He slouched down onto his side to regard her, stashing a pillow under his arm and propping his head on his palm.
“I thought the fact that I was passing through on the way to London was half my charm.”
It wasn’t. A tiny part of his charm, perhaps, but also part of why Vera hesitated. “I’m making a hash of this.”
Oak surprised her by taking her in his arms and situating her against his side. She went into his embrace willingly, even gratefully.
“Here is what I think,” he said, smoothing a hand over her hair. “I think too many of us go a-romping without taking into consideration whether we truly want to romp, or whether romping is simply foolishness or a consolation for more elusive joys. Men do this, you know. Swagger about, waving their pizzles around like the boom of a ship caught in the eye of the wind. That’s my father’s analogy, by the way. He once told me he remarried in part to simply have done with the foolishness.”
Foolishness. This discussion didn’t feel foolish. It felt honest and intimate. “I’m supposed to be in my romping years,” Vera countered, thinking that was quite the strangest admission she’d ever made. “Dirk always said I took life too seriously.”
“Dirk.” Oak kissed her temple. “He was born to a founding member of the Royal Academy. His uncle was a court painter to old George. He was talented, charming, and well placed to line up commissions from an early age. He arrived on this earth at a time when a Grand Tour was still possible and thus had the further benefit of directly observing the greatest masterpieces on the Continent. He was never without paying work, never without friends and supporters. To his credit, he was generous to his peers and kind to those in need of encouragement, but what would such a man know of life’s sorrows?”
Well, yes. Dirk had been lucky. Very lucky. “He lost his Anna. She was his muse.”
“And he married you within a year. Perhaps he was incapable of dealing with life’s most serious challenges, while you haven’t had a choice.”
That was a conclusion worth pondering—some other time.
“What of you?” Vera asked, brushing dark curls from Oak’s brow. “Have you had serious challenges to deal with?”
The pleasure of awakening in female company was a wonderful rarity, and Oak’s male body rejoiced at the possibility of impending intimacies. Of course, he usually awoke in the same state of reproductive rejoicing even when he was alone. Ignoring his arousal, however, had never been so difficult.
Vera was nearly naked, her braid a frazzled rope, and her body… Blessed Saint Luke, her body was the feminine ideal, and she seemed oblivious to her own endowments. She nestled against Oak’s side like a stray kitten given shelter before a toasty hearth.
Oak longed to take her hand and wrap it around his cock, but how selfish would that be? Instead, he kissed her fingers and placed her palm on his chest.
“You ask if I’ve faced serious challenges. The answer is no.” Ignoring a cockstand was not a serious challenge. Not at all. “I was ridiculed for pursuing art, of course, until my father asked me to illustrate his botanical treatises. My brothers stopped teasing me then, though I caused some consternation at university. Losing my mother was sad, but she hadn’t been happy for some time and rather washed her hands of us several years before her death.”
“She abandoned you?”
“We could not afford to reopen and staff the dower house, so she removed to Bath to be with friends.” Mama’s departure had only felt like an abandonment, an echo of Jacaranda’s departure years earlier.
“So you’re a happy fellow, not a care in the world?” Vera’s hand drifted across Oak’s chest, the caress nearly soothing until she happened to trail her fingers across his nipple. She apparently didn’t realize the effect on him, for she did it again a moment later.
“I am a happy fellow.” A happy, increasingly frustrated fellow. “But I cannot continue to impose on my brother’s generosity. Hence, I am on my way to London.” The third time Vera’s touch glanced across his nipple, he shuddered.
She peered at him. “Are you well?”
“I’m sensitive,” he said, taking her hand and glossing the tip of her index finger in a delicate circle. “There. That arouses me.” A stupid statement of the obvious when made to a married woman.
“It does?”
Oak pushed the covers down, baring himself in all his morning glory. “Quite.”
Vera stared at his unrepentant cock, her expression puzzled. “Touching you here…” Oh yes, she touched him again. “Affects you there.”
There was a nod in the direction of his breeding organs. “Afraid so. You needn’t—”
Ye bare naked cherubs. She used the same fingertip to touch the head of his cock. “Men are as soft here as the nose of a horse. I’ve always wondered about that.”
“Have you now?” All three words were coherent. A feat of articulation, given that she was circling the tip of his cock in a maddeningly lazy caress.
“I saw little of Dirk in this state. He was a dressing-gown-and-lights-out sort of fellow, which was fine with me. This has to be the most peculiar bit of human anatomy. I think he was self-conscious about his age.”
Oak would pity Dirk Channing his self-consciousness on some other, more saintly, day. “Vera, I’m not objecting, but if you are intent on continuing…” The words petered out as arousal became the defining beacon of Oak’s existence. He groped for his handkerchief on the bedside table, nearly knocking over the water glass in the process.
“I’ve never done this,” Vera said, reversing direction to circle him the other way. “Never toyed with a man’s parts.” She sounded as if she was mixing her pigments, trying for a particular shade of blue and coming so, so close to the desired result.
“Indulge yourself,” Oak replied. “I’m not far from indulging myself too.”
He expected she’d withdraw her attentions at that warning. Instead, she slipped her hand down to sleeve his shaft.
“What about this? Do you like this too, Oak?”
He wrapped his hand around hers, showed her exactly how he liked it, and lasted less than a half-dozen strokes before pleasure cascaded through him. He made a mess on his belly and scented the air with evidence of his satisfaction, but holding back any longer simply hadn’t been possible.
Vera took the handkerchief from his limp grasp and tidied him up, then sat back, gaze on his softening member.
“I haven’t done that before,” she said. “Did I do it right?” Again, she put him in mind of an artist turning a critical eye on an experimental composition.
“If you did it any more right, I’d be the first man to expire from an excess of bliss. Come here.” He wrestled her down against his side—not that she resisted—and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “You have quite undone me.”
“You smile like the woman in that painting you found. All naughty secrets and lovely dreams.” Vera remained covered from neck to knees in her nightgown, though she was smiling a naughty smile too.
“You are pleased with yourself,” Oak said, “and well you should be.”
She turned her face against his shoulder and drew her toe up his calf. “I want to discuss what just happened, Oak.”
“Talking is about all I’m good for at the moment.”
“Why was I married for seven years without realizing…? What is a tup against the wall?”
The first rays of sunshine hit the vanity opposite the window, reflecting off scent bottles and dotting the wall with jewels of color.
Oak realized that his notion of an intimate friendship with Vera would not travel along the rutted path of his expectations. She was a woman with experience, true, but not as much experience as Dirk Channing’s wife ought to have had.
Oak tossed back the covers, hopped off his side of the bed, and stretched. “Absent drawing paper and pencil, it’s easier to show you the basic idea.” He crossed the room and beckoned.
“You aren’t wearing a stitch,” Vera said, looking
equal parts fascinated and appalled.
“Clothing would be more of an impediment than anything else. The general concept is easily demonstrated.”
Vera cast a longing glance at a dressing gown hanging on her bedpost, then crossed the room to his side. He took her by the shoulders and positioned her between him and the wall.
“The general idea is”—he hoisted her against the wall, and she gave a little yeep—“wrap your legs around my waist and your arms around my shoulders.”
She clutched at him. “And we make love like this?”
“The angle can be satisfying to both parties, though this position also challenges the strength of a man’s legs.” Already, Oak’s body was taking a more than theoretical interest in this tutorial, and his leg strength was improving by the moment.
Vera studied him, and because he’d braced her back high against the wall, she was at his eye level.
Footsteps pattered by in the corridor, probably a maid bringing a pot of tea up to the nursery floor.
“I want to know more about this,” Vera said as Oak let her slide down the wall to regain her feet. “I want to discuss it at length, but now is not the time. You must be going, and please, for the love of heaven—”
“Don’t let anybody see me.”
Oak hadn’t had a woman’s help dressing since he’d been a small child, though Vera made a very competent valet. He wanted to linger long enough to provide her the same courtesy, to make the encounter more reciprocal and less a matter of her hustling him on his way after sexually servicing him.
Vera passed him a comb. “How will I face you at breakfast?”
“With a smile, I hope.” Her question reminded him that he’d been wrong about her. He’d assumed that a beautiful woman married to a worldly artist would be erotically sophisticated.
Vera grabbed him in an unexpected hug. “I’m miserable at this frolicking business. I’m sorry. I’ll get better at it.”
Oak hugged her back, overcome with an odd protectiveness. “A lady should never apologize for stating her honest misgivings, Vera. If you’re disinclined to share another encounter with me, you simply say so. I hardly acquitted myself like a legendary lover, did I?”
She rested her forehead against his cravat, then stepped back. “We’ll talk about that. I must sort out my thoughts first. You’ve put me in a considerable muddle.”
Oak took her dressing gown down and draped it around her shoulders. Then he bowed with a sweeping, courtly gesture of his hand.
“Until breakfast, Mrs. Channing.”
That made her smile, which was his cue to depart. He waited by the sitting room door to make sure no more footsteps pattered by in the corridor, then slipped back to his own rooms.
Truth be told, he was in rather a muddle too. He should have been content with the encounter—he was sexually satisfied, wasn’t he?—but instead, he was unsettled, displeased with himself, and not entirely sure why.
Breakfast was not the ordeal Vera had anticipated. Oak Dorning appeared just as she was perusing the offerings on the sideboard, and the only other person in the room was Tamsin Diggory.
An ally of sorts.
“Good morning, Mrs. Channing.” Oak bowed. “Miss Diggory. We’re to have another beautiful day, from the looks of the sky. Miss Catherine and I should have our drawing lesson in the garden, methinks. What hour would suit you, Miss Diggory?”
With a few mundane words, Oak Dorning turned the meal into the start of just another placid morning, except that Vera was left to wonder how many of these potentially awkward breakfasts he’d managed with the same calm assurance.
Might I have the butter? Smile.
How I adore eggs served good and hot. Glance.
Oak was handsome, ambitious, and talented. Why shouldn’t he have the savoir faire to smile at his lover over the teapot? Except that he and Vera weren’t quite lovers, which only added to Vera’s sense of disquiet.
It was soon agreed that Catherine’s art lesson would follow Alexander’s. By the time Jeremy and Catherine joined the table, Vera had started on her second cup and was feeling more self-possessed.
“I’m off to pay a call on Mrs. Treeble,” she said. “Miss Diggory, if you’d like to accompany me, I can time the outing to coincide with Catherine’s drawing lesson.”
“That would suit wonderfully,” Miss Diggory replied.
Catherine set down her fork. “But then I can’t go with you.”
Oak was at the sideboard, making a second raid on the eggs. “I can schedule your lesson for later, Miss Catherine. The garden is just as worthy of sketching in the late afternoon as at midday.”
Jeremy took a sip of his tea and patted his lips with his table napkin. “Catherine wants to steal a moment with young Tom Treeble. I’ve seen how he looks at her in the churchyard.”
Catherine blushed rose pink, Miss Diggory frowned, and Vera wanted to slap Jeremy for his lack of consideration.
“A gentleman,” Oak said mildly as he resumed his seat, “would not remark the occasion of another fellow’s unrequited longings, particularly not those of a young lad whose masculine pride is in its tenderest beginnings. Pass the honey, please.”
Jeremy set the honeypot at Oak’s elbow. “A gentleman doesn’t pine for his ladylove in public like the veriest moon calf either. Catherine would turn any man’s head, but that doesn’t mean she should have to put up with Master Treeble making sheep’s eyes at her over his hymnal, hmm?”
Catherine apparently did not know what to make of that assertion, while Vera found it badly done. Catherine had just put up her hair for the first time. Sheep’s eyes and lovelorn looks should be a good way off and turning any man’s head some distance after that.
“I’ll take both Catherine and Alexander with me,” Vera said. “You can use a few hours at liberty, Jeremy, and I will enjoy the company of my children.”
Jeremy stirred his tea. “I will refrain from informing the terror that he’s to have another interruption in his studies until the hour is upon him. He’s been exceptionally distractible lately, but I can hardly fault him for that. Mr. Dorning’s arrival has caused all manner of upheaval. I’m sure things will soon settle down.”
Oak drizzled honey into his tea. “I’ll be off to London before you can list my many shortcomings, Forester, and perhaps by then you will have begun addressing your charge politely rather than making snide references to the child before his own family.” Oak let the last of the honey drip from the wooden whisk. “Hmm?”
He smiled faintly at Jeremy and set the honeypot in the center of the table.
Catherine was frankly goggling. Miss Diggory’s expression had gone carefully blank. Vera was astounded to find a duel being fought at her breakfast table, but also pleased. A man raised with a herd of brothers wouldn’t bat an eye at Jeremy’s sarcasm and verbal sniping, while Vera hadn’t known what, if anything, to do about it.
And Jeremy was sniping—at a small boy with no means of defending himself.
She took a final sip of tea and rose. “I’m sure Mr. Forester means only to poke affectionate fun at Alexander—my son is anything but a terror, after all—though I do agree with Mr. Dorning. If we expect Alexander to adopt the manners of a gentleman, we ought to take every opportunity to set a polite example for him. Wouldn’t you agree, Miss Diggory?”
“Of course, Mrs. Channing.”
Oak rose, as a gentleman did when a lady left the room. “Well, that’s settled. Master Alexander and I can have our drawing lesson when he returns from escorting the ladies on their call. Miss Catherine, you and I can meet before supper, if that suits.” Oak turned a mildly inquisitive gaze on Jeremy, who shoved to his feet.
“I’ll enjoy my free time,” Jeremy said. “Have a pleasant outing, Mrs. Channing.”
“I’m sure I will.” Vera would have made a grand exit, except that Oak touched her arm.
“Might I have a word with you regarding the paintings to be restored, Mrs. Channing?”
“Now, Mr. Dorning?”
“Now would suit.”
“Very well.” And blast the luck, he looked as if he did, indeed, have nothing more than paintings on his mind. Vera accompanied Oak from the breakfast parlor up the steps to the floor where he’d organized his studio.
Breakfast had gone reasonably well, for a public encounter after a near tryst, but the near tryst still puzzled Vera. She was attracted to Oak Dorning, she liked him better the more time she spent with him, and she truly wasn’t looking for an entanglement.
So why had she been so missish about taking him as a lover? Why was she out of sorts now?
“I spent some time in my studio before breakfast,” Oak said, “and I wanted you to see the fruits of my labors.” He unlocked the door and bowed her through before relocking it.
The windows were open, though a faint odor of turpentine and linseed yet lingered in the room. The portrait of Anna Beaumont as an odalisque lay on the worktable, another unframed canvas beside it.
“Have a look,” Oak said.
He’d apparently dismantled another of the mundane paintings cluttering up the gallery walls and again found a more worthy work beneath—more worthy and more shocking.
“God in heaven.” Anna again lay among tangled covers, and this time her entire body was revealed, but for an ankle draped with a ruby quilt. The composition was such that her mons occupied the main point of interest, dark curls contrasting with pale skin, wild brushwork erupting from long, smooth strokes.
“That painting is brilliant,” Oak said, “though it goes beyond what can be displayed as an artful nude.”
“Well beyond.” Anna’s breasts were entirely on display, pinkish-taupe nipples peaked, her fingers brushing the fullness of one breast. Her other hand was flung back against the pillow, and in this painting, no lover hovered in the shadows on the other side of the bed.
“She looks as if she’s been pleasuring herself,” Oak said. “The scene has an air of repletion, as if in the next moment, she’ll drag the covers up and indulge in a nap full of erotic dreams.”
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