A few scandalized titters rippled through the small group. A shock borne of delight rather than of narrow-mindedness.
“A woman, Lady Olivia? A woman painted these?”
She couldn’t contain a smile at Lady Bede’s enthusiasm. She’d provided the woman a delightful on dit that would have her enthusing for days.
“But the paintings in the final room,” Lady Bede said, appearing both flabbergasted and captivated at once. “Such sensuality . . . created by a woman’s hand?”
“Indeed,” replied Olivia, relieved to feel engaged by someone other than him, even if only for a moment. “A new style is emerging from the Parisian schools. A realism in painting unlike anything that has come before it, except perhaps by the hand of Caravaggio. Exciting, isn’t it?”
“Hear! Hear!” cheered a lord on the periphery of the group, eliciting a host of snickers.
Olivia used the commotion to step away. They wouldn’t miss her. Her gaze cut toward Lord St. Alban. Gone. Impossible this heaviness in her chest was disappointment.
An arm slid through hers from behind, and, before she knew it, she was secured fast to Mariana’s side. “You will be delighted that I have brought a bank check, but no husband.” Mariana wasn’t one for small talk. “So I am free to spend said check exactly as I please.”
A laugh complicated by nothing other than pure, familial love bubbled up from deep inside Olivia. “Is Nick traveling?”
“He and Lavinia have hied off to the north country in search of the perfect bay stallion. That girl loves horses more than just about anything, and that man loves our girl more than just about anything. So there you have it. A father who will do anything for his daughter, and a daughter who knows it.”
Domestic bliss radiated off Mariana in waves. Olivia still hadn’t adjusted to her sister’s wifely happiness. It was difficult to imagine now, but Nick and Mariana had been estranged for most of their marriage.
Then, six months ago, Paris happened. Like a magic trick, one moment, their marriage was smashed into pieces, irreconcilable, and the next—the wave of a hand, the flourish of a cape, et voilà!—they were whole again, reconciled with nary a chip on the surface. It was as if their preceding ten years of estrangement never happened.
Except it wasn’t only Nick and Mariana who were affected when they’d emerged from those Parisian shadows, bringing with them into the light a resurrected Percy. Olivia hadn’t been able to breathe when she heard the news, the life she’d built for herself threatening to collapse on her. To be a wife again . . . To lose her hard-won freedom . . . Unthinkable.
The old soldier’s words came back to her. A right selfish and unnat’ral wench. She could accept that descriptor if it meant keeping her freedom.
“But, Olivia, I’d like to change the subject,” Mariana said, a spark of mischief in her tone. “Have you been holding out on me?”
“Pardon?” she asked, buying what little time she had left.
“Come now. As your elder sister, I can see straight through you.”
“You are older by three minutes. I hardly think that qualifies as elder.”
Like a bloodhound on a scent, Mariana pressed on. “When I spoke with the very handsome viscount tonight, I formed the distinct impression that the two of you are, let’s say, acquainted with one another.”
Olivia turned away from Mariana on the pretext of fixing a flower arrangement. Her elder sister would see the truth in her eyes in a second flat.
“Lady Olivia Montfort, you have been holding out on me!” Mariana said, her voice an excitable whisper. She snuggled closer. “Tell me everything.”
“Mariana,” Olivia began in the most patronizing tone she could muster, “you make it sound so . . . so”—What was a good word for it?—“tawdry.” Maybe that was too good a word for it. “He’s simply interested in our little progressive school for his daughter. The Dowager Duchess of Dalrymple sent him my way, and I answered a few questions for him. That is all.”
As lies went, it wasn’t bad.
“Oh, we must make that happen.”
As Mariana rhapsodized about the possibility of having Lord St. Alban’s brilliant daughter at the school, Olivia’s mind drifted. She didn’t enjoy lying to her sister, but her dealings with Lord St. Alban existed in a peculiar limbo that she didn’t yet understand. She felt strangely protective of it.
And then yesterday, she’d almost—
Her eyes squeezed shut in mortification. Oh, what had she done? Or almost done?
It was no surprise that last night thoughts of him had pushed sleep out of reach. Frustrated with tossing about and twisting the bed sheets into knots, she’d padded down to her studio to purge her system of him in the only way she knew how: by drawing her obsession into submission.
Her pencil had gone at him from every angle, even introducing different lightings to accentuate the strengths of his firm lips, his chiseled jawline, his angular cheekbones, his piercing eyes that surely saw through her contrariness, her protests, to her true wants, desires, needs.
By the time the first rays of the sun had streamed through an open window, she was spent. Dozens of drawings littering the walls of her studio, she felt that she could be done with him. Surely, her system was thoroughly purged.
Tonight, however, that purging had felt less than thorough when she’d spied him from two rooms away. She’d vowed to stay away.
Instead, she’d spoken of love with him. And she’d spoken of Percy. And they’d spoken of perfection and messes. What a perfect, little mess she could make with him . . .
Oh. Where had that come from?
“Olivia”—
She could hear the gasp in Mariana’s voice. No mean feat.
—“you must explain this series of paintings to me.”
They stood in the final room, the climax of the show. Three portraits lined one wall while facing them on the opposite wall was an oversized map of Europe. Unlike the scenes in the other rooms, these paintings weren’t presented with an extravagant contextual vignette.
“Do you think they’re too much?”
“I can’t imagine what you’re talking about,” replied Mariana, a tease in her voice. “Whores and grande dames share wall space all the time.”
Olivia closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and opened them, hoping to see the portraits in a fresh light, as a new viewer might take them in.
To the left was the first portrait of a self-satisfied lady seated in front of her equally self-satisfied husband, who stood behind her, a proprietary hand on her shoulder.
In the middle was a portrait of a sensuous opera singer lounging on a sofa, head tilted back to better hear the coercive whispers of the young buck stretched out behind her, clearly on the precipice of an amorous diversion. The woman’s saucy gaze remained fixed on those of the viewer as if they shared a naughty secret.
The last portrait portrayed a prostitute, her stare direct and bleak, as a shadowy man cupped her chin in a possessive and sinister manner from behind. The sad resignation within her eyes made Olivia want to look away even as she was drawn into the woman’s plight.
“Was the map directly across excessive? Earlier, it seemed like an excellent idea.”
“A way of underscoring the show’s message about the casualties of empire?” Mariana asked. Leave it to Mariana to cut straight to the heart of a matter.
“Has it strayed into melodrama?”
“Perhaps,” Mariana replied absently, transfixed by the impudent opera singer, “but some people you just have to bash over the head before they understand the subtleties of a situation.”
Of the three subjects, it was the opera singer who had made Olivia the most uncomfortable from the first moment she’d laid eyes on her yesterday. The woman’s frank, sultry gaze suggested not only her own plea
sure to come, but also an invitation to watch. Or to participate.
Her heart fluttered a few beats, sending a warm throbbing sensation to the apex of her thighs. She shifted to study the young buck’s face. His eyes appeared to have only just drifted shut, lost to the anticipation of pleasure.
Percy had never taken her from behind in that way. Their amorous interactions had been, well, they’d been a respectful husband and wife in the bedroom. Lights out, covers drawn, domestic, proper, typical of their class, she suspected, but could never know with certainty as one never discussed such things. Not even with one’s sister, especially when one suspected one’s sister had an altogether different bedroom relationship with her husband.
But when she gazed upon the painting with Lord St. Alban in mind, well, she had no trouble envisioning him lost to such a moment and ensuring his lover was, too.
“He left some minutes ago.”
Olivia startled into the present. A thin sheen of perspiration rushed to the surface of her skin, crawling along the nape of her neck, coating her palms. “I beg your pardon?”
“And he walked through that door.”
“Oh?” Olivia replied, blithe nonchalance breezing through the syllable, even as her gut churned in panic. The hallway beyond that door led to . . . The fine hairs on the back of her neck prickled to a stand. “Mariana, I never saw to Lady Bede’s goat milk.” She landed a distracted peck on her sister’s cheek. “Lovely of you to come tonight.”
As the door closed behind her, she heard, “But, Olivia, the kitchens are the other way.” She didn’t need to see her sister’s face to envision the familiar sarcastic quirk of her lips.
It mattered not. Not now. Now that Lord St. Alban had entered this corridor.
Perhaps he’d left the soirée. Or had become lost. Perhaps.
Except both were impossibilities in this particular corridor, which had only two doors.
One led to a storage closet.
The other to her studio.
Chapter 12
How long had she been standing here, peering at Lord St. Alban through the narrow crack between the door and the wall? Thirty seconds? Thirty minutes?
The amount of time hardly made a difference. A single second was too long for him to have been in her studio. Surrounded by drawings of himself.
Drat it all, what had she been thinking during last night’s bout of insomnia? She hadn’t. What had once been a deliberate means of healing had become instinct. Something interested her, she must draw.
But it didn’t feel therapeutic, standing here, breath held, fingers curled into tight fists, sweat trickling down her spine, watching him through a gap in the door like she was the interloper. The impulse to push the door open and confront him grew weaker the longer he stood inside her studio, judging her work, violating her privacy.
How many sketches littered the walls? She had no idea of the precise number, but dozens. Some drawn from a mid-distance perspective, others more intimate, focused on individual features in a manner bordering on the . . . deviant.
Yes, that was the correct word. Obsessive was another correct word.
She clenched her eyes shut in mortification as he strolled over to yet another image of himself and swallowed another dram of whiskey. A few swigs of whiskey sounded like a brilliant idea right now.
What was the expression on his face? All she was able to see was his unreadable profile. Was he bewildered? Amused? Or would his face reflect what she felt for herself? Embarrassment.
He took another gulp of whiskey and set the tumbler down. Before she could draw breath, he shrugged his shoulders, shed his overcoat, and draped it over the back of a chair. In the next blink, his vest was off his body. She moved not a muscle as she drank in the muscled length of his torso visible through the fine lawn of his shirt. She’d never seen him without overcoat and vest. What she’d only suspected was now confirmed.
In short, he was well-built. In expanded form, there was no denying the width of his shoulders or the trimness of his waist or the tautness of his backside through the superfine of his pants.
She nearly jumped through her skin when he began examining one of the smaller sketches, facing her. But his expression, neutral and emotionless, gave no sign of awareness that he was being watched. In fact, his fingers loosened the folds of his cravat before flicking open the top two buttons of his shirt. The whiskey found its way to his hand again as if it was a natural extension of him.
Lord St. Alban had made himself thoroughly comfortable. In her studio. Another layer of sweat broke out across her body. And she’d thought she’d drawn him into submission, purged her system of him.
Seeing him now at ease in her private space, she understood that the feeling she’d experienced at dawn hadn’t been completion, only complete exhaustion. There was no completion where Lord St. Alban was concerned. Not even close.
He ambled out of sight, and she pressed forward into the door, straining to keep her eye on him. Dressed down to his unbuttoned starched shirt and black breeches with that tumbler of whiskey carelessly in hand, he looked every inch the female fantasy of manly dishabille. So long had she spent drawing him in black and white, she’d almost forgotten that he was a flesh-and-blood man. Almost.
She inhaled deeply and caught a trace of cloves. His scent.
This limbo couldn’t go on any longer. She must face him tonight, now, if she was to have a measure of peace. If she was to face him again. If she was to face herself again.
On a bracing exhale, she pushed the door open on silent hinges and slipped into the studio, her heartbeat a ragged roar in her ears. His back to her, he remained unaware of her presence. She found the nearest wall and slumped bonelessly against it, her body a quivering bundle of anxiety and anticipation.
She wanted this man.
It was no accident that the hazy idea of taking a lover had begun to coalesce around the time she’d first set eyes on him. Her only hope lay in the unreliable notion that it would be uncomplicated.
It could be true. He didn’t have to be as complicated as she made him out to be. She could be the one complicating the air between them.
His back muscles tensed, suggesting he felt her presence in the room. He swiveled around, his gaze meeting hers, unwavering. An energy pulsed between them, sinuous and dark. An energy that would no longer be repressed. Victorious, it flared to the surface and dared them to ignore it.
His feet began a slow prowl forward, steadily erasing the distance between them, inch by deliberate inch. She should feel panicked, or, at least, unsettled, by his purposeful approach. But those feelings refused to take hold. The anxiety and anticipation of seconds ago flared into a single overwhelming sensation: desire, white hot, ravenous.
He drew within a foot of her and stopped. The only sound in the room the jagged in and out of her breath.
So this was what it was to be a wanton? Aching from the nearness of his withheld touch, excruciatingly delicious and exquisitely tortured all at once.
“Why are you here?” she muttered.
“How should I answer that question?” he returned, his voice a low, masculine register that quaked her to the core of her sex. His head lowered, lips hovering just above hers for one, two, three rapid heartbeats, his breath a whisper across her lips. “Like this?”
He thrust forward, closing the remaining gap between their bodies, the full length of him pushing her up and against the solid wall, and their bodies went still, their gazes locked. If there was a time for turning back, this would be it.
She wasn’t certain she could survive another night after an almost kiss. And she had no intention of finding out.
Her heels lifted, her body grazing his full length. A groan escaped him, and his mouth lowered, his lips brushing hers, once, twice, her nipples hardening in want, in expectation,
before another groan sounded and the kiss deepened in a tidal wave of pent-up desire too long held at bay.
The tip of his tongue swirled around hers, toying with her, teasing her. An animal moan sounded, and she realized it had come from her. His hands slid down and around to the small of her back, coursing lower until he had her bottom in hand. His knees bent, and, of a sudden, their bodies fit together like a perfectly joined puzzle.
Well, almost. She gave a quick thrust of her hips, and her foot snaked around his ankle. Oh, they could be joined so much more perfectly . . .
As if intuiting her thoughts, his long, capable fingers wrapped around her knee, and he pressed himself against her until she felt the rigid length of his shaft through gossamer layers of silk. Again her hips pushed forward, this time a more deliberate, slow grind against him. She went mindless with pleasure, pure, raw, clamoring for, nay, demanding release.
This was no uncertain first kiss. This was madness.
He tore his lips from hers, only to trace his slippery tongue down the exposed column of her neck. Her throat emitted a ragged moan as his mouth trailed lower until he reached her breasts and his hands reached up to cup them from below. One expert tug of silk, and suddenly her nipples were free. She didn’t wear bindings.
A hard glint of hunger shone in his eyes, coaxing her arousal higher. His mouth covered one nipple, his tongue flicking the taut bud, and his fingers toyed with the other until she bucked beneath his touch. A cry erupted from her throat, a primal plea for more, for everything.
She clutched the lapels of his shirt, intent on rending the cloth, if need be, her sole concern to feel his undressed skin upon hers. She hardly knew herself, a feral wild thing concerned only with pleasure.
Then, she noticed it. He’d gone still. A moan of frustration unwound inside her.
“Shh. Do you hear?”
She exhaled a rough, frustrated breath and quieted her unruly self, listening, waiting. Every muscle in her body tensed, and her eyes flew open. She heard them. Footsteps echoing down the hallway with only one realistic destination: this room.
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