Page 18 of My Lord Rogue
She tried to speak, but could only nod.
He stepped back, giving her room to breathe. “I should go,” he said, though the words seemed to pain him. “If I stay, I will do something we’ll both regret. Or perhaps just you.”
She shook her head, felt the tears prickling behind her eyes. “I wouldn’t regret it.”
He smiled, slow and crooked. “Good. Because I intend to do it again.”
He turned, then, and walked back down the hall.
Theo stayed where she was, back pressed to the wall, heart battering against her ribs. Closing her eyes, she savored the memory of his mouth, the heat of his hands, the impossible, terrible hope that had taken root inside her.
She knew she ought to be afraid, but she wasn’t.
She was alive, and wanting, and for the first time in a year, she let herself hope that she might be wanted in return. “I will see you at supper,” she called after him, her voice almost steady.
He turned back and bowed. “Until then, Lady Pattishall.”
She watched him walk away, her pulse thunderous in her ears, the memory of his scent and his words lingering long after she began to walk to her room. She told herself she could still control the ruse. She told herself she could keep the performance from becoming the reality.
But as she reached the staircase, she realized with a sudden, sick certainty, the line was gone. There was only the hunger, and the knowledge that she was already lost.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The drawing room glowed, ready for the evening’s entertainment of cards and games. The paneling drank in the light and returned it, dark and gleaming, so every surface took on the quality of polished bone. Lady St. Ervan’s guests filtered in by slow degrees, talking in pairs or threesomes, laughing at ribald remarks.
Theo lingered at the threshold. She could have turned aside, claimed a headache or a pressing letter, but the expectation of the house was a living thing, it caught her by the sleeve and propelled her forward. She crossed the carpet and took her seat at the card table, directly opposite Teddy. Verity and St. Ervan completed the square, the former with a glimmer in her eye and the latter with a look of resigned amusement.
The whist table was laid with a cloth of maroon felt, scalloped at the edges, a faint powdering of chalk along one side where a nervous predecessor had dusted his fingers. The cards themselves were new, the backs stamped with gold, and the candlesticks on various furniture around the walls lent a kind of merciless intimacy to the proceedings.
For the first few hands, Theo managed well enough. She found safety in the repetition, shuffle, deal, bid, play, the rituals of the table as comforting as any nursery rhyme. She kept her eyes on her cards, her chin up, and her back straight, the textbook image of composure. When she spoke, it was only to offer a precise, bloodless observation about the game’s progress or to politely deflect Verity’s needling.
“Theo, dear, you are formidable,” Verity observed, drawing her own cards with a flourish. “I should warn my husband now that your reputation at cards exceeds your reputation at the pianoforte, and that is already the subject of legend.”
Theo forced her mouth to move in what could pass for a smile. “The game is not won until the last trick is played, Verity. You taught me that.”
Teddy, seated beside her, watched the play with a mannered detachment. When he dealt, his hands were sure and unhurried, each card flicking from the pack with a soft, deliberate snap. Above the table, he was all manners, the casual flex of his wrist as he set down a trump, the faint quirk at the corner of his mouth when he took a trick from Verity, the half-sigh, half-laugh when Lord St. Ervan countered his bid.
It was what happened under the table that undid her.
At the turn of the second hand, as Theo reached to arrange her cards, she felt a deliberate, insistent pressure at her ankle. Not an accidental brush, but the measured application of a foot, its owner unhurried and entirely in control. She glanced up, pulse skipping, Teddy’s face betrayed nothing. He continued a discourse on the merits of whist versus piquet, his gaze on the diamond in the trick pile. His foot, meanwhile, remained exactly where it was, warm through the thin leather of her slippers, and just insistent enough to remind her of every word, every breath, every lie she had ever told.
She hesitated. Her left hand faltered, and the jack of hearts slipped, landing face up on the cloth for all to see. A novice’s error. The table’s conversation paused, Verity’s gaze sharpened, then softened into something suspiciously like delight.
“Is the room too warm for you, Theo?” Verity inquired, voice syrupy. “You’ve gone rather pink.”
Theo found her voice, brittle as old lace. “Perhaps it is the candles. Or the company.” She shot a look at Teddy, who bowed his head, the picture of wounded innocence.
“Shall we open a window?” St. Ervan asked, half-rising from his seat. His voice was that of a man who has spent decades negotiating the boundaries of his own household and knows better than to challenge either his wife or her friend directly.
“Don’t trouble yourself,” Teddy said with the barest flicker of a smile in his eyes. “A bit of warmth never hurt anyone, and Lady Pattishall is as steady as they come.”
The next deal passed in a haze. Theo tried to focus on her cards, but the pressure at her ankle grew, spreading a heat up her leg that made concentration impossible. Every time she shifted in her seat, Teddy’s foot adjusted, keeping pace, the contact now a secret handshake, now a declaration of war. Her fingers trembled, she fumbled a play, misjudged a bid, and saw her points evaporate with humiliating speed.
Verity watched, fascinated. “How curious. I would never have expected you to be so easily unseated, Theo. Is it the game, or the company, that unsettles you?”
Theo felt her face flame. She wanted to look away, but Verity’s eyes pinned her. “Perhaps I am simply out of practice,” she said, but even to her own ears the excuse sounded paltry.
“I doubt that,” Verity said, grinning. “You always struck me as someone who rehearses even her improvisations.”