Unlacing Lady Thea

by Louise Allen

  His hands were sure and firm around her waist and he was so close her senses reeled with the scent of hot man. If she closed her eyes, she could imagine herself back in his arms, imagine the musk of their lovemaking.

  ‘I should have insisted we stop so you could have a glass of lemonade before embarking on this,’ Rhys remarked. ‘And I ought to have warned you to put on sturdier shoes.’

  His words were so alien to the remembered sound of his voice, the gasped words of passion, the groan deep in his throat when he thrust deep into her, that Thea opened her eyes, lost for a moment. Below her on the dusty theatre floor was the small figure of Giles, pacing to and fro. The stone tiers of seats fell away like a crumbling mountain slope and above her the swifts dived and screamed in the hot blue sky.

  ‘Steady!’ Rhys caught her by the arm as she swayed. ‘I thought you were fine with heights.’

  ‘I am.’ She shook off his restraining arm. ‘I was dizzy for a second, that is all.’ She had been remembering passion and intimacy and desire. Rhys had been thinking about lemonade and practicalities.

  ‘We had better sit down, in that case. I will signal to Benton that we are ready for him to begin.’

  ‘What is he going to do? He will have to shout if we are to hear him here.’

  ‘Listen,’ Rhys said. ‘I have heard of this.’

  And then Giles spoke. He was not shouting, or even speaking loudly, she realised, entranced. His voice reached her as clearly as though he was standing just in front of her and speaking conversationally. ‘What is he saying?’ It was Latin and she could read that a little, but she had never heard it spoken.

  ‘It is from Caesar’s Gallic Wars,’ Rhys said. ‘Trust Benton not to spout poetry.’

  ‘The triumphal arch put him in mind of it, I suppose. How intimate it sounds.’ How would she feel if it was Rhys down there speaking verse, something romantic? This place was magical—surely he felt it?

  Rhys got to his feet and walked off around the arc of the seats, head tilted as he listened. ‘Interesting effect. I don’t understand the science. I must read up on it.’

  Obviously he did not feel the romance. Thea slid to the edge of her perch and dropped the few inches to the next seat, sat and repeated the process. It would do her walking dress no good at all, but it was better than having Rhys’s hands on her, so practical and impersonal. Touching her, being close to her, did not affect him at all, it seemed. Thank goodness she had said nothing to lead him to think she wanted to resume their intimacy.

  ‘That was fascinating,’ Thea said enthusiastically when she reached Giles, who came up the bottom steps to help her. She turned and looked up to where Rhys was silhouetted against the sky. ‘Are you coming down?’ she said, half doubting her words would reach him.

  He waved, but then sat down and held up his sketchbook.

  ‘We will see you at luncheon?’

  Rhys made a gesture that seemed to encompass perhaps and don’t wait for me and goodbye.

  ‘What about you?’ Thea asked Giles. Really, with the bright smiles and the air of unconcern she was managing to summon, she was missing a promising career on the stage. ‘I would like to go and look around the shops this afternoon, but I can take Polly with me. You will want to explore and sketch, I am sure.’

  ‘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.

  He saw her, reached out, but she made a little gesture of reassurance and broke the surface, spluttering. ‘The current is faster than I thought,’ she called to the other two, who were gazing tactfully in the other direction.

  ‘Rhys?’ She looked around. No sign of him. Thea splashed round in a circle, treading water. Cramp? A snag of dead branches? Clinging weed? She was about to dive under when hands took her around the waist, tossed her upwards and she fell back with a great splash and a shriek.

  ‘You wretch,’ she spluttered, dragging wet hair out of her face.

  ‘Pax,’ Rhys called. He had taken refuge behind Hodge.

  ‘Coward!’

  ‘I know where I am safe.’ He was grinning like the boy she remembered from so long ago and her heart contracted with love for him and with nostalgia for a time when all was innocent and uncomplicated.

  She realised, with a jolt, that she was happy. Whatever had passed between them, however much she might love him in vain, she and Rhys were back on their old terms of friendship. ‘I have a long memory,’ Thea threatened, trying hard not to laugh as she swam back to Polly as decorously as she could manage.

  ‘Snails in my slippers?’ Rhys called after her.

  Thea rolled onto her back and assumed her best society expression and voice. ‘You may have reverted to thirteen years of age, Rhys Denham, but I have put no snails in slippers since I was eight.’ That reduced even Hodge to hoots of laughter and Rhys... It was clear Rhys attached no importance to their night together.

  Chapter Seventeen

  It had been almost time for the evening meal when they finally arrived in one of Avignon’s smarter hostelries, close by the Porte du Rhone. They’d still been rather damp about the underwear and decidedly relaxed.

  ‘The proprietor obviously thinks the circus has come to town,’ Thea remarked as they met in the hallway an hour later. ‘Either that or he will expect all English visitors to arrive removing water weed from their hair.’

  ‘The place is like a morgue,’ Rhys complained. He had been looking forward to dinner, to enjoying good food and wine while watching Thea laughing. She seemed to have recovered her poise after their reckless interlude, and it was good to have her so comfortable with his company again. He only wished he could put it behind him so easily, but desire was not to be suppressed.

  ‘I was told it was clean and comfortable,’ he grumbled now, focusing on that and not on the memory of her slim waist as he had caught her in the water, as near naked in her clinging shift as made no difference. There had been a moment as their eyes had met, the second before she hit the water, when he had imagined he’d seen a yearning as intense as his. Wishful thinking.

  ‘It is perfectly clean and well appointed,’ Thea pointed out.

  Rhys felt a perverse desire to disagree. ‘I suppose it is a superior establishment, but I do not fancy eating my dinner in a private dining room that looks as though it was decorated for one of the gloomier popes.’

  ‘I was forgetting that the popes were here for some of the Middle Ages.’ Thea tucked her hand into his elbow and he had to consciously keep himself from squeezing it against his ribs. ‘Were they gloomy?’

  ‘Probably not. There’s a very splendid papal palace and acres of vineyards—I would wager they had rather a good time.’

  ‘I wonder what the music is.’ Thea went out to the front terrace and Rhys followed her.

  ‘There is a festival, madame.’ The proprietor came through the doors as she spoke. ‘One t
rusts the noise will not disturb you.’

  ‘It sounds delightful. Will there be food down there?’

  The man looked down his nose. ‘Rustic fare, madame. The eating places of the townspeople, vendors with stalls. Wine sellers.’ He made a very Gallic flicking motion of dismissal with his fingertips.

  ‘Sounds excellent,’ Rhys said. ‘We will eat out. Hodge!’

  ‘My lord?’ The valet emerged from the shadows.

  ‘Tell Polly and Tom we’re going down to the fair and you can all have the evening off. All right?’ He raised an eyebrow at Thea.

  ‘That sounds wonderful. I would like to try the local food.’ She adjusted her shawl over her shoulders, took his arm again and made for the steps.

  They strolled amidst the old stone buildings, gilded by the setting sun, then wove their way through narrow alleyways and across tiny squares, headed for the music and then followed the smell of roasting meat. The Place du Palais had three great fires that had obviously been nursed since early morning—a whole ox, two sheep and three pigs were turning on spits with waiters hurrying to and fro between them and the tables grouped around to form impromptu eating places.

  Other stallholders shouted their wares from boards laden with pies, breads, salads, sweetmeats and fruit. Down the middle of the long open space, dodging the cursing waiters and tripping each other up, a group of men were laying boards over the cobbles.

  ‘A dance floor. What fun.’

  ‘You want to dance?’ Rhys asked with a sinking heart. He danced out of duty, because it was expected of a gentleman, and he always felt a fool promenading about, despite being assured by any number of young ladies—with much fluttering of lashes—that he was an excellent dancer.