Chapter 16 #2
The painting before her was a vivid depiction of a black stallion caught in a storm at night, the poor, bewildered beast rearing amid lightning and rain but unable to outrun the threats surrounding it on all sides. God, how long ago had he painted that image?
“It’s a very old painting,” Dorian told her, something stirring inside him with this recollection. “I was maybe seventeen when I finished it; fifteen years ago…”
“The poor horse can’t escape from the storm,” Rose murmured. “I can feel it when I look at him. He is trapped by terrors he can’t understand.”
Dorian gazed at the picture and swallowed what began to rise in him at the sight.
“The lightning was a struggle,” he commented. “It is even more ephemeral and harder to capture than moonlight…”
Despite his efforts to keep memory at bay, Dorian’s mind replayed the sound of a crashing vase and a slamming door. Then, his mother’s voice screamed that she wished his father was dead…
This had been the unmusical accompaniment to the movement of Dorian’s hand over the canvas, adding those hints of red to the whites of the terrorized animal’s eyes, and emphasizing the lines of tension in its straining muscles.
Back in the present, Rose had put her arm around his waist and was leaning against him.
“It was not an easy time in my life,” he admitted to her with a sigh. “Some of that comes out in the painting, I suspect.”
“Were you very unhappy when you were young, Dorian?” Rose asked.
“My adult life has certainly been happier than my youth,” he replied with studied insouciance. “The best thing about my childhood is that it is long over and need never be revisited.”
“You did not like your parents,” observed his wife, making a statement rather than asking a question.
“They were not parents in the sense you likely mean,” Dorian told her. “Certainly not like your parents, nor your friends’ parents. They wanted very little to do with me and I was usually glad of it.”
“But who looked after you? Who fed you and dressed you? Who educated you?”
“Oh, whoever was around at the time and being paid to do so. It was a relief to go to school when I was eight. At home, my father had one of his many affairs with the woman who was meant to be my governess. My mother paid him back by having a fling with the young Oxford graduate who briefly took over my tutoring.”
Rose’s face was sad rather than shocked on hearing these admissions.
“Why was it like that in your home?” she asked him.
Dorian did his best to answer honestly and factually.
“My parents were entirely wrapped up in one another, for better or worse. When they were in love, I was in the way. When they were in hate, I suppose that I reminded each of them far too much of the other. I was a handsome well-favored child, however, and they both liked to show me off sometimes. I certainly learned how to play to the gallery.”
“How strange and wrong. Poor little Dorian!”
She touched his shoulder comfortingly but he laughed and drew her into his arms. He had long been a man rather than a boy.
“It was all a long time ago, Rose. Little Dorian is long grown and needs no pity although I always welcome your embrace, especially in so flimsy and open a garment as that shirt…”
“But you would never treat your own child like that would you?” she insisted.
“Never!” Dorian returned almost before Rose had finished speaking, the vehemence of his own response taking him by surprise.
Until Rose, Dorian had never given real thought to children of his own. But he knew he must, given Rose’s wishes and their frequent intercourse. He had not expected to feel so strongly.
He took a deep breath before saying anything further, wanting to restore his normal equilibrium and banish the deeply buried sense of vulnerability that he could normally ignore.
“Perhaps you see why I avoid extremes of emotion. People get hurt when emotions are out of control, often innocents as well as those directly involved. I do not wish to inflict such injury.”
Rose frowned slightly but then, to Dorian’s relief, she apparently decided not to pursue that line of thought further. Instead, she smiled.
“There was another painting that struck me. It seems to be a self-portrait…”
“Ah,” grinned Dorian, imagining that she had discovered his collection of more indecent sketches. “Show me.”
Slipping from his arms, Rose took up a small canvas from the top of a pile and handed it to him.
Dorian laughed to see it was not at all what he had expected.
This more recent painting was of a large wolf crouching in the darkness on the edge of a wood.
Its eyes were almost human and its mouth slightly open but relaxed.
“This wolf seems powerful but playful rather than aggressive. It is like you,” Rose said. “Did you intend that?”
“If everyone sees me as a wolf, I suppose I must be one,” laughed Dorian. “I should only be grateful that you do not fear wolves, at least in human form.”
He was glad to be able to joke with Rose instead of talking more of his wretched childhood right now. It had been far easier than he could have expected to answer her questions honestly but still, there were certain things he was relieved not to have to look at further tonight.
“You did bite my neck that night in the gardens at Ashbourne Castle,” Rose reminded him. “It was the very first time you touched me. Is it any wonder I see you as a wolf?”
“I bit you?” he teased her, pushing the loose shirt from one shoulder and kissing her there with an open mouth, before pressing another kiss on her exposed throat. “It was hardly a bite, only a caress with my teeth. Now, what you did to me on our first night together was definitely a bite!”
“Oh Dorian!” Rose protested, still self-conscious at the reminder of her wild response. “I did not mean to…”
“I know. That makes it all the sweeter,” Dorian assured her, biting very gently at Rose’s neck once more as one of his hands began to fondle her breasts. “Maybe I will bite you properly one of these days. Or maybe I will only make you bite me again. Would you like that?”
Enjoying her blushes and wriggles and wanting more of the same, Dorian now deliberately reached for one of the old sketch books.
“When you mentioned a self-portrait, do you know what I thought you’d come across?” he asked, placing the book in Rose’s hands.
When she opened the cover, her gasp of surprise, her curiosity and the quickness of her breathing as she perused the pictures were all Dorian could have wanted.
“But how can you draw and…?” Rose said in wonder, biting her lip as Dorian’s hand climbed her thigh.
“Very, very slowly before a large mirror, or two,” he told her. “There is usually a great deal of stopping and starting and the detail must be filled in later.”
“I could not imagine…” she breathed and Dorian kissed her ear.
“Oh, I’m sure you could,” he suggested. “You have an excellent imagination.”
“Can I ask you something, Dorian?” Rose said and he chuckled, expecting to be asked something more about the pictures or the acts they depicted.
“Ask me anything you want. Your erotic education is my present priority in life.”
“Are you deliberately trying to be outrageous now so that I don’t ask you more questions about your childhood?”
Dorian stopped dead, his heart skipping a beat and not through excitement.
He shivered and stepped back, feeling as though something more of the winter cold had suddenly entered the room.
Rose might be an innocent by his standards but she was neither a child, nor a fool.
What else might she see of him that he had thought well-hidden behind his charming smile?
He nodded stiffly, unwilling to lie and unable to deflect at this moment. Rose stepped forward, cupping and caressing his face in her small hands.
“You don’t have to hide those things from me, Dorian. I would rather know all of you. I am married to all of you, the neglected boy as well as the charming man of the world and the rakish Wolf of West London.”
“Rose,” he said, closing his eyes and uttering the only word that came to him.
A moment later, Rose’s warm lips pressed softly, seekingly on his, and seemed to drive away the sensation of metaphysical cold that had threatened a few seconds earlier. Comfort and lust both surged through him again, neither emotion under control as he returned her kiss desperately.
Without any explanation, Rose seemed to understand his turmoil and held him close, returning his kisses with equal passion.
“You need not hide from me,” she murmured again, stroking his jaw and shrugging down the shirt from her shoulders so that his hands could lie easily over her full and sensitive breasts.
When Dorian pulled back and looked into her large blue eyes, he saw an immensity of feeling that both attracted and unnerved him. Was Rose’s understanding something more than her natural kindness and appreciation of his sensual attentions?
Had Cassius in fact been right and Rose had very naturally fallen in love with the man who rescued her from ruin and then introduced her to the pleasures of the bedroom? Of course she had. Rose had been waiting for her entire life to fall in love with someone, hadn’t she?
Dorian scented danger and disaster in this idea, his mind shrinking from the notion of love, even as his body craved his wife’s warm curves and yielding depths.
If Rose loved him, he could not in conscience continue to feed that dangerous emotion in her with their ever-growing closeness.
It would be wrong and cruel. He had already done more than enough in recent weeks to hopefully fulfill his duty of giving her a child.
Once she had a baby to love, perhaps Dorian would fade from her heart and they could begin again, more calmly.
In any case, how could he stop now when his whole body ached for Rose’s touch? Tomorrow it might seem easier to draw the line. Tonight, one more time…
Lifting his wife into his arms, the Duke of Ravenhill carried her back to the bedroom.