Chapter 7 #2
“But, really,” he began. If he didn’t come to his own defense, who would? “How is meeting a person on eight occasions enough time to love them?”
Lady Amelia simply sat regarding him as if his head had become screwed on backwards. “There’s more.”
Tristan saw no way out of this conversation but through. “Lady Sarah asked if I ever could.”
“And you said?”
“No.”
“And she said?”
“‘A woman needs to be adored every now and again.’” He spread his hands wide in a gesture of helplessness. “I politely informed her that wouldn’t be possible.”
“You told your fiancée—the woman you were to spend the rest of your life with—that you would never adore her?”
“Or any other woman, to be fair.” He shrugged. “It was only the truth.”
Lady Amelia’s brow furrowed. “But why deny yourself?”
“I deny myself nothing,” he said. “Just ask the gossips.”
“Oh, but you do,” she said. “It’s the most wonderful feeling in the world to adore something or someone, to feel absolutely smitten. Sometimes it’s a beloved pet or a particularly juicy peach or a new dress—”
“I’ll have to take your word for that one.”
She wasn’t to be interrupted. “But the feeling fills you as if you’re bursting with light. To adore feels better than to be adored, and yet you deny yourself the feeling.”
“Perhaps I don’t have the same capacity as you.”
Lady Amelia shook her head. “I’ve seen you at your work, your passion for it. That’s adoration. You have the capacity.” Her head canted. “And that’s why Lady Sarah jilted you?”
“In part.”
“You’re about to tell me what set off the scandal, aren’t you?”
“I merely informed her—politely, as one adult to another—that was what lovers were for.”
Lady Amelia’s mouth gaped. He’d shocked her. It was, as a matter of fact, the same expression Lady Sarah’s face had taken.
“It’s true then,” said Lady Amelia, aghast. “You told her to take lovers.”
Tristan shifted uncomfortably. “A suggestion, really. She wasn’t obliged to take me up on it.”
“You…you…you…” sputtered Lady Amelia. Tristan couldn’t decide if she was lost for words or had too many clamoring to get out. “You are a singularly infuriating man.”
He shrugged. “And that was the last I ever saw of Lady Sarah Locksley.”
“But not heard of her.”
“The gossip does have a habit of haunting my footsteps.”
Lady Amelia tapped paintbrush to mouth. “What I don’t follow is how you went from there to Italy. You’re a duke and, really, it’s not an unsurvivable scandal for a duke.”
He sensed a raw spot in her words. “And you would know all about that?”
“I’m acquainted with the subject.”
He didn’t have to tell her the next part, but for some reason he wanted to.
“It was through my mother’s grace and understanding.
She understood that I needed a taste of freedom.
A taste of life outside the structure and inflexibility of being a duke.
So, she came to me with an offer. She would give me five years of freedom.
She’d run the estates during my minority, and she’d do it again. ”
“She offered you the opportunity to experience life as a man, not a duke,” said Lady Amelia. He detected understanding in her words, in her eyes.
“At the end of those five years, I would return and resume my duty.”
“How old were you?”
“Thirty.”
“And what age are you now?”
“Four and thirty.”
“You have one more year.”
“Six months.” Not even.
“You don’t want to return to England.” It wasn’t a question, but a statement of fact.
“Would you?”
“I do.”
Intimacy pulsed between them. Not the sort of intimacy his body wanted from her, but that of the intangible.
An intimacy he couldn’t remember experiencing with anyone else.
Two instincts warred inside him—to draw in…
to pull back. He could ask her why she wanted to return to England so badly and learn more about her, or he could leave it.
The simple fact was he didn’t need to know why, or anything else about Lady Amelia Windermere. It was better if he didn’t. She was already haunting his dreams and turning him into the sort of lech who watched women from outside their windows. Better this bargain was fulfilled and behind them.
“Aren’t you going to ask me to remove my shirt?” he asked.
Like a man who had just lobbed a grenade, he sat back and waited for it to explode.
In an instant, she went tense, and he detected a slight tremble in the hairs of her paintbrush. “Of course.” She swallowed as if her throat had gone suddenly dry. “Will you remove your shirt?”
With deliberate ease, he slipped the garment over his head.
When he opened his eyes, he caught her in the act of staring at him—her gaze roving across his bare chest, drinking in the sight of him.
He’d never had virgin eyes laid upon him.
He felt strangely exposed. What was that flare in her eyes? Desire?
He cleared his throat, and she startled. Stirred into action, she dipped her brush in water and began to pull the fine tip against paper. It was as if he could feel those brush strokes against his skin.
Though phantom, it was quite possibly the most sensual feeling he’d ever almost experienced.
“Do you need me to move?” he asked, feeling as if he needed to say something.
She gave her head a curt shake, entirely immersed in her work.
Surprise ribboned alongside awareness through his body. He hadn’t at all anticipated the intimacy of this experience.
And Lady Amelia… She was sensual—her skill…her focus…everything about her. Before him was the Lady Amelia no one else had ever glimpsed.
He wanted her.
It occurred to him he might sacrifice anything to have her.
“Shall I remove my trousers?” he asked, the question gravel in his throat.
Her gaze flew up to meet his, the brush in her hand gone still, the breath caught in her chest.
“But I must warn you.”
“Of?” she asked, breathless.
“I forgot my fig leaf at home.”
Horror turned into amusement, and she laughed. A relief, that laugh. He thought she would run screaming from her own bedroom. But perhaps Lady Amelia Windermere was made from sterner stuff.
“Um, yes.” She reached for a glass and took a large gulp of water. “You may remove your trousers.”
Tristan stood, and she shifted away, presenting him with the cold of her shoulder and the side of her face as she began fiddling with her paint palette and brushes.
There was no mistaking the stain of red on her cheek as surely the periphery of her eye witnessed the removal of one boot, then the other… the fall of his trousers…
Naked as a Greek statue, he settled back, arms stretched to either side of him along the back of the settee.
And his cock? Well, it was beginning to make a spectacle of itself as it lay half full against his thigh.
“It doesn’t work that way, you know,” he said. What was it about this woman that he enjoyed discomfiting her so?
“What doesn’t?” Still, she didn’t turn.
“You have to look at me to paint me.”
She went very still, took a deep breath, and, at last, shifted her body to face him. Her eyes went wide, and she gasped.
Of course, her gaze would go straight there.