“Why do you think I spend so much time reading?” Emma shook her head with a laugh. “It isn’t that I try to be abysmal at artistic endeavors. I just am.”
With narrowed eyes, Aidan’s smirk widened to a smile. “Nonetheless, we read yesterday. Today, we shall attempt artwork. Unless…”
“Unless?” She raised a single eyebrow. “Are you suggesting I’d prefer to go hawking with the others? Because in all honesty, while I’m a poor shot, I think I stand a better chance in that endeavor than I do in creating what anyone might term as being art.”
“I would never have imagined you as a falconer, Emma.” Then Aidan chuckled. He bent lower to whisper in her ear. “What I’d hoped to imply was, unless you have changed your mind and no longer require love.” The arm she’d been holding wrapped behind her waist, drawing her closer until the musk of his cologne wafted over her nostrils. “I’d be perfectly content to forgo your requirement and whisk you off to the hermitage instead—where we could continue where we were interrupted before.”
He barely touched her, his fingers just tickling against her ribcage and his arm only brushing her side, and yet she couldn’t stop the goose flesh from rippling over every inch of her flesh from the slight contact. Or perhaps it was more from the dark intent of his words.
His eyes had turned the shade of the midnight sky, and the heat of his lips hovered near hers.
It would be easy to become lost in his silky promise.
Emma shook her head and pushed her hands against his chest until he backed away. “We’re falling in love, and that’s that.”
“All right.” The smirk had returned, unsurprisingly.
Of course it had. She shouldn’t have expected anything else. The thought of seeing his face without the smirk—well, she couldn’t imagine it.
A husky laugh escaped her. “Very well. You may attempt to turn me into an accomplished artist this afternoon, but don’t say I didn’t warn you about my lack of skill in that particular area. Artistry is quite possibly the feminine pursuit in which I can be found most wanting.”
He put her hand over his arm again and resumed their journey to the main house. “Why don’t we allow me to be the judge of your skill?”
“And you won’t regret not going with the others? We could, you know. I wouldn’t mind.”
For a long moment, he merely stared at her, his head turned toward her instead of looking where they were walking. “Your brother-in-law will allow me to return and go hawking with him any time I wish. I’d prefer to spend the day with only you.”
Surprising as it was, even to her, Emma believed him. Maybe there was hope for them to have a love match, after all. Maybe there could be more than just the spark of lust that so readily kindled between them. “If you wish,” she replied.
And so, after they took luncheon with the rest of the houseguests, the two of them went together to sit in the rose garden with canvases and easels while the others went off in the direction of the dovecote. Even Morgan went along with Kingley on one side and Sir Henry on the other.
Aidan set up an easel for Emma and gave her a brief instruction on the use of watercolors before leaving her on her own while he started on his own piece. They created in silence for quite some time, but with every stroke of her brush, the canvas before her came closer to resembling a great greenish-black blob. She sighed in resignation.
Aidan looked around his easel. “Problem?”
“I daresay you ought to judge for yourself, oh master of artistry.” Emma stepped back so he could come around and get a good view of her mess.
He visibly blanched when he saw it, which had been a regular response from her governesses over the years. “You seem to have muddied the whole canvas as though it were your palette.”
“I told you I’m a rather dreadful artist.”
Aidan turned to her and lifted a skeptical brow. “Are you certain you didn’t do this purposefully? It is so bad it would seem it has to be intentional.”
Emma couldn’t stop herself from laughing at his accusation, whether he was serious or joking. She thought he was joking. Maybe. “I promise I would never do anything of the sort.”
“Hmm.” Before she could defend herself again, Aidan had removed the canvas from the easel and replaced it with a new one. He turned to her with both hands held out. “Surrender your brush and paints.”
“Gladly,” Emma said, pushing them toward him as though they were poisoned.
Her relief only lasted a moment, because he quickly replaced them with a box of pastels.
“These will be far more difficult for you to create such a muddied effect. Just use one at a time, blending a bit here and there.”
Then he turned and went back to his own easel, picking up another box of pastels and resuming his work. Emma frowned, not that he would see it. He was too absorbed in his own creation to notice her discontent.
Since sulking about it was pointless, she decided to set to work on another attempt.
After nearly thirty minutes of ineffectual strokes with her various pastels, she had what was supposed to be one of the pink roses on the bush next to her but which appeared far more like a mal-shaped parasol. But maybe taking a step back would help it to look better. Didn’t artists tend to do that, to view their pieces from various distances? She took a step back, and then another—but now it didn’t even look like a parasol. It might seem more like a pink storm cloud.
While she examined her piece, Aidan’s grin flashed in the corner of her eye.
“Well?” she said, putting her hands on her hips. “You might as well come and see it for what it is.”
He moved to stand beside her and stared at the canvas. After a moment, he cocked his head to the side and stared again.
Emma pursed her lips. “Go on. I promise you can’t say anything worse than Miss Throckmorton did when I was thirteen.”
Instead of speaking, he nodded—and that same smirk was back on his face. “I suppose now is when I admit you were right.”
A great peal of laughter escaped Emma’s lips, and she nodded. “I suppose that will do.”
When he took the canvas down from her easel, a slight moment of panic hitched in her chest.
“You’re not going to ask me to try again, are you?”
He turned to her, but his smirk had fled. Emma recognized the look in his eye. It was the same expression he bore each time he kissed her, the same one he’d had in his eye as he’d unnerved her from across the drawing room. Her breath hitched when he moved closer.
But instead of kissing her, he brushed a finger along her jaw, tracing the curve of it and leaving her trembling from the contact. Then he passed the same finger over her cheek and tucked a stray tendril of her hair behind her ear. When she was almost desperate for him to kiss her, he instead moved the easel to the side.
Then he pointed toward the stone bench behind it. “I had hoped you might sit just there for me while I finish.”
“Of course.” Sitting and waiting while he worked would be far preferable to making a fool of herself with another attempt, and she sincerely doubted herself capable of completing any task at the moment which would require her to think. Not while her heart was fluttering and her breaths were shallow and she could think of nothing but the gentle yet rough texture of his fingers against her face. Emma sat down upon the bench while he went back behind his easel.
He kept peeking around the side of his canvas at her, though, so often that her cheeks grew warm from his attention.
“Is something the matter?” she asked when he’d looked around it for the fourth time in only a few moments. “Do I have paint on my gown, or—”
“There’s nothing amiss,” he cut in. “I’m just seeing how the light hits your cheeks.”
That only served to fuel the flames of her blush. He was doing her portrait. He had been tracing the shape of her jaw, so his hands could know how to form it upon the canvas.
Emma sat as she was, trying not to think about it but u
nable to think of anything else as he worked. If he was creating her portrait—what would that mean for…for how he felt about her?
And had he been as moved, had he felt as erratic as she did when he was touching her so?
A love match might just be in her cards after all.
Trying to make Emma into an artist might not have been a fully unmitigated disaster, but it certainly hadn’t turned out how Aidan had planned. No matter how desolate the possibility of developing her skill in such an area might be, there was no denying the fact that what was issuing forth from his hands onto the canvas was one of the most beautiful things he’d ever done.
Before he’d started this portrait of her, none of his pastels had been what anyone would term beautiful. They certainly weren’t something he could ever attempt to sell. Emma’s portrait, however, would easily take a hefty profit at auction.
The one he’d burned so many years ago might have, as well, but he would never know.
Not that he could bear to put this one up for sale. Even as his hands formed the lines that made the slope of her shoulders, the soft curve of her waist and hips, he couldn’t stop himself from thinking of drawing his hands over her actual skin in such a way. Any man who saw it would be bound to think in a similar fashion, and the thought of that was enough to send Aidan back into a rage. No one would ever touch Emma—no one but him.
So he would never sell this one. He’d hang it in his chamber, where he and he alone could stare at it and think lustful thoughts. Aidan wouldn’t seek a profit from it.
At one point in time, he’d thought to make his art into a means of supporting himself and his family. With all the rage that had fueled his creativity of late, that had fallen by the wayside. He’d told himself it was all right, that he could live on Niall’s coin, because Morgan needed them all around her.
But she didn’t need them all anymore. Emma had seen to that. Aidan’s sister was almost as self-sufficient as she had been before her injuries, and her desire to prove herself capable knew no bounds.
Emma had seen what Morgan truly needed—and for that matter, what Kingley needed—and then had found a way to make it all happen. In three years, neither Niall nor Aidan, nor even their mother, had been able to see through their own ideas of what Morgan needed to get to the truth of it all.
She needed to be trusted. She needed to be set free, to make her own way through the world with what she had left. She needed the freedom to fail, and then to try again after she’d failed until she could do anything.
No one but Emma had been able to recognize that…and in less than a fortnight, she’d provided it.
Emma Hathaway was as sweet and genuine a young woman as she could possibly be. She honestly cared for other people, for animals, for everyone and everything around her. It was no wonder she was so often surrounded by those in need.
Everyone needed someone to care for them. Why not Emma?
The more time Aidan spent in her presence, the more he found he wanted to be in her presence. Not only that, but he was quickly discovering that he didn’t particularly care to share her attentions with anyone else. Not even Morgan.
And, while he wasn’t certain he loved her yet, Aidan was absolutely, unequivocally certain of something else. He did not hate her. He couldn’t. It was no longer a possibility.
Lust, however, Aidan found to be in free supply. He wanted Emma more than he knew how to handle—wanted nothing more than to be with her at every moment he could. With only her, as if that were even a remote possibility.
Even now, she looked over at him with those lightly downturned eyes—eyes that only made him think of bedding her—and gave him a cheeky grin, her lush lips widening seductively. “Have you finished yet? I am desperate to see it.”
She couldn’t possibly be as desperate to see the portrait as he was to touch her again. When his finger had moved along her jaw, her cheekbone, it had taken every ounce of restraint he possessed to refrain from kissing her again—and Aidan feared that the next time he kissed her like that, he might not be able to stop himself from doing so very much more than simply kiss her.
Alas, they remained at David and Vanessa’s house party. He couldn’t very well take her up to his chamber and toss her in his bed. Their betrothal had been announced, and the others were granting the two of them some time alone when otherwise it would not be done, but even then, there were limits.
The image flashing through his mind at the moment, of her in his bed with her long limbs bared for him, did him no favors. If he didn’t change the course of his thoughts soon, he might just pull out a blank canvas and attempt to create the vision in his head.
So instead, he swallowed, wishing he could wash the thoughts swirling through his mind down his throat so easily.
“Come,” Aidan finally said. “Take a look.”
When Emma came to her feet and took a step toward him, a moment of panic clutched his chest. What if she didn’t like it? What would she think?
Before he had much opportunity to worry over her reaction, she’d made her way around his easel and stared at the likeness of herself. Silently.
She didn’t say a word, didn’t take a breath. It was more than Aidan could handle. He turned around and took two steps away. He shouldn’t have ever shown her. He should have never opened himself up to her reaction, whatever it may be. If he could, he would reverse time and never let her know he’d been working on a portrait of her in the first place. He wouldn’t leave himself so vulnerable as to work on such a thing with anyone around to see it, to know such an intimate part of who he was.
But he couldn’t go back in time, and he couldn’t undo what had already been done. He could only find a way to live with the regret.
“I don’t—” Her breaths were stilted and sharp. “It’s beautiful. I’ve never thought…”
But she didn’t finish her sentence. The incomplete thought hung in the air between them so long Aidan feared he might fall over if she did not finish it.
“You never thought what?” he prodded when still she remained silent, save the uneven breaths.
Emma’s hand, so small and delicate, hovered near his arm but didn’t touch it. He felt her warmth through his coat, wanted her touch, but could not bring himself to ask for more than she would give.
“I’ve never thought of myself as beautiful. Not until I saw this. I don’t—” Then she did touch him, lightly brushing her hand over the sleeve of his greatcoat, her gentle touch as reverent as the awe in her tone. “This is how you see me?”
How could she not see her own beauty? Truly, she wasn’t beautiful in the traditional sense. She didn’t have a perfect English rose complexion, nor did she have the golden hair so popular amongst a certain set, but if she was in the room, he couldn’t look elsewhere if he tried.
“Of course,” he finally said, his voice cracking on the words like they had when he was no more than a green youth.
She moved around him until she stood before him, close enough he could touch her if he allowed himself such freedom. With each shuddering breath, her chest rose and fell, nearly straining against the delicate yellow fabric of her bodice.
“Thank you.” Her lips remained parted after she spoke, just enough he could see a hint of the whiteness of her teeth.
He couldn’t look away. It didn’t matter that he knew he mustn’t kiss her or touch her. To do so, at this juncture, would be perilous to his plan. Emma wanted more than lust. She wanted love. But if he kissed her now, he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he would fall victim to need.
Aidan tried to back away, but she came with him, moving closer with each moment that passed until her lips came up to meet his.
Her kiss was almost wild, and entirely too seductive. Placing a hand on his chest for balance, she leaned in and moved her lips over his in thoroughly untutored fashion. Aidan held himself back as well as he could, but was unsure how long he could go without taking control of the situation before losing that very same control. Restra
int had never been a skill he had mastered.
When the soft tip of her tongue flicked out and touched the seam of his lips, he very nearly lost all desire to hold himself back. At that moment in time, all he wanted in the world was to toss her over his shoulder and carry her off to somewhere they could be alone. He couldn’t stop the groan that sounded deep in his throat, but somehow refrained from ravishing her on the spot.
Emma seemed to take his groan as encouragement. Sliding one hand up his chest, she wrapped it behind his neck and tugged him down to her, even as with the other hand she grasped his lapel in a desperate clutch. Moment by moment, she grew bolder, her tongue delving between his lips to stroke and explore, her hands nearly frantic as she tried to get closer.
It was more than he could bear. He had to stop her, now, before he forgot why such a thing was necessary.
Aidan broke off the kiss and took both her shoulders in his hands. “We can’t do this.”
But she didn’t take his pronouncement well. She stretched on her toes, trying to kiss him again. “Touch me. Please. Like you did that night. I want—I want to feel you touch me. To feel your hands on me.”
Never before in his life had a woman begged him for his touch. He wasn’t a libidinous bastard by any stretch of the imagination, but he’d taken his fair share of women to his bed—and they’d all been more than content by the time he was finished with them. He was not a man to deny a woman her pleasure. Not when he could grant it.
But how could he possibly do that with Emma before she was his wife? If David caught wind of such a thing, they’d never make it to their wedding day. Either that or it would occur much sooner than any of them wished. And even if no one discovered what had transpired, Emma would be sure to come to her senses and realize it was only lust between them and not love, wouldn’t she?
Once more, she tried to kiss him but he turned his head to the side. Her lips fell upon his jaw, and she trailed a series of kisses along a path to just below his ear.
“Emma…”
He couldn’t finish his thought because her hands kept fluttering over his chest and arms, and it was all he could do to remember his name or where he was.
Cardiff Siblings 01 - Seven Minutes in Devon Page 23