Regency Rogues: Unlacing The Forbidden. Louise Allen
‘A scandal only if I am recognised, and who is going to do that? I will be veiled and anyone who sees us will assume I am your mistress.’ He rolled his eyes, as well he might. She was hardly mistress material, veil or no veil. ‘Frankly, I do not care if I am ruined. It can’t make things any worse. Rhys, I am not asking to be taken about as though I was on an expedition of pleasure, merely to be transported. I cannot go by myself, not easily, although if you do not help me then I will hire a courier and a maid and attempt it.’
‘Using what for money?’ he demanded. ‘Or do you expect me to lend you the funds to ruin yourself with?’
‘Certainly not. But my life will be wrecked if I have to stay.’ He looked decidedly unconvinced. ‘I have eighteen months’ allowance with me.’ The bundles of notes and the coins sewn into her underwear had kept her warm and comforted her with their solid presence throughout the long journey.
‘I suppose your father handed it over without question?’ There was the faintest hint of a twitch at the corner of his mouth. It gave her some hope that the old Rhys, the carefree, reckless boy who was up for any lark, was still lurking somewhere inside this rather formidable man.
‘Of course not. I have not spent more than a few pounds of my allowance for three months. The rest I took from the money box in Papa’s study. I left a proper receipt.’
‘And who taught you to pick locks, madam?’
‘You did.’
‘The devil! I can’t deny it.’ He did grin then. ‘You were very good at it, I recall. Remember the day when you opened Godmama’s desk drawer and rescued my catapult? And I had a perfect alibi, clearing up under the nose of the head gardener after I broke three windows in the conservatory.’
‘You said that you would be for ever in my debt.’ She did not make the mistake of smiling triumphantly.
‘I think I was thirteen at the time,’ Rhys said. ‘That is a very long time to remember a debt.’
‘Surely a gentleman never forgets one, especially to a lady.’ His eyes flickered over her appalling clothes, but he refrained from comment. ‘You have three choices, Rhys. Take me with you, leave me to my own devices in London or send me back to Papa.’ Thea smiled to reduce the bluntness of her demand. ‘Think of it as one last adventure. Or don’t you dare?’
He shook his head at her, then winced as his eyes crossed. ‘Do not think you are going to provoke me that way. I am twenty-eight, Thea, much too old for that nonsense.’
Rhys was not too old for anything, she thought as she concentrated on keeping her face open and ingenuous. He looked perfect for one last adventure, one last dream. ‘Please?’
It had never failed before. She had no idea why, of all the group of godchildren who had spent their long summers with Lady Hughson, she was the one who could always wheedle Rhys into doing anything she asked. Her, ordinary little Althea, not the other boys, not even Serena, the blue-eyed beauty he had fallen in love with.
‘I must be mad.’ She held her breath as he took a long swallow of brandy, his Adam’s apple moving in the muscled column of his throat. ‘I’ll take you. But you had better behave, brat, or you’ll be on the first boat home.’
Rhys might have been foxed, but he could still organise his affairs with an autocratic authority. Hurrying upstairs to get changed, a sleepy maid at her heels, Thea recognised the development of the charm she remembered from years before. Then he would smile, explain, persuade—and things happened as the young Earl of Palgrave desired them. Everything except his marriage.
As an adult he still smiled, but he had no need for persuasion, it seemed. What his lordship ordered, happened. Now a travelling carriage was waiting behind the chaise in which she sat, clad in the plain, crumpled gown and cloak she had pulled from her portmanteau. A startled housemaid had received an unexpected promotion to lady’s attendant and was chattering excitedly with Rhys’s valet, Hodge, while the remainder of the luggage was packed into the carriage.
Thea twitched the side blind to make certain it was securely down, although there was no one in the dawn-lit street to see her inside the vehicle, let alone recognise her with the thick veil that covered her face. She yawned and wriggled her toes, relishing the thick carpet and the comfortable squabs after the Spartan stagecoach. Her new maid—Molly, Polly?—would join her in the chaise and Rhys would travel in the carriage with his valet, she assumed.
That was a good thing. She had not realised quite what a shock to the system this fully grown Rhys would be. Other than some distant glimpses when their paths had crossed while she was doing the Season, her last memories were of a youthful, trusting twenty-two-year-old standing white-faced at the altar as his world fell about his ears. After that he had been in London and, even when she was there, too, following her come-out, the paths of a wealthy, sophisticated man about town with no interest in finding a bride did not cross those of a young lady in the midst of the Marriage Mart.
The door opened and a footman leaned in. ‘Excuse me, ma’am, but shall I put your seat into the sleeping position?’ As he spoke he tugged a section of the padded facing panel away to reveal the darkness of the compartment that jutted out at the front of the vehicle, then he fitted the panel into the gap in front of the seat. She had heard about sleeping chaises, but had never travelled in one before.
‘No, thank you.’ She felt too tense to lie down. The maid deserved some rest after being dragged from her sleep to attend to her so she could use the facility.
The door opened again, the chaise dipped to the side as someone put their foot on the step. ‘Rhys?’
‘Not sleeping?’ Shaven but heavy-eyed, he climbed past her, shrugged out of his coat and slid down the bed the footman had created, his booted feet disappearing into the void. ‘Wake me when we stop for breakfast.’ He closed his eyes and curled up on his side. ‘Or for highwaymen.’
Without his coat Thea had an unimpeded view of the back of his head, his broad shoulders, the quite admirable lines of long thigh muscles and—she made no effort to avert her eyes—a firm, trim backside.
She stared for a long minute, being only human and female, then fixed her gaze on the postilions as the chaise lurched into motion. Oh, yes, indeed, her childhood friend had grown up. She felt rather as if she had whistled for a friendly hound to come to her side and had found instead she had summoned a wolf. He might be Rhys, but he was also a male. An adult male. With, she recalled, a reputation.
She brought to mind the sight of him in a box at Covent Garden Theatre, plying a beautiful woman with champagne, and hearing the whispers of the married ladies in her party. He had snatched that ladybird from the keeping of Lord Hepplethwaite and the displaced lord had blustered about calling him out—and had then recalled Rhys’s reputation with a rapier.
After a few minutes Thea lowered the blind. It was easier on her nerves to see where they were and, if she was looking out of the window, then she was not watching the man slumbering by her side. He was snoring a little, which was not surprising after all he had drunk, she supposed. The sound was oddly comforting.
A glint of water showed her they were crossing Westminster Bridge, the new gaslights disappointingly extinguished. But the view downriver was as dramatic as when Wordsworth had written about it. ‘The City now doth like a garment wear the beauty of the morning…’ she murmured.
Beside her Rhys sighed as if in protest at the sound of her voice and turned over, his eyes tightly closed in sleep. His hair was fashionably cropped, but one dark lock fell over his forehead, a vivid reminder of the youth she had known. Thea reached out to brush it back, then stopped, her ungloved hand a fraction above the slightly waving strands. They rose to meet her fingertips like the pelt of a cat that had been stroked until its fur crackled.
Thea