The Nude (full-length historical romance) (12 page)

“Your lips are most exquisite,” he said just before leaving her at the base of the grand staircase, knowing it would scandalize her. “I won’t be able to think of anything other than your sweet taste upon my mouth for the rest of the day.”

Elsbeth stood off to one side of the drawing room door and watched the ladies taking afternoon tea with the gentlemen gathered within. Everyone appeared so at ease. They visited and laughed freely with each other.

Her heart shuddered.

She’d never experienced such familiarity with her husband and his friends. Men, loud and often brash, simply could not be trusted. They needed to be watched as carefully as one would watch a thief around the household’s best silver.

She felt much more comfortable around the servants. That was where she had spent the afternoon, questioning the servants about Dionysus. Though they had expressed honest concern, every single one she’d questioned was either too loyal to the Marquess, or they truly didn’t know Dionysus’s secret identity.

She tended to think that it was the latter, that the servants simply did not know. The secret was that deep.

“Dreadful, isn’t it?” a voice whispered in her ear, startling the wits out of her. She nearly jumped to the ceiling before she whirled around with such speed that her feet jumbled beneath her, tossing her directly into his chest.

His
chest.

She felt his muscles ripple from beneath the layers of his clothing. Or was that just her overactive imagination at work? And that kiss in the garden. She couldn’t seem to keep from thinking about it. Or wondering if there would be a second one. Those unruly thoughts frightened and excited her all at once. She shouldn’t be having such thoughts about a man, especially not about a man who could turn her legs to jelly with the twitch of his lips.

Edgeware smiled down on her as he very gently set her back on her feet. “I didn’t mean to frighten you,” he said softly.

Her face heated from embarrassment . . . and from that other emotion she was unwilling to acknowledge. She was forever making herself look the fool around him.

She quickly gathered her composure and turned a hard glare toward the devilishly handsome lord.

“What do you mean by saying I am dreadful?” she asked.

“Not you, dove.” His gaze flicked toward the drawing room. “
Them
. I despise such gatherings. One feels obligated to be in a perpetually cheerful mood and such obligations tend to irritate my nerves by half.”

He looked so miserable, so utterly put out, she couldn’t help but smile. Surely he was jesting. A man of his position and wealth must thrive on social gatherings.

“We must go in, you know,” he said. “My fortifiers—brandy, sherry, and port—are all on that sideboard . . .” He sighed. “On the far side of the drawing room.”

“Poor man.” His behavior was so unlike her late husband’s. Lord Mercer would have never bemoaned the location of his brandy. Instead he’d have plowed into the room, poured a snifter full, and ignored the guests if that was what he chose to do.

“I have a duty to my guests,” Edgeware said and heaved another deep sigh. “Perhaps if you stay close to me, we’ll both survive the ordeal.”

He wasn’t jesting. He was actually dreading this evening more than she. And he was looking to
her
to be his strength.

Amazing
.

“If you smile like that all evening, I won’t notice anyone in the room but you,” he said. A wolfish gleam appeared in his black gaze. His eyes shimmered with a brooding hunger, the same erotic and almost tempting hunger he’d used against her defenses that afternoon in the garden. And just like in the garden, she couldn’t run away. Not from him . . . or herself.

“Thank you, my lord. But I have no need of support. I am perfectly capable of enjoying an evening with my peers.” This time when she turned, she did so with careful precision. Head held high, she marched into the drawing room. Alone. The laughter and giddy chatter abruptly came to a halt. All eyes turned to her.

She
did
need his support, damn his teasing ways.

She didn’t want to face his guests alone. She didn’t want to face them at all. They
knew
. Because of that horrid painting, they now
knew
. She could read it in their disapproving gazes. They knew she’d been unfaithful to her husband, the royal hero who’d bravely given his life in battle. Though she hadn’t taken comfort in another man’s arms in his absence—as some now believed—she
had
broken her marriage vows.

She’d denied the truth to her uncle. Denied it to herself, too. She hadn’t been a faithful wife. She’d withheld herself from him in the worst possible ways. A wife was bound by duty to love and honor her husband, no matter the hardships. And she’d done neither. The day word of his death reached her ears, she’d breathed a sigh of relief for being released from him, a man she despised.

Somehow Dionysus had seen through her stiff upper lip and silent nods. Somehow he knew of the dishonor lurking in her heart and was determined to reveal her secret to the world.

She had to stop him before he dealt another blow to her and her family’s reputation. There were too many secrets hidden beneath the pain. Society would forever shun her if they ever learned the full truth of her marriage.

With a brave smile that was anything but real, she stepped toward her cousins, who were, unfortunately, sitting on a sofa next to Lady Dashborough’s two daughters. Just as she was about to politely greet the lovely quartette of ladies, her gaze landed on a large painting hanging above her cousins’ heads.

And she froze.

Varying shades of purples and crimson had been blended to create a stunning sunset. The paint nearly glowed. The artist’s short bush strokes and heavy use of paint struck Elsbeth immediately.

Dionysus had painted the scene.

Even here, far away from the frivolities of London, he plagued her, underscoring the urgency of her task. Naturally, she’d expected it to be the case since Edgeware had baldly admitted to being Dionysus’s keeper. But even so, her heart wasn’t prepared to soak in the heartrending landscape.

A man, alone, with only his back visible stood on a rocky outcropping, a cape fluttering in the harsh wind. Other than the rocks and the vast expanse of the sunset, the landscape was barren. Utterly barren.

The raw despair bared in that scene threatened to rip open her heart. How could this be the same artist who wished to ruin her? How could he display such depths of feeling while being cold enough to seek to destroy her bruised and broken heart?

“Elly,” Olivia said loudly, saving Elsbeth from being completely absorbed into Dionysus’s painting. “I was afraid that you were determined to hide upstairs for the entire week.”

The younger of Lady Dashborough’s two daughters, a creamy-skinned beauty with soft auburn hair, sniffed haughtily. “One could only have hoped.”

“That new gown looks lovely on you, Elsbeth,” Lauretta said on the heels of the snide comment.

“Yes,” Lady Dashborough’s elder daughter said. “The silver threads are simply stunning.”

Elsbeth held her breath, waiting for the young woman to follow up the compliment with a snide remark of her own. The woman merely batted her pretty long eyelashes and stared up at Elsbeth with a look akin to reverence.

“Thank you,” Elsbeth said finally. Shock kept her from saying anything more.

Besides, her attention was drawn back to the painting. It was a self-portrait of course, a man utterly alone in a harsh environment. His shoulders sagged, drawn down with exhaustion from bearing too great a weight for far too long. She recognized his anguish, knew such pain only too well. Here, in the middle of this drawing room, she felt just as alone.

“Lady Sara, Lady Constance, please permit me to introduce my cousin.” Olivia jumped up from the sofa and pulled her arm around Elsbeth.

“There is no need,” the younger of the daughters said. She rose from the sofa and walked away.

“I am Sara,” the elder Dashborough said. “Please forgive my sister. She is . . . insecure.” Sara edged closer to Elsbeth. “But I am fascinated by you. I would dearly enjoy talking to you sometime this week.”

“I would be only too happy to—”

“Please excuse me, ladies.” Lord Edgeware appeared at Elsbeth’s side and deftly captured her arm. “Allow me to introduce Lady Mercer to the other guests before the three of you monopolize all her attentions.” He gave the women such a charming, dimpled smile it would have been impossible to object.

“A pretty splattering of colors, do you not agree?” he said, not sparing even a passing glance toward the painting she could not seem to ignore. The dark lord stood too close to her. His spicy masculine scent left her breathless, her mind muddled. “I thought it matched the décor of this room.”

Pretty
? She shivered and forced herself to turn away from the haunting image. He couldn’t even
begin
to understand how Dionysus’s lonely images could sting her heart.

Just standing next to Edgeware and looking at the “splattering of colors” made her miss the soft emotions she’d long ago abandoned.
Gracious
, she needed to regain control. Allowing her foolish heart such freedom would prove dangerous.

It always did.

“Don’t run from me again,” Edgeware whispered as they strolled across the room, his voice an intimate caress on her ear, making it all the more difficult to steel her nerves against the softening of her resolve.

“Forgive me, my lord,” she said, her voice as sharp as a fishwife’s.

“Just don’t do it again,” he replied smoothly. “I would hate to wrack my brain once more in order to come up with a fresh excuse to lure you back to my side.”

She bit her tongue, stopping herself before she told him that spending the evening in his company was one of the very last things she wished to do. A lie, if there was ever one, too. Perversely, like Dionysus’s paintings, Edgeware fascinated her.

So, with a smile forming on her lips, she allowed herself to be introduced to the crowded room. Every now and again she caught her gaze straying back to Dionysus’s painting and would have to forcibly return her wandering attentions to the guests being introduced.

Not all present that evening were staying at the house. Some were Edgeware’s neighbors. And not all of the faces were unfamiliar to her. Lord Ames had the decency to blush as he rubbed his cheek in memory of the slap she had given him the day of the exhibition.

The famous “Beau” Brummel, the arbiter of taste and refinement, bowed over her hand and complimented her silver sheath of a gown. Stunned by his acceptance, she just barely murmured her gratitude. Mr. Brummel and Edgeware paid her no heed as they talked amicably about courtly affairs.

Lady Cowper, one of the patronesses of Almack’s and a powerful figure in her own right, greeted Elsbeth with cool civility before turning her charm toward Edgeware. “I have pulled myself away from London during the height of the Season with the sole purpose to recruit you into our ranks, Edgeware. Whenever will you join Almack’s?” She swatted him with her fan. “There are so few eligible, handsome faces attending lately.”

Lady Cowper’s husband, the Fifth Earl of Cowper, was on the other side of the room, talking politics with several of Edgeware’s neighbors.

Much to Elsbeth’s surprise, other than Lady Dashborough’s youngest daughter, no one insulted her or tried to spurn her company. Even Lady Dashborough apologized for her earlier behavior. Apparently the Marquess’s social influence hadn’t been overstated.

After the introductions, she wasn’t given the chance to return to her cousins or to disappear into a corner where she could ponder her unsettling reaction to either Dionysus’s painting or the way the dark lord made her heart race. Instead, she was persuaded, rather doggedly, to partner Edgeware in a game of Whist, a game she was, luckily, able to play with a great deal of skill and confidence. After a while, she found that the evening promised to be a bit better than the utter disaster she’d initially imagined. And much to her surprise, many of her giggles were even genuine.