‘Thank you,’ Thea said and rose to her feet. ‘I am truly grateful for the care you took of me. No, please don’t get up. I must go and ring for a bath or I will ache all over tomorrow!’ That was really a very convincing little laugh, she congratulated herself as she left the room. It was strange how tired she felt, but that was due to spending the day in the saddle, no doubt. And she felt queasy. But that was an incautious indulgence in nougat.
Bother the dust, it seemed to have got everywhere, even into her eyes. Thea stopped outside her own bedchamber door and groped for a handkerchief to catch the solitary tear as it began to trickle down her face.
Stop it, she told herself. You had one night of complete bliss, you slept in his arms, you will remember it always. Now have some pride or he will guess you are within a hair’s breadth of going on your knees and begging him to make love to you again.
Thea scrubbed at her face, forced a cheerful expression onto her face and pushed open the door. ‘I absolutely must have a bath, Polly, or I will be as stiff as a board in the morning.’
Chapter Sixteen
At least Giles had not noticed anything amiss, Thea thought as she shaded her eyes against the bright morning sunlight and listened to him expounding on the history of the Arc de Triomphe. Rhys appeared to be genuinely engrossed. And why should he not be? she chided herself. He is an intelligent and cultured man, and to view sites such as this is one of the reasons a gentleman embarks on the Grand Tour.
‘It was built to commemorate the conquest of the Gauls by Julius Caesar,’ Giles explained. ‘The detail shows his superiority in both land and sea warfare, as you can see from the anchors and ropes here and the prisoners on the other side of the arch.’
Thea told herself to stop moping and take an interest. ‘Through here?’ She walked into the shade of the massive central arch.
‘They are in a state of nature,’ Giles called after her. ‘You may not wish—’
Having seen Rhys in such a state she was hardly likely to be outraged. ‘I am certain the cultural and historical significance outweighs any scruples of that kind,’ Thea said, and wondered if she had caught the fleeting glimpse of a smile on Rhys’s lips.
She studied the battered carvings with a purely intellectual interest, she assured herself, although it was hard not to reflect how much more beautiful Rhys’s body was than anything the sculptor had depicted.
When she strolled back to the other side both he and Giles had pocket sketchbooks in their hands. ‘May I see?’ Rhys sketching? ‘But these are very good! I had no idea you could draw.’
‘I took it up at Oxford. There was a group of us who were interested. It made a focus for walking holidays. I am competent, that is all. Benton has a much surer touch.’
Giles handed her his book readily. He had obviously studied more than Rhys and the standard was more than amateur, but somehow it seemed academic and lacking in the life that Rhys’s rapid sketches held.
‘You have a real talent,’ she praised.
‘Thank you.’ Giles smiled diffidently. ‘You should join us. We could acquire some watercolours and we could all work together.’
‘Me?’ Thea laughed. ‘I cannot draw, let alone paint in watercolour.’
‘You are too modest! I thought all young ladies learned as a matter of course.’
‘Thea turned her drawing master grey,’ Rhys remarked. ‘Our godmother always engaged one for the summer when we stayed with her. He would have a gaggle of intense young ladies around him like a duck with ducklings—and Thea would be out in the middle of the lake in the rowing boat or up a tree or persuading the grooms to let her try out every horse in the stables.’
‘You sound disapproving. You always encouraged me at the time.’
‘I was no more sensible than you were,’ Rhys said with something of a snap. ‘Or should I say that boys have no concept of the attributes a young lady needs to acquire to fit herself for her future role in life.’
That was clear enough, Thea thought as she handed his sketchbook back to Giles with a smile that seemed to be frozen on her lips. I was fun to play with when I was a tomboy—now I am a hoyden, unfit for a respectable marriage.
‘I have saved the best until last,’ Giles remarked as he slid the book into the pocket in his coat-tails. ‘We have seen the cathedral and the arch, now it is time for the Roman theatre. We must walk back through the old town, but it is not far.’
He offered his arm to Thea, who listened with only half an ear to his explanation that the hill in front of them was the old castle of the princes of Orange. Behind her she was conscious of Rhys’s footsteps on the cobbled pathway and imagined his eyes on her back. Imagined his thoughts and, worse, his regrets.
Even so, the sight of the theatre stopped her in her tracks and knocked any other thoughts from her head. Battered red sandstone towered up like a cliff face, pigeons wheeling across its facade from the niches and cracks that studded it.
Giles was talking about the emperor Augustus and ten thousand spectators and something about acoustics, but she was still gawking at it and hardly listened as he led them inside.
‘If you climb the steps to the seats at the back, we can try the sound,’ he said with enthusiasm, urging Thea and Rhys forward across the semicircular area. ‘Be careful, the stone is very worn.’
‘We had better do what our tutor tells us,’ Rhys remarked, low voiced. ‘Give me your hand—these are very uneven.’
In the heat, neither of them was wearing gloves. More hoydenish behaviour on my part, Thea thought bitterly as Rhys’s grip tightened and her heart began to pound. The steps between the tiers of stone seats were broken in many places, so they had to climb from seat to seat. After the first few, with Thea grabbing desperately at her skirts to stop them riding up with the height she had to lift her leg, Rhys simply dropped her hand and boosted her from one to the other.
His hands were sure and firm around her waist and he was so close her senses reeled with the scent of hot man. If she closed her eyes, she could imagine herself back in his arms, imagine the musk of their lovemaking.
‘I should have insisted we stop so you could have a glass of lemonade before embarking on this,’ Rhys remarked. ‘And I ought to have warned you to put on sturdier shoes.’
His words were so alien to the remembered sound of his voice, the gasped words of passion, the groan deep in his throat when he thrust deep into her, that Thea opened her eyes, lost for a moment. Below her on the dusty theatre floor was the small figure of Giles, pacing to and fro. The stone tiers of seats fell away like a crumbling mountain slope and above her the swifts dived and screamed in the hot blue sky.
‘Steady!’ Rhys caught her by the arm as she swayed. ‘I thought you were fine with heights.’
‘I am.’ She shook off his restraining arm. ‘I was dizzy for a second, that is all.’ She had been remembering passion and intimacy and desire. Rhys had been thinking about lemonade and practicalities.
‘We had better sit down, in that case. I will signal to Benton that we are ready for him to begin.’
‘What is he going to do? He will have to shout if we are to hear him here.’
‘Listen,’ Rhys said. ‘I have heard of this.’
And then Giles spoke. He was not shouting, or even speaking loudly, she realised, entranced. His voice reached her as clearly as though he was standing just in front of her and speaking conversationally. ‘What is he saying?’ It was Latin and she could read that a little, but she had never heard it spoken.
‘It is from Caesar’s Gallic Wars,’ Rhys said. ‘Trust Benton not to spout poetry.’
‘The triumphal arch put him in mind of it, I suppose. How intimate it sounds.’ How would she feel if it was Rhys down there speaking verse, something romantic? This place was magical—surely he felt it?
Rhys got to his feet and walked off around the arc of the seats, head tilted as he listened. ‘Interesting effect. I don’t understand the science. I must read up on it.’
Obviously he did not feel the romance. Thea slid to the edge of her perch and dropped the few inches to the next seat, sat and repeated the process. It would do her walking dress no good at all, but it was better than having Rhys’s hands on her, so practical and impersonal. Touching her, being close to her, did not affect him at all, it seemed. Thank goodness she had said nothing to lead him to think she wanted to resume their intimacy.
‘That was fascinating,’ Thea said enthusiastically when she reached Giles, who came up the bottom steps to help her. She turned and looked up to where Rhys was silhouetted against the sky. ‘Are you coming down?’ she said, half doubting her words would reach him.
He waved, but then sat down and held up his sketchbook.
‘We will see you at luncheon?’
Rhys made a gesture that seemed to encompass perhaps and don’t wait for me and goodbye.
‘What about you?’ Thea asked Giles. Really, with the bright smiles and the air of unconcern she was managing to summon, she was missing a promising career on the stage. ‘I would like to go and look around the shops this afternoon, but I can take Polly with me. You will want to explore and sketch, I am sure.’