Chapter 4 #2
After the sweet course, but one course remained—cheese, usually her favorite.
Tonight, it was like sand in her mouth. But she was determined to push through and send this man on his way in short fashion.
Yet as she took one determined bite after another, she couldn’t help noticing from the edge of her vision that the duke wasn’t eating, or even drinking.
Not a single bite or sip. Instead, he’d settled back in his chair and was staring at her.
What was he looking at, anyway? Had a large chunk of bleu cheese become lodged between her front teeth? A dribble of lemon ice down her bodice?
At last, she could take it no longer. A woman had her limits. “Why are you staring at me?”
“I’m a sculptor.” He smiled. Or what passed for a smile with him. More of the suggestion of a smile. “And, very soon, you will be my subject. It’s what I do.”
“Well, you’re making me…” Oh, she didn’t want to finish that sentence. She suspected it would give him too much satisfaction.
He, however, decided to finish it for her. “Uncomfortable? Your cheeks do look flushed.”
Amelia opened her mouth and closed it. He looked decidedly smug. She used her irritation as motivation and said, “You simply cannot speak that way to a young lady.”
His mouth curled into the arrogant, condescending smile of a duke. “I can speak any way I like,” he said. “Besides, you’re not that young of a lady.”
For some reason that Tristan couldn’t be bothered to explore, he enjoyed discomfiting the not-as-young-as-she-once-was Lady Amelia Windermere.
Just look at her—brow lifted to the ceiling…clear blue eyes round as saucers…pert mouth formed into a small, perfect O.
He’d shocked her speechless. A rare thing he would wager.
Delicately, she cleared her throat. “Perhaps you’ve been away from the niceties of proper society for too long, but one doesn’t call attention to a lady’s age whether she be young or not.”
Tristan knew he should, but he felt not a bit chastened. Still, he conceded, “Fair enough.” He hoped that would appease her, for he wouldn’t be apologizing for speaking the plain truth.
Of course, she was beautiful—the ton would call her a diamond of the first water—that went without saying. Logic would follow that the only reason she was yet unmarried was through her own choice, not from a lack thereof.
Anyway, the subject bored him, and seeing as how they were the only two left at the table, conversation must be made. “So, what is it you do?” he asked, not particularly concerned with the answer.
Her brow knitted. “Do? Have you mistaken me for a washerwoman?”
He snorted. Why did aristocrats become so offended by the very notion of doing something? “You strike me as an industrious sort of woman, is all.”
She pushed a piece of cheese around her plate with her fork and took to not looking at him, as if she could ignore him into nonexistence.
“What are your interests then?” he asked.
“I dabble in painting.” Still, her gaze remained averted from him, now appearing to count the individual crystals in the chandelier above.
Her irritation was wearing off on him. “Dabble? You either paint or you don’t,” he all but growled.
Her gaze dropped to meet his. “I paint.” The two simple words emerged prim, definite.
While he didn’t have much use for the former adjective, the latter one intrigued. “Which medium?”
“Watercolors.”
Tristan felt a frown forming on his mouth. He couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed.
“Do you take issue with watercolors?” she asked, tapping her forefinger on the rim of her plate.
Since she was asking… “As a matter of fact, I do.”
A laugh startled from her. “How can anyone find offense with watercolors? They are quite possibly the least offensive medium of any of the arts.”
“That is precisely why they offend me. They make no statement. They don’t dare me to feel.”
She stared at him, head canted, flummoxed. He found that he liked flummoxing this woman more than he’d liked doing anything in months. Why not continue flummoxing her?
“Show me your watercolors.”
Her mouth gave a wry twist. “They’re but mere watercolors.” There was no mistaking the sarcasm in her voice.
Of a sudden, his question meant to flummox turned into true desire. “I want to see them.”
Her mouth perched on the edge of no. His ears fully expected it. Then her head canted to the other side, and different words spilled out. “Follow me.”
She pushed away from the table and started walking without a backward glance. He shouldn’t bite. He should march in the opposite direction and not stop until he was home. But she’d cast a lure, and he couldn’t resist.
They entered a room, which he quickly realized was her bedroom. “This isn’t an elaborate way of trapping me into marriage, is it?” The question was asked only half in jest. “I’m no great catch, I can assure you.”
“Oh, I don’t need your assurance to know that.”
Her barb would sting if his skin weren’t already thick as bison leather. Instead, he gave a dry laugh of appreciation.
She led him past the bed and sitting area to a studio space near double doors that opened onto a private terrace. On an easel sat a painting. Of a pomegranate. It was done well in terms of texture and color. No doubt she had a deft hand with a brush. But…
It did nothing for him.
She handed him another painting. A bowl of fruit. Then another bowl of fruit. The same fruit from the previous painting, in fact, but arranged in a different configuration. Then another…and another.
“What do you think?” she asked. She strove for nonchalance, but gave herself away with the twitchy glint in her eyes.
Tristan had never been skilled at disguising the truth. These watercolors were the bland work of a polite English lady. Which was disappointing. He’d thought there might be something impolite about this particular English lady.
“I had it in my mind that you would…” He stopped talking. He couldn’t tell her what was in his mind. He’d thought her more.
Her eyes the blue of a particularly frigid glacier narrowed on him, and she seemed to make up her mind about something. In a few quick strides, she’d crossed the room to a bureau and began rifling through its top drawer. Seconds later, her hand emerged with a neat stack of watercolor papers.
More watercolors.
Tristan tried not to sigh too deeply, but more watercolors.
She returned and held the stack to her chest, uncertainty in her eyes.
Curiosity sparked within Tristan, even as he couldn’t help thinking how very beautiful Lady Amelia Windermere was in the moonlight streaming through the open double doors.
Not the simple beauty of a young surface.
Deep-boned beauty. The sort of beauty Botticelli would have immortalized in oil.
His hands were beginning to itch to sculpt her.
On a roughly exhaled sigh, she thrust the new stack of watercolors toward him. “These are…different.”
He recognized the subject of the top painting.
Dolce, Signore Rossi’s dog, seated on his purple velvet pillow, poised for a round of barking by the look of it.
Tristan couldn’t help smiling as he flipped through the paintings.
Scenes on various Florentine squares at different times of the day and sometimes night.
Portraits of family members. Curious, those.
None of her family were posed formally but, instead, depicted as they would be in life.
Archer seated at a pianoforte. The cousin reading by a window.
The sister clearly in the middle of one of her long-winded proclamations.
Tristan knew why in an instant. “Your family have no idea about these, do they?”
Lady Amelia bit her bottom lip between her teeth and shook her head. Nervousness shone in her eyes.
“They’re good,” he said. These paintings were better than good, but no need to get carried away. “Have you shown them to anyone?”
“I paint these for me.”
“You’ve done something in a few brush strokes that painters dream and strive for their entire lives and few achieve.”
“What is that?” she asked, cheeks flushed and eyes bright.
“You’ve captured the essence of the person or animal. I know them, just by looking at these paintings.” He felt embarrassingly earnest.
Except he wasn’t embarrassed, at all. No one should feel ashamed of their passion for art. It was the oxygen of a meaningful life, and did anyone feel embarrassed to have to draw breath?
Lady Amelia, for her part, stood three feet from him, blushing to the roots of her hair.
He would make her blush more before he was finished, for the longer he studied her paintings, the more he had to say about them. “It’s a gift. You have a gift. You’re a true artist.”
Now her pulse was pounding so hard, he could see the rapid beats against the pale column of her neck. A few more words of praise and she just might reach climax, and how he would like to see that.
No.
Where had the thought come from?
Not from as remote a place in his mind as he would prefer.
He cleared his throat. “Have you considered oils?”
Her bearing shifted into the defensive. “Pardon?”
“With oils, you could considerably deepen all this.”
She exhaled a dry, incredulous laugh. “They’ve made you feel something, haven’t they?”
“They have.” Now it was him on the defense.
“Then why shouldn’t I continue to perfect the medium of my choice?”
Tristan didn’t have a ready answer. She might be in the right. “You have connections in the arts. You could do a show.”
“Ladies don’t participate in art shows.”
And like that, Tristan remembered who this woman was. A proper Englishwoman, bound by the rules of the aristocracy.
Yet these paintings hinted at a different woman.
He wasn’t sure which woman he was trying to push with his next words, but he would speak them anyway because she needed to hear them. “There is really only one thing holding you back from becoming as great as you could be.”
“And you know what this one thing is, I suppose.” Her arms were crossed over her chest, and her jaw had a decidedly pugnacious set to it.
“I do.”
“Enlighten me.”
“You need to study the nude form.”
Her mouth opened and closed and opened again.
She was about to give him an earful, surely. But what he wanted was for her to think about what he’d said, rather than simply react to it.
So, he did the only sensible thing. He handed the paintings back to her, gave a slight bow, pivoted on his heel, and exited the room through the open double doors, gone from the house in seconds and soon navigating the maze of Florentine streets beneath a clear, starry sky.
What had he been thinking in there? Speaking that way to a proper, unmarried English lady?
It mattered not.
He’d been following his instincts, and he’d been in the right.
Further, Lady Amelia Windermere was no simple proper English miss.
In fact, he sensed there may be something decidedly improper buried not so deep inside that particular English miss.
His logical side told him to leave it be—to leave her be. But his other side—the side that had brought him to Italy—knew he wouldn’t be able to.