by Liz Tyner
Just looking at her eyes—seeing the dazed reflection...and he reached out.
Dipping to her mouth again, he took advantage of her stillness, pulling her against him, feeling the press of breasts against his too-thick coat. He put his hands lower, running the length of her, holding her bottom closer, her body heating his arousal.
He shut his eyes and put his forehead to the side of her head, letting skin touch skin, letting their hair mingle—feeling her in a way he’d never felt anyone before.
Her hands pushed against his chest, not shoving him away, but moving herself back. She stumbled, hair bouncing, eyes wide and lips parted.
He saw her give herself a shake, a shudder of control. ‘I have learned I am not quite so unaffected by soft words and gentle touches as I thought. You’ve been my muse. And you fascinate me immensely. How you can be so happy with the flavour removed from life, I’ll never know. But please do not say nice things to me now. I might remember them later, and it would be bad...’
‘I understand, but I might not be able to help myself.’
She reached up, patting his face with a bit of strength. ‘No kind words like that either.’
‘I will try.’ She was right. He touched over his chest again. The reminder.
She waved a hand, dismissing the subject. ‘But, the picture,’ she said. ‘I want you to see the finished painting. I will only need to spend a few more days and then let it dry.’ She moved to the door. ‘I only know a painting is completed when I look at it and think the brush strokes I’m adding are making it worse. Then I know it’s time to stop.’ She shrugged. ‘The fingers are not—’ She stopped, gave her head a quick shudder. ‘See how out of sorts I am. I didn’t put your hands in the portrait.’ Her voice became light. ‘How ridiculous. I meant your earlobes. I simply didn’t do them justice.’
Andrew reached out, grabbed her wrist, sliding his hand to hold hers, and pulled them facing each other. Beatrice. He could not bear the thought of not seeing her again. He could not.
She shook her head. ‘The portrait first. I put it aside so I could be certain of watching your face when you see the completed work.’
Whirling around, she walked from the room and returned, putting his likeness on the empty easel.
She stood back, waiting. Andrew moved to look.
‘Looks like me.’ Andrew said. He stared at the painting. Suddenly, he hated it.
‘That’s all you have to say.’ She gave a sniff.
‘Well, it does look like me.’
‘Do you like it?’ She stepped back to see him better, studying his face.
He reached over, lifted the art and examined it. ‘You are accomplished. Talented.’
‘Thank you. I would have appreciated the comments more if you’d been a little quicker with them.’
He heard the ire and, putting the painting back on the easel, turned to her. ‘How can I appreciate it justly, when I see that face every day of my life?’
It was the image of his father.
One side of her lips turned up. ‘So it is the face you see in the mirror.’ She gave a soft slap to his arm. ‘You do like it?’
He nodded, taking her shoulders, moving his hands to push the light fabric of her sleeves up, so he could hold her.
‘I don’t see any roguish stare or anything out of the ordinary. I admit, I was concerned when you said you wanted me to have a halo and horns.’
She shrugged. ‘This one only shows the outside. The exterior everyone sees.’
‘None could have done better.’ He looked into Beatrice’s gaze. Eyes so soft he could have fallen into them. Even the upsweep of her lashes brushed him with warmth.
He touched Beatrice’s cheek. He needed to have something to take away the sting of the view he’d had when he saw the portrait. The feel of Beatrice’s skin was the only thing in the world that would do what he needed at that moment.
He burned his face against her, holding her against his heart. Her hands touched his hair, his back, his shoulders, and clung to him.
But she didn’t still and pushed away to loosen his cravat, pulling it from his neck. He felt the sliding cloth even through the collar beneath. He never saw what happened to the stock, but he grasped the curve of her waist as she reached for his buttons at his waistcoat. He knew when her hand passed above the scar.
‘Andrew?’ The words came from somewhere. Maybe the next room. Maybe inner London. He did not care.
His mouth fell to her lips and she tried to ascend his body. He had no time to help her climb him. The fastenings at the back of her dress, each one felt like a little lock which had to be picked, but he was almost at the very end of south. Now he had corset ties and he’d have to change plans if they were tangled. There’d simply not be enough time to unknot.
She pushed back with both hands and he stared at her. His jaw dropped. Surely she was not going to change her mind.
‘I don’t want to wait any longer,’ she whispered. ‘I have waited a lifetime for this moment. It is as if the portrait I painted has appeared alive before me.’
His lips touched hers and he felt no different than she. His Boadicea had appeared in his arms—in all his senses, only she would rise victorious.
He watched her, this inspiration, reach to slide her bodice downwards, her chemise coming loose as well, breasts revealed freely—nipples erect. He would never look at her painting again without seeing this version of her.
He couldn’t form words. His mouth kept moving towards her nipple and when his lips closed around one, he heard a groan, and it wasn’t from him, he felt certain, but he wouldn’t swear on it. His tongue swirled, his lips closed and he felt her hand moving to his buttons. Both hands.
Then he stopped.
‘Where is the bed?’ The most important question he’d ever asked.
Her fingers twisted around his waistband and she began to tug him forward in tiny steps.
He pulled back, seeing her dark hair unleashed to her shoulders, better than any image in reality or imagination. Lips full with desire, blue eyes darkened. No artist on earth could recreate what he saw in front of him.
‘Bed,’ she whispered.
‘Direction?’ he asked.
She pulled her skirts up, which had sagged with the loosening of her hooks, and moved to an open doorway.
He followed.
Inside, he saw the tester bed and imagined it a cloud.
He couldn’t help himself. He shut her door, dropping down the tiny latch, even while keeping his head half-turned to her.
Beatrice wriggled her dress the rest of the way to the floor and her corset and chemise followed, movements more alluring to him than any siren’s. Her body seemed a sliding, heaving, pulsing delight to his eyes.
Boots. Boots. Boots. He didn’t take his eyes from her as he did something he never remembered ever doing before. He effortlessly slid his boots from his feet.
Trousers followed, hitting a bed post.
She grasped one fist on his shirt front and pulled him forward as she fell back on to the bed.
He stopped his momentum to land just above her, pausing only a second, but the moment would be in his mind for ever. Beatrice. Hair splayed. Eyes locked, a thousand, thousand unspoken words flowed. He’d never looked so deeply into another person.
‘I know,’ she said and reached up, touching his face.
A kiss deeper than any other. So much more than the first night he had seen her.
And time. Time outside the door stopped and inside himself. He could linger and savour and his dreams of her became more than reality.
* * *
Beatrice brushed against him, moving inside the world she tried to capture on canvas. Skin wasn’t just a hue of colour any more. Just as every leaf on a tree was truly different, every brief skim of her fingers against his skin revealed a sensation she’d never known. She could feel each trace of him in a way that blossomed into her mind, all the hues of life revealed to her with only a sweep of her fin
gertips across his body. Individual nuances of him exploded into texture under her hand. His scent wasn’t only pine, leather and male, but masculinity. His throat pulsed. The razor had left a trail, from sharp edges which awed her, and led her to the softer skin just below, a downy infinitesimal trace of hair lying on the surface to give more texture to her touch.
A roughened ridge of flesh at the contours over his ribs alerted her to a memento of his past, some scrape that he possibly didn’t remember, but an added imperfection that heightened her awareness of him. Now she’d touched a part of him, this scar from his past, a moment of accidental injury which proved he was mortal.
He pulled away as she touched it and took her fingers to his lips, then slid her hand to his side, moving to lie in her arms.
Every bit of him was individual from every other part of him and she did not want to miss any sensation. Her body woke more to him, aching to be closer.
She’d only captured a wisp of him on the canvas and his body alongside hers showed her how little her art could compare with nature’s brush. The warm room and the moisture of their breaths created a connection between their embrace that melded them into one entity long before they slid into passion’s complete embrace.
She gasped and cried out in his arms. His life flowed into her and he shuddered, shuddered into a climax she’d never felt before.
Her hands clawed his back, pulling at him with all her might, pressing her face into the moisture-coated skin of his shoulder. She gasped, lost in the magic around her. She screamed her release.
And then she bit him.
Chapter Fifteen
Beatrice opened her eyes and forced herself to raise her head. Andrew stood at the side of the bed, getting dressed. He’d already donned his trousers. He tugged the shirt over his head and tied it.
‘Normally,’ she stated softly, not wanting to hurt his feelings, ‘afterwards—a man might at least roll over and fall asleep.’
‘Thank you...very much...Lady Riverton...for that information.’
Beatrice, she thought. She was not Beatrice any more?
He turned, snapping his waistcoat from the floor and pulling it on.
Whatever he lacked in sweet endearments, he made up for in well-proportioned form, she decided, letting her breath out with a whoosh. And the thin lawn of his shirt showed those shoulders quite well. She compared the reality with her art, examining the true masterpiece and so hopeful she could capture at least something of him on to the canvas. But flaws. They always had to be present.
He didn’t sit on the bed to don his boots, but in a chair. He looked at her. His jaw clenched. His eyes had changed into those pit-dark orbs she couldn’t see past.
She could not figure out what she’d missed.
She pushed herself up on one arm. ‘Is...something wrong?’
He slipped one boot on to his foot, tugging, then the other, before answering ‘Women tend to use teeth in the act of lovemaking. Can you explain that?’ Dark eyes rimmed by darker lashes met hers.
‘Teeth? I don’t know what you mean.’
He pointed to the area of his shoulder and then his midsection, then splayed his fingers and raised his hand questioningly. ‘Teeth.’ He clasped the ties of his collar.
She twisted around, rolled on to her stomach, propped up on her elbows and faced him. No tender endearments. No sweetness. Now she knew why he was a virgin. The man was daft. He lost his mind when he completed the act.
Apparently, unsettled men were attracted to her. Riverton with his wish to numb his mind. Andrew with his intense beauty, his intense thoughts and his intense ability to escape the act of lovemaking. The ones...not quite perfect.
But this was not so bad. Not so wonderful, but not completely unworkable as long as one understood it. This did not have to end their friendship. His instability when he finished lovemaking could somehow be directed to a gentler conclusion.
She pulled the covers from the top of the bed, wrapping them around herself. She spoke ever so delicately. ‘I see you are flawed—’
‘Lady Riverton.’ The words snapped out and he jumped to his feet, his right hand pressed over his ribs. ‘Just because it happened once does not mean I have a proclivity for it. I am a normal man, I assure you.’
She would not wager the silver on that. The room became chilled, then fiery hot. He was not taking the loss of his virginity well. ‘A proclivity for such is normal.’
His face paused as he took control of himself. His face calmed. He relaxed back into the chair. ‘Thank you for explaining that.’ He shook his head. His lips moved up in one of those smiles that was more apology. ‘It, however, does not suit my nature.’
She’d been foolish. She’d misread his reluctance. It went far deeper than anything she could have imagined. And how much more insensible she felt to be foolish as a widow than as a green girl. At least she had an excuse before, and now, she had none. The papers were right. She was merely some creature that acted on impulse.
Abandoned. Again.
‘Go.’ She spoke clearly. ‘Leave. Now. I cannot bear you to be in my studio.’
‘Beatrice.’
‘I simply—it’s the way of an artist. I thought to touch the painting and then I discover it’s no different than canvas. Reality can never touch the splashes of paint the artist has daubed around. Sad. But that is the way it is.’
He nodded, eyes on her. ‘I understand completely.’
Then he turned to the door and raised the latch.
His eyes ran the length of her one last time, a caressing farewell.
Anger, hurt, disappointment—everything surfaced in her body. Just as it had before. Rejection. Again.
She pulled herself up and swung her legs around, sitting on the side of the bed, never taking her eyes from him. ‘I am pleased we waited until the portrait was finished.’
She took a slow, deep, lingering breath and put her palm on to the bed, then leaned sideways, letting her arm brace herself, letting the covers fall from her body. Watching his eyes. Feeling a quiet satisfaction at the way they lingered.
‘Goodbye.’ Quiet words, shouted from the heart.
He nodded. The door shut ever so softly, a slam in its own way.
* * *
Andrew left Beatrice’s house, trapped in the carriage with his thoughts. Her nails had scraped his back as her teeth had pressed into his shoulder. He could still feel the impression of the marks on his skin. She’d reminded him. With her teeth, she’d reminded him. She was the tempest and he was the calm.
He’d not expected Beatrice to be calm, but neither had he planned on gathering any more scars.
He was certain Foxworthy had none from the women he’d bedded or Fox would have told him when Andrew had shown him the blemish.
He crossed his arms, leaning back against the squabs, memories of the earlier moments with Beatrice resurfacing.
* * *
After Beatrice finished the painting, her visit to Wilson’s house had not gone well. Her mother had flitted back from a visit to her sister, become upset when she discovered Andrew was nowhere about and sulked away to Beatrice’s house.
Beatrice, her brother and her aunt all appreciated the others’ residences from time to time and they’d all offered to assist her mother with finances for a home of her own, but she’d not thought it a grand plan. Not wanting them to waste their funds, she’d claimed.
Beatrice had not been able to hold her mind to anything but Andrew. His parts, all of them, remained vivid in her memory. She could recall the stubble, the chin and the individual aspects of him one after the other.
She should be thankful they had actually made it into the bedchamber before he rejected her. All along she’d known he would not be satisfied with her creative side—the side of her that gave her life. She’d just not expected him to be so uncomfortable with lovemaking.
Riverton had been flawed. Andrew, with his silent nature, which she had thought hid more sensual parts of him, was just as un
sound. He probably drew stick figures on his walls and slept on a rug in his bedchamber. Just like Riverton.
But Andrew stirred her to create in a different way than Riverton had. With Riverton she painted to escape. With Andrew, to experience. She wanted to rush back and look at the portrait and prove that her imagination hadn’t transformed him into a creation not humanly possible. Surely her mind had taken some fanciful leap and put him on an artistic pedestal that no man could belong on. She had to see his face again. She’d forced herself to stay away for the time it took the oils to dry—painting a miniature of Mrs Standen instead. Oddly enough, the housekeeper’s face looked more like Andrew’s.
In a few days, she would be seeing Andrew again to give him the finished portrait. She’d written him a note telling him the paint should be dry and the portrait ready to hang. No matter what else happened, she wanted to present the work to him. He was rational with his clothing on.
Rushing into the studio, she stopped at the small formal portrait, going into the magical place inside herself where she could mentally see each brush stroke, each nuance.
He truly looked better to her each time she saw his image. It was not fair to women that a man should be created so. It simply was not. Men should be most unattractive so a woman could look at them with her mind and not get muddled by—everything else. Andrew was the perfect combination of what an artist would want to paint.
And she couldn’t fall in love, particularly with another irrational man. She imagined her heart again as the charred mess. That was best. She could not care. She could not spend the next years of her life in her studio, holding a paintbrush and managing no more inspiration than a yellow, five-petal flower on a green stalk. That had taken her a year to paint and she’d slashed that canvas herself. She could not go back to that.
Love caused things to get all tangled and mangled and messy. She’d been eviscerated before. Granted, Riverton was different than Andrew, but it wasn’t only the man who caused the problem. Something happened to her when she fell in love. Something wobbly.
