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‘It is wonderful,’ Isobel agreed. Many families indulged in amateur dramatic performances, especially during house parties. She caught Giles’s eye and smiled: he looked appalled at the possibility of treading the boards.
‘Perhaps on another visit, Lizzie,’ the countess said. ‘I am writing another play, so perhaps we can act that one when it is finished.’
‘The post, my lord.’
‘And what a stack of it!’ The earl broke off a discussion with his son to view the laden salver his butler was proffering. ‘And I suppose you will say that all the business matters have already been dispatched to my office? Ah well, distribute it, if you please, Benson, and perhaps my pile will appear less forbidding.’
‘Feel free to read your correspondence,’ Lady Hardwicke said to her guests as her own and her daughters’ letters were laid by her plate.
After a few minutes Isobel glanced up from her mother’s recital of a very dull reception she had attended to see Giles working his way through half-a-dozen letters. He slit the seal on the last one and it seemed to her, as she watched him read, that his entire body tensed. But his face and voice were quite expressionless when he said, ‘Will you excuse me, Lady Hardwicke, ladies? There is something that requires my attention.’
Isobel returned to her own correspondence as he left the room. It was to be hoped that whatever it was did not mean he would have to miss their ride. She told herself it was not that important, that she could take a groom with her, that it was ridiculous to feel so concerned about it, but she found she could not deceive herself: she wanted to be alone with Giles again.
The earl departed to the steward’s office, Philip to his tutor and Cousin Elizabeth and Anne for a consultation with the dressmaker. Isobel followed behind them a little dreamily. Where would they ride this morning? Up to the folly and beyond, perhaps. Or—
‘Lady Isobel.’ Giles stepped out from the Yellow Drawing Room. ‘Will you come to the library?’
It was not a request; more, from his tone and his unsmiling face, an order. ‘I—’ A footman walked across the hallway and Isobel closed her lips on a sharp retort. Whatever the matter was, privacy was desirable. ‘Very well,’ she said coolly and followed him through the intervening chambers into the room that was one of the wonders of Wimpole Hall.
But the towering bookcases built decades ago to house Lord Harley’s fabled collection were no distraction from the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. Isobel could not imagine what had so affected Giles, but the anger was radiating from him like heat from smouldering coals.
‘What is this autocratic summons for?’ she demanded, attacking first as he turned to face her.
‘I should have trusted my first impressions,’ Giles said. He propped one shoulder against the high library ladder and studied her with the same expression in his eyes as they had held when he had caught her staring at him in the hall. ‘But you really are a very good little actress, are you not? Perhaps you should take part in one of her ladyship’s dramas after all.’
‘No. I am not a good actress,’ Isobel snapped.
‘But you are the slut who broke up Lady Penelope Albright’s betrothal. You do not deny that?’ he asked with dangerous calm.
When she did not answer Giles glanced down at the letter he held in his right hand. ‘Penelope is in a complete nervous collapse because you were found rutting with Andrew White. But I assume you do not care about her feelings?’
Isobel felt the blood ebbing from her cheeks. That foul slander…and Giles believed it. ‘Yes, I care for her distress,’ she said, holding her voice steady with an effort that hurt her throat. ‘And I am very sorry that she chose such a man to ally herself with. But you must forgive me if I care even more that Lord Andrew mauled and assaulted me, ruined my reputation and that very few people, even those who I thought were my friends, believe me.’
‘Oh, very nicely done! But you see, I have this from my very good friend James Albright, Penelope’s brother—and he does not lie.’
‘But he was not there, was he? He knows only what Penelope saw when she came into my room that night: four people engaged in a drunken romp. Only one of them, myself, was not willing and the other three—the men—were set on giving a stuck-up spinster a good lesson, a retaliation for snubbing their patronising flirtation.
‘That is the truth and if you have not the perception to know it when you hear it, then I am sorry, but there is nothing I can do.’ Isobel turned on her heel. One more minute and she was going to cry and she was damned if she would give Giles Harker the satisfaction of knowing he had reduced her to that. A fine friend he had turned out to be!
‘Who would believe such a tale?’ he scoffed as he caught her by the arm and spun her back to face him. ‘No one there did and they were on the spot.’
‘You think it improbable they would be deceived?’ Yes, after all there was something she could do, something to shake that smug male complacency.
‘Of course,’ Giles began as Isobel threw herself on his chest, the suddenness of it knocking him off balance back against a bookcase full of leather-bound volumes. ‘What the devil—’
As he tried to push her away she used the momentum of his own movement to swing around in his grip until she was pressed by his weight against the books, then she threw her arms around his neck, pulled his head down and kissed him hard, full on the mouth.
For a moment Giles resisted, then he opened his lips over hers and returned the kiss with a ruthless expertise that was shocking and, despite—or perhaps because of—her anger, deeply arousing. Isobel had been kissed passionately by her betrothed, but that was four years ago and she had loved him. The assault of Giles’s tongue, his teeth, the fierce plundering exploration, fuelled both anger and the long-buried desire that had been stirring with every encounter they had shared. When he lifted his head—more, she thought dizzily, to breathe than for any other reason—Isobel slapped him hard across the cheek.
‘Now, if someone comes in and I scream, what will they think?’ she panted. His face was so close to hers that she could feel his breath, hot on her mouth. ‘What will they have seen? Giles Harker, a rake on the edge of society, assaulting an innocent young lady who is struggling in his arms. Who will they believe? What if I tear my bodice and run out, calling for help? You would be damned, just as I was.
‘I do not have to justify myself to you. But I was sitting in my room, reading by the fireside in my nightgown, and three men burst in. I thought I could reason with them. I did not want a scandal, so I did not scream—and that was my mistake. And for that I am condemned by self-righteous hypocrites like you, Giles Harker. So now will you please let me go?’
For a long moment he stared down at her, then those gorgeous, sinful lips twisted. ‘Yes, I believe you, Isobel. I should never have doubted you.’
Kiss me again, a treacherous inner voice said. Listen to your body. You want him. ‘You called me a slut. You just kissed me as though I was one.’ She did not dare let go of her bitterness.
‘I believe you now.’ He looked at her, all the anger and heat gone from his face. ‘I am sorry I doubted you. Sorry I called you…No, we won’t repeat that word. But I am not certain I can be sorry for that kiss.’
