Love's Reward (21 page)

“No, home. I have about as much desire to dance now as Hercules had to face the hydra.”

Home? The formal rented house. It was the only home he had, of course.

“By all means,” Joanna said. “Richard is probably breathing fire in the ballroom by now. Let’s escape and go to my studio. I can’t get your eyebrows to come right.”

He reached out to run a thumb very gently across her forehead, smoothing down her eyebrow. Then he dropped his hand abruptly and sprang to his feet.

They walked back to the house in silence. Throughout the carriage ride home, Joanna watched him, his mouth and his eyes, as he leaned back against the squabs, locked away in that place she could never reach, offering her nothing in return for her sacrifice.

He is an arrogant, self-centered rogue!
They had been the words of a child, understanding nothing.

And what had her mother said?
You are not selfish, Joanna. You are just filled with too much passion and too much burning longing for life
.

Fitzroy shifted a little and closed his eyes. Tension limned his jaw.

Damn him! He has become part of my life. Can’t he understand that, and give me something—one drop of notice?
Or share anything of his concerns and his torment? I’m his wife!

* * *

Fitzroy sat in the chair, casually posed with one arm along the back, his cravat abandoned, shirt open at the neck. Candlelight caressed his smooth skin, casting him in gold.

Joanna, once again in her old dress and smock, hated him with a clear passion, and knew her emotion was only an imposture for desire.

“Why don’t you paint anymore?” she asked as she mixed pigment on her palette.

His reply was distant, preoccupied. “I have too much else to do.”

“It seems to me a kind of cowardice.”

He looked around at her, cocking a brow. “Does it?”

Something was burning in her, something she had kept banked at Lady Kettering’s. But now a lonely, hot wind was stirring the embers and fanning them into flame.

“Yes, it does. To give up a gift like yours shows an appalling failure of spirit, doesn’t it? What else can account for wasted genius? Only a craven loss of nerve, when, who knows, if you followed your talent you might prove to be a master?”

The supple voice remained casual, impersonal. “But what if you were to make decisions in your life based on faith in that talent, and discovered that you weren’t a genius, after all?”

His very coolness infuriated her. “Does that matter? As long as our effort is genuine, brings pleasure, fulfillment, who cares about society’s judgment? All art is a risk, isn’t it? We might show the world how mediocre we are. So it’s safer not to do it. It’s the same with your superiority and sarcasm. It shows nothing but a fear of letting your guard down, in case people see you for what you really are and remain unimpressed. Is that what happened in Spain for which Richard could never forgive you? A base act of cowardice?”

He stood up, his back stiff. “Perhaps.”

Joanna marched up and down, violently stirring the paint. His casual response to this unforgivable affront to his honor only fueled her rage.

“Just as you gave way to your father over our marriage. I think you have no bravery in you. Rakes don’t, do they?”

“Courage is what you did tonight at Lady Kettering’s.” His voice had become very soft, intense. “You think I didn’t know, didn’t recognize that, or appreciate the spirit that it took? What’s happening now is the aftermath, like soldiers rioting after a battle. Don’t do this, Joanna!”

“Don’t do what? I have never made any demands on you. I have honored the terms of our contract. But you have used me at every step. You left me at the church door after our wedding, and foolishly at the time I thought it rather splendid. But it meant that I was left without any support to face your father and mine—hardly the chivalrous act of a gentleman.”

“No. I’m aware of that.”

She spun about as her anger threatened to flame out of control.

“And you take it for granted that I’ll be complacent and cooperative about your mistresses. But what about my pride and confidence? All those women! So beautiful and desirable. Lady Carhill was ready to weep over you.”

He crossed the room in a few long, rapid strides. “What can I do, Joanna?”

She looked up into his eyes, forcing herself to meet that devouring gaze in spite of the mortifying sting under her lids.

“Meanwhile, I am the only female on this earth that you don’t want. I’ve had to swallow my humiliation over that, but it’s too hard. It makes me feel like the ugly stepsister, when every night you go to the ball with a different Cinderella. Should I chop off my heels and toes to fit them into the slipper, so that you’ll notice me, too?”

He caught her by the wrist and tossed her palette aside, spilling paint as the wood cracked. Colors ran riotously together, a reflection of her wild, pure anger.

“Notice you! Every night I sit in that damnable hard chair and watch you poring over your painting, giving all your love and generosity and courage to a dumb piece of canvas. Meanwhile, you’re never really studying my features. Obviously, it pains you to look at me. And why not, when I have behaved to you as I have? Yet Lady Carhill, Lady Reed, Lady Kettering, they mean nothing—nothing! Not one of them has been my mistress, though I don’t expect you to believe it. Why should you? Compared to your passion for art, I’m a mere cipher in your life. What the devil does it matter what I do?”

“But it does, because you married me and there is no one else.”

“You should take a lover,” he said, but the words seemed to choke in his throat. Suddenly he laughed, with that wild, bitter self-derision, yet his eyes remained locked on her face. “Though if you did, I would want to kill him.”

She didn’t know if she believed him, but the words fired a fierce joy in her.
Not one of them has been my mistress.
Joanna stared back up at him. How could he mean it?

“I shall never take a lover,” she said. “You are my husband. Shall I go to my grave a virgin?”

His grip changed on her wrist, softening, fervent.

“You don’t know what you ask, Joanna, what it would mean. There’d be no turning back. Dear God, I didn’t expect it to happen.” His fingers moved up her arm, over the fabric of her dress to the bare skin of her neck. “My feelings don’t matter, they have never mattered, yet I had no idea that you were being hurt by my inattention.”

She knew what she risked.
So let that one kiss be the first and last expression of lust between us. Even if you invite me, madam, it will never happen again
. Yet she couldn’t help herself.

“And you think that’s all it is? A little wounded pride and vanity? Why did you say you would never touch me again? What else can it be, except that I alone am hideous to you?”

The candlelight flickered over his face as he studied her features, his gaze fathomless, his tension palpable. Words seemed dragged from him, as if it pained him to speak, yet his voice pulsed with intensity.

“Ah, no, dear heart, you are infinitely lovely to me.” An odd half-smile lit his face as he gently rubbed his thumb over her jaw. “When I said that, I was angry with my father, and distracted by other claims. But love is a far higher, sweeter thing than lust.”

“What do you mean?”

His hand slipped down, his knuckles caressing her throat. Her pulse hammered in response.

“I saw at the Swan that you are beautiful and brave, but I didn’t think I would be so vulnerable to you. Dear wife, I desire you passionately, with a man’s hunger for a woman’s beauty and with all the ardor of my soul. Thoughts of you taunt me day and night. You’ve fired a longing in my blood that I can’t quench. I find you enchanting. Oh, God, what a dearth of words is in the language! I burn for you. But I cannot act on it.”

“Why not?” It was a whisper.

He hesitated, as if searching for the words.

“Richard told you the kind of work I did in Spain. It’s not over just because we’re no longer openly at war. I am caught up in something degrading and vicious that I don’t understand, and I cannot tell what may be required next. I can see no way out of it, but I fear the planned end is my death. At first it didn’t matter that much. But it matters now. I love you, Joanna, and I know what we risk. Which makes it all impossible.”

All her concentration centered on the sensations he was creating on her skin. The rest barely registered:
The planned end is my death.
I love you
. They seemed only words to Joanna, the melodramatic claims of a rake. To how many women had he professed love? She didn’t care. Tears ran openly down her cheeks.
I burn for you.

“So you do dangerous work. I have guessed as much. No man would come from a mistress looking as you do. But we all risk dying, every day. It’s an overwhelming reason to live in the meantime. You said as much yourself about your sister. Your restraint is empty, Fitzroy. I’m your wife. If you love me, then prove it, damn you!”

“How the devil?” Fitzroy asked quietly, his voice dry and throaty. “When it is my own heart’s desire? How the devil do you expect me to refuse you now?”

Slipping his hands to her waist, Fitzroy pulled her against his body. Joanna closed her eyes as his lips met hers. She would be burned. Surely, surely, the incandescent flame would sear her, scald her to the soul? She held back nothing of her confusion and her desire, letting her mouth move under his searching lips and tongue, trembling, hot, beautiful.

They slipped together to the floor, Fitzroy supporting her easily with a hand at her waist, pressed together, devouring each other. He rolled her onto her back as he kissed her eyelids and hairline and throat. With her hands held above her head in one of his, he ran his fingertips over her hair with a tenderness that reached deep into her heart. She would be consumed!

Yet she wanted to explore him, too, as if her fingers on his jaw and neck would help her find out who he really was.

“Let me touch you, Fitzroy!”

“Here,” he said, opening his fingers and kissing the corner of her mouth. “I release you, wife, to have your wicked way with me.”

Joanna touched his face, the slight roughness of his shaved jaw, the smooth column of his throat moving under her fingers. She had so longed to do this. A deep spring of joy washed away her anger.

Tentatively she stroked his upper lip. He caught her fingertip in his mouth, soft and warm, and caressed it with his tongue. She moved her other hand to his back, feeling the firmness and the strange strength of him.

Boldly she pulled the shirt out of his waistband and ran her fingers up his naked spine.

“Like that?” she asked, breathless, ravished by the flex of his muscles under her hand.

He smiled down at her, infinitely desirable, his eyes as dark and wide as a night sky as his fingers moved over her skin.

“Or like this?”

Joanna gasped, her eyes closed, lost to anything else as the sensations he created flooded through her veins.

“Yes! Oh, yes, Fitzroy!”

They rolled over together, her smock soon discarded, her dress unbuttoned, his hands on her skin a revelation of delight.

She longed to do the same wonderful things for him.

Blushing furiously, she whispered, “I want you out of this shirt.”

He pulled away, the dark hair falling over his forehead, his eyes dilated into blackness.

“Oh, damnation!” he said and laughed—a carefree, wild laugh, filled with gaiety.

“What?” Joanna sat up, her hair tumbling down around her shoulders. “What is it?”

Fitzroy rocked back on his heels and held up his hands.

“Paint! We’re getting covered in paint. Look!”

They had crushed her abandoned palette beneath them. Pigments rioted, wild streaks of color running across the floorboards—and on their hands and faces and clothes.

“Oh, no!” Joanna looked at her palms. “Burnt sienna and cadmium red.”

He brushed his thumb across her cheek. “Prussian blue. It looks like woad, my pagan princess.”

She ran one finger through a wash of paint and giggled. “We’re tattooed, like savages.”

He leaned forward to kiss her gently, his lips barely touching hers then parting again softly.

“Let me take you to bed, dear heart, or tell me to go to hell forever. I am mad, perhaps. No, I know I am mad to do this. Stop me, for God’s sake, for I don’t believe I can stop myself.”

“I want it,” Joanna whispered, trembling in his arms. “I want you. Don’t abandon me now. Devil take tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow! We’re married, aren’t we?”

Married.

Once before he had taken a lady to her bridal bed, wanting it to be the most memorable night of her life. He had felt an exquisite tenderness for Juanita, and a fierce, burning passion. Now he felt it again, even more brightly, blazing with a purer flame, and had a second chance, perhaps.

Fitzroy knew he ought to walk away, that he was breaking the bargain he had made with himself. Joanna had no idea how absolute this was. Yet there was already no going back. He had trapped them both.

However unwise it might be, he felt helpless in the face of his all-consuming desire.

And Joanna was his wife. He wanted to make her a gift.

But more than that. More than that! If he refused her now, he would instead give her a wound that might never heal.

Fitzroy picked her up off the floor and carried her out into the corridor, kicking the doors open and closed behind him. He carried her into the great master bedroom and set her down on the bed.

“Now,” he said. “I am about to make love to you in earnest, Joanna. I give you my soul to dance upon, if you like. Make merry with my heart, wife. It is yours. I want to touch you until you melt away, but I shall be melting with you.”

“Yes,” she said, gazing up at him.

He smoothed the tangled hair away from her face. Then he took one of her hands and laid it palm to palm with his. Their joined pulse throbbed, hot and wild.

“This is the meaning of desire, sweetheart. To be carried together on the flood tide. Never doubt, whatever happens later, that everything you feel tonight is real, that I love you, that I am feverish with my passion for you. But tell me to stop if you want. For I can’t promise anything else. I can’t promise to be with you, or to be a good husband, or even that we can ever do this again. ‘The world is too much with us.’ Yet dear God, I hope you won’t send me away now!”