Her eyes were so bright, her spirit so lively. It would be a small matter to take one more step, to brush her hair away from her face and slide his lips over hers. If he were a different man, he would.
If he were a different man, he would tease and play with his bright, lively bride; he would revel in these prizes of pleasure and delight and joy.
But he was not a different man.
How did this keep happening? He kept forgetting. One moment he was heading for the door, the next he was thinking of taking her to bed. It was as though Thea’s presence transformed him somehow, but like all magic, it could never be real.
That realization hit him like cold water and gave him the strength to wheel about and march out the door.
But his own rooms had become echoing and dull, where nothing held his interest, so he sought out Martha in the parlor downstairs. She pointedly remarked on the countess playing billiards alone in the next room, but he pointedly ignored her, and demanded that she give him some bhang to test tonight. The way he was feeling now, a little pain-relieving intoxicant would go a long way.
“There, that got rid of him,” Thea boasted to the empty settees, but the furniture was not fooled; it knew as well as she did that she had wanted him to stay.
More than that. When she had stood so near to him, enclosed in his heat with her palms touching his chest, so near that his woodsy scent intoxicated her and his eyes saw inside her, she had longed to trace the contours of his body. The mysterious folds of his neckcloth had tempted her to strip it away and bare his throat, and his wicked coat taunted her with notions of sliding it aside. And the lingering sensations under her skin, where their single kiss bounced around excitedly, warned that she wanted him to do similar things to her.
So. This was the sinful desire ladies were warned about. How right they were, to call passion dangerous, for it perilously banished rational thought. But after some coaxing, rational thought returned to remind her that Luxborough believed them married, and would be furious when he learned the truth. If she succumbed, she would ruin herself, and ruining herself would ruin her plan of restarting her life as if there had been no scandal.
She calculated the days. Surely she would hear from Helen tomorrow? Surely. And tomorrow she would leave.
Resolutely, Thea laid out the three books on the table, but they only made her think of Rafe and the story he refused to tell, so she decided to practice billiards instead.
In the billiard room, she heard muffled female voices. Thea opened the door to see Sally and Martha sitting together in the neighboring parlor, one with sewing, the other with a book, and both with guilty expressions. Thea did not cast them out, and they did not invite her in, so she closed the door and played billiards alone.
At one point, she heard Lord Luxborough arrive and exchange inaudible words with Sally and Martha. She froze, straining to hear, wondering if he would play billiards with her after all, but then he left and she heard nothing more.
Finally, long after the other women had retired, Thea blew out the candles and headed back to her rooms. As she walked along the corridor, a movement in the courtyard garden caught her eye and she opened a window to look out.
In the garden stood Luxborough, half dressed, his white shirt bright in the moonlight. Thea tried to puzzle out what he was doing, but he seemed only to be staring at a pink flower. He poked the flower like a perplexed cat, and then picked it. Moving as though his arms were unnaturally heavy, he plucked a single petal, which he studied from various angles. Then he threw it into the air and watched it drift away, before repeating the process with the next petal.
With a shiver, Thea closed the window and kept walking, chilled by the baffling scene and the realization that the earl remained a mystery to her still.
Chapter 12
The next morning, Thea coaxed Gilbert into taking a rowboat with her on the lake, where her first efforts at rowing had them turning in circles.
“Are they treating you well, Gilbert?” she asked, once she had figured out how to make the boat go straight.
“Aye, this household’s as jolly as bonfire night. Mind the reeds there, my lady,” he said, his cheerful tone at odds with his nervous grip on the boat. “That Mrs. Sally, she knows how to run a house and keep the staff happy.”
“She’s been doing it a while, I suppose.”
“Not so long. It’s only a few years since his lordship gave her the position. Maybe he knew what she was capable of, from when she was his first wife’s companion.”
One oar snagged in the water and the little boat lurched. “But Sally said Katharine never lived in this house.”
Although no one had explained how Katharine’s books came to be in the library. Thea had not thought to ask.
“Maybe not,” Gilbert said. “But when his brother was the earl, his lordship and his wife and Mrs. Sally lived in the Dower House here on the estate. All three of them together, cozy as puppies in a pile of hay. Until his wife fell off her horse. They say she wasn’t right.”
“What do you mean?”
“That’s all they say, that his lordship’s wife wasn’t right. Then their mouths shut tighter than a poacher’s snare. Ah, maybe I should take the oars now, my lady?”
Thea surrendered the oars and Gilbert rowed them back to shore. She was no longer enjoying herself anyway, and besides, rain clouds were gathering. And how could she think about rowing with this discovery that Luxborough and Katharine had lived in the Dower House, with Sally as Katharine’s companion, and the vexing puzzle of why neither Luxborough nor Sally had mentioned it?
Sternly reminding herself that it was not her concern, Thea marched up the lawn toward the house. At first, when a horseman came cantering up the driveway, she paid him no mind. But then she realized from his saddlebags that he must be a fancy express messenger, and a peculiar jolt made her knees and elbows giddy. News from Helen! Then it was over. Already. Today. Of course, she had to leave, before she entangled herself further, but… Not yet. She wasn’t ready for it to be over yet.
That thought was enough to spur her foolishly weak knees into a run.
Rafe saw the messenger through a window, and he had barely thought, Thank God, it’s over, and Not yet, please, before he was tearing down the stairs, skidding on the floors in his haste.
It must be news from Ventnor. Only Ventnor thought his communications so important he would bother with an express. Ventnor’s letter would inform him that the woman Rafe had married was not Helen, and Rafe must feign shock and send her away.
But not yet.
Besides, he’d not received confirmation that the trustees had released his funds. Or that Thea had her dowry. And where would she go without money?
So no, not yet. He wasn’t ready yet.
He charged out of the house as if he could somehow stop the messenger from delivering the news, just as Thea came running up the lawn, pink-cheeked and panting.
“Give it to me!” she cried breathlessly, as the messenger reached into his leather saddlebag.
“No, give it to me!” Rafe countered.
What with them both yelling and running, even the messenger’s well-trained horse became skittish, and in calming it, the messenger dropped two letters on the gravel at Rafe’s feet. Thea launched herself at them, in a dive that would earn cheers in a cricket match, and Rafe was so caught up trying to grab the letters with one hand and stop Thea from falling with the other that they both tumbled to the ground, still scrambling for the letters, and ended up sitting side by side, with their rumps on the cold, sharp gravel, their legs tangled, and each with one letter in hand.