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Perhaps she could become an Anglican nun. They did have them, she was sure, and it sounded safe and peaceful. A mental image of Mr Harker, laughing himself sick at the sight of her in a wimple, intruded. She would look ridiculous and she would be quite unsuited to the life. Besides, she would not be free to travel, to visit Jane and the children. An eccentric spinster then. She had enough money.
Only she did not want to be a spinster. She would rather like to fall in love again with a good man and marry. Her daydream stuttered to a halt: he would doubtless want children. But where did she find one she could trust with her heart and all that was most precious to her? And even if she did find this paragon, was he going to want her when he knew the truth about her?
CHAPTER FOUR
‘MORE COFFEE, COUSIN ISOBEL?’
‘Thank you, Lizzie.’ Her mind was going round in circles. Isobel forced herself into the present. ‘At what time shall we go for our walk?’
‘Shall I meet you in the garden at ten o’clock?’ the girl suggested. ‘I must explain to Miss Henderson, my governess, that I am going on an educational nature expedition with you.’
‘You are?’
‘There are the lakes—we will see all kinds of wild birds,’ Lizzie said with irrefutable logic. Isobel found herself experiencing a pang of sympathy for the unfortunate Miss Henderson.
A visit to Lady Hardwicke’s unusual semicircular sitting room, almost next to her own, reassured Isobel that her hostess did not require her assistance, and that Lizzie was permitted to escape from French conversation for one morning.
Isobel snuggled her pelisse warmly around herself as she stepped out into the garden that lay between the north front and the parkland. It wanted at least fifteen minutes until ten o’clock and there was no sign of Lizzie yet. The bleak, wintry formal beds held little attraction, but the shrubbery that lay to one side behind the service wing looked mysterious and worthy of exploration.
A glimpse of a small domed roof intrigued her enough to brave the dense foliage, still dripping on to the narrow paths after yesterday’s drizzle. The building, when she reached it down the twisting paths, was small, low and angular with an odd dome and no windows that she could see. It looked vaguely classical, but what its function might be, she had no idea. The gloomy shrubbery seemed an odd place for a summer house. Perhaps it was an ice house.
Isobel circled the building. Under her boots the leaf mould yielded damply, muffling her footsteps as she picked her way with caution, wary of slipping.
The sight of a pair of long legs protruding from the thick clump of laurel bush that masked the base of the structure brought her up short. The legs were visible from midthigh, clad in brown buckskin breeches. The polished boots, smeared with mud, were toes down—their owner must be lying on his stomach. As she stared there was a grunt from the depths of the bush—someone was in pain.
A keeper attacked by poachers? A gardener who had fainted? Isobel bent and pushed aside the branches with her hands. Even as she crouched down she realised that gamekeepers and gardeners did not wear boots of such quality. She slipped, landed with an ungainly thump, threw out a hand and found she was gripping one hard-muscled, leather-clad thigh.
‘Oh! Are you all right?’ The man was warm at least—perhaps he had not lain there very long. There did not seem to be any room to move away now she was crouched under the thick evergreen foliage.
The prone figure rolled over and she went with him in a tangle of thin branches to find herself flat on her back, her body pinned under the solid length of a man who was quite obviously neither fainting nor wounded, but very much in possession of his senses. All of them.
‘My dear Lady Isobel, have you come to assist me with the plumbing?’ Harker drawled as he looked down at her through the green-shadowed gloom. After a fraught moment he raised his weight off her and on to his elbows.
‘Plumbing?’ Isobel stared at him. ‘What on earth are you talking about? Let me go this—ouch!’
‘You are lying on a hammer,’ he explained. ‘If you will just move your shoulder a trifle…There. Is that more comfortable?’
‘No, it is not. Will you let me up this instant, Mr Harker!’
‘The ground is quite dry under these evergreens and you are lying on sacking.’ There was the hint of a smile tugging at one corner of those sculpted lips. ‘You are being very demanding—I really do not feel you can expect anything better if you will insist on an alfresco rendezvous with me in early February.’
Isobel tried to sit up and succeeded merely in pressing her bosom against his chest. Harker’s eyes darkened and the twitch of his lips became an appreciative smile. She fell back, opened her mouth to scream and then remembered Lizzie—the last thing she wanted was to frighten the child by bringing her to this scene.
Furious at her own powerlessness, she put up her hands and pushed against his shoulders. He did not shift. Isobel felt her breath become shorter. Oh, the humiliation—she was positively panting now and he doubtless thought it was with excitement. Even more mortifying was the realisation that he would be right—her instincts were responding and she was finding this exciting. This was her punishment for daydreaming about his body. The reality was just as deliciously hard and lean and—
‘Get off!’ She felt aroused, flustered and indignant, but she did not feel afraid, she realised as the green eyes studied her. ‘I have not the slightest intention nor desire of making a rendezvous with you, Mr Harker, inside or outside.’
‘Then whose thigh did you think you were fondling?’ he asked with every appearance of interest.
‘Fondling? How dare you! I lost my balance.’ The feel of those taut muscles under the leather was imprinted on her memory. ‘I thought a gardener had fainted, or hit his head, or a gamekeeper had been attacked by poachers or something.’ His body was warm and hard and seriously disturbing to a lady’s equilibrium, pressed against her just there…and the wretch knew it. He shifted slightly and smiled as she swallowed. Oh, yes, he was finding this very interesting. No doubt she should be flattered.
‘And there I was, thinking that the sight of me in my dressing gown was enough to lure young ladies into a damp shrubbery,’ Harker said. ‘I was, of course, about to decline what I assumed was your most flattering offer.’
‘Decline?’ She stared at him. That he could imagine for one moment that she had actually followed him there in order to…to…canoodle…Indignation became fury. ‘Why—?’
‘Why? Because well-bred virgins are far more trouble than they are worth.’
‘Oh!’ The insufferable arrogance of the man!
