“Have I said something amusing?” she said.
“Hmm?”
“You looked amused.”
“Hmm,” Rafe said, and fell into the empty settee.
Thea flew into a flurry of activity, carrying over their wine goblets, then dropping into the other settee and gathering the books.
“What would you like? First up, Leonora by Miss Edgeworth.” She flipped it open. “Oh. Some sentences are underlined.”
Rafe tensed and his heart skipped a beat. Blast. He should have foreseen this. Thea appeared not to notice, as she frowned at the page.
“That reminds me. Today I saw a strange marking in the…” She flicked a glance at him, then returned to the book. “Never mind. Let’s see what the previous reader underlined. ‘What a misfortune it is to be born a woman!’ Well, that’s cheerful. And maybe not for you.”
She tossed it aside and grabbed the next book.
Rafe realized he was jiggling his leg and pushed his hand onto his knee to make himself stop. Stop. He had to stop this. Across from him, Thea chattered on, oblivious.
“Here is poetry, much more manly: Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field. Flodden? What kind of word is that? Really, Walter Scott. Our intrepid reader has been here too, and has underlined… ‘O, what a tangled web we weave, When first we practise to deceive.’ Um. Ha ha. Well.”
Cheeks pink, eyes averted, Thea tossed the book at him. Rafe caught it in one hand and pressed a sharp corner into his palm.
Thea picked up the third book and considered its plain cover. “I begin to get a sense of our unknown friend’s character. First, I deduce it was a woman.”
“It was Katharine,” Rafe said abruptly. “The underlining,” he added, at her questioning look. “It was a habit Katharine had, underlining sentences that she said…” He hesitated. How to explain that Katharine believed the books were sending her messages? “Had particular meaning to her.”
It was only to be expected that the subject of Katharine would arise, sooner or later, given Thea’s curiosity. Rafe watched her turning the book over in her hands, and he was still trying to decide whether to leave or stay, when she looked up.
“She was your wife,” she remarked.
“Hmm.”
“Were you in love with her?”
“We agreed no talking.”
She opened and closed the book a few times before saying, “You ran away to America to avoid the army, and you took Katharine with you.”
“Sounds like you already know everything.”
“I don’t know whether you were in love with her.”
“We were so young and…” No. Katharine deserved better than that. “Yes,” he amended softly, and let himself remember, the naive, adventurous eighteen-year-old he had been, and Katharine, a few years older and bolder. Yes, he had been young. Since then, he had aged a thousand years.
Thea’s expression was soft now, and somehow that softness made it easier to speak.
“Have you ever seen a wild horse?” Rafe said. “Katharine was like that. Reckless, untamable. She refused to marry any of the men Ventnor chose for her. Her family was staying here, and she overheard me arguing with my father about joining the army, and it seemed we had much in common. When I told her I was thinking of sailing for America, she wanted to come. We sat up one night talking, spinning out tales of the adventures we would have, and by the time the sun rose, we had decided to run away together. We sailed from Bristol two days later.”
How full of hope they had been, he and Katharine, standing on the ship’s deck and yelling their joyful farewells to England, while the briny wind whipped at their clothes. A far cry from Katharine’s final days, when she cursed him and fled. When the ship’s captain married them, they had promised to look after each other always. A promise Rafe had failed to keep.
“And then?” Thea prompted.
“And then…”
The conversation unfurled in his mind, the questions Thea would ask, the answers he would have to give, hauling up the unchangeable past like some slimy, crumbling remnant of a shipwreck, turning Katharine’s story into her post-dinner entertainment. Soon, Thea and her curiosity would depart for her next escapade, but those resurrected memories would remain; better they lay buried, where they were easier to manage.
“She became unwell,” he finished brusquely. “It was better for her to return to England. She wrote to her parents. Ventnor came to take her home. The end.”
“But you came back too, didn’t you?”
Rafe stood and bowed, painfully aware of his comically stiff politeness. “I bid you good night. Thank you for your company. Now I shall retire.”
He headed for the door, but with a swish of skirts, Thea skipped ahead of him.
“Please forgive my impertinent questions,” she said. “It was thoughtless of me. My curiosity gets the better of me. I did not mean to upset you.”
“I’m not upset.”
“It’s just that it was all so long ago, and you need not be lonely.”
“I’m not lonely.”
“Very well.”
Those cornflower-blue eyes called him a liar, but her expression was caring and earnest, her lips slightly parted. His cheeks warmed with the memory of her palms, and his fingers craved to caress her sun-kissed face in turn. The edge of her pale-green gown drew his eye to the swell of her breasts, to the fine muslin cascading over the promise of a waist and hips and thighs. Rafe wasn’t upset and he wasn’t lonely, he wasn’t, but he was a hot-blooded man and Thea was a captivating woman who made his blood run hotter; he had vowed not to touch her, but neither could he summon the will to return to his empty room.
A knock at the door had them leaping apart. They loitered awkwardly while the servants cleared away their dinner plates. No one batted an eyelash at them; all were caught up in the fiction of their marriage.
“Why was the countess not served syllabub?” Rafe asked the last footman before he left.
“No!” Thea cried. “Please don’t mention it.”
The man was frowning. “I don’t understand, my lord.”
“The countess had no syllabub on her tray.”
“Her ladyship eats her dessert first, my lord. The empty glass was on the sideboard.”
Where Rafe had not noticed it. Well played, Thea. He pivoted to face her. She stood against the wall, eyes wide in feigned innocence. The footman hurried to escape, and once more Rafe was alone with Thea.
Alone with her playfulness and mischief and delight.
A giddy recklessness washed over him, and he was advancing on her before he even knew what he was doing.
“You eat your dessert first?” he said slowly.
She pressed back against the peach-colored wall. “The best countesses always eat their dessert first.”
He used his arms to cage her in, which had the added benefit of keeping himself steady, for her hands were on his chest and his legs were ready to collapse, that he might fall to his knees and slide up her skirts.
“And do the best countesses always eat the earl’s dessert too?”
“The best earls always give the countesses their dessert. You, my lord, are an excellent earl.”
“And you, my lady, are not an excellent wife.”