Unlacing Lady Thea

‘Wake up, Thea,’ he murmured into her ear.

She stirred and then, without saying anything, wriggled round in his arms and kissed him, finding his mouth, it seemed, by blind instinct.

Rhys fought the urge to follow where that kiss was leading. He lifted his head. ‘Sweetheart, I have to go.’

‘Not yet.’

Her hand slipped down between their bodies and Rhys groaned. Four warm fingers and an erotically enterprising thumb closed around his erection. ‘Thea, if I don’t go out of the door now it will be the balconies later.’

That worked. Thea rolled away. ‘You are not risking breaking your neck again.’ She slid out of bed, groped her way across to the shutters and opened them, letting in the faint grey light of dawn to bathe her unashamed nakedness. ‘Brrr. It is cold out here.’

‘Then get back into bed.’ Rhys winced as his feet hit chilly boards, but he pulled on his breeches and found his shirt as briskly as he could, trying not to look at the pale dawn ghost that was Thea as she flitted about the room setting things to rights. ‘Or put on your robe and slippers.’

To his secret disappointment she pulled her nightgown over her head. ‘I’ll get back into bed when you have gone,’ she promised. When he padded over to join her by the door she put her head on one side and laughed, clapped her hand over her mouth to stifle the sound and stood there, eyes twinkling at him.

‘What?’ He knew he sounded grumpy with the sheer effort of not throwing her back onto the bed and having his way with her.

‘You look like a tomcat going home after a very wild night on the tiles,’ Thea said, and reached up to stroke his hair into some kind of order.

‘Well, and so I am.’

‘At least you did not yowl at the moon.’

‘Oh, I did,’ Rhys said with a grin and bent to brush his lips over hers. ‘Inside I was making enough noise to have every boot in the neighbourhood thrown at me.’ He eased the door open and checked the corridor, then slid outside and shut the door before she could reply and make him laugh even more than he was tempted to do now. Tomcat, indeed!

He reached his room without so much as seeing a sleepy-eyed boot boy. What would be heaven, of course, would be a wife for duty and Thea for fun. And passion. And something else he could not quite put his finger on. Friendship, he supposed.

Rhys threw off his much-abused clothing and got between his own chilly sheets. The bed needed to look slept in, so somehow he was going to have to try to sleep.

Chapter Fifteen

Thea shook out the bedding to remove any betraying jet-black hairs, remade the bed then got in to toss and turn it into a convincing state. That took ten minutes in all. After a further two hours tossing and turning she sat up and ran her hands through her tangled hair in exasperation.

What idiocy had made her think that one night in Rhys’s arms would be enough, that she could keep the memory like a pressed flower in an album to be taken out and sighed over in pleasant reminiscence? All she had achieved was to make her long for him more, with the added torment of now knowing exactly what she would be missing every night for the rest of her life.

And he will be married to his dull, respectable wife and it will be positively sinful of me to feel jealous of her. Why did I assure him one night would be enough and that I would not ask for more?

It was all very well and good being undemanding and honourable and doing everything to make him not feel he was under any kind of obligation but... No, she had been right. The only thing worse than not having Rhys in her bed would be him being there, but knowing it was out of pity.

There was a faint scratching at the door. ‘My lady? Are you awake?’

Thea opened the door to find Polly beaming with good humour. ‘Would you like your breakfast in your room, my lady?’ She came in and flung the shutters open. ‘What a glorious morning it is! We don’t get sunshine like this in London, that’s for sure.’

‘Breakfast here would be excellent, thank you, Polly.’ And would have the advantage of giving her some time before she had to face Rhys under Giles’s perceptive eye. Possibly she could manage not to blush like a peony when she was dressed.

‘Not that it’s much like a proper breakfast. The food’s all right over here—better than I thought it’d be—but there’s nothing to set a body up for the day in those mimsy little pastries, now is there?’

After countless breakfasts with her father demolishing bloody beefsteaks and fried eggs, Thea was grateful for chocolate and croissants and some fresh fruit. ‘It suits me very well,’ she said. ‘I’ll have my washing water first, though.’

‘You’ve had a restless night,’ Polly observed, flapping the bed into some sort of order as she passed it. ‘And you’ve put your foot right through the bottom of this sheet, my lady.’

‘Oh, dear. I must make sure it is added to the accounting.’ She escaped behind the screen to hide her scarlet cheeks. That must have been Rhys.

* * *

‘Did you have a pleasant evening at the fair?’ she asked when, washed, dressed and feeling rather more composed, she sat down at the little table on the balcony. It was a miracle that Rhys hadn’t managed to demolish that on his way to her room.

‘It was lovely, my lady. I bought ever such a pretty lace trim for my Sunday best and a handkerchief and some soap. And there were swings and jugglers and a fortune teller.’

‘And did you have your fortune told?’

‘John...Mr Hodge, I should say, teased me until I did. But he had to come in with me or I wouldn’t have been able to understand a word!’

‘Sit down and tell me what your fortune is to be,’ Thea urged.

‘Ooh, my lady, thank you. Well, I’m to meet a dark man with grey eyes who is good with his hands and much travelled and we’ll fall in love and live happily ever after and have three children. What do you think of that, my lady?’

‘That possibly it was being translated by a dark man with grey eyes?’ Thea teased.

‘Could be, my lady.’ Polly’s pink cheeks dimpled into a smile. ‘Not that I mind him taking an interest, mind you.’

‘You will be careful, won’t you, Polly?’ And who am I to lecture? ‘I’m sure if anything should... Well, you know what I mean. I am certain his lordship would insist on Hodge marrying you, but it isn’t the way you’d want to start married life, is it?’

‘Don’t you worry, my lady,’ Polly said. ‘I don’t believe in letting a man take liberties. A girl loses all her mystery if she does that, my sister Bethan says. You give them what they wants and then they don’t want it anymore, she says. And she landed herself an attorney’s clerk! A little kiss is all John Hodge is getting until I’ve got a ring on my finger.’

‘Very wise,’ Thea said as her stomach took an unpleasant swoop downwards. Is that what would happen now? Perhaps she had only been a novelty for Rhys, and the attraction he had felt for her would evaporate now there was no mystery about the woman she had grown up to be. Perhaps, in the cold light of day, he would think less of her, believe her wanton. No, surely Rhys would not be that hypocritical.

‘Is your sister’s a happy marriage?’ she asked, and stirred another spoonful of sugar into her chocolate for courage.

Polly shrugged. ‘There’s money enough and he’s kind to her and the kiddies are healthy. I’d not be surprised if he doesn’t stray now and again, if you take my meaning.’

‘So it wasn’t a love match?’

‘No. Our Bethan’s got her head on the right way round. She set out to catch the best man she could, provided she liked him well enough.’

Love matches would be different, Thea told herself. If a man loved a woman he would not think worse of her the next day if she slept with him. But Rhys does not love me, not that way. All the warm, happy, sensual glow that had been with her since Rhys’s departure ebbed away, leaving her apprehensive and shaken.

What did I think, deep down, was going to happen? she asked herself. That Rhys was going to wake after a night in my arms and realise he loved me passionately? She hoped that was not the case. At least expressing desire frankly was the sort of thing an independent adult woman might do, but to daydream about fairy-tale endings was uncomfortably like her youthful yearnings.

‘Shall I lay out your green walking dress, my lady?’ She had been so deep in her troubled thoughts that Polly had already found her clean linen and was standing waiting to help her with her stays.

‘Yes, please.’ Another day in the chaise with either Giles and his uncomfortably perceptive gaze for company, or the agony of being with Rhys, on public display and unable to touch him, let alone ask how he felt about her now. ‘No, put that back, Polly. I have an idea.’

* * *

‘Are you riding today, Denham?’ Benton pushed back his chair from the breakfast table and stood up.

‘Hmm?’ Rhys yanked his thoughts back from their review of last night’s delights. ‘Riding? Yes, I thought I would.’ Thea might need a while to feel comfortable alone with him, and he could well do without the strain of sitting next to her in the chaise, unable to do any of the things that he would find himself aching for.