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‘WHAT THE DEVIL are you about?’ Giles planted himself squarely in the corridor to block his mother’s furious, impetuous path. She was quite capable of sweeping out into the ballroom on Isobel’s heels and continuing this scene there.
‘You fool,’ she snapped at him, eyes flashing. ‘You aren’t content with having your face ruined for the sake of that little madam, but now you are getting yourself entangled with her. She’ll be the ruin of you! She’s an earl’s daughter—Bythorn won’t stand for it and he has influence.’
‘And he never slept with you, so you can’t play that card,’ Giles drawled, hanging on to his temper by a hair’s breadth. ‘I am not entangled with Isobel Jarvis—’
‘Hah!’
‘We were merely continuing an argument.’
‘An argument? I have heard it called many things, Giles, but never that!’
‘I am not having an affair with the girl.’
‘No,’ the Widow said grimly. ‘You fancy yourself in love with her.’
‘I am not in love with her. I am considering strangling her.’
‘Listen to me! I have found you the perfect wife, Giles,’ she said as he turned on his heel.
‘Really?’ he threw back over his shoulder. ‘Some plain daughter of a Cit?’
‘No. Caroline Holt, the daughter of Sir Joshua Holt.’
‘And what is wrong with her? Or the family, that they should consider allying themselves with us?’
‘There is absolutely nothing wrong with Miss Holt who is tolerably pretty, intelligent and twenty-three years old. What is wrong with her father is a series of investments that have gone badly wrong, an estate mortgaged to the hilt and four unmarried daughters on his hands.’
Giles turned round fully to face his mother. ‘So Caroline is the sacrificial lamb. You buy her for me, Holt pays off the debts and the other girls can enter the Marriage Mart with some hope of attracting respectable husbands. Provided they aren’t seen with their brother-in law, that is.’
‘Exactly. And you get a well-bred wife who will be grateful for all we have done for her family.’
‘How did you find her?’ he asked even as he wondered how he was managing to keep his temper, and the urge to storm into the ballroom and drag Isobel out of it, under control.
‘I have excellent enquiry agents.’
Of course, Geraldine had always prided herself on being able to find out anything about anyone. It was how she made such good choices in her lovers, avoided blackmailers, kept away from men with wives who had connections that would be dangerous to her and always found the right place to invest her money.
‘I hope you have not made the Holts any promises.’ His body was throbbing with frustrated desire. He felt as though he had been kicked in the gut and he had an overwhelming need to break something. ‘Because I am not marrying the girl, for which she should be profoundly grateful. I have told you before, there is nothing you can buy me, least of all a wife.’
A dismissive flick of Geraldine’s hand was all the acknowledgement she gave that she had heard him. ‘Caroline Holt is not going anywhere far from her home in the wilds of Suffolk,’ the Widow said with a thin smile. ‘She will wait until you come to your senses about the Jervis chit.’
‘My senses are perfectly in order, ma’am. My refusal to marry Miss Holt has nothing to do with Lady Isobel.’
‘Liar!’ she threw at him. ‘She ruined your looks and yet you lust after her like a—’
‘Mother,’ Giles said. It stopped her in midrant. He never called her that unless he was deeply angered and she knew it. ‘I have it on good authority that a broken nose and a couple of scars gives me an interesting air of danger. Really, I should thank Lady Isobel.’
The Widow took a deep breath. ‘I would sacrifice everything for you, Giles. I would do anything to ensure your future.’
It was guilt, he knew, although she would never admit it, or probably even recognise it. Her actions had made him a bastard—now she would fight tooth and nail to force society to accept him.
‘I can look after my own future,’ he said, not unkindly. He hated it when her voice shook like that. ‘Society accepts me for who I am and I make my own way in it. Go back to Carstairs and stop plotting: I’ll not ha
ve Lady Isobel insulted.’ Knowing Jack Carstairs, her current youthful lover, he would be scouring the house trying to discover where Geraldine had got to, well aware that he would probably have to extricate her from some scrape or another when he did find her.
Giles walked away with the firm intention of getting drunk. Behind him he thought he heard Geraldine repeat, ‘Anything,’ but he was not certain. Besides, there was no need to worry—there was nothing that she could do to harm Isobel. He was her only dark secret and Geraldine would not risk involving him in further scandal.
‘Who is your letter from, Isobel?’ Lady Bythorn glanced up from her own correspondence. ‘You’ve been staring at the same page for minutes. Is the handwriting bad?’
