Regency Rogues: Unlacing The Forbidden. Louise Allen

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       Chapter Three

      Dartford, Greenhithe, Northfleet. They travelled the next five miles in virtual silence, both of them, it seemed to Thea, adapting to their new relationship as travelling companions. Rhys had the excuse of his hangover as well, of course. She almost suggested they stop at the next apothecary’s shop for a headache remedy, but this was a grown man beside her, not a boy. The very last thing she wanted to do was mother him.

      ‘What has put you to the blush?’ he asked without preamble.

      She wished she had resumed her veil, but it hardly seemed friendly, not while they were travelling through open country. ‘I was thinking about a man.’ After all, she had always been able to tell Rhys everything. Almost everything.

      ‘Really?’ Rhys stopped slouching in his corner and regarded her quizzically. ‘A very romantic man, by the look of those pink cheeks. Fallen in love with the drawing master?’

      ‘No.’ He obviously could not stop thinking of her as a sixteen-year-old. ‘Not the drawing master and no one romantic. Men do not woo me romantically. They check that I am not a complete ninny-hammer, assure themselves that I have all my own teeth and do not giggle and then they trot off and talk to Papa about the size of my dowry and whether he can assure them my mother’s family will never make themselves known.’

      ‘Thea, give it a chance. Just because you haven’t taken yet it doesn’t mean you won’t get a perfectly reasonable proposal or two.’

      ‘Rhys, I have not taken in three Seasons. I am not a beauty. I am not pretty. I am not even interestingly eccentric in my looks. I am perfectly ordinary. Average height, average face, ordinary eyes, mouse-brown hair which does not cascade into tumultuous waves to my waist when I take it down.

      ‘If any man wrote poetry to my eyebrows I would fall about laughing and suggest he bought eyeglasses. When I do laugh no one compares it to the trill of a lark or the ripple of running water. I can sing and play the piano adequately and no one is so foolish as to ask for an encore.’

      Rhys looked rather daunted. ‘But you—’

      ‘If you say I have a wonderful sense of humour, I will lose all respect for you,’ she warned. ‘Such a cliché.’

      ‘Well, you do have. But what I was going to say is that you have a talent for friendship.’

      ‘Oh.’ Now he had surprised her. What a very lovely thing to say. He had always been generous with his friendship—to her, to Paul who had betrayed him. She had not realised he had valued that in her and she was touched he recalled it now. ‘You have made me blush in earnest now,’ Thea said as lightly as she knew how. ‘I hope I am a good friend. But I do have a talent, and you will see what it is in Paris.’

      ‘Shopping?’

      ‘Not quite. Where are we now?’

      ‘Gravesend. We will change horses again at Strood. But you have evaded the subject. Who is this man that the mere thought of him makes you blush? Did he break your heart?’

      He was teasing, that was all. Thea found her smile from somewhere. ‘Not deliberately. He had no idea of my feelings, you see, and besides, he was in love with someone else.’

      ‘He was?’

      ‘Is, I am sure. He was never the fickle sort. But don’t look so indignant on my behalf. It was ages ago.’

      Simply a youthful tendre, the delicious, painful quivering of first love. Puppy love. That was behind her now, thank goodness. That girl and that young man no longer existed. Except in dreams, sometimes, but it would be too cruel to give up on dreams of love.

      But they were dangerous things to hold on to. If she had realised that then, she would never have believed Anthony sincere when he began to court her, never have thought that she could find an adult love, prosaic and sensible perhaps, but true and honest nevertheless. It had made the disillusion even greater when she had overheard her father discussing the terms of her dowry, the extra lands he was adding to compensate Anthony for taking his plain, awkward daughter off his hands.

      Rhys had the tact to stop questioning her, which was a relief because she was not certain how long she could maintain a mask of indifference in the face of direct interrogation. She should never have said as much as she had. ‘Look,’ she said as she drew down her veil. ‘This must be Strood.’