To Win His Wayward Wife (13 page)

Chapter 14

Benjamin stared at that wooden chest. Who knew a little box no more than six cubic feet could possibly fascinate him so? Madison had gone whiter than a corpse when she heard Paul’s grand announcement about those chests. Something had to be inside there that she didn’t want to be reminded of. But what? For the hundredth time since he’d taken it from the drawing room, his fingers ran over the edges. All he had to do was flip it open and he’d know what she was hiding behind. But that wasn’t his place, he reminded himself as he pulled his hands away and shoved them back into his pockets. She needed to trust him and she wasn’t going to be able to if he searched her things like she was a child.

Putting the trunk under his bed, he went about setting up the painting materials he’d purchased. He’d been pursuing her quite aggressively the past two days and hoped by asking her to join him here she’d take a chance and trust him enough to come.

Morning couldn’t come fast enough. And just like every other day in the last six years, it took its sweet time about coming. But at last it arrived and joining the sun peeking into his windows, shedding light in the room came knocking at the door.

Wearing only his shirtsleeves and trousers, Benjamin tentatively opened the door and was rather surprised to see a perky Madison with a sleepy footman standing behind her holding a heavy tray. “Good morning, Benjamin,” she said brightly before directing the footman to take the tray to a little table in the corner.

“Madison,” he greeted, idly rubbing his jaw where he had a day’s worth of gristle. He knew she didn’t sleep until noon like she’d once claimed, but he had no idea she got up so earlier, either.

“May I come in?”

He looked at the position of her feet in the middle of the carpet. “It appears you’re already in.”

“I know,” she said matter-of-factly. “Why don’t you go finish getting dressed?”

He nodded and went to go shave and finish putting on his clothes. He was glad she’d come, even if it was much earlier than he’d expected.

He’d just finished shaving and had his stockings and boots on when she came to the edge of the bedroom doorway. “I’m almost done,” he said, tying the laces to his boot.

“It’s all right, take your time,” she said dismissively. “Breakfast is ready when you are.” She shot him a winning smile and leaned her head against the doorjamb.

“Dare I hope it’s waffles,” he teased.

Her smile slipped. “How did you know?”

“I didn’t. But I do now,” he said, taking to his feet.

She put her hands on her hips. “See if I ever try to surprise you again.”

He smiled at her. “You do all the time and don’t even know it.”

“Leave the waistcoat and let’s go,” she said, walking out of the room.

He wasn’t going to argue with that command. He tossed the waistcoat down by his waiting coat and cravat. “Thank you for the waffles,” he said, sitting down. “It’s rare I eat them three meals in a row.”

“Me, too. Actually, it’s rare I eat them at all, and don’t for one minute think I’ll be eating them again for lunch,” she informed him. “However, I had a brilliant idea in the middle of the night and I had to see if you’d like it. And I absolutely couldn’t wait until our next trip to Bath to find out.”

Benjamin smiled at her. She’d thought about him in the middle of the night! And from the sound of things, they’d been good thoughts. “All right. Let’s see what we have,” he said, grabbing the top of the silver dome that was by him. He pulled the top off and looked at the waffles he’d just uncovered. They had little chucks of brown sprinkled in them. “What’s this?” He picked one up with his fingers and stared at it closely, barely resisting the urge to sniff it.

“It has chunks of chocolate in it,” she said with a blinding smile. “I’m sure someone’s thought of it before, but let’s pretend they haven’t and it was all my bright idea.”

“Excellent idea,” he agreed with a smile. “What made you put chocolate in it?” He noticed there was only one large round waffle on that plate under the dome and he carefully cut it in half and slid half onto each of their plates.

“Well, you said you like waffles and hot chocolate, so I thought, ‘why not combine them?’. And if that turns out to be nasty, I asked Cook to make one with chunks of strawberries cooked into the batter.” She lifted up another dome that was hidden on the chair to her left. Pulling off the lid, she showed him the waffle with the strawberries. “I figured since you were putting strawberries on them yesterday, you might like them cooked inside, too.” She shrugged and cut that waffle in half like he’d done with the other and gave them each half.

“Thank you. That was very thoughtful of you. I’m sure they’ll be delicious.”

And they were.

“I have something for you, too,” Benjamin said after they’d finished eating and the conversation reached a lull.

“You do?” Both her voice and her bright blue eyes were so full of excitement Benjamin swore his heart rate picked up.

He got up from his chair and walked back to where the little bedroom was. “Are you coming?” he called from inside the room.

“Aren’t you going to bring it out?” she hollered back, still sounding excited, but perhaps a different kind of excitement.

He went to the vanity table that was against the far wall and started to arrange the painting supplies a bit more. She’d come close to coming into this room before breakfast, but where this table was located, she hadn’t been able to see his surprise. “It would be easier for you to come in here,” he said, fanning out brushes and positioning tubes and jars of dye just right.

Slowly he heard her feet scrape across the wooden floor as she walked across the great room to his little bedroom. “All right,” she said in a weak, resigned voice. “I’m all yours.”

“Excellent.” He went to the door and flashed her a smile before grabbing her hand and pulling her inside. “I’m not the greatest at surprises, but I think you’ll like this.”

She stepped over the threshold and into his room. Her face looked a little paler than earlier and her body was tense as she looked to the middle of the room. At his bed.

“You’re looking in the wrong direction,” he said gently.

She blinked her eyes and slowly let them move from his bed to the window and finally to rest on vanity before she gasped. “How did you know?”

“Brooke told me you didn’t bring your painting materials here. I thought now that this will be your permanent home, you could use some.”  He walked with her over to the table and watched as she picked up some of the brushes and dyes. “This was all I could find in Bath. We can get more next time we go to London.”

“Thank you,” she murmured, picking up one of the oil paints. “You didn’t have to get both oil and watercolors.”

He frowned. “Do you prefer one over the other?”

“No, I’m just surprised you’d go to such an extreme, that’s all.” She picked up one of the brushes that couldn’t possibly have more than three hairs in it, and yet it had been almost the most expensive one. Of course. “They conned you, didn’t they?”

“Absolutely,” he agreed jovially with a “who gives a whit” smile. “I haven’t a clue about painting and the clerk knew it. However, I don’t mind how much it cost or what ridiculous piece of material I was tricked into buying. I bought this for you and I want you to enjoy it.”

“I think I will,” she mused. “You said you don’t paint?”

“No,” he confessed, “I couldn’t paint a stick.”

“A stick?” she asked, favoring him with a curious expression. “Why in the world would you paint a stick?”

 “I have no idea.” He shook his head and grabbed a canvas. “When I was a boy I got bored and found some old watercolors that belonged to my nanny. She didn’t want them and said I could have them. I was so excited to have something to do, I ran to my room to paint. An hour later I still had a blank canvas. I had no idea what to paint. I looked out the window and saw what looked like a snake crawling on the ground and decided to paint that.

“First, I painted the entire canvas green to be the grass. Then I mixed a few colors together and painted the snake. When I showed it to Nanny, her lips twitched a bit but she just patted me on the back and said it looked great for the first time. Inspired, I showed it to Lizzie and got a different reaction entirely. I believe her words were, ‘Why did you paint a stick?’ When I tried to explain it was a snake, she cocked her head to the side and said, ‘It’s hard to tell, it really doesn’t look like either.’ The only other time I tried to paint, I kept painting over the edges of the square canvas.”

Madison didn’t even try to hide her mirth. “Would you like to learn?” she asked, grabbing a few brushes and jars.

“I’ll try, but I don’t think I’m teachable,” he admitted, bringing the canvas to the little table and chair by the window.

“That’s all right. Just prop that up against the window, thank you. As Brooke mentioned, I haven’t painted in a while. I’m probably not very good anymore.”

“Rubbish,” he countered. He left for a second to go to the common room and grabbed another chair.

She had her back to him stirring paints when he walked back in the room. She looked so graceful standing there. He wanted to prolong the moment and watch her forever, but knew he couldn’t do that, she was expecting him to return.

“I thought we’d use oil paints. They’re far more forgiving than watercolors,” she explained as he took a seat next to her. She finished mixing and poured a small blob of a few of the pigments on a pallet. “All right, Your Grace, shall I show you how to paint a stick or a snake?”

He grinned and shook his head. “Neither.” 

“Oh, a square, then?” she asked with a teasing smile. “Or would you like to branch out and do a circle?”

“Actually rhombi have always held special appeal to me,” he said, edging his chair closer to her, hopefully without her catching on.

“Rhombi?”

“It’s the Latin word for the plural for a rhombus. I suppose it could also be rhombuses. I just like the word rhombi better,” he said, pressing his thigh against her skirts.

She looked at him curiously, which he interpreted to be because of his words, not actions. “I don’t mean to sound daft, but what on earth is a rhombus?”

“It’s a shape,” he said with a shrug. “It’s a four sided parallelogram that all have equally long sides. Kind of like a square. Except a square also has four right angles, therefore, it’s called a square instead of a rhombus. The most common shape for a rhombus is the dia—”

She leaned forward and cut him off with another quick kiss. But he was too quick, and when she went to pull away, he moved his hands up to cup her face and brought her lips back to his.

He pressed his lips to hers and held them there, moving them slowly on top of hers, waiting for her to respond. And she did respond. Her lips moved to match his. Exerting pressure, then releasing. Carefully, he parted his lips more and ran his tongue along her bottom lip, flicking the corner of her mouth. She gasped his name and brought her hands up to rest on top of his fingers where they held her face.

Taking advantage of her parted lips, he slipped his tongue past her lips and swept her cheeks. She tasted sweet. Like strawberries and chocolate. He moved to touch her tongue and was sweetly rewarded by hers boldly following his as he swept her cheek again.

Hot desire shot through him, making his blood race and his temperature rise. She wanted this just as much as he did. Like him, she was powerless to stop. But rational thought entered and he knew he needed to stop. This wasn’t the right time.

He withdrew his tongue and pulled back from her lips, eliciting a whimper of displeasure from her followed by a fetching blush. “You’re so beautiful when you’re blushing,” he murmured, making her blush deepen.

She lowered her eyes to stare at the lower half of his face. “What were we talking about?” Her voice sounded strange. Lost. Dazed.

“Rhombi,” he said with a roguish grin. “I was explaining wh—”

“Stop,” she interrupted.

“Hmm, and here I thought you were enjoying our geometry lesson.”

She shot him a pointed look. “You’re not turning into Alex on me, are you?”

“No,” he said, brushing a blonde curl out of her eye. “I only did that to see if you’d kiss me again.”

She rolled her eyes. “If you want a kiss, just ask.”

“You mean you’d kiss me if I asked?”

“Yes. I still owe you that Waffle Law kiss, remember?”

“Oh,” he said, disappointed. She seemed awfully eager to have him collect on that and be done with it. But there was no reason to do so when she kept giving them to him without his having to ask. “I don’t think I’m ready to use that yet,” he mused. “However, I have decided what I want to paint.”

“What? A waffle?” she asked sardonically.

“No,” he said, matching her snarky tone. “A landscape. I want a river running here,” he ran his fingers in a curvy line down the middle of the canvas, “and trees here, here, and here,” he tapped two fingers on three different spots on the canvas, “the rest can be rolling grass. You know, not flat, but not mountainous, either. Just hills and such.”

“For someone who looked at a blank canvas for an hour before deciding to paint a snake that looked more like a bad stick, you sure have high aspirations,” she said, shaking her head and smiling.

A half hour later Benjamin had more paint on his shirt and hands than was on the canvas. Not that that was saying much. The canvas was covered in paint. No, it was slathered in paint. In fact, the paint alone had to have a volume of half an inch off the canvas.

The picture itself was no masterpiece, either. The stream was black from far too many coats and colors mixed in. The grass looked like the wind was blowing it in all different directions because of his uneven and mildly careless strokes. The trees resembled a long skinny brown stick wearing a big curly green wig. But he didn’t care. He didn’t care it looked atrocious and he was covered in paint. No, he was grinning like an idiot.

The whole time he’d attempted to paint she’d grinned at him. She’d touched his hand to help guide his strokes. She’d laughed at his asinine jokes. She’d even calmly answered his stupid questions. All that was well worth the horrific painting he’d produced.