Unlacing Lady Thea

* * *

They rode slowly through the starkly beautiful countryside all day, amongst fields of lavender and groves of olives, past stone farm buildings that seemed carved from the rock itself, where barking dogs on long chains made their horses shy. The sky was cloudless and eagles soared, their mewing cries plaintive in the hot air.

Aix-en-Provence was, to Thea’s eye, more elegant, more formal and more modern than Avignon. It was a university town, Rhys explained as they strolled along the fashionable Cours Mirabelle under spreading plane trees with the splash of fountains all around them.

Thea wore the best of the half-dress gowns she had bought in Paris with a lace scarf from Lyon thrown over her hair. The town felt so elegant that dressing up for it seemed only right, and Rhys, resplendent in black breeches, dark blue swallowtail coat and gleaming white linen, had obviously felt the same.

‘Where are we going?’

‘To a café called Les Deux Garçons. It was opened just before the Revolution and apparently has managed to survive as the place to see and be seen. I thought we would eat at the hotel, but that you might like some refreshment now.’

He was more formal somehow, as though the wicked lover had become a respectable escort. Thea put aside naughty thoughts of silk stockings and bed heads; one glance at Rhys told her that he was going to want to be in total control of events that night.

He was relaxed, charming and—what was it he had called himself? Possessive, that was it, Thea decided. She was flattered that he appeared to find it necessary to guard her quite so carefully, as though the sight of her might cause a stampede of amorous French admirers. A passing gentleman had only to meet her eye, doff his hat and then glance at her companion to hurry on.

‘Is there some signal between men that I cannot read?’ she asked him, a silver spoon loaded with a luscious confection of cream, fruit and fragile pastry halfway to her lips. ‘You have just routed those young gentlemen with one look.’

‘Students.’ He caught her eye and smiled. ‘I told you, I am possessive.’

‘But how do you do it?’ Thea persisted. Rhys looked at her, all the amusement gone from his face as he lifted one eyebrow fractionally. Thea’s pulse leapt. ‘Goodness! I can almost hear the clash of antlers.’

‘You compare me with a rutting stag, do you?’

‘Mmm.’ Thea licked the cream from the spoon very slowly, her eyes locked with Rhys’s. ‘Are we very far from the hotel? We walked around in a circle, I think.’

‘Ready for dinner already, despite that confection?’ He glanced at her lips. ‘You have a tiny smear of cream, just there.’ He brushed it with his finger and then licked the tip.

‘No, I don’t want dinner. I want you.’

The blue fire flared in his eyes. ‘I keep thinking you cannot arouse me any more than you do, Thea, and then I find I am wrong.’ He gestured for the waiter. ‘But how do you intend to distract your maid from the fact that there is a man in your bed?’

‘By having the foresight to tell her that I would not need her until I finally retired for the night and suggesting that she and Hodge go and explore the town and have their evening meal out.’ Thea gathered her shawl and reticule and stood up. ‘I gave her the money to pay for it. She was delighted.’

‘And you are smug.’ Rhys dropped a kiss on the end of her nose. ‘Excellent.’

* * *

Nothing was said, and yet the pace of the journey had slowed. Thea knew that Rhys had intended, that night in Avignon, to be in Venice within the fortnight. Now it had taken them a week to reach Toulon, three days to find a boat that he was prepared to accept, then another week around the coast to Genoa. Rhys had found something to explore at every cove, every village, every little port.

‘It is as if time has stood still.’ Thea leaned on the ship’s rail and watched the scattered lights twinkling like stars along the darkening coastline. Out in the bay the sea was studded with bobbing lights: the fishing boats were at work. ‘Where are we?’

‘Italian coast somewhere,’ Rhys said vaguely. He dipped his head and nuzzled beneath her ear. ‘Genoa tomorrow, impatient one.’

‘I am not impatient.’ She shifted to give him better access. ‘Not to arrive, anyway.’ This was like a honeymoon, a romantic, sensual, idyllic journey, first through beautiful countryside, now on a placid, gentle sea, every day sunlit with the coast slipping past, every bay and headland a new kingdom to explore.

Thea had given up caring that Polly and Hodge knew that she and Rhys were lovers, just as she closed her mind to the fact that the maid and valet were, too, despite Polly’s stated resolve not to give him more than a kiss. They were all adults—besides, she was certain the two would marry just as soon as they arrived somewhere with an Anglican clergyman.

Her mind, distracted by Rhys’s mouth on her skin, drifted back to where that chain of thoughts had begun. Honeymoons ended in a married life together—this one would end in separation. A phrase came to her. Was it a song or a poem?

‘Rhys, where does the line, “Journeys end in lovers’ meeting”, come from?’

‘What made you think of that? It’s Shakespeare. The clown sings it in Twelfth Night.’ He hummed a few notes. ‘We performed it at Eton. Let me see if I can recall it.’ When he sang his voice was a rich, clear tenor. Thea realised she hadn’t heard him sing since he had been a youth.

“Trip no further, pretty sweeting,

Journeys end in lovers’ meeting—

Every wise man’s son doth know.

What is love? ’Tis not hereafter;

Present mirth hath present laughter;

What’s to come is still unsure:

In delay there lies no plenty,—

Then come kiss me, Sweet-and-twenty,

Youth’s a stuff will not endure.”

‘Then come kiss me,’ he repeated. ‘Kiss me, sweeting.’

What is love? The words echoed in her head as she went into his arms. ’Tis not hereafter. It would last, this loving, only until Venice. That was why Rhys was dragging out the journey, because he was already anticipating its end. She might daydream—his mind was quite clear.

* * *

‘There it is—Venice. Magical,’ Rhys murmured. A heat haze hung over the lagoon, blurring sea and sky, water and mud bank. In the distance, the mirage of the city shimmered, floating.

The small boat that they had taken from the coast skimmed over the water, the men bent to the oars, their efforts scarcely seeming to move them over the vast liquid expanse.

The carriages had been left on the mainland, with Tom to guard them. He was happily ensconced in an inn run by a buxom widow and appeared to be making considerable headway with her, despite not having a word of Italian.

Rhys spread a map of Venice open on his knee and glanced from it to the vista in front of them while the skipper of the boat traced the route with his stubby brown finger.

Godmama had taken a palazzo on one of the canals off the Grand Canal. It sounded impossibly romantic to Thea, who sat, her fingers entwined with Rhys’s, and watched the fairy-tale city that marked the end of her fairy-tale journey come slowly closer.

It was all a dream, she thought now. She had a fever, or perhaps had simply not woken up, because this could not be real, could not be the end. Last night Rhys had made love to her with the tenderness of a man parting from his lover for ever. She imagined that a man going out to die in a duel at dawn or setting out on a voyage to the distant Arctic, expecting never to return, might make love like that, as though he was creating a memory almost too fragile to hold. Then, without a word, he had left her and gone back to his own room, something he had not done since Aix, and she had finally allowed herself to weep, silently, into her pillow.

Now the water traffic got busier, the buildings began to loom out of the haze, exotic, like the work of a confectioner spinning architecture out of sugar. Rhys pointed out the Doge’s Palace, the massive church of San Giorgio Maggiore, the pillars marking the waterfront of St Mark’s Square, but all she could do was stare, unable to focus on one thing out of the shifting scene.

‘Santa Maria della Salute,’ the boatman said, and they skimmed into a wide canal. Thea unlaced her fingers from Rhys’s and stiffened her spine. They had arrived. She was awake, this was real.

‘This is the Grand Canal.’ Rhys shifted the map on his knee to align it. ‘We are almost there.’

Every building lining the canal looked like a palace to Thea. Their walls rose straight from the green water. Gondolas were moored in front of landing stages, small boats laden with everything from barrels to a vast load of hay criss-crossed their path. ‘It sounds so different,’ she said. ‘No carriages, no horses, just people and the lapping of the water.’

‘It smells different, too,’ Rhys remarked. ‘Of the sea and old stone.’

The boat made a sweeping turn into a smaller canal. Walls rose on either side, above them were balconies, now and again stone landing stages jutted into the water, all with their striped mooring poles. ‘Ecco, Ca’ Riccardo,’ the boatman announced, and brought their vessel alongside a wide platform. In the wall were double-ironwork gates with a courtyard behind them. The boat with Polly and Hodge and more of the luggage came in behind them as Thea schooled her face to show nothing but pleasure. Of course, she wanted to see Godmama again and of course she wanted to be in Venice. Pride kept her from showing any of the other feelings that left her mind dazed with unhappiness and her stomach tense with expected pain.