Louise Allen (7 page)

With the delicious sensation of illicit exploration and a frisson of apprehension that she was about to discover Bluebeard’s chamber, Isobel opened the door to her right and found the somewhat sordid wreckage of a small kitchen. The middle door opened on to a loggia with a view of the wood behind the building and the door to the left revealed a staircase. The footprints led upwards and she followed, her steps echoing on the stone treads. The door at the top was closed, but when she turned the handle it opened with a creak eerie enough to satisfy the most romantic of imaginings.

Half amused at her own fears, Isobel peeped round the door to find a large chamber lit patchily by whatever sunshine found its way through the cracked and half-open shutters.

It was empty except for a wooden chair and a table with a pile of papers and an ink stand. No mysterious chests, no murdered brides. Really, from the point of view of Gothic horrors it was a sad disappointment. Isobel cast the papers a curious glance, told herself off for wanting to pry and opened the door on the far wall.

‘Oh!’ The room was tiny and painted with frescoes that still adhered to the cobwebbed walls. A day-bed, its silken draperies in tatters, stood against the wall. ‘A love nest.’ She had never seen such a thing, but this intimate little chamber must surely be one. Isobel went in, let the door close behind her with a click and began to investigate the frescoes. ‘Oh, my goodness.’ Yes, the purpose of this room was most certainly clear from these faded images. She should leave at once, they were making her feel positively warm and flustered, but they were so pretty, so intriguing despite their indecent subject matter...

The unmistakable creak of the door in the next room jerked Isobel out of a bemused contemplation of two satyrs and a nymph engaged in quite outrageous behaviour in a woodland glade. She had heard nothing—no sound of hooves approaching the building, no footsteps on the stairs. The wind perhaps...but there had been no wind as she walked up the hill. The consciousness that she was not alone lifted the hairs on the nape of her neck.

Chapter Seven

‘I
know you are in there, Isobel.’ Giles Harker’s sardonically amused voice made her gasp with relief, even as she despised herself for her nerves and him for his impudence.

‘How did you know?’ she demanded as she flung the door wide.

He was standing hatless in the middle of the room in buckskins and breeches, his whip and gloves in one hand, looking for all the world like an artist’s model for the picture of the perfect English country gentleman. He extended one hand and pointed at the trail of small footprints that led across the room to the doorway where she stood.

Isobel experienced a momentary flicker of relief that she had resisted the temptation to investigate what was on the table. ‘Good morning, Mr Harker. I came up here for the view, but I will not disturb you.’

‘I thought we were on first-name terms, Isobel. And I am happy to be disturbed.’ Was there the slightest emphasis on
disturbed
? She eyed him warily. ‘It is an interesting building, even in this sorry state. Whether I can save it, or even if I should, I do not yet know.’

So this was what he was about, the rescue of this poor wreck. ‘It is charming. It is sad to see it like this.’

‘It was built as a prospect house and somehow was never used very much for forty years. Soane had suggestions for it some time ago, Humphrey Repton countered with even more ambitious ones. His lordship points out that it cost fifteen-hundred pounds to build, so hopes that I, with no previous experience of the place, will tell him what can be done that will not cost a further fifteen-hundred pounds.’ He smiled suddenly and she caught her breath. ‘Now what is it that puts that quizzical expression on your face?’

‘It is the first time I have heard you sound like an architect.’

‘You thought me a mere dilettante?’ The handsome face froze into pretended offence and Isobel felt the wariness that held her poised for flight ebb away as she laughed at his play-acting. Surely he was safe to be with? After all, he had let her sleep untouched when she was at her most vulnerable yesterday and the moment when they had stood so close and she had thought he was about to kiss her had been as much her own fault as his. But it had troubled her sleep more than a little, that moment of intimacy, the sensual expertise she knew lay behind the facade of control.

‘I knew Mr Soane would not associate with you, nor the earl employ you, if that was so. But you are the perfect pattern of the society gentleman for all that. You should not object if that is all you are taken for.’

‘Appearances are deceptive indeed. You should look out for the glint of copper beneath the plating when you think you are buying solid silver,’ he said with an edge to his voice that belied the curve of his lips. He turned to the table before she could think of what to reply. ‘You are that impossibility, it seems—a woman without curiosity.’

‘Your papers? Of course I was curious, but curiosity does not have to be gratified if it would be wrong to do so.’

‘Even if these are simply sketches and elevations?’

‘For all I knew they might be the outpouring of your feelings in verse or love letters from your betrothed or even your personal accounts.’

‘I fear I am no poet and there is no letter from a patient betrothed, nor even—do not think I cannot read that wicked twinkle in your eyes, Isobel—billets-doux from females of quite another kind.’

‘I have no idea what you are talking about,’ she said repressively. ‘Tell me about this house. Or is it not a house?’

‘A prospect house is a decoration for a view point, not for living in. As was fashionable when it was built, this room was designed as a banqueting chamber. It
is
rather splendid.’ He swept a hand around the space which was perhaps twenty feet square. ‘Repton’s plans would make this open for picnics. He proposed moving the pillars up from the front portico to frame the opening and turning the ground floor into an estate worker’s cottage.’

‘Oh, no.’ Isobel looked around her at the wide fireplace and the walls that had once been painted to resemble green marble. ‘I love this as it is. Could it not be repaired?’

‘I share your liking. But I fear the initial building was so poorly done that repair or alteration may be a positive money pit for the earl.’

‘And there I was imagining it renovated and turned into a little house. I love looking at houses,’ she confessed. ‘I think I must be a natural nest-builder.’ She could imagine herself, an almost-contented spinster, in a little house like this. But she would be alone with a cat, not with the sound of a child’s feet running towards her—

‘You found the painted room.’ He strolled past her and into the little chamber she had been examining. Isobel shook off the momentary stab of sadness and followed. She would not be a prude, she would simply ignore the subject matter of the tiny, intricate scenes that covered the mildewed walls. ‘The frescos are in the Etruscan style,’ he explained. ‘I think this room was intended for trysts, don’t you?’

‘Or as the ladies’ retiring room,’ Isobel suggested.

‘So prosaic! I hoped you would share my vision. Or perhaps you have examined the designs and are shocked.’

It rankled that he should think her unsophisticated enough to be shocked. ‘Your vision is of a history of illicit liaisons taking place here?’ Isobel queried, avoiding answering his question.

‘Do you not think it romantic?’ Giles leaned his shoulder against the mantel shelf and regarded her with one perfect eyebrow lifted.

‘Thwarted young lovers might be romantic, possibly, but I imagine you are suggesting adulterous affairs.’ She could easily imagine Giles Harker indulging in such a liaison. She could not believe that he was celibate, nor that he repulsed advances from fast widows or wives with complacent husbands, however much he might protest the need to keep young ladies at a safe distance.

‘Not necessarily. How about happily married couples coming here to be alone, away from the servants and the children, to eat a candlelit supper and rediscover the flirtations of their courtship?’

‘That is a charming thought indeed. You are a romantic after all, Mr Harker. Or a believer in marital bliss, perhaps.’ She kept her distance, over by the window where the February air crept through the cracks to cool her cheeks.

‘Giles. And why
after all
? An architect needs some romance in his soul, surely?’

‘Yesterday your views on the relationships between men and women seemed more practical than romantic.’ Isobel picked at a tendril of ivy that had insinuated itself between the window frame and the wall.

‘Merely self-preservation.’ Giles came to look out of the window beside her, pushing the shutter back on its one remaining hinge. ‘How is it that you have avoided the snare of matrimony, Isobel?’

Surprised and wary, she turned to look at him. ‘You regard matrimony as a snare for women as well as for men? The general view is that it must be our sole aim and ambition.’

‘If it is duty and not, at the very least, affection that motivates the match, then I imagine it is a snare. Or a kindly prison, perhaps.’

A kindly prison
. He understood, or could imagine, what it might mean for a woman. The surprise loosened her tongue. ‘I was betrothed, for love, four years ago. He died.’

‘And now you wear the willow for him?’ There was no sympathy in the deep voice and his attention seemed to be fixed on a zigzagging crack in the wall. Oddly, that made it easier to confide.

‘I mourned Lucas for two years. I find it is possible to keep the memory of love, but I cannot stay in love with someone who is no longer there.’

‘So you would wed?’ He reached out and prodded at the crack. A lump of plaster fell out, exposing rough stone beneath.

‘If I found someone who could live up to Lucas, and he loved me, then yes, perhaps.’
He would have to love me very much indeed
.
‘But I do not expect to be that fortunate twice in my life.’

‘I imagine that all your relatives say bracingly that of course you will find someone else if only you apply yourself.’

‘Exactly. You are beset with relatives also, by the sound of it.’

‘Just my mother and my grandfather.’

Which of those produced the rueful expression? she wondered. His mother, probably. He had described her as eccentric.

‘If this paragon does not materialise, what will you do then?’ Giles asked.

‘He does not have to be a paragon. I am not such a ninny as to expect to find one of those. They do not exist. I simply insist that I like him and he is neither a rakehell nor a prig and he does not mind that I have...a past.’

‘Paragons of manhood being fantastic beasts like wyverns and unicorns?’ That careless reference to her past seemed to have slipped his notice.

Isobel chuckled. ‘Exactly. I have decided that if no eligible gentleman makes me an offer I shall be an eccentric spinster or an Anglican nun. I incline towards the former option, for I enjoy my little luxuries.’

Giles laughed, a crow of laughter. ‘I should think so! You? A nun?’

‘I was speaking in jest.’ How attractive he was when he laughed, his handsome head thrown back, emphasising the strong line of his throat, the way his eyes crinkled in amusement. Isobel found herself smiling. Slowly she was beginning to see beyond the perfect looks and the outrageous tongue and catch glimpses of what might be the real man hiding behind them.

There was that suspicion about secrets again. What would he be hiding? Or was it simply that his faultless face made him more difficult to read than a plainer man might be? ‘I thought about a convent the other day when I was reflecting on just how unsatisfactory the male sex can be.’

‘We are?’ He was still amused, but, somehow he was not laughing at her, but sharing her whimsy.

‘You must know perfectly well how infuriating men are from a female point of view,’ Isobel said with severity, picking up the trailing skirts of her riding habit to keep them out of the thick dust as she went to examine one of the better-preserved panels more closely. Surely they could not all be so suggestive? It seemed they could. Was it possible that one could do that in a bath without drowning?

‘You have all the power and most of the fun in life,’ she said, dragging her attention back from the erotic scene. After a moment, when he did not deny it, she added, ‘Why is the thought of my being a nun so amusing?’

Giles’s mouth twitched, but he did not answer her, so she said the first thing that came into her head, flustered a little by the glint in his eyes. ‘I am amazed that the countess allows this room to be unlocked. What if the girls came in here?’

‘The whole building has been locked up for years. Lady Hardwicke told the children that they were not to disturb me here and I have no doubt that her word is law.’

‘I think it must be, although she is a very gentle dictator. So—will you recommend that the place is restored?’

‘I do not think so.’ Giles shook his head. ‘It was badly built in the first place and then neglected for too long. But I am working up the costing for the earl so he has a fair comparison to set against Repton’s ambitious schemes.’

‘But that would be such a pity—and you like the place, do you not?’

‘It is not my money. My job is to give the earl a professional opinion. I am not an amateur, Isobel. I am a professional, called in like the doctor or the lawyer to deliver the hard truths.’

‘But surely you are different? You are, after all, a gentleman—’

Giles turned on his heel and faced her, his expression mocking. ‘Do you recall what you called me when I kissed you?’

‘A...
bastard
,’ she faltered, ashamed. She should never had said it. It was a word she had never used in cold blood. A word she loathed.

‘And that is exactly, and precisely, what I am. Not a gentleman at all.’

‘But you are,’ Isobel protested. He was born out of wedlock? ‘You speak like a gentleman, you dress like one, your manner in society, your education—’

‘I was brought up as one, certainly,’ Giles agreed. He did not appear at all embarrassed about discussing his parentage. Isobel had never heard illegitimacy mentioned in anything but hushed whispers as a deep shame. How could he be so open about it? ‘But my father was a common soldier, my grandfather a head gardener.’

‘Then how on earth...? Oh.’ Light dawned. His
eccentric
mother. ‘Your mother?’ His mother had kept him. What courage that must have taken. What love. Isobel bit her lip.

‘My mother is the Dowager Marchioness of Faversham.’ Isobel felt her jaw drop and closed her mouth. An aristocratic lady openly keeping a love child? It was unheard of. ‘She scorns convention and gossip and the opinion of the world. She has gone her own way and she took her son with her.’ He strolled back into the large chamber and began to gather up the papers on the table.

‘Until you left university,’ Isobel stated, suddenly sure. A wealthy dowager would have the money and the power, perhaps, to insist on keeping her baby. Not everyone had that choice, she told herself. Sometimes there was none. ‘She did not want you to study a profession, did she?’ She made herself focus on the man in front of her and his situation. ‘That was when you went your own way.’

‘Perceptive of you. She expected me to enliven society, just as she does.’ He shrugged. ‘I am accepted widely—I know most of the men of my age from school and university, after all. I am not received at Court, of course, and not in the homes of the starchier matrons with marriageable girls on their hands.’

Isobel felt the colour mount in her cheeks. No wonder he was wary of female attention. If his mother was notorious, then he, with his looks, would be irresistible to the foolish girls who wanted adventure or a dangerous flirtation. Giles Harker was the most tempting kind of forbidden fruit.

‘Of course,’ she said steadily, determined not to be missish. ‘You are not at all eligible. I can quite see that might make for some...awkwardness at times. It will be difficult for you to find a suitable bride, I imagine.’

‘Again, you see very clearly. I cannot marry within society. If I wed the daughter of a Cit or some country squire, then she will not be accepted in the circles in which I am tolerated now. There is a careful balance to be struck in homes such as this—and I spend a lot of my time in aristocratic households. We all pretend I am a gentleman. A wife who is not from the same world will not fit in, will spoil the illusion.’