A knock at the door had them leaping apart. They loitered awkwardly while the servants cleared away their dinner plates. No one batted an eyelash at them; all were caught up in the fiction of their marriage.
“Why was the countess not served syllabub?” Rafe asked the last footman before he left.
“No!” Thea cried. “Please don’t mention it.”
The man was frowning. “I don’t understand, my lord.”
“The countess had no syllabub on her tray.”
“Her ladyship eats her dessert first, my lord. The empty glass was on the sideboard.”
Where Rafe had not noticed it. Well played, Thea. He pivoted to face her. She stood against the wall, eyes wide in feigned innocence. The footman hurried to escape, and once more Rafe was alone with Thea.
Alone with her playfulness and mischief and delight.
A giddy recklessness washed over him, and he was advancing on her before he even knew what he was doing.
“You eat your dessert first?” he said slowly.
She pressed back against the peach-colored wall. “The best countesses always eat their dessert first.”
He used his arms to cage her in, which had the added benefit of keeping himself steady, for her hands were on his chest and his legs were ready to collapse, that he might fall to his knees and slide up her skirts.
“And do the best countesses always eat the earl’s dessert too?”
“The best earls always give the countesses their dessert. You, my lord, are an excellent earl.”
“And you, my lady, are not an excellent wife.”
Her eyes were so bright, her spirit so lively. It would be a small matter to take one more step, to brush her hair away from her face and slide his lips over hers. If he were a different man, he would.
If he were a different man, he would tease and play with his bright, lively bride; he would revel in these prizes of pleasure and delight and joy.
But he was not a different man.
How did this keep happening? He kept forgetting. One moment he was heading for the door, the next he was thinking of taking her to bed. It was as though Thea’s presence transformed him somehow, but like all magic, it could never be real.
That realization hit him like cold water and gave him the strength to wheel about and march out the door.
But his own rooms had become echoing and dull, where nothing held his interest, so he sought out Martha in the parlor downstairs. She pointedly remarked on the countess playing billiards alone in the next room, but he pointedly ignored her, and demanded that she give him some bhang to test tonight. The way he was feeling now, a little pain-relieving intoxicant would go a long way.
“There, that got rid of him,” Thea boasted to the empty settees, but the furniture was not fooled; it knew as well as she did that she had wanted him to stay.
More than that. When she had stood so near to him, enclosed in his heat with her palms touching his chest, so near that his woodsy scent intoxicated her and his eyes saw inside her, she had longed to trace the contours of his body. The mysterious folds of his neckcloth had tempted her to strip it away and bare his throat, and his wicked coat taunted her with notions of sliding it aside. And the lingering sensations under her skin, where their single kiss bounced around excitedly, warned that she wanted him to do similar things to her.
So. This was the sinful desire ladies were warned about. How right they were, to call passion dangerous, for it perilously banished rational thought. But after some coaxing, rational thought returned to remind her that Luxborough believed them married, and would be furious when he learned the truth. If she succumbed, she would ruin herself, and ruining herself would ruin her plan of restarting her life as if there had been no scandal.
She calculated the days. Surely she would hear from Helen tomorrow? Surely. And tomorrow she would leave.
Resolutely, Thea laid out the three books on the table, but they only made her think of Rafe and the story he refused to tell, so she decided to practice billiards instead.
In the billiard room, she heard muffled female voices. Thea opened the door to see Sally and Martha sitting together in the neighboring parlor, one with sewing, the other with a book, and both with guilty expressions. Thea did not cast them out, and they did not invite her in, so she closed the door and played billiards alone.
At one point, she heard Lord Luxborough arrive and exchange inaudible words with Sally and Martha. She froze, straining to hear, wondering if he would play billiards with her after all, but then he left and she heard nothing more.
Finally, long after the other women had retired, Thea blew out the candles and headed back to her rooms. As she walked along the corridor, a movement in the courtyard garden caught her eye and she opened a window to look out.