‘I am sure you can, but for the sake of my pride, I’d like to carry it.’ He flashed her a grin. ‘I don’t want anyone thinking I’m sloughing off my duty as a gentleman.’
She handed over the basket with a saucy smile. ‘All right, then, for the sake of your fragile male ego, you can carry it.’ She was probably only half-joking. She knew precisely the lengths men would go to protect that fragile ego.
They walked in silence back to the farmhouse. Unlike many women of his acquaintance, Artemisia Stansfield didn’t feel the need to make idle chatter. She was comfortable with herself just as she was. He liked to think the silence was a sign that she was also comfortable with him, but it was too soon to make any assumption there. He’d been unlucky regarding assumptions and Artemisia. She was, no doubt, resigned to tolerate him, yet he did not think it was an entirely unpleasant resignation. They’d spent a companionable afternoon together, they’d eaten together and she’d told him about the farmhouse. Surely that signalled at least modest liking.
* * *
At the farmhouse drive, she took the basket from him. ‘I am sketching the oystermen tomorrow at the beach.’
‘I’ll take that as an invitation and as a humble endorsement of my company.’ He gave her a half-smile.
‘Don’t read too much into it. What cannot be avoided must be endured,’ she replied, but there was no rancour in it. He took that very small victory with him as he left, but it didn’t quell the growing emptiness the further he got from the farmhouse. He pictured Artemisia going inside, setting the basket down in a warm kitchen filled with dinner smells, imagined her telling Adelaide about the birds. She might mention his presence in minute passing, affording him perhaps four brief and nondescript words in the recollection of her afternoon.
Darius Rutherford was there.
Not St Helier. Not the title, but the man. Of course. Artemisia Stansfield would never be intimidated by a title nor would she conflate a man with his title as too many did, as his mother did, calling her husband Bourne, even within the intimacy of the family dining room.
He smiled a little to himself. What else might she tell her sister? Would he feature further in her recounting? If he was lucky, he might get three more words later when she discussed her plans for tomorrow.
Rutherford is coming.
He laughed out loud. She would say it just like that, too, as if he were a bothersome schoolboy tagging along. But she hadn’t minded his company, not entirely. They’d got along well at the estuary today sitting in, if not an exactly companionable silence, certainly not an uncomfortable one.
The Crown would seem lonely tonight. He knew no one else here and, like most small towns, Seasalter’s inhabitants weren’t keen on getting to know strangers, especially well-dressed ones from London. He liked to think that explained his nascent obsession with Artemisia Stansfield. She was the one person he knew here, the only person he had any connection with, tenuous as it might be. It was perfectly understandable to gravitate towards her, to fix his attentions on her. In the absence of other acquaintances and other work, where else would he fix them?
Chapter Six
He was still ‘gravitating’ a week later. His days orbited around her. He rose in the mornings, responded to correspondence sitting next to the window in the taproom as he ate his breakfast. Stretched his legs with a mid-morning walk around what passed for ‘town’, and then it was time to seek out Artemisia, time to watch her sketch, time to sit quietly and contemplate her over the pages of his journal, his own pencil scribbling or drawing away in efforts he’d not yet had the courage to go back and assess.
‘You will never be nothing but a dauber.’
Eight words that had changed the trajectory of his life, assuming that heirs ever had choices about their trajectories. At the time, though, he’d thought he had a choice. Those words had meant everything, defined everything. It was the only time he’d ever felt limited.
Artemisia looked up from her pad, her gaze contemplative. They were back at the beach, watching for winter birds. He took advantage of the moment to initiate conversation. She spoke little when she worked and he found her words to be like golden grains, treasured for their scarcity. ‘When will you paint?’ As much as he was enjoying the outings this week, it had occurred to him that perhaps these outings were another of her strategies to keep him out of her studio, but she couldn’t sketch for ever.
Her sharp grey eyes dropped to the journal in his hand. ‘There’s a reason I don’t press you about your book. An artist’s work is very private. The studio, be it a journal or an actual space, has an intimacy matched only by the bedroom.’
His blood began to rouse at the potent image drawn by her words. Had she done it on purpose? It was the most telling statement she’d made all week, even more revealing than her story of the farmhouse. It had occurred to him, of course, that she was no stranger to passion in all of its guises. She was not an eighteen-year-old debutante, but a woman in her late twenties, the daughter of an artist who ran an eclectic household without a motherly figure at the helm.
Her own temperament and views suggested that she held society’s foibles in contempt. There was plenty of ground on which to speculate and speculate he had. It was, admittedly, one of the more decadent things his mind had wondered about during this week of silent study. What type of man would such a woman take as a lover? How often? He didn’t want to know the answers. He’d have to report them to the Academy if he had knowledge of them. The Academy would pillory her for passions indulged.
‘You want to watch me paint, Mr Rutherford.’ It was a quiet accusation. She might as well have said, ‘You want to see me naked.’ To her it was likely the same thing. He recalled her earlier reference to the studio as a bedchamber, an intimate space.
‘Well?’ He rose to the argument. ‘You’ve seen me naked in my bath.’ Surely, this confident woman was not intimidated by him watching her paint. Her talent was already proven, even if it was not accepted by the Academy at the higher levels.
‘You had nothing to lose, it’s hardly the same.’
She really believed that. He gave a short chuckle. ‘My dignity? My pride? Those are no small things.
‘What does it cost you if I watch you paint? You’ve already said you think it hardly matters what you come back with in March. Perhaps you, too, have nothing to lose.’
She did not believe that. She put her pencil away and closed her sketch pad, signalling the end of the session. ‘I have everything to lose and you hold all the power. Your words will matter, far more than mine. A man’s testimony always carries more weight than a woman’s.’ Her stare was piercing, forcing unspoken truths to surface. They both knew it was true. How many times was a woman believed in a court of law over a man? How many maids didn’t dare lay a complaint against the molesting lord of the manor in fear of their jobs? Never and none. His thoughts stalled on the last. It wasn’t just men, then, that she referenced in her shrewd comment, but men with status, a subtle reference to the power of his title and perhaps to something more.
‘If there is any sway to be had,’ Artemisia said with deadly quiet, ‘it rests with you, Mr Rutherford.’ There it was again: the tellingly formal Mr Rutherford. Proof that, for her, nothing had changed in their week. There was no intimacy in her address and something in him rebelled against it. He didn’t want to believe they were the same people they’d been five days ago. Perhaps because he wasn’t the same. Something in him was beginning to wake up, to hunger for things he’d not allowed himself in years. He wanted to paint again, wanted to defy the conventions that said he shouldn’t, that such dabbling was beneath him.
Rebellion whispered softly at his ear, If you shook of those shackles, what else might you shake off? An intriguing thought. Perhaps that was the real power of Artemisia’s influence and he wanted more of it, wanted to see where it led.
‘Darius, please. We do not need to b
e enemies, Artemisia.’ He tried out her name. Would she correct him?
‘At least not in Seasalter?’ There was no correction, but she was wary of the offer, perhaps already concluding he should not have made it. ‘What about London? I can’t imagine this fragile truce has a chance of lasting once we return to town.’ Fragile on so many levels, not just the Academy. He was heir to the Earl of Bourne. He could not imagine presenting her to his parents. To be seen with her would raise eyebrows and speculation. He would survive it. Men were expected to have mistresses. She would not, even if the speculations were untrue.
‘London is complicated. It need not be that way here,’ Darius said simply. He couldn’t win the argument and he wouldn’t give her lies. He rose and offered her a hand up from the hard-packed sand but she refused it, rising on her own to stand toe to toe with him. Dear heavens, what had he said now to irritate her?
‘Is that a proposition? If so, I won’t sleep with you for a decent review.’ She tossed her plait over her shoulder. ‘I am not for sale.’
Darius had not thought she was. Her accusation inflamed him. ‘It was nothing more than an offer of friendship for the duration.’ Darius’s own temper began to slip its leash. This was the damnedest waltz, one step forward, two steps back. Just when he thought they were making progress, she put up another wall, each one higher than the last.
‘Am I really such a monster?’ He could see the dark flecks in her grey eyes, could almost see the thoughts that flitted behind them, could almost catch them. Almost. Nothing about her was easily caught.
‘You are worse. You are the monster’s tool.’
He did not like the sound of that and it broke the last of his restraint. He’d taken enough of her insinuations this week, but he would not stand for slander of his personal honour. ‘Be careful with your words, Artemisia. I am my own man and I do not need to bribe women into my bed,’ he growled the caution. ‘You know nothing about me.’
‘I know you are here, sent by men who would destroy me. That seems sufficient enough to make the case.’ Artemisia knew nothing of caution. His warning had not been heeded.
His dam of restraint broke. ‘I am here because those men would indeed destroy you, if given the chance. I came so they might not have that chance.’ He was suffering six long weeks in Seasalter for that decision. He need not suffer her accusations as well.
She rolled her eyes. ‘So now you’re my saviour? Every woman needs a protector, is that it? You want to be my knight in shining armour? I assure you, I am no damsel in distress.’ She made to turn from him. ‘I can handle myself.’
‘By shouting “penis” to a room full of men?’ No one turned their back on him and it was time someone took this brash young woman in tow with some hard truths. Darius reached out a hand and gripped her wrist, unprepared for the electric frisson of awareness that jolted up his arm at this first contact, skin-to-skin, a reminder that there were more feelings at play here than anger and pride. ‘Listen to me, Artemisia, I was in that room after you left. I heard what they said and it’s all you can guess and more. In March, maybe you get accepted, maybe you don’t. If you’re accepted, it should be on your own merits, not because of who your father is. If not, it shouldn’t be because they’re holding you to an unfair standard that they would not hold themselves to.
‘You are making it too easy on them. There were plenty of men in that room willing to come and make sure you were found unsuitable, but they asked me, because an art critic is supposed to be objective. I am willing to be your fighting chance, but you have to let me in, you have to stop thinking of me as the enemy.’ The ardour of his argument surprised him.
He almost had her. Something had got her attention. He could see her thinking through his words, weighing them against the truths she knew. He pressed his case. ‘I can offer you objectivity, a fair hearing. Perhaps I am the only one who can or will.’
‘You want me to believe you’re on my side?’
‘I am not on anyone’s side. I’m objective, remember.’
‘Nice try.’ She shook her head. ‘That’s not possible. Everyone’s on a side and, in the end, you will be, too.’
‘Not me,’ he assured her, loosening his grip on her wrist. He was close. He had to make her see he was in her best interest. She would not get a better chance. When had he started to care so much what happened to one rebellious artist? ‘You’re not the only one who can’t be bought.’ She was softening. He couldn’t lose her now; the reasons were myriad and confusing if he focused on them for too long. Not all of them were about access to her art. Some of them, frankly, were about access to her. He’d not been intrigued by a woman this intensely for a long while. It was an unseemly attraction and a dangerous one. Developing an attachment to her would jeopardise the objectivity he promised her. If that attachment were discovered, it could be used against him if he rendered a favourable opinion of her art.
He ought to walk away, he ought not to stoke the sparks that leapt between them. But he didn’t want her to go, not back to the farmhouse where she’d be alone with her thoughts, where she’d convince herself that he was the enemy once again. Alongside that, though, was another reason that had emerged steadily over a week of watching her, of noting her habits and words. He wanted to talk to her, talk without quarrelling, without debating. What more might he discover about her? She was full of fascinating ideas and perspectives. Where did they come from? What fuelled Artemisia Stansfield?
How did he make her stay? He thought fast. ‘Come have dinner with me at the Crown. Let me show you who I am. I’ve earned your tolerance, now let me earn your trust. I am not the monster you think and the wine will be a more than adequate compensation if I’m wrong.’ He offered a wry smile.
She cocked her head and made him wait for an answer. He jotted another mental note. Everything was done on her terms, even answering invitations she didn’t issue. ‘All right, Darius,’ she said at last. ‘One dinner and you’d better be right about the wine.’
Chapter Seven
He wanted to be her fighting chance. The words played through her mind as they sat for dinner at the Crown, not in the crowded main room as she’d anticipated, but in a private parlour.
‘Here we might talk,’ he offered, his voice low at her ear as he held her chair inside the cosy room. A fire crackled in the grate, the heavy oak door shutting out the din of the taproom, emphasising their privacy. ‘It would be too noisy out there. I’d have to ask you to repeat every other word. Wine?’ He moved to the oak sideboard where a bottle waited and poured two glasses.
His manners were smooth, effortless extensions of himself. Even in sand-speckled clothes, there was no mistaking him for other than what he was: a peer’s son, a man raised to navigate society with the subtle inflection of a single word, a single look designed to create a desired impression. Today, the impression had been one of possibility. On the beach, he’d almost made it seem as though she had a choice, that she could make the Academy accept her, that she had a choice in allowing him into her studio, or that she had a choice about dinner tonight. Technically, she supposed she did, but refusal was costly and served no purpose except to be the tool of her own defeat.
Rutherford handed her a glass of deep ruby wine and took his own seat across from her at the small, square table. It was oak like the sideboard and lacked a tablecloth. Instead of white linen, it sported a generation of scars and burns. It was not an elegant table, but Rutherford sat at it as if it were polished mahogany, transforming the humble furniture with his own innate refinement. ‘Cheers.’ Rutherford clinked his glass against hers and they drank.
The wine went down as smoothly as his manners. She had to wonder, was he navigating her as he would a ballroom? Easily? Effortlessly? No matter how sincere the offer of friendship sounded there was no denying it was convenient for him. It gained him all he wanted. Why was he so adamant that she listen to him? Was it truly for her own
good as he argued, or for his? They both knew he couldn’t go back to London empty-handed.
‘Well? What do you think?’ he asked as she swallowed.
‘It is good.’ Artemisia gave her assessment. ‘A French burgundy. Probably smuggled.’ She added the last offhand and was gratified when Rutherford choked on his swallow. ‘Well?’ She cocked an eyebrow at him. ‘Where did you think the proprietor of an out-of-the-way inn of meagre means would get such a fine vintage?’ Rutherford no doubt drank smuggled brandy at his London clubs, but he’d likely not been so close to the supply chain before.
‘Touché.’ He grinned, taking the ribbing good-naturedly, and took another swallow as the innkeeper’s two gangly sons entered with dinner on heavy trays and set out the dishes. The savoury scent of a roast and potatoes filled the room and Artemisia’s stomach grumbled, a reminder that she’d forgone the usual late lunch on the beach when they’d quarrelled.
The boys left and Rutherford carved the meat, offering her the first slice and topping off her glass. He was giving new definition to the concept of being wined and dined. When the firelight played across his face, accentuating the firm, straight line of his nose and the strong angle of his jaw, it was hard to remember this was a show for her benefit, an attempt to persuade her that she could trust him. Despite her past experiences with such persuasion, she’d like to trust him. She chewed her roast slowly, thoughtfully, as she mulled the idea over.
This week hadn’t been unpleasant. He’d been good company, respectful of her need to work in silence. He’d not intruded on her privacy with words or useless small talk. And he was easy on the eyes. There were far less attractive companions one could have. Tonight, he was giving her a taste of what friendship would be like with him: quiet evenings, good wine, pleasant banter and the same freedom he’d given her all week to speak her mind, to be herself. It was a dangerous mixture, a tempting cup to drink from, and she was not unwilling to stir that cup a bit, but with a caution born of experience that said men betrayed. But before that, how far would he go to win her trust? How much of himself was he willing to reveal in order for her to do the same?
Portrait of a Forbidden Love--A Sexy Regency Romance Page 6