Rhys gave him a surly glance. “I was an altar boy, and I can tell you that reports of their virtue are highly exaggerated.”
With a reluctant grin, Devon turned and headed back toward the main hall.
Rhys went to find Helen. Since it wouldn’t do to alarm her by running and leaping on her like a madman, he forced himself to walk at a measured pace. Exiting the back of the house through the conservatory, he crossed a section of neatly mown lawn.
A sinuous graveled path led past sweeps of winter-flowering shrubs, and ancient stone walls covered with climbing vines that twisted together like lace. The estate gardens were clean and spare, the frosted ground biding its time until spring came to soften it. A breeze scented of peat smoke and sedge reminded him of the vale where he had lived in early childhood until his family had moved to London. Not that Llanberris, with its stony ground and abundant tarns, was anything like these manicured surroundings. But there was a particular smell of a place with lakes and rain, and Hampshire had it.
As he approached the row of four glasshouses, he saw movement in the first one, a slim black-clad shape gliding past frosted panes. His heart jolted, and a flush heated his face despite the biting February air. He didn’t know what he expected, or why he was as nervous as a lad with his first sweetheart. Not long ago, he would have scoffed at the suggestion that an unworldly young woman, a girl, could reduce him to this state.
He used one knuckle to rap gently on a glass pane. Carefully he ascended a stone step, let himself into the building, and closed the door.
Rhys had never been inside the glasshouse before. Helen had described it to him in detail while he had stayed at Eversby Priory, but he’d been encumbered by crutches and a leg cast. He had regretted not being able to walk out to see it, having understood how important it was to her.
The indoor climate was moist, warm, loamy. It seemed a world away from England, a glass palace filled with brilliant color and exotic shapes. He was greeted with the pungency of potting soil and dense greenery, and thin sharp orchid perfumes, and a pervasive smell of vanilla. His wondering gaze traveled over row upon row of tall plants, tables of orchids in pots and jars, orchid vines growing over the walls and curling upward toward a glittering glass firmament.
A slender figure emerged from behind an inflorescence of snow-white blooms. Helen’s crystalline eyes caught the light, and her pretty lips rounded like a tea rose as she said his name in soundless bewilderment. She moved toward him, stumbling a little as she came around the table too fast. The hint of clumsiness, her obvious haste, electrified him. She had missed him. She had wanted him, too.
Reaching her in three swift strides, Rhys caught her up against him so tightly that her toes left the floor. Momentum turned them in a half-circle. Letting her back down, he dove his face into the warm fragrant skin of her neck and breathed her, absorbed her.
“Cariad,” he said huskily, “that was the first time I’ve ever seen you move with less than swanlike grace.”
She gave an unsteady laugh. “You surprised me.” Her warm, delicate hands came to the cold sides of his face. “You’re here,” she said, as if trying to make herself believe it.
Breathing unevenly, Rhys nuzzled her, amazed by the silkiness of her skin and hair, the tenderness of her flesh. Something like elation, only stronger, was pouring into his veins, intoxicating him. “I could eat you,” he muttered, pushing past her caressing hands to find her lips, feeling her mouth with his. Helen responded eagerly, her fingers sliding into his hair and shaping against his skull.
He murmured rough-soft endearments between kisses, while Helen clung to him. Her sweet little tongue stroked against his in the way he’d taught her, and the sensation shot down to his groin. Staggering slightly, he had to reach down to the edge of the table to steady himself. Holy hell. He had to stop now, or he wouldn’t be able to stop at all. Taking his mouth from hers, he let out a shuddering sigh, and another, laboring to bring his desire under control. The muscles of his arms trembled as he forced them to loosen.
It didn’t help that Helen was stringing flowerlike kisses along the taut line of his jaw, infusing fresh sensation into his blood. “I thought you might come tomorrow or the next day—”
“I couldn’t wait,” he said, and felt her cheek curve against his.
“This must be a dream.”
Too full of heat to restrain himself, Rhys reached down and gripped her hips snugly against his. “Is this real enough for you, cariad?” A coarse gesture that no gentleman would have made. But Helen knew what to expect of him by now.
Her eyes widened as she felt the taut pressure of him even through the layers of her skirts. But she didn’t pull back. “You feel very . . . healthy,” she said. “How is your shoulder?”
“Why don’t you cut off my shirt and take a look?”
That drew a quick, throaty chuckle from her. “Not in the glasshouse.” Lowering to her heels, she twisted to reach for one of the plants on the table beside them. After breaking off a small, perfect green orchid, she inserted it into the buttonhole of his left lapel.
“Dendrobium?” Rhys guessed, looking down at the flower.
“Yes, how did you know?” She felt for the tiny silk boutonniere latch underneath the lapel and tucked the end of the stem into it. “Have you been reading about orchids?”
“A bit.” He ran a teasing fingertip down the length of her nose. It was impossible to stop touching her, playing with her. “Trenear said you’ve been studying Welsh history.”
“I have. It’s fascinating. Did you know that King Arthur was Welsh?”
Amused, Rhys stroked her hair, finding the intricate mass of pinned-up braids at the back. “If he existed, he would have been.”
“He did exist,” Helen said earnestly. “There’s a stone that bears his horse’s footprint near a lake named Llyn Barfog. I want to see it someday.”
His smile widened. “You pronounce that well, cariad. But the double L sounds more like thl. Let a breath of air slip around the sides of your tongue.”
Helen repeated the sound a few times, not quite able to match his pronunciation. She was so adorable with the tip of her tongue fitted behind her front teeth that he couldn’t help stealing another kiss, sucking briefly at the warm satin of her lips.
“You don’t have to learn Welsh,” he told her.
“I want to.”
“A difficult language, it is. And in these times, there’s no advantage to knowing it.” Ruefully he added, “My mother always said, ‘Avoid speaking in Welsh as you would sin.’”
“Why?”
“It was bad for business.” Rhys let his hands coast slowly over her arms and back. “You know of the prejudice against my kind. People who believe the Welsh are morally backward, lazy . . . even unclean.”
“Yes, but it’s nonsense. Civilized people would never say such things.”
“Not in public. But some say that, and worse, in the privacy of their own parlors.” He frowned as he continued. “Some will think less of you for marrying me. They won’t admit it to your face, but you’ll see it in their eyes. Even when they smile.”
It wasn’t something they had discussed during their previous engagement—Rhys had been touchy about his social inferiority, and Helen hadn’t been willing to risk offending him. He was relieved to finally be frank with her. But at the same time, the admission that it would lower her to marry him left a bitter taste in his mouth.