Chapter Thirteen

Patience woke a second time when the sun was high in the sky, the bright light of a crisp late-spring day flooding the room. She tensed her thighs. A lingering soreness accompanied the ghostly impression of his huge cock.

She reached a hand to Ashcroft’s side of the bed. It was empty. Her eyelids fluttered open. Oh yes. He’d gone some time ago. Before he’d left, she’d asked him how he could be up at such an ungodly hour. “I don’t sleep much. Never have.”

It made a certain amount of sense. A man like the marquess, with his vibrancy and vitality, wouldn’t have time for something as mundane as sleep.

She smiled, stretched, and leaned over the bed to pull the cord. Waiting for the servant, she slipped into a wrap that had been set along the foot of the bed, then grabbed the discarded curtain and replaced it over the mirror on the headboard.

By God in heaven. She’d done it. It’d been real. She’d lain with a man. She’d watched herself do it, too. She was no longer a virgin—and thanks be for that. Patience smiled. Thoroughly debauched, that’s what she was. Thoroughly, happily, and wonderfully debauched.

A maid arrived. A woman of about thirty-five years, with a pleasantly featured, ordinary kind of face, and an easy demeanor to match, who introduced herself as Dinah. “May I fetch you a tray, Mrs. Warrington?”

“Chocolate please, Dinah. Your very biggest pot.” Patience smoothed the bedclothes. She was going to have whatever she pleased, enjoy it, and not spare one thought of another person.

“Of course. Anything else?”

Patience paused. Did she dare? Yes. Yes, she did dare. And not because the marquess had fucked her twice and called her beautiful. Because she—Patience Emery, unrepentant of any appetite, sexual or otherwise—was now living by her own rules and utterly bereft of apology. “No, two of your biggest pots. Nothing else.”

Dinah’s face remained unchanged, the picture of the perfectly trained servant. Of course, the Marquess of Ashcroft would demand no less, so it shouldn’t have been surprising.

Patience was used to her mother involving the servants in her plots to “help” Patience. Another stinging layer of humiliation, like a blanket woven of nettles and cast about her huge shoulders. Another burden she could shuck readily enough, for when she returned to her old life, she would not be the same.

She was changed—for the better, too. No more interference from servants would be tolerated, her mother’s orders or no. It was not their place, nor their concern.

“Very good, Mrs. Warrington.”

“Thank you, Dinah.”

After the maid left, Patience slipped out of bed and found her writing book, a stub of pencil, and a volume of poetry. Back in the covers, she shifted the track of her thoughts to the next chapter of The Haunted Tower, wrote in fits and starts until the tray came, and read while relishing the morning indulgence.

An hour later, after savoring every last sip of the thick chocolaty goodness and properly dressed, she had a servant point her in the direction of the marquess. He’d transformed the castle’s old solar into a studio. Easels strewn about the long room could be seen through the open doorway as she approached. She ducked to pass through into a narrow space with high wooden beams lining the pitched ceiling, and leaded windows allowing in northern light. The gaping fireplace stood empty, and an earthy smell hit her nose, pleasant. Reminiscent of him.

Ashcroft watched her from the middle of the room. He stood enclosed in a circle of easels spread about a foot apart—eight in all—and wore nothing but white shirtsleeves, fawn trousers, and black boots. His hair was wavy, a bit disheveled, but he could not have looked more perfect. “I’ve been waiting for you, Miss Emery.”

This was the man she’d allowed inside her body. First, he’d tasted her. Then he’d felt her. Then he’d fucked her. She’d watched his cock sink into her flesh. Watched them join their bodies. Felt him inside her, so big and hard and insistent.

When he looked at her, she never wanted him to stop. Because with him, she wasn’t merely another beautiful object in a life cluttered with so many pretty things, the word had lost its meaning. Quite the contrary. With him, she was the most beautiful living, breathing, passionate creature in the world.

She wanted to try everything again, from start to finish. Move together, feel together, find ecstasy together. Set free their untamed desires. All the things no other person would allow in her, he coaxed from her and cherished in her. “You’ve done all this since we’ve come?”

“No, not all. I brought some to reference.”

“Reference?” She tore her gaze from one canvas to glance at him.

“Some who write will travel with books. I paint. I travel with drawings.”

“I never thought about it before.” It wasn’t the way of traveling with a book or a bit of stitching to entertain oneself on the journey. “May I have a look, my lord?”

He bowed graciously. “I would be honored.”

She padded across the thick carpeting strewn over the stone floor, wool soft from years of wear. There were other easels and half-finished canvases littered around the place. Drawings on paper were strewn over every surface, some even on the floor as if having been blown by the wind from an open window. Some of the pictures were decidedly erotic. Others were subtly so.

Patience stepped into the circle, like the fairy rings she’d danced in as a child, imagining a world permeated with magic. Her breath caught. There were four paintings in all. Each was a jewel, the colors lifelike, but more so—rich and brilliant. Her color vision was perfect, but seeing these brought a rush of awareness of how much there was in each sweep of the eye that went unremarked upon.

“They’re beautiful.” Except her insipid words did the pictures no justice. They weren’t beautiful. They were extraordinary. “I’ve never seen anything like them.”

Damn the wobble in her voice. The paintings were unfinished. They had no right to be so moving.

Each canvas showed a woman, the same one in all four, with an unusual golden shade of hair and tilt of the nose. The subject was nude, but neither overtly aware or unaware of the male gaze upon her. It was about watching and being seen…and somehow neither, but a moment’s repose being nothing but what she was.

Patience turned to the marquess, the man before her suddenly far more complicated than she’d expected. She’d spent the brief time at Glenrose waiting for the mask to fall and him to reveal his true self. She’d thought she’d have to wait longer.

How blind she’d been. He’d never been anything other than his true self. Truer than all the hypocrites who denied their base needs and subverted their carnal nature. “How do you do this?”

He lifted his brows at her and glanced around before looking back at her. “What do think it is I do?”

It wasn’t as if he wondered, but as if he tested her.

Patience bit her tongue, looking at him anew. Her preconceptions were swept away like the seeds on the ball of a dandelion under a breath of spring air. If he saw into people with such sharp, cutting clarity, she’d have expected him—until the moment she saw his paintings—to make a mockery of others.

That idea, though, was naught but her own failing. She was too used to mockery, expecting it, whether they voiced it or not, from everyone in the world but her parents.

Words from the night she and Ashcroft had met echoed in her mind: But remember this, Miss Emery, when I engage in pleasantries, I don’t make them at the expense of other people.

Why had she not believed him?

Because she was a fool. She, wholeheartedly, with no small amount of weary acceptance, surrendered herself to the assumption that every person with whom she crossed paths in a day made a judgment about her. If anyone should know better than to slot a person into a box in which they did not belong, it was her.

The marquess touched Patience’s arm. “Miss Emery? Are you well?”

“Forgive me, my lord.” She brought her hand to rest upon her chest in that space on her skin between her collarbones and cleavage.

His face darkened with concern. “I’ve upset you. Let me take you to the chair and call for tea.”

“Nothing of the sort. No, please.” She didn’t allow him to move her from where they stood, almost murmuring the next words. “You are what you are without apology or regret.”

“Yes. It’s what I hope for everyone.” He gently took her by the chin and tilted her face up. “Most especially you, Mrs. Warrington.”

A new awareness grew between them. And with it, the tension assumed a new intensity. What he’d said about being who one was without apology or regret. Ashcroft lived those words. If this man ever tried fitting in a mold, it would be a mold of his own making, and be nothing the world had ever seen.

They had pictures on the walls back home. A few precious portraits of ancestors, none of them done well enough to imagine they captured a likeness. The rest depicted a single subject. The great love of her father’s life—His Majesty’s ships.

Those paintings did nothing that Ashcroft’s did. Looking upon them, one’s eyes were not opened. One’s senses were not heightened. They never increased awareness of the color and light and beauty in the world. Maybe for her father, but not for her.

Patience swallowed and looked away. It was too much, at least for now. There were many new things to think about, but now was neither the time nor the place. “These are beautiful. I want to see them.”

“You’re not offended?”

“Good gracious, no.”

“I broke my own rule when I began them. I always ask before painting someone. With you, though, I couldn’t help myself.”

Startled, Patience’s gaze flew back to the paintings. They depicted her? Oh Lord, they did. She examined each in detail, looking more carefully this time.

The body she’d been told to hide and cover all her life was now quite prominently on display, without a hint of remorse. And the way he depicted her—it wasn’t as if he were using her to make a point or flagrantly defy…well, anything.

It was so much simpler than that. She was just beautiful. The way she’d always been. The way she was always meant to be seen.

Ashcroft’s brows rose, and he spoke slowly. “You didn’t realize they were you?”

“No.”

“These are nothing but sketches, mind you. I take three or four of the pencil sketches I like best and see what I think of them as a painting. If I like one, I’ll spend months on it. If I don’t…” He shrugged.

“If you don’t?”

“I start over or move on.” Ashcroft shrugged. “These are my current projects. Whether I’ll work on them here or not, I don’t know, but I can’t take the chance that I’ll need to work on them.”

Patience wandered through the studio. The paintings were at every stage of completion. Some were in their infancy, existing as no more than a few marks on the canvas—the guidelines for blocking in the dominant shapes of the piece. Others appeared complete.

“It smells of you.” She glanced around the room. “Or you smell of the studio.”

The marquess plucked a terra-cotta pot from the clutter on the table beside the easel where he was working. “Smell this.”

Patience held her hair back as she leaned over to inhale. It was that same earthy smell, full-bodied, but light. Rounded and sweet. “Yes. That’s it.”

“You’ve never painted?”

“Never. My education was purely practical. My mother wanted me to learn more ladylike skills, but there was no money for it.”

She paused and took a breath, broaching a subject she’d never been comfortable discussing. “Except for one year. There was a bit extra and they sent me to school. There was some drawing instruction. The headmistress said I was hopeless. I hadn’t much cared to even try after that.” Patience bit her lip. She hadn’t meant to expose that part of herself. They were on intimate physical terms, yes. She had no right to burden him with confidences.

But she’d already spoken, and Ashcroft’s face darkened. “She sounds a horrid woman. That she dare say such a thing to a child says all I need know about her character.”

“It’s no matter. I don’t think about her often.”

Not anymore. The headmistress in question had been one Mrs. Blake, and it had taken some years before her words had stopped plaguing Patience. She’d been young enough to believe every word Mrs. Blake had spoken. Not having others who spent much time with her or showed her how the world was supposed to be, she’d had nothing else to cling to.

The woman’s favorite word for Patience had been hopeless. Mrs. Blake had taken a single look at Patience and her face had fallen. That one glance had summed up the tenor of their entire relationship.

The marquess pressed on. “Pray tell me she received her due.”

“I didn’t like the school, and my parents didn’t make me return.” Patience tried to sound aloof. Like what Mrs. Blake had said never mattered.

What Miss Blake had done mattered more. She’d taken in the seams of all of Patience’s garments to make her clothing tighter, trying to humiliate her into somehow magically becoming slender. Patience’s mortification had been too acute to tell anyone about the woman’s ploy; what flew from the tongues of the other girls had been far crueler. At night, she’d let herself cry, stuffing her face into her pillow so none of the others could hear her sobs.

Patience rubbed her arms, staring mindlessly at a painting done in muted shades of blue, brown, and gray, of a large woman strewn backward over a bed, her head hanging off the side, her long hair trailing to the floor. That’s how she’d been, too. Alone. Helpless. Naught more than an unsophisticated child under the power of a cruel adult.

“I’m sorry.” Ashcroft came to stand behind Patience. His breath warmed her neck the second before his lips descended, slow and tender. Her skin erupted into gooseflesh.

“It’s in the past. I only want to focus on what I can have now.”

“In that case, will you sit for me? I want to paint you. It’s dull work, doing nothing but sitting, but I would be honored if you would.”

Patience was already warm and ready. “Yes. I love it when you look at me. I love being on display for you.”

He nuzzled her throat and emitted a sound of pleasure. “The perfect muse.”