by Gabriel
But that violent satisfaction was not to be Gabriel’s.
If Polly had her way, this sexual interlude would be kept carefully discreet, superficial, and temporary. Her precious, damned painting was enough for her.
Not so, for Gabriel.
He wasn’t going to wait two years to make love with her, only to let her go merrily painting on her way. As soon as he had his own safety sorted out, he’d be down on his knees, making her blush and stammer, and God willing, come, while she accepted his ring.
She’d fight him, of course, and argue and elude, but she’d not given herself to another the way she’d given herself to him in the past hour, and even Polly had to acknowledge the significance of that. It was a small tragedy that their loving would not likely result in a child, but Gabriel would offer her every consolation time, money, and caring could afford.
Let somebody else see to the succession—Aaron, even George, or the damned Regent, for that matter. Polly was meant to be his wife, his for all time, and he was meant to be hers.
Next time, he would have to remember to tell her these things.
Provided, of course, she permitted him a next time.
***
Gabriel awoke to hear a pencil scratching over expensive paper. More than a week after he and Polly had become lovers in truth, this sound was familiar to him. She was working diligently on Aaron’s portrait by day, and Gabriel was working diligently on her resistance by night, but she, artist to her toes, was sketching him as much as she was making love with him.
“Get back in this bed, woman.”
“Hush, and don’t move.”
“Five minutes then,” he ordered. “My backside is half-exposed to the chilly night air, and I’ll catch a lung fever.”
“You like modeling for me,” Polly murmured, pencil flying.
“I like your gaze on me,” Gabriel countered, but in truth, he did like modeling for her, because it allowed him to study her even as she studied him. Her sketching him served as a kind of sexual teasing, with each too absorbed to care where the other’s eyes were fastened.
“Of course,” Gabriel went on, “I like your hands and your mouth and your body on mine too.” And her scent. He loved knowing he left her bed smelling slightly of cloves and passion.
“I said hush.”
He’d yet to do it, but Gabriel suspected that with enough practice, he could make her come with mere words. As her menses approached, her sexual fuse had lengthened, or perhaps she was simply gaining her balance with increased experience.
He certainly wasn’t. He was gaining a nigh constant erection, and were it not for the need to tend to estate, legal, and personal business, he’d tie her to the bed and tie himself to her.
“Three minutes, beloved, and you’re waking up parts of me that need their rest.”
“Do not move.”
He waited half a minute before his next attempt at shifting her focus. “A fellow with a delicate back is taking a chill here.”
“I built up the fire,” she shot back, and the room was cozily warm accordingly. They both liked it that way, because it left them with more light to see by and allowed them to make love on top of the covers, gloriously exposed to each other’s eyes and hands and mouths.
Gabriel lay partway between his side and his chest, the covers wrapped around only one leg and hip, leaving him more exposed than not. He was curled around a pillow, facing his artist, though he knew she’d caught him in about every pose a man could occupy in bed.
“You need to keep two notebooks, love. One for leaving around the house, that includes all your subjects, studies, and the decent parts of me, and one exclusively for our bedroom.”
He used the first person plural as much as he could: our, ours, we, us. She’d stopped flinching visibly when he did it, but he still felt her resistance.
“All of you should go in one notebook,” Polly said, frowning at her work. “Your hands are as erotic as your mouth or your manly parts.”
“How is a fellow supposed to mind his manners when you offer him such naughty talk, Polonaise? One minute.”
“You mind your manners as you steal my wits. God above, you are beautiful.”
“Could you experience sexual satisfaction merely by sketching me?”
“Gabriel Felicitos Baptiste Wendover, shut up.”
He smiled, his best wicked, arousing smile, and knew she’d be closing that sketchbook in a minute, possibly two.
“Are you growing damp for me, beloved? Do you anticipate our pleasures as much as I do? I had to tend to myself while dressing for dinner tonight. It was all I could do not to come, thinking of you at your bath.”
“Please, Gabriel.”
He fell silent, because he’d never outright refuse her request, unless she were begging him to deny her pleasure. She rewarded him a few moments later by closing her sketch pad and setting it aside. Or perhaps it was a defensive maneuver, for he’d assisted at her bath a couple days ago and had the sense the experience had left her leery of bathtubs, bath sheets, soap, and her own body.
But not his. She remained fascinated with his body, and that offered him badly needed encouragement.
“You aren’t going to show me your work?”
“Oh, very well.” She fetched the sketchbook and leafed through it. When she brought it to the bed, he levered up to sit on the edge of the mattress, tugging her down to sit beside him.
He considered her most recent sketch. “You wanted more time?”
“Always.” Usually, Polly had no vanity about her work and no insecurity. That her likenesses would be accurate was a foregone conclusion. What she puzzled over and spent time on was the emotional content of the image, the subjective impact.
“You make me look like a weary, naked angel. A fellow who has put his wings aside at the end of a lovely day and has awakened from dreams of another lovely day.”
He sensed she saw his body, scar and all, as that perfect. Silly woman. When she touched him, the same intense regard was there in her hands, so he didn’t tease her about it, didn’t question his great good fortune.
He instead kissed her cheek. “When you marry me, you can order me to strut about all day without clothes. We’ll bankrupt ourselves keeping the fires going all winter, and expire regularly of bliss.”
“Gabriel, not tonight, please?”
“No expiring tonight?”
“None of your nonsense about marriage.” Polly put the sketch aside. “It makes me want to avoid you.”
A cold draft wedged its way into their cozy boudoir. “Avoid?”
“We can’t marry,” she said, staring at her hands where they were linked in her lap. Her talented hands held no tension, but Gabriel sensed her growing desperation anyway. “You have the title, I have my art. I am too attached to you as it is, and your talk of marriage is not… entertaining.”
“A proposal is not usually considered mere talk of marriage,” Gabriel countered, though he knew he wasn’t going to grouse and bluster his way past her resistance. “We care for each other, Polonaise, and we are famous good friends in bed. Give me a reason other than the bloody title why we shouldn’t be wed?”
There was a reason. Her silence, the despair in her eyes, confirmed it.
“Perhaps,” she said slowly, “I am too passionate to confine my amours to one man.”
“Well, all right then.” He wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “When you’ve tired of me, you are free to have your amusements, and I shall do likewise if I can still walk and have any higher functions left to go on with.”
He’d called her bluff, and Polly dropped her forehead to his shoulder. “This isn’t a joke, Gabriel.”
“It isn’t funny,” he agreed. “Come to bed, Polonaise, and we’ll argue later.”
“No, we won’t.” She let him help her out of her nightclothes, and snuggled up to his side under the sheets. “You’ll bully and tease and make love to me, and the arguments will grow without another single word from e
ither of us.”
“You think I can’t be married to an artist?” He settled his arms around her. “This is arrogance on your part, Polonaise. I am capable of flexibility and tolerance, and I can be happy with one pair of boots and one old horse.” All he needed to be happy was her, and the ability to provide for her.
“I know that.”
“Let me rub your back.” He rolled her over, as easily as if she were a tired puppy, and rearranged himself behind her. She was soon breathing the steady, relaxed cadence of sleep, while Gabriel was, as she’d predicted, silently growing his arguments.
They belonged together, or so he’d decided, but doubt fractured his resolve with a thousand tiny fissures.
She was suffering. As much as she delighted in his sexual attentions, as much as she allowed herself to be comforted by his affection and regard, Polonaise Hunt was also tormented by the weight of the succession, or by some burden known only to her. For this reason—because she suffered—he’d eventually lose the heart to press his suit upon her. Forcing confidences from her would break something of the trust they already had, and that he would not do.
***
“Bring a book,” Polly suggested in exasperation.
“A book?” Marjorie blinked at her. “To read to him?”
“Your husband is as difficult a subject as a trio of little boys,” Polly said, naming one of her most challenging projects from years past. “He cannot hold still, can’t remain silent, can’t abide inactivity.”
“You think he’ll abide it if I’m underfoot?”
“You can’t make him any worse. He can barely hold still for five minutes.”
They detoured to the library, where Polly selected some of Byron’s verse, and then hied themselves to Polly’s studio on the third floor. Lord Aaron paced a slow pattern from window to window. Wintery sunlight gilded him as he passed each one, making the highlights in his hair wink everything from sunset red to molten gold.
“I’ve brought a distraction,” Polly announced.
Lord Aaron smiled at the ladies. “Sorry. I’m not used to maintaining immobility.”
“One senses this,” Polly said. “My lady, you must sit where his lordship can see you and hear you easily.”
“Here?” Marjorie took up a hassock not far from where her husband was to stand. The sunlight hit her hair and came over her right shoulder, just as it had in the portrait Polly had done of her. The angle was the most flattering Polly had found for a lady who was quietly stunning to begin with.
“That will do,” Polly said, tying a full-length apron on. “You, sir, assume your pose, and we will make progress today if it’s the last thing we do.”
His lordship fixed his gaze upon his wife, and Polly realized she should have tried this approach a week ago, when she’d first started work on the man’s portrait. As Lady Marjorie read the poetry in the cool, ironic tones the poet intended, Aaron’s mouth relaxed into a sort of half smile, one Marjorie, with her eyes on the book, could not see.
Polly saw it. Polly had been watching for it for days, and there it was. She painted with an intensity that had previously eluded her with this subject, and knew some relief, and reassurance, to be lost in her work.
She tried to ignore the impending despair Gabriel’s nights in her bed had provoked, but it crowded in on her, compressing her art, her joy, even her very breath.
She was going to leave the man she’d come to love, because she couldn’t bear to confess to him that for two years, she’d been living a lie, as had both Sara and Allie at Three Springs. Gabriel was piercingly intelligent. He’d see soon enough that even Beckman had been allowed in on the secret, but not Gabriel.
Not Gabriel North, overworked steward, and certainly not Gabriel, Lord Hesketh.
She could not bear the contempt she’d see in his eyes when he realized how far from marchioness material she was.
Or worse, the pity.
So she ignored despair, ignored the tearing guilt she felt with every cheerful, stupid letter she wrote to her daughter and sister, and ignored all the epistles Tremaine sent, no doubt filled with requests for progress reports and threats of more artistic success.
Artistic success, alas, mattered little. An artist could have a youthful indiscretion, at least on the Continent, provided she was repentant and very careful thereafter.
A marchioness could not. And if Polly had to choose at that moment between the child she’d passed into her sister’s keeping and the man she’d come to care for too much, well… she’d have to choose neither. For the sake of both of them, she’d have to choose neither.
Thirteen
“How’s the portrait coming?” Gabriel passed his brother a glass of brandy and poured a second one for himself. A cold wind soughing around the corner of the house and gusting atop the chimney announced that this would be not an autumn night, but a winter night.
“She won’t let us see the painting.” Aaron took a sip of his drink and sighed out his pleasure. “Marjorie says that’s unusual for Miss Hunt.”
“It is. Our artist looks tired to me.” And Gabriel well knew why she was losing sleep.
“Tired?” Aaron rolled a cue stick across the green felt of the billiards table. “Miss Hunt looks like Miss Hunt to me.”
“And what does your wife look like to you these days?” Gabriel turned his back to his brother, taking a good long while to poke up the fire. The room was warm enough, but the question wasn’t exactly casual.
“My dear lady wife looks like… a little bit of heaven, dangled right before my crossed eyes. Your injury doesn’t appear to be paining you.”
Gabriel straightened, which resulted in not so much as a twinge from his back.
“It isn’t.” Something about Aaron’s words tickled Gabriel’s memory, where he usually ruminated on the various challenges in his life. “Since taking nigh a week to purely rest, my back is doing better. Then too, I’m trying to keep it limber.”
“You didn’t before?”
“Hadn’t the time to indulge the occasional game of billiards. I was warned in Spain the damned thing would take years to heal, and it has.”
But then too, making love seemed to help, at least most of the positions he’d tried with Polonaise did, and her hands kneading his muscles, and grabbing hard at his—
A knock on the door interrupted his thoughts, which was fortunate for his dignity, because Aaron missed little.
“My lords,” a footman said, “you have a visitor.”
Aaron set his drink down. “It’s damned near dark. Are we expecting anyone?”
“A Mr. Tremaine St. Michael,” the footman supplied. “He’s in the family parlor, and Lady Marjorie is being located that she might receive him.”
“Send along a substantial tea tray,” Gabriel said. “Aaron, you’ll accompany me?”
“You know this fellow?”
“He’s Miss Hunt’s man of business. I wasn’t aware we were to be graced with his presence.” Gabriel would have bet his horse Polonaise hadn’t summoned the man, either.
“His name is familiar.” Aaron started rolling down the cuffs he’d turned back in anticipation of a predinner game.
“You know him as the Sheep Count,” Gabriel suggested. “He’s something of a market force in the Midlands wool industry. Or perhaps you saw his name on Miss Hunt’s contracts.”
“I did. You know him in other capacities?”
“There’s a family connection between him and the new owners of Three Springs,” Gabriel said, which was a truth. As they made their way to the family parlor, he suspected Aaron sensed it was a half-truth.
“So you didn’t send for him?” Aaron asked.
“What makes you think I would?”
“You don’t seem surprised by this. I recall something in the contracts about his needing to confer with his client from time to time, provided his visits do not interfere with progress on the present project, and so forth.”
Gabriel stopped outside the family
parlor. “That’s the language. Nearly word for word, and you haven’t seen those documents in weeks, at least.”
“I can usually recall what I’ve seen, if I was paying attention when I read it. Shall we greet our guest?”
Our guest. That, at least, was encouraging.
They exchanged cordial bows with St. Michael, who had apparently been warned that Mr. North, late of Three Springs, would bear a close resemblance to Gabriel Wendover. The conversation wandered to civilities about the roads, the weather, and the good health of mutual acquaintances at Three Springs.
“There’s something else you should know,” St. Michael said, setting down an empty teacup. “It might strain your hospitality a bit.”
Gabriel refrained from pointing out that keeping his fists to himself was proving a strain on his manners, and not only because St. Michael was the helpful fellow who’d made Polly’s eventual departure from Hesketh not merely lucrative, but contractually imperative.
Then too, the man was tall, dark, handsome, well spoken, and as far as Gabriel knew—and thanks to a few shared soaks in the hot springs, he did know—free of disfiguring scars. Worse, he sported that half-French, half-Scot hint of an accent, and he’d known Polly for years.
“How could one so charming strain our hospitality?” Gabriel said, pouring their guest more tea. Where was Lady Marjorie, and more to the point, where in blazes was Polonaise?
“I myself will be no imposition, I assure you,” St. Michael replied. “But we had occasion to stop by your stables before coming to the house, and there reacquainted ourselves with Soldier, because he was a familiar face, so to speak, and because the grooms were the soul of attentiveness, I made my way in advance—”
“Mr. North!”
A human meteor came hurtling at Gabriel where he stood near the hearth. Allie pelted toward him from the door at a dead run, braids flying, a smile as wide as heaven on her rosy cheeks. “Mr. North, it is you. It is. Uncle said only that we were going to have a surprise, and I am surprised to pieces.”