A Sinner without a Saint

by Bliss Bennet

  “Ah, in a rush to be alone with me, are you?” Dulcie chuckled as Benedict yanked his arm nearly out of its socket.

  “Yes. Back to Pennington House, now!”

  “Pennington House? Would you not rather—?”

  “No. Pennington House.”

  “But is not your brother in residence?”

  “No, he’s gone down to Lincolnshire. And my sister and Sir Peregrine are off on their wedding journey.”

  “But what of your sister’s chaperone? Has she, too, returned to her own abode?”

  “Yes. Now hurry!”

  Dulcie yanked Benedict to a halt. “Such desperation is flattering, Pen, but if you do not slow down, I’ll not have breath enough to speak. Not to mention any other activities you may be contemplating.”

  Benedict’s eyes smoldered down at his. “You’ll not need to speak, not with what I have in mind for you.”

  A delicious shiver ran down Dulcie’s spine. Was his plan to seduce Benedict Pennington already bearing fruit?

  “Then by all means, let us throw all decorum to the winds.”

  Heart pounding, spirits flying, Dulcie took off at a run.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “Sit. No, lie down.” Benedict pushed Clair back on the chaise-longue in his attic studio, then took a step back to consider. “No, not on your back, not as if you were sleeping. Turn onto your side, facing me. Yes, just like that.”

  “Why, Mr. Pennington,” Clair drawled. “How very demanding you are tonight. But why are you leaving me here to languish on my own?”

  Benedict rushed about the studio, gathering the materials he needed to begin painting. As he’d worked on an entirely different drawing at the Sketching Society, this other, far more compelling image had risen like a ghost in his mind. The first sketch had started as a joke, voluble Lord Dulcie in the guise of Shakespeare’s Bottom, a way to make fun of Clair, or perhaps poke a hole in that seemingly endless reserve of charm with which he kept the world at one remove. But as Benedict had shifted from drawing the ass’s head to sketching in the man’s lean, strong body standing amidst Titania’s fairy bower, the memory of a quite different leafy covert near the grounds of Harrow had popped into his mind. A shady recess which had served as his own personal retreat from the hue and cry of the busy school, a place of silence and secrets, of dreams and desires. A place he’d longed to share with that laughing golden boy who had so occupied his thoughts, but which he’d never quite had the courage to reveal.

  That is how he should paint Clair, he’d realized. Not standing, carefully and artfully posed, or sitting in a heavy chair, the symbols of his rank and privilege scattered about him like any other aristocrat or figure of authority. But lounging at his ease, out of doors yet hidden within that shady bower. Hatless, rumpled, cheeks flushed from true love’s kiss. Stripped entirely bare. Not physically, but emotionally. Stripped down to his very essence.

  Benedict’s fingers nearly ached with the need to capture that vision on canvas.

  “No, don’t get up!” he nearly shouted as Clair, ever impatient, began to rise. Benedict abandoned the easel he’d been moving to push him back down onto the sofa. “Stay right there.”

  “Sit! Stay! What am I, your dog?”

  Benedict laughed and shook his head. How could Clair not see it? “Not my dog, you ridiculous man. Don’t you see—you’re my muse.”

  Clair’s fingers ghosted over adorably pursed lips, petulance transforming into surprise, then gratification. “Your muse? A gentleman as muse?”

  “Of course, a gentleman. Now sit back and prop yourself up on your elbow. Yes, lean it on the arm of the chaise-longue. Tip your head into your hand, cross one foot over the other, ah yes, that’s it. Now stay.”

  Clair snorted. “I may be the first male muse in history, but I warn you I am no puppy. I will not be begging you for your favors, no matter how elegantly you pose me.”

  Benedict propped a primed canvas onto the easel, then grabbed a handful of brushes and his walnut-wood palette. Painting directly on canvas, without first sketching in the lines, rarely served. But something inside him told him the risk was worth taking tonight.

  “I’m almost ready. Just let me squeeze out some colors.”

  “Paint? You plan to paint this evening? After spending the last four hours sketching?” Clair pouted. “This is decidedly not how I imagined this night proceeding.”

  Benedict shook his head. He far preferred to work in silence, but if he wished Clair to maintain his pose, he’d best keep him talking. “Is it not? Then why don’t you tell me what you did imagine.”

  “Is that a challenge, Pen?”

  “Take it as you will,” Benedict said. Flake white, India red, black. Then mix the shade tints.

  Benedict turned back to the subject of his portrait to see Clair stretching out on the chaise, the muscles of his legs rippling beneath his clinging pantaloons. Yes, there, the line of that calf, the curve of that thigh. He grabbed a brush and slashed bold strokes directly onto the canvas, blocking in the background.

  “Now that I’ve your attention once again, let me tell you precisely what I imagined,” Clair said. He could talk as much as he liked, as long as the rest of his body remained still.

  “I imagined we would go to a tavern I know, one not too far away, but not close enough that we’d run into anyone familiar.” Clair’s voice dropped low and smoky, as if he were actually sitting in that tap-room.

  “Yes? And would we have a drink there?”

  “I imagined buying you a glass of wine, or brandy.”

  “Not ale?”

  Clair shuddered. “Certainly not. Ale is for gulping, not for savoring. And I’d want to watch.”

  Benedict’s brow furrowed as he dabbed in the darkest shades on the canvas. “Watch? Watch what?”

  “Watch you drink it. You’d do it slowly, savoring the taste of it on your tongue. Your cravat, sloppily tied as always, would dip, revealing the line of your throat as you swallowed.”

  Had he got the tones quite right? Benedict squinted, looking at the shades rather than lines.

  “And then I imagined you watching me do the same. The glass against my lips. The fire in my eyes.”

  Reaching for a dry brush, Benedict almost missed the sight of Clair kicking off one shoe, then the other.

  “Then, I imagined you would divest me of my slipper, like so.”

  Benedict frowned. “Stay still, if you please.”

  But Clair ignored him, sliding his stocking-clad toes down his own calf. Benedict’s arm stilled, his breath catching.

  “And then, I would slide that foot about the muscles of your lower leg. Those poor muscles, so taut from the strain of drawing and painting for hours on end.”

  Oh! Benedict’s eyes widened. Was that the kind of evening Clair had anticipated? Suddenly, the vision of a reclining, embowered Clair shifted, replaced by this compelling creature of flesh and bone on the chaise before him. Yes, that was how he should paint him. Not some orderly, detached likeness, but tumultuous, seductive, all the emotions he typically held in check bubbling to the surface. Intense. Wild.

  Clair’s eyelids lowered, his smile turning feral. “Ah, Pen, I believe you finally begin to understand. And would you like to hear what I next imagined?”

  Benedict lowered his paintbrush and gave a silent nod.

  “Out of sight under the table, I imagined pushing your legs wide and teasing your inner thigh with my toes. Perfectly respectable from above, filthy lewd out of sight below.”

  Benedict jerked his eyes back to the canvas and cleared his throat. “Please move the tail of your coat; it is blocking the line of your upper leg.”

  Clair flicked the offending coattail over his hip, then moved his hand to toy with the ends of his cravat. “I’d let you drink enough to heighten your senses, and bring a flush of color to those sublimely rounded cheeks. But not enough to make you stupid with it.”

  Clair’s fingers curled around the end of his neckclot
h and yanked the intricate knot free. “Because I’d want you to be aware of everything, Pen. Everything I did to you. Everything I was thinking to do to you next. I’d want you quivering with awareness, poised on the pinhead of suspense, wondering if I’d move the arch of my foot to cover your straining prick, or tickle your taut stones with my toes. Wondering if I’d dare to bring you off right there, make you spend in your small clothes in front of an entire roomful of other men.”

  Good God. Benedict clenched against the stirrings in his groin, hoping the easel blocked Clair’s view. The curves of Clair’s body on the canvas, the line of his trousers, the spill of his cravat over his waistcoat—did any of it come close to capturing the depths of his allure?

  “And would you?” he finally choked out.

  Clair grinned. “Oh, I’d make you wonder for a while. But I wouldn’t be so cruel. No, before you began to shudder in your seat, I’d draw my foot slowly back down your thigh, down your calf, and slip it back into its own shoe.” But instead of putting on his own shoe, Clair pulled at his neckcloth, dragging the fabric slowly from around his neck. “And then I’d toss a coin to the barkeep for the room in the back, the one that can be paid for by the hour.”

  Benedict stepped away from the easel. “And you’d invite me to go with you, into that room?”

  “Invite you? My dear boy, by that time you’d be begging me to take you.” After dropping the cravat to the carpet, Clair flicked open the single button at the collar of his shirt. The linen gaped, revealing a smooth clavicle, a hint of warm skin.

  “And what do you imagine we’d do, in that room in the back?” Benedict dropped his paintbrush. He’d never be able to capture the subtle details of the face, not without his finest brush. Not with Clair distracting him, enticing him, with every carefully chosen word.

  “Oh, the possibilities then!” Clair’s fingers traced a line down his throat, then slipped inside his gaping shirt, circling, what? His pectoral muscle? His nipple? Whichever it was, it had Clair’s hips hitching forward. Benedict jerked his eyes back to the easel, but the sight was already replacing the vision in his head, the vision he’d been so eager to commit to canvas.

  “Perhaps I’d lie down on a table—no comfortable chaise-longue in a tavern, alas—and array myself for your delectation. Or flick open the falls of my trousers, and tempt you with the hint of what lies behind them.”

  Benedict ground his teeth as Clair’s hand did just that, slipping the buttons out of their holes, tracing over the bulge hardly hidden by the thin fabric of his smalls.

  With a curse, Benedict took a step towards temptation.

  “Yes, Pen. That’s right. Forget about that fellow on your canvas and come frig me.”

  “Come frig me, or you’ll be blacking the boots of every boy in the sixth form. Now, Pennington! Dulcie says I’m to have charge of you since he’s gone.”

  The sick feeling in his stomach stopped Benedict in his tracks. He’d long ago outgrown the fear those words had once inspired, the hot mixture of powerlessness and curiosity and shame. Yet their ghost still served as a warning, a reminder that the Clair whom he’d once idealized could flit away just as quickly, and as carelessly, as he could entice.

  Would the adult Clair prove just as fickle?

  “And is that all you want of me?” Benedict asked, stepping back behind the easel. “A drink, and a quick frig?”

  Dulcie rose from the chaise, all languid grace. “I doubt I’d be satisfied by a quick frig. No, Benedict Pennington, I intend to take my time with you.”

  “But for how long? And would I be the only lover with whom you’d be engaging in such dalliance, for however long this lasted?”

  Clair smiled as he trailed a hand across Benedict’s shoulder. “Ah, it seems I am not the only one with a vivid imagination. Does that give you pause, thinking of me with my hand around another man’s cock?”

  “Jealous?” Benedict shook his head. “Why should one be jealous, if a lover is faithful and constant?”

  “Faithful? Constant?” Clair’s laugh held a hint of mockery. “First I’m an ass, then a dog, and now you want me to play the ostrich or an ape, a creature so constant that it mates for life? Next you’ll be demanding I give over my courting of Miss Adler for you.”

  “You still plan to court Polly?” Benedict nearly choked in disbelief. “After bringing me to the Sketching Society tonight, and supporting the plan for a National Gallery?”

  “What has one to do with the other? Besides, just because I gave you the opportunity to speak to a few painters about your plans does not mean that I support the project myself. I simply took pity on your creative difficulties, and thought that visiting with fellow artists might push you beyond them.” Clair buttoned his shirt and picked up his cravat, then strolled towards Benedict’s easel. After examining the unfinished painting for several moments, he stepped back and waved a hand in dismissal. “But if this is any indication, the visit does not seem to have helped. Perhaps you should return to rudimentary still life studies if the more elevated genres are beyond your grasp.”

  Still life studies? The lowest genre in the hierarchy of painting? “If you thought so little of my skills, I wonder you bothered to invite me to the Sketching Society at all.”

  “Well, the odds in favor of my gaining Miss Adler’s hand, along with her grandfather’s paintings, just seemed so high, it hardly seemed sporting not to offer you some sort of a leg up.”

  Benedict ground his teeth. “Sporting? Is it sporting to entice a man to fuck you, when all the while you intend to do him wrong?”

  “I’ve never kept my intentions hidden,” Clair answered as he retied his cravat and jerked at his cuffs. “You misinterpreted them. You are welcome to take them, and me, as you will. Or not.”

  Benedict’s hands fisted. “Not.”

  Clair tipped his head, as if not quite convinced by the single word. “You will, of course, inform me if you change your mind. But one thing you should know before making a final decision. I never allow any man to fuck me. Not even one as comely as you, Benedict Pennington.”

  And with that, Clair turned his back and strode from the room.

  Benedict threw his palette at the arrogant fellow’s retreating figure with a barely suppressed curse. But he was too late; the paint-smeared palette bounced harmlessly against the closing door, then clattered to the floor.

  Shaking, he grabbed for a cloth and began to scrub at the smears of paint threatening to stain the boards.

  If only he could so easily erase the the memory of the man who had, once again, left him behind without a backward glance.

  “All the modern conveniences, sirs, what you can’t get in most parts of the city, not without setting down a pretty penny for ‘em,” declared the portly man sitting in the carriage across from Dulcie and Sir Peregrine. Dulcie had hoped accompanying his friend to inspect a property Per was considering leasing would be a welcome distraction from the painful memories of Benedict Pennington that kept popping into his brain at the most inopportune moments. The infinitesimal widening of his eyes as Dulcie’s words of allurement first broke through his abstraction. The tightening of his lips as Dulcie sang him deeper into the seduction. The way he’d ignored his paint-filled brush as it dropped from fingertips to spatter against the floor, so eager to touch something warmer, something pulsing with life.

  The smart of his unexpectedly stinging rejection . . .

  Dulcie sighed. If Benedict had left him with only a frustrated cock-stand, he could have offered up a prayer to St. John the Long-Suffering to be relieved of unwanted lust. But no, Dulcie found himself saddled not just with sensuous appetites, but with all these ridiculous feelings, too. Longing, and loss, and even, heaven forfend, a touch of shame. He, the imperturbable Lord Dulcie, feeling ashamed? Perish the thought!

  No, this jaunt with Sir Peregrine might take his mind off of Polly Adler, who had left London for her grandfather’s estate in Kent for the summer. But it was doing little to help him
banish Benedict from his brain.

  “And pray, Mr. Faulke, what constitutes the most modern of conveniences in the burgeoning district of St. John’s Wood?” Dulcie inquired with a smile. He’d shake himself free of this uncharacteristic ill-humor yet.

  “Do you not feel the smoothness of our ride?” Faulke tapped a finger against his nose. “Macadam roads, all throughout the district. Good-looking, quick to install, and above all, the quietest ride you’re like to get on any road in London.”

  “Indeed!” Dulcie exchanged an exaggerated wide-eyed look with Per. “And is that all?”

  “All? No, indeed, sir, far from it! Have you clean water piped right to your house, and sewers to take it all away again?”

  Dulcie shook his head in mock sorrow. “No, sir. I cannot say that I do.”

  “Buy a villa here and you will. Water any time you wish! No need to pay out extra to lay pipes, like the nobs in Mayfair do; pipes here are already laid. And no need pay servants to haul your water up and down the stairs. Now, that’s a real savings, that is.”

  Per’s eyes twinkled. “And I understand that Mr. Eyre, the owner of the land, has also laid in good drainage?”

  “The best drainage!” Faulke enthused as the carriage slowed. “Your cellar won’t never flood in a rainstorm, not in St. John’s Wood. And you’ve your own garden, too, much grander than anything you’ll find in the dirt of town. Your very own country estate, only steps from the city!”

  Dulcie raised his eyebrows at Sir Peregrine, who had in fact just returned from his very own country estate, where he’d taken his new bride on their wedding trip. But Mr. Faulke was too caught up in his own enthusiasm with his investment to pay much heed to their amusement. When the carriage rolled to a stop, he opened the door and jumped down to the amazing macadam pavement, waving an eager hand.

  “Not the most fashionable London address for a rising young politician, Per,” Dulcie said, laying a hand on his friend’s arm. “Why do you not purchase in Mayfair?”

  Per frowned. “Mayfair is too crowded, and too expensive. Besides, I don’t want my children to be brought up amidst the smog and noise of the city, and Sibilla will not stand to be left alone in the country for months at a time. St. John’s Wood seems a good compromise.”