Chapter 5
Awareness
Over the course of the next day, Georgiana tried to think of herself as Gia.
She’d always been George. Resilient, dependable George, the least emotional of her seven sisters.
Her brother told her often enough, though it counted more as an insult than a compliment.
She loved him, but Charles was merely delighted she’d brought little trouble to his door.
Resolute women got less attention, less care, less everything.
They stayed steady through the chaos, cleaned up messes, marched through life as if the ground were littered with broken glass—while everyone else cried and shouted and sulked.
For once, she wanted her passions added to the mix.
The thought of Renwick Bellamont stirred a disarming amount of them. Gads, her body thrummed like a struck pianoforte string when he got within twenty yards of her. A blistering connection, inexplicable and inescapable.
She’d never been rendered breathless by the mere sight of a man. Never, ever, ever.
Trying to hide a traitorous smile, Georgiana glanced at the leaden sky, where a storm gathered on the horizon.
She’d grabbed her parasol on the way out, though the lace-trimmed gauze offered little protection from the elements.
She would have borrowed one from her host, but Anthony Vale’s knowing smile as he’d glanced between her and Ren at dinner the night before had given her reason to hide today’s artistic pursuit.
The last thing anyone needed was to send the gossip mill churning.
This could be a platonic exchange, could it not?
Among friends? She truly wanted to see if the Duke of Dunmere was as gifted as she suspected, and she’d never had her portrait done.
Also, Georgiana didn’t have a multitude of friends, nor did Ren appear to.
She didn’t like spending time with many people outside her family—yet she liked spending time with him. That alone was distinctive.
The pebbled path led directly to the cottage, as the note delivered discreetly to her bedchamber had said it would.
It was lovely, tucked away beneath a copse of willow and alder, with foxgloves and wild roses threading the edges of the path and a silver slice of river visible beyond the trees.
The cottage itself was small and old, the sort a dowager might claim for quiet exile, its ancient stone softened by climbing ivy and a narrow yellow door set beneath a low, uneven roof.
Ren had mentioned that Anthony had given him the space to work without drawing society’s attention.
Before she got there, the sky split open.
Rain came down in a sudden sheet, hard enough to flatten the foxgloves and turn the path slick beneath her slippers.
Her parasol proved useless at once, no match for the deluge, and by the time she reached the charming yellow door, breathless and knocking, she was soaked through.
Thankfully the narrow portico provided shelter, though when Ren opened the door, he didn’t immediately usher her inside.
Instead, his lips parted, a soft sigh escaping as he stared.
He was dressed more casually than any nobleman in England, in cream cotton trousers and a shirt of modest quality bought in a shop far outside London, the material rumpled and stained with charcoal smears.
His collar was open, revealing a scatter of chest hair, his sleeves shoved past his elbows to reveal forearms corded with veins.
Lamplight danced over his eyes, the mix of color between the lighter and darker making her think of volatile seas and starlight.
Without warning, the memory of his gaze narrowing as he pulled his arm back, the bow held securely in his hands, the muscles in his shoulder drawing tight, flowed through her in a warm wash she felt in the center of her belly.
And below, the dangerous below. He’d been like some fierce god on the archery pitch, rising above everyone, even her, and now, he was a serene one in his element. Grounded, when she’d never been.
Her entire life, she’d been longing for someone to grasp her hand and pull her into being.
“You’re alone,” Ren murmured, walking backwards into the cottage, his gaze never leaving her. “As expected, your maid didn’t make the trip.”
Georgiana tiptoed into the stone dwelling, shutting the door behind her.
His hushed tone suggested clandestineness, a nebulous silhouette that took shape, lighting a fire inside her.
The feeling burst when she glanced around his broad body to find Henry snoring softly on the settee.
He was lying on his side, one hand tucked beneath his cheek, a woolen blanket draped over him.
He’d gotten most of his facial features from his father, and the sight struck her clean through.
Father and son were something to behold.
“Dorothy is recovering from a feminine indelicacy,” she whispered, stepping fully into the chamber. Men never asked more when this issue was mentioned. Though it was true—her maid suffered from horrid cramps during her courses, whereas Georgiana was rarely troubled. “Henry can act as chaperone.”
Unconvinced, the Duke of Dunmere grunted as he continued to study her in an almost scholarly way, far from the appreciative glances she was used to. His varied eyes shimmered, his long fingers flexing at his side.
Waiting for an official welcome, she glanced around the modest cottage.
It was all dark wood and pale granite stone, the golden lamplight catching on scattered charcoal sticks, sketch pads, a paint box left open on a low table, and a carved toy horse resting on the faded carpet.
It appeared the duke spent a great deal of time here hiding from society.
“It was a gamekeeper’s cottage,” Ren said when the silence began to chafe.
“Anthony keeps it for visitors, mostly business associates who want a respite from the army of servants scurrying about in the main house, waiting on their every whim while sending gossip to the city faster than a Gazette columnist.”
“Sounds like an affluent man’s problem,” she returned, moving toward the pier mirror on the far wall. Her hairpins were pinching her scalp where her chignon was tumbling loose.
“Don’t.” Ren snatched up a charcoal pencil and sketch pad from the table. “There, by the hearth. Sit. Please.”
His tone was commanding, one she’d heard from men before—especially her brother—but it was also layered with a captivated vibration that stole her breath, leaving her, for the moment, willing to obey. She’d wanted to see this side of him. The artist, not the duke, and he was showing her.
It was too late to back down now.
Georgiana perched on the edge of a beaten armchair angled before the hearthfire, imagining how she must look.
Henry’s drowned rat comment came to mind.
“The rain caught me by surprise, and I hesitated to ask Mr. Vale for an umbrella.” She smoothed her hand over her hair, horrified to find it had, as suspected, escaped confinement and was doing what it always did in the damp—curling madly about her face. “I should freshen up before you begin.”
Ren had gone to one knee a few feet away from her, the sketchpad balanced on his thigh, the length of charcoal sailing across the sheet.
His broad shoulders tensed as he shifted, his gaze leaving and returning to her in restless measure, his awareness drawn to the place she guessed an artist’s must go.
It wasn’t distraction so much as absorption.
“If I could only have one moment before the mirror,” she said, starting to rise—
“No, no.” He shook his head, frowning at the drawing without looking up.
“You’re exactly as you should be. I can find pampered debutantes every day of the week, draw them until my mind and fingers are equally numb.
You, this”—he gestured, murmured something lost to her, brushing his jaw and leaving a black streak there—“are primal perfection.”
“Primal,” she whispered, the word crude yet…glorious.
He sighed and rocked back, lifting the charcoal tip from the sketchpad, though his gaze remained locked on the drawing. “This isn’t appropriate, Lady Georgiana, no matter the dozing young heir on the settee acting as chaperone, and we both know it. There’s no duke in this world.”
She laughed, elated that this was all he cared about. “Brilliant, because I’m more interested in this Ren Bellamont fellow.”
His head lowered, his hair a disordered tousle hanging over his face, yet she saw the smile curve his lips.
After a few seconds, he gave up and looked at her, knowing he was letting her in.
His dimple appeared, a deep dent in his cheek that flooded already vulnerable places within her with a sudden, searing warmth.
He was right. This wasn’t the circumspect nobleman, the holder of the oldest ducal title in England, who crouched before her.
In casual attire, his jaw covered with a day’s dark stubble, Ren was far from unyielding, more the type of man she’d have chosen had she the right, perhaps a soul nearer that of the gamekeeper who’d once inhabited this cottage.
“You study me like you’re trying to figure me out,” she said when he continued to stare. It was taking every ounce of her dogged stamina to face him.
He tapped the pencil on his knee, grinning outright now. “I suppose breaking a person down into stark streaks on a page is a way to see what they’re made of. People often mystify me without art as the go-between.”
“How do I do that with you?” Georgiana asked, leaning back in the chair, hoping a model was allowed to move.
He shrugged and ripped the page free and let it flutter to the floor. “You don’t.”