Chapter Twenty
Aedan savored her warmth and the fit of his hands along her natural curves through the slick of heavy silk under his palms. She looked up at him, motionless, beautiful, adoring.
“Spectacles,” he reminded her.
She lifted the steel frames from her nose and set them on a table. Aedan gathered her close again, fingers spread across the small of her back.
“Good!” John said. “Hold that.”
Her hands rested on his chest, fabric sandwiched between his torso and hers. Her breasts were soft and full against his chest. The freedom their posing sessions allowed stirred and aroused him. He shifted his hips to retain his dignity.
These posing sessions night after night were sweet torture.
Her slight weight against him, her warm, firm body, the play of textures under his hands, the thickness of her unbound hair, set him afire.
He ached to kiss and caress her thoroughly, he burned to continue what had begun on a rainy afternoon in an ancient storage chamber.
How much longer could he pretend he was impervious, that she was merely a friend? Every day tested his mettle. She had seeped into every part of his life, blood, bone, and being.
“They meet secretly in her bower and are about to be parted,” John said as he drew on the paper tacked to the easel, the chalk-and-charcoal drawings that he would transfer to the wall to prepare for painting.
“She is to marry her father’s choice of groom, but she cannot bear to part from her Druid lover.
They need each other. I want to show that. ”
Stop, Aedan thought. He was nearly ready to throttle the man.
John was absorbed in his drawing, chalk dashing over sheets of paper that flew off the easel to rest untidy on the table.
He began new sketches, hardly stopping between.
Aedan glimpsed elegant studies of faces, hands, and drapery, and several full-length couples, bodies joined like rising fountains, passion and love expressed in fluid lines.
“That standing pose is beautiful,” John said, glancing back and forth between page and models. “They are enchanted, these two, swept up in the magic.”
“Oh,” Christina breathed. Aedan sighed. She was like a flame stoking his own fire.
John came toward them to adjust his sister’s gown. “Tilt your shoulder, that’s good. What a graceful line from throat to shoulder.” He retreated to his easel.
Though Aedan had seen countless feminine bosoms bursting from countless lowcut dinner gowns, he had never seen a sweep of skin as alluring as Christina’s shoulder emerging from a simple tunic.
He stood silent and motionless, trying to ignore the demands of his body and, blast it all, his heart. He was well and truly caught.
“Tip your head closer to hers, Aedan,” John said. “The very picture of love.”
“Good God,” Aedan muttered as Christina widened her eyes. This modeling venture had been a colossal mistake.
Listening to the whisper of chalk on paper, the sputter of a candle, Christina’s soft, rapid breathing, he thought he might go mad. His body heated like steel in a forge, and he could only stand there like a blasted statue.
“‘Struck deep to her soul, the winsome creature smiled,’” John said after a while, reciting Sir Hugh’s poem while he drew.
Aedan strived to listen and detach from the feel of her in his arms. John had a rich baritone and knew the poem well.
Years had passed since Aedan had heard The Enchanted Briar spoken aloud.
Now, John’s voice wove the story anew, Christina took deep breaths in his arms, and suddenly Aedan understood the poem as he never had before, poignant passion and tragedy.
“‘She lay among the briars, lost to him. Lost!’” John recited while he drew. “‘Fallen among the wanton blooms and cruel thorns—’” he continued.
Oh my love, come back to me, and oh my love, come home.
But she drifted moorless upon a distant sea where no soul sails but for the last time.
Hearing a sniffle, Aedan looked down. Christina’s eyes welled with tears. “Sorry. That verse always makes me cry,” she whispered, chin wobbling.
Aedan murmured wordless sympathy, pressing her closer. She sniffled again.
John looked up. “I know you two are not the best of friends, given that hill and the stones and all. But I must ask you to pretend to kiss. Act enraptured if you can. But remember, sir,” John added, “she is my sister. This is just for the painting.”
“Of course,” Aedan murmured. His heart slammed. He moved close, touched his lips to her, felt her breathy moan, and silently cursed the posing sessions, the silk under his hands, the legend of Dundrennan that held him back from what he deeply wanted. Needed.
John set down his chalk and stood back. “I left some sketches in the library where I was copying some details from engravings of Pictish objects. I will be back soon. Take a break, you two, and rest.” He grabbed his cane and left the room, closing the door.
The immediate silence was heavy. Aedan straightened, fighting the thunder within, blood pounding. He began to release her—and simply could not.
“Damn it,” he breathed, an apology of sorts, and pulled her to him. He kissed her soundly and thoroughly, curving her back, feeling her lips open beneath his. A fierce hunger overtook him as he kissed her, slaked, drew back, delved again like a man dying of thirst.
“Aedan, God,” she breathed, and cupped his face, pressed against him. He took her with his mouth, his tongue, his hands slipping up and down, but could not quench his thirst for her. His hands trembled on her waist, sliding over silk as he gripped her arching hips.
He could not hide how profoundly he wanted her.
Pulling her forward, he arched into her, and let her feel his mounting desire.
She moaned into his mouth and moved her hips.
He thought he might succumb, then and there.
Again he kissed her, deeper, open, and felt the delicate, wet caress of her tongue upon his own.
Then the door handle turned, and the candle flame vanished in the draft as John entered. Cloaked in sudden darkness. Aedan ended the heartrending kiss and drew back, pulling his woolen tunic and cloak close.
John relit the candles and Aedan resumed the pose.
He could feel Christina’s heartbeat thumping against his chest. His mind was foggy and he could not remember their exact pose.
Drawing her to him, he set one hand on her waist and with his free hand, captured her fingers against his chest, his furiously beating heart.
John looked up. “Ah, you changed the pose. I like this one even better.”
Damn this whole infernal business, Aedan thought, and gave John a thin smile.
*
“I’m finally painting now on the dining-room walls,” John told Christina later, after an hour of posing. She ached from holding some positions too long, and stood bouncing on the balls of her feet and swinging her arms as she listened to her brother.
At the other end of the room, Aedan looked like a man desperate for movement, pacing and scowling to himself. The tension of the passion between them had been high that evening; his hands had felt hot enough to burn, while her body had throbbed.
“I would love to see what you’ve done on the walls,” she said to John, just as Aedan strode into an adjacent room and closed the door.
“I’m transferring the drawings and laying in some ground color. I might ask Miss Amy to help with it. She has been assisting me in the library, searching for historical detail.”
Christina nodded, looking at several drawings spread out on a table where John had laid them out in order, like large cartoons telling a story.
With the sharp point of a compass, he had punched tiny holes around the sketched figures.
The next step, she knew, would be to tack them on the walls, which had been prepared with whitewash, and begin to pounce charcoal powder over the punched marks.
When the drawings were removed, John would trace the charcoal marks and begin painting.
She had seen the process often enough to assist her brother. But she was rather pleased that he suggested Amy’s chatty help instead. As she and John spoke, she looked up to see Aedan return to the room.
Deep inside, she felt something bound, almost joyful, at the mere sight of him.
He had changed from the tunic to the coat and kilt he had worn at dinner, when Mrs. Gunn and one of the Jeanies had served beef and barley soup and lemon pudding.
She had spilled some pudding on her blouse, and Aedan had handed her his napkin, dipped in water.
Little touches and contacts and murmurs meant so much to her now.
She rose from her seat, smoothing her loosely cut costume. “I must change, too.”
“Chrissy, no one but us will know if you go to your room still in costume,” John said. “Everyone is asleep by now except the three of us.”
“I suppose I could.” She considered the tedium of putting on stays, crinoline, petticoats, blouse, skirt, and waister just to go to her room and undress. “My blouse needs cleaning, after all. Tomorrow I should take it to Effie MacDonald. It’s laundry day.”
“Do that, and do not bother to change now,” John said. “We will not tell.”
“Aye, then.” She went to the adjacent room to gather her folded things, bundling them in her arms, though the crinolines looped out awkwardly.
Aedan removed his jacket and slipped it gallantly over her shoulders, then took the bundle from her to carry her things.
“Oh! Thank you.” Surprised, she wrapped his large coat snugly around her, breathing in its owner’s spicy, earthy scent. Kissing John’s cheek, she avoided Aedan’s steady gaze, wishing she could kiss him too, and more.
“I will stay here for a while to finish some studies,” John said. “Good night.”
“Good night.” Christina exited through the door that Aedan opened. He followed, holding a flaming candle and dish in one hand and her bundled clothing under his free arm. When she turned to head for the wide staircase, he stopped her.