‘If you are sure?’ Giles offered her his arm and they turned and left Rhys on his lonely eyrie.
‘Oh, yes. I saw some delightful printed fabrics and there are lavender oils and soaps.... I will be in terrible trouble with Rhys for buying more things, I have no doubt, but the temptation is too great.’ Her laughter would reach him up there, she was certain. He would know she was quite unconcerned.
* * *
Thea came down to breakfast the next day to find the two men making somewhat stilted conversation over wide cups of milky coffee. She paused, unseen just before the doorway, and listened.
‘But you obviously want to push on to Avignon now and I want to spend some more time sketching here.’ That was Giles.
Rhys made a sound that might have been agreement.
‘How long do you intend to stay in Avignon?’ Giles asked.
‘A few days. I want to buy wine to be shipped home, see the sights, visit the dealers for artwork. Then on to Aix and down to Toulon to take ship around the coast to Genoa. What are your plans?’
He sounded a trifle cool, Thea thought. Had he and Giles somehow fallen out?
‘I will spend a few more days here and then go directly to Arles. I intend on making my way to Marseilles and after that I will take ship along the coast to Viareggio and then inland—Lucca, Florence, Rome.’
‘You are leaving us?’ Thea entered the room and both men rose with a scrape of chair legs on the terracotta tiles. To be alone with Rhys would be blissful, and yet Giles’s company had kept her anchored in the real world, a bulwark against losing herself utterly to hopeless dreams.
‘I think I must. It has been delightful to journey with you and I am deeply in your debt for rescuing me at the roadside, but we all have our own route to travel now, do we not?’
Was she imagining he put some emphasis on the last, innocuous question? Warning or encouragement, she could not tell. ‘We will miss you,’ Thea said warmly.
‘We will, indeed,’ Rhys added, and to her relief he sounded regretful and not as though he was anxious to see the back of Giles.
* * *
Polly packed away the lengths of charming printed cloth in rose and gold, green and blue, and found corners for soaps and oils and Rhys had nothing to criticise when the vehicles were loaded and they rode away from the inn.
It had been hard to say goodbye to Giles, although they promised to write. ‘Keep faith,’ he murmured as he kissed her cheek. ‘Hold on to that love.’
Thea turned and waved one last time, and then urged her horse up to keep pace with Rhys. He was quiet, and she wondered at it. Did he dislike her kissing Giles? Or perhaps he regretted the other man’s departure and had valued a buffer between himself and her.
But she could not read his mood and he had very little to say to her at all, beyond perfectly amiable commonplace remarks. ‘Are you sure that wide-brimmed hat is sufficient shade from the sun?’ he asked as they emerged from the cover of the town walls. ‘The sun is getting very hot now and you will complain if your nose becomes pink!’
‘Quite sure. And I have taken a leaf out of your book and found a linen jacket to replace the woollen one with my riding habit.’ Rhys looked casual, relaxed and altogether edible, Thea thought. His hair was overlong now, for Hodge appeared to have no influence with the scissors. His skin was tanning golden in the sun, unlike poor Giles, who had turned pink and freckled, and he had changed leather breeches and his wool coat for heavy cotton and linen.
There should be a law against men with muscled forearms like that taking off their coats and rolling their sleeves up.
‘Very sensible,’ he commented on her jacket. ‘We have no need to hurry today at all. Avignon is a very short journey, so we can linger over luncheon in the shade or explore anything along the way that takes our interest.’
Thea smiled and agreed and assured herself that this calm friendliness was what was prudent, was what she wanted—and was what she had told Rhys she expected. It was beyond foolish to feel as though she had been spurned, that her heart was breaking, that she was a hundred times unhappier than she had been before, when Rhys was simply a dream she had resigned herself to losing.
* * *
An hour later the sun was bouncing off white limestone, the road was dusty and the air was heavy with the scent of thyme, lavender and a dozen herbs Thea could put no name to. The buzz of the cicadas had gone from strange to irritating to simply part of the atmosphere and everyone had lapsed into a state of relaxation that would have scandalised polite London society.
Rhys had shed his coat and neckcloth and was letting his horse walk a zigzag pattern from one patch of shade to the next. Hodge and Polly had abandoned the inside of the coach and were perched up on the box with Tom, staring round as they fanned themselves with their hats and passed a flask of what Thea hoped was lemonade from one to another. Rhys had sent the chaise with the post boys, impatient with the strange dawdling of the English, on ahead to advise the landlord of their arrival in time for dinner.
Beside them the Rhone wove its slow way in intricate braids separated by sandbanks and islands, some wooded with scrubby trees, others bare. ‘Phew.’ Thea took off her hat and fanned her flushed face with it. ‘That water looks tempting.’
Rhys had turned off the road and was splashing along the shoreline. ‘I was thinking that.’ He sounded himself again, relaxed and cheerful. ‘We need a sheltered branch where there is no current—the main channel is not safe.’
‘We are going swimming?’ Thea urged her mare down to join Rhys. The horse went down on its haunches as it slid over the low bank of rounded river pebbles, sending driftwood shooting in all directions. ‘Wonderful! All we need is one of these side channels where there are some bushes for changing.’ Thea craned her neck. ‘Look, that’s perfect, just ahead. The water is flowing enough to prevent it stagnating, but there are no swirls and currents. You men can go behind those low willows and Polly and I can use these rocks.’
‘Men, my lady?’ Tom pushed his hat back on his head and scratched his ear. ‘I don’t rightly hold with getting wet all over. Soaks in, if you ask me. Ain’t healthy.’
‘Very well, you may water the horses, then sit under a tree in the shade and relax while the rest of us swim.’
‘What, like at the seaside, my lady?’ Polly sounded shocked, but she looked at the water with longing. ‘We haven’t got any bathing machines.’
‘We don’t need them.’ Thea kicked her foot free of the stirrup and slid down. ‘We go in wearing our shifts and the men—’ she stifled a giggle ‘—the men will wear undergarments.’
Rhys was already out of the saddle. He tossed his reins to the coachman and sat on a boulder to pull off his boots. ‘I’ll try it first and make certain it is safe.’
He was rolling down his second stocking before Thea realised that Polly was tugging her arm. ‘My lady! His lordship is taking his clothes off!’
‘Goodness, yes, so he is. Behind the bushes with us, Polly.’ She did not even try to pretend to herself that in her mind she was back all those years ago when the children had splashed and tumbled in and out of the lake without a care in their innocent heads except for what would be said about their sodden clothes when they got home for dinner. She had been watching Rhys with a very adult yearning and it would not do.
‘Quite safe!’ he called. ‘Sandy bottom, gentle flow. Come on, Hodge. We’ll swim down a bit and leave the ladies some privacy.’
‘Ladies,’ Polly said with a giggle. ‘Fancy his lordship calling me a lady.’
‘We’re all the same under our clothes,’ Thea said, helping Polly with her buttons. All cats are grey in the dark and one woman between the sheets is much as another, no doubt. She had tried not to think where Rhys had got his bedroom skills from and now she gave herself a brisk mental shake. ‘Just leave your chemise on. They’ll dry quickly enough on the bushes afterwards.’
She peeped around the bushes. Two dark wet heads bobbed at the other end of the channel, both tactfully facing downstream. Tom was already asleep, propped under a spreading willow. ‘Come on, Polly. Can you swim?’
‘No, my lady, but I’ll just bob about, like.’ They tiptoed into the water. ‘It’s cold!’
‘Better once you are right in.’ Thea took a run and ducked under. ‘Lovely,’ she called as Polly bravely followed suit. Then they were both splashing and laughing and the men turned cautious heads to make certain they were safely immersed.
Don’t look, don’t imagine. Once they would have been diving, catching each other by the ankle, playing and teasing. But not now. Thea turned onto her back and floated, feeling the sun warm on her front while the water beneath was chilled and refreshing. She closed her eyes, paddled vaguely with her hands to keep station and let her mind go blank.
‘Beware, here comes Ophelia,’ a voice said by her ear and she sat up with a start, forgot where she was and promptly sank. It was deep here, her feet did not find bottom, but she opened her eyes in the brown gloom and swam confidently upwards. Legs, pale, with paler cotton drawers plastered to them by the current, loomed into sight. They trod water and then there was a convulsion as the man upended and dived down. Rhys.