“My mother died when I was a babe,” she went on as he returned to studying her injured palm. “But my father saw that I always had some form of canvas for sketching. Even if it was… the walls.” She paused, and he found himself wanting her to continue. Wanting to know details about the mysterious woman who lived in a forgotten corner of Luton. For his report on her. It was only about his report… That assurance echoed in his mind, pinging around there as the lie it was. “But,” she went on, her voice reflective, “I never considered myself an artist.”
Graham continued to hold her hand, her fingers warm in his own. “And why not?”
She snorted. “Artists are paid for their efforts. Men who have their work hanging in museums. There’s hardly a place for a woman from Luton skilled with paints and charcoals.”
“Hardly.” He scoffed. “You’ve never heard of Fede Galizia.”
Martha went wide-eyed. “Who?”
“She was a Renaissance artist.”
Dropping her chin atop her uninjured hand, she shook her head. “I’ve only ever heard of da Vinci and Michelangelo.”
How many times had he ridden by the Royal Academy and not given art so much as a thought? Martha deserved to be there, in London, surrounded by those artistic pieces to observe and study. “Tell me about her,” she urged.
“She was the daughter of an artist in Milan. Her father raised her to believe that she too could and should be an artist. By twelve, she was already accomplished enough to earn mention by renowned Italian artists.”
Martha’s entire body remained motionless as she stared on, enrapt. Had anyone ever looked at him that way? Had he ever given anyone reason to look at him that way? It was dangerously heady for a man who’d long since ceased to feel the effects of fine spirits and hedonistic pleasures. That a look from a woman should stir… this… whatever this was inside. It compelled him to continue. “Her work survives to this day, no less valuable or revered for her gender.”
“How do you know this?” she breathed.
His neck went hot, and he coughed into his hand. “I fear the truth will only humble me. I saw one of her portraits. Judith with the Head of Holofernes. It was a painting of a woman holding a head in her hand.” To his tutor’s horror, Graham had been endlessly fascinated and learned everything there was about that piece. “Gory, graphic, horrific stuff.”
Her crimson brows drew together, the familiar suspicion darkening her eyes. “No… how does a stable master come to know so much about female artists?”
Graham silently cursed himself to the devil. “I wasn’t always a stable master.”
She peered at him. “You weren’t?”
He’d been so focused on encouraging her own work and maintaining that slightly adoring glimmer in her eyes, that he’d made a careless misstep. He flashed a wry grin. “I served on the staff for a nobleman whose entire household was filled with those pieces,” he said, not missing a beat, “and I was so fortunate as to have the mistress of the household care for me when I remained”—a disappointment, a failure—“invisible to so many.”
She stared wistfully back. “And you gave all that up?” she murmured, searching his face. “You traded all those opportunities and experiences away with the hope—”
“For more,” he finished. “Yes.”
“I understand that,” she said softly, glancing down at her hands. “For a long time, creating my sketches, even knowing the world would never see them, was enough… for me. Somewhere along the way, it all… changed.”
She sought employment. Only, she didn’t speak of her skills in terms of her need for work.
“There’s this feeling I have…” She scrunched up her brow, searching and then finding. “I don’t know how to describe it. This… feeling that can only come in creating something from nothing.” The wonderment in her husky tones as she spoke so lovingly of her craft was no mere afterthought or detail in a Home Office file. Hers was a tangible joy that lit her eyes—and scared the hell out of him for the unknown feelings it stirred. She didn’t speak of money or security, but rather, some intangible thing.
“Joy?” he ventured.
She shook her head. “No. It is… different. It’s equal parts wonder, and frustration, and exhilaration, all wrapped together. Have you… ever felt anything like that?” she asked hesitantly.
He sank back over his heels. “Have I…?” Did he feel that sense of wonder for anything? Had he ever? Society and his family would have readily supplied an answer for her that gave a nod to Graham’s years as a rogue and the illicit pleasures and passions he’d pursued. And they would have all been wrong. For he had felt that way about something. “I feel that way when I care for horses.” Or he had. Before his father had ordered him from the stables and barred the stable master from allowing Graham to assist him.
Disquieted, he shoved to his feet.
“Yes, you should retire. The morn comes…” Her words faded as he stalked over to the shallow wood trough set into the top of a cabinet.
Graham grabbed the nearest pot and dipped it into the trough. Filling it halfway, he carried it to the table and set it down. “May I?” he asked, reaching for her hand.
She wet her lips and then nodded once.
Graham dipped her stained, injured palm into the cool water.
“What are you doing?” she asked, glancing between him and her hand.
“Come now, Miss Donaldson. Surely you’ve come across Hippocrates’ treatment of injuries.”
“I haven’t.” A curl fell over her eye, and with his spare hand, Graham brushed it back, tucking that silken tress behind the shell of her ear.
“There are those who believe cleaning a wound will help to prevent infection from setting in,” he explained, dipping one of the white linens into the water and gently washing the charcoal from around the injury first and then the remainder of her hand.
They settled into a companionable silence, with Graham washing and then wrapping her cleaned hand. While he did, he felt her eyes taking in his every movement.
“Martha,” she said softly, and he stopped mid-wrap. The long, graceful column of her throat moved. “You should call me Martha.”
His gaze wandered unwittingly to the mouth that had captivated him from the moment she’d entered the White Stag Inn.
Her lips parted, and she tilted her head back. Graham froze, transfixed by her. By this moment. Martha’s lashes fluttered closed. Kiss her. She is offering that gift. Take it when you desperately want it.
Graham moved closer to her lips, so close the hint of plum that lingered on her breath filled his senses, filled him with a taste of sweet fruit. Of her.
He’d had numerous lovers, including inventive widows with the lush bodies of fertility goddesses. What was this enigmatic pull Martha Donaldson had over him? He swallowed hard, warring with himself. Fighting what he wished to take. Needing her to end this connection and send him away, as she should. “I should go.”
“Why?” she whispered. Nothing more than a single syllable that spoke of her desire for him to remain.
“Because I want to kiss you,” he said, his admission hoarse with restraint. “And I shouldn’t,” he said regretfully. If they’d met somewhere else, as different people, brought together for different reasons… He forced himself to step around her.
He’d made it halfway across the kitchens when her husky tones sounded behind him, tinged with hesitancy.
“What if I want you to?”
Chapter 9
What if I want you to?
Martha’s heart hammered.
As a girl, Martha had wondered, even dreamed about, what her first kiss would be like.
Until she was a young woman newly married to Viscount Waters and had been subjected to her first kiss.
From that moment on, Martha had long abhorred any form of intimacy. While her children had pined over their absent father when he was in London, missing the ruthless cad whose evil they hadn’t known, Martha had secretly rejoiced o
ver his absence. With the viscount gone, she’d been spared from him “claiming his husbandly rights,” as he’d reminded her during their every encounter.
Through all the unpleasantness she’d known in his arms, there had been something particularly distasteful in his kisses—sloppy, wet, stinking of garlic and spirits. She used to turn her head in a bid to escape that act whenever her husband paid a visit to Luton.
When he died, she’d vowed to never again subject herself to the distaste of one of those embraces.
In this moment, alone in the kitchens with Graham, there had been a piercing heat that radiated from his gaze, that singular focus she’d learned to run from when she’d seen it in Lord Waters’ eyes.
And in this sliver of time, she wanted Graham Malin to kiss her.
Because something in the searing intensity of his eyes, coupled with the restraint he’d shown, had told her that Graham Malin’s kiss would never be like Lord Waters’. That Graham Malin would not take, as if her lips or any part of her body were his due, but rather, as if they were a gift that he’d cherish.
It was madness, that faith she had. Utter madness. But then, everything about Graham’s arrival in High Town and presence here defied any sort of reason.
And yet—he made no move to face her.
As time stretched on, and with it the thick, deafening silence, embarrassment stole away the excited little fluttering in her belly.
Mortification brought her toes curling hard into the arches of her feet. My God, what he must think of her. The wanton widow all of High Town took her for. Perhaps she was precisely what they accused her of being. “Forgive me,” she said, hurrying to gather up her medical supplies to give herself anything to do, all the while praying for the floor to open and devour her whole. “I should not have asked you to… to…” Kiss me. She could not get the words out. “That was inappropriate on my part. You are a man in my employ, and I’ve surely scandalized you by—” She gasped as he turned swiftly around.
Graham was across the room in three long strides. Cupping her gently by the nape, he angled her head and covered her mouth with his.
Martha stilled, and then the scissors slipped from her fingers, the noisy clatter as they hit the surface of the table muted by the beat of her own heart.
This kiss was nothing like… any kiss she’d ever known from her husband. Ever.
It was an explosion of heat and sensation that seared her from the inside, his lips hard and masterful, but with a gentleness that stood in impossibly beautiful contradiction.
Martha crept her fingers up his chest, a hard wall of contoured muscle, and she clung to his shirtfront, giving herself over to his kiss. Taking that gift he now gave.
He tasted of peppermint, unadulteratedly pure and crisp and heady. Martha angled her mouth to better receive each slant of his mouth, meeting each stroke of his lips in return.
“I… never knew,” she rasped between each kiss, “that it could feel like this.”
He groaned into her mouth, the slightest, most delicious hum of a vibration that brought her lips apart, and Graham slipped his tongue past them.
Martha’s legs went out from under her, but Graham was there. He caught her by the waist, guiding her to the edge of the table, never breaking that kiss, exploring her.
Nay, they explored each other. There was no demand. There was no one person taking what another didn’t wish to give. It was a union of two mouths by two who wanted all of each other.
His mouth left hers, and she bit her lip to keep from crying out at the abrupt loss, but he was only shifting his attentions lower, to her neck, caressing with the tip of his tongue the place where her pulse beat wildly.
Martha moaned, a low, wanton sound she didn’t recognize for what it signified and from the place where it came.
Graham lightly nipped at her sensitive flesh. He suckled, teasing at the skin. His cheeks, faintly coarse from the day’s growth upon them, brushed her chin and earned a faint, husky laugh.
He paused in his ministrations and glanced up at her through thick lashes. Desire poured from those sapphire depths.
“It tickles,” she breathed, stroking her fingers along the angular planes of his harshly beautiful face. And before she did something maddening, such as allow reality to intrude upon this, Martha stretched up and kissed him.
Graham’s muscles went taut under her, and then he was claiming her mouth again, scooping his hands under her buttocks and bringing her close. As if he sought to meld them, bodies and souls, joining them as one, in an act Martha had only despised.
But she knew, the same way she had about the magic that Graham’s kiss would be, that lying beneath him would wield a beauty and wonder she’d never known.
That I want to experience…
It was a realization she’d not had—that she’d not allowed herself to have—until now. Martha yearned to be a woman capable of feeling desire and passion. And as Graham searched his hands over her, caressing the curves of her hips and the swell of her buttocks, Martha reveled in the warmth that tripped through her body, spreading like a slow-burning fire that consumed all it touched.
It was a conflagration she’d gladly turn herself over to.
*
Graham had kissed a number of women.
Each of those kisses had been a casual act that had meant nothing, a basic one that had been a precursor to sex with women who’d been as experienced as he was in the art of lovemaking.
And none of those kisses had been… like this, and none of the women had been like the one in his arms now.
Despite her title of widow, there was a tentativeness coupled with innocence that contradicted her eager response. The initial hesitancy in her kiss, however, had dissolved as she returned his kiss with utter abandon, free of all restraints.
It was not enough…
Graham caressed his lips over the skin exposed along the trim of her modest décolletage.
Martha whimpered softly and tangled her fingers in his hair, clenching and unclenching, holding him close.
“The moment you entered that inn, I was captivated,” he breathed against her chest, straightening to take her mouth again.
“I… w-was angry,” she panted between kisses.
“You were magnificent in your fury.” She’d been a warrior woman prepared to burn the town down, in a display he’d never before witnessed from any lady.
Graham guided her down, and she melted upon the table, so trusting.
Offering herself to him.
He hovered above her, braced on his elbows. His breath came hard and fast.
Oh, God. Please do not let this be the moment to develop a damned conscience. She yearned for this as much as he did.
Uncertainty flashed in Martha’s expression, and she stared at him through eyes hazed with desire. “Wh-what is it?”
His gut clenched. All he needed to do was draw her gown and undergarments down to expose that luxuriant cream-white skin. The hint of plum that lingered on her breath filled his senses, filled him with a taste of sweet fruit. Of her. Beckoning.
Graham moved closer to her lips.
Oh, and Whitworth? I was ordered to give you one more instruction about your assignment: Do not go seducing the young woman.
Bloody hell.
Graham squeezed his eyes shut and reluctantly drew himself away from everything he wanted. Lord Helling’s orders pounded at his head, and he placed several much-needed steps between him and Martha. “I should not have done that,” he said, his voice rough with unsated desire.
Martha lay sprawled for the span of several heartbeats before hastily shoving up onto her elbows. “Of course,” she said quickly. Her cheeks still flushed with the hint of unsated desire, she scrambled to her feet. Her hands shaking, Martha adjusted her garments, tugging her gown back into place.
Smoothing her skirts.
Straightening her hair.
All the while, she avoided his gaze like he was that serpent-headed devil Medusa who’d
freeze her with a single look. “I’m sorry,” she said on a rush. “I should not have…”
He closed the space between them and touched a finger to her lips. He’d not have her apology. “I am the one who owes you an apology,” he murmured, stroking the pad of his thumb along her cheek. “I should not have kissed you.” Graham tipped her chin up, angling her gaze to his, so their eyes met. “Yet, I have no regrets. I’m not any sort of gentleman that I would regret any of what we shared.” With every ounce of restraint in him, Graham released her.
Collecting the strips of fabric that, at some point, had fallen to the floor, he tidied up the kitchen table.
“I can do that.” She made a hasty grab for those items.
“I have it.”
When he’d finished, Graham made to leave.
“Graham?” she said, taking ownership of the name he preferred and none had ever used. Wrapped in her low, husky tones, none would ever be able to command that name the same way she did. He made himself face her. “Thank you”—her cheeks pinkened—“for caring for my hand.”
“You needn’t thank me.” Leave. He’d blurred too many lines between them. In this instant, he stood before her with weakened defenses that challenged the vow he’d made to the Brethren and his superior before he’d gone off on this assignment. Nonetheless, he remained rooted to the floor, needing to say one more piece. “Martha… It… doesn’t have to be one or the other. It’s possible for your art to be both: something you find joy in and something you do as a craft.” He held her gaze. “That you are a woman should not prevent you from seeing yourself as the artist you are.”
“You’ve not even seen my work,” she gently pointed out.
“No,” he agreed. He’d like to. He’d like to see what manner of moments and memories she memorialized upon a page. “But anyone who feels as passionate as you do about your work deserves to be recognized for that love and commitment.”
Her lips parted, and a little sigh slipped out. “Thank you,” she whispered.
Before he did something like return, take her in his arms, and resume kissing her as he’d done moments ago, Graham left.
The Rogue Who Rescued Her Page 10
