Page 20 of My Lord Rogue (Wicked Widows’ League #34)

T he walk back from the lake was nothing like the walk away.

The sky, so benign a half-hour ago, had sealed itself shut with slate.

A wind picked up, urgent and indecent, flattening the reeds along the bank and thrashing at the necks of the lilies.

Theo felt it first as a shift in pressure—a dense, expectant stillness—followed by the distant sound of thunder, a noise so subterranean it seemed to rise through the soles of her shoes before it ever reached her ears.

Teddy turned his face upward, watching the clouds. “That is not a gentle storm. If we run, we may beat it. If not—” He left the rest unsaid, but his hand tightened fractionally on her arm.

She let him guide her back toward the house, their pace a brittle half-jog along the shrinking path.

The wind rose with every step. Within minutes, the first drops spattered against her shoulders, fat and cold as tears.

Then, as if some god had lost patience, the rain broke in a single, drenching curtain—nothing gradual or polite, only the violent assertion of the elements.

The rest of the picnic scattered in a panicked blur.

Distantly, she saw Verity and Lady Amelia lift their skirts and sprint for the shelter of the terrace, voices lifted in shrieks that dissolved in the storm.

The men shouted instructions, half-drunk and wholly ineffectual, as baskets and bottles went tumbling in the grass. No one even tried to salvage the food.

Within moments, Theo’s gown was soaked. The silk turned transparent, a second skin clinging to every curve and hollow, the wet fabric latching on to her like the grasp of an eager lover.

Her hair, so carefully arranged that morning, uncoiled from its pins and hung in sodden ropes against her cheeks.

Water ran down her back, over the dip of her spine, and down behind her knees.

She gasped, choking on a mouthful of rain and laughter, and turned to see Teddy at her side, equally destroyed.

His coat was off, his shirt plastered to his chest. The linen, when wet, offered nothing in the way of discretion.

The fabric revealed every plane of muscle, every rise and fall of bone beneath the skin.

His hair dripped in his eyes, his expression was wild and exhilarated, a boy’s delight and a man’s hunger stitched together in a face made for neither.

He draped his coat over her shoulders, allowing her some modesty.

She tried to speak, but the wind drove the breath from her. Teddy reached for her hand, his fingers locking around hers, and together they sprinted up the last stretch of path.

They reached the conservatory and Teddy yanked open the door and propelled her through, then followed, slamming it shut against the howl of the wind.

The impact echoed in the domed chamber, startling a flock of finches into flight among the trailing vines.

Inside, the air was a different world—thick, sweet, and almost tropically hot.

Every pane of glass was fogged with condensation, rivulets of water raced each other down the sloped roof, tracing patterns that vanished and re-formed with every flash of lightning.

Theo stood gasping, her lungs burning from the run.

She was soaked through, the blue of her gown gone indigo, her skin showing pale and iridescent beneath.

She pressed her palms to her cheeks, then down to her thighs, as if touch could confirm the fact of her own body.

She was acutely aware of the wetness everywhere—on her eyelashes, between her fingers, at the hollows of her knees and elbows, at the small of her back.

Teddy stood a few paces away, hands braced on his knees, catching his breath. He looked up at her and laughed—an honest, animal sound, the sort she had not heard from any man since childhood. “Well,” he said, voice rough, “I suppose it was only a matter of time before the weather turned.”

She tried to muster a reply, but the words were lost to the air. Instead, she stood, and water sluiced from her hem onto the mosaic tile, pooling in shapes like fallen leaves. She shivered, though the air was close and thick as velvet.

Lightning lit the chamber, turning the flowers into ghosts and then back into flesh. Each flash was followed by a thunderclap that rattled the glass in its frames, making the whole structure shudder around them.

Teddy found a bench near a tangle of orchids and dropped to sit, spreading his knees wide and stretching his arms along the bench’s back. He looked as if he belonged there, a creature grown in this environment, equal parts violence and show.

Theo took the opposite end, careful not to touch him.

Her heart was still thrumming with the run, but her body was beginning to respond to the heat, the damp.

Her gown stuck to the insides of her thighs, to the slope of her breasts, to the tops of her arms. The wetness turned her cold, then hot, then cold again. She shivered, but not from chill.

For a time, they did not speak. The sound of the rain—relentless, almost orchestral—filled the chamber. The finches, reassured, resumed their song, weaving a descant above the thunder.

It was Teddy who broke the silence. “I envy plants,” he said, gesturing with his chin at the riotous green. “No fear of scandal, no need to hide their hungers. They just take what they want.”

Theo watched a drop of water slide down his jaw, catch at the collarbone, and disappear beneath the translucent fabric of his shirt. The effect was indecent, and she felt her face burn.

“You’d make a good specimen,” she said, surprising herself. “You thrive on neglect.”

He laughed, a sound less wild this time, but no less sincere. “Perhaps. Or perhaps I’m only alive because no one’s bothered to uproot me.”

She let the joke die. The silence returned, denser than before, charged with the energy of everything unsaid.

After a time, Teddy leaned forward, elbows on knees. He picked a single orchid bloom and spun it between his fingers. “I always wondered,” he said, “if you invented me as a lover or a villain.”

Theo tried to smile. “It depends on the day.”

He nodded, turning the flower over and over. “And today?”

She met his eyes, and the force of his gaze nearly unseated her. “Today,” she said, “I think you are both.”

He seemed to savor this, rolling it in his mind as he rolled the flower in his hands. “I can live with that.”

A crash of thunder so close it rattled the panes. The lights flickered, then held. Theo flinched, her body was trembling, but she could not say if it was from the storm, the run, or the man opposite.

Her hair had come undone completely, a wet snarl at the nape. The cold had left her nipples peaked under the ruined gown, she crossed her arms, only to realize the gesture was more revealing than not. She forced herself to be still.

Teddy watched her, the slow hunger returning to his face.

His shirt, too, had become transparent, the lines of his chest and stomach visible beneath the fabric, the small circle of his nipple dark and taut.

He made no attempt to cover himself, he seemed indifferent to the effect, or perhaps he relished it.

The rain intensified, if such a thing was possible.

Now the noise on the glass was deafening, a percussive roar that swallowed up the rest of the world.

For a moment, it was easy to believe that nothing existed outside the glasshouse.

That the storm had scoured the planet clean, leaving only these two animals and their tangled, impossible wants.

Theo sat forward, elbows on thighs, her hands clasped to keep them from trembling. She felt as if she’d been through a fever. She wondered, absently, how long it would take for her hair to dry. She wondered if she would ever be able to feel clean again.

She turned her head, and found Teddy watching her with a look so open and unguarded it made her want to hide. She looked away, at the dripping orchids, at the white-hot flashes of lightning against the sky. Her body ached, but not in a way she could name.

He broke the silence again, voice low and uncertain. “Do you ever wish you could start over? Be someone else, just for a day?”

Theo stared at her knees, at the pale skin showing through her gown. She thought of all the days she had wished for escape, for transformation, for a story where she was not the object but the author.

“Yes,” she said. “Every day.”

He nodded, as if this was the answer he had hoped for. He did not move to touch her, but the possibility of it hung between them, static and dangerous.

They sat, each trapped in their small circle of heat, while the storm raged on, and the world outside faded to nothing.

For the first time, Theo let herself believe that anything might be possible.

The storm, she realized, was only the beginning.

She did not know how long they sat in silence, separated by a gulf of expectation.

The rain had found its rhythm—no longer a frantic assault, but a steady, almost meditative pulse against the roof.

The glasshouse, which had seemed so bright at first, was now half-drowned in shadow.

The plants reached upward, eager for the light, the air hummed with life, with waiting.

Theo pressed her knees together, acutely aware of the way the wet silk bunched between her thighs.

She could feel the pattern of her stockings against her skin, the clammy chill of water trapped in every seam.

Her mind darted in loops—she should go, she should say something, she should not be here, she should never have come. But she did not move.

It was Teddy who broke the spell. “You’re shivering,” he said, his voice softer than she had ever heard it.