Chapter 13
Darcy stilled.
I might need… your help.
The words struck her rather unpleasantly, lodging deep within her chest, and a flicker of sharp, instinctive alarm passed through her before she mastered it. It was not her place to object. This was Henrietta’s choosing, and Darcy had no authority here beyond her art.
Drawing in a steadying breath, she forced her body to relax, though a faint awareness lingered beneath her skin. She would ignore him. She must. Resolute in that decision, Darcy turned her full attention to Lady Henrietta and reached for her brush, steadying her hand as she prepared to begin.
Henrietta did not speak. Nor did she seem to require instruction.
Instead, she moved to the chaise and reclined with effortless elegance, her head tipping back slightly as though she listened to something within herself rather than to the world around her.
For a moment, she was still. Then, slowly, she lifted her hand.
Darcy watched. At first, the touch was light—almost absentminded—as Henrietta’s fingers traced the line of her throat, drifting downward along the graceful curve of her collarbone.
Darcy’s breath slowed, her focus narrowing as she began to paint, her hand moving almost instinctively across the canvas.
Henrietta’s touch deepened. Her fingers lingered now, pressing slightly, exploring the contours of her own body with a familiarity that startled Darcy. There was something… unguarded in it. Something that felt both private and profoundly revealing.
Darcy had never imagined such a thing. The intimacy of it unsettled her.
And yet she could not look away. Her gaze sharpened, her artist’s mind striving to capture not merely the form, but the feeling that seemed to animate it.
The subtle shifts in Henrietta’s expression, the way her lips parted on a quiet breath, the faint flush that rose along her skin.
She was slowly yielding to the sensation, her composure loosening in a way Darcy recognized at once as a kind of surrender. Henrietta’s breath grew uneven, a soft sound escaping her as her hand slipped between her parted thighs.
Darcy watched, transfixed. Did Henrietta imagine someone as she touched herself?
Did her mind conjure a presence—a lover, a memory, a face that lent meaning to what she felt?
Or was it something else entirely? A turning inward, a yielding not to affection, but to the body alone…
to sensation unbound by sentiment or tenderness?
Darcy’s strokes grew more certain, as she captured the arch of Henrietta’s body, the subtle tension that coiled beneath her movements, the quiet rise and fall of her breath as sensation seemed to build, to crest.
Darcy became aware of herself. Of the strange warmth that had begun to gather low within her. Of the way her own breath had deepened, her pulse quickening in response to what she witnessed.
It was unfamiliar and unsettling. And yet, impossible to ignore.
She shifted slightly upon her stool, her fingers tightening around the brush for a fleeting moment before she forced them to steady.
Her gaze did not waver from the canvas, though her thoughts had begun to scatter, her senses heightened in a way that felt dangerous.
Darcy had thought herself composed and removed from the scenes she painted.
Now she understood how fragile that illusion had been.
The room seemed warmer. And though she remained at her easel, her posture upright, her movements controlled, there was no denying the quiet, insistent awareness that had taken root within her.
Darcy said nothing. She only painted, watched and paid keen attention to the subtle shifts in expression that would give life to her work.
Henrietta’s body responded as though guided by instinct alone, her breaths deepening, her lips parting on soft, unguarded sounds that filled the room with raw and shocking carnality.
The brush trembled faintly between Darcy’s fingers before she steadied it.
Henrietta arched, her movements growing more urgent, her expression loosening into something unrestrained and wanton.
Darcy felt it then—a strange pull, a tightening low within her own body, as though something in her responded in kind, though she did not understand it.
She had not known that a woman could bring herself to such a state.
Nor that she could crest… and crest again.
Darcy’s breath slowed, her gaze fixed, almost enraptured, as Henrietta shuddered and stilled, only to begin once more, chasing that same height with a hunger that seemed to deepen rather than diminish.
Henrietta’s hand stilled at last. Her chest rose and fell, her breath uneven, her body flushed and softened by the intensity of what she had wrought within herself. Then, slowly, she lifted her gaze.
“My lord,” she murmured, her voice low, languid, threaded with wicked invitation. She extended her hand toward him, beckoning. “Come here. Help me ease what remains… I find I desire more.”
Darcy’s hand stilled. Something sharp and immediate twisted through her—so sudden, so fierce, it stole her breath. “No!”
The word left her before she could stop it. Darcy blinked, startled by herself, by the force of it, by the unfamiliar emotion that coiled tight within her chest.
“What?” Henrietta asked, brief confusion flickering on her face.
“I said no.” The thought of him touching Henrietta—of his hands upon her was intolerable. Silence stretched. Darcy forced herself to lower her gaze, to gather what composure she could, though her pulse still raced with that strange, unwelcome intensity.
Darcy glanced at him then and realized he had not moved. Lord Raine regarded Henrietta with a calm that bordered on indifference, his posture relaxed, as though the invitation held no sway over him.
Henrietta pouted and arched with a languid, feline grace. “My lord, I want—”
“I am not interested.”
His refusal, delivered without even a trace of the charm he so often employed, seemed to startle Henrietta into stillness.
“I think,” she said at last, a note of frustration creeping into her tone as she rose, “that you have seen sufficient for your painting.”
Darcy inclined her head, her voice steadier now. “Yes.”
Henrietta gave a careless shrug, drawing her peignoir more loosely about her shoulders as she moved toward the door. With a final, displeased glance, she quit the room, the door closing behind her with a soft, decisive click.
Silence returned. Darcy remained where she was for a moment, her thoughts unsettled, her senses still heightened from all she had witnessed.
Then, slowly, she lifted her gaze. And found his already upon her.
Something in his expression held her there—something intent, something searching that made it impossible to look away.
“Why did you refuse?” she asked softly, the question slipping free before she could reconsider it. “Were you not… stirred by her actions?”
“No.”
Darcy stilled. Her gaze, almost of its own accord, dropped.
Rebecca’s words returned to her then, unbidden—that a man’s body would betray his desire, that it would not remain concealed when he was roused.
Darcy hesitated only a fraction before allowing her eyes to lower further.
His trousers were unaltered. No sign of arousal.
Slowly, she lifted her gaze once more and found him watching her.
A slow smile curved his mouth. “I do not want her. And so her actions, and all that accompanied them, hold no particular allure for me.”
Darcy drew in a quiet breath. “I think… I shall take my leave,” she said softly, rising from her seat.
He did not move, though he did not obstruct her either. Instead, he regarded her with that same intent focus that seemed to see more than she wished revealed.
“Where do you go,” he asked, “when you depart from here?”
Darcy paused, then allowed a faint smile to touch her lips as she gathered her gloves. “How curious of you to inquire.”
“Most oddly so,” he returned, without apology.
She tilted her head slightly. “I go home to my family.”
Something shifted in his expression at that, subtle yet unmistakable. “Are you married?”
The question was simply spoken, yet there was an undercurrent that brushed against her instincts with quiet warning.
She ought to lie. The thought came swiftly, sharply.
It would be safer. Safer to be uninteresting.
Safer to be beyond his sensual provocation.
For she knew it now, with a clarity that unsettled her—this man was capable of seducing her, and she…
she was not certain she would refuse him.
This place had already begun to reveal its dangers, for it loosened the mind, stirred a restless curiosity, and tempted one to forget what ought, above all, to matter. Darcy met his gaze. “Would you believe me,” she asked lightly, “if I told you I was?”
He stilled. “Yes,” he said, after only a breath.
Darcy laughed then, soft and unguarded. “How surprising. I had thought you believed me to be quite the na?ve and innocent creature.”
A smile curved his mouth. “There are many women who are married and yet remain wholly unacquainted with their husbands. Some have never seen him unclothed, nor known more than a perfunctory visit to their bed once a week, conducted under the strictest propriety and in near darkness.”
Darcy stared at him. “Truly?”
“Yes.”
“I am not yet married,” she said at last.
His gaze sharpened slightly. “Not yet? Does that imply a gentleman has laid claim to your attentions?”
“No,” she replied, with a faint lift of her chin.
His smile returned, though it carried a hint of danger, of intent held just beneath the surface. It dispossessed her of her senses for several beats, and yet she did not look away.
“Will you dance with me?”
Darcy blinked. “Dance?”
“There is a ballroom on the lower floor,” he said, as though the notion were the most natural in the world. “And tonight, the illusion of propriety is indulged. The arrangements are made to resemble a society assembly.”
Darcy laughed, the sound bright with disbelief. “How astonishing. That people should come to a place such as this, leaving behind all pretense of decorum, only to recreate it for their own amusement. They are truly bored.”
His gaze held hers. “What they enjoy is the knowledge that wickedness lies only a step beyond it.”
Darcy considered that, her amusement softening into something more thoughtful. “I do not know how to dance,” she admitted, a faint flush rising to her cheeks.
“I will teach you.”
She studied him. “Why?”
“Because I wish to dance with you. I confess, I find the notion as unexpected as you do.”
A slow breath left her. “Am I so easily read,” she asked dryly, “even behind a mask?”
“Yes.”
She laughed again. “There is a part of me tempted to accept,” Darcy murmured, almost to herself. “But that same part warns me it would be exceedingly unwise to say yes to a man of your particular charm.”
His gaze darkened slightly, amusement flickering beneath it. “Flattery,” he said, “will gain you everything with me, Miss Red.”
Darcy’s lips curved despite herself, even as her pulse began to quicken once more, that same dangerous awareness stirring low within her. And still, she did not retreat from him, nor from the madness of the temptation that held her fast.