Regency Rumours. Louise Allen

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      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

      ‘DINNER 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 СКАЧАТЬ