“To whom did you sell them?” He wasn’t quite yelling at her, but his voice was firmer than she’d ever heard it. He was being completely unreasonable.
“I have a buyer in Town. I see him once a year for the exchange.”
Was she going to be able to keep track of all her lies?
“How many are there? I don’t want you to fib on the number, Emma. I want to know exactly how many nudes exist.”
She pinched her lips together. He would not listen to reason, would not hear anything she was telling him. The image was not her—the only similarity was in the woman’s slender form. What harm could he do now that the paintings were sold? She didn’t even know who had purchased them. Hadn’t wanted to know, because she trusted Nathan to handle the business end of the transaction with discretion.
“Answer me, Emma.”
“Thirty.”
Anger flared in his eyes.
She lowered her head and stared at the painted lady mocking her. They were always mocking her, saying their life was not ever going to be a life she could enjoy for herself. Wasn’t that the reason she had painted them? To escape into a world that would never exist for her.
“Thirty-one, if you include this piece.”
Two of them were of her. Oh, God, what would Richard do with that truth? That secret was safe. It had to be. Nathan would come through for her.
Emma shoved the picture back into his hands. There was no room for weaknesses right now. She must be strong. She must hold her ground.
Really, was it so shocking for a woman to paint and sell nudes? Or was it just unacceptable for her to do so as the Countess of Asbury? She’d painted nudes for nine years now; she wasn’t about to stop because her husband couldn’t see the true beauty in her art.
“Take a long look at it, Richard. When you come to your senses and can see the image as it really is, then I expect an apology.”
She stormed out of her painting room and went to her private chambers. She didn’t care if it looked like she was hiding from him. Her emotions were running high. Simply put, she didn’t want to see anyone right now.
Especially her husband.
Chapter 17
I wonder if I would have discovered the real me, had you stayed?
“It pleases me to see you,” Dante said as he turned to her, tossing his necktie on the bed. “I thought maybe you wouldn’t come again.”
Grace stood with her back to the door, fingers fidgeting at the decorative ribbon about her waist. “I didn’t think you’d welcome me after my association with … with our unwanted guest.”
“Waverly always proved a shrewd business partner. His facility in life was to be a charmer of the worst sort. I wouldn’t doubt it if he had orchestrated his acquaintance with you quite intentionally.” Dante ran a hand through his hair. “Cara, you must promise to stay away from him.”
“I realized his intentions toward me long before he showed up here.” How she wished she hadn’t been so stupid with Waverly. “I came to see you because I don’t want you to think me a loose woman. I never … that is to say, the things you and I did are not things I do with any man.”
Not only did she know she blushed, but her ears were hot, and she was sure her whole face was crimson with shame. She didn’t like this feeling at all.
“Waverly has long been unwell.” He walked toward her, his hands in front of him, palms facing her. With a desperation unlike her, she wanted to take his hands, but dared not. Not till she knew how he felt about her.
“You never need to hide yourself from me,” Dante finished.
It had never been her intention to hide from him. She took a calming breath and hoped the heat in her face and neck had cooled. She would be brave. She would not shy away from this man who had come to mean so much to her in so short a time.
“Can I come to you?” he asked.
Why was he asking her when he rounded in on her regardless? One slow step at a time. Could she be hopeful that he still wanted her? Her heart stuttered and stopped. Stuttered and stopped.
Her palms were sweating, so she rubbed them against her dress. “Why aren’t you questioning my past relationship with Waverly?”
“Although the thought of you with another angers me, I’m not going to stop pursuing our relationship. I want you so badly, cara. I can’t even think straight when you’re around.”
She saw the truth of his statement reflected in his eyes. His face was all seriousness: brows furrowed in concern, his lips a smooth even line. There wasn’t a twitch to be had in his face as he regarded her evenly.
She would not have him thinking less of her, because that was what she feared most right now. “I just wanted you to know I was never intimate with Waverly,” she blurted out.
“This information makes me an even happier man.” Standing in front of her, he chucked her under the chin. “Your past is yours. We all make mistakes, hmm?”
She nodded. “Do you mean that?”
“I do.”
She raised one hand and brushed the back of it over his shirt, touching him so lightly she didn’t even feel his firm muscle beneath. She wanted to take more, touch more, but dared not. She was so confused.
“You are wearing too many clothes, cara.” Her eyes snapped up and met his again. “It is an unusually warm night. I think we should undress so we are more comfortable.”
Reaching around her back, where it pressed to the door, he clicked over the lock.
Her heart beat faster in her breast with the obvious insinuation. Not that she hadn’t hoped for this to happen. It was just that she thought he wouldn’t want anything to do with her. Hands raised, she put them on either side of his face and felt his evening stubble. She wanted to scratch up against him like a cat starved for attention. Like a cat in heat.
“You want me to stay?”
He gave one of his slow grins. A twinkle of mischief was evident in his expression. “The things I want to do every time I see you. Stay the night with me.”
Going up on the tips of her slippered feet, she whispered, “Only if you make me cry out your name, Dante.”
“I will make you scream my name, cara.” Dante took her mouth in a ferocious kiss that she felt all the way down to her curling toes. Goodness, they’d gone from a slow seduction to an erotic coupling.
His hands were at her back, caressing her and releasing buttons at the same time. She fumbled with his shirt, pulling it from his trousers, up over his smooth chest, then finally over his head. When the sleeves caught at his wrist, he ripped the decorative clips right out of the cuffs. She released the ties on her corset, loosening the strings enough to release the clasps in front.
Dante stared down at her bosom like a man starved. “I could live a happy man right here.”
Grace untied her skirts and pushed them from her hips. She couldn’t seem to get undressed fast enough.
“Take off my trousers.” His voice was hoarse. The material made it as far as his knees before he was hitching her legs over his hips and pressing up into her body in one long, smooth thrust.
“Glorious. So glorious.” He pressed his forehead to hers. “You are sweet heaven.”
Her head fell back against the door, her arms wrapped tightly around his shoulders so he could bury his face into the plumpness of her breasts.
Did this mean there was something more between them? She bit her lip and swallowed the question for later. It felt so good—right—having him inside her body. It was as though he owned her body.
“You make me hot,” he said, biting and sucking at her breasts. “Like a young man who gets hard at the first sight of a beautiful woman.”
She pulled his face back up to hers and speckled kisses over his hair-roughened face, his nose, the corner of his lips. She couldn’t stop kissing him.
“Lock your ankles around me. I’m going to walk you over to the bed.”
There was no way he could carry her weight like that. She did the opposite of his request and tried to set her f
eet down on the floor.
He caught her leg up again before she could escape and pulled away from the wall so quickly she was forced to do his bidding.
“You needn’t carry me,” she yelped in surprise.
“I don’t want to leave your body. That would be a crime.” He teasingly patted her buttocks, then stroked and squeezed it. “You clench around my cock so sweetly, tesorina. Besides, you are light.”
“You’re addled to think that.” But she was giggling like a young girl who had just received her first compliment.
“Maybe addled only where you are concerned. Pull off the chemise.” His hands clasped tight at her buttocks to steady her while he kicked off his trousers. “You are not going to be able to leave this room when we are done. I’m going to tire us both so much we can’t walk.”
“I like how you think.” She leaned in close to him, sucked at his bottom lip, and gave it a loving bite before releasing him. “But what if someone comes looking for us? We haven’t even made it past the dinner hour.”
“We’ll ring for dinner soon, and tell the servant we are indisposed.”
She gasped at the bold suggestion. “The serving staff will think I’m a great hussy.”
“I will say I am having dinner with my affianced.”
Dante stopped walking and held her tight, never letting her fall. He was grinning.
“Do you mean it?”
“Cara, I would not say something if I didn’t mean it. We are already in a compromising position.” He demonstrated how compromising by pulling out of her body near to the tip of his instrument, then shoved himself back in. “You must become my wife now.”
How could she respond to that? She wanted to run away with him. Yes, preferably as man and wife. She’d known that since their first time together.
“We’ve known each other for so short a time.” She nibbled at her lower lip. Unsure about everything. Did he mean it?
“This does not matter. I’m a grown man of thirty-five, you a decade younger.” He kissed her sweetly on the mouth. “I’ve never asked another woman for her hand in marriage. So this is not something I ask lightly. Say yes.”
“Oh, Dante.” She returned his kiss enthusiastically. “Yes, I will be your wife. I want that more than anything.”
“Good,” he said.
Then she was falling backward onto the bed, his firm, hard body following. After that, she didn’t think anymore. Couldn’t think except to call out his name when he pleasured her and gave her two orgasms before he had his release. Then he kissed the whole of her body, not leaving a single inch untouched before climbing between her legs again—that was when she screamed his name. She hoped no one else in this wing of the house heard their impassioned cries. She didn’t really care, though, because she was going to be Mrs. Lioni.
* * *
The very rational part of Richard’s mind told him that the painting was not his wife’s body and likeness. There was no birthmark covering the right hip on the woman in the picture. There was a roundness to the stomach that his wife did not possess. The woman’s thighs were thicker, fleshier, and the hair of the woman was a darker blonde than that of his wife’s. He could argue that the breasts were similar, the pale pink nipples identical in coloring to Emma’s, though hers turned dark red in the height of passion unlike the vixen stretched so wantonly across the divan in this picture.
He still planned to purchase back every single nude she had painted over the years. If it were ever revealed that Emma painted golden-haired Venuses and amorous Aphrodites for the gentlemen in society, she’d be closed to all social circles in Town. Not that he cared what society thought.
His foolish, adorable wife was going to keep him on his toes. Tucking the canvas under his arm, Richard left her painting room. He had left no canvas unturned. He had to make sure there were no more paintings in here, no sketches of a lusty nature. It had taken him some hours to complete the task.
He stopped outside Dante’s room on hearing a breathy moan. His brow furrowed, and his hand went to the door latch. It might be his house, and he expected a certain level of respect toward his guest and his wife’s sisters, but he couldn’t demand Dante keep his hands to himself. He was almost positive who his friend spent the evening with.
Grace was a grown woman. A widow, Richard reminded himself. And she was in Dante’s room, not the other way around. With a shrug, he eased away from the door and walked the remainder of the hall to his bedchamber.
Setting the painting on his bureau, he stared at it. While he did not have an eye for art, he could see that this one was something that could easily be coveted by any man who considered himself a connoisseur of the female form.
It was not an amateur painting. It was at least a hundred times more detailed and real than the landscapes and flowers Emma had shown him earlier. Thirty paintings of this nature existed somewhere in England. Hell, they could be anywhere on the Continent for all he knew.
* * *
Emma took a late dinner in her room that night. She pushed around the asparagus on her plate. She didn’t have an appetite. Not after the fight with her husband. Just when she thought everything was coming together in their relationship, everything fell apart at the seams.
Her fork fell to the plate with a clank.
She wasn’t angry with her dim-witted husband anymore. Perhaps she should be, but her temper was usually short-lived. There was comfort in knowing he couldn’t do anything about her sold paintings. He would simmer over the evening and be his cool, calm self by morning. She was sure of that.
She wondered if he planned to come to her room later. She frowned. She shouldn’t want that. In fact, she’d refuse him at the door. Lock him out as she had the first night he’d arrived at the manor.
She’d given in to him so easily. It wasn’t fair for him to walk back in her life and take the reins right out of her hands. In the matter of days, she’d lost herself. It had taken years for her to build her confidence. And he took all that away in a single day.
What if she just left? Went to London and let the infernal man chase her down if he truly cared to mend their marriage. If he didn’t, then she’d have to hope that she wasn’t pregnant. She could not be tied to a man for the rest of her days and be alone. How would she survive without his companionship now that she’d tasted of it so thoroughly?
There was at least fifty thousand pounds sitting in a trust fund originally set up for her extra pin money. She’d not spent a single cent from the sales of her nudes. What if she left Mansfield Hall? Forgot about London altogether and moved to the wilds of Scotland?
She pushed away her plate and slouched back in the chair. That didn’t sound much more appealing, either.
She brooded as though her life was at an end because her secret had been revealed.
Her art would remain a constant in her life. The same could not be said for her husband. He would eventually leave again. She would continue to sell her paintings and squirrel away the money. If they did divorce, she’d need that money to find a little cottage somewhere. To live as an independent woman.
As she stood from the writing table where she’d taken her dinner, the door to her private sitting room flew open.
Richard strolled in without a care for invading her private space.
“Good evening, Emma.”
She inclined her head as she gathered her courage to face her husband so soon after their fight.
Richard narrowed his eyes to the lone lamp lit on her table. “Why is it so dark in here?”
“I was in a black mood. Gothic lighting seemed fitting.” She folded the napkin she was holding and placed it on the table. “Why are you here?”
“I wanted to discuss the disagreement we had earlier.”
Her brows rose, and she tapped her foot impatiently, waiting for him to continue.
He stepped fully into the room, leaving the door wide open. Behind him, the last rays of sun shaded her bedchamber in tones of orange and gold.
> “I realize now that my assessment of the situation might have been rash.”
“Rash?” Why was it that he made her want to strike out at something? “Really, Richard, your reaction was far more than rash. You assume you can take control of my life after being away for the better part of it.”
“I’m not here to fight about this.” Richard yanked on the bottom of his vest and stood taller.
That was not something she expected to hear from him. Why was he here, then?
She sat in one of the chairs arranged neatly around the hearth, giving her husband her back. “I have things I need to attend to. I would appreciate it if you’ll make your speech and leave me to my own devices.”
She turned her head so she could watch him from the corner of her eye. Richard put his back to the silk-papered wall and crossed his arms over his chest.
“What of our night together?”
She couldn’t help the snort that left her mouth, or the subsequent laugh at his nerve to suggest they continue their night as planned. As though nothing significant had happened between them. If he wanted to control her life, he was in for a surprise. She had vowed never to let a man rule her actions or her heart ever again. She’d been foolish enough to let Richard back into her life at all. Had she been thinking with her head instead of her heart, she would have pressed the issue of divorce.
Her hand curled around the cushion by her thigh. “To assume I would accept your advances is pure arrogance.”
A small part of her cried out in denial at refusing her husband now; she tamped that need down in her mind, locking it away with all the other emotions she’d been forced to ignore for so many years.
The attraction she felt toward her husband, the desire to have him in her life and in her bed, would subside if she just ignored it. She’d gone twelve years without him already. She could last long enough to get a divorce.
Infernal man. How vexing this day had turned out. She should be focused on her anger—not her attraction. He had accused her of adultery, and indecency with the paintings. Yet during their marriage, he was allowed to do exactly as he pleased. That infuriated her.
The Seduction of His Wife Page 20
