Stay there.’

‘I do not think I could do anything else...’ It was an effort to speak, so she lay still until he came back and spread something warm and soft over her.

‘Go to sleep, Isobel. If any nightmares come, I will chase them away.’

He will
, promised the voice in her head. It was telling her to just let go, so she did, and slid into a darkness as profound as the blackness of the lake water.

Chapter Six

G
iles locked the door from his dressing room on to the landing and studied the sleeping woman stretched out on the chaise. Isobel must be utterly drained to have fainted like that. He supposed he should have done something, anything, rather than carry her into his room, but it was a trifle late to worry about that now and they were probably safe enough. The family would be too concerned about Lizzie to wonder where their guest had got to and his borrowed valet believed him to be resting and would not disturb him.

He sat down in a chair, put his elbows on his knees and raked his fingers through his damp hair. Nothing had changed, so why the devil was he ignoring the self-imposed rules that had served him so well all his adult life? Isobel was a single young lady of good family and one, it would appear, that he had misjudged. The wild sensuality he had sensed in her must have either been his own imagination or she was unaware of it in her innocence.

He shot a glance through the door into the dressing room, but she seemed deeply asleep. He was discovering that he liked her, despite her sharp tongue and unflattering view of him. He admired her courage and her spirit, enjoyed the sensation of her in his arms. But all of that meant nothing. She should be, literally, untouchable and they both knew it.

Why, then, did she make him feel so restless? He wanted something, something more than the physical release that his body was nagging about. There was a quality, a mood, about Isobel that he simply could not put his finger on. Giles closed his eyes, sat back, while he chased the elusive emotions.

* * *

‘Mr Harker. Giles! Wake up, you are having a nightmare.’

Giles clawed his way up out of a welter of naked limbs, buttocks, breasts, reaching hands and avid mouths. ‘Where the hell am I?’

‘In your bedchamber at Wimpole Hall.’ He blinked his eyes into focus and found Isobel Jervis kneeling in front of him, her hands on the arms of the chair. His body reacted with a wave of desire that had him dropping his hands down to shield the evidence of it from her as she asked, ‘What on earth were you dreaming about? It sounded very...strange.’

‘I have no idea,’ he lied. ‘How long have we been asleep?’ Long enough for her to have lost the pallor of shock and chill. Her body, bracketed by his thighs, was warm.
Hell
. ‘You should not be here.’ And certainly not kneeling between his legs, as though in wanton invitation to him to pull her forwards and do the outrageous things his imagination was conjuring up.

‘I am well aware of that, Mr Harker! It is four o’clock. I heard the clocks strike about five minutes ago when I woke. Are you all right? You were arguing about something in your sleep.’

‘I am fine,’ Giles assured her. Already his head was clearing. It was the familiar frustrating dream about trying to break up a party at the Dower House, the one that had got completely out of hand. It was after that fiasco that he began to lay down the law to his mother—and to his surprise, she had listened and wept and things had become marginally better. But that night, when he had to cope with a fire in the library, a goat in the salon—part of a drunken attempt at a satanic mass—and the resignation of every one of his mother’s long-suffering staff, had burned itself into his memory.

‘I was supposed to be making sure you did not dream,’ he apologised. ‘And you had to rescue me instead.’

‘I had no nightmares,’ she assured him. ‘But it was a good thing that your voice woke me.’ Her hair had dried completely and the loose arrangement was beginning to come down in natural waves that made him want to stroke it as he might a cat’s soft coat. Isobel shook it back from her shoulders and a faint scent of rosemary touched his nostrils, sweet and astringent at one and the same time, like the woman before him.

‘You must go before anyone starts looking for you.’ He kept his hands lightly clasped, away from temptation.

Isobel nodded and sat back on her heels and the simple gown shifted and flowed over breast and thighs. Giles closed his eyes for a moment and bit back a groan.

‘I will go out of your dressing room and across the inner landing to my sitting room. Provided no one sees me leaving your chamber, there are any number of ways I could have reached my own door.’

‘You have an aptitude for this kind of intrigue,’ Giles said in jest. Isobel got to her feet in one jerky movement and turned towards the door in a swirl of skirts. He saw the blush on her cheek and sprang up to catch her arm. ‘I am sorry, I did not mean that as it sounded. You think clearly through a problem, that is all.’

‘Yes, of course.’ She kept her head averted, but the tension in her body, the colour in her cheek, betrayed acute mortification. ‘I have a very clear head for problems.’ The unconcern with which she had knelt before him had gone—now she was uncomfortably aware of him as a man.

‘Isobel.’

She turned, her eyes dark and her mouth tight. He no longer thought it made her look like a disapproving governess. This close, he could read shame behind the censorious expression.

‘I am sorry.’ How she came to be in his arms, he was not certain. Had she moved? Had he drawn her close—or was it both? But with her there, warm and slender, those wide, hurt grey eyes fixed questioningly on his face, it seemed the most natural thing in the world to kiss her.

Isobel must have sensed his intent, although once his arms had encircled her she did not move for a long moment. Then, ‘No!’ She jerked back against his hold, as fiercely as if he had been manhandling her with brutal intent. ‘Let me
go
.’

Giles opened his hands, stepped back. ‘Of course.’ There had been real fear in her eyes, just for a moment. Surely she did not think he would try to force her? Perhaps she had recovered enough to realise just how compromising it was to be in a man’s bedchamber.

Or was this all a tease, a way of punishing him for his kiss that morning? But then she would have to be a consummate actress. Puzzled, uneasy, he knew this was not the time to explore the mystery that was Isobel Jervis. In fact, now was the time to stop this completely before his curiosity about her got the better of him.

He opened the door and looked out. ‘It is safe to leave.’

‘Thank you,’ Isobel murmured and brushed past him without meeting his eyes.

That was, of course, the best possible outcome. All he had to do now was to maintain a civil distance. He could only hope he was imagining the expression in her eyes and that he could ignore the nagging instinct that he should be protecting her from whatever it was that caused it.

* * *

‘You’re not having anything to do with that man, are you, my lady?’ Dorothy set the breakfast tray across Isobel’s lap with unnecessary firmness. ‘You go vanishing goodness knows where yesterday when you should have been resting and I worry you were with him. He’s too good looking for any woman to be around—it shouldn’t be allowed. You can’t trust any of them—men—he knows you’re grateful for him saving you and the next thing you know he’ll be—’

‘I told you, I had a nap in one of the other rooms, Dorothy.’ Isobel made rather a business of wriggling up against the pillows and setting the tray straight on her knees. ‘Will you please stop nagging about it?’

‘What your sainted mama would say if she knew, I do not know.’

‘And how could you?’ Isobel said between gritted teeth. ‘There is nothing to know.’

‘He’s no good, that one. He’s not a gentleman, despite all those fine clothes and that voice,’ Dorothy pronounced as she bustled about, tidying the dressing table. ‘They don’t say much in front of me in the servants’ hall, me being from outside, but I can tell that there’s something fishy about him.’

‘Dorothy, if Lady Hardwicke trusts Mr Harker sufficiently to entertain him in her own home, with her daughters here, I really do not feel it is your place to question her judgement.’

‘No, my lady.’

‘And one more sniff of disapproval out of you and you can go straight back to London.’

Silenced, the maid flounced out, then stopped to bob a curtsy in the doorway.

‘May I come in?’ Cousin Elizabeth looked round the door and smiled when she saw Isobel was eating. ‘It seems everyone is much recovered this morning, although I have forbidden Lizzie to leave her room today.’

‘How is she?’ Isobel’s sleep had been disturbed by vivid dreams of loss, of empty arms and empty heart. She felt her arms move instinctively as though to cradle a child and fussed with the covers instead.

‘She is fine, although a trifle overexcited. What would you like to do, my dear? Stay in bed? I can bring you some books and journals.’

The sun was pouring through the window with a clarity that promised little warmth, but exhilarating views. ‘I thought I might take another walk, Cousin Elizabeth. If you do not require me to assist you with anything, that is. Perhaps Anne or Philip might join me?’

‘Of course, you may go and enjoy this lovely weather, just as long as you do not overtire yourself.’ She looked out of the window and nodded, as though she could understand Isobel’s desire to be outside. ‘Philip would join you, but his father has sent him to his studies—his tutor’s report on his Latin was very unsatisfactory, poor boy. And Anne has fittings with the dressmaker all morning—I declare she has not a single thing fit to wear for her come-out.’

‘Never mind. I do not mind exploring by myself,’ Isobel said. ‘It is such a sunny day and who knows how long the weather will hold at this time of year.’

‘Do you want me to send one of the footmen to go with you?’

‘Goodness, no, thank you. I will probably dawdle about looking at the view and drive the poor man to distraction.’

The countess smiled. ‘As you wish. The park is quite safe—other than the lake! Mr Harker and my husband will be in a meeting this morning.’ She delivered this apparent non sequitur with a vague smile. ‘And now I fear I must go and have a long interview with the housekeeper about the state of the servants’ bed linen. Do not tire yourself, Isobel.’

* * *

Isobel came down the front steps an hour later, then stopped to pull on her gloves and decide which way to go.

Over to her left she could glimpse the church with the stables in front of it. Time enough for viewing the family monuments on Sunday. A middle-aged groom with a face like well-tanned leather came out from the yard and touched his finger to his hat brim.

‘Roberts, my lady,’ he introduced himself. ‘May I be of any assistance?’

‘I was trying to decide which way to walk, Roberts.’ Isobel surveyed the long avenue stretching south. It would make a marvellous gallop, but would not be very scenic for a walk. The park to the north, towards the lake, she did not feel she could face, not quite yet. To the east the ground was relatively flat and wooded, but to the west of the house it rose in a promising manner. ‘That way, I think. Is there a good view from up there?’

‘Excellent, my lady. There’s very fine prospects indeed. I’d go round the house that way if I was you.’ He pointed. ‘Don’t be afeared of the cattle, they’re shy beasts.’

Isobel nodded her thanks and made for the avenue of trees that ran uphill due west from the house. At the first rise she paused and looked back over the house and the formal gardens.

Why, she wondered, had Cousin Elizabeth made a point of mentioning where Giles Harker would be that morning? Surely she did not suspect that anything had transpired between them beyond his gallant rescue?

And what
had
happened? Gi...Mr Harker seemed to accept that she was not some airheaded flirt. She was, she supposed, prepared to believe that he suffered from an irritating persecution by women intent on some sort of relationship with a man of uncannily good looks. But that kiss in the shrubbery, the look in his eyes as they stood at the door of his room, those moments made her uneasily aware that she could not trust him and nor could she trust herself. He was a virile, attractive male and her body seemed to want to pay no attention whatsoever to her common sense.

There was something else, too, she pondered as she turned and strode on up the hill, her sturdy boots giving her confidence over the tussocky grass. There was another man behind both the social facade and the mocking rake, she was sure. He had a secret perhaps, a source of discomfort, if not pain.

Isobel shook her head and looked around as she reached the top of the avenue and the fringe of woodland. The less she thought about Giles Harker the better and she had no right to probe another’s privacy. She knew what it was to hold a secret tight and to fear its discovery.

To her right was an avenue along the crest, leading to the lake and, beyond it, she could see the tower of the folly. To her left the view opened out beyond the park, south into Hertfordshire across the Cambridge road. A stone wall showed through a small copse. She began to walk towards it, then saw that it was the building she had noticed from the chaise when she had first arrived. As she came closer to the grove of trees it revealed itself as a miniature house with a projecting central section and a window on either side.

It was set perfectly to command the view, she realised, but as she got closer she saw it was crumbling into decay, although not quite into ruin. Slates had slipped, windows were broken, nettles and brambles threatened the small service buildings tucked in beside it.

Isobel walked round to the front and studied the structure. There was a pillared portico held up by wooden props, a broken-down fence and sagging shutters at the windows. The ground around it was trampled and muddy and mired with droppings and the prints of cloven hooves.

And through the mud there were the clear prints of a horse’s hooves leading to where a rope dangled from a shutter hinge: a makeshift hitching post.

Giles Harker’s horse? Why would he come to such a sad little building? Perhaps he was as intrigued by it as she was, for it had a lingering romance about it, a glamour, as though it was a beautiful, elegant woman fallen on hard times, perhaps because of age and indiscretion, but still retaining glimpses of the charms of her youth.

But he was not here now, so it was quite safe to explore. Isobel lifted her skirts and found her way from tussock to tussock through the mud until she reached the steps. Perhaps it was locked. But, no, the door creaked open on to a lobby. The marks of booted feet showed in the dust on the floor. Large masculine footprints. Giles.