Portrait of a Forbidden Love--A Sexy Regency Romance Page 8

  If they acted now, they wouldn’t be able to excuse it as the product of wine and firelight. This would be an admittance of attraction. She ought to fight it, it was too dangerous to indulge, but something in his eyes was irresistible.

  There was a suggestion of genuine human need in the hoarseness of his voice when he spoke. ‘Artemisia, do you ever get tired of being alone?’

  His raw need threatened to undo her. She wanted to reach for him, to wrap him in her arms. Instead, she whispered, ‘Yes.’ Yes to all of it: to secrets she had to hide, to wants and needs denied, to dreams deferred, to always being her father’s perfect girl—the heir to his greatness—to disappointments she bore behind a brash façade that said she didn’t care a fig for the world’s rejections even when those rejections cut her to the quick and stripped another piece from her soul until alone was all she could be.

  ‘Me, too.’ His gaze was melting her. He reached for her because she hadn’t reached for him. She froze.

  ‘Darius, we cannot risk it again.’ What she really meant was that she couldn’t risk it. The power balance between them would shift dramatically. That shift would not work in her favour and when he betrayed her, as he surely would, this decision would ruin her, yet it beckoned.

  He wanted to be her champion, to give her the objectivity her art needed. He wasn’t Hunter McCullough, who felt he was trading up with her. Darius Rutherford was a viscount. She was beneath him. Perhaps that was reason enough if not to trust him, then to indulge. There it was, that ridiculous logic that seemed to resurrect itself when Darius was around, proof that she wasn’t as in control as she’d like to be when it came to him.

  ‘Please, Artemisia, don’t make me beg, don’t deny yourself, don’t deny us.’ Darius’s words were a plaintive growl. ‘Just for a moment out of time, I don’t want to be alone and neither do you.’ He read her mind, her body so completely, and she knew when a battle was lost.

  She gave herself up to his mouth, to the press of his body on hers. She lost herself in the moan that worked its way up his throat as he, too, gave over to the moment. Her hips dragged against his, her hands in the glossy wave of his hair and at his back, digging into the fabric of his clothing, feeling the muscle and flex of him, the need for release riding them both hard.

  His mouth moved to her neck, to the vee of skin exposed by her blouse. His hand, that glorious, elegant hand that had taken up so much of her speculation last night, kneaded a breast, a thumb running over a nipple beneath the linen until it puckered and strained for more. Heat pooled low at her core, a sigh escaping her. As if drawn by that heat, his mouth moved to kiss her belly through her clothes, his body slid down the length of her until he straddled her thighs, his hands running up her legs, pushing back skirts, her skin bared at last. It was something akin to relief to feel his hands warm on her flesh, confident and caressing as he spread her, exposed her most deliciously.

  Her core was weeping when his mouth took her. Had she ever needed anything as much as she needed this right now? She gave herself over to his tongue, each stroke, each lick. Each decadent flick of its tip over the tight, hidden nub of her sent her closer to pleasure’s paroxysm. But not quite. He was very careful to make sure she waited, that she not claim that pleasure too soon. Neither did she intend to wait too long. She raised her hips against him, urging him on, the need for completion racing through her, raw and wild and untamed, and he answered, his own back heaving in the borrowed pleasure of her pleasure, until at last she broke in a wave of sighs, each one deeper, more shuddering than the last as they peaked, and then softening as they ebbed, taking pleasure’s sharp edge with them, a little bit at a time, like the tide going out.

  It was good while it lasted. Artemisia sighed against Darius’s shoulder. They laid length to length on the sofa, holding on to the pleasure and all it brought as long as they could. There was freedom in the pleasure, freedom to float, to forget, freedom to relinquish burdens and fears. What did Darius relinquish? What did he forget? Had he forgotten, like her, that for all his arguments to the contrary, they were on opposite sides? When would he remember?

  His arm moved around her, keeping her tight against him. She shut her eyes, letting herself imagine that this moment out of time could stretch on. That this handsome, strong, insightful man was her lover in truth—would he be her shield if she asked? What would it be like to have such an ally?

  It was a fairy tale, of course. She’d never asked a man for such protection and none had ever offered. Even if they had, she wouldn’t have believed them. Everyone wanted something. No one did anything without cause. For the first time since she was eighteen and still dewy-eyed about the world, she wished it could be different, that men could be trusted, that women could be treated as their equals. No, not that all men could be trusted. Just one man would suffice. Her man. Whoever he was, if he was trustworthy, that would be enough.

  ‘Have you reordered the world to your satisfaction?’ Darius’s voice was a drowsy drawl at her ear. He smelled of clean linen and bergamot, all citrus and spice.

  ‘Not quite.’ She breathed deeply. ‘You remind me of the south of Italy.’

  His chuckle rumbled deep in his chest, beneath her ear. ‘I’m sure the weather is better. Have you been?’ His hand ran up and down her arm, an idle caress.

  ‘Yes. My father took us when I was ten, right after my mother died. We rented a villa outside Naples and played on the beach every day while he painted.’ And drank and hunted for oblivion, but she left the last part off. She understood now that he’d been grieving. He’d lost his wife, his newborn son, and inherited sole care of two daughters just as he was on the cusp of his fame.

  ‘It must have been a difficult time,’ Darius empathised.

  ‘Yes, but good came out of it. My father started to take a real interest in me. He began cultivating my talents. He taught me to paint that summer.’ It had been a very formative summer in other ways. A ten-year-old was a smart, impressionable creature. ‘I think that was the summer I grew up.’ Although she hadn’t known it at the time, it had been the first step towards self-sufficiency and a step away from trusting others. Even those you loved had the power to fail you; her mother had died and her father had seen to his own grief first.

  It had been up to her to see to Addy, who’d been not much more than a toddler, and it had been up to her to carry the torch of her father’s artistic legacy. ‘I had to be perfect. I had to be all things to all the people I cared about in my little world.’ She sighed softly against him, marvelling that he’d done it again. ‘How do you do that, Darius? How do you make me tell you things I don’t tell another soul?’ She never talked about Italy, or her mother, or that her father was only the first man to fail her.

  ‘Because you like me, Artemisia,’ he murmured. ‘You just don’t want to admit it.’

  No, she didn’t want to admit it. If she did, she’d soon be admitting other things from which no good could come. Now it was his turn to reciprocate in kind. He’d had his pound of flesh and she’d have hers. She levered up on one elbow. ‘Now, will you tell me something, Darius, something from your childhood?’

  Chapter Nine

  Darius shifted uncomfortably. She was making him pay for his curiosity earlier and quite possibly this was the price for his pleasure as well. The balance of power was ever foremost on Artemisia’s mind. It spoke volumes of what her experiences growing up had extracted from her. Artemisia must always have a level playing pitch and in one fell swoop of a question, she achieved that levelling, although that was likely by chance. She couldn’t possibly guess how much the question discomfited him.

  ‘Does an heir ever truly have a childhood?’ He offered a question in answer to her own. ‘I think I was twelve when I realised, though, what it truly meant to be the Earl,’ Darius said after a pause, selecting his story carefully. ‘There’d been fever in the village that winter and several had died. My father took
me to the funerals. He didn’t miss a single one. Each death grieved him. Another tenant lost, another friend gone. I watched him comfort the families. I watched him tell the widows who had no man to work the fields not to worry about their tithe this year. I watched him take a moment with the children and leave baskets my mother had packed.’

  ‘Your father sounds like a good man.’ Was she equating his father with hers? A man who had seen to his own grief over caring for his daughters with a man who shared his grief with his community and his support? Was she concluding his father was a saint? It was all part of the perfect surface the house of Bourne curated so well and it was a myth. Something in him stirred, compelled to disabuse her.

  ‘My father tries to be a good man. He does not always succeed. Without my father, the village would have failed. I learned two lessons that day. First, a lesson in compassion, but secondly, and perhaps more importantly, I saw how deep my responsibility ran for others. The people of Bourne must always be my first priority, just as they have been for my father.’ A priority that came before his son, his wife. He served Bourne and they must, too.

  ‘Then we are indeed true opposites.’ Artemisia said quietly. ‘While I was learning self-sufficiency, you learned the import of caring for others. I wonder who learned the better lesson?’

  ‘The word “better” assumes many things, Artemisia.’ He wasn’t convinced either lesson was essentially ‘good’. ‘Both come with prices.’ Darius gave a long exhalation. Serving Bourne meant subjugating oneself, one’s preferences, one’s passions. ‘But those are not thoughts for today. Today, we are just Artemisia and Darius. A moment out of time, remember?’

  ‘And tomorrow? Who shall we be then?’ In looking ahead, Darius sensed, she was already retreating, already playing with the idea of regretting their choice today. Reality was encroaching on her pleasure and he wanted her back. He wanted the Artemisia who let passion purl up the length of her throat, who arched into that passion with all she was.

  She stretched and sat up, taking the last of the interlude with her. She combed her fingers through the tangle her hair had become. She did not look at him as she did so, keeping her back to him. Darius had the distinct impression she might be combing through a tangle of another sort with her long fingers, as if she could comb away what had happened this afternoon. ‘This must truly be a moment out of time. I will hold you to that, Darius. This cannot be repeated.’

  Darius sat up beside her, unsurprised by her announcement. Artemisia was fortifying her citadel. He would allow it because he understood how much she needed to do it. She would not feel safe with him otherwise. He swung his legs over the side of the sofa and held out his hand, unwilling to relinquish the private peace of the afternoon all at once. There were other ways to be intimate beyond the physical.

  ‘Will you show me the progress you’ve made with the paintings? There’s nothing I’d like better than to see your work through your eyes.’ He offered her a warm smile. ‘It would be the perfect ending to a perfect day.’ It would be dark soon and he would go. But not yet. As long as there was art to discuss, they could be alone together for a little while longer.

  She took his hand and led him to the far side of the room where her paintings awaited. She walked him through the narrative of each. She’d chosen a stark palette and yet there was a warmth in those greys and browns that depicted the marsh in winter. That warmth took him back to the first day he’d found her on the beach and the seclusion of their spot by the rocks where one could forget it was January. Her paintings were stark, but they were not cold, not lifeless. ‘The marsh is a refuge, you’ve made it a place of safety,’ Darius mused. Her skill confirmed that painting was more than putting colours to canvas. It was skill in manipulating a brush stroke, intelligence in thinking of the subtle messages being conveyed, making the most of every line.

  ‘The marsh is a refuge. Kent is temperate. Birds flock here for the winter.’

  It was more than that, although he declined to say so. She’d also made it an allegory. She’d flocked here, this was her sanctuary, the place where she could be safe from winter’s winds. He paused at a painting depicting an avocet and godwit side by side. This was a place where all were welcome despite their differences, unlike London where the rule was, uniformity, conformity and adherence, like with like. ‘This is exquisitely done,’ he complimented. ‘Your father would be proud.’

  She dismissed the remark. ‘Proud? To date, I’ve failed him. I’m his great legacy and I cannot enter the great ranks of the Academy.’ That was telling. Artemisia Stansfield wasn’t as self-sufficient in terms of detachment as she pretended. It did matter to her what certain others thought. He’d heard it in her tone earlier when she’d talked of Italy, of raising her little sister while her father mourned. She was acutely aware that Addy relied on her, that in his own, perhaps selfish way, her father relied on her as well.

  He didn’t think they were as different as she thought. People depended on them both. They asked themselves to be all things to those people counting on them. He rather thought her father asked too much of her and gave too little in return. That had hurt her, shaped her early. Men had betrayed her, starting with the one man who should have been her rock.

  It occurred to Darius as he stared at the last painting that it wasn’t a singular man who could be blamed for her inherent distrust of men, her fire against them, but a covey of them who’d systematically ruined her faith until she was left with faith in no one but herself. Her earlier references to free will, intimacy and access in all ways: to her body, to the world of men, teased at secrets yet unspoken. What shape had that ruination taken?

  Whatever shape, it had not broken her, had not ruined her, as it would have other women. It made her stronger, too strong perhaps so that now she thought to wage an impossible war. An idea began to light within him, a warm, glowing coal of insistence—a singular man hadn’t ruined her, but perhaps, a singular man could save her, could repair her faith. He wanted to be that man.

  Even as the thought came alive, he knew it to be as impossible as her war against the Academy. To restore her faith, he’d have to reorder the world he knew, turn it on its head and his own assumptions along with it. His father would never forgive him. He would say the house of Bourne was not worth one woman’s life.

  ‘Penny for your thoughts,’ Artemisia’s throaty tones interrupted.

  Darius looked away from the painting. ‘I’m thinking it’s getting dark and I must go.’ He lifted her hand to his lips. ‘Until tomorrow.’ She did not gainsay him, but something moved in her eyes that made him wonder if he’d put too much stock in the assumption, or perhaps it was only that he was dangerously close to overstaying his welcome.

  * * *

  ‘Mr Rutherford stayed a long time today,’ Addy observed over ham and potatoes that evening. It was just the two of them, Mrs Harris and Darius having both left. Darius had offered to walk the housekeeper home, cementing himself in her good graces. ‘I thought he might stay for dinner.’ Addy offered the last as a quiet accusation of how long he’d been at the farmhouse, apparently too long in her sister’s opinion.

  ‘We had a lot to discuss. I’ve started outlining on the canvases for the last set of paintings.’ Thank goodness he hadn’t stayed for dinner. She wasn’t sure she would have been capable of keeping a guilty look off her face. It was hard enough now to offer plausible explanations for Darius’s prolonged presence today.

  ‘I can’t imagine what you have to discuss. He’s here nearly every day. Pass the potatoes, please.’ Addy served herself another helping before she launched her next salvo. ‘He sees more of you than I do and you don’t even like him.’ Artemisia was aware of her sister’s hazel stare. ‘That’s still true, right? That you don’t like him?’

  Artemisia cut her ham into tiny cubes. She wouldn’t lie to her sister, but she knew Addy would disapprove of this afternoon’s interlude. ‘It’s a little
more complicated than that. He should not be defined by his task. He’s in a difficult position.’

  ‘You’re in a difficult position,’ Addy pointed out. ‘More so than him. He’s supposed to report back to the Academy about you, but who reports about him? Who holds him accountable for his words? He can go back and say anything he likes.’

  ‘All the more reason to play nicely with Darius, don’t you think?’ Artemisia argued. ‘I can’t imagine what rudeness with him might gain us.’

  ‘Darius? Is that what you call him now? How nice are you playing with him, Arta?’ Addy set her fork aside, evincing genuine concern. ‘Have you forgotten that he came in here on a lie and wormed his way into your studio?’

  ‘No, of course not, but that’s not the whole of him.’ It was easy to forget, though, when he told her stories of his childhood, when he talked of growing up or when he’d allowed her a glimpse in his journal. There’d been a vulnerability to him then, a humanness that made one forget he was an art critic, that he could influence her future with a word.

  ‘I think you do forget. He’s very handsome and he does seem taken with you. It would be easy to fall for him. Perhaps that’s why I am worried, Arta. I don’t want to see you hurt again.’

  ‘That was a long time ago. No one has hurt me since. I’m quite capable when it comes to managing men,’ she reminded Addy with a reassuring smile. She’d not been managing Darius today, though. Today hadn’t been about manipulating or negotiating for relational power. It could be though, she supposed, seeing the afternoon in another light. Would he keep his word that whatever they were to each other, whatever they did together, would stay here? What if he told the Academy about what they’d done on the sofa today? It would paint her as a woman of loose morals. She could make it uncomfortable for him if he did, but in the end, she would be the one who lost. She liked to think that was all unnecessary speculation. He seemed to be a man of his word. She was counting on that. But should she be?