Chapter Fifteen
Silverlund let himself into his son’s house with a copied key he’d bought from an all-too-easily bribed footman. He glanced back over his shoulder, scanning the darkness. In the shadows, the only thing moving was the shape of a giant tomcat bounding across the street with a huge rat in its jaws.
The hour neared midnight, but the duke hadn’t been able to sleep. Earlier that same day, the man he’d hired to hunt down Giles had come with a disturbing report.
“He’s gone off with a woman, Your Grace.”
Cold dread crushed Silverlund’s lungs. He couldn’t move his mouth to form the word “eloped.”
“Scotland?”
“No, Your Grace.” The man gave his name as West. He was nondescript in a way that made him difficult to describe. Utterly ordinary. Brown hair, medium height. Age anywhere from late thirties to late forties. No strong features, no defining characteristics. The sort one overlooked. No doubt West used his appearance to advantage in his work. “Gone to one of the estates of his friend Holbrook. Glenrose Castle.”
Holbrook. A duke. A man who, by rights of rank, should have looked to Silverlund for guidance as to properly conducting himself in his station. How he should act. What being a duke meant to England, her people high and low. Instead, he retained a friendship with Ashcroft. It rankled every time the thought brushed Silverlund’s mind. “Yes? What else?”
“A woman joined him. The people know them as Mr. and Mrs. Warrington. I’m still tracing who she is. Not a woman of birth or breeding. We’re calling her the dairy maid.”
No, she wouldn’t be a woman of birth or breeding to agree to such a thing, would she?
Another disgrace. She must be using his son for her gain, the hussy. But what? A bastard to barter as blackmail? Jewels? Pray the latter. They were easy to obtain. Mistresses were crass business, but at least Silverlund knew how to get rid of them.
“Find out who she is.”
West inclined his head. “We will, Your Grace.”
Ashcroft needed to be brought to heel. The problem would not be solved with the duke’s current tactics.
Which had brought Silverlund to his son’s house tonight. There had to be something. In the study, he lit a candle, flipped through account books, ran his finger down pages of ledgers. Nothing out of the ordinary. His eye caught on a number. What that boy spent on paper alone was a disgrace.
Silverlund slammed the cover shut and moved on.
At first, he hadn’t wanted to go into the studio. Those paintings made him dream of fire.
He stopped on the stairs. Fire.
He turned around.
Back in the studio, he roamed through the disorder, taking it all in. Every last painting was obscene, lewd, and vulgar.
How beautifully they would burn.
…
Giles sketched all the next day, and Miss Emery bore it beautifully. He made studies of her face. Her body. Her open legs. Her full and luxurious quim.
She wasn’t simply a model. She was also a muse, firing him to aim for new heights. He never wanted to stop painting.
Later, she examined his handiwork, silent for a long time as she paged through the sheets. “You start with a few strokes that appear random and end up with something so lifelike.”
“Drawing is little more than the art of seeing. A line here. A mark there. A correction. Another mark. Another correction. A few more lines. A few more corrections.” He waved a hand carelessly through the air. “Et cetera.”
Late in the afternoon, he set down his pencils and made her spread her thighs for him. He ate her sweet quim until she came in his face, then painted some more.
His hands skimmed her upper arms, touching her like she were more precious than gold. “And then tonight, well…tonight I have something for you. Something special. If you’ll allow me.”
“You only have to tell me.”
“Bring the gift I left for you in the carriage.”
Tonight, she would be his canvas.
Around suppertime, he’d sent Miss Emery away to rest. She’d been gone no more than five minutes when two notes arrived. The first was a short message from his mother telling him that she would be accompanying Lady Headly to Bath for a few weeks. His mother went on to inform him—as if it was important he know—that Lady Headly’s knee was paining her again, and only taking the waters ever helped.
The second…the sight of the imperfect hand, with its slightly shaky letters, made Giles tense. He broke the Silverlund seal.
Giles crumpled the unwanted message in his fist and tossed the paper into the fire. “Go to hell, Duke.”
It was nearing midnight when Miss Emery returned. The world outside had been cast in pitch, all but swallowed in a starless night, the sky covered in clouds, the waxing crescent moon obscured.
In Giles’s makeshift studio, a few candles glowed. But he’d ordered many more. Dozens. They waited, unlit, until he was ready.
Miss Emery stood silent in the doorway of the solar, eyes enormous. The gown she wore was plain, but the shining silk was ornamentation enough. Perhaps all the more so because no lace or ruffles competed with the simplicity. Their gazes met. Her lips parted.
“You called for me?”
“You brought the gift?” The jewel he’d had the driver leave for her in the carriage, his cock flooding with heat at the mere thought of what he was going to do with it.
She held out her hand, upon which the box rested.
“Good. Come here.” Giles held up a black silk ribbon. “May I?”
“You’re going to blindfold me?” She came as he bade and stood before the fireplace where he’d set up a new workplace. A large, light-brown leather chair with overstuffed arms stood nearby, along with a mirror hidden under a thick swath of dark woolen fabric.
“If you wish it.” He meant it. There was no pleasure in cohesion. Only in giving—and giving freely.
“You’re not going to tell me what you plan to do?”
“No.”
When she looked at him with perfect trust and nodded, he swallowed. When he lifted his hands to obscure her vision with the silk, his fingers actually trembled.
How this beauty inflamed his overwrought lusts. Giles could never get enough of her…and never wanted to.
After tying the silk at the back of her head, he leaned close. “Let me help you out of these clothes.” He took her gently by the wrists. “Lift your arms up. There you are. Perfect.”
Moving languidly so as to experience every exquisite moment, he stripped her bare. He allowed the backs of his fingers to trail over every dip and curve of her skin.
Artful curls had been arranged atop her head, a single ribbon that matched the fabric of her dress banding the crown. He buried his nose in the nape of her neck and inhaled the sweet scent of woman.
Restraining his desire to abandon his plan and take her immediately, he pulled back.
“You’re ready?”
“For whatever comes.”
Eggshells littered the floor by the cluttered table where he’d concocted a special paint. It consisted of egg white, a bit of water, and mica ground as finely as it would go while retaining a gleam. He’d wanted gold dust, but the amount required was too difficult to obtain on short notice, even for him. It was a rare instance of not being able to have whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. But he had Miss Emery now, and that was most important. So he’d improvised.
Normal tempera paint used the yolk of the egg, but not the white. What he’d made for tonight was something entirely new.
Giles stroked the fox hair of his brush. The thick strands were silky under his touch. He lightly ran the dry ends in a twisting and curling pattern down her back to get the feeling of the movement in his hand and wrist before he began in earnest. Miss Emery shivered.
He wanted to learn her. Know her. Pleasure her. Then go beyond everything and into her soul. First, he had to show her his. And this was how he would do it.
Dipping the bristles in the waiting paint, Giles gently wiped the excess on the side of the cup and began. He worked in small strokes, the brush not holding enough of the medium for aught else.
She bore it beautifully, raising her arm when bidden to do so and holding perfectly still while he worked. He started at her shoulder. One ornamental swirl grew from another. Vines curled around one another, and delicate leaves grew spontaneously. All his concentration narrowed to his task. Time dissolved. His eyes assumed a preternatural ability to see detail, with each minute fragment of mica seeming to have a life of its own. Each square inch of Miss Emery’s skin a wonder of nature.
He painted the expanse of her back. Her breasts. Her belly. Each thigh. Strokes wrapping around her as his vision began to appear before him. He slowed at the feet. He was almost done. He painted the last tiny swirls on her littlest toes.
Then he stepped back, letting the brush dangle from his fingertips and fall where it would when he reached a hand over the nearby table to drop it, not caring…not being able to move his eyes from Miss Emery. The wood clanked when the tool fell.
“One last thing, I think.” His voice emerged low. Rough.
He was uncomfortably hard as he moved around the room with a slim taper he used to light the remaining candles. When the room was ablaze, he gently tugged the blindfold from her eyes.
Miss Emery looked down at herself. Her mouth fell open. “It’s…I—I could never have imagined such a thing.”
Giles pulled the drape off the full-length mirror standing by the fire and stood back, silent as she admired herself in the oval surface. The mica shimmered.
She sent him a wary glance. “Am I now your creation?”
There was no hesitation in his answer. “Never.”
Stepping forward, he took her hand, raised it above her head, and twirled her. The curling lines sparkled in the candlelight, as if he’d adorned her in thousands and thousands of tiny specks of diamond dust. “This is all you. I dare claim no credit.”
She softened, staring at herself.
“Turn again.” Miss Emery obeyed his command, her gaze never leaving her reflection. He cocked a half smile and spoke, voice infused with heat. “Now bring me your gift.”
She brought him the box, and he lifted the lid, exposing the enormous gem. “What is it?”
He raised his brows at her. “You haven’t a guess?”
“No.”
“Bend over the chair with your bottom facing me.”
A bit of sunrise pink touched her cheeks, and she glanced again at the item resting in the box he held.
Giles smiled. “Have a guess now, my lovely?”
She looked back over her shoulder. “I’m really not certain.”
“I think you have a guess.”
She bit her lip and then raised her gaze to his, eyes uncertain. “It’s not big enough for you to fuck me with.”
Such a lovely word from such a pretty mouth. He raised his brows at her. “Oh, but I do intend to fuck you while you wear it.”
Miss Emery made no reply.
Giles ran his free hand over the expanse of her backside, carefully so as not to upset the paint. He slid a finger down the cleavage, closer and closer to her other entrance. Finding the delicate skin of what he sought, he traced a little circle around the tight opening. “You see now?”
She nodded and responded—voice breathy. “I see now.”
He made no more. “I await your command.”
Their gazes locked. “I want everything you could possibly give.”
With the tip against her anus, he pressed gently. The jewel’s anchor slid into her body. Giles’s hands roamed her bare ass, moving over her skin and caressing her with equal parts reverence and possession.
Aroused beyond what even he believed possible, he undid his falls and slipped a finger between the lips of her slick quim. He put a foot between hers and spread her legs wide. Placing his own tip against her, he watched himself slide into her body. When he looked up, the reflection of their joined bodies met his gaze in the mirror.
He took her from behind. One long stroke and then another. Her eyes closed, and her back stretched long as she raised her hips higher in the air, urging him more deeply into her body. Whenever he looked down, the jewel looked back at him, lodged inside her. Nothing but a thin layer of woman separated it from his cock.
Miss Emery was so soft against him. Her flesh waved gently with each slap of his thrusts, and her body fit his with unimaginable perfection, though he was no less huge and no less demanding. She had to stretch to accommodate him, but stretch she did. So tight. And nary a complaint on her lips about his girth. No, indeed—she liked it, didn’t she, wicked young miss that she was.
His paradise, it was her. It was what he’d never known he needed but had been unwittingly searching for his entire life.
And he was going to fuck until the world meant nothing to either of them and their consciousness knew only this. Them. Their nearness, their joining. Pleasure, the most potent and powerful this side of paradise.