“The smoky flavor of this tea is heavenly,” Nicholas said. “Judith would adore this.”
“You can have it. It was a gift from my new father-in-law, Mr. Knight.”
Nicholas lowered his cup with a clatter. “You talked to him? I thought you intended to keep your mischievous scheme quiet. Or does he know the truth?”
“No. He believes I married his perfect Helen. I got Thea her dowry. They just cast her out, and did not believe her side of the story. She deserves better, for all that she is a royal pain in the neck.”
“Is she, Rafe? Is she a pain in the neck? Because that look on your face when you say her name…”
Rafe waved the bundle of bills in his hand. “She took the Luxborough carriage and a servant in Luxborough livery, told everyone she is the Countess of Luxborough, and has bought up half of Bond Street.”
“I like her already.” The bishop smiled like the angel he wasn’t. “What about you? Do you like her, Rafe? Do you?”
“Oh no, you don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t you put on that innocent face for me, old man. If you’re hoping to meet her, forget it.”
Nicholas pouted over his teacup. “Only to check she’s good enough. I should meet the girl you’ve married.”
“I haven’t married her! You knew I had no intention of marrying her when you issued the license. So stop it. This is not a real marriage.”
“Not yet it isn’t,” he replied, singsong.
“That’s it. Out now. Out.”
“But I haven’t finished my tea.”
Rafe grabbed the teacup and emptied it into a potted palm. “Yes, you have. Look. All gone. Now—out.”
“You can’t talk to me like that,” the bishop protested through his laughter. “I’m a holy man.”
“You’re a holy pain in the neck. And when you start nagging me to marry, it’s time for you to go.”
Nicholas merely poured himself more tea. “So you don’t find her appealing, then.”
“Of course she’s appealing. She’s… She’s…”
Thea in the moonlight, bright and brave and all alone in the world. Her palms cupping his cheeks, standing so close he could have slid an arm around her waist and pulled her into his embrace.
He caught himself pressing his knuckles to his cheek and lowered his hand.
“She’s perfectly nice-looking,” he finished.
“Does your face frighten her?”
Rafe snorted. “She jokes about it.”
“And would she hate to be married to you?”
“Don’t even think it,” Rafe said. “I’ve told you a thousand times, I’m not getting married again. I’m not good at it.”
“It’s marriage, my boy. No one’s good at it. That’s what makes it so much fun.” Nicholas sipped his tea, his bright eyes fixed on Rafe. “This girl sounds perfect for you.”
“We are lying to each other.”
“So perfect.”
“Besides, she likes people.”
“Oh, heaven forbid. Not people!”
“One week at Brinkley End and she’d be moping about, desperate to get back to London.”
That was all there was to it: Rafe did not have it in him to make someone happy. He had one wife buried on his estate. He did not need a second one there too.
“You don’t know that,” Nicholas persisted. “Let me ask her.”
“No! You’re each as mischievous as the other, and who knows what you would cook up together.” He shuddered. “You should go before she gets back.”
“I’d behave myself.”
“You have never behaved yourself.”
Nicholas drained his cup and stretched his arms with a loud yawn. “Very well, I’ll be off. I wish you wouldn’t run back to Somersetshire so soon. Judith complains she never sees you.”
“Tell her I look the same as I did last time she saw me, but older and more miserable.”
“You should have gone to the seaside with Christopher and his family. Christopher’s boys have been asking about you. They want to learn how to hunt a jaguar.”
Christopher was one of the few people Rafe felt truly comfortable with, but the thought of his younger brother’s family—Christopher’s beloved Mary and their gaggle of children, three or four or twenty or however many they had now—unsettled him.
“I don’t know how to hunt a jaguar,” Rafe said. “In case you hadn’t noticed, the jaguar won.”
“If the jaguar had won, you’d be dead.”
“Right. And Christopher would be earl, and there’d be a proper family in Brinkley End again, and all would be—”
“Don’t say it!” Nicholas slapped his hands down on the table and the tea things rattled. He launched to his feet, suddenly serious, fury flashing in his eyes. “Don’t you dare say it, Rafe.”
From outside came screeching about witches; from inside the banging of a door. Rafe’s jaw ached with the effort of locking down his throat.
He unclenched his jaw. “And all would be right in the world,” he finished defiantly.
“Brinkley End—”
“Is not my home,” Rafe said. “It never was. It never will be.”
“Not if you think like that it won’t.”
That sounded like something Thea would say. What a pair they were, Thea and Nicholas, chatty and sunny and knowing nothing at all. Rafe wheeled away and paced across the room.
“You did all you could for Katharine,” Nicholas said.
“This has nothing to do with Katharine.”
“Her death was not your fault.”
Rafe stopped short. “She rode recklessly through a storm to escape from me. I promised to look after her and I failed.”
“You keep telling yourself this story, but what if it isn’t true?”
“I was there, Nicholas. I know what is true.”
“You allow your guilt—”
“Guilt has nothing to do with it. I’m simply not made for…for marriage.”
“Katharine’s situation was unusual. There is nothing more you could have done.”
Rafe shook his head, tired of this argument. It suited the bishop to absolve him, but Rafe would never escape his failure to look after his wife. He would never escape the truth that he could look after nothing more complicated than a plant.
Their thick silence was broken by the sound of a carriage pulling up outside.
“Is it her?” Nicholas dashed to the window, eager as a boy at Christmas. “Oh, it’s her!”
Rafe found himself at the window too, watching as Thea’s manservant Gilbert helped her down from the carriage. She certainly appeared the part of a countess, in a sleek blue-striped pelisse and large, elaborate bonnet. The wide-brimmed bonnet did a fair job of hiding her face, until she paused and looked up to admire the house. The light caressed the angle of her jaw and slid down the smooth column of her throat.
“She looks delightful,” Nicholas said. “Please, may I talk to her? Please, please, please?”
“No!”
With both hands on the laughing bishop’s back, Rafe marched him into the hall and ordered him to leave through the kitchen. A moment later, the butler had opened the door and Rafe was in the doorway, looking at Thea.