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‘Don’t worry.’ He dragged his shirt over his head and sat on the edge of the bed to dispose of shoes and stockings. ‘At least you have encountered a naked man before.’
‘No, I haven’t. Anthony just unfastened his falls and pushed me onto the chaise.’ It had almost been exciting at first and then...not.
Rhys stopped with his hands on the fastenings of his evening breeches. ‘The man is a clod. Shall I put out the candles?’
Thea shook her head. If this was going to be the only time she made love, then she wanted to see everything, know everything. And she was prepared; she had felt Rhys’s aroused body pressed against her in the chaise on the ship.
Rhys pulled off his breeches and stood there, a faintly quizzical expression on his face as she stared. It seemed she’d had no idea quite what to expect after all.
Oh, my goodness. Thea said the first thing that came into her head. ‘I think you look magnificent.’ Quite unable to feel shy, afraid or even apprehensive, she reached out her right hand.
Rhys gasped as her grip closed around his erection. ‘Thea! Hell’s teeth, you are as curious and bold as a cage full of monkeys, you wicked girl.’ He wasn’t angry; she could tell by the way he hardened still more against her fingers and by the trace of laugher in his voice. ‘Let go for a moment and I will take off your chemise and do my share of admiring.’
‘My stockings,’ she mumbled as the fine lawn was whisked over her head.
‘Leave them. They are very arousing.’ Rhys sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled her close between his parted thighs before she could realise just how exposed she was or wonder how stockings could be arousing. He held her still with one hand behind her waist and bent to kiss her breast.
The hairs on his legs were strangely stimulating against her bare skin, his lips were warm and sure on the curve of her breast and she moaned softly. So gentle. And then he took the nipple in his mouth, sucked, nipped lightly with his teeth and Thea almost jumped out of her skin. She caught his head in her hands and held him close, panting with the shock of the sensation that tugged a response from her womb, her thighs, deeply, intimately...
When Rhys lifted his head she thought she would sink to the floor if it were not for the pressure of his legs and his hand holding her.
He looked up, his eyes dark. ‘You are so lovely, Thea. So sweet and so innocent, despite what that oaf did. If I am going to stop, I have to do it now.’
‘You cannot stop now,’ she gasped.
‘I can. Barely. I should.’
‘Sooner or later I will find a man to make love to me, because I am not going to live and die a spinster and not know how it should be. And I would very much rather it was you, Rhys.’
‘That, my sweet, is blackmail.’
Thea bit her lip. He sounded so serious. Was she goading him to act against his honour? She would never do that to Rhys. ‘I am sorry, it was, was it not? Rhys, you aren’t being a rake or a seducer. I am not a virgin. I want this and I understand what we are doing.’
‘And the consequences? If I do not prevent you becoming pregnant?’
‘It will not happen.’ He would keep her safe, she had total trust in him, just as she had under that diligence. She placed her hands flat on his chest and leaned in to kiss him, as if that would explain just how deep her trust was.
With a groan Rhys lay back and pulled her with him, rolling until she was beneath him. His face was buried in the angle of her neck, his heart beat over hers and her legs had opened of their own accord to cradle him intimately against the heat at the core of her. It was a kind of perfection, a moment of stillness, poised on the brink of the blissful abyss.
Thea closed her eyes and let herself absorb every sensation. Rhys’s hair smelled faintly of woodsmoke and somewhere he must have brushed against a flowering bush, for a fragrance clung to the cropped curls. His skin was soft and smooth in some places, firm and roughened with hair in others. The weight of him was dominating, and yet he held himself in such control that it was not at all frightening. At the junction of her thighs she could feel the shape of him, beating with a pulse of its own, heating her flesh, moving as it strained against his will, wanting to thrust.
‘Ah, Thea.’ He lifted himself on his elbows and she opened her eyes to look up into his. ‘I never—’
‘My lord, are you awake?’ A piercing whisper, the rap of knuckles on the door. Polly?
They froze, staring at each other, desire fled. ‘What do you want?’ Rhys snarled. ‘What hour is this to be hammering on doors, for goodness’ sake?’
‘It is one o’clock, my lord. I’m sorry, but I got up to go to the necessary and peeped into Lady Althea’s room and she isn’t in her bed and it’s not been slept in. Where can she be?’
‘Blast the woman, she’ll start a hue and cry,’ Rhys whispered, then raised his voice. ‘Perhaps she went into the garden for some air and slipped and hurt herself, or fell asleep. Go down and look, Polly, and be quiet about it, don’t make a fuss. I’ll dress and come and help.’
‘Yes, my lord. But I’ve told Mr Hodge and the landlady, I was that worried—and Mr Benton woke up, too.’
‘Go! And don’t wake anyone else,’ Rhys ordered. He rolled off the bed and reached for his breeches. ‘Confound the wench, she’s started a hue and cry. Get dressed, Thea, hurry. The garden slopes up past this window. I’ll lower you down—go and find a bench to pretend to fall asleep on.’
It was as though someone had doused her in icy water. The heat of Rhys’s body had gone, the enchantment of that perfect sensual moment fled and in their place was the sordid possibility of being discovered in a man’s room by a search party.
She whipped her hair into a braid as Rhys tied her corset strings. ‘Try to tie it as it was or Polly will notice,’ she urged. He tossed her gown over her head and fastened it in urgent silence. ‘Find the hairpins, hide them,’ she whispered as she thrust her feet into her slippers.
The window had a low sill. She sat on it and swung her legs over, straining to hear. There was the sound of movement and people talking lower down, near the entrance to the inn. Rhys took her wrists and swung her down to the path some six feet below the window, just as he had in those long-ago days when they went scrambling over walls to pick illicit apples. ‘Take care!’
Thea crept up through the tangled garden that clad the slope, onto a terrace that, in daylight, commanded a view of the river. There had been a wide bench, she remembered, and groped towards it in the starlight. When she bumped against the cool stone she lay down and tried to arrange herself in a convincing pose for sleep. She realised she was panting and focused on taking deep, sleepy breaths.
‘Lady Althea! Thea!’ Giles, coming closer...
When she heard footsteps on the gravel she sat up, stretched her arms and gasped with what she hoped was realistic alarm for someone waking up, confused, in the dark. ‘Giles! Where are you? What time is it? Oh, my goodness, I must have fallen asleep.’
He came out onto the terrace, his face eerily underlit by the lantern in his hand. ‘Past one,’ he said as he went down on one knee by the bench. ‘Are you all right, Thea? We thought you might have fallen and hurt yourself.’
There were voices farther down, the sound of bodies crashing through the undergrowth. ‘I am perfectly all right. How many people are searching? What a fuss—it was only that I was hot...’
‘Polly is convinced you have been snatched by bloodthirsty revolutionaries or a gang of ruffians bent on kidnap and ransom. Lord Palgrave suggested we search the gardens first.’ He twisted round. ‘Here he is.’
‘Idiotic woman,’ Rhys said, as he strode onto the terrace with Polly and what looked like half the inn’s staff on his heels. ‘You’ll catch your death of cold one day with this obsession with fresh air. Why the blazes didn’t you tell anyone you were out here?’
He sounded thoroughly irritable and was probably not having to act in the slightest. If he felt anything like her, Rhys was aching with frustrated desire.
‘I didn’t mean to stay and fall asleep,’ she protested. ‘I went out after Polly left me because I couldn’t drop off.’ That was all technically true, at least, even if it barely touched the real facts in passing.
‘You are frozen.’ Rhys hauled her to her feet, despite a murmur of protest from Giles. He pulled off his coat and slung it around her shoulders. ‘How the hell I let you persuade me to bring you along on this journey, I’ll never know.’
Whatever else the onlookers were imagining, Thea doubted they envisaged any kind of romantic tryst. Rhys sounded like a man with a delinquent younger sister.
‘And don’t start crying,’ he snapped.
Thea took her cue and flung herself sobbing into Polly’s arms. The more fuss she made, the less likely the maid would notice anything untoward about the way she was dressed. Goodness knew what Rhys had done with her corset strings.
‘Don’t shout at me,’ she pleaded from behind the large handkerchief that Giles had pressed into her hands.
‘I’ll get rid of the staff,’ he said. ‘This is turning into a circus.’ He herded them before him, leaving Thea, Polly and Rhys on the terrace.
