Painting in Paris
A lady should not be alone with a man in a hotel room.
Julia stood in the middle of the living area, on the elegant Turkish carpet. She was surrounded by furnishings of royal blue silk and gilt in the style of Louis XIV. A canvas was set up near the window. The deep blue and gold curtains were tied back, and Paris glittered below them. Cal was pouring champagne.
Julia could just imagine Mother falling into a swoon at the thought of her doing such a scandalous thing. In England, if a rumor began to spread that she had been in Cal’s room her reputation would be in shreds.
Of course, nothing would happen. This was for her to sit for a portrait. She knew he loved Alice and she believed Cal would not try to seduce her. He’d teased her with that before, but he’d proven himself honorable.
“You aren’t going to want me to take off my clothes, are you?” She had wanted adventure in Paris. And for art, why would she be so nervous about doing that? Could she do it?
The champagne bottle jerked in his hand and the stream flew clear of the glass.
“I’m not sure if I can do it,” she admitted. “Tonight, I met the most exciting, artistic people of our times and—and I was shocked. By what they said, how they live, the fact some of them take both men and women as lovers.” She sighed ruefully. “I’m simply not modern. I don’t belong in this world. Even if you asked me to pose naked to save Worthington, I now know I couldn’t do it. I’m not daring and brave. I’m dull and boring. A true English lady.”
Champagne dripped off his hand and Cal grabbed one of his painting rags to clean up. “You are anything but dull and boring. Just because you were shocked doesn’t mean you don’t belong here. I’m not going to ask you to take off your clothes. You’re something special, Julia. Something remarkable and unique. You are really the perfect lady.”
Strangely, she wasn’t so sure she liked that. She didn’t know quite what he meant. She thought Cal disliked perfect ladies.
He handed her the flute of champagne. She sipped and the bubbles tickled her nose.
“I’ll show you how I want you to pose. Fully clothed.” He pulled a stool over so it stood in front of the window and the view of Paris. “First, I want you to sit there. Talk to me.”
As she settled down delicately, Cal took off his dress jacket and his tie. Watching his shoulders and back move and his muscles bunch made her feel giddy. He kicked off shoes and socks so he was barefoot. Even in his fine shirt and tailored trousers, he looked bohemian. Wild.
But his heart was Alice’s.
He began to squirt paint onto his palette.
“Why do you need to paint me?”
“Because you’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life and an artist gets an obsession to record something like that,” he said.
The champagne was loosening her inhibitions—on top of the cocktails she’d drunk. He gave instructions and she sat as he wanted. As he sketched on the canvas, he kept looking at her so intensely. With a hot, penetrating gaze. She knew it was just to get the detail, but she felt her cheeks grow warm.
Giggling a little, she said, “You told me that the staff of the hotel knew you because you came here to celebrate after you sold a painting. I don’t believe that. They know you too well.”
“What I told you was true. Whenever I sold a painting, I always came here. I tipped well, which guarantees they’ll look after you and remember you.” He shrugged. “I always took the viewpoint that money would come from somewhere, so I spent it when I had it.”
“Truly? Even though you had been poor?” The English aristocracy used to take it for granted they would be the upper tier of society, with grand houses and grand lives. They feared losing everything now. Brideswell was safe, but she remembered how terrifying it was to fear losing her home and having the tenants lose theirs. That was why she sympathized with Lady Worthington, Diana and her sisters.
“Having been poor once meant I wasn’t scared of being poor again,” he said. “After the War, everything felt like heaven. Even camping out and sleeping beneath the stars felt like luxury after catching a few minutes’ sleep standing up in a trench that was ankle-deep in sloppy, stinking cold water.”
“You camped under the stars?” Goodness, had he not been able to afford a roof over his head?
He laughed. “That shocks you, doll? I went to paint the north—the wilds in the north of Canada, just below the Arctic Circle. There are artists painting landscapes not as dainty places tamed by men, but as wild and untamed land. I joined them, canoeing into the north, then camping and sketching.”
“But didn’t you get wet and cold?”
“I set up a canvas tent. I had to fit what I took in a canoe.” He grinned. “I had a sleeping sack made of waterproof cloth and sheep’s wool. I cooked food over a campfire. I learned I could live with very few belongings.”
She stared at him, amazed. He was so intriguing—he knew so much, had done so much.
He sketched, looking at her, then at the easel.
She loved to watch him draw, with all his focus on the picture. He brushed his hair back as he worked, as the pencil flew over the canvas. He frowned, smiled, grimaced, as if experiencing all the emotions possible in the minutes while he sketched.
She couldn’t stop watching him. She wanted to touch him.
All of him.
Suddenly the room felt hotter than even on the most baking summer’s day. But she couldn’t touch him. She couldn’t have a love affair with a man who truly loved someone else.
“I would be scared of being poor,” she admitted. “I don’t have that much courage.”
“I think you have a lot of courage,” he said.
She was about to shake her head, then remembered models were not supposed to move. “I don’t really. I just hide things very well. Ladies do. For a long time, we had no money and we thought we would have to lose Brideswell. But the aristocracy wants to ‘keep up appearances.’ We threw dinner parties we could not afford and ate tiny meals as a family. We burned fewer fires and shivered more in the winters. We shut up much of the house.”
“What would you have done if you’d lost the house?”
“I guess we would have found somewhere smaller to live. We would have had much less, but we would have still tried to carry on as if nothing changed. That is what people like us do.”
He shook his head. “You come from a world I’m never going to understand.”
“It doesn’t make sense to me anymore, either. Our world has value and meaning but it needs new ideas—it needs men like you. You truly were born to be an earl,” she insisted. “To be a true self-made man, you are obviously quite brilliant at business. And you truly care about people. You are probably more qualified to be an earl than most men who have the title.”
He didn’t answer.
She went on, in a voluble rush, “You could make Worthington into a great place. You could marry Alice Hayes and have a family. You could be happy.”
“Marry Alice?”
“I—I overheard her tell you that she is in love with you. I am sorry. That was most unladylike of me. I know you don’t want to hurt your brother—”
“Julia, there are a hell of a lot of reasons I wouldn’t marry Alice. David is only one of them.”
He looked past her at the city beyond, and she was sure he was drawing in the background. She knew she mustn’t stop now. “I understand why you hate Worthington. How could you ever forgive the old earl and the countess? But it was their mistake and it’s wrong for innocent people to suffer—”
“They forced my mother into committing a sin—at least she believed it was a sin. Mam apologized to me. She said she was already damned forever. She said she was better dead than alive to poison us. Don’t you see I can’t forgive that? Goddamn them. I hope there is a damn curse.”
Julia jumped at his rage. She almost fell off the stool. “A sin? I don’t understand—”
“It was my fault, don’t you see? My fault... Christ.” He threw the palette to the floor.
She was shocked. His head was bowed. His shoulders were tense, his hands fisted. She got off the stool. “Whatever it was, whatever this sin was, it was not your fault.”
“It was. It—Damn, you don’t know.”
She kept trying to reassure him.
Tears glittered in his eyes and she thought of a fourteen-year-old, too late to save his mother, blaming himself for her death. It was so wrong.
“Maybe you are right,” she whispered. “Maybe Worthington has been poisoned by pride and arrogance. If there was a way to ensure the people who live on the estate are safe, I guess I would say—destroy it.”
“Julia—”
She jumped off the stool, hurried to him. She kissed him. A passionate kiss.
He pulled away, cupping her face. Then he groaned with such frustration and pain, she felt it shiver down her spine.
Cal braced his hand against the top of the canvas. He tossed the pencil to the small ornate table beside him. “I’m going crazy, Julia. Crazy with wanting you.” His blue eyes blazed at her. “You’re the real reason I wouldn’t marry Alice. I thought I loved her—until I met you.” He kissed her again, trailed kisses down her neck and she was turning to steam.
She should stop him. She was still a lady. Years of training told her that she must not do this. She had been taught five words: wait until your wedding night.
But she wanted Cal.
His arms went around her and he swept her up off her feet. He lifted her so high that an instinct kicked in and she wrapped her legs around his hips so she didn’t fall.
She didn’t want him to stop and she knew, with a lady’s intuition, that they were perilously close to the point she must stop him.
His lips trailed over her jawline. Teasing sensations made her whimper.
His mouth skimmed down, and he eased the straps down her shoulder—the straps of her dress and her brassiere.
She knew he would kiss her nipple. He couldn’t—he mustn’t—but she ached for it. Her nipple puckered and poked against the firm fabric of her lingerie. Her back arched, lifting her bosom toward him. His lips trailed over her skin, above the lacy trimming of her undergarment.
Julia never dreamed she would physically hurt with the wanting.
His hand cupped the top of her thigh and she gasped. She’d never had anyone touch her so close to her private place. His rough palm slid up her bare thigh, above her rolled-down stockings. Oh, the touch of fingers on her skin—
He pulled something out of the back waistband of his trousers. His paintbrush. A clean one. He brushed the soft bristles across her lower lip. Then down, across her collarbones, into the low neckline of her dress to caress the swells of her breasts held up by her brassiere.
With his paintbrush he teased her all over. He drew up the skirt of her dress, revealing her girdle and her panties. Up went the brush, making her tremble. The soft bristles tickled her inner thighs.
She moaned with the sheer need.
Cal got onto his knees in front of her. He took hold of her girdle, unfastened it and drew it down. She stared at him, but she didn’t want to stop. Then she stood in front of him in her filmy underpants. He leaned forward and kissed her. There, right between her legs, against her silk undies.
She almost died of shock.
He swept her up into his arms and carried her easily to the bedroom. Julia gasped as she saw the huge ornate bed, festooned with silk and gilt, and large enough to fit the entire court of Louis XIV on top of it.
She wanted Cal. But this was disaster. Every lady knew that. Panic took her. Panic she couldn’t stop or control. “No!”
He set her down on her feet.
“I can’t. I want to, but I don’t dare. I know you have no intention of marrying me. I desire you like I have never desired any other man. But I can’t have a love affair.”
* * *
Cal panted hard, his brain full of hot desire. One promise would be all it took. One question.
He’d come to Worthington full of rage. Being in Paris with Julia had been the sweetest time of his life. He’d loved seeing her delight, her shock. She made him laugh, made his heart glow. She made him want something more than anger and revenge.
He wanted to laugh with her, make love to her. Wanted to watch her eyes go wide and flash with pleasure when she came beneath him. Or on top of him. He was more than happy to bow to a woman’s desire for equal control in sex.
He wanted it so much his every breath hurt.
“I won’t ruin you, Julia. I wouldn’t do that to you.”
Yet even as he made that promise, he knew he needed her. “I was thinking of asking you to marry me.”
“Just so you could sleep with me? Cal, that’s a terrible reason.”
He laughed; a raw, hoarse laugh from deep inside him. She had no idea what a damn hellish thing he was doing—proposing to her when she didn’t know the truth about him. “A better reason than an aristocratic one like marrying you to get your dowry or a tract of land. At least marrying you for lust would be all about you, doll.”
“That is rid—” She broke off. “I suppose it is true. But it’s not a very wise reason.”
He stroked her hair “Marrying me would be a dangerous thing for you. I wouldn’t accept separate bedrooms and discreet visits for the purpose of making an heir.” He didn’t know what he was doing—trying to scare her into saying no? To ease his conscience. When he ached for her.
“I don’t believe that is what I want.”
He took her hand, led her to the bed. He sat on the end of it, pulling her with him. He pulled her onto his lap. Felt her rounded bottom settle on him, smelled her light rosy perfume, gazed at her perfect profile. And something happened to him. He threw aside any noble part of him.
“I’d want to take you around the world while I paint,” he said, keeping his voice low and seductive. “I’d want to sleep under a lean-to with you in the north, cuddled tight together against the cold of frost.”
She caught her breath. And he was holding his. Expecting her to turn him down flat. Giving her every reason why she shouldn’t want him—except the real one.
“I wouldn’t mind that,” she breathed. “Being with you—every moment I’ve spent with you—has made me see there’s something I couldn’t live without in marriage.”
“What’s that?” he asked, all innocence, even as he trailed his lips down her neck, then nipped the very base of it.
She moaned and he felt a jolt of lust and pain. “What can’t you live without?” he asked again.
“Passion,” she squeaked.
The way she said it, all wrapped up in ladylike nerves, only served to make him want her more. Wanting her was a feeling more powerful than the beat of his heart.
“You could marry me,” he said, “if you were willing to live a nomadic life with me.”
“But I want you to find a home. To build a family and be happy. What if there are children? They can’t live in a tent or be taken all over the world.”
“Worthington will never be my home.”
“I haven’t changed you at all, have I?” she asked softly. “It’s not you selling Worthington that frightens me now. Doing so will not give you peace from the past or change anything that happened. It won’t make your past go away. It won’t heal your pain.”
“If I gave you the choice, Julia, would you choose Worthington over me?”
“It doesn’t have to be a choice.”
“Yes.” His voice was cool and low. “It does.”
“No, it doesn’t.” She moved away from him.
“If you don’t marry me, I’d sell the damn place in a heartbeat.”
Her eyes went wide. “You can’t blackmail me into marriage.”
“I can.”
“No, you cannot. This is a mistake. A terrible mistake.” She jumped off the bed to her feet. “I’m going back to my room.” She pushed her skirt back down so it covered her thighs. Hiking up her straps, she hurried to the door. Cal followed her and saw her snatch up her girdle. He almost smiled as she clutched it to her chest and ran out into the hall.
He stalked over to the champagne bottle in the bucket. The hell with a glass. He lifted it to his lips and drank straight from the fancy bottle.
He knew loss and he knew pain. He’d lost his father and mother. Both deaths—in a way—had been his fault. He had witnessed hell in the War. He’d seen David wounded. He knew what it was like to have your heart broken by grief and pain.
But right now, it felt like his heart had shattered. Into pieces too small to ever fix.
He couldn’t lose Julia.
Every moment he’d spent with her flashed before his eyes, like a moving picture. The first night he saw her on the terrace, sparkling as if all the stars in the world surrounded her. Her determined vow to make him love Worthington. Her glowing smiles for young Ben. Her strength when she helped Ellen. How she’d gamely herded the pigs.
He loved her. More deeply, more intensely than he’d loved anyone.
He shouldn’t marry her. Not a girl like Julia. He had no right to her, but he was going to make her his. And he would sell his soul to do it—that’s what Mam would say, wasn’t it? That keeping the truth from Julia was as good as lying to her. Marrying her that way had to be a sin.
* * *
Julia knew a lady should probably throw herself on the bed and cry. But she jumped on her bed and pummeled it with her fists.
Inside, she was all wound up. And all mixed-up. Had he seriously offered marriage—or was it a joke? Or was he just trying to get her into his bed?
A knock sounded at her door. “Julia, it’s Cal. I want to ask you to marry me. Seriously this time. Honest.”
His words answered her unspoken question so clearly, it stunned her. Sometimes she’d imagined a proposal from Cal—imaginings she wouldn’t even admit to herself. She never dreamed she would feel as if walking across clouds to receive it. As if she could fly, as if she were lighter than air, but tentative and full of nerves, too.
The instant she opened her door, Cal dropped down on one knee and took her hand. “You’ve changed me, Julia. I know Worthington means so much to you. You don’t know how much it touched me to have you say you agreed with me—that maybe the place is poisoned and should be destroyed.”
She was about to speak, but he rushed on. “Julia, I’d rather live with you at Worthington than live in pain and anger for the rest of my life. I need you. A life without you would be too empty for me to bear. I love you. You’ve changed me because I love you. Would you do me the honor of marrying me?”
“I didn’t change you,” she whispered. Her throat was so tight. “You’ve always been a loyal, loving, good man. I know that from everything you have done for your brother, for Ellen and the Brands.”
Cal got to his feet. What did it mean when a man got off his knee during a proposal, before she’d answered? Had she ruined the moment? Julia struggled to find a rule of polite behavior to deal with such a thing—
He drew her out to the terrace, holding her hand. He walked with her to the railing. Lights sparkled all around her, streamed up the Eiffel Tower and shimmered at the dizzying top.
“In front of all Paris, Julia, tell me—do you care for me enough to marry me?”
She sucked in a breath. She saw the vulnerability in his eyes. The hope.
“You’re the most wonderful woman I’ve ever met,” he said softly. “You’re ladylike and elegant—”
“I thought you didn’t like such things.”
“I adore them about you. But you also have all the kindness my mother always had. You truly care about people. You are too good for me. I’ve no right to ask you to become my wife—”
“Stop that. I love you—” She hesitated. “And you are really willing to keep Worthington?”
“Yes, Julia.”
“Then, yes, I will marry you. Yes! Very much yes! But we should be modern about this. Are you, Cal Carstairs, willing to become my husband?”
He grinned, dazzling her. “With all my heart, Julia.”