Louise Allen - Regency Rumours

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!

‘This is probably madness, but as we are here, it seems a pity to waste the moment.’ She realised too late that her hands were still on his shoulders and tried to pull herself away, but there was nowhere to go. He bent his head and took her mouth, all with one smooth, well-practised movement.

The last man to kiss her had been both drunk and clumsy. Harker was neither. His mouth was hot and demanding and sent messages straight to her belly, straight to her breasts, as though wires connected every nerve and he was playing with them. Panic at her own response threatened for a fleeting moment and then she got one hand free, twisting as she did so. The smack of her palm against the side of his face was intensely satisfying.

‘You…you bastard,’ she spat, the moment he lifted his head. The word seemed to rock him off balance. The green eyes darkened, widened and he pushed himself up and away from her. The wave of anger brought her to her feet, shoving against him for balance as she crashed out of the shrubs onto the path. ‘Is this revenge because I took you to task for your insulting words to Mr Soane last night? You arrogant, lustful, smug bastard!’ It was a word she never used, a word she loathed, but now she threw it at him like a weapon.

‘Cousin Isobel? Are you in the shrubbery?’ Lizzie’s voice sounded as though she was coming towards them.

‘Stay there,’ Isobel said fiercely, jabbing a finger at him. ‘Just you stay there.’ Harker straightened up, one hand rubbing his reddening cheek, his mouth twisted into a rueful smile. The mouth whose heat still seemed to burn her own.

Isobel turned on her heel and almost ran along the twisting path to meet the child. The tug of the ribbons at her throat stopped her in time to rescue her bonnet. She brushed leaf mould from her skirts, took a deep breath and stepped out onto the lawn.

‘Here I am. I went exploring.’ Somehow her voice sounded normal, if a little over-bright.

‘Oh, I expect you found the Water Castle. Castello d’Aqua , Mr Soane calls it. He had it built to supply the boiler when the plunge bath was put in, but it hasn’t been working very well.’ Lizzie chattered on as she led the way across the garden and out of the gate into the park. ‘Papa said the pressure was too low and the steward should call a plumber, but Mr Harker said he’d see if he could free up the valve, or something. I expect having a bath this morning reminded him.’

That must have been what he was doing in the bushes, not lying in wait for passing females to insult. Apparently he could manage to do that with no prior warning whatsoever.

They let themselves out of the iron garden gates and Lizzie led the way across the park that lay between the house and the hill surmounted by the folly tower. A small group of deer lifted their heads and watched them warily.

‘What a delightful park.’ Isobel kept her side of the conversation going while she forced her somewhat-shaky legs to keep up with Lizzie’s exuberant pace.

Harker had leapt to the most indecent conclusion about her motives—her desires, even. He had not let her get more than a word out, he had taken advantage of her in the most appalling way.

She had stood up to him last night—was this then to be her punishment? To be taken for a lightskirt? Or was this insult simply retaliation for her refusal to meekly treat him as wonderful? That made him no better than those wretched bucks who had invaded her bedroom and she realised that that was disappointing. Somehow, infuriating though he was, she had expected more of him.

She had responded to him, she thought, incurably honest, as she trudged in Lizzie’s exuberant wake through a gate and across a narrow brick bridge crossing a deep stock ditch. Had he realised? Of course he had—he was experienced, skilful and had slept with more women than she had owned pairs of silk stockings. So now she could add humiliation to the sensations that would course through her when she next saw Mr Harker and he, no doubt, would use it to torment her mercilessly for as long as the game amused him.

She toyed with the idea of telling Cousin Elizabeth, then realised that she did not come out of the incident well herself, not unless she was prepared to colour the encounter so she appeared a shrinking violet and he a ravisher.

‘See—is it not splendid?’ Lizzie gestured to the tower and ragged length of curtain wall that crowned the far hill. ‘But I think Papa should have Mr Soane build an entire castle. Or Mr Harker could do it. He is younger so perhaps he is more romantic. It would not be an extravagance, for all the gamekeepers and under-keepers could live in it, which would be a saving in cottages.’

‘Do you not think the keepers might find it uncomfortable?’ Isobel enquired as they took the winding sheep path down towards the sheet of water. She resisted the temptation to remark that, in her opinion, Mr Harker was as romantic as a ravaging Viking horde.

‘That had not occurred to me. You are very practical, Cousin Isobel.’ Practicality did not seem to appeal much to Lizzie. She frowned, but her brow cleared as the lake opened out in a shallow valley before them. A long narrow ribbon of water ran away to their right. Ahead and to the left was a smaller, wider lake.

‘When Mr Repton was here to do the landscaping he said we should have a ship’s mast on the bank of the lower lake.’

‘A rowing boat or a skiff, you mean?’

‘No, a proper big ship’s mast so the tops of the sails would be seen from the house and it would look as though there was an ocean here.’ Lizzie skipped down the somewhat muddy path. ‘Papa said it was an extravagant folly. But I think it would be magnificent! I liked Mr Repton, but Papa says he has expensive ideas, so Mr Sloan and Mr Harker have come instead. You see, there is a bridge here.’