Portrait of a Forbidden Love--A Sexy Regency Romance Page 10

  She stared back, letting the long silence speak for her while she chose her words. ‘I already told you I wouldn’t sleep with you for a good review.’ But if not for the business of that review hanging between them, she might have been tempted. She wouldn’t sleep with him for a review, but for herself, for satisfying the curiosity that burned between them, she might consider it. If only the playing pitch between them wasn’t already so uneven.

  He knew it, too. She could see dark acknowledgement flicker in his eyes. That kiss at the inn, that afternoon on the couch, all evidence that something existed between them, something they had only partially resisted and even now was tugging them towards some inevitable conclusion. Or was she being played? Was all of this part of a deeper game? The old cynicism reared its head. ‘Do you think my words are a lie? That my resistance is a coy strategy?’

  ‘I don’t want to think that.’ Darius’s voice was quiet across the fire. ‘I want to think that our rainy afternoon was a moment out of time for both of us where agendas were suspended. I want to think that such moments might happen again.’

  Artemisia fought the urge to soften at the words. She wanted that, too. If the three days apart had shown her anything, it was that she desired him, that there was pleasure to be had with him, a connection that, if explored, might be more than physical. But the risk was too great to merely explore a curiosity.

  ‘Perhaps I should be asking you the same,’ she replied. ‘Why do you suppose I wanted some time apart? Those same questions haunt me as well. Perhaps you are seducing me, hoping to report to the Academy that I am too immoral for them. You could ruin me in more ways than one, Darius. Whereas I can do nothing for you.’

  He chuckled and poked the fire with a stick, watching the wood catch. ‘You still think I am the one with all the power. You’re wrong. There is something you can do for me, that we can do together.’

  There was a ruefulness in his gaze when he set the stick aside. She did soften at that. Something more was on his mind. ‘While we have been wondering if we can trust one another, something has happened. What is it, Darius?’ It must be terrible indeed to drive him to such considerations.

  He came around the campfire and took up a spot on the blanket. ‘I’ve had a letter from Aldred Gray at the Academy. You should read it.’ He reached for the basket and pulled out a bottle. ‘It will go better with wine.’

  Artemisia took the letter and settled against a rock. The letter was nothing short of a covert confession regarding her suspicions: that the Academy had never planned to approve her work or her membership. It wasn’t surprising, but it still hurt. More surprising was the closing salute.

  She took the wine glass from Darius and sipped thoughtfully. ‘They want to blackmail you. They must not be sure of your compliance if they think such measures are necessary.’ She took another swallow, getting her thoughts around the reasons for that. ‘They must think I’m a femme fatale, an irresistible Circe, that I’ll lure you to my bed and infect you with my ideas of feminine equality.’ The letter all but called her a whore. ‘What will you do?’

  ‘What will we do?’ he corrected. ‘There’s something else you should read.’ He reached into the basket and pulled out a sheaf of papers. ‘This is my report on the progress I saw here.’

  ‘Is this what you’ve spent the last three days doing?’ Artemisia took the considerable collection of pages, feeling a little quiver of anxiety move through her. ‘Passing your verdict?’ Would it be favourable? More importantly, would it be truthful? If he found her work lacking, would that be the truth or would it be his way of saying he had no choice, that no matter what he thought, he would cater to the Academy’s whim?

  ‘Just read. I’ll roast us some dinner.’ Darius busied himself stabbing two thick sausages on to sticks and holding them over the fire. Despite her curiosity about the report, Artemisia found it hard to look away. The firelight and fading dusk did beautiful things to him, limning the planes of his face, flickering over the blue-black highlights of his hair, outlining the contours of his body.

  He caught her staring. ‘Read, Artemisia. Please,’ he scolded. ‘It’s important and the light is fading.’

  She did read, glancing up every so often to reconcile the man at the fire with the man who’d written these words. ‘You liked the collection?’

  ‘You sound surprised.’ Darius took a sausage from the fire and passed it to her. ‘I have bread to go with it. Just give me a moment.’

  ‘I am surprised.’ Artemisia twirled the stick in her hand, sniffing appreciatively at the smell of cooked sausage. ‘When you first saw them, you told me everything that was wrong with the paintings.’

  ‘I told you what the Academy would see,’ he corrected. ‘They will still see that, but that’s not what’s there. The paintings are brilliant. To someone who understands them and their painter even more deeply, they exceed brilliance.’

  She was glad of the darkness so he couldn’t see her blush, couldn’t see how the words pleased her. ‘But you can’t print this.’ She put the pages back in the basket for safekeeping.

  ‘Why not? It’s the truth.’

  ‘They will ruin you for it.’ Artemisia bit into her sausage, letting the hot juices dribble over her tongue.

  ‘Yes, they will try.’ She felt Darius’s gaze on her mouth, watching her eat.

  ‘You don’t think they’ll succeed?’ She reached for her wine. Despite the conversation, this was turning out to be a delicious picnic.

  ‘I’m not sure what I know right now. That’s why I wanted to see you. I wanted you to know what they’d done, not just to you, but to me. I thought...’ Darius paused and refilled her glass ‘...together we might find a way to thwart them.’

  Artemisia sighed. What interesting bedfellows adversity made. Given her state of mind when it came to Darius Rutherford, she needed all of her wits about her because he suddenly needed her, or, at least, he thought he did. ‘You are looking to save yourself.’ Weren’t all men? Something in her deflated a little. She’d wanted him to be different. This was where he proved he wasn’t and she would remind herself she wasn’t disappointed, that she’d had no expectations.

  ‘You don’t need me to save you, Darius. The power to do that has always been within your grasp.’ Because he was a man, a man with a title and influence, a man to whom people would listen even if he was stark, raving mad. ‘The answer is easy.’

  Something sparked in his eyes. ‘I will not give my name to a lie.’

  Ah, she saw it now, in a brilliant flash the way lightning reveals a landscape in the dark of a storm, the dilemma that plagued the honourable Darius Rutherford. He felt duty-bound to tell the truth, even when it could save neither of them. Perhaps he did need her to save him after all, not from the Academy, but from himself.

  ‘I was always going to burn, Darius,’ she said with quiet acceptance. ‘You needn’t burn with me.’ All he really needed from her was her permission: permission to separate from her, permission to say whatever was needed in his review to assure he fell into step with the Academy. Only she would know that for a moment he had contemplated doing otherwise.

  The fire crackled between them, a shower of sparks lighting the night. Overhead, the first stars were birthing in the sky, in the marsh a rambler gave its night cry. Artemisia stretched out on the blanket, her head propped on an elbow as she nibbled the rest of her sausage and bread. ‘I trust that was the business end of your reasons for seeking me out. Now, we can move on to the pleasure, starting with how you learned to cook like this?’

  ‘We haven’t decided anything, Artemisia.’ Darius’s gaze was intent.

  ‘What is there to decide?’ Artemisia gave him a half-smile. ‘You can’t possibly submit the review you’ve written.’

  ‘I can’t avoid submitting something, if that’s what you’re suggesting.’ He answered her half-smile with one of his own, full of w
ryness and rue. ‘You were right. I have to pick a side.’

  Artemisia laughed. ‘You can’t pick mine, Darius. It will ruin you and you know it.’ So much for being her fighting chance, her champion. It had been a nice thought while it lasted. At least he was honest about it. She set aside her empty stick and folded her hands behind her head, looking up at the sky. ‘What will you say about me? Perhaps you will say I am overly simplistic, that the paintings show no depth of mastery with light and colour.’ She chuckled. ‘Maybe I will help you write it—it could be an entertaining exercise being the author of my own demise.’

  She felt the nearness of him, the heat of him, as he rolled to his side, his body closer now, his words an earnest whisper. ‘Stop. Go back. Why wouldn’t I pick you? Why do you assume I wouldn’t choose your side?’

  She turned her head to watch his face in the firelight. So this was what an idealist looked like: handsome, strong, his belief in doing the right thing chiselled in every plane of his visage from jawline to brow. It wasn’t naivety or a blindness to the reality of the world. Darius Rutherford knew what the world was like and he chose to be a champion for right regardless.

  ‘Because it will be the undoing of you, Darius,’ she reminded him. ‘Save yourself for a fight you can win. We both know I was never going to be victorious.’ She rolled to face him, reaching a hand up to smooth back that errant swoop of hair that fell across his face. ‘Thank you for the thought, though. I’ve never had a champion before. It was nice.’

  ‘Was? Am. I am your champion, Artemisia. The work you’ve done here is outstanding. I’ve seen nothing like it. You should be recognised.’ His hand closed over hers. ‘Why are you so willing to give up? The woman I saw in the assembly hall wouldn’t have given up.’

  ‘I am not used to having others involved. You needn’t sacrifice yourself for me. I’m used to being alone.’ She’d been alone the day she’d faced the assembly. She was alone when she painted. No one but she decided what she painted, how she painted. She didn’t even paint with her father’s other pupils, hadn’t for ten years. Art was a solitary pursuit—to make it otherwise was to pollute it with agendas and compromises. ‘Up until now, I couldn’t really hurt anyone but myself.’

  She wanted to keep it that way, but it was hard to remind herself of that with Darius Rutherford’s long length stretched out before a campfire on the beach, tempting her with all nature of persuasion to rethink her association with loneliness. To have an ally who understood her, who saw her passion, who saw her, who didn’t want to change her, was a heady temptation indeed. She felt like the sticks on the fire; one moment strong and whole, the next, ash, overcome by the flame.

  There’d been men before who sought to be her patron among other things, men who thought to raise her up in their image, polish the diamond in the rough, never understanding this particular diamond liked her hard edges. She had, on occasion, given one or two of them her body when the loneliness became unbearable, but she’d never given them her soul, her heart. They wouldn’t have known what to do with it.

  How could Darius be any different despite his protestations? How could he fulfil the promises he made with his words, his eyes, his body when he was so highly placed in the hierarchy of men? What did he stand to gain? ‘Darius, why do you care what happens to me?’ The fire popped as if to emphasise that this was indeed the burning question. What could matter so much that he would take such a risk? She wasn’t sure she wanted to know. But it was too late, the question had already been asked and his answer was swift.

  Chapter Twelve

  The words were breathtaking and offered without hesitation. ‘Because you, Artemisia, are the most incredible woman I’ve ever met. You are beautiful and bold, courageous and talented. Such things should not be crushed by the world, not if I can help it.’ And he thought he could help it. But she couldn’t. In that moment, she couldn’t help her body, couldn’t help the wanting of him. At long last she was going to stop resisting, she was going to give in.

  He reached for her, his hand was in her hair at the base of her neck, his body gathering her close, his words low at her ear as if they were the fine words of a lover. ‘What good is my voice if I cannot use it to fight for right? What good is it if I am only giving voice to others’ vision? Doing what others want?’ He kissed the inside of her neck beneath her ear and a trill of want shot through her, wild and wicked. She wanted to possess this man, wanted to drink from the intoxicating cup of his goodness, his rightness, his honesty. Just one night, with no artifice. Had she ever been able to say that about a lover?

  Darius’s mouth kissed the racing pulse at the base of her throat. ‘You’ve brought me alive. I’d forgotten I was dead until I met you.’

  Yes, she breathed against him. That exactly. With him, a tiny part of her was slowly allowing itself to wake again, to stretch its limbs. It had been dormant so long she’d almost forgotten it—that piece of her that didn’t need to fight, to rebel, to defend, only to be, to trust, to live simply in the moment. She wrapped her arms around him, answering his closeness with hers, hips, mouths, bodies pressed together, knowing he needed from her in equal measure that which he gave. In this moment, in this place under the stars, beside a crackling, snapping fire, she was content to give it. Solace, in its finest form.

  * * *

  This was communion in its most intimate form. Darius breathed her in, drinking from her lips, his body rising against the curves of her, feeling her tremble with the same desire that shook him in waves of need and awareness, of him, of her, of who they might be together—something as dangerous as it was powerful. The unknown beckoned and Artemisia was the gateway to it, to earth-shattering passion, to dreams he’d long since stifled in exchange for the mantle of responsibility. Her hand moved between them, seeking and finding the hardness of him. She moved over it, tracing his length through his breeches. He let out a hard breath, part-arousal, part-pain, as his body strained for the freedom of release. Her nimble fingers responded, unbuttoning his fall and seeking him with an intrepid hand that closed over him, firm and confident, yet needing to hold him as much as he needed to be held, touched, roused to the full extent.

  He groaned against her, his own hands working the frogs of her jacket open, cursing the buttons of the linen blouse under his breath until his mouth, his hands, had access to the warm, bare skin of her breast. She was firm and full in his hands, her nipples puckering and taut as his mouth closed over them, sucking, teasing, his tongue licking and laving each in turn. She was not shy. She moaned her delight in honest gasps, her hand tight about him in return, stroking his length in mirror of his own machinations.

  He moved against her, hips to hips, his hand seeking the hem of her skirts, rucking them up as she arched into him, letting out a breathy laugh of pleasure as he shoved his trousers down past his hips, wanting to match her bareness with his own. He felt the coolness of the evening on his buttocks, the heat of the fire’s flame. He felt her tremble against him. ‘Are you cold?’

  ‘No.’ Her hand found him again. ‘You?’ Her voice was low, throaty, seductive rasp.

  ‘No. If I tremble it is with desire.’ He sought her mouth with his, giving proof to words. He could not recall a raw wanting of this magnitude, of wanting to lose himself in her. His body wanted to go fast, wanted to push with all speed to that point of release, the thing it sought blindly. But his mind wanted to savour this, wanted to build slowly towards that release.

  She wrapped her arms about him, holding him against her, her thighs parting, offering the hardness of him a resting place between her legs. He was welcome here. She moved again, her intimate curls damp against his phallus, a petition for ingress. ‘Don’t wait on my account, Darius,’ she breathed the heady invitation against his neck.

  He needed no further encouragement. He braced himself on arms taut with his weight, corded muscles straining beneath his shirt, and entered her. She was his estuary, his refuge
, and he buried himself deep in the wet heat of her, feeling her legs lock about his hips, her hands grip his shoulders, his back, as her body took up the rhythm of retreat and surge with him, their cries joining with the sounds of the night. He thrust hard, his own body tightening as climax approached. Not yet, not yet, he cautioned. He wanted to wait for her, but soon he would be beyond waiting, soon pleasure would overwhelm him like a wave, pushing him along at its own speed, not his. ‘Come on, Artemisia, come with me, now,’ he groaned at her ear. ‘Look at me, open your eyes, and look at me.’ His body was straining hard, slipping its leash at the last.

  When he quickly withdrew and release overtook him, she held him tight, a sigh escaping her lips, but her eyes remained shut and he couldn’t shake the sense that for as pleasurable as the joining had been, she’d not come with him, not all the way. Yet, when she snuggled against him, there was a weary contentment in her body and in her voice. He would have to settle for that, this time. It was enough. Even in its incompleteness, there was a kind of wholeness.

  Her hand rested on his chest, drawing idle circles, her voice soft in the night. ‘You never did answer my question. How does an heir to an earldom learn to cook outdoors?’

  ‘My father taught me. There was a place we’d camp on the edge of our land. In the autumn, when he was home from London, he’d take me out every year for a tour of the estate on horseback. We were gone three days. Three days of meeting with tenants, seeing the fields, the forest, the river. We’d fish and swim, and hunt.’ Darius sighed. Those days seemed a long time ago, boyhood was another lifetime. ‘I used to live for those trips and those times when it was just my father and me.’