Dark Obsession

by Allison Chase

  But how could that be?

  Could she have fallen asleep at the kitchen table and dreamed the woman again? Still been dreaming when she believed the woman walked her to the stairs?

  Grayson said she must have been Franny, who worked in the kitchen. Nora had met Franny upon her arrival here for the wedding breakfast yesterday. The maid bore no resemblance to her elusive companion.

  Besides, she hadn’t mentioned to Grayson the last bit of advice the blonde had imparted last night—a suggestion she doubted a kitchen servant would ever think to make.

  To learn more about him, persuade Grayson to take you to the National Gallery.

  Chapter 8

  "That was wonderful of Papa, wasn’t it?" Nora murmured. Yet even as the traveling coach listed over a bump in the road, her thoughts veered to a far different matter.

  Beside her, Grayson nodded his agreement. ‘‘Nice to see he has a tender side, though my guess is only you can bring it out.’’

  ‘‘Mama can too,’’ she replied absently. Storefront after storefront darted past her window; she felt half inclined to signal their driver to stop at any one of them.

  What did she expect to find at the National Gallery? Insight into her husband’s character? Something that might reconcile her initial impression of a brooding creature of darkness with the gentle, loving man capable of awakening her deepest passions? What could that possibly have to do with Grayson’s taste in art?

  Then again, she was following the advice of a complete stranger . . . or someone envisioned in a dream. Yes, surely it had been a dream. Lifelike, lingering, but a figment of her imagination all the same. No other explanation made sense.

  ‘‘This outing is a capital idea.’’ His observation startled her out of her reverie. ‘‘Glad you suggested it.’’

  ‘‘I almost didn’t. I thought perhaps the National Gallery would be the last place you’d wish us to be seen, after what happened with Alessio’s portrait.’’

  But that was only half the truth. The other half involved her failing to tell Gray everything her mysterious lady had said last night, and that made her feel rather like a liar. Certainly she was bringing him along under false pretenses. But wouldn’t he think her rather dotty to be listening to a dream?

  He was shaking his head and smiling at her. ‘‘Alessio and his antics are behind us now, my darling. You are an artist. It only makes sense we’d wish to spend an afternoon viewing the exhibition.’’

  Reaching an arm around her, he pulled her closer to his side, then tipped her chin to view her face beneath her bonnet brim. ‘‘For the life of me, I don’t understand why you hedged so about it earlier and why I practically had to pry it out of you.’’

  ‘‘Yes, well, I haven’t been here all season, and I’ve been longing to study the Rubens works again, but I feared you wouldn’t approve.’’ She sighed and allowed the pitching coach to nudge her more firmly against him. ‘‘It’s art that landed me in such a quagmire, isn’t it?’’

  ‘‘Are you inferring that being married to me constitutes a quagmire?’’

  She couldn’t help laughing as his expression wobbled between indignant and tragic. ‘‘I confess I thought exactly that. Until last night, that is.’’

  ‘‘Ah. So I do have my charms, under certain circumstances at least.’’

  Her misgivings retreated to a distant corner of her mind as she found herself tipped precariously back in his arms, her mouth ravaged by his lips. When a button on her carriage jacket sprang open and his warm hand slid inside her bodice, her better sense reluctantly reared its intrusive head.

  "Gray, no ..."

  ‘‘Ah, but the way you say no sounds suspiciously similar to a yes.’’ Before she knew it, he’d loosened her bodice. One of the laces that held her gown to her corset popped free.

  ‘‘How on earth did you do that?’’

  ‘‘I’ve a multitude of tricks up my sleeve.’’ His hand burrowed beneath her shift and slid across her breast, raising exquisite friction against her beaded nipple.

  Her breath hitched. ‘‘That you’re quite the magician became abundantly clear last night, but now is not the time.’’

  And yet her body contradicted the sentiment. Appropriate or no, desire steamed like an urgent kettle, steeping her in aching heat.

  She slapped at him playfully, wishing they were anywhere but rumbling down crowded Regent Street. ‘‘We’re almost there. Help put me back to rights.’’

  With a boyish pout he obeyed, refastening all but the errant lacing inside her gown. That would have to wait till later. In the meantime she must simply move carefully to prevent her bodice rumpling.

  ‘‘There. Good as new.’’ He ran his palm over her jacket, pausing again over her breast, tight and swollen in response to his teasing.

  The quelling look she tried to conjure melted into a grin of complicity.

  The coach rolled to a stop. She shook out her skirts, concentrated on drawing steady breaths in and out and did her best to ignore the persistently lustful gleam in his eye.

  They’d arrived at Pall Mall, at a house not much larger than her parents’ own in Belgravia. It never failed to confound her that the country’s foremost collection of European art should be crowded into this inadequate building, formerly the home of one Julius Angerstein.

  Now, after only a few short years, the collection threatened to exceed its allotted space. She could not help hoping there might be room someday for a work or two of hers.

  But wishes aside, her feet stilled on the walkway and she stared in apprehension at the gallery’s brick facade. A voice inside her suggested she climb right back into the coach and forget this little outing. Insisted nothing good could come of it. Debated the wisdom of pushing her luck by walking through the doors of any art gallery.

  ‘‘Darling, you needn’t be afraid.’’ He wrapped an arm about her waist. ‘‘This is the best defense of all. Go exactly where people least expect us to show our faces and prove to them we’ve nothing to hide and nothing to fear. You’ll see how quickly the gossip fades.’’

  ‘‘I do hope you’re right. Oh, but of course you are. I’m being silly.’’ It was only a building filled with paintings, thankfully none of them of her. There would be no appalling surprises, certainly nothing to send her running like a coward.

  Passing through the main hall, they entered what was once the ballroom, spacious and ornate, with wide marble pilasters dividing the walls into smaller viewing sections. Sheer silk curtains draped the wide windows, admitting filtered but indirect light. Gas lamps along the walls helped illuminate the artwork.

  Several small groups of patrons milled slowly from painting to painting, their hushed tones traveling up the walls to echo against the carved ceiling. A man and woman stood gazing at a pair of Rembrandts; three ladies inspected a Reynolds; another group compared examples of the Dutch and Flemish schools.

  Nora strode to the center of the room and stopped, gazing around and wondering what on earth she might learn about her husband by staring at art. She had been here many times before, had seen these very paintings countless times. Could one of them have been donated by the Lowell family?

  She felt Grayson’s solid presence at her back and turned to face him. ‘‘Do you have any particular favorites?’’

  He shrugged. ‘‘I like certain works better than others, though I confess I’m not always sure what distinguishes one school from another.’’

  He stepped closer, filling her vision and bringing the masculine scent of his shaving soap to tantalize her senses. His eyebrows wiggled suggestively. ‘‘Perhaps you’d like to teach me a thing or two. Tell me what it is that excites you. About art, of course.’’

  ‘‘Art indeed. All right, then. Come this way.’’

  Taking his arm, she led him through an archway. If he truly wished to learn, she’d be more than happy to share her favorite masters with him. Perhaps that was their reason for being here, so that he might come to understand exact
ly what it was about art she so revered.

  They were almost into the adjoining parlor when a whisper hissed liked an arrow through the hushed room.

  ‘‘Why look there, it’s that lewd painting come to life.’’

  ‘‘The Painted Paramour. How utterly shameless.’’

  The blood roared in Nora’s ears as mortification prickled like hot needles on her cheeks. A few yards away, two women and a gentleman seemed no longer interested in viewing the George Beaumont landscape before them. No, apparently she and Grayson offered a much more fascinating prospect.

  ‘‘I must say I’m rather surprised to see her still alive.’’

  ‘‘No doubt they find each other highly engrossing— a murderer and his paramour. . . .’’

  ‘‘Yes, well, she of all people would be capable of holding his attention, succeeding where his poor brother failed.’’

  Her breath filled her lungs in dagger-sharp bursts. A bolt of fury followed, one that left her limbs trembling. No one spoke of her husband that way. Indeed, for her own part she could hardly blame them for believing the worst. Her nude portrait had, after all, hung on public display in the Marshall Street Art Gallery.

  But after last night, the thought of Grayson Lowell ever harming another individual was preposterous, impossible. How could the rest of the world be so blind to the obvious?

  She gathered breath to utter the sharpest retort her indignant mind could devise, but Grayson’s hands clamped her shoulders and propelled her forward into the next parlor.

  ‘‘Don’t listen to them.’’ His lips pressed against her ear. ‘‘Slanderous idiots, all of them. They dishonor themselves far more than they ever could us with their insipid prattling.’’

  ‘‘Why should they say such hurtful things?’’ Her pulse points thudded as frustration filled her to bursting. ‘‘What pleasure do they derive from being cruel?’’

  He brought them to a halt. His palm cupped her chin, raising it until her watery gaze met his, unwavering and filled with a firm conviction that soothed away the greater portion of her anger.

  ‘‘I don’t give a tinker’s damn what they say about me,’’ he said, ‘‘and we both know what they say about you isn’t true.’’

  The disparity of his words struck her. He believed in her innocence, but what of his own? Merely that he didn’t care what people said. She wanted to ask him, opened her mouth to do so, but a forbidding shadow darkened his features. She shivered in a sudden chill.

  The shadow lifted and his arms went around her. ‘‘Devil take them all. We’ve just as much right to be here as anyone. Their venomous tongues can’t force us out.’’

  The pressure of his embrace, the kiss he pressed to the top of her head, exposed her misgivings for the serpents they were and sent them slithering away. She knew who she was; knew her husband for the man he was too. No scandal sheet or drawing room gossip could alter the truth or poison her happiness.

  Her chin came up. ‘‘Be assured I’ve no intention of leaving. Not until we are good and ready.’’

  ‘‘There’s my brave, stalwart girl.’’

  Nora beamed up at him, wondering if this is why her dream had directed her here today—to show her that together she and Grayson were stronger than all the gossip London could concoct. Didn’t it make sense, then, that her mind would devise such a dream, sending her back to the art world where she’d once been so happy and so filled with plans for the future? A future that now included the man at her side.

  Taking his hand, she led him into what had been the formal dining hall, a lengthy expanse flanked by hearths at either end and a bank of windows along one wall. Landscapes lined the wall opposite.

  They were the room’s sole occupants, and for that she breathed a sigh of relief. Not only would they be free of wagging tongues, but they might take their time without being jostled along. Why did it always seem that whichever painting captured her interest suddenly became the most coveted object in the entire gallery?

  ‘‘Claude Gellée,’’ she murmured fondly, walking closer to a landscape featuring the lovers, Narcissus and Echo, entwined in a tree-shaded foreground. Yet it was the brighter, rose-hued distance she leaned to examine. ‘‘The colors produce the most remarkable effect, don’t you think?’’

  ‘‘I confess I’m more interested in what those two are up to.’’ He gestured toward the lovers.

  ‘‘Yes, but see how the brighter distance offers a subtle reminder of a wider world beyond their intimacy.’’

  A faint look that might have been concentration or puzzlement creased his brow.

  ‘‘I’m convinced Turner must be influenced by Gellée’s work.’’

  He harrumphed and brushed his chin with the backs of his fingers.

  ‘‘Come look at this one.’’ She tugged him along, pausing next before a canvas by another Frenchman. ‘‘Now, Nicholas Poussin learned his use of color from Titian. Can you see it in the golden tones of the road and the wall?’’

  ‘‘Now that you mention it . . .’’

  ‘‘See how the man at the fountain is washing his feet? He has found a place of comfort and rest. It is at once sensual and safe, rather like a trusted lover’s embrace.’’

  But Grayson was no longer regarding the artwork. He was looking at her and grinning. His hand came up to stroke her cheek, cradle her chin. His thumb grazed circles beneath her bottom lip. ‘‘I believe it is not the colors but you that make these works sensual.’’

  She blew out a mildly exasperated breath and would have explained further, had he not leaned beneath her bonnet brim for a kiss. His tongue darted against her lips, and a flame of desire leapt inside her.

  She pushed against him. ‘‘Not here.’’

  ‘‘Let’s be off, then.’’

  Shaking her head as if at an incorrigible child, she suddenly spotted the very painting she had most longed to see.

  ‘‘There it is!’’ Lurching out of his arms, she swept away and hurried to an oblong panorama by Peter Paul Rubens. ‘‘I’ve needed to see this for ages.’’

  ‘‘Needed to see?’’ He joined her at the painting. His shoulder brushed hers, then lodged firmly against it with an intimacy she delighted in, luxuriated in.

  Such a solid shoulder, strong and rock hard and everything her own slender shoulder was not. Didn’t that simply make them a perfect fit, his hardness against her softness. . . .

  She stifled a scandalized giggle and ducked beneath her hat brim. When did she start having such lascivious thoughts?

  Sometime last night, she supposed.

  She cleared her throat and took a half step forward. ‘‘It’s Rubens’s use of light that fascinates me. I’ve been trying . . . oh, but not quite getting it . . . look here. How does he do it?’’

  She swept a hand in the air. ‘‘See how the foreground is dark and muted—much like the Gellée we just saw. But then how quickly the eye is drawn to the distant hills and those brilliant clouds. It’s as if by entering into the landscape of this painting, the viewer is whisked from comfortable yet unenlightened familiarity to a gleaming, glorious realm of hope, of possibilities and potential. . . .’’

  At her back, he slipped his arms around her, lodging them just beneath her breasts. ‘‘I believe you’re all the gleaming, glorious hope I need,’’ he said against her neck.

  His hot breath raised an ardent tremor. Even so, she twisted to flash him a mock scowl. ‘‘Don’t you long to run across these hills and stand beneath that golden light?’’

  He shrugged, grinned, held her tighter. ‘‘Are you there waiting for me?’’

  And just like that she turned in his arms, yielded to his lips, melted against him.

  A moment later she broke free of the kiss and darted wild glances first at one doorway, then the other.

  He grasped her chin. ‘‘There’s no one here. To hell with them anyway.’’

  His lips prodded hers open. Against them he ground, ‘‘We’re already lost to scandal. Why not
make it the most glorious scandal ever to take London?’’

  His hands were everywhere, touching places she’d never been touched, nor dreamed of being touched, in daylight hours. Standing in this very public place had the shocking effect of heightening her senses, sharpening her desire. Of sending her hands to search brazenly inside his coat.

  She lifted her face and smiled up at him, and glimpsed, beyond his shoulder, a sight that stopped her blood cold. Her hands dropped to her sides. Grayson spoke but she didn’t hear, too intent on the strange, otherworldly light flickering from the next room.

  In an instant she realized she’d grown all too familiar with the nature of that light. Twice now, in her dreams, it had glowed with the brilliance of a Rubens masterpiece.

  Pushing away from Grayson, she set off, her footsteps clacking on the marble floor. Back into the small parlor . . . she entered just in time to see a glimmer of blond hair, the billowing luster of lavender silk.

  Yes, now she remembered—on those two previous occasions her mystery lady had worn that very dress and had seemed to stand in the full noon sun.

  This was no dream. She broke into a trot, dispensing with decorum as she pattered into the ballroom. Puzzled stares followed her. Whispers dashed after. Behind her, Grayson’s footsteps hastened in pursuit.

  ‘‘Nora, what is it? Where are you going?’’

  From the main hall she scurried up the stairs, where her chase ended in what had once been the billiard room. Panting for breath, she stumbled in from the landing in time to catch a fading shimmer of light, nothing more. She stopped on the threshold and gripped the door frame for balance.

  The room was nearly empty but for a lone man in a tweed cloak. But how could that be? There was only one doorway out and Nora was standing in it.

  The gentleman turned from the painting he’d been viewing. He was young, about Grayson’s age. From above a hawkish nose, his pale eyes regarded her with the bland expression common to the wealthy and bored.