Unlacing Lady Thea

by Louise Allen

  The mothers of hopeful daughters were outraged: a young, wealthy, handsome earl should be setting up his nursery. Preferably with one of their girls, any of whom had been better brought up than that flighty Lady Serena Haslow. If Lord Denham would stop indulging in the pleasures of the flesh and the gaming room long enough, he would soon come to his senses and marry one of them.

  The chaise rattled out of the yard and turned east towards Dartford. No one was forcing Rhys to go on this European trip. A few months ago, with the Continent at war, he could not even have contemplated it. So why was he going now, and why had she sensed such equivocal feelings about it the night before?

  * * *

  The bed, unaccountably bumpy, suddenly tipped. Half awake, Rhys grabbed for the edge, missed it and slid down until his booted feet hit some obstacle. Boots in bed? A gentleman always takes his boots off, at the very least. ‘Where in Hades...?’

  ‘This is the West Hill down into Dartford. The route guide warns it is uncommonly steep.’ The matter-of-fact voice jolted him into a wakefulness that the discomforts of his bed had not achieved.

  ‘Thea?’ Rhys sat up, shoved the hair out of his eyes and groaned at the sunlight. If this was a dream, it was an uncommonly uncomfortable one. ‘What the devil are you doing in my chaise?’

  ‘You said I might come with you to the Continent. Surely you weren’t so foxed last night that you cannot recall promising?’ Pin neat, drab in mud-brown wool, as ordinary as a London sparrow and three times as real, she regarded him with what appeared to be disapproval.

  ‘I’d hoped it was a nightmare. And what are you looking at me like that for?’ He lifted the section of padded board and slotted it back into position so he could sit. ‘My mouth feels like the floor of a cockpit.’

  ‘I am not surprised—you were positively castaway last night. I suggest you tell the postilions to stop here and have some breakfast. The rest of us ate at Shooter’s Hill.’

  To retort that he was in charge of this journey and would make the decisions where to stop was to plunge back into the bickering of their childhood. Not that Thea had ever bickered. Or whined, come to that. She merely widened those unremarkable hazel eyes until he felt he had somehow disappointed her. And he did want something to eat and a quart of black coffee and then, with any luck, someone would hit him over the head so he could forget this headache in merciful oblivion.

  Rhys dropped the window, leaned out and yelled, ‘Next decent inn!’

  ‘That will be the Bull.’ Thea frowned at her road book.

  ‘Never mind inn names, what the devil am I going to do about you?’ He must have been beyond foxed to give in to the girl. Vague memories of an awful suit of male clothing swam into his memory.

  ‘Take me to Godmama.’ She regarded him through eyes suddenly narrowed with suspicion. ‘As you promised.’

  ‘You took advantage of me,’ Rhys retorted.

  ‘Do women often take advantage of you?’ she enquired sweetly.

  ‘When my luck’s in,’ Rhys muttered and Thea laughed. How could he have forgotten that wicked gurgle of laughter? He bit his lip to stop himself smiling back at her. ‘This is an improper conversation and an utterly improper situation. If it ever gets out, you’ll be ruined.’ He squinted at her. ‘You aren’t a child any longer.’ Was she? She looked about seventeen, if he was generous.

  ‘No, I am not. And as for being ruined—’ Thea shrugged as the chaise slowed. ‘Good. Then Papa will stop trying to marry me off to devious, fortune-hunting... I mean, then I can have the freedom to live my life as I want to and not dwindle into an old maid.’

  What is the matter with her? Every other girl wants a husband, full stop. Why must Thea be so contrary? ‘Is that before or after your father shoots me?’ he enquired as they stopped and an ostler hurried up. Rhys opened the door. ‘No, we do not need a change of horses, but I want breakfast.’

  ‘So do I, now I think about it.’ Thea hopped down before he could offer his hand. ‘A bacon roll and warm coffee were not very sustaining.’

  She had her thick veil down, so he could find no reason to object, but when she returned from, he presumed, finding the privy, he wedged a chair under the door handle of the private parlour.

  ‘Very wise,’ Thea observed, taking her seat. ‘If this was a stage farce, someone would burst through the door just as I removed my veil to eat. And, of course, by hideous coincidence they would know me very well and have a fatal penchant for gossip. Papa would arrive with a horsewhip....’

  ‘Do you see many farces?’ Rhys refilled his cup and added sugar. He needed all the strength he could get.

  ‘Not these days,’ Thea said, and sliced the top off an egg with undue force. Eggshell fragments splintered, Rhys winced. ‘Papa knows perfectly well that being kept away from London and the galleries and the theatres and the libraries is a torture. I am so looking forward to Paris.’

  Rhys told himself that it was unmanly to whimper. ‘Perhaps you have a friend somewhere in Kent or Sussex? Someone you can stay with?’

  ‘You promised.’ And he had. Being drunk was no excuse; a gentleman should be able to hold his liquor. A gentleman never broke his word. And he owed her. Not for that lock-picking incident that he vaguely recalled coming up last night, but for years of friendship culminating in that moment in the church when she had slipped him her handkerchief, had looked at him with a world of understanding in her eyes for his pain, had given him a brief hug.

  Thea had said nothing and had broken the contact almost immediately, as though she knew that too much sympathy would break him. The sixteen-year-old girl had offered him the only thing she could: her understanding and a calm presence that stopped him falling apart. That clear-eyed look told him that she trusted him to do the right thing and, somehow, he had.

  What would have happened if she had not been there? Would he have given chase, called out his best friend? Put a bullet in him and left three lives in ruin instead of just his own?

  ‘Yes, I did, didn’t I? All right, I won’t go back on it.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Her hand shook a little as she lifted her cup, but otherwise she gave no sign that she had feared his refusal.

  She always was a courageous little thing. Rhys poured more coffee so she wouldn’t know he’d noticed that tremble and felt a pang of guilt. He should have kept in touch. But gentlemen did not write to young girls.

  ‘Why were you—?’ Thea broke off. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Why was I so drunk last night? Damned if I know. Twelve months suddenly seemed a hell of a long time to be away and I started having doubts about whether I really wanted to do it, whether it was just a whim. I’d told myself I deserve a holiday before—’ he almost did not finish the sentence, but then this was Thea and he’d always been able to tell her anything ‘—before I look for a wife next Season.’

  And I despise myself for snatching at Bonaparte’s defeat as an excuse to put off that search for another year, and that’s why I was drinking. Coward. You should have dealt with those memories. There was little risk history would repeat itself; it was safe enough to seek to marry. His reason knew it, but apparently his emotions did not. It seemed there were some things he could not confess to Thea after all.

  ‘You always have a plan,’ she said, so coolly that he was taken aback. But what did he expect? That she would gasp in shock that he could forget Serena?

  ‘And that involves getting back on the road now. I expect to be in Dover at half past four. That will give us an hour to get the carriages loaded and still catch the tide.’

  ‘You are taking the carriages to France? How?’ Her voice was oddly muffled behind the veil as she replaced her bonnet. Had he upset her somehow?

  ‘I’ve hired a ship. I do not intend roughing it.’

  ‘Excellent.’ Thea’s voice held nothing but approval. He had obviously been mistaken. ‘I do so approve of luxury. And that means much more room for the shopping.’

  ‘Shopping?’ The Thea he remembered
had no interest in shopping. But then, she had only been a girl and a tomboy at that. Looking at that disastrous gown, he shuddered to think what her idea of shopping entailed. Oh, well, her stepmother would soon sort out her wardrobe before her come-out. The vague memory of her saying she had been out for several Seasons floated into his aching head. And offers, and some man she was supposed to marry... No, surely not.

  ‘Of course. Shopping is the entire point of Paris.’

  This time he did not care how weak it sounded. Rhys whimpered.

  Chapter Three

  Dartford, Greenhithe, Northfleet. They travelled the next five miles in virtual silence, both of them, it seemed to Thea, adapting to their new relationship as travelling companions. Rhys had the excuse of his hangover as well, of course. She almost suggested they stop at the next apothecary’s shop for a headache remedy, but this was a grown man beside her, not a boy. The very last thing she wanted to do was mother him.

  ‘What has put you to the blush?’ he asked without preamble.

  She wished she had resumed her veil, but it hardly seemed friendly, not while they were travelling through open country. ‘I was thinking about a man.’ After all, she had always been able to tell Rhys everything. Almost everything.

  ‘Really?’ Rhys stopped slouching in his corner and regarded her quizzically. ‘A very romantic man, by the look of those pink cheeks. Fallen in love with the drawing master?’

  ‘No.’ He obviously could not stop thinking of her as a sixteen-year-old. ‘Not the drawing master and no one romantic. Men do not woo me romantically. They check that I am not a complete ninny-hammer, assure themselves that I have all my own teeth and do not giggle and then they trot off and talk to Papa about the size of my dowry and whether he can assure them my mother’s family will never make themselves known.’

  ‘Thea, give it a chance. Just because you haven’t taken yet it doesn’t mean you won’t get a perfectly reasonable proposal or two.’

  ‘Rhys, I have not taken in three Seasons. I am not a beauty. I am not pretty. I am not even interestingly eccentric in my looks. I am perfectly ordinary. Average height, average face, ordinary eyes, mouse-brown hair which does not cascade into tumultuous waves to my waist when I take it down.

  ‘If any man wrote poetry to my eyebrows I would fall about laughing and suggest he bought eyeglasses. When I do laugh no one compares it to the trill of a lark or the ripple of running water. I can sing and play the piano adequately and no one is so foolish as to ask for an encore.’

  Rhys looked rather daunted. ‘But you—’

  ‘If you say I have a wonderful sense of humour, I will lose all respect for you,’ she warned. ‘Such a cliché.’

  ‘Well, you do have. But what I was going to say is that you have a talent for friendship.’

  ‘Oh.’ Now he had surprised her. What a very lovely thing to say. He had always been generous with his friendship—to her, to Paul who had betrayed him. She had not realised he had valued that in her and she was touched he recalled it now. ‘You have made me blush in earnest now,’ Thea said as lightly as she knew how. ‘I hope I am a good friend. But I do have a talent, and you will see what it is in Paris.’

  ‘Shopping?’

  ‘Not quite. Where are we now?’

  ‘Gravesend. We will change horses again at Strood. But you have evaded the subject. Who is this man that the mere thought of him makes you blush? Did he break your heart?’

  He was teasing, that was all. Thea found her smile from somewhere. ‘Not deliberately. He had no idea of my feelings, you see, and besides, he was in love with someone else.’

  ‘He was?’

  ‘Is, I am sure. He was never the fickle sort. But don’t look so indignant on my behalf. It was ages ago.’

  Simply a youthful tendre, the delicious, painful quivering of first love. Puppy love. That was behind her now, thank goodness. That girl and that young man no longer existed. Except in dreams, sometimes, but it would be too cruel to give up on dreams of love.

  But they were dangerous things to hold on to. If she had realised that then, she would never have believed Anthony sincere when he began to court her, never have thought that she could find an adult love, prosaic and sensible perhaps, but true and honest nevertheless. It had made the disillusion even greater when she had overheard her father discussing the terms of her dowry, the extra lands he was adding to compensate Anthony for taking his plain, awkward daughter off his hands.

  Rhys had the tact to stop questioning her, which was a relief because she was not certain how long she could maintain a mask of indifference in the face of direct interrogation. She should never have said as much as she had. ‘Look,’ she said as she drew down her veil. ‘This must be Strood.’

  * * *

  They arrived in Dover at a quarter to five and Rhys ushered his small party into private rooms at the Queen’s Head on the quayside. ‘I’ll go along to the ship and send for you in about an hour.’

  Thea balked at the threshold. ‘I will come with you.’ The prospect of sitting in a stuffy parlour with a yawning maid and a ramrod-backed valet perched on the edge of his chair had no appeal. ‘You go and lie down and get some sleep, Polly.’

  One of the things she had always liked about Rhys was the way he would never try to persuade her out of the harmless things that stuffy convention decreed girls were not supposed to do. She tucked her hand under his arm and walked along the quayside. The wind flipped her veil back from her face, but there was no one around who might recognise her.

  ‘The wind is quite strong.’ Waves slapped high against the stonework. ‘And the sea looks rather rough, even in the shelter of the harbour.’

  ‘Do you get seasick?’

  ‘I don’t know. I am fine in a rowing boat on the lake and as cool as a cucumber in a punt on the river.’

  ‘They do not have waves.’

  ‘No.’ Thea took a deep breath of bracing sea air and found it was composed of an equally bracing mix of rotting seaweed and drains. ‘I am sure it is all a case of mind over matter.’

  ‘Or stomach. Perhaps I should acquire a basin.’ Rhys nodded towards a chandler’s shop. ‘They probably have some.’

  ‘We should write a book together. A practical guide to elopement. You do it from the male point of view, I will do the hints for the ladies. It should have a list of things to take that can fit in a small valise....’

  ‘Very small. No cabin trunks,’ Rhys said with feeling. ‘A rope ladder.’

  ‘Sensible shoes for climbing down a ladder. Smelling salts.’

  ‘A road book and plenty of money. A good team of horses to start with and close-mouthed postilions.’

  ‘A compass to make certain the gentleman really is heading for the Border.’

  ‘Cynic! And that obviates the need for a basin. No sea crossing.’

  ‘So it does. Oh, dear,’ Thea said mournfully. ‘I was so enjoying the vision of an amorous young gentleman, tiptoeing around the corner at the dead of night, lantern in his teeth, rope ladder tripping him up, basin under one arm.’

  Rhys chuckled. ‘Why would he take the basin with him for the ladder-climbing part of the proceedings?’

  ‘Because he is young and romantic and silly. Of course,’ she added hopefully, ‘his true love may be overcome with nerves and need it. Or he could use it to knock out a pursuing parent.’

  Rhys disentangled himself from her grasp and caught her hand in his. ‘You,’ he said with a grin, ‘are a bad girl.’

  ‘I wish I was. I fear I am simply too prosaic.’

  ‘If leaving home disguised as a boy, bullying a half-cut gentleman into escorting you across the Channel and spinning fantasies about elopements is prosaic, then I hope I may never meet an adventurous lady.’ He looked down at her, more intently. ‘Thea, how old did you say you are now?’

  Having Rhys smile at her was such a relief it affected her like one glass of champagne too many. It was going to be all right. He really would take her, not change h
is mind at the last moment. ‘Twenty-two. I am six years younger than you, just as I have always been.’ She laughed up at him and, distracted, tripped over a mooring rope.

  Rhys spun her round and caught her up in his arms before she fell on the rough cobbles. ‘Steady! Are you all right?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Tight in his embrace, close against his body and breathless with laughter, Thea looked up into intent blue eyes and smiled.

  And then he went very still and his arms tightened around her as his eyes went dark. It lasted a second. It lasted an hour. Heat, strength, intensity. A hard, very adult, body against hers. A body that was becoming aroused.

  Then he let her go, stepped back, stared at her in horror. ‘God! I am sorry. Hell, Thea...I never meant for a moment to...manhandle you like that.’

  Rhys was more shaken than she had ever seen him. It was that bad, holding me in your arms, was it? ‘Please, do not regard it. I most certainly do not, you merely steadied me.’ Once I would have paid with everything I owned to be in your arms.

  ‘Of course you should regard it,’ he snapped. As though it was my fault, as though I had flung myself into his embrace on purpose... ‘I beg your pardon. Let me escort you back to the inn.’ He offered his arm and she slid her fingers under his elbow. Through the kid leather of her glove she could feel his warmth and the thud of his heart against his ribs. So agitated by discovering I am female!

  ‘There is no need. I would like to see the ship and the carriages being loaded.’ Anything to stop her thinking about how the body that had pressed against hers had been so... A man’s body, not a youth’s.

  Rhys ignored her, as though intent only on setting a brisk pace towards the Queen’s Head. Then, just as she was on the point of jerking her hand free, he said, ‘You are right not to regard it. Men are creatures of instinct, I am afraid. To find one’s arms suddenly full of woman... It is no excuse, but you must not take it personally. It does not mean I do not hold you in the highest respect.’ He cleared his throat.

  As well he might, he has probably just heard how pompous he sounds. The rake lecturing on propriety, indeed! And he has just admitted that he was aroused and that I would have recognised that, so now he is thoroughly embarrassed and it is all my fault.