Rhys had become something of a master at sneaking about.
Through the years, he’d honed his skills as a rogue. He would move furtively about the parlors and offices as he’d meet wanton widows in the middle of balls and soirees for an assignation.
Why, when he’d been a young man, recently betrayed by the woman he’d given his heart, and intended to give his name, too, Rhys had become particularly adept at meeting lovers in gardens. And off riding paths.
Always out of sight, always escaping notice.
Never before, however, had he sneaked about in a wooded copse with the purpose of hiding from a lady.
His back was pressed against one of the ancient, gnarled oaks. Rhys scanned the area around him.
Snow tumbled to the ground, landing several feet away. He stiffened, looking up.
A squirrel, its fur a bright splash of color upon the stark white landscape, scurried overhead. Not pausing, the creature jumped to the next mangled branch. It continued its quick pursuit, before scrambling into a yew tree and disappearing within the thick evergreen.
Silence reigning around him, Rhys bolted to the next ancient oak and stopped mid-stride.
Alice, a wicked smile on her supple lips and mischief in her deep brown eyes, stood there, not unlike any of the women he’d previously taken to his bed. And yet, at the same time, Lady Alice Winterbourne was wholly unlike every one of those ladies.
“Caught,” she whispered and drew her arm back.
Belatedly, he feinted left.
Her missile found its mark at his chest, the snow exploding with such force that it splattered upon the already badly dampened garment and sprayed his face.
With a clear, unfettered laugh, Alice darted off. Her battlefield partners giggling, raced after her.
“Traitors,” he called after them, and his nieces only laughed all the more.
Rhys dusted off the front of his cloak and gave his head a wry shake.
Yes, in all his years purported to be a rogue—and with justifiable reasons—not a single lady had been running away from him.
Except, in those instances, they’d been engaged in erotic games that had involved the thrill of the chase. Ultimately, they’d ended with a round of passionate lovemaking.
Desire bolted through him as he imagined Alice. Only not the innocent hunt between them but one that saw them together, entangled in one another’s arms and—
Alice darted out from her cover, once more, and hit him square between the eyes with another snowball.
Breathless, she stopped, little puffs of air spilled from her lips as she spoke. “Your snowball fighting skills leave something to be desired.”
None of the women he’d taken as lovers had ever called into question… any of his attributes or skills. Rather, they’d been fawning. How much more he preferred Alice’s realness to all that empty praise. “Indeed,” he drawled. Nor, for that matter, would a single one of those scandalous widows have cavorted in the snow with two small children, with no purpose but play in mind.
“She really is correct, Uncle Rhys,” Faith lamented. And then in her usual display of loyalty, added, “Though you aren’t always this dreadful.”
Lips twitching, he rejoined the three ladies. “Thank you for that high praise,” he murmured with false solemnity.
Still too innocent to detect sarcasm, Faith bowed her head.
Violet tugged at his gloved hands. “Sh-she can throw a s-snowball,” the girl whispered, teeth chattering.
“Indeed, she can,” he murmured, approvingly. The only other woman to do so had been his sister, Lettie, and, even now, he could not remember the last time she’d done so.
Alice’s cheeks already reddened from the cold and her sprinting about, flushed all the deeper. He’d always taken care to avoid innocents and respectable ladies of any age. What, then, accounted for this hungering to take Alice Winterbourne’s chilled frame in his arms and discover the taste of her?
He tamped down a groan.
Violet scrubbed the back of her gloved hand over her dripping nose. That innocuous gesture brought him back from all improper musings about his sister’s innocent friend.
“Come,” he urged his nieces, continuing over their protestations. “If we remain out here any longer, you’ll turn to ice.” He shuddered. “And then, I’d receive a stern scolding from your papa and mama.”
“Oh, fine,” Faith muttered. Then, grabbing her sister’s hand, she dragged Violet along at a quick clip through the snow.
Rhys and Alice fell into step at a more sedate pace until the manor drew into focus.
Gone was the boisterous, cheerful minx of a few moments ago. In her place was the quietly contemplative woman he’d first stumbled upon last evening. It was as though she’d allowed herself a fleeting reprieve from whatever sorrow held her in its grip. Surely, that bespectacled, stern-faced pup at the breakfast table wasn’t the cause for her melancholy? And why did the possibility needle at his chest?
With her spirit, she was one who should always have a laugh falling from her lips and a smile in her eyes.
Now, her attention remained riveted on the two children at play twenty paces ahead of them. She followed Faith and Violet’s every movement the way a scientist might examine his subject. “I was not always serious.”
For a moment, he believed that hushed, barely-there admission had been nothing more than a product of the gusty winds and his own imaginings.
Silent, Alice remained riveted by the girls at play. The wistful smile that dimpled her cheeks was heartbreaking for the sorrow there.
“I used to dash about and make mischief and…” Her voice dissolved into a whisper and then faded to nothing on the winter’s breeze.
His mind reflexively balked at those unfinished thoughts Alice left dangling. Whatever accounted for the lady’s despondency belonged to her and her alone. As a rule, after having had his heart shredded by a faithless woman, outside of lovemaking, Rhys had disavowed any and every connection with women.
After all, sex offered a physical release and nothing more. There was no risk to one’s heart. There was no shattered pride. There was simply mindless bliss, and nothing. Rhys craved that nothing. He hungered for it. He’d built himself into someone who was stronger because of it. Now, this lady, his sister’s friend, no less, challenged that order he’d established for himself.
Shaken, he trained his eyes on his nieces up ahead. “The serious fellow at breakfast?”
He winced. Where in the blazes had that probing come from?
Except… even as that query defied his rules on engaging a person in talks of the heart, he didn’t want to call it back. Mayhap, it was that he himself had been hurt by love. Mayhap, it was an inexplicable wondering about the woman at his side. But he did want to know what accounted for her misery.
Silence marched on for a long while, and then she spoke. “His name is Henry.” It didn’t escape Rhys’ notice that, for a second time, she didn’t counter his supposition.
Henry.
It was a perfectly stodgy name for a somber fellow who didn’t make his own plate and wouldn’t sit without a servant pulling out a chair for him.
And more… it spoke of an intimacy between the man and the lady with whom Rhys had been dashing around the English countryside a short while ago.
Something uncomfortable slithered around his chest. It was something he couldn’t identify and didn’t care to begin exploring.
Alice collected her bonnet strings in a white-knuckled grip. “We were betrothed.” He fisted his hands. She was to have married the gentleman. “He…” She drew a deep breath and spoke on a rush. “He married another.”
His gut clenched as, at last, her palpable glumness made sense. Her quiet despondency was one he could understand. One he had experienced… before he’d devoted himself to becoming Society’s leading rogue. “I see,” he said softly.
She stopped in her tracks and glanced up at Rhys; her eyes filled with wariness. “And just what do you see?”
He saw the reason for her melancholy. He saw why she remained outdoors in the middle of a storm, in the dark of night.
His nieces’ laughter pealed around the air; the joyous sounds spilling from their lips at odds with the somberness of his and Alice’s exchange.
In the end, he didn’t give her flippant assurances or a roguish retort. “I see why you would avoid the gentleman.” Looping his hands at his back, he rocked on his heels. “That, in being around him, you’re continually reminded of what could have been and what your life would be like even now had… things gone differently.”
Alice stared at him with stricken eyes. “Oh,” she whispered, touching a hand to the clasp on the front of her cloak.
“Did you expect me to make light of your revelation?” he drawled, unable to keep disappointment from creeping in. But then, he was the affable rogue to all and certainly not one to listen to a young lady share her most private heartache. What reason did she have to trust there was anything sincere about him? The only one who knew that he, too, had been gutted by love, his mother, would sooner turn over her title of Dowager Marchioness than share Rhys’ scandalous hopes for a future with an actress.
The lady studied her gloved fingers a moment. “No. Yes.” She shrugged. “I don’t know what I expected you to say. I was captivated by Henry because he was reliable, bookish, serious, and yet…” Her throat moved. When she looked at Rhys there was such hurt in her eyes, he ached to chase it away and restore the smile that had been there a short while ago. “That honorable gentleman betrayed me.” It was a bitter pain that he knew all too well and, though she was more stranger than anything, he hated that she should know that hurt. A wry little laugh shook Alice’s frame. “And yet, there is my brother, once a rake with a rotted reputation, who has proven to be a devoted husband to his wife and loyal and…” She plucked at the black velvet ribbon that hung from the heart-shaped clasp. “I’ve learned it is best to simply look at a person not as a title or category they might fit in to, but rather for who they are.”
He searched his gaze over her wind-burned cheeks and an appreciation for both those words, and the woman who’d uttered them, stirred. In a world where rank drove all, including, in Rhys’ case, his parents’ affection—or lack thereof—Alice saw more. “And what do you see when you look at me?” His body jerked and he wanted to call the query back. What did it matter what she believed or her opinion?
Alice took a step closer. The crunch of snow under her boots was inordinately loud in the morning stillness. She continued moving forward and then stopped, a mere foot apart. Head tipped back, she studied him. “I see a rogue.”
He curled his lips into their customary position of indolence. “One requires but a glimpse into the scandal pages to ascertain as much,” he drawled.
“There’s the grin,” she murmured. She stretched a fingertip close to his mouth, a breath of space from touching. His amusement faded. There was something vastly more erotic in the hint of Alice’s caress than all the bold touches and embraces that had come before from wanton widows. “A practiced smile. One that is carefree. Bored. Arrogant. Your smile says all those things.”
Her accusation was certainly not the first time he’d been called such, and he’d certainly been called far worse. So why did her words rub at a nerve he’d never before known was exposed?
“But, do you know what I’ve come to find, Rhys?” She trailed her gaze over his face.
“What is that?” he asked gruffly.
“There are many types of smiles and after one has been hurt, one dons a safe grin.”
Her stodgy betrothed. “You speak as—”
“As one who knows?” she interrupted. “Yes. A smile, I’ve come to find, is often used to deceive. It’s not reserved for rakes, rogues, or scoundrels but a tool used by all who’ve been hurt. I am just as guilty. It is how I know that one is false. Most rogues, they are not rogues because they were born condescending, cold-hearted dastards.” She angled her head, lifting her gaze to his.
Panic welled in his chest. His mind thundered for her to stop. He wanted to silence whatever utterance was about to spill from her lips… because she saw too much.
And it scared the bloody hell out of him.
“Smiles hide hurt. I’d wager you’ve known your own.” The lady lifted her shoulders in a little shrug. “Or I could be wrong, and you really could be this arrogant, content-to-shock scapegrace who sets Polite Society to talking.”
Regret filled him. Regret that, at the moment he’d come upon her in The Copse, vulnerable and hiding from a man who’d never been worthy of her, Rhys had been irreverent and rude.
“I am sorry,” he said quietly.
She shook her head. “I don’t…?”
“Yesterday, when I came to… to…”
“Retrieve me?” she dryly supplied.
Rhys winced. “Surely I didn’t say—?”
“Oh, you did,” she said, more of the cheerfulness from their snowball fight before restored.
He tugged at his collar. “I was an unmitigated arse.” Who’d allowed his previous experiences with women of all stations to cloud his judgment.
“Yes,” she concurred. “But I was also pitiable, sulking about outside… in a storm.” Her eyes twinkled. “Shall we come to an arrangement, then?”
Again, his mind danced down the path of wickedness. “What manner of… arrangement?” he asked, his voice hoarse to his own ears.
She flashed an innocent smile, absent of coyness and wickedness. That act hinted at one wholly unaffected by him, effectively shattering his lust.
“I shan’t be the downtrodden, sad-eyed creature hiding about and you won’t be dismissive and presumptuous.”
He winced, wanting to debate her on that scathing assessment. And yet, he’d lived a life dismissive of all because… well, it had simply proven to be more safe.
“Well?” Alice stuck her gloved palm out.
He stared at those long digits, encased in gloves, wanting to tug the thin, leather fabric back and feel the heat of her palm. Rhys quickly took her hand in his. Even through the fabric of their damp gloves, an electric surge shot at the point of contact, traveling up his arm.
Let her go… release her…
And yet, he remained, fingers curled around her smaller ones, unable to relinquish that hold. Not wanting to shatter the connection.
Alice’s smile froze, and then slowly faded as her gaze went to their joined hands and then back to his. Her bow-shaped lips parted.
But she did not make any move to draw back. Instead, she curled her delicate palm, lightly squeezing his—
A loud squawking from across the snow-covered lawns, broke the pull.
They looked as one to the stone terrace, cleared in the early morning hours by meticulous Brookfield servants.
His mother, arms akimbo, watched on.
With a gasp, Alice snatched her hand back and he silently cursed the blasted interruption.
The dowager marchioness was flanked by Ladies Lovell and Guilford. Even with the distance between the ladies and Alice, there could be no doubting the ire in the two matrons’ like expressions. Faith and Violet rushed onto the terrace, jamming their fingers excitedly in Rhys and Alice’s direction.
He swallowed a groan. His mother had taken to following after him… outside, in the dead of winter? It was a mark of her determination.
The ever-jovial Lord Lovell hovering just beyond his wife’s shoulder, waved in greeting. “Rhys, my boy, a pleasure,” his booming voice echoed around the countryside.
Oh, bloody hell. “Likewise, Lord Lovell,” he called out that lie.
And by the loud snorting that left the other man, he’d gathered the fabrication there.
Alice adjusted her bonnet, drawing the brim low over her brow. As they joined the gathering on the terrace, Rhys found himself longing for the stolen moments in the snow he and Lady Alice Winterbourne had just shared.