Eight Hunting Lyons (The Lyon’s Den Connected World)

Chapter Seventeen

“T his pickled whiting is just the thing when yer under the weather.”

“It’s whelk ye need. Boiled till it ain’t nothing but bones, then drink the broth.”

“It’s tea, my lord. My special verbena, dog’s piss mixture. I have it right here.”

Li-Na laughed at the last one. Lord Daniel was in a feisty mood this evening as he mocked all the well-wishers who had brought gifts of one sort or another. Most were food, some were unguents, and his favorite so far was a fine bottle of smuggled brandy given by the ancient Lord Cardyn who lived on the southern side of Cornwall.

“You know I’ll have to try them all then remember who to thank for my miraculous recovery. And I’ll bet every one of them is better than this.”

He threw his spoon into the gruel he’d been allowed on this second day without a fever. Over the past two days, he’d given lots of special names to his unappetizing meals. Spackled clouds that tasted like angel’s piss. Fish-like lumps that deserved to die. And her favorite beige mystery added to brown meal made thin with brackish water. Something about the repeated “b” sounds made her giggle.

And that, apparently, was the point. He clearly loved making her laugh. He would sit up taller and, if it was a good laugh, would wink at her as if they’d just shared an even deeper moment.

She couldn’t deny that it was effective. Over the past two evenings, he’d managed to cajole her into talking about her life in China. She explained her daily life, how she started painting, and even who had been the subject—or the cause—of her early attempts. He learned about the oldest Zhong boy who had given her moon cakes and read her love poems. She’d taught the boy mathematics because he was dreadful at it. And together they’d shared a kiss.

Which is how she ended up in England when his father found out.

Lord Daniel, in turn, told her about his first kiss in the confessional at the local church. He and a tenant’s daughter had slipped into the dark recess to explore in the way teenagers do. “To this day, I cannot go in there without conflicting thoughts.”

Then he’d asked her what her favorite foods had been, and they shared a pleasant evening with her trying to describe what she’d eaten and guessing how it was made. She had no earthly idea. The Zhong daughter had not been interested in cooking, so they had not spent any time in the kitchen.

“Are you going to paint tonight?” he asked, after he’d told her about his favorite cream tea. That food was not tea at all, but clotted cream and jam on a fresh scone.

“The light is too poor, and you are faring better.”

“I won’t interrupt you. Paint to your heart’s content!”

She might have, but she was too new to evening conversation to want to interrupt it with painting. For two nights now, they had talked about any number of things, and she found it unexpectedly delightful. No one shared conversation like this at the Lyon’s Den. At least not with her and certainly not about Cornish mead and the teenage antics that resulted from an overindulgence in it. They both shared tales, and Li-Na found herself relaying things that she hadn’t thought of in years.

And the oddest thing about it was that as she told her stories, Li-Na felt like she was living them again. She went through her childhood—laughing at the funny parts, touching upon the sad bits, and even trembling again at the dangerous ones—feeling as if she were growing up again, but this time mixing it with the warm rumble of Lord Daniel’s voice or the rich sound of his laughter. He touched her hand when she talked about hearing that her father had died. The news had struck her as awful not because he’d died, but because she couldn’t remember him. And he, in turn, had spoken about his parents’ passing years ago while they’d been traveling on the Continent. It had taken a month for the news to reach him and his brother, and even longer for the legalities to be handled. They did not even have the bodies for the funeral.

She squeezed his hand at that revelation.

The next day he refused to stay in bed. Instead, he joined her in the workroom to write his correspondence. He was a talkative soul when he worked. He would laugh at the letters he received or mutter as he pondered the best way to respond. To her surprise, he posted letters to people all over the Continent, often in their own language. She already had an idea of the size of the estates he managed. She was working on the ledgers for them. But by mid-afternoon, she began to appreciate the scope of his business dealings in art.

Also his stubborn nature after his seventh yawn while sitting at his desk.

She set down her abacus. “I am going to take a walk.”

He frowned and looked at his pocket watch. “I hadn’t realized it was so late. You should have quit a few hours ago.”

She still thought it ridiculous to insist that she work on the ledgers no more than five hours a day, but knew she would not win that argument. So she looked out the window and admired the bright day. “I shall wander back to the water, I think.”

“I will go with you.”

She snorted. “You can barely keep your eyes open. You are still recovering, my lord, and so should rest while I am gone. Mrs. Hocking is in the kitchen. She will come if you call.”

“I’m not an invalid to be watched over like a child.” He leaned toward her, his eyes sparkling in the afternoon light. “Will you paint or play in the sand?”

She had no idea. She didn’t relish taking her paint supplies down to the water, but then she could simply sit on the edge of the cliff and let her brush mimic the waves.

“I will carry your paints for you,” he said before she could answer. “Then rest while you work.”

He was trying to watch her paint. They both knew it, and this time she didn’t object as vehemently as she had before. She had grown comfortable with him, especially when he waggled his eyebrows at her.

“I will follow you down to the water,” he warned. “I’ll exhaust myself, causing a relapse that will have you sitting by my bedside throughout the night.”

“I did not mind that part. It was your snoring that bothered me.”

“Then we had best get going right away.”

She relented with a smile. He was charming when he put his mind to it, and today she was receptive to it. Indeed, it was the first time in years that she was charmed by anything instead of anxious about it. What was happening to her that the rigid control of her life in London had slipped into easy banter with this man?

She was still pondering that as they made their way to the edge of the cliff. He was solicitous in carrying her paints and easel. She was careful to walk slowly and watch for any signs of discomfort from him.

“We can stop here,” she said, indicating a place where he could sit on a convenient boulder or even stretch out on the ground if he so chose.

“The view further out is better.”

It was true. “But I don’t need a view to paint. The water is inspiration, not the truth of what I paint.”

He carefully set down her easel while she took everything else from his arms. He seemed to be strong enough to manage it all, but she did not want to take the risk. Meanwhile, he kept prodding her, forcing her to think about something she had always done but never spoken aloud.

“Then what is the truth that you paint?”

“What I feel, my lord. And if you keep pressing me, then I shall brush irritation into every stroke.”

“I should like to see that.”

Of course, he would. “It would not be a pretty sight.”

“But it would be something new. I have never seen irritation on paper.” He settled down on the convenient rock. “But I have no wish to inspire hatred in you, so I shall sit here and watch.”

She arched a brow. “I do not think you can be quiet.”

“You underestimate me.”

Did she? In the short time that she had known him, he’d been talkative. Indeed, that first night he’d been talking to himself about his horse when he walked in. But unlike the chatterboxes at the Lyon’s Den, she didn’t mind his voice or his words. He thought about things aloud, and she liked the pattern of his thoughts.

Without thinking about it, she picked up her brush, wet the ink, and began to make marks on the paper. She thought of his words like waves, and she painted them as such. She thought first of him talking to his horse, and she drew heavy, flat waves like the grumbling she remembered. She recalled their first breakfast when she was still frightened of him. His gruff statements were short, but to the point, rising steadily in irritation when she did not give him the answers he wanted. Those were the waves hitting the boulders by the cliff face and bursting upward.

Their conversation about the goddess Yao Ji by the sand had been inquisitive. He asked leading questions, and she drew them as long lifting waves further out to sea. Her answers were the undertow of the waves, pulled into him like water drawing upward into a wave.

And then she thought of his illness, of their nighttime reminisces, and the way he made her laugh as he complained about his gruel. These conversations could not be drawn clearly. They were mixed too much with memories of his body. In the space of one day, she had gone from a general awareness that he was a strong, handsome man, to intimate knowledge of the shape of his frame, the bulk of his muscles, and the ebb and flow of the hair on his body.

She had washed every part of him. She had held his joints, stroked his muscles, and marveled at the beauty in his body even when it was wracked with fever. There was little fat on him, so she had spent hours tracing the contours of his anatomy. And she had washed his most intimate place.

What was a man’s organ except for the repository of his seed and the method by which he forced a woman to carry it? It was nothing more than masculine flesh, and yet she could not dismiss it from her thoughts.

Lord Daniel was not a man who forced himself on women. So what then was his organ but the holder of his seed? It was large and strong like him. The tip was shaped like an arrow but not one that pierced. It was smooth and blunt, as if he could charm his way to what he wanted rather than force.

What fanciful thoughts! And scandalous, too. Worse, she realized she’d been painting her thoughts as they’d wandered through her addled mind. What she’d drawn were seagulls flying across the sky, but they were not any bird that existed in nature. They were male organs with wings and clouds that doubled as veins or—

She darkened her brush and blotted out her thoughts. The ridiculous birds became storm clouds, dark and furious. She did not want to think about such things. For the first time in years, she was not surrounded by ladies who served men’s needs. She did not have to listen to their coarse discussions of every part of a man. Not just his intimate bodily functions, but the way he gambled for pleasure, or gossiped about his compatriots.

For the last five years in London, she had been made excruciatingly aware of men and their desires. Now—here—she was free of the constant service to men, and yet what was she thinking about? A man, his thoughts, and his organ.

Disgusted with herself, she grabbed the paper off the easel and tore it up. She’d had dozens of new and different experiences in Cornwall for her paint. Why would she draw a man’s penis with wings? She tore her thoughts into a thousand tiny pieces and threw them to the wind. She wanted them to flutter into the ocean to drown in the waves, lost forever. But the wind took them a different direction. Instead of toward the water, the pieces blew back toward the castle to be caught in the gnarled bits of shrubbery or trapped against stone. Not drowned then, but scattered here and there like seeds to torment her whenever she came across them again.

No one gathered the trash as happened in London. She might find her fragment of thought tomorrow or the next day or the day after that.

She thought about chasing the pieces down and burning them, but she chanced to look at his lordship then. True to his word, he had been silent the whole time. She had assumed he’d slept because the man was never so quiet. But now she saw him watching her with a dark, steady gaze.

The tiger watches his prey.

She flushed crimson when she met his gaze. He had seen what she’d drawn before she’d blotted it all out. Did he understand it?

“A pity,” he said as he watched a scrap of paper tear free of a branch before dropping near a boulder. “What were you thinking when you painted it?”

She didn’t answer. She couldn’t.

He straightened off the rock and came close to her. “Have you ever drawn anything like that before?”

She shook her head.

“Were you thinking of me?” he asked. His lips curved. “Did I provide the inspiration for that?”

She swallowed. “I have never tended a man’s sickroom before. You needed to be washed often. It allowed me a chance to study in ways I never have before.”

His smile was slightly crooked as if he mocked himself as he spoke. “You may study more if you like. It won’t be the first time I’ve posed, though I’d ask you to make me more handsome.”

Her eyes widened in surprise. “You have modelled for such things?”

He shrugged. “I was younger then and full of myself. And I’d just discovered that erotic art sells very well.” His expression sobered. “I would be honored if you chose to paint me.”

She had been painting him for days. She’d drawn his tiger eyes, his large tiger hands like thick paws. She’d made a study of his spine and the curve of his flanks. This was the first that she’d drawn his organ though, and she thought it funny that she’d made it into sea birds.

She hadn’t realized she was smiling until he touched her face. She didn’t realize he was that close until she felt his fingers trail across her cheek and jaw. His thumb rolled over her lips as if measuring the contours of her mouth.

“How experienced are you with men?” he asked.

She didn’t know how to answer that. She had a great deal of knowledge about men, but he was wholly outside her experience.

“Are you a virgin?”

She shook her head. “Not after the trip to England.”

He winced. “I’m sorry. I would kill every one of them if I could.”

Her lips curved at his vehemence, and her insides softened that this tiger man would fight them for her. The entire voyage had been a horrible blackness on her life that had taken years for her to paint out and burn.

But life in the Lyon’s Den had softened that pain, and she could now think of it without darkness consuming her. She had listened to the women there, as much as they would talk to her. And she had learned that she was not the only one who had been abused by men. They had shown her by example that she could survive. And they had said, too, that sex could be pleasurable.

Li-Na had never felt the urge to find out if that was true. Then she’d come to Cornwall. Now she feared that it was all she thought about. Could it be pleasurable with him?

She had thought about that a lot.

“The past is done,” she said. “And I will not dwell on it anymore.”

He nodded. “You have loved though, yes?”

“Yes.” She had loved the eldest Zhong son until the moment he had abandoned her to his father’s fury.

“He kissed you.”

It wasn’t a question, but she answered it anyway. “I have already told you so.”

“You spoke of a first kiss in a schoolroom over a mathematical text. That is the kiss of a boy. Have you ever kissed a man?”

She flinched away from the memory. The sea captain was buried in her memory beneath layers of black ink.

“I have not,” she said, startling herself with her boldness.

He grinned then spread his arms. “May I offer my services, then, as model? If you draw such things, you should at least know the experience of it.”

As he stood there, his hands open and his arms spread wide, the wind blew a gust against him. His clothes pressed tight to his body, outlining the muscles of his chest that she remembered. It also revealed a bulge in his pants beneath his falls. Larger than she remembered, thicker than she’d drawn. She wondered if the head expanded or just the stalk? How would it look now—how would he look when not lost in a fever.

She itched to know.

She looked back at his face. He’d been studying her expression and must know what she’d been looking at.

Did she dare? “I want to see.”

He grinned and stripped out of his coat. When he pulled off his shirt, she realized that he intended to reveal himself here and now.

“But…we are outside!”

“No one comes here,” he said. “Not even Mrs. Hocking or her sons. It’s on the opposite side of the road and blocked by the wall. But it has a good view, which is why I brought you here.”

The view now was of him as he unbuttoned his pants and then his falls. She stood there watching, her heart accelerating and her eyes wide, as he undressed completely. Within moments, he stood before her in full sunlight, his very masculine body naked and erect.