Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Courtship was nothing more than a slow seduction, and Remmy was expert at that. So he stuffed a few drawings into the letter he was sending to his secretary at the Folly and set off to find Tessa.
He’d spent his morning and early afternoon answering correspondence, and Hardwright’s letter had been promising.
His secretary wrote that business had indeed picked up since the publication of the Belle’s column, though the patrons seemed to be spraining their necks more looking for him than attending to the performance on the stage.
All as he’d expected. Once they saw how luxurious the theatre was, how talented its actors, that would change.
They came for him but would return for the Folly itself.
And the drawings of Remmy naked on horseback would soon be circulating throughout London to keep curiosity as high as ticket sales.
He found Lady Chattaway in the parlor, but Tessa was not with her.
“She wandered out toward the woods,” Lady Chattaway said, “after our walk.”
“Thank you.”
She eyed him from boot to hair. “She’s a good girl.”
“I’m aware.”
“Too good. You might ruin her up a bit. Especially since Brawley’s nephew doesn’t seem inclined to do so.”
He choked on a breath.
She smacked him on the back. “Go get some fresh air, boy.”
“Right.” With watering eyes and a cravat too tight, he made his way outside then took the path toward the woods and the lake. He saw her hair first, blazing bright in the afternoon sun, and slowed his approach so he could watch her.
Slim, straight back, graceful column of a neck beneath that blazing abundance crowning her head.
He wanted to wake every morning with it wrapped around him, with his face buried in it.
He wanted to kiss his way down her neck until he came to the tapes of her gown, then undo those all in a rush to have her naked beneath his hands.
She must have heard him because she twisted and smiled when she spotted him. She sat on top of their rock, in the very center, and she scooted to one side as he stepped up onto it.
“Good afternoon,” he said, unable to keep the bedchamber from his voice even though he would definitely keep them out of the bedchamber. For now. Until he was sure of her feelings.
“How was work? Is the Folly still standing without your presence?”
“Barely. But I put them right.” A few detailed drawings provided by Horace, who wasn’t an artist like Tessa but could make more sense of shapes than Remmy could. “What are you doing out here?”
“Thinking.” She drew her legs up beneath her skirts and hugged them. “I truly enjoyed spending the day with you yesterday.”
A bird burst into song on some unseen branch high above, and his insides turned to honey. “I’m glad. We’ll do it again today.”
“Mmm.” She set her chin on her knees. She seemed… dimmer.
“What’s happened? Where have you been?” What had made her so silent and still?
“Visiting with my parents. They are not pleased to hear I’m not taking Mr. Tilbury’s offer seriously. They are coming to Crossvale for dinner, no doubt to encourage Mr. Tilbury’s suit.”
“How unfortunate for them, then, that you are so ill.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Am I?”
“Oh yes. You certainly cannot attend dinner.”
“And what is to keep me in my bed?”
Me. He cleared his throat. “A megrim.”
“Naturally.” For a moment, there was nothing but birdsong between them, then she said, “Why can I not know my own mind? It should be an easy enough decision. Companion or wife. And Mr. Tilbury is a fine man.”
Remmy growled, his hands clenching and unclenching. “Be careful with your words, sweetheart. Every time Tilbunny so much as accidentally brushes against you, I want to punch his smug face.”
She looked at him, her expression entirely blank. “I’m not sure what to do with that.”
“If he is what you choose… I’ll check my impulse to stab his eye with a fork and pop it out like an olive. But I’d prefer you make a different choice.”
“Please do not re-enact King Lear with a Surrey vicar whom I might marry.”
“No promises.”
“Are you… jealous?”
What would she do if he told her he loved her? Right here where he’d told her the first time. Hug him and pat him on the head and send him away? Absolutely not risking that again. But he had to do something to make her feel better. Each downturn of her lips was like a knife between his ribs.
“I wish,” she said, “I had your confidence. You do not care what others think about you, and that… opens up the world for you. My own world is very closed. Because I care too much what others think.”
He sighed. “It’s a lie.”
She froze, peeked over her shoulder at him. “What’s a lie?”
“The whole thing. Me being a rake. Or—” God.
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’s a farce, an exaggeration.
I needed to drum up interest in my theatre, and I entered into a bet with a friend, and it led to a bit of a reputation, and I…
exaggerated it a bit. And it’s worked. So far.
Everyone loves to gawk at a rake, especially when he’s been named by the Belle.
” He held his arms wide, then dropped them heavy to his sides.
“I do care what others think. I actively cultivate their thoughts, and I must be larger than I am, more confident, because I… am not that man at all. I’m not brilliant like Kit or brave like the twins.
The only thing I’ve ever been slightly good at is music and the Folly. ”
“You are good at those things. But you’re good at people, too.”
He rolled his eyes.
“It’s true. You make them feel special, as if they’re in on some grand joke with you. You always made me feel less lonely. Like you do now.” She toyed with the end of a ribbon on her gown.
He wanted to kiss her. Hope gave him reason to. Instead he said, “I’m scared. Terrified I might give everything I am for the Folly, and it will still fail.”
“It won’t. It cannot. It’s your destiny.”
She was his destiny.
After a moment’s silence, he said, “I’m like one of those brittle leaves you’re always drawing. They look excellent at a distance, whole and sturdy. But close up, they are fragile and crumbling.”
“I think those leaves are beautiful. I wouldn’t keep drawing them otherwise.
When the skin—or tissue or whatever you wish to call it—of the leaf begins to die, it reveals its skeleton, and even when the brittle skin crumbles, the skeleton can remain, the strongest architecture, and elegant even in the midst of disintegration.
Even if the theatre fails, Remmy, you remain. ”
“A skeleton?”
“Strong.” She tugged on his sleeve, and he caught a glimpse of her sly smile. “Besides, I’ve heard you’re far from skeletal. You’re quite proud of your architecture, aren’t you? You must be or you would not go about half dressed all the time.”
“Not all the time, but… it’s damn freeing. Peeling off clothes is like unwrapping everyone’s expectations, all the rules, responsibilities. It’s letting go of all of that and being yourself only for a brief space of time.”
Her cheeks heated into roses to rival her hair.
“I cannot say I’ve ever felt free. As you describe it.
And perhaps that is why I cannot make my decision.
I am quite suffocated by clothing. No air to think.
” Her eyes glistened, and he reached for her, but before he could even brush his fingertips against her skin, she took off through the woods.
“Tessa?” He followed quickly with long steps over roots and rocks. “Slow down! You’ll trip!”
She didn’t slow. She sprinted for the lake as fast as the terrain allowed.
And he ducked a shoe that came spiraling toward his head.
“Tessa!”
She bent over, hopping on one foot as she took off the other shoe and tossed it behind her. He almost tripped over that one. Then she was running barefoot, skirts raised, stockings flashing white in the summer-green world.
She stopped right before the water and ripped at the tapes fastening her gown.
“What are you doing?” he demanded, stepping out of the tree line.
She grinned over her shoulder. “Finding freedom.”
Hell. “Tessa, no.”
“Remmy”—she faced him, dropped her gown, her breasts heaving above her shift and stays—“yes.”
Stockings gone, ribbons fluttering in the wind, bare legs flashing beneath the sun, making him hard, filling him with as much lust as wonder and sheer bloody joy.
She strode into the lake, splashing with each step, and when she was hip deep and cursing and shivering, she dove, swimming out to where she could barely touch. Standing on tiptoe with only her creamy shoulders and head above the water, she bit her bottom lip and began contorting.
She’d gone mad.
He sat on the shore, leaning back into his palms. Might as well enjoy the show.
After a period of wiggling and grunting and one small duck beneath the water, she reappeared with a cry of victory while lifting a sodden, white pile of…
something above her head. She tossed it, and it didn’t make it anywhere near the shore, hitting with a splat atop the water where it spread out like ice before sinking.
Her shift. Her stays.
She was entirely naked beneath the water.
Hell.
His cock throbbed.
She raised her face to the sky and shrieked, “Free!” The word a laugh slung at the heavens. She slung it again, and his heart leapt, trying to rise up and meet her joy.
“Join me!” she cried, waving him in.
“Someone will hear you!”
But she couldn’t hear him. She was under water, swimming out farther.
With a groan, he wrestled himself out of his cravat and waistcoat and all the other trappings until not even his smalls remained.
He’d regret this, most likely.
But he couldn’t stop it.
He swam toward her, slicing through the cool water, lifting his head to keep sight of her where she waited beneath the overhanging branches of trees.