The Truth About Love (18 page)

Jacqueline saw his equivocation, felt it in the arms surrounding her that didn’t ease. She comprehended something of what she read in his eyes; she, too, felt…distracted. As if she’d just experienced something that was important to explore further, but…the moment was already slipping away.

Her hands had come to rest against his chest; she found a half smile and gently pushed back. After an instant’s hesitation, his arms eased, and he released her.

“The sun’s almost gone.” She looked down the valley to where the burning orb of the sun was disappearing below the horizon. Shifting along the coping, she glanced his way. “We should go inside. It’ll soon be time to change for dinner.”

He nodded and stood. He picked up his sketch pad, stuffed the pencils in his pocket, then he looked at her, and held out his hand.

She met his gaze, then placed her fingers in his and let him help her to her feet.

He released her once she was steady. Together they turned, and, side by side, without words, walked up through the gardens.

With one long, shared glance, they parted on the terrace.

L
ate that night with the moon riding the sky, Gerrard stood in the balcony doorway of his bedroom staring moodily out at the silvered gardens, and considered where fate had led him.

Not by the nose, but by another part of his anatomy, together with a section of his psyche he hadn’t previously known existed.

He could hardly claim he hadn’t known what he was doing, that he hadn’t been cognizant of the dangers, the risks. He’d known, but had acted anyway; he couldn’t remember when last he’d been so heedlessly impulsive.

Arms folded, he leaned against the doorjamb; eyes fixed unseeing on the shadows below, he tried to get some mental purchase on what, precisely
what,
was driving him. It wasn’t anything he’d experienced before.

He knew what he wanted: Jacqueline. He’d wanted her from the moment he’d seen her watching him through the window when he’d arrived at Hellebore Hall—but what was driving him to it? The compulsion that was growing day by day, pressing him to make her his—from where did that spring?

Lust was certainly there, familiar enough, yet this was lust of a different order, an unusual degree. He’d lusted after ladies before; it didn’t feel like this. With Jacqueline, the drive came from deeper within him, from some more primitive, more intense realm of emotion…Words, as always, failed him, yet if he painted it, it would glow with myriad shades of red, all the varied hues, not just one.

The vision shone in his mind. After a moment, he shifted his shoulders, then settled back against the frame.

His reaction to her, his fascination with her, was only half his problem. The other half was her fascination with him. He was aware of that to his bones; every little twitch, every instinctive feminine response she made, he felt like a sharpened spur, digging in, heightening his awareness of her, stirring his lust, and the need to slake it.

Never before had he been in the grip of such elemental and reckless desire.

That
was what had led to that kiss. Then her curiosity, her directness, had snared him, and drawn him with her into deeper waters.

Unwise. He’d known it at the time, but hadn’t called a halt, as he could have done.

Worse, he knew beyond doubt that it would happen again, and it wouldn’t end with just a kiss. If he stayed and painted the portrait he was now desperate to paint, met the irresistible challenge fate had laid before him and painted the work she and her father wanted and needed him to paint…

For long minutes, he stood gazing out at the night-shrouded gardens, grappling with what he now faced. If he stayed and painted Jacqueline’s portrait, he would risk falling in love with her.

Would the passion, the lust, the desire—all that love encompassed—drain the passion he drew on to paint? Or were the two separate? Or complementary?

Those were the questions he hadn’t wanted to face, that he’d hoped, at least for the next several years, to leave unbroached.

But they faced him now, and he didn’t know the answers.

And could think of only one way to learn them.

Yet if he took that route and the answer to his first question was yes…he would have risked and lost all he was.

Resigning Lord Tregonning’s commission and leaving Hellebore Hall immediately was the only way to avoid putting those questions to the test. The ultimate test. A good portion of his mind, the logical, cautious side of him, strongly urged leaving as the most sensible course.

The painter in him said no. Emphatically no. The chance to paint the gardens aside, he would never, not ever, find such a challenging portrait, such a challenge to his talent and skills. To walk away without even attempting it smacked of sacrilege, at least to his painter’s soul.

The man he was said no, very definitely no, too. Jacqueline trusted him; that was implicit in her behavior, in her invitation to him to be her champion, her “witting judge.” She needed him; the situation she faced was perilous, potentially life-threatening. She and her father had been right; with his reputation backed by his ability, he was the only one able to open the doors of others’ minds and free her from the peculiar web ensnaring her.

He stood staring into the night for half an hour more. Would he continue, paint her portrait and free her, accept and embrace the likelihood of falling in love with her, and so risk losing the one thing he valued above all else, his ability to paint?

Behind him in the darkened room, the clock on the mantelpiece chimed, a single bell-like note. With a self-deprecating grimace, he pushed away from the door frame and turned into the room. He was racking his brains to no purpose; his decision had already been made, virtually by default; he was here, so was she—he wasn’t going anywhere. Certainly not now he’d held her in his arms and felt her lips beneath his.

The die was cast, his direction set.

Closing the balcony door, he reached up to tug the curtain across—a movement in the gardens caught his eye.

He looked, and saw the bright glint again.

A spyglass on a tripod had appeared in the room the day after he’d arrived, courtesy of Lord Tregonning; he’d already set it to scan the gardens. Striding to where it stood, he brought it to bear on the area in question, quickly focused.

On Eleanor Fritham.

She walked down the path out of the wood in the Garden of Diana. Her hair caught the moonlight—the glint he’d seen.

“It’s one o’clock. What the devil’s she doing—” He broke off as, scanning ahead of Eleanor, he discovered someone else. Someone in a coat, with broader shoulders, stepping off the highest viewing platform, heading deeper into the gardens further down the valley. Some man, but he was already in denser cover, walking into the dips and shadows of the gardens. Eleanor followed, her steps light.

In seconds, they’d disappeared, dropping lower into areas out of Gerrard’s sight.

He put up the spyglass; he had little doubt of the meaning of what he’d seen. The Hellebore Hall gardens at night, drenched in moonlight, were the perfect setting for a tryst.

Heaven knew, he’d felt the magic himself that afternoon.

Inwardly shrugging, he finished drawing his curtain, and left Eleanor and her beau to themselves.

S
o tell me—what’s he like?” Eleanor looked into Jacqueline’s face, her own alive with curiosity.

Smiling, Jacqueline walked on. That morning after breakfast, Eleanor had arrived to stroll the gardens and chat, as she usually did every few days. Jacqueline had expected to have to deny her and devote her time to Gerrard, but when she’d looked his way inquiringly, he’d sensed her question and instead excused himself, saying he wished to look over his sketches from yesterday.

He’d headed upstairs, presumably to his studio, leaving her free to stroll with Eleanor, and appease her friend’s rampant curiosity. “You’ve seen him.” She glanced at Eleanor. “You’ve spoken with him. What did
you
think of him?”

Eleanor mock groaned. “You know very well that’s not what I meant, but if you want to know, I was taken by surprise—appreciative surprise, I hasten to add. He’s not at all what I’d expected.”

Indeed.
Jacqueline stepped down from the upper viewing stage onto the path that led through the Garden of Diana and farther to the Garden of Persephone, and the spot where she and Eleanor most often sat and talked.

“He’s not quiet, not reserved, but
contained,
isn’t he?” Eleanor, eyes on the path, ambled beside her. “He watches, observes, but doesn’t react, yet there’s all that energy—all that strength and intensity—you can sense it, almost see it, but you can’t touch it, and it doesn’t touch you.”

She shivered delicately; glancing at her, Jacqueline saw an eager, frankly knowing smile playing about her lips.

Eleanor caught her gaze; her eyes shone. “I’d wager Mama’s pearls he’s a
fantastic
lover.”

Jacqueline felt her brows rise. Eleanor had had lovers—she’d never known who, or if there’d been one or more; Eleanor had freely described her experiences, but only in terms of the feelings, the excitement, the physical sensations.

Through Eleanor, she’d learned more than she would otherwise know, yet only in the abstract.

Until now.

He kissed me, and I kissed him.

The words hovered on her tongue, but she drew them back. Held back from sharing that piece of information she knew Eleanor would relish. She could imagine her friend’s subsequent questions: how had it felt, what had he done, was he masterful, what had he tasted like?

Wonderful, he’d opened her eyes, yes, he was masterful, but gentle, too—and male—he’d tasted like the essence of male.

Those would be her answers, but she was reluctant to share them. The incident yesterday hadn’t been intended, not by either of them. He hadn’t played with her hair intending to seduce her into a kiss, of that she was sure. And she…she hadn’t known that after his lips had touched hers once, she’d ache to feel them again—that she’d want, and be so brazen as to invite, so much more.

Yet he had, and she had. She wasn’t yet sure how she felt, or should feel, about either of those happenings.

While Eleanor had always shared the intimate details of many aspects of her life, she had always been more reserved, more circumspect in what she let out. But she knew Eleanor well; she would have to say more.

“Sitting for him has been quite different from what I expected. He’s only done pencil sketches so far, and he’s very quick with those.”

“Do you have to strike a pose? Jordan said he met you and Gerrard in the gardens yesterday, but that he’d finished by then.”

“Not finished—we were in between gardens. We strolled through, trying various spots. It’s not so much striking a pose as just sitting as he tells me to sit, then talking.”

“Talking?” Eleanor drew back to look at her. “About what?”

Jacqueline smiled and kept walking. Their usual bench lay just ahead, set between two flower beds. “Anything, really. The topics aren’t all that important. I’m not even sure he listens to what I say, not to my words.”

Eleanor frowned. “Why talk, then?” Reaching the bench, they sat. “It’s so I’m thinking of something—because of course I have to think of whatever I’m talking about. He’s more interested in what shows in my face.”

“Ah.” Eleanor nodded. They sat quietly for a few moments, then she said, “Mr. Adair’s quite interesting, isn’t he?”

Suppressing a cynical smile, Jacqueline agreed.

“He’s the third son of an earl, did you know?”

There followed a largely one-sided discussion of Barnaby’s character and person, with occasional comparisons to Gerrard. Jacqueline interpreted those with the ease of familiarity; as she’d expected, Eleanor found Gerrard the more attractive, an attraction only heightened by his apparent unattainability, his disinterest, but she viewed Barnaby as the easier conquest.

“Gerrard probably reserves all his intensity for his painting—artists can, I believe, be terribly selfish in that way.”

When Eleanor’s pause made it clear she expected a response, Jacqueline murmured, “I suspect that’s so.”

But he hadn’t been selfish yesterday. He’d been…what? Kind? Generous, certainly. He must be accustomed to dallying with experienced lovers; with her untutored kisses, she was very far from that. Yet he hadn’t seemed disappointed. Or had he just been polite?

Inwardly, she frowned.

“Hmm,” Eleanor purred. She stretched, raising her arms, pushing them up and out.

Glancing at her face, lifted to the sun, Jacqueline noted again the impression she’d gained the instant she’d seen Eleanor that morning. Eleanor’s expression was that of a contented cat stretching languorously in the sunshine.

Jacqueline had seen that expression before; Eleanor had been with her lover last night.

A spurt of some feeling rushed through her, not quite jealousy, for how could one be jealous over something one didn’t know—a yearning, perhaps, to…live a little. Eleanor was only a year older than she, yet for years Jacqueline had felt the gap between them widening. Before Thomas disappeared, they’d seemed much closer in experience, even though Eleanor had already taken a lover, but when Thomas walked away and never came back…from that point on, her life had stalled. Then her mother had died and life had been suspended altogether.