The Bride Price (4 page)

Her chin jutted. “I dress the way I please. And why am I bothering to respond to you?”

“Because underneath all of that prim severity, there is passion tethered and waiting, and you want it released.” Another slow, lazy smile. “I can see it in the pulse at your throat, in the flush on your cheeks.”

She could feel her cheeks heat further even as she shook her head.

“No? Women are such contrary creatures at times. I’m simply reading your body’s reaction.” He leaned closer, and her heart skipped ahead three beats. He smiled in satisfaction. “Your reactions show promise. Your sketch does not.”

“And what would you know of it?” She leaned away from him, looking him over from toe to tip with as much disdain as she could muster over a racing heart and burning cheeks.

“I need not be a master of the brush to recognize a shocking suffocation of emotion.” His head rolled around his neck, as if he was casually rotating out the kinks. The motion stopped so that he was looking at her from under long lashes. “Though I can be your master, should you need that.”

“I do
not
.”

“It seems as if you need something to incite you.”

“I’m perfectly capable of—of
inciting
myself—”

He smiled wickedly.

“—as well as being intelligently cautious.” Why in all that was holy was she defending herself like a caught novice? She tried to ignore the answer wrapped in her body’s thrum, the heavy beat of her heart.

“Cautious? You didn’t know until I said something that you weren’t alone. The groom who accompanied you is napping soundly on his perch. What’s the use of caution if there is no one around to dupe? You could have been out here
inciting
yourself and no one would have known.” He smiled lazily. “Except me, of course. And I do have to tell you that would be a sight for which I’d pay the ticket price.”

Her jaw dropped.

He leaned closer, too near for comfort, looking at the next paper on her stack—an earlier version of the scene. “Maybe you should try something more ladylike, that you could wave off as simply pretty. A lovely accessory.” He looked up at her with those eyes. “Many ladies get by on simply being one themselves.”

Too near. Too near
, her senses screamed.

She leaned away from him, swallowing, trying not to let too much of her skittishness show. “I’ll have you know that sketching landscapes is perfectly ladylike. Have you never been to a parlor, sir?”

He was still so close that she could see the small creases in his brow as one lifted. “I try to stay away from activities so dreadfully boring.”

“I daresay that you have a hard time being alone then.”

“A dreadful time. Alas, I often must amuse myself.”

He leaned back and stretched his legs, perfectly tailored trousers whispering across slate. “Let’s see what you try for your next barely passable sketch.”

“Sir, if you were a gentleman, you would hie on to parts unknown.”

He bent one knee, a booted foot dislodging bits of gravel as it scraped up. “But who said I was a gentleman?”

She didn’t even know his name, and at this point she was unlikely to ask. The answer to his question was obvious.

She decided to ignore him and began sketching again, using the previous outline she had drawn.

A rip of material, and her new effort joined its brother.

“No, put a little passion into it.”

She had no idea what the man was talking about. Daft, hateful, motherless rat. She grabbed a new piece of paper and had barely finished a new outline of the house, before long fingers removed
it from her lap. The sound of paper hitting leaves thudded in her ears.

She bit her lip to keep tears of frustration at bay over the wasted time, the wasted work, the wasted goodwill she would have received from the earl.

She rose. “You
and
the earl can go to the devil.”

“Oh, come now, don’t lump me in with Cheevers.” He mock-shuddered, and she hated him for it.

“Little difference is there. Bullying those you see as inferior. Lording over those in your power. Being petty just because you can.”

His eyes shuttered, but she didn’t care. She turned and strode in the direction of the carriage. Three steps later a body was in front of her, a hand at her elbow.

“In my power, are you?”

“Is that what you absorbed from my speech? Pity that your brain seems little more than a snail’s.”

“In two hours it will be dusk,” the too-handsome demon said, eyes still shuttered, body too large in front of her as he pressed forward, backing her up with his proximity. “The light will be gone and you will be without your sketch.”

The backs of her legs hit the bench. She lifted her chin and met his eyes, refusing to be intimidated even as her heart thumped in her chest. “I suppose I will.”

“The earl will be displeased.”

“Most likely. But I don’t let the earl’s displeasure overrun my will, and neither will I let yours.”

His eyes narrowed on hers. “You are lying.
The earl’s displeasure is a keen thing to you.” She pressed her lips together. “You will lose your position.”

“Perhaps. If you recognize such, what will it take for you to leave me be? For you to let me sketch the house and leave?”

Something shifted in his expression. “Oh, I’m not sure you are willing to pay the price.”

She focused on the falling sun, the heavy shadows. “Perhaps I’m not, but what is it?”

“What if I demand you naked here, splayed on your back, arching against me as I drive into you?” One edge of his mouth lifted in a hot smile that matched entirely with the look in his sarcastic eyes. Not the type of smile that gentlemen wore.

Her mouth dropped open. “N-no. I don’t think that is at all what I had in mind.”

“No? Perhaps a meeting for tea? A drive through the park? Surely a maid doesn’t expect to be courted?”

She looked determinedly at the waning golden rays, unable to speak. It wasn’t her station in life that sparked tears in her eyes. It wasn’t the proof once more that men were fickle and free. It wasn’t disappointment over the hand that the dealer of life had dealt her.

Soft leather gripped her chin, turning her face toward him. Aquamarine eyes surveyed hers. “Damn the duke to hell,” he muttered.

He pushed her with just enough force to plop her rear on the stone seat.

“A sketch of Roseford.” The demented man paced in front of her. “Just a sketch.”

He looked at the house, then back at her, arguing internally with himself as she watched. “I’m a bastard, I know. Nothing will change that.”

She wanted to agree with this assessment of his character, but decided that saying nothing was the wisest course of action now that the mercurial man had shifted his temperament once again.

“And I’m still going to charge you the price. I’ll pull every bit from you. In every denomination.”

Relief and anxiety vied. There was some money in the carriage. If monetary payment was all it took to get out of here, she’d pay. She just hoped it was enough. The man unnerved her in every way. He irritated and befuddled her. And the heat of him, the unmistakable pull of the most virile man she’d ever come across, snapped across the inches separating them, pushing against the slight madness that seemed to grip him whenever Roseford was mentioned.

“A kiss, I think, to start.”

She jolted, the predatory look in his eyes spiking an answering call. “I beg your pardon?”

Legs pressed intimately between her knees. “Hopefully. We’ll have to see.”

Smooth lips descended upon hers, feather-light. Shock pulsed through her, and the lightness changed to a firmer pressure against her mouth. Strong and sweet. The feeling was like tasting a fine dessert, and she was too stunned to do anything but enjoy it. The garden smells wrapped around her senses as the last hanging rays of the sun pierced the trees.

His mouth lifted, and a smooth thumb drew
along her lips. “Yes, I think we’ll make a game of it, Miss Sculler. Fresh as a country daisy with your milky skin and rosy cheeks.” He sprawled onto the seat, eyelids half covering his eyes as he surveyed her. “You want that sketch, and I’ve decided I want you.”

“Well, that is not going to happen.” Reason returned, along with tight stirrings of desire that penetrated through her rigid control and demanded more. Alarmed, she pushed her materials together haphazardly. She hadn’t felt this out of sorts in a long time. And the last time she had felt the stirrings of such overwhelming desire, she had gotten into a sea of trouble.

She started to shakily stand. A firm hand on her thigh held her in place.

His hand didn’t move, but warnings and flares fired. She had maintained a tight leash on her desire—he had nailed that from the first look. And the evidence that she still possessed the emotion terrified her as much as it made her yearn to let it free.

Passion mistaken for love had led her astray once. Terribly astray. But there was no declaration of love here to fool her. There was no reason to be so troubled, yet something about the deranged man who kissed like a master threatened something within her.

His fingers trailed to the stack of papers. He lifted the top one, and she waited for it to be tossed with the rest.

“You keep making the same mistake.”

Her mouth kicked back into battle, happy to
have something to distract her, trying to discount the double meaning of his words, and concentrating on the war. “All of the lines are perfect.” She jabbed a finger at the sloped roof of one of the sections of the house that was under repair. “Representative of the structure.”

“If you want a completely plain, boring representation.”

She stared at him. “It’s a building.”

“No structure is
just
a building. Just like no man is
just
a man. There is an identity to everything. Look at the loneliness in the peak.” He visually traced the real edges with his finger through the air. “The way it tips toward a lost support. Calling for that which is missing. Rubbish to call it just a structure.”

She watched him, unnerved. He smiled lazily, all traces of seriousness disappearing behind a mask. “It is simple aesthetics.”

The wisps of a brief window of something far deeper than any other trait he had shown dissipated. Her nerves increased, but for a different reason.

“Who are you?”

“A man who appreciates aesthetics. For instance, every aesthetic sense says that you are quite beautiful,” he said, tossing the paper back to her, leaning back to prop himself with an elbow on the back of the sloping support.

Her previous irritation resumed. “Flattery,” she deadpanned. “Empty and boring. A plain representation of a real conversation.”

Something sparked in his eyes again, some sort of pleasure this time.

“Perhaps this conquest will truly be worth the cost. If I had known, I would have worn something more suitable.”

“Conquest? You call charging someone to kiss you a conquest?”

“A kiss is merely the toll. The real conquest happens when you beg for more.” A finger idly moved over his full lower lip. “Passion unleashed.”

She knew firsthand that unleashed desire could easily revert to caged aggression. “Passion burns brightly, then fizzles away.”

Expressions, mercurial and rapid, charged across his face.

He reached over so quickly that she was too late to move away. He swiped a thumb across the top of the drawn roof on her lap, depressing the papers into her thighs.

“But if you capture desire, if you hold it…” He pulled his expensively gloved thumb across the bottom of the pillar and leaned toward her, a hairbreadth from her lips. “…then that moment will burn indelibly.”

His eyes held hers, his face so close that if they blinked in tandem, their eyelashes might brush together. Desire like none she had felt in years pulsed through her, fear following on its heels with stomping strides.

A dark, satisfied smile curved his lips. He leaned back against the stone and motioned with one hand. “Please, sketch while you can, Miss Sculler.”

She looked down at her paper, at the smudges he had made, then at the roof—the solitary slope
he had traced in the air, the one that on paper now leaned indelibly toward something. There was movement and a shard of emotion in the rough smudges. Unfinished, but evoking a shred of life.

Unnerving. The sight of something beneath the facade. But then Patrick had had many depths. They just hadn’t all been good ones.

She concentrated on filling in the rest of the lines. Stagnant, clean lines without life. She peeked sideways to see him leaning with his head back against the stone armrest, legs sprawled out toward her, the edge of his boot touching her slipper, the edge of his left trouser caressing her dress.

She surreptitiously drew a bare finger along the chalk line, trying to imitate his actions. No, it just looked like a smudge. She frowned.

“Magnificent, isn’t it?”

She jerked guiltily, but his eyes were still closed.

“One could lie here forever listening to the wind.”

His eyes remained shut, so she watched him, trying to understand how someone wearing such expensive clothes would so willingly wrinkle and dirty them. None of the guests at Meadowbrook would dare sit on a bench that hadn’t received a thorough scrubbing that morning, no less sit on one that had been left unattended beneath the glow of more than a few full moons.

He either possessed extreme wealth or was a spoiled son with a complete and total lack of responsibility.

She was inclined toward the latter.

And he was full of contradictions. His demeanor and actions, at odds with each other one moment, pulling her in the next, entangled her in knots. A consummate rake, a
master
of the breed—she’d bet every groat. His relaxation on the bench was a show, a patient waiting, of that she had no doubt. The problem was that a part of her was tensed in anticipation, not outrage.

And she’d thought Patrick had that indefinable quality that made women,
smart
women, beg. This man made him seem a silly boy. It made the rational, intellectual part of her uneasy, and the more wild side…Well, best not to think about that.