by Ingrid Hahn
If he took a rare moment to be reflective, he would admit there were four things he truly cared about, albeit in vastly different ways. Fucking. Painting. His word. His mother.
And Giles did not make mistakes. So how had anyone discovered what he and Miss Emery had done?
Relief relaxed the tension spun around his bones. Tuesday night…that had to be what his father meant. The night before last. Specifically, the debauchery at the Cyprian Ball. A particularly good one this time around, too.
“I’m going to give you one last chance.” The duke turned. “Or I’m going to make you more sorry than you can ever imagine.”
“You already have. You married my mother.”
“And begot you. You should be groveling at my feet.”
“Perhaps there might be groveling in me were you ever to forgive me for being born.”
The old man stared at him. His eyes alone would have gleefully spread a layer of frost over a garden of rosebuds. “Toy with me at your own peril. Mark my words, boy. This is the last time I will warn you.”
“Very well.” Giles waved at Silverlund. “I consider myself warned. Now leave.”
The duke stayed firmly affixed to the floor on which he had no permission to remain. “I fear you’re not heeding me.”
“Well, then?”
“Well, then, what?”
Giles blinked. Really, it was astounding that this man had sired him. He could be thicker than a brick of lead. “Why do you yet persist?”
“I will make you sorry.”
“We covered this ground not two minutes ago. Consider your errand complete and go about…” Giles paused to consider, wrinkling his nose slightly and pursing his lips. “Doing whatever it is you do.”
His father gone, Giles took his mortar and began grinding the dark-red hematite. And ground and ground and ground. When he added the oil, the pigment assumed the hue of old blood. He didn’t usually clench his jaw. But if he couldn’t relax, he was going to shatter every last one of his teeth.
That one done, he moved onto the next stone to crush for pigment.
“My lord?”
Giles jumped. He’d been grinding for so long, the stone had disintegrated into dust. His hand ached, and he rolled his shoulder to ease the stiffness away. “Yes, Welland?”
The butler took a step in the room, holding out a note on a silver plate. “This arrived.”
There was a tiny X on the left bottom corner. Miss Emery. At once, Giles’s entire body began humming.
He’d have given her all the time she pleased. He himself liked his gratification powerful, satisfying, and, above all, immediate. However, a man like him learned quickly that he was different from others and that sometimes he had to put his physical demands second in order to get what he wanted.
Very well, in truth, he put his own wants second but rarely. He was the Marquess of Ashcroft. People tripped over themselves to gratify him. Women were ready to lift their skirts on slight provocation. But it was a philosophy he wanted to embrace on the occasions that warranted them. Miss Emery was worth any wait.
Giles tore open the note.
I want to say yes, but I’m not certain. —P.V.E.
V.
How intriguing.
He smiled and abandoned his painting room for the study. It was sensible for her to be considering the proposition with care.
At his desk, he penned his reply, each letter formed in perfect round hand. Each word in a written document required careful selection, both in how the whole would be read silently and how it would sound being read aloud. It had to appear beautiful, too. A letter was a work of art. A note was no excuse for relaxing standards.
Shall we meet? Tell me what the V stands for. Verity?
The reply wasn’t long in coming.
Where would we meet? And, no, not Verity.
He penned a reply as hastily as his penmanship standards would allow.
While waiting for her next reply, Giles took out his cock—made hard merely by the act of writing to Miss Emery—and played with himself, reliving the memories from the previous night. How sweet her soft flesh had been. How his hands had sunk into her thighs. How he’d feasted on her wetness, finer than any wine, his tongue making her tremble and moan.
Erotic visions flocking in his fertile imagination, he tugged and pulled, keeping pressure firm and steady over the hot shaft. Holy hell, he was hard. His body was tense, his bollocks tight. He was ready to shoot off quickly and forcefully.
But he held back, not willing to surrender the pleasure of thinking about her just yet. Wanting to push himself to the limits of his endurance as he envisioned her impatiently following her own bodily delights.
Miss Emery. Miss Emery. Miss Emery.
What powerful needs she had. And if he were the one to coax them out of her, to teach her about a side of herself she hardly dared imagine, he would be the luckiest bastard in the world.
Chapter Five
Late into the afternoon, Patience sat with Elizabeth at the table in the Emery dining room, their writing things around them. After Patience delivered a detailed description of the ball—omitting the Marquess of Ashcroft—they worked to finalize the latest installment of The Haunted Tower and plan the next few chapters.
Elizabeth was the painfully shy and shortsighted spinster daughter of a cloth merchant who possessed perpetually rosy cheeks and a vivid imagination. She also had a fascination with Society gossip that rivaled Patience’s mother’s.
“What do you think might happen if…” Patience pretended to be preoccupied with straightening the papers to keep her eyes averted. She could only pray she sounded casual. She tried to clear her throat, but it was dry. Tea would have been welcome. “If Lady Alice were to have an attractive gentleman offer her a proposition?”
Lady Alice was the younger sister of The Haunted Tower’s heroine, Lady Caroline. Lady Caroline, of course, would end up with the duke. She could not stray. But Lady Alice had much more leeway. They’d already established her as a character with unconventional beliefs and a rebellious streak.
What really drove the question was Patience’s own dilemma. She didn’t have the words to discuss the marquess’s proposition, even with Elizabeth, the person she trusted the most in the world. This was the only way to test the waters.
Elizabeth gave Patience a wide-eyed stare over the rims of her spectacles. “I should say such a gentleman wasn’t entirely respectable.”
“Say he wasn’t? Would that be so terrible?”
“Wouldn’t it?”
They were interrupted by Frances, who passed Patience a folded note. It was from the marquess.
Swallowing, Patience slid her finger under the wax seal.
Can you slip out of the house? I can have an inconspicuous town carriage brought around to you at midnight. Veronica?
Fingers trembling, she refolded the note and put it to the side, self-consciously trying not to cover it protectively with her hand so as not to alert onlookers of its importance. “Tea, please, Frances.”
“Will there be a reply, miss?”
“Not just yet.”
Frances left. Elizabeth gave Patience a curious look but stayed silent.
Patience licked her lips. Concentrating on the task at hand was nearly impossible. Thoughts of the marquess and his proposal had expanded in her mind, squeezing out everything else. “What do you think?”
Elizabeth blinked. “About what?”
“The gentleman?” Patience picked up the pen and dipped it in ink, positioning herself as if she might jot a note on the list of things coming next in the story.
“I think it would be going much too far.”
A sharp pang of disappointment bit Patience’s heart. Of course. Of course.
“Besides, what would your father think if we tried to write such an episode into the story?”
“No, you’re entirely right.”
Elizabeth gave Patience a queer look. “Are you well?”
“
Oh, of course. I—”
Frances brought tea just in time.
The rest of the hour was painful. She couldn’t do any more work on The Haunted Tower. Her brain wouldn’t cooperate. At last, she had to plead a headache.
Over the empty tea things waiting to be removed, Elizabeth gave her another concerned look. “Are you quite certain you’re well?” In a motherly gesture, she reached out and cupped a hand over Patience’s forehead. “You don’t feel warm.”
“Tired from last night is all.”
Elizabeth said nothing for a long moment. The woman was both intelligent and perceptive. No doubt she saw perfectly well that Patience was hiding something. But at last, instead of inquiring further, she gave a careful nod, her brows drawn, her lips pinched with worry. She rose and gathered her things. “Very well.”
When her friend had gone, Patience took up her writing instrument to respond to the marquess. The only sensible course would be to refuse him.
Holding the pen, her hand refused to cooperate. All she had to do was say no. But every time she closed her eyes, she saw herself looking down between her open legs watching him sucking her quim.
Patience grasped the length of the writing instrument so tightly, her fingers began to cramp. She took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh of resignation.
Decision made, a rush of relief flooded her veins.
Saying no was the right thing to do… God help her, but she couldn’t. Refusing required strength she didn’t possess.
Not Veronica, though I rather wish it were. Patience Veronica sounds lovely, though a bit unusual. I can slip out of the house. Don’t bring the carriage there, though. Kressington Square. By the fountain. Tie a white ribbon around the spoke of the right back wheel so I’m certain which is yours. Midnight.
…
Patience must have been mad. Slipping out of her house at midnight to meet a man.
A stranger.
A dangerous stranger. One who, last night, had put his mouth between her legs and taken her to the height of wickedness.
When she was supposed to be going to sleep, she instead crouched by her fireplace, read the notes he’d sent that afternoon one more time, then pushed them behind the grate in her bedroom. She watched until they were reduced to nothing.
He would be expecting her. They’d made an arrangement. Ultimately, going or not would be her choice. Funny. It didn’t feel as though she had any choice. There was a desire greater than anything she’d ever known compelling her forward.
If more wickedness was yet to be discovered, Patience needed to explore it. Once would not suffice.
Shaking with daring driven by curiosity to previously unknown heights, she dressed in black, veiled her face, and crept down the narrow stairs, heart slamming in her chest with every creak and squeak her foot found. If her parents overheard, she’d have no explanation. A nighttime stroll?
Pausing by their door, only snoring emanated from within.
The ground floor used to hold her father’s printing shop. It had operated at all hours of the day, her father leasing time on the presses to other newspapermen and pamphleteers when he wasn’t running an edition of his journal. For as long as Patience could remember, the rooms below had always been noisy.
After they’d come into their small fortune, he’d brought a new press, hired a few more assistants, and moved into a bigger space down by the warehouses on the river. That was, what money was left after foolishly loaning far too much to Mr. Wilshire. Had it been a calculated move? Had they known he wouldn’t be able to repay them? Were they trying to obligate a man into marrying their daughter? They could have left her the funds in a trust. She could have been independent. But a notion such as female independence wouldn’t have entered her parents’ minds, would it?
They now rented the old shop space on street level to a tea merchant. It was blessedly quiet. And smelled wonderful. The whole floor was redolent of paradise.
Purging the unwelcome Wilshire from her mind, and with one last inhalation of the fragrance of the tea leaves for courage, Patience slipped into the alley behind the small row house. A three-quarter moon cast plenty of light.
A few blocks away, the Thames snaked along its bed, but they lived on a street situated in a respectable stretch several blocks beyond the border where unspeakable doings sullied London’s underbelly.
She turned the corner and traversed the rising ground toward Kressington Square. These parts were peopled by those who strove to take care of themselves when they didn’t always have the means. The air didn’t have the smell one might hope for on the night of an assignation, but such a trifling detail wasn’t going to stop her.
As promised, a plain carriage stood by the fountain. A white ribbon dangled from the spoke of the back right wheel. Curtains covered the windows, but a lantern inside made them glow.
“I must be mad. I must be mad.” Patience stood fixed to the uneven surface of the road. She closed her eyes and breathed into the bottom of her lungs. If she passed up this opportunity, she’d spend the rest of her life wondering what she might have learned.
Hang propriety. If wanting to know more about the pleasures of the flesh made her depraved, she’d dance in licentious glory through orgasm after orgasm.
Besides, she could always repent later.
She crept up to the carriage. The driver kept his gaze forward, ignoring her. She rapped lightly on the window. The door opened. There he was, bathed in the light of a stubby candle dangling in a glass cage from the center of the carriage roof. “Good evening, Miss Emery.”
As he leaned out, an umber lock of hair fell over his forehead. He descended and reached out a hand to help her inside. She slipped her fingers over his. “Good evening, my lord.”
With his touch came a flood of memories. His head between her legs. Her skirts up. Her thighs bared. And the pleasure building, building, building. Until it had burst, sending her careening through unimaginable realms.
Inside, the carriage was simple but fine, the cushions plush, the emerald velvet showing no hint of crush or wear. Patience took the side facing forward—the empty side—and arranged her skirts. Paper was strewn over the bench opposite, sharpened pencils at potentially hazardous intervals. Upon many of the sheets were sketches of horses, houses, and other ordinary things. The man must spend an absolute fortune on paper alone. The sort of sum one normally encountered when reading the costs of feeding a ship full of hungry men.
The marquess followed her in and shut them inside.
She lifted her veil.
Instantly, his eyes warmed as they roamed her face. “I should very much like to take this opportunity to draw you, Miss Emery.”
She touched the top button of her pelisse. He couldn’t mean for her to strip here. “Draw me?”
He reached out toward her face but held back before making contact with her skin. His brows rose. “May I?”
Her cheeks warmed. She agreed with a careful nod, her pulse starting to speed. His touch was gentle, the tips of his fingers lightly skimming over the contours of her face. It was strange combination of innocent, shocking, and unspeakably intimate.
“I need to know every line your face. Every swell. Every dip. Every contour. From the first moment I saw you, I wanted to draw you.”
Patience’s eyes fell shut. Her lips parted, and she tilted her head with a sigh at his caress.
He pulled back, and she shivered. The marquess collected the strewn paper, shuffled it into a relatively neat pile, and found a pencil. His stare darting between her and the paper, he sketched a few strokes with—how interesting—his left hand, ran his fingers through his hair to brush it back from his face, then sketched a few more. With a few more lines, there she was—the essentials of her features, maybe, but her. He shaded a bit here and a bit there, and suddenly there was more of her.
Never in her life had she dreamed she might have her portrait done—even informally, say, with a schoolroom slate and a bit of chalk. Her father had paper
, but it was precious—all for the journal and pamphlets, and accounted for down to the last sheet. The ink was for printing words. There was nothing artistic about his shop. Nothing frivolous.
She sat up straighter. Now she was sitting with a man who couldn’t draw her quickly enough.
“Again.”
Patience started when he cast the paper aside suddenly and started anew with a blank sheet.
“Head a little to the side this time, please.” He motioned, and she moved her head. “There. Perfect, stop. No, back again…there.”
The process repeated itself.
More drawings. More sheets. More directions. She lost count.
Without warning, she yawned. She covered her mouth. “Forgive me.”
His pencil stilled. “I could do this all night.”
“I’m not certain I could.”
He smiled. “Nor should you. May I sit with you?”
She nodded and moved over slightly to allow him room on the seat beside her, drawings left forgotten on his bench. He pulled her close, and their lips touched.
The first kiss was awkward, her back stiffening, her body tensing. It was close and intimate. There were so many things she wanted but had been trained her whole life to repress. Now she was taking them in this secret, stolen moment.
The marquess kept kissing her. One after another. The awkwardness vanished as she melted against him. They moved together slowly, exploring each other with their mouths, the heat building until any objections Patience might have had—and they were few, indeed—faded to nothing, like a dusting of snowflakes under a golden sun.
He pulled away slightly. “Your face isn’t the only part of you I want to know every swell, contour, and line of.”
Tightness pulled between her legs, and the weariness of a moment ago slipped away like a ribbon of silk dropped in a light breeze.
“May I touch you?”
Her “yes” emerged in a breathy whisper.
“I thought you might say you were too tired.” His hand rested upon her thigh. Without any hurry or thought to the desperation screaming from the center of her being, he moved her skirts up, up, up.