Unlacing Lady Thea

‘Mind?’ Rhys snarled under his breath. I’ll tear his head off if he so much as puts a finger wrong with her. He glowered at the colourful scene. The dancers were turning, then the women spun beneath their partners’ upheld arms. Thea was smiling up at her Frenchman, chatting despite the speed of the steps.

Rhys splashed out more wine and slid farther down in his chair, the glass cupped in both hands, shoulders hunched. He was perilously close to sulking, he told himself. It was bad enough to do something so juvenile, but worse when he wasn’t at all sure what he was sulking about.

Thea returned at last, with a small group of eager young men, all pressing her for a dance. And this time she did not so much as glance in Rhys’s direction.

He dumped the glass on the table, levered himself out of the chair and strode over to meet her. ‘This dance is mine.’

Thea did not take kindly to being ordered about, he knew that of old, but he was determined to win this. He was not going to watch her laughing up into another man’s face, happy and carefree. She was damn well going to suffer trodden toes with him.

‘I would love to!’ Her smile took his breath and Rhys struggled for some poise as she turned to her followers with a pretty apology in French. ‘Thank you,’ she murmured as she slid her hand into his. It felt small and delicate. Puzzled, Rhys glanced down at her. This was Thea, with confident, strong, long-fingered hands—what was the matter with him? Her immaculate coiffure was coming loose and tendrils of hair curled and fluttered on her brow, which was slightly damp from her exertions.

Desire burned through him like flames licking along his veins, and yet all he wanted was to hold her and keep that smile on her lips, that sparkle in those hazel eyes. The band struck up a lilting air and couples turned into each other’s embrace.

‘A waltz,’ Thea said. ‘How dashing. I do not believe the patronesses of Almack’s have presented you as an eligible partner, my lord.’

‘I am willing to risk the scandal if you are,’ Rhys offered, and gathered her firmly into his arms, all sweet curves overlying a lithe strength that only emphasised her femininity. His bad mood vanished like smoke.

Thea looked up, her face serious. ‘We have already risked it. And yet...we dance.’ There was no regret in her voice, nor teasing, either. Her eyes were soft and held the smile her lips did not. Rhys moved without conscious thought into the opening steps of the dance, feeling that he had been punched in the gut and had no air in his lungs. Could she mean what he thought she meant?

‘I would very much like to be that scandalous again,’ he said when he had found his voice. ‘But I can well understand if you do not. Forgive me for—’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Yes?’

‘If you truly want to.’ He must have looked incredulous, for she shook her head and smiled, despite the blush that was turning her cheeks rosy. ‘I said I had no expectations beyond that one night, and I would hate it if you felt obliged by gentlemanly scruples to return to my bed.’

‘Gentlemanly scruples should keep me from it,’ Rhys said wryly, knowing that nothing on earth was going to do that now. This was madness, but madness with a term to it. How long before they reached Venice and a return to sanity? Two weeks, perhaps. He wanted to invent diversions, convince himself that reaching Venice should involve going via Rome, Naples, Sicily. But he could not. It was not fair to Thea; it was not fair to himself.

‘It will not change anything, will it?’ she asked now. ‘Our friendship, I mean. I felt I had lost you, these past years.’

‘You had,’ Rhys confessed. ‘I think I had lost myself, too. I should have realised that I did not need to cut off the whole of my past simply to leave behind one part of it. Now we will not lose each other again, whatever befalls us. We will write, often, I hope.’

Thea quirked an eyebrow. ‘Until your marriage. I doubt your wife would look kindly on a correspondence with an unmarried female.’

His wife. That theoretical, nebulous lady. Rhys knew he had lost sight even of her outline these past few days. All that remained of her was an arid list of requirements. Arid, but safe. Sensible. He’d think of her again once he had left Venice. ‘Yes, of course. But you may be back in London by then. We will meet.’

Thea across a dance floor in the arms of another man. Thea married, perhaps. Thea in another man’s bed. Or unmarried, available, but not to him because he had married some near stranger with good bloodlines and a placid temperament.

‘The music has stopped.’

‘And you may stop laughing at me, you provoking chit.’ Around them couples were smiling. Some ladies even appeared to be regarding them with a sentimental sigh. ‘For goodness’ sake, they look as though I’ve gone down on one knee in the middle of the dance floor, just because I kept turning for a few bars!’

‘About a minute, actually. The French are romantics,’ Thea said with an abrupt return to her prosaic tone. ‘Come and have your supper. It will get cold.’

* * *

Of course Rhys cared for her, Thea thought as she picked up a spoon and delved into the first of the interesting platters before them. And he loved her as a friend and, miraculously, he desired her as a woman. But he did not want her, not as a wife, not as a lover for ever. We will write, he had said. And when he was married no doubt she would be invited to dinner and to parties at his town house or to stay at the Norfolk estate.

It had been foolish to mention his marriage. What had she expected? That he would drop to one knee, as he had joked just now, and declare that he had been blind, that he had loved her all along and they must marry at once? He was treating her precisely as she had asked. She would be delivered to Godmama, much educated in the sensual arts and with her heart in tatters, for now she knew the adult man as a friend, and a lover and a companion, all day and every day. She would know him as well, if not better, than a wife.

Rhys reached towards the plate of cheese-and-herb pastries. ‘Oh, no, you don’t, that’s the last one.’ Thea pounced on the remaining flaky morsel. It melted on her tongue, an instant’s pleasure. That was what she must do, live for the instant. Then, when Rhys had left, she would rebuild her life with all the courage she had. As if he had died.

They finished the food with sighs of mutual pleasure, then fell silent. Or possibly Rhys was simply distracted by the subtle assaults he was launching on her composure. His arm lay warm across the back of her chair and his thigh touched hers beneath the cover of the cheerful tablecloth. Both limbs were an incitement to lean into their strength; both promised a leashed power that made her shiver with anticipation. From the slight curve of Rhys’s lips she knew he could feel that tremor.

‘Shall we go?’ Rhys stood and Thea looked up at him, tall, dark, broad-shouldered, somehow unmistakably English against the golden stone, lit now by flickering torches. Desire quivered through her as he took her hand and then trapped it hard against his side as she came to her feet. I will become addicted to him, Thea thought with a sudden plunge into despair. I will be like a laudanum user, only half-alive without his touch. If I was strong, I would tell him no. This should end here. But I will not.

They turned at the mouth of a dark alleyway to look back at the festive scene. ‘There are Polly and Hodge, dancing.’ Rhys pointed at the two figures, Polly, lively and laughing, and Hodge, upright and respectable as ever, even in the midst of a country dance, a great grin on his face.

‘At least they are happy.’ She spoke her thought aloud and Rhys looked down at her.

‘And you are not? Ah, Thea...’ He stepped back into the darkness and pulled her into his arms. ‘Tell me what you want.’

Chapter Eighteen

‘Tell me what you want.’

This was the moment to be strong and sensible. The moment to tell him it was a mistake, that they should resist this attraction and to leave him quite clear that her actions were simply driven by sexual desire.

But if to love was to be weak, then so be it. She would have to find her strength soon enough, because she would not wallow in despair and loss. After Rhys she would rebuild her life, but she had perhaps two weeks to give him everything but the words.

‘I want to be with you. I want to make love with you again. I want to spend the night in your arms.’ It felt sinful and wonderful to be like this in the open air, in a dark alley in a foreign city pressed against the aroused body of her lover.

‘That seems clear enough.’ Rhys’s voice rumbled in her ear as she pressed her cheek to his shirtfront. He turned and she was trapped against the wall. ‘I tried this in a Paris alleyway and got threatened with a hatpin for my pains.’ There was laughter in his voice and a husky anticipation of passion. ‘I wanted to kiss you then. What will happen if I kiss you here?’

‘Try.’ Thea put her arms around his neck and ran her fingers into his hair, closed them tight and pulled his head down.

It must have hurt, but he simply growled, deep in his throat. ‘You want to play rough games, do you?’

She was not certain what he meant, but it sounded...exciting. ‘Yes,’ she managed to get out before Rhys’s mouth crushed down on hers. He lifted her, his hands spanning her waist, and raised his leg so she was riding his thigh, her feet off the ground, her back to the wall, her full weight bearing down on the point where her body ground against his.