Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Tessa beamed down at him from on high, and Remmy almost toppled face-first into the dirt. He’d thought her changed yesterday in the evening shadows. But the late afternoon sun revealed the truth—she’d transformed entirely.
When she’d left, she’d had tear streaks on her cheeks. She’d been the kind of girl to say scandalous things, then look over her shoulder, scared someone had heard her.
Now she lifted her face to the sky with a miraculous grin and seemed to dare the universe to challenge her.
Remmy might have been grinning madly, too. Difficult to tell, as his face was growing fuzzy. He’d downed two drinks before Tessa had begun to unravel his plan in front of everyone as loudly as she could. Likely that was why he’d decided to drink more.
He poured more wine down his gullet and joined Tessa on the rock. The navy of her skirts shifted to a brilliant cobalt in the light of the dying sun, and her flushed cheeks were merry apples of joy.
Her eyes, though… heavy, shadowed, tired.
He hefted himself up on top of the boulder and sat with his legs over the edge, swinging. He took a drink of the wine, and she sat next him, skirts brushing trousers as they’d always been. Nothing had changed but the length and color of both.
She drank the brandy, he the wine, as the day died around them.
“Did your mother even look at you?” he finally ventured.
“Not once. And Father kindly begged me to become invisible.”
“If I could take back what I did, with the painting, the competition—”
“Do not say it.”
“—I wouldn’t.”
Breath left her in a great gust. “Good.”
“You deserved to win that award. Your painting was better by leagues than all the others.”
She gave a wistful sigh. “I wish I’d been brave enough to put my real name on it.”
But they’d used Remmy’s name instead, and he’d taken her canvas all the way to London for the Royal Artist Society’s yearly competition. “If you ask me, your mother is likely to be in trouble with God for holding grudges so well and so long.”
She grinned, then elbowed him in the ribs. “What was that about? With the women? Why are you playacting?”
“It’s a promotion. For the Folly. We’re doing a morality tale on the dissolution of men who cannot conquer lust.” True in its own way.
Remmy took another long pull of the wine and scooted backward to the top of the rock.
He stood, looking out across the lake. Wind rippled the surface and coming night darkened the depths.
Below him, Tessa tilted her head back, and her long neck plunged into the deep, open bodice of her gown.
Peg’s and Meg’s gowns had been lower, their breasts larger, but…
How much wine had he downed? He’d decided yesterday that Tessa—and by association, her bosom—no longer mattered. But here he was, comparing everything about her to everything about everyone else and finding that…
The world fell short of Tessa King’s beauty.
He tilted the wine bottle up, welcomed the liquid burn down his throat. “I’ve not a single reason to be melancholy,” he grumbled.
“You? Melancholy? Of course not.”
“Exactly. The June rake could never be melancholy.”
“Oh, do come off it, Remmy. You’re not the man that Brazen Belle wrote about. It must be this Richard Islington.”
“What do you know about Richard Islington?”
“Only what the women told me today, but even with that little, it’s clear to me it cannot be you.”
Remmy sat abruptly, and the world veered off-center.
It righted with a little shake of his head.
He tapped the bottom of the wine bottle against his chest. “R. I. is Remington Ives. Me. I have done everything in that article. The actresses, the partial nudity. I don’t like you to know the particulars, but since you refuse to believe the truth, I won’t hide it from you— In the last six years, I’ve earned every scandalous sentence the Belle wrote. ”
“Of course you have.” She patted his leg placatingly, a sisterly gesture that set off entirely unsisterly sensations like little bells throughout his body.
They last time they’d sat on this rock together…
I love you.
Thank you.
Mortifying.
He pulled the scandal sheet out of his jacket pocket and waved it in her face. “I’m ‘Mr. R. I.’”
“You are indeed a Mr. R. I., but you’re not the man described there. Why do you insist on everyone thinking you are?” She snatched the paper from him and sipped from the brandy bottle.
The world spun a bit, the wine making him lightheaded. He took deep breaths and shook his head until it stilled. She still thought of him as a boy, a useless youth. Another long pull of the wine, hot and smooth and warming him on the inside to match the summer heat.
“I’m not who I used to be, Tessa.” A warning.
She scrunched her nose, clearly missing it. “Actresses, preening? All the”—she waved her hands and the bottle about in the air—“general rakishness and public nudity? You are not wearing a cravat, Remmy. You might as well invite everyone to watch you bathe.”
“Excellent idea. I’ll send out engraved invitations next week.” He snagged the brandy bottle, the better to keep it safe.
She snorted. “I simply cannot—” Another snort, but this one erupted into a cascade of giggles. Between her happy, maniacal little laughs, she managed to squeeze out the words countenance and it.
He took a hearty swig of the brandy.
She swiped it back and followed suit, her laughter popping into a tiny brandy hiccup. “Oh, it is diverting.”
“I have never been so insulted.” He moved as far from her on the boulder as possible.
She tamed her face and swallowed her giggles. “Oh c-come n-ow. I don’t… I mean you d-don’t—” She dissolved into laughter once more.
“This is truly insupportable.” He helped himself to a hefty swallow of wine. If he got good and foxed, he’d deserve that reprieve from this humiliation. He might already be good and foxed. The world was fuzzy at the edges. The sky rocked like ocean waves.
When she’d quieted down enough to breathe, she rolled her lips between her teeth and took several steadying breaths then spoke with her eyes closed, the corners of her lips twitching, damn them.
“Oh heavens,” she sighed, “I think I’m brandy brewed.”
“Brandy brewed?”
“Adjective. In a state of having consumed so much brandy, you’re practically steeping in it.”
“Then I’m wine brewed.”
“No, you’re wine ruined.”
“That sounds more like what happens the next morning.”
She chuckled and let her head fall back. Long neck, gently sloping bosom, the elegant line of her jaw. She kicked her legs gently, swaying her skirts, and he inched back toward her, kicked his legs, too. Their hands rested side by side on the rock between them, warm and snug.
With the small woods between the house and lake and their rock situated beneath the trees, the world seemed inhabited by two. All as it had been years ago.
No.
Years ago, he’d been nothing more than a sad puppy dog begging for scraps of affection from a woman who did not know she held the damn bone in her hand.
She’d patted his head and called him friend, and he’d been coward enough to let her, to not risk everything they had for what might be.
His parents had been right—he hadn’t been good enough for Tessa King.
“I am a rake.” The words came out sharp, angry. They were the truth though, because otherwise he wouldn’t be looking at his friend’s lips. Perhaps it was because he was wine ruined, but they looked like a dream, like a smear of paint across one of her canvases. “Admit it.”
“Never.” Those lips curved. She tapped the end of his nose. “If you were truly a rake, I would never be here with you, sitting safely within reach. You’d have me flat on my back in two breaths. Yet here I am. Unseduced.”
“You’re right.” He watched the rise and fall of her chest for one breath.
Then he pounced. The wine bottle made a thud as it hit the forest floor. The Rake Review flew up into the air and fluttered to the ground. And Remmy caught the nape of Tessa’s neck as he leaned over her, carrying her head gently to the rock.
In two breaths, he had her flat on her back.
He grinned. “Now do you believe me?”
Her cheeks were pink and her lips parted. Little red flyaway hairs curled around her face, and she’d gone still as one of her portraits. When she fluttered back to life—cheeks surging from pink to oh-so-scandalized red—she swatted his chest.
“Oh yes, Your Rakishness. I’m trembling and terrified.
Please do not ruin me.” The way her mouth shaped the words with easy humor, the skepticism in her eyes—she didn’t believe he’d do it.
She was grinning up at him, the breaks in the canopy above dropping streaks of sunlight across her face, innocent and unaware.
Her or the sunlight? Damn, he was drunk.
Still cradling her head, he moved over her, closer, closer, until they were belly to belly, nose to nose, legs laying side by side—his, hers, his, hers.
“Oh, sweet, innocent Tessa King. I will ruin you.” He inhaled slowly, trailing his nose along her hairline, lingering at her temple.
Her skin held the bite of paint and the sweet scent of a warm summer day.
The brandy on her breath drifted up to him.
Everything familiar and not at the same time, having her beneath him better than he’d dreamed.
She slapped her palm against his chest, firm and likely with the purpose to push him away. But she didn’t. She just let her hand rest there.
And that warm hand tilted the world even more than the wine already had. It burned a hole right through muscle and bone, and when he spoke next, his voice caught on each breath.
“I know just how to do it.” He twisted a curl near her neck around one finger and tugged lightly. Her head followed the gentle tension, opening the slope of her neck to his perusal.
His friend’s neck.
The neck of the woman who’d shattered his soul.
The wine didn’t care.