“I see.” Her smile faltered. “I shall have to thank her as well, then.”
A silence fell between them then, broken only by the clink of cutlery on china. He had disappointed her. He hadn’t meant to, had only meant to diffuse the heaviness of the moment. Hadn’t he just told himself that he needed to act with more restraint where she was concerned? That he couldn’t afford to continue allowing himself to lose his head over her?
Yes, damn it. Of course he had. And now he was feeling badly when he’d done nothing wrong. He needed to escape the room and put an end to this foolishness. He stood abruptly, startling Tia from her concentration on her breakfast.
“I prefer to take my ride each morning,” he told her, deciding that it would be best that they spent little time together during the course of the day. Some distance would do well to douse his inconvenient passions. Or at least, he hoped it would. “I shall leave your morning schedule to your preference. Today, Mrs. Rhodes will be giving you a tour of the house to better acquaint you with your new home. She will collect you after you finish breaking your fast.”
“Yes, of course,” she murmured in a tone of voice he couldn’t quite decipher. But a tiny frown drew her brows together, and he suspected that didn’t bode well for him. “Will you be joining me for tea?”
“No,” he decided quickly. “I have some pressing matters to attend to, I’m afraid. Being away from the estate has left me with much work to do. I’ve a meeting with my steward.”
In truth, he hadn’t a meeting with his steward, who was a more than capable man he’d entrusted with the running of the estate in his absence. But perhaps it would be a convenient time to arrange one. He couldn’t bloody well spend all day at his wife’s side, sniffing at her skirts.
“Of course,” she said again. “Enjoy your day, Your Grace.”
“Heath,” he gritted out just before stalking from the room.
He wasn’t certain, but he was fairly confident he heard her say, “Yes, Your Grace.”
The minx would be the death of him.
If there was one thing that drew Tia’s interest as surely as a fly to a barn, it was a closed door. Closed doors and sealed-off rooms were meant to be opened and investigated. At least they were in Tia’s estimation. But she hesitated outside the chamber she’d been warned away from in the east wing during her tour with Mrs. Rhodes, her hand poised over the knob.
Tia knew she was likely intruding, but one of her flaws was an unquenchable sense of curiosity. When she’d been a girl, she’d snooped through every room in her father, Lord Northcote’s, country estate. She’d found nothing of interest save for a few spiders and the dusty journal of her great-grandmamma. But oh how she’d adored those days of adventure.
Given her history, she supposed it was hardly surprising that she should be entertaining herself by snooping about in Chatsworth House. After all, her husband was off riding after being rather aloof at breakfast, she’d done the necessary with her housekeeper and she’d even answered all her correspondence for the morning. She’d never been the sort to quietly sit and read books or—worse—engage in embroidery.
She cast a quick look about the hall before she opened the door and stepped inside. Though windows lined the far wall, curtains had been drawn, bathing the spacious chamber in shadows. Tia stalked across the room and made short work of the drapes, pinning them open to allow the beautiful late-morning light to illuminate the space she’d just invaded.
Everything in the room was covered with cloths, but the shapes beneath their coverings were unmistakable. Large, framed canvases.
“Paintings?” Her brow furrowed, Tia moved to the nearest stack, uncovering it.
Dust billowed forth, causing her to sneeze. Apparently, no one had entered this room or bothered with its contents in quite some time. Years, unless she missed her guess. Odd, that, especially considering Heath was so proud of the restorations he’d made to his country seat. Why would he seal away an entire room and its contents?
She looked down at the paintings she’d discovered and was instantly shocked. They weren’t fusty, old Cavendish family portraits as she’d expected. Instead, they were beautiful works of art. The first was a landscape. Italian, unless she missed her guess. With bold strokes and rich, warm hues, it was so dreamy and inviting that she felt as if she were standing in the midst of the painting itself.
She flipped to the next, a scene of a nude man and woman embracing beneath a tree, presumably Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The attention to detail and the lush representation quite took her breath. It was exquisite, and each painting she found was equally impressive. She skipped past a beautiful angel to another landscape, this one decidedly English, before stopping at the portrait of a woman who looked somewhat familiar to Tia. She was seated, her hands clasped, and had been represented with an almost loving attention to her beauty. Tia wished someone would paint her in that same way.
Indeed, whoever had painted these works possessed true, inspiring talent.
“What are you doing in here, Tia?” demanded her husband, intruding so suddenly on her thoughts and the chamber both that she gasped and spun about to face him, nearly knocking over the paintings she’d just revealed in the process.
“Heath.” She flattened her palm over her racing heart, forgetting to annoy him by calling him “Your Grace” in her surprise. “I didn’t hear you approach.”
“I daresay not.” He entered the room, looking rakishly handsome in his riding clothes, and rather a bit irritated as well. His full lips were drawn in a tight, disapproving line. “You were too busy riffling through rooms you have no reason to be intruding upon.”
It would seem that the cool, aloof duke of the breakfast table was to continue. She supposed she couldn’t entirely fault him. For all that they were wed, she was yet an interloper here. He hadn’t wanted this room opened. The otherwise kind, round-visaged Mrs. Rhodes had been very firm on the matter of leaving the chamber as it was. Tia had ignored her husband’s wishes, and perhaps it had been selfish of her to do so, she worried now as she watched him.
There remained much of him that she needed to know. She well understood that Heath had welcomed her into his bed, had proclaimed her the lady of the manor before his servants, but had yet to allow her fully into his confidences. He had certainly not revealed more of himself to her than his sexual needs. Heavens, she may as well have been his mistress and not his wife.
“I’m sorry,” she said quickly, only half meaning the apology. After all, he couldn’t very well go about closing up rooms without expecting her to investigate them. She was a leopard who couldn’t entirely change her spots.
“You should not have come here,” he told her. “I’ll have the servants set the room to rights. Come.” He held out his hand for her to take, his intention clearly to lead her from the chamber as if she hadn’t just uncovered an extraordinary cache of beautiful paintings. As if his behavior were innocuous and normal.
It wasn’t, and she wasn’t forgetting those paintings, either. She crossed her arms over her bosom and stared him down. “No.”
He raised an imperious brow. “No?”
“Just so.” Perhaps taking a stand against him wasn’t precisely the wisest course of action, but Tia was stubborn to a fault. She wanted to know why he was overwrought over her discovery of the paintings and why he wished to keep them hidden away when they should be enjoyed. “I won’t leave until you tell me where these pictures came from and why in heaven’s name they’re secreted away in here.”
His eyes darkened and his expression hardened. “I’m afraid you’ll be waiting here a frightfully long time, then.”
She shrugged as if she hadn’t a care, when in truth she was very much invested in his response. She didn’t wish for them to be polite strangers as they had been this morning. She longed to know him—all of him—as surely as she knew his body and the pleasures it gave her. “Very well. I’m sure I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
He clenc
hed his jaw. “I haven’t the patience for this, Tia. Not today.”
“Tomorrow, perhaps?” she couldn’t help suggesting, tongue in cheek.
But he was not amused. “Damn it, this isn’t one of your larks.”
The smile fled from her lips. “I know.”
Did he think she was merely toying with him because she was bored? His face was impossible to read. He held himself stiffly, as if he weren’t certain if he wanted to stalk from the room or stalk to her and shake her. It occurred to her that she’d never seen her husband angry before, and perhaps she had unwittingly enraged him with her little intrusion.
“They’re mine,” he ground out at last.
At first, she couldn’t be certain of his meaning. Of course the paintings were his. Chatsworth House and its lands all belonged to him. But there was something in the way he’d spoken the declaration that was different. It was as if he were saying he’d painted them himself. But that was ludicrous. Surely if Heath painted so sublimely she would have known.
Still, he seemed deadly serious, and she had to ask. “You painted these?”
He raked a hand through his hair. “I did. Damn it all, I should’ve bloody well had them burned.”
Tia didn’t think she would’ve been more shocked if he’d announced he was planning on sprouting wings and flying into the sun. She could scarcely believe he had painted the stunning canvases before her. The talent he possessed was incredible. While Tia had never been the book lover her sister Cleo was, she had always adored the art of painting. She had seen some of the finest art of their age on display, and she could honestly say that Heath’s work rivaled it.
“Why should you wish to burn them?” she asked, trying to gather her scattered wits. “These are some of the most talented pieces I’ve ever seen. To destroy them would be a travesty. Indeed, keeping them tucked away like this, as if they’re some sort of awful family secret, is travesty enough.”
He came to her then, startling her by taking up the cloth and flipping it back down over the canvases. “The real travesty is that I ever wasted my time painting them at all. It was a selfish lad’s fancy, nothing more.”
It was apparent to her that there was a rather large part of his story he was withholding from her. He had intended to keep this room, these pictures, from her. She’d never seen him display such an intensity before, other than when they were making love. Her heart gave a momentary pang as she couldn’t help but wish that she could move him the same way even when they weren’t caught up in the undeniable passion between them.
She caught his hand in hers on impulse. “Why do you hate them so?”
He stilled, his gaze locking with hers. “I don’t hate them. I feel nothing for them.”
“I don’t believe you.” She squeezed his fingers, imploring him with her eyes. “I may have had no business poking about in closed rooms, but I know you well enough to see that these paintings have an effect on you. Please tell me why, Heath.”
Chapter Eight
Goddamn it. Heath had been right earlier that morning. The minx he’d wed would be the death of him. Tia had found his paintings. She’d been looking at the portrait he’d done of Bess when he walked in. The sight of his fiancée’s sweet face staring back at him had shaken him to the core. He’d begun the painting after she’d agreed to marry him. And he’d finished it after her death, in the days of drunken misery that had overtaken him. He’d intended to give the painting to her parents, but in the end, he hadn’t been able to part with the last piece of Bess he’d ever have. Even if he couldn’t bear to look upon it.
“Please,” Tia repeated, “tell me.”
His wife’s expression was soft. Concerned. It chipped away at the ice in his heart. He had never confided in anyone after Bess’s death. He had simply carried on, and when he’d been able to put down the whiskey and rejoin the world of the living, he’d never again spoken her name. Not to anyone. But there was something about Tia that undid him. Made him weak.
He pulled her against him, needing to feel her soft, warm, and alive in his arms. As she embraced him, he sank his nose into her hair, breathing deeply of the sweet scent of violets. “I was betrothed,” he forced himself to say.
She stiffened in his arms. Clearly, she hadn’t known. He hadn’t been certain. Bess’s family owned the estate neighboring Chatsworth, and their betrothal had not been announced in society. They had decided to wait until he had returned from Italy.
“When?” Tia asked simply.
“Six years ago,” he began, unsure of how much he would tell her. Perhaps everything. Perhaps only just enough.
“It’s her in the portrait, isn’t it?” Her voice was hushed.
He supposed it wasn’t much of a leap for her to make, but he couldn’t help but be startled. “Yes.” Emotions long buried rose within him. “Her name was Bess.”
“You loved her.” It was a statement rather than a question.
Heath swallowed, thinking of the compassionate, kind-hearted young lady he’d grown to know as a lonely young man who’d just inherited a dukedom. “Very much.”
She didn’t withdraw, continuing to embrace him. “I could tell by the way you painted her. What happened?”
“She died.” Five years after the loss, he still felt it every bit as keenly. The shock, the bitterness. The guilt. “I was away in Italy when I received word of her illness. By the time I returned, she was being lowered into the ground.”
“Oh, Heath. I’m sorry.” She pulled back slightly, searching his gaze, and he swore he could detect the sheen of tears in her vivid eyes. “If I had known, I never would have intruded.”
How could he hold onto his anger in the face of her kindness? He traced the curve of her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “You’re my wife now. It’s only right that we shouldn’t have secrets between us any longer.”
She turned her head to press a kiss to his palm. “I understand why you wish to keep her portrait tucked away. But why the others? Why didn’t you tell me that you paint?”
“I don’t paint,” he told her, careful to keep his roiling emotions from his voice. He hadn’t discussed his past with anyone, and resurrecting it was not without its share of pain. “Not anymore.”
She gently trailed her fingertips over his beard. The urge to take her away from this chamber full of ghosts was strong. He longed for her. Needed to lose himself inside her, to blot out the misery of old wounds. She was silent, studying him for what seemed an eternity.
“Does painting remind you of her?” she asked at last.
There was something damn awkward about discussing the woman he’d loved and lost with his wife. But there was also something comforting about it. Something freeing.
“It reminds me of the way I betrayed her.” Devil take it, he may as well lay it all before her, all the ugliness, the scars. Let her see him for who he truly was. “I was a selfish bastard, so consumed by my desire to paint that I nearly allowed it to destroy me. We were going to be wed, Bess and me, but I wanted to take a trip to Italy to study the great artists. I asked her to wait for me, and I left her behind. Months passed by, and then one day, the letters from her stopped. I received a letter from her sister instead, telling me that Bess’s condition was grave.”
“You hardly betrayed her by traveling to Italy, Heath,” Tia told him firmly. “Was she ill when you left her?”
“No.” He thought back to the last day he’d seen Bess. She’d been laughing, her cheeks pink, wearing a bright-green day dress. He still recalled the way she’d worn her hair, the way her warm, brown eyes had laughed at him. “She was in perfect health.”
“You couldn’t have known something would befall her in your absence,” she said softly.
Of course he knew that. If he’d had the slightest inkling on the day he’d said goodbye to Bess that it would be the very last time he’d see her, nothing could have stopped him from staying by her side. Except that he hadn’t known, and he had merely kissed the back of her hand
as he’d done a dozen times before, and left her without a backward glance. No, his lack of knowing what was to come didn’t mitigate his culpability.
“I should never have left for Italy in the first place,” he countered. “I was a fool, chasing a dream that could never be mine. Dukes don’t paint. They wed and produce progeny for the future of their estates.”
Tia stared at him. “Is that why you married me? For your heir and a spare?”
Christ. He didn’t know what to say to her. Surely she’d realized that he hadn’t wed her solely to bed her every night? She was a widow and the daughter of an earl. She could hardly be ignorant of the ways of the ton. But he saw the hurt glimmering in her eyes, and it cut through the grief that had returned to him the moment he’d caught sight of his paintings.
“Tia,” he began, hating the way she was looking at him.
“Of course it is,” she answered for herself, her tone cool. She slipped away from his grasp, setting some distance between them.
“It isn’t the only reason for our union,” he tried, taking a step toward her. Without the comforting warmth of her in his arms, he was suddenly bereft.
She shook her head. “No. You needn’t prevaricate on my account. I suppose I was a fool for thinking differently.”
“You’re not a fool.” Damn it, he felt like the worst sort of cad. “You know I desire you.”
“Yes, that is most reassuring.” She flashed him a smile that held no mirth. “If you don’t mind, I find I’m feeling quite exhausted. I’ll leave you to your memories.”
“Please don’t go,” he called after her, but she spun on her heel and fled anyway, leaving him standing alone in a chamber laden with dust and the remnants of the man he’d once been.
Her husband was in love with a dead woman. And not just any dead woman, but a woman with the face of an angel. An incomparable beauty who would forever be perfect in his eyes because he hadn’t known her intimately enough to recognize her failings. A woman whose death he felt somehow responsible for.
Heart’s Temptation Books 1–3 Page 68