Chapter 5 #2
Regrettably, he didn’t realize it had to go both ways.
So Georgiana waited him out. Until he was again absorbed in the task (he’d moved to sit on the floor, the sketchpad on his lap, a new illustration taking shape).
Until he’d answer without thinking. “Since we’re involved in a so-far-successful matchmaking scheme, I wonder, you’ve never considered marrying again? ”
“No,” he ground out, “I have not.”
His hand stilled, his curse echoing about the chamber. “Nicely done, sprite.”
Georgiana plucked at her damp bodice, thankful to her bones she’d worn a dark color and the silk hadn’t become transparent. Though it clung to her curves in a manner that was unavoidable, one she suspected, from the way a certain duke’s gaze lingered, he appreciated.
She peeled her gloves off one finger at a time. “In payment for my sitting for you, I should be allowed three questions.”
He snorted what might have been a laugh, his gaze fixed on her hands. “May I remind you that you asked me to do this?”
“A gentleman wouldn’t.”
“We already agreed you weren’t getting him today.”
Exasperated and amused, Georgiana unraveled her sad chignon, letting her untidy hair flow over her shoulders. “Three paltry inquiries, Your Grace.”
Ren swallowed as he watched her, his throat working. The air shifted, sparking more than the hearthfire at her side, and something low and molten turned over inside her. The awareness was new, startling, but not unwelcome.
Jaw flexing, his fingers tightened around the pencil. “Your smile is the devil’s own, Gia. By damn, I wish I could capture it.”
She gave a half-shrug. “Do your best.”
“I answered the duchess query, so you’ve got two more,” he murmured, after glancing over his shoulder to ensure his son still slept.
Two questions. Direct, but not too. If she told him she wanted to know everything—for reasons she couldn’t explain—she’d frighten him off. “Were you happier before?” was what she impulsively settled upon. Before the title, she meant.
He didn’t look up, merely paused to lick his thumb, then brushed it across the page. “It softens the stroke,” he said instead of answering. “Smooths out the rough edges.”
Patience was a newfound virtue, a skill her twin, Cece, claimed Georgiana needed to work on. She tried, she really did, but her tapping slipper gave her away.
His eyes were pools of blue when they met hers, diverse and splendid.
“As an only child, I was prepared for this life. My father was sixty when I was born, my mother his third wife. He’d outlived the first two and never expected an heir to arrive with the last. He wasn’t unpleasant so much as unforgiving.
There were rules, and I was to follow them.
End of story.” Ren gave his charcoal a jaunty spin between his fingers.
“Art was not part of the ducal equation, ever. Though I started drawing before I could write. Nor was the rowdiness at Oxford, the small fire I started in my room at Magdalen, or the family’s solicitors having to assist in resolving it.
Another disappointment as he’d wanted Christ Church for me, the college he and my grandfather entered.
Though I was always grateful I didn’t start the blaze there, amongst some of the oldest structures on campus. ”
Vulnerability shimmered like candlelight around him, and Georgiana stepped into the trap scores of women had before her: the dangerous belief that, despite a man’s roguish reputation, despite his distant manner, he’d never talked like this with anyone before.
“Your childhood sounds lonely,” she whispered, the words slipping out unbidden. She’d grown up surrounded by laughter, love, arguments, chaos.
He frowned, possibly never having considered this. “I guess it still is. Lonely. My parents are long gone, and now, it’s just the two of us, Henry and me, plus a few distant cousins. After having the largest family in England, I realize this is hard for you to fathom. Truly, I would have liked—”
He shook his head as if it was too much to share and shoved to his feet. Crossing to his son, he tucked the blanket in where it had come loose. The boy mumbled sleepily, dreamily, and Ren answered in a soothing murmur, “I’m here.”
Georgiana realized it wasn’t a sensible time—before a first kiss, a first anything—for her heart to skip across the chamber and into a guarded duke’s hands, but who could control these things? She was more than a little breathless when she prompted, “You would have liked?”
He glanced at her from the corner of his eye, close to vexed.
“Henry and Jane, his mother, came down with a spotted fever the summer of 1812.” Bringing his hand to his temple he rubbed hard as if to erase the memory.
“I was fine, never caught it despite tending them both. My wife passed during the second week, along with two of my staff. Henry lingered in a place I hope to never go near again, until he inexplicably got better. Needless to say, I was a wreck for months, scared if he got so much as an ant bite that he would fall to another illness. And since I’m telling you this, out of my mind in the doing, I’ll share my earlier hope.
That I would have liked more children, though I didn’t desire them with her.
Nor did she desire anything with me. Accordingly, I don’t want another duchess because of the past, and I can’t fathom having more children because of my fear of the future. ”
With a sharp exhale, he stalked to the sketchpad and bent to snatch it and the pencil from the floor.
She untangled her skirts as she rose and went to him, no way to stop it. “Ask me something. I have nothing to hide.”
“That, Georgiana Harrington, is your luxury, not mine.”
He was staring at the sketch, a scowl drawing his brows together. Lamplight played across his stern features and the glossy streaks of gray in his hair.
“Can I see it?” she whispered, trying in vain to peer around him.
He thrust the pad at her. “I’m not used to showing my work. As Nesbit mentioned, the effort was smothered years ago.”
Bracing her hand on his shoulder for balance, she brought her face close, reluctant to tell him she wore spectacles for reading.
He had not been gentle with her, not in the way society prized for portraiture.
His strokes were bold, decisive, and yet there was a forgiveness for the subject, a softness that lived beneath the strength.
She seemed…alive, as though she might step free of the page.
Surprisingly, the gown he’d drawn wasn’t the one she wore.
This one belonged to his imagining, looser, more fluid, spilling over her hips and down her legs before pooling at her feet like the sea.
It was fantasy in charcoal.
Her eyes—his version of them—were alight, mischief caught there, her lips curved into something just shy of a smile. Not innocence, but not quite brashness either. As though she knew exactly what she was doing, when she knew nothing of the sort.
He leaned in beside her, close enough that the warmth of him pressed along her arm, and smoothed out a line with the pad of his thumb before blowing a soft breath across the page to clear the dust.
The move embedded itself in her skin.
How to tell him he was far more talented than she’d allowed? That he’d seen her, then sought to remake her in shadow and light? “You made me beautiful.”
Ren blinked, his pupils widening until the blue went dark as night around them, then he reached for her hand and drew a small, imperfect rose on the inside of her wrist. “You are beautiful, Gia. More than any woman I’ve ever known.”
Georgiana shifted—a small, thoughtless adjustment that brought her into his space—and his attention broke, his hand sliding to her hip before he could stop it. They stood like that, his touch a single point of startling awareness…until whatever held him in check gave way.
Ren dragged her out of the room and into the narrow space beneath the attic stairs, his grip unrelenting until her back met the paneled wall. His gaze dropped to her mouth, breath rough, control slipping. “I shouldn’t—”
“You should,” she whispered, her heartbeat echoing in her ears.
So he did.