Willful Depravity

by Ingrid Hahn

  It wasn’t as if he wondered, but as if he tested her.

  Patience bit her tongue, looking at him anew. Her preconceptions were swept away like the seeds on the ball of a dandelion under a breath of spring air. If he saw into people with such sharp, cutting clarity, she’d have expected him—until the moment she saw his paintings—to make a mockery of others.

  That idea, though, was naught but her own failing. She was too used to mockery, expecting it, whether they voiced it or not, from everyone in the world but her parents.

  Words from the night she and Ashcroft had met echoed in her mind: But remember this, Miss Emery, when I engage in pleasantries, I don’t make them at the expense of other people.

  Why had she not believed him?

  Because she was a fool. She, wholeheartedly, with no small amount of weary acceptance, surrendered herself to the assumption that every person with whom she crossed paths in a day made a judgment about her. If anyone should know better than to slot a person into a box in which they did not belong, it was her.

  The marquess touched Patience’s arm. “Miss Emery? Are you well?”

  “Forgive me, my lord.” She brought her hand to rest upon her chest in that space on her skin between her collarbones and cleavage.

  His face darkened with concern. “I’ve upset you. Let me take you to the chair and call for tea.”

  “Nothing of the sort. No, please.” She didn’t allow him to move her from where they stood, almost murmuring the next words. “You are what you are without apology or regret.”

  “Yes. It’s what I hope for everyone.” He gently took her by the chin and tilted her face up. “Most especially you, Mrs. Warrington.”

  A new awareness grew between them. And with it, the tension assumed a new intensity. What he’d said about being who one was without apology or regret. Ashcroft lived those words. If this man ever tried fitting in a mold, it would be a mold of his own making, and be nothing the world had ever seen.

  They had pictures on the walls back home. A few precious portraits of ancestors, none of them done well enough to imagine they captured a likeness. The rest depicted a single subject. The great love of her father’s life—His Majesty’s ships.

  Those paintings did nothing that Ashcroft’s did. Looking upon them, one’s eyes were not opened. One’s senses were not heightened. They never increased awareness of the color and light and beauty in the world. Maybe for her father, but not for her.

  Patience swallowed and looked away. It was too much, at least for now. There were many new things to think about, but now was neither the time nor the place. “These are beautiful. I want to see them.”

  “You’re not offended?”

  “Good gracious, no.”

  “I broke my own rule when I began them. I always ask before painting someone. With you, though, I couldn’t help myself.”

  Startled, Patience’s gaze flew back to the paintings. They depicted her? Oh Lord, they did. She examined each in detail, looking more carefully this time.

  The body she’d been told to hide and cover all her life was now quite prominently on display, without a hint of remorse. And the way he depicted her—it wasn’t as if he were using her to make a point or flagrantly defy…well, anything.

  It was so much simpler than that. She was just beautiful. The way she’d always been. The way she was always meant to be seen.

  Ashcroft’s brows rose, and he spoke slowly. “You didn’t realize they were you?”

  “No.”

  “These are nothing but sketches, mind you. I take three or four of the pencil sketches I like best and see what I think of them as a painting. If I like one, I’ll spend months on it. If I don’t…” He shrugged.

  “If you don’t?”

  “I start over or move on.” Ashcroft shrugged. “These are my current projects. Whether I’ll work on them here or not, I don’t know, but I can’t take the chance that I’ll need to work on them.”

  Patience wandered through the studio. The paintings were at every stage of completion. Some were in their infancy, existing as no more than a few marks on the canvas—the guidelines for blocking in the dominant shapes of the piece. Others appeared complete.

  “It smells of you.” She glanced around the room. “Or you smell of the studio.”

  The marquess plucked a terra-cotta pot from the clutter on the table beside the easel where he was working. “Smell this.”

  Patience held her hair back as she leaned over to inhale. It was that same earthy smell, full-bodied, but light. Rounded and sweet. “Yes. That’s it.”

  “You’ve never painted?”

  “Never. My education was purely practical. My mother wanted me to learn more ladylike skills, but there was no money for it.”

  She paused and took a breath, broaching a subject she’d never been comfortable discussing. “Except for one year. There was a bit extra and they sent me to school. There was some drawing instruction. The headmistress said I was hopeless. I hadn’t much cared to even try after that.” Patience bit her lip. She hadn’t meant to expose that part of herself. They were on intimate physical terms, yes. She had no right to burden him with confidences.

  But she’d already spoken, and Ashcroft’s face darkened. “She sounds a horrid woman. That she dare say such a thing to a child says all I need know about her character.”

  “It’s no matter. I don’t think about her often.”

  Not anymore. The headmistress in question had been one Mrs. Blake, and it had taken some years before her words had stopped plaguing Patience. She’d been young enough to believe every word Mrs. Blake had spoken. Not having others who spent much time with her or showed her how the world was supposed to be, she’d had nothing else to cling to.

  The woman’s favorite word for Patience had been hopeless. Mrs. Blake had taken a single look at Patience and her face had fallen. That one glance had summed up the tenor of their entire relationship.

  The marquess pressed on. “Pray tell me she received her due.”

  “I didn’t like the school, and my parents didn’t make me return.” Patience tried to sound aloof. Like what Mrs. Blake had said never mattered.

  What Miss Blake had done mattered more. She’d taken in the seams of all of Patience’s garments to make her clothing tighter, trying to humiliate her into somehow magically becoming slender. Patience’s mortification had been too acute to tell anyone about the woman’s ploy; what flew from the tongues of the other girls had been far crueler. At night, she’d let herself cry, stuffing her face into her pillow so none of the others could hear her sobs.

  Patience rubbed her arms, staring mindlessly at a painting done in muted shades of blue, brown, and gray, of a large woman strewn backward over a bed, her head hanging off the side, her long hair trailing to the floor. That’s how she’d been, too. Alone. Helpless. Naught more than an unsophisticated child under the power of a cruel adult.

  “I’m sorry.” Ashcroft came to stand behind Patience. His breath warmed her neck the second before his lips descended, slow and tender. Her skin erupted into gooseflesh.

  “It’s in the past. I only want to focus on what I can have now.”

  “In that case, will you sit for me? I want to paint you. It’s dull work, doing nothing but sitting, but I would be honored if you would.”

  Patience was already warm and ready. “Yes. I love it when you look at me. I love being on display for you.”

  He nuzzled her throat and emitted a sound of pleasure. “The perfect muse.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Patience let his hands skim over her body as he undressed her, layer by layer. As each one fell away, her power grew. She became more and more her true self.

  When she was nude, he raked his eyes over her, down slowly, then back up again. “Why don’t you take the settee by the windows?”

  She crept forward and stood to the side of the glass and as far back as she could while still being able to peer out. The windows were tall and narrow, without
coverings of any kind. Below them was a walled garden. So many shades of green, and all in one small, enclosed space.

  Ashcroft came to stand next to her. “Are you hoping someone will see you or will not?”

  Pausing to consider, she skimmed the tips of her fingers back and forth over her chest. She turned her head toward him. “I think I prefer only you to see me in the flesh. The paintings, however…”

  The paintings. That they might someday be viewed by other people sent a rush of arousal between her thighs. Exposing herself for no other reason than the pleasure of being seen and giving pleasure in turn.

  The marquess flashed a smile. “I understand. I have a very appreciative gaze.”

  She sat and leaned sideways luxuriously, one arm tucked behind her head, and the other resting on a thigh.

  “Perfect. Can you stay like that for a spell?”

  He brought his things close and set to work, glancing at her, dabbing at his paints, and brushing on the canvas.

  Partway through, Patience rose to walk about the room. Sitting was far more work than she’d have believed. “May I see what you’ve been working on?”

  Giles held out his hand, inviting her look. “As you please, of course.”

  She looked through the sketches he’d been working on, four in all. They were all similar, but all different. One focused more carefully on form. One on her face. One on color. The last merely depicted mechanical lines, which came together to form a human body. “It’s incredible what you can capture in so little time.”

  He put his painting things away and took out drawing supplies.

  “My aim is to do you justice.” This time when he glanced at her, it was less with the eye of an artist and more with the eye of a man.

  Patience went warm. “I can’t believe of all of these, there isn’t something to develop you won’t be satisfied with.”

  “Satisfied?” His head went to one side, and he considered. “I don’t think that’s something I could ever be. If I were satisfied, I would stop painting.”

  “That seems…” She frowned and twirled a loose curl of hair, studying the color of the strands in one of the sketches. “Defeating.”

  “Oh, no, it’s anything but. I strive. With each painting I complete, I strive to be better than the last. There is never something I don’t want to improve. Never anything I don’t want to try capturing that I’ve never captured before.” His face assumed a faraway look. “Every day on the Italian peninsula, the light was different. It changed by the hour. For the first months of my stay, I couldn’t get enough. I was in agony thinking I might miss the way the morning light hit on a vase if I looked away for even a second.”

  He rubbed his brow and continued. “I had to come to terms with the fact that I couldn’t have everything, no matter how much I wanted it. I decided then to focus—to be selective about what I chose. When I make a choice to complete a painting, I strive to make it the very best I can.”

  The Italian peninsula. She wasn’t unfamiliar with the people from all over the world who traveled in and out of London’s harbors almost daily. But it sounded as far away as the moon.

  “That’s why you spend so much time sketching.”

  This went far beyond her father’s all-consuming passion—obsession, really—with ships and all things related to the navy and men upon the sea.

  “Precisely.” The marquess smiled. He raised his brows at her. “Ready to resume?”

  Patience took her place on the settee. He took a chair this time, one leg over the other, board on his knee, ready to draw.

  He studied her. “Perhaps…leg bent this time?”

  She repositioned her back leg. He stared between them, eyes hooded with pure wickedness, half grin upon his lips leaving no question as to the direction of his thoughts. “There. I should like to draw that.”

  A rush of heat plumped her quim.

  He raised his brows in question. “Shall I?”

  She wiggled, horribly aroused by the mere suggestion and on fire with a new sort of self-awareness. “Draw it?”

  “Draw it. They’d be for me alone, now and forever. Should you ever desire them destroyed, they’d be burned at once. Which goes for every likeness I’ve done of you, I should add. Nobody will see them without your permission, and they will only exist so long as you’re happy knowing they do.”

  The man could be wicked one moment and direly earnest the next. His work wasn’t a joke to him. Neither was she.

  Patience swallowed, daringly exposing herself further. “Go on, then. Draw it.”

  The way he brushed the lines over the paper was more like caressing the page. He went slower than when he’d drawn her face that night in the carriage. Studying more carefully. Making bolder, more deliberate strokes. The styling suited the subject.

  He offered her the first rendering. She stared at it. “I don’t think I can do this any longer.” Setting the paper aside, she slipped her fingers downward. “I can’t stand it. I need to be touched or I will die.”

  …

  Far be it from Giles to let a woman suffer.

  He could have taken her quick and hard, the sort of fast and unbridled coupling to leave them both breathless, boneless, and happily sore.

  It was tearing him apart—this overpowering need to send them spiraling over the cliffs into the light and fire of pleasure as quickly as possible, while desperate to restrain himself so he wouldn’t miss a moment of savoring her.

  He set his drawing things aside and stood over her. There was nothing like the sight of a woman with her hand between her legs. He reached down to stroke the hardness under his falls.

  First, he had to taste her. Giles knelt and buried his head between her thighs. Oh, give glory to the Creator. Sweet, sweet heaven. Pussy. What greater gift could there be under the sun? Warm. Wet. Perfumed. And the variety was nothing short of wondrous.

  A man could live his life without it. But what would be the point?

  Giles kissed her, gently opening his mouth and running his tongue up and down, over and through. Silken nectar. She moaned and moved her hips. He sucked harder.

  The blaze between them built. He reached down to unbutton his falls so he could stroke himself as he continued pleasuring her.

  She tensed and trembled. Oh yes. Nearing another climax. One day he’d draw her while she touched herself. If he could capture her on paper as she appeared in the middle of pleasure…

  With one final stroke, she cried out, body jerking and rocking as the sensations took her.

  He moved to cover her, pushing himself between her legs and nudging inside. Eager, his cock flexed. She welcomed him into her arms and hitched her ankles around his calves. Her fingers sank into the flesh of his backside as she pulled him deeper, faster. “I want this so much.”

  A woman whose passions might match his.

  Inside her warmth, her body gripped his with the perfect amount of tension. Like they had been formed to complement one another. Two instruments tuned to perfect harmony.

  He moved over her, stroking slowly and devouring her mouth with his. She was soft and womanly. Skin smooth. His hands would never tire of roaming her body any sooner than his cock would tire of being squeezed and cradled by her passage.

  Tearing himself out in time took a measure of reason that didn’t seem possible to possess in his pleasure-fogged brain. But withdraw he did, and poured himself onto her thigh.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Silverlund let himself into his son’s house with a copied key he’d bought from an all-too-easily bribed footman. He glanced back over his shoulder, scanning the darkness. In the shadows, the only thing moving was the shape of a giant tomcat bounding across the street with a huge rat in its jaws.

  The hour neared midnight, but the duke hadn’t been able to sleep. Earlier that same day, the man he’d hired to hunt down Giles had come with a disturbing report.

  “He’s gone off with a woman, Your Grace.”

  Cold dread crushed Silverlund�
�s lungs. He couldn’t move his mouth to form the word “eloped.”

  “Scotland?”

  “No, Your Grace.” The man gave his name as West. He was nondescript in a way that made him difficult to describe. Utterly ordinary. Brown hair, medium height. Age anywhere from late thirties to late forties. No strong features, no defining characteristics. The sort one overlooked. No doubt West used his appearance to advantage in his work. “Gone to one of the estates of his friend Holbrook. Glenrose Castle.”

  Holbrook. A duke. A man who, by rights of rank, should have looked to Silverlund for guidance as to properly conducting himself in his station. How he should act. What being a duke meant to England, her people high and low. Instead, he retained a friendship with Ashcroft. It rankled every time the thought brushed Silverlund’s mind. “Yes? What else?”

  “A woman joined him. The people know them as Mr. and Mrs. Warrington. I’m still tracing who she is. Not a woman of birth or breeding. We’re calling her the dairy maid.”

  No, she wouldn’t be a woman of birth or breeding to agree to such a thing, would she?

  Another disgrace. She must be using his son for her gain, the hussy. But what? A bastard to barter as blackmail? Jewels? Pray the latter. They were easy to obtain. Mistresses were crass business, but at least Silverlund knew how to get rid of them.

  “Find out who she is.”

  West inclined his head. “We will, Your Grace.”

  Ashcroft needed to be brought to heel. The problem would not be solved with the duke’s current tactics.

  Which had brought Silverlund to his son’s house tonight. There had to be something. In the study, he lit a candle, flipped through account books, ran his finger down pages of ledgers. Nothing out of the ordinary. His eye caught on a number. What that boy spent on paper alone was a disgrace.

  Silverlund slammed the cover shut and moved on.

  At first, he hadn’t wanted to go into the studio. Those paintings made him dream of fire.

  He stopped on the stairs. Fire.

  He turned around.

  Back in the studio, he roamed through the disorder, taking it all in. Every last painting was obscene, lewd, and vulgar.