Free VIscount Besieged by Elizabeth Bailey Page A

heart’s
content.’
    ‘ I
shall do nothing of the kind,’ Harriet protested as they left the
little parlour together.
    ‘ Well, you need not refrain on my account,’ said Isadora
frankly. ‘For my part, I will be only too happy if you plague him
beyond bearing.’
    ‘ I
was thinking of his account rather than yours,’ retorted her
friend. ‘I would not be guilty of such a piece of presumption as to
question him about anything at all. I only hope you will not put me
to the blush by quarrelling with him in my presence.’
    ‘ Never fear,’ Isadora told her with mock-meekness. ‘I shall be
as good as gold—just for you. But if—’
    She broke off,
halting suddenly in the middle of the hallway. Harriet, almost
bumping into her, began to ask what was the matter.
    ‘ Hush!’ said Isadora urgently. Had she heard what she thought?
Voices in the library. Men’s voices. Yes, there they were
again.
    She saw by
Harriet’s face that she was hearing them too now. The low tones had
filtered through just as they were passing the library door on the
way to the main staircase. Creeping on tiptoe, Isadora sneaked
closer and put her ear to the woodwork, ignoring Harriet’s shocked
look.
    Yes, it was
Roborough and Thornbury. She could hear them clearly
now.
    ‘ You
are sure there is no alternative?’ the lawyer was saying. ‘It must
be the estate?’
    ‘ I’m
afraid a sale will prove inevitable.’ That was Roborough.
Apologetic, but determined. ‘Perhaps you could begin by putting out
some discreet feelers. I do not wish it generally known just yet
that the property is on the market.’
    He was going to
sell the estate! Isadora reeled in shock, moving away from the
fateful door without even being aware that she did so. He was going
to take their home from under them and pass it on to strangers. How
could he be so cruel?
    ‘ Dora, what is it?’
    Harriet’s
concerned tones brought her a little out of the oddly unreal
sensation she was experiencing, as if she were not actually
there.
    ‘ He
is going to sell,’ she said blankly.
    ‘ What ? What do you mean?’
    ‘ Roborough. He is going to sell the estate.’
    Harriet stared.
‘Sell this house?’
    ‘ Yes,
I tell you. He is just instructing Thornbury.’
    Without
thinking, she put her ear back to the door.
    ‘ Dora, for God’s sake,’ hissed Harriet.
    ‘ Hush!’ whispered Isadora again, for she had just heard her own
name spoken. What more? Great heavens, what more?
    ‘ You
have some query concerning Miss Alvescot, my lord?’ asked
Thornbury.
    ‘ It
is rather a delicate matter, Thornbury. I only wondered if there
might be a local suitor.’
    ‘ A
suitor?’ echoed the lawyer, evidently surprised.
    ‘ Yes.
Surely it is not a strange idea that Isadora could well be married
off in the near future?’
    Isadora,
listening behind the door, very nearly burst into the room on the
instant. Married off? Married off?
    ‘ So
that is what he intends, is it?’ she said aloud, her tone wrathful.
‘We’ll see about that.’
    But Harriet,
seeing her reach out towards the door-handle, seized her wrist and
began to run back the way they had come.
    ‘ Harriet, let me go!’
    But it was plain
that Harriet had taken fright, and nothing would do for her but to
bundle her friend back into the little parlour, shut the door
firmly—but quietly—and lean against it, half panting with
effort.
    ‘ Harriet, come away from that door!’
    ‘ No!’
    ‘ Harriet!’
    ‘ Dora, I know you. You will say dreadful things and this
Roborough of yours will be furious and your poor mama will be
distracted and everything will be terrible.’
    She ended this
rattling speech on a rising note that in itself gave Isadora pause.
But it did not assuage her fury. She swung away across the
parlour.
    ‘ That
man!’ she raged. Oh, but she would like to murder him with her bare
hands. ‘How dared he? How dared he?’
    Harriet relaxed
away from the door, though she remained in front of it, as if