but for years of friendship culminating in that moment in the church when she had slipped him her handkerchief, had looked at him with a world of understanding in her eyes for his pain, had given him a brief hug.
Thea had said nothing and had broken the contact almost immediately, as though she knew that too much sympathy would break him. The sixteen-year-old girl had offered him the only thing she could: her understanding and a calm presence that stopped him falling apart. That clear-eyed look told him that she trusted him to do the right thing and, somehow, he had.
What would have happened if she had not been there? Would he have given chase, called out his best friend? Put a bullet in him and left three lives in ruin instead of just his own?
‘Yes, I did, didn’t I? All right, I won’t go back on it.’
‘Thank you.’ Her hand shook a little as she lifted her cup, but otherwise she gave no sign that she had feared his refusal.
She always was a courageous little thing. Rhys poured more coffee so she wouldn’t know he’d noticed that tremble and felt a pang of guilt. He should have kept in touch. But gentlemen did not write to young girls.
‘Why were you—?’ Thea broke off. ‘Nothing.’
‘Why was I so drunk last night? Damned if I know. Twelve months suddenly seemed a hell of a long time to be away and I started having doubts about whether I really wanted to do it, whether it was just a whim. I’d told myself I deserve a holiday before—’ he almost did not finish the sentence, but then this was Thea and he’d always been able to tell her anything ‘—before I look for a wife next Season.’
And I despise myself for snatching at Bonaparte’s defeat as an excuse to put off that search for another year, and that’s why I was drinking. Coward. You should have dealt with those memories. There was little risk history would repeat itself; it was safe enough to seek to marry. His reason knew it, but apparently his emotions did not. It seemed there were some things he could not confess to Thea after all.
‘You always have a plan,’ she said, so coolly that he was taken aback. But what did he expect? That she would gasp in shock that he could forget Serena?
‘And that involves getting back on the road now. I expect to be in Dover at half past four. That will give us an hour to get the carriages loaded and still catch the tide.’
‘You are taking the carriages to France? How?’ Her voice was oddly muffled behind the veil as she replaced her bonnet. Had he upset her somehow?
‘I’ve hired a ship. I do not intend roughing it.’
‘Excellent.’ Thea’s voice held nothing but approval. He had obviously been mistaken. ‘I do so approve of luxury. And that means much more room for the shopping.’
‘Shopping?’ The Thea he remembered had no interest in shopping. But then, she had only been a girl and a tomboy at that. Looking at that disastrous gown, he shuddered to think what her idea of shopping entailed. Oh, well, her stepmother would soon sort out her wardrobe before her come-out. The vague memory of her saying she had been out for several Seasons floated into his aching head. And offers, and some man she was supposed to marry... No, surely not.
‘Of course. Shopping is the entire point of Paris.’
This time he did not care how weak it sounded. Rhys whimpered.
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,
