Regency Rumours Read Online Free PDF Page B

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 not feel that any good will be served by rehearsing the reason you hold such… ill-judged opinions.’ Giles took a firm grip on his knife and resisted the urge to retaliate. He had been in the wrong—not to feel what he did, but to risk saying it where he might be overheard. Now he must give his head for a washing. He braced himself for her next barb. ‘You were telling me about your house.’
    Excellent tactics , he thought grimly. Get me off balance while you work out how to knife me again . ‘My house is situated on a small estate in Norfolk. My paternal grandfather lives there and manages it for me in my absence.’ It was also close enough for him to keep an eye on his mother on those occasions she descended on the Dower House of Westley Hall for one of her outrageous parties, causing acute annoyance and embarrassment to the current marquess and his wife and scandalised interest in the village. When she was in one of her wild moods he was the only person who could manage her.
    ‘Your father—’
    ‘He died before I was born.’ It had taken some persuasion to extract his grandfather from the head gardener’s cottage at Westley and persuade him that he would not be a laughing stock if he took up residence in his grandson’s new country house. ‘My grandfather lives with me. His health is not as robust as it once was.’ Stubborn old Joe had resisted every inch of the way, despite being racked with rheumatism and pains in his back from years of manual labour. But now he had turned himself into a country squire of the old-fashioned kind, despite grumbling about rattling around in a house with ten bedchambers. Thinking about the old man relaxed him a little.
    ‘How pleasant for you,’ Lady Isobel said, acceptinga slice of salmon tart. ‘I wish I had known my grandfathers. And does your mama reside with you?’
    ‘She lives independently. Very independently.’ Things were relatively stable at the moment: his mother had a lover who was a year older than Giles. Friends thought he should be embarrassed by this liaison, but Giles was merely grateful that Jack had the knack of keeping her happy even if he had not a hope of restraining her wilder starts. To give the man his due, he did try.
    ‘She is a trifle eccentric, perhaps?’
    ‘Yes, I think you could say that,’ Giles agreed. How quickly Lady Isobel picked up the undertones in what he said—No wonder she was able to slip under his guard with such ease when she chose.
    ‘My goodness, you look almost human when you grin, Mr Harker.’ She produced a sweet smile and turned to join in the discussion about the Irish language the earl was having with his eldest daughter.
    You little cat! Giles almost said it out loud.
    He had succeeded—far more brutally than he had intended—in ensuring he was not going to be fending off a hand on his thigh under the dinner table, or finding an unwelcome guest in his bedchamber, but at the expense of making an enemy of a close friend of the family. Now he had to maintain an appearance of civility so the Yorkes did not notice anythingamiss. He could do without this—the tasks he had accepted to help Soane were going to be as nothing compared with the challenge of keeping his hands from Lady Isobel’s slender throat if she continued to be quite so provocative.
    She was idly sliding her fingers up and down the stem of her wine glass as she talked. The provocation was not simply to his temper, he feared.
    Giles took a reviving sip of wine and listened to young Lizzie lecturing John Soane on the embellishments she considered would make the castle folly on the distant hill even more romantic than it already was.
    That was one possibility, of course: wall up Lady Isobel in the tower and leave her for some knight in shining armour to rescue. Which was a very amusing thought, if it were not for the fact that he