Louise Allen - Regency Rogues - Unlacing The Forbidden

‘Very well.’ She swept cloak and skirts around her with a flourish and sat in a chair that had probably once graced the town house of some now-executed aristocrat. The idea made her shiver.

‘You are cold.’ From his frown, that appeared to be a fault on her part.

‘No, I am…unsettled. Please say what it is you wish to say and then I will go and change.’

‘You should never have come to me and I should never have brought you with me,’ Rhys stated without preamble.

‘I was obviously mistaken in thinking I could rely on an old friend to help me.’

‘You should have been able to rely on an old friend to do the right thing. If I had been halfway sober, I would never have brought you. But it is done now and there is no going back from it. I will get you to Godmama safely.’

‘Thank—’

‘I have not finished. Your position is open to misinterpretation from everyone we meet, servants or otherwise. I will not have a lady under my protection insulted or embarrassed, and I would therefore be grateful if you would do nothing to draw attention to yourself, or our journey is likely to be a turbulent one.’

‘Indeed?’ Thea got to her feet with a swirl of skirts that would have been considerably more effective if they had not been overwashed old wool. ‘Other than being female, I do not believe I have done anything that might be said to draw attention to my person. I regret that I am not able to rectify that grievous fault—unless you wish me to dress as a boy? I still have the clothes.’

‘You make an appalling boy—you do not have the figure for it.’ Rhys appeared to find the carved overmantel fascinating.

‘I could bind my—’

‘It is not your… Not the parts that need binding that are the problem. No youth has hips like that, and those can’t be bound.’

‘Hips? Are you saying that I have a fat posterior?’

‘No! Thea, this is a highly improper conversation.’ Rhys glared at her. ‘You have curves, that is all I am saying.’

‘So I should hope.’

‘You never had them before.’ Rhys’s lips twitched into a reluctant smile. ‘You used to be all skin and bone and angles. You still have the elbows. I have the bruises from last night.’

‘I was sixteen the last time we met face-to-face, for goodness’ sake! I was a late developer,’ she added mutinously.

‘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.