Unlacing Lady Thea

‘Well, you’ve developed now, and that’s a problem.’

‘Not according to Stepmama. She considers that I finally have an adequate figure.’ Rhys appeared to be grinding his teeth. ‘Anyway, I have no intention of flaunting anything, or of flirting with passing rakes, leaning over the balcony en negligée or otherwise drawing attention to myself. Does that reassure you?’

‘It does. Thank you, Thea.’ They watched each other in wary silence for a minute, then Rhys said, ‘I am not used to having to look after an unmarried girl.’

‘I am not a girl.’ His words might have been intended as a small flag of truce, but her precarious hold on her temper was slipping again. ‘If I am old enough to be married, and to inherit my own money, I think that makes me a woman, don’t you?’ Even to her own ears she sounded remarkably tart. What was the matter with her? She never lost her temper—she was known for cheerful common sense, everyone said so.

‘No doubt it does. And that is the problem. At least we understand each other now.’

We do? She opened her mouth to ask that very question as Polly bustled in.

‘The room’s all ready for you, my lady, and the bath’s being filled, although I had a bit of a problem with the servants here to start with. Cobwebs like you wouldn’t believe and no proper pillows, just nasty, hard bolster things.’ She picked up Thea’s discarded bonnet. ‘Amazing how they understand if you speak nice and loud and slow, isn’t it?’

‘French servants or Englishmen?’ Thea murmured as she followed the maid out. From the corner of her eye she saw Rhys’s mouth quirk up at the corner. So he had heard her. Ah well, so long as that half smile meant they were back on their old footing and he stopped that nonsense about drawing attention to herself. And wanting to fight anyone who insulted her.

It was rather charming, she decided as she rolled down her stockings. Gallant. Up to now gentlemen had not seemed to consider that she might need helping down gangplanks or rescuing from embarrassment. Even when Anthony was making his pretence of courting her so ardently he had never tried the ‘fragile flower’ treatment.

Not that she did need assistance, of course. She would hate to be a helpless female, but it was pleasant to be looked after once in a while. The memory of just how safe Rhys’s body had made her feel sent a shiver shimmering across her skin. Odd, she must be tired, or perhaps she was coming down with a chill.

And perhaps safe was not the right word, not when she remembered the shocking pressure of his arousal against her buttocks, or the heat of his body. But that was just a male reflex, nothing to be worried about. Everything would be fine, provided Rhys stopped lecturing her. Even discovery and ruin hardly mattered. Nothing did, provided she was not forced back home into a grey nothingness of an existence. She shivered again. That would be so bad she might even agree to marriage and find herself tied to someone like Anthony.

Polly lifted her gown over her head and Thea shed shift and petticoats before stepping into the bath. ‘Heaven.’ This would stop the shivers. ‘A hot soak and a soft bed that doesn’t move. It is soft, I hope?’

‘The sort that swallows you,’ Polly said cheerfully, and passed the soap. ‘They’ve put me in there.’ She pointed at a door. ‘Great big room. And Mr Hodge is on the other side next to his lordship. Not exactly cosy, though, is it?’

‘Not at all. I think it was a quite grand town house once and this was the main reception floor. These are not really bedchambers.’

‘And the owner’s come down in the world? He doesn’t look much like a gentleman.’ Polly began to shake out Thea’s clothes. The corset had reappeared, she noticed.

‘I suspect the real owner and his family went to the guillotine,’ Thea said, repressing another shiver.

‘Ooh! I was forgetting that.’ Polly’s eyes were huge. ‘Murdering Frenchies. Why, they’re probably eyeing up his lordship and sharpening the blade even now....’

‘We are at peace with France,’ Thea soothed. ‘There is a king on the throne again and Bonaparte is safely banished to Elba in the middle of the Mediterranean.’

‘And quite right, too,’ Polly muttered. ‘Now, I suppose it will have to be the blue gown tonight.’ She prodded the limp garment with disfavour while Thea made herself focus on the immediate crisis of her inadequate wardrobe and pushed other, more disturbing, thoughts back into the shadows.

* * *

Rhys folded his long legs into the bath and bent his head for Hodge to pour over a jug of hot water. Thea and that tongue of hers, as sharp as ever. But she never used it to wound. Only to tease, to create laughter, to press home a point.

He’d missed that laughter and teasing from a woman. There was laughter enough with his male friends, but his mistresses were always more intent on being seductive than on amusing him, which he supposed was fair enough, that was what he wanted from them—beauty, sensual expertise in bed and sophisticated conversation beforehand.

They were an expensive luxury, but Rhys was prepared to pay for quality. But some things could not be bought from a woman: friendship, laughter, loyalty. For a few weeks he would have those with Thea, he supposed, and felt the smile curve his mouth.

‘More hot water, my lord?’

‘Hmm?’ He must have fallen into a trance. ‘Yes. More hot water, more soap.’ Thea. Just as long as you remember that she’s an innocent. A bright, clever, independent innocent. It is a good thing she’s been stubborn enough to turn down those marriage offers—she isn’t cut out for matrimony and they’d only make her miserable, forcing her into the mould of a perfect wife.

Hodge passed him a back brush and Rhys began to scrub, shifting his shoulders under the pleasurable rasp of the bristles.

But she’d have to be careful, he realised as he considered it further. Life as a single woman would be made smoother with wealth, but it would be all too easy to slip into eccentricity, or worse, if she failed to find a manner of living that met with the approval of society. He would have to talk to her about it, make certain she made the right decisions, just as he had.

* * *

‘So what are you planning to do with all this money when you have control of it?’ Rhys asked.

The wind on the cliff top was blowing her veil in all directions and he could not see her face. With an irritated ‘Tsk’, Thea gave up wrestling with her veil and threw it back over her bonnet. ‘There is no one up here to see,’ she said, as though expecting him to demand that she lower it again. ‘What am I planning? Why, to be independent.’

‘I know that, but independently doing what, exactly?’ Rhys hitched one hip onto a tumbledown stone wall and half turned as though watching the town and harbour below. Out of the corner of his eye he studied Thea as she paced back and forth over the rabbit-cropped turf.

‘Living, of course! What a ridiculous question.’

‘Where? With whom? Who will be managing your investments? What will you be spending your money on?’ He swivelled to face her and she stopped, a furrow between her brows as she frowned at him. ‘What will be your purpose in life?’

‘To enjoy myself. To be free.’

‘Selfish,’ Rhys commented, with the intent of provoking her. Down in the harbour, fishing boats were running out on the tide, and he pretended to watch them. ‘That’s not like you.’ Or perhaps it was. Six years was a long time. He had changed, she must have, too.

‘I don’t mean mindless frivolity,’ Thea protested. ‘I mean doing things that I consider worthwhile. Something that will tell me I am alive,’ she added so softly he thought he must have misheard her. Surely life in her father’s house was not so stifling? ‘I will set up a charity—that would be satisfying....’

‘To be Lady Bountiful to the grateful poor?’ He let the corner of his mouth curl into a sneer. As it had in the past, his goading worked. Thea glared at him, but he had loosened her tongue.

‘No, certainly not. People do not need to be patronised, to be done good to. I will find something worthwhile and invest in it. Perhaps set some enterprising women up in small businesses, or provide apprenticeships for bright boys. I have a brain with some ideas in it, Rhys. I will suffocate if I don’t use it, if I am not free.’

He hid both his approval and his unease at her vehemence. ‘It does not sound as though you have planned it out.’

‘Of course I have not.’ Thea marched round to stand in front of him, cutting off his view of the harbour. ‘I need to find out exactly what my income is, learn how to manage it and, I hope, increase it. I have to find a suitable companion and somewhere to live. I need to work out all those things and then I can see where I am.

‘Anyway,’ she demanded, ‘what is so important about planning? You used to do things on the spur of the moment. Improvise.’

‘I do not any longer.’ He stood up, rather too close for her comfort, it seemed. Thea cast a harried glance over her shoulder, apparently decided that the cliff edge was a safe distance from her heels and took a long step backwards. ‘These days I plan—the estate, my investments, my political life, the way I live.’