Louise Allen (22 page)

It seemed that to deny love, the emotion he had never believed he could feel, required as much courage and resolution as facing a fellow duellist. The pain certainly lasted longer, bad enough to force him to admit that the emotion was true and would never leave him. He loved her. He could admit it now he was no longer a danger to her, now he would never see her again, except, perhaps, across a crowded ballroom.

He wanted to write to her, tell her how he felt, tell her why this was so impossible. He wrote the letters every night and every morning burned them. How long was it going to be before he could shake off this sensation that without her he was merely a hollow shell, going through the actions of life? Or perhaps he never would be free of it. Perhaps the heart could not heal as the body did.

But doing the honourable thing, the right thing, was never going to be easy. He was not a gentleman, but, for Isobel’s sake, he was going to behave like one. He could cope with physical pain, he just had to learn to deal with mental torment, too, or go mad.

A ripple of water splashed his face and his floating body rocked. Someone else had got into the pool. Lord Hardwicke or young Philip, he supposed, opening his eyes and staring up at the vault of the ceiling, wishing they would go away. The other bather said nothing. Giles raised his head and saw something on the curving edge at the end of the pool.

A small black-and-white puppy was sitting on its haunches watching him. Its tongue lolled out, its tail thrashed back and forth—it was obviously delighted to see him. A long blue leash curled onto the damp brown marble where it had been dropped.

Giles surged to his feet, turned and found Isobel, as naked as a water nymph, her wet hair on her shoulders, standing behind him.

‘Isobel.’ She smiled, that warm, open trusting smile. ‘No! No, go away, damn it! I do not want you.’ And he turned to forge his way through the water to the steps.

Chapter Twenty-Two

‘G
iles.’ Her voice stopped him for a second, two, three, then he summoned up all his will and began to walk away again. ‘Giles. Please. If you feel anything at all for me, answer one question.’

He should keep going, deny his feelings for her sake, but he found he could not lie to her. ‘What is it?’ He did not turn around: to see her face, those wide eyes, would be too much to bear.

‘If you had not only my father’s agreement, but his blessing, his public acceptance, would you marry me?’

‘If wishes were horses, beggars might ride,’ he said, still looking at the steps that rose out of the water, then twisted steeply to the changing area. Escape. His voice was choked in his throat.

‘It is not a wish, it is a fact.’

It could not be. It was impossible. He was dreaming.

‘Giles,’ the voice from his dreams persisted, ‘I wish you would turn around. I am trying to propose to you and it is very difficult talking to the back of your head.’

That brought him round in a spin that created waves. The puppy retreated with a yap of alarm as water sloshed over the sides. The naked nymph was still there, her wet hair almost black, plastered over the curves of her breast. Not a dream, not an hallucination. The real woman.

‘Isobel...’ He sank his pride and tried an appeal. ‘This is not fair. Not to you, not to me, to pretend this is possible.’

‘I have only ever lied to you to protect my daughter,’ she said, her gaze locked with his. ‘I swear on her life that I am not lying to you now. I am not delusional. My father accepts I will marry no one else, ever. I told my parents all about Annabelle, you see, so finally they understand. And once my father thought about it, once he began to hear about you from other people, he realised that he respected you.’

She made no move to come closer to him, only waited patiently, watching his face as he worked painfully through what she was telling him. ‘You told them about Annabelle—risked that, for me?’

‘No.’ She shook her head, painfully honest as ever. ‘But it is because of you that I told them. You made me think about trust and honour and what I was withholding from them because I dared not take a chance on their love. So I told them. It was later that I realised that, now they have given up all hope of me making a conventional match, they might consent if they thought you would make me happy.’

‘There is a lesson for me in that, you do not have to spell it out,’ Giles said.
Trust and the withholding of love
. He had not trusted her to be strong enough to cope with his impossible love as well as her own. ‘I thought I was doing the right thing, making the right sacrifice.’

‘So it was a sacrifice?’ For the first time he saw her fear and her uncertainty in the wide grey eyes and the way she had caught her lower lip between her teeth.

Still the words would not come. How could he risk her regretting it as soon as the knot was tied? So much of her life that she took completely for granted would be lost to her. But if Isobel could trust him, then he must trust her. ‘Yes, it was a sacrifice,’ Giles admitted.

Her smile was radiant. ‘Oh, thank goodness.’ It was an ungainly business, splashing towards each other through water that was more than waist-deep. Giles found he was laughing when he finally had Isobel in his arms and so was she, and crying, and the puppy was yapping.

‘This is so bizarre it has to be true,’ Giles said, his arms full of wet woman. His pulse was racing, he felt dizzy. ‘I thought I was dreaming. How on earth did you get here?’

‘Never mind that! Will you marry me?’ Isobel demanded, her arms twined round his waist.

‘Are you sure?’ This time he knew she saw his hesitation clearly, realised he had not said those words that mattered to her so much.

‘Not if you are not.’ All the animation drained away, leaving her naked and vulnerable. ‘I am sorry if I misunderstood. I thought it was only the fear of scandal that stopped you and if that was no longer there, it would be all right.’ Isobel pushed away from him and splashed to the steps. She climbed out, dripping and naked, the puppy gambolling around her feet until it sensed her unhappiness and crouched, whining.

‘Isobel!’ Giles took three long strokes and climbed the steps beside her. ‘You do not realise what it would mean to be married to me.’ He caught her, blocked her escape up the narrow twist of steps that led to the changing area.

‘You are used to a great house, a London home, dozens of servants. You are received at Court, you are invited to the most fashionable functions.

‘I cannot give you that. You won’t be received at Court any longer, there will be people who will snub us, my country home is a tenth the size of this and if we want to live in London we must rent, at least at first. I don’t own a carriage. I—’

‘Is that all?’ she demanded. ‘What do you think I want, Giles?’ When he just stood and looked at her, she prodded him in the ribs.

‘Me?’ Isobel nodded. ‘Our children?’ Another nod.

‘That is all and that is everything. I have a perfectly good dowry which will keep me in all the fashionable frivolity I want—if I want it. The rest can go to the children if you are too stiff-necked to take it to buy a town house or a carriage or whatever you want to improve the estate.’

‘Truly?’

‘Truly. Now, tell me why you will not marry me, because the only reason that I am prepared to accept is that you do not love me.’

It was like shackles breaking or a dam bursting inside. There was only one thing between him and having the woman he loved and that was his stubborn fear of believing what Isobel was telling him.

Giles took a deep breath. ‘I love you.’ He found he was grinning. ‘I love you. I never thought I would be able to say it to you.’ He picked her up, slippery as a fish, and started to climb as she wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face against him. Apparently his love had run out of words.

Giles stood her on her feet when they reached the little changing room. His brocade robe hung neatly on one of the hooks on the wall that was warmed by the boiler. His slippers equally tidy below. ‘My dear love,’ he said mildly as he surveyed the scattered feminine clothing that strewed the floor. ‘Am I to expect our home to be in this much of a muddle?’

‘I was in a hurry,’ Isobel said with dignity. She ran her hands over his body. ‘I still am. You love me,’ she murmured, as if she could still not quite believe it.

Giles caught her wrists as her fingers descended lower. ‘And I will prove it to you. But I refuse to make love to you on the floor.’
Not here and not now, anyway
.
There was a large bearskin rug in front of his dressing-room fire at home that had fed a particularly delicious and tormenting fantasy about Isobel.

‘In my bedchamber, then. Or yours?’

‘Neither.’ Reluctantly he let her go and pulled on his robe, stuffed his feet into his slippers. There was something respectable about slippers. Wicked rakes did not make passionate love in slippers.

‘Why not? You want me.’ She slanted a look that was pure provocation from beneath her wet lashes.

‘Of course I want you, you witch. I love you. But I am going to marry you.’
Marry you
. He repeated the words in his head, trying to convince himself that this was really going to happen. ‘So I am going to do this properly. Respectably.’ Isobel opened her mouth to protest. ‘I am going to go and get dressed. So are you and you will then find Lady Hardwicke.

‘I will ask the earl if he can spare me for a few days. We will drive back to London, in separate chaises, where I will formally ask your father for your hand. We will then proceed to do whatever it is that respectable people do for the duration of a respectable betrothal before they are respectably married.’

‘Giles, that will take
weeks
.’ Isobel rescued a stocking from the puppy and began to pull it on. Giles studied the way the walls had been painted with minute attention while the rustling and flapping of her dressing went on.

‘Precisely. Our wedding is going to be the exact opposite of an elopement.’

‘I am dressed. You may stop looking at the architraves or whatever it is you are pretending such interest in.’

‘Soffits,’ he said vaguely. ‘God, you are beautiful.’

‘No, I am not. I am—’

‘Beautiful. I love you.’

‘Then kiss me, Giles. You haven’t kissed me since you told me you loved me.’

‘Not here.’ He watched as she wrapped her wet hair into a towel. ‘I will walk you to your room and I will kiss you at your door because I cannot trust myself to touch you here.’ He looked down. ‘Why is there a puppy chewing my slipper?’

‘It is the same one from the farmyard. You gave her to me to hold. She is the only thing you ever gave me—except my life and my honour and a broken heart—so I had to keep her.’

‘Oh, hell,’ he said, appalled to find his vision blurring. ‘Come here.’

Isobel melted into his arms and Giles wondered why he had not realised from the first moment that he touched her that this was where she belonged. Her body was slender and strong in his embrace and her mouth hesitant, soft, as though she was shy and this was the first time.

So he kissed her as though it was, as though this was new for both of them. And it was true, he realised, because this was love and he had never loved before. So he did not demand or plunder, only explored and tasted gently, leisurely, until she was sighing, melting in his arms and he realised that he was more simply happy than he had ever been in his life.

* * *

‘What was your favourite thing about the wedding breakfast?’ Giles asked Isobel as she curled up against him on the wide and opulent seat of the carriage that had been his mother’s wedding present to them.

‘My father plotting a new shrubbery with your grandfather’s advice and your mother and mine circling each other like wary cats and then deciding their mutual curiosity about each other’s gowns was too much to resist. I have to say, it does help that Papa never had an affaire with her. Did you notice Pamela Monsom’s father dodging about the room to avoid her? Pamela is convinced there was something between them.’

‘Oh, Lord,’ Giles groaned.

‘It doesn’t matter. Or rather, it does to Lady Monsom, of course, but we can’t help that now. I like your mama—she says what she thinks and she is very kind to me now she doesn’t regard me as a menace to your well-being.’

‘She has had eight weeks to get used to the fact,’ Giles said.

‘And we have had eight weeks of blameless respectability.’ She snuggled closer and nibbled his earlobe.

‘I am not going to make love to you in the carriage,’ he ground out. ‘There is a big bed waiting for us. After that you may assault me where and when you please.’ She curled her tongue-tip into his ear. ‘Within reason!’

‘Very well.’ With an effort Isobel stopped teasing him, sat back and watched the countryside rolling past in the sunshine of the late afternoon. ‘Wasn’t Annabelle lovely? The children were so well behaved. I am so glad Jane brought them down.’

‘We will have them to stay whenever she can come,’ Giles promised. Isobel had watched him, seen how he was with both the children, how careful he was not to single Annabelle out. He would make a wonderful father.

‘We are here.’

She craned to look at the grounds as they rolled up the carriage drive. The house when they reached it was perfect, the brick and dressed stone still crisp with newness, but the garden already embraced it, softened it. ‘I love it,’ she said and felt his pleasure at hers. ‘Where is the room with the big bed?’

‘At the back, overlooking the lake. Don’t you want to eat first?’

‘No, I want to make love,’ she whispered in his ear as he swung her down from the carriage. ‘Where is everyone?’

‘I told them you would meet them in the morning. You see, I guessed you might want to inspect the bedchamber first—there should be a cold meal laid out.’

The front door opened as if by magic as he swept her up into his arms and carried her up the steps, but there was no one to be seen in the hall with its wide staircase. Giles carried on up to the first floor to where double doors stood open on to a room decorated all in palest grey and in blue silk with a wide Venetian window framing the landscape and, as he had promised her, a very big bed.

‘Lady Isobel Harker,’ Giles said as he set her on her feet. ‘There is something in the marriage service about worshipping you with my body and I take promises very seriously.’

‘I hope so, Mr Harker,’ she murmured as he began to unfasten her gown. Silk and lawn whispered to the ground, her stays followed with a facility that she would tease him about later. But now this felt too important for levity, only for deep happiness.

Giles carried her to the bed and stripped off his own clothing. ‘I have never seen you without all those bruises,’ she murmured, running her hands over the flat planes of his chest, the ridged muscle of his stomach. ‘I was too nervous to notice in the pool that they had gone.’

He lowered himself over her, his scarred cheek resting next to her smooth one and she twisted so she could kiss it, then his nose with its new bump.

‘I love you,’ he told her as his hands began to caress her. Every time he said the words it seemed to her that it was never just a phrase. Each time he seemed to find it wonderful and new, a surprise to love and be loved.

‘Show me,’ she whispered back, curling her legs around his waist, cradling him between her thighs where she had wanted him for so long.

‘Eight weeks of respectability is all very well,’ Giles said, his voice husky. ‘But it makes a man very, very impatient.’

‘So am I,’ Isobel told him, and lifted her hips to press against him, took his mouth and thrust with her tongue to tell him it was all right to be urgent, to take her. It had been a long time since Lucas, but for all his scarce-controlled desire Giles was gentle. She opened to him when he entered her, as he slid home deep and sure to make her his, and then she lost every trace of apprehension in the heat and the joy of their merging and the pleasure that he spun out of caresses and kisses to send her wild and desperate for release.