Chapter 6 #2
Then they were walking in earnest, traversing the blocks between them and a luxurious tea in silence, and it occurred to Rhys that, perhaps, he should’ve offered to take her to Gunter’s instead of Mivart’s.
Mivart’s was one of London’s premiere hotels, and as such, it was fashionable and exclusive.
It also happened to have been a place where he’d met more than a few ladies for an indiscreet tête-à-tête.
Well, today his intentions were pure as the driven snow.
He simply wanted to take Miss Birdwell there for tea.
Treat her to it.
This woman, who was a lady’s maid and sometime card cheat and indiscriminate giver of Christmas gifts and possessor of passions great, she deserved a treat.
The doorman, having recognized Rhys from rakish days past, readily swung the front door wide for them with a wink. Then it was the concierge rushing forward. “Lord Rhys, it has been a while.”
He nodded in greeting. “A table for two for tea.”
Discreetly, but not imperceptibly, the concierge appraised Miss Birdwell and would’ve immediately determined Lord Rhys Osborne was accompanied by a woman who wasn’t a lady.
So, he led them through the mostly empty banquet room used for afternoon tea service and seated them at a discreet corner table.
Miss Birdwell wouldn’t have noticed.
But Rhys did.
And he was irritated.
Irritated by the quiet class snobbery.
Irritated, even, that Miss Birdwell didn’t notice.
Or, worse, she’d noticed, but didn’t care.
None of which he would mention and spoil her fun.
Besides, perhaps she had the right end of the stick, and he the wrong.
In fact, that was very likely the case.
Once they were seated, they faced each other across the table with, apparently, not a single thing to say.
“So,” she said.
“So,” he replied.
“You’re the sprig of an earl.”
“I am.”
“But not the heir.”
“No.”
“The spare, then.”
“Not even the spare, I’m afraid. I am a third son.” He snorted. “The entirely useless sort of son.”
“The third son of an earl.”
“A minor earl.”
Her head canted, and, at last, there was her smile again. “Are there minor earls?”
“Fair play.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You’re not entirely useless, though, are you?”
“Maybe not entirely, but…” It was a near thing, he didn’t need to say.
“You don’t mind everyone thinking so, do you?”
“Not particularly.”
She nodded. “That way no one has expectations. But…”
“But?”
She shook her head and settled back in her chair. “It’s not my place to say.”
Rhys sat forward, his elbows coming to rest on the table. “Say it.”
“To my way of thinking,” she said, “isn’t it good to carry some expectations on your shoulders? Because when someone puts expectations on you, it means something.”
“It does?”
“It means someone thinks highly enough of you to reckon you could live up to those expectations. That they believe in you.”
He’d never thought of it like that.
This woman… What a revelation she was.
She shrugged a shoulder. “Anyway, that’s what I think, and not too many folk give a sod about that.” She laughed.
But Rhys didn’t find himself laughing along with her. “I care what you think.”
And he found it wasn’t just words.
It was the truth.
Opaque emotion passed behind her eyes, clouding their clear blue. “I think…” she began, “I think if you knew anything about me, you wouldn’t.”
The servers arrived to lay the table and serve tea, so Rhys settled back in his chair and gave them room—and considered Miss Birdwell.
I think if you knew anything about me, you wouldn’t.
She had a past.
That was what she was saying.
She was also saying she wouldn’t be sharing it with him.
Well, if she didn’t want to talk about her past, then the present would have to do. He waited for the servers to clear out before he said, “You’re quite skilled at your work, it appears.”
She dropped a lump of sugar into her tea, followed by a dollop of cream. “Oh, it’s hardly work when you’re good at something and love it.”
A sudden chord of envy struck through Rhys. What she was describing… He’d never felt that once in his life. He couldn’t even say he loved being a wastrel rake. He’d been good at it, certainly, but it had been more compulsion than love that drove it.
Especially as the years passed and began bleeding into one another.
“I was good at being a wastrel rake.”
She finished stirring her tea, then canted her head, a little mischievous smile playing about her mouth. “You speak like you aren’t still a wastrel rake.”
Touché, he supposed.
After all, she did first meet him at a card table at a masquerade ball.
But there was something he needed to say, aloud to another person, rather than only to himself. “I’m not a wastrel rake.” He added, “Anymore, that is.”
“How’s that?”
“When I lost the ring to Sir Felix a year ago, that was my low point. I had to change my ways.”
“That’s why you were at the masquerade, then.”
He nodded. “To expose Sir Felix and get Papa’s ring back.”
Her mouth formed an O as she blew across the surface of her tea, and Rhys found his eyes lingering a beat too long on those lovely plump lips of hers. Her throat cleared, and his gaze startled up to meets hers, watching him.
He’d been caught out staring—and didn’t mind one bit.
That rake yet took up residence inside him, didn’t he?
“But you didn’t count on me.” Her eyes sparkled like blue topazes and her mouth curved into that mischievous smile never too far away and she laughed.
That night, the moment she’d won the ring had been one of the worst of his life. Yet now, he found his mouth smiling along with hers and a laugh of his own joining hers, too.
Strangely, the more he laughed…the more he laughed. As if an avalanche of laughter had been unleashed inside him that felt nothing less than soul-clearing.
Soul-clearing.
His soul craved this laughter, like a parched throat craved water in the desert. They were likely being inappropriate and causing a scene, but he didn’t care.
And this laughter, he understood, would be sparked by this woman—and shared with her.
He found he liked sharing with her.
People took life so seriously, and life was serious, which was why laughter was so necessary.
All those years he’d spent playing the wastrel rake, he’d thought he’d been laughing at the ton, at the world.
But he hadn’t, had he?
He’d been a drowning man.
But this laughter, shared with this woman, it was buoyant.
It lifted him up.
He could easily become addicted to it.
And the thought struck him that perhaps he already was.
Like an opium eater’s first hit of the pipe, perhaps that was what laughter shared with this woman was.
And it occurred to him.
At the end of this tea, he couldn’t simply let her walk out of his life.
Well, she wouldn’t be, precisely.
The ring still bound them.
And the three noble deeds.
The ring…the three noble deeds…
A chord of inspiration struck him. “About our terms for the ring.”
She exhaled the last of her laughter, a glint of suspicion replacing it in her eyes. “What of them?”
“The three noble deeds.”
“Was this—” She swept her arm around their luxurious surroundings. “Was this all about sweetening me up so I’d just hand over your pa’s ring?”
He’d miscalculated his approach—and needed to right this ship before it veered irretrievably off course. “How will you know?”
“How will I know what?”
“That I’ve held up my end of the bargain and actually done my noble deeds.”
Understanding lit within her eyes. “Ah.”
“I mean, how can you trust me?” asked Rhys, pressing his point home. “I’m a known wastrel and rake.”
“I thought you said you were on the mend.”
“You only have my word that I’m reformed. In my heart, I could be entirely and unapologetically unreformed.”
“That so?”
He spread his hands wide. “So, I have a solution.”
“What’s that?”
“You must witness my noble deeds.”
Miraculously, his rakish, wastrel past was of use to him here, for he’d not only turned their bargain a hair to his advantage, he’d given himself some of the whip hand, too.
And—as if that wasn’t enough—he would now get to spend more time with Miss Birdwell and her interesting perspective on life and her buoyancy of the soul.
At last, she nodded. “All right.”
The triumph that sheered through him was surely too exaggerated for the accomplishment.
But it didn’t feel that way.
It felt like the first good thing to have happened to him in years.
“When’s your next day off?” He didn’t plan on dragging his anchor.
“I don’t really take days off.”
“When do you have time to yourself?” He felt his brow furrow. “When do you have fun?”
“That’s not how I look at life.”
“Then how do you look at it?” He genuinely wanted to know.
“Every day and every moment of the life I live now is better than the one that came before it.”
It wasn’t that she’d uttered some earth-shattering, awe-inducing statement, but rather her words were the opposite.
They were simple and humble and struck a place inside Rhys that knew the truth when he heard it.
She reached for her reticule and sat it on her lap, a none-too-subtle indicator that their tea was nearing its end. “How about you send me a note with the date and time for your first noble deed, and I’ll be there. Then soon enough, you’ll never have to see me again.”
Rhys froze.
You’ll never have to see me again.
He didn’t like the sound of that—the finality.
Instinctively, his best charming smile found its way to his mouth—the very smile the rake in him had spent years refining—and he said in a low, crushed-velvet voice, “Didn’t you enjoy our afternoon together, Miss Birdwell?”
An ineffable something flickered behind her eyes, and her mouth twitched as if it wanted to smile, but caught itself.
Ground gained…ground lost.
“I did,” she said as primly as a woman like her could.
Women like her fancied a little frivolous flirting.
And Rhys had always taken great pleasure in flirting.
So, here they were—flirting.
Which was why he asked, “Now, why wouldn’t you want to see me again?”
Oh, his unreformed self was reveling in the light, wasn’t he?
The rake that needed to be desired by every woman whose eyes happened across him.
She gave a little, feminine laugh. “Because you’re a sort.”
“A sort?”
He knew what sort, but he wanted to hear her say it.
Another laugh along with a shake of her head. “Oh, you’re definitely a sort, Lord Rhys.”
He found himself laughing along with her, improbably. “And what sort is that?”
“The love-’em-’til-morning-and-leave-’em sort.”
“And who doesn’t like to be loved until morning?” He held her gaze. “I suspect you, Miss Birdwell, are very much that sort.”
Like that, she froze, and her laughter fell away—as if he’d doused the conversation with a bucket of ice water. “Well, Lord Rhys, you don’t really know the first thing about me.”
She stood, awkwardly, indicating both tea and their conversation were at an end.
As they made their way out of Mivart’s, him hauling her boxes of toys and her holding onto her silence, he understood something.
He wanted to know more about her—and he would.
That desire had already become determination as he deposited her and her packages into a waiting hackney cab, paid the driver, and watched it roll away.
Already, he missed this woman he’d only known for a handful of hours.
This woman who was buoyant light personified.
But he would see her again.
That was the main thing.
She wasn’t out of his life.
She’d even given him an idea for his first noble deed.
“Not many men, noble or otherwise, can be Lord Percival Bretagne.”
She’d told him not to lose any sleep over the fact.
He felt like he’d been dealt the backhand of an insult, for the implication was clear: he wasn’t a man who could be like Lord Percival Bretagne.
A man Miss Birdwell clearly admired.
And if Rhys was the opposite of Lord Percival, then another implication was clear, too.
He wasn’t the sort of man Miss Birdwell could admire.
He liked that even less.
Though hardly any time had passed since she’d spoken those words to him, he already felt haunted by them and that implication.
He was going to lose sleep over it.
But the day wasn’t all bad.
He had a path to recovering Papa’s ring.
And he saw another path, too, one that ran alongside it.
A path toward earning Miss Birdwell’s respect.
A path he just thought he would pursue.