To Win his Wayward Wife AZ w cover

by Rose Gordon

  “Absolutely,” he agreed jovially with a “who gives a whit” smile. “I haven’t a clue about painting and the clerk knew it. However, I don’t mind how much it cost or what ridiculous piece of material I was tricked into buying. I bought this for you and I want you to enjoy it.”

  “I think I will,” she mused. “You said you don’t paint?”

  “No,” he confessed, “I couldn’t paint a stick.”

  “A stick?” she asked, favoring him with a curious expression. “Why in the world would you paint a stick?”

  “I have no idea.” He shook his head and grabbed a canvas. “When I was a boy I got bored and found some old watercolors that belonged to my nanny. She didn’t want them and said I could have them. I was so excited to have something to do, I ran to my room to paint. An hour later I still had a blank canvas. I had no idea what to paint. I looked out the window and saw what looked like a snake crawling on the ground and decided to paint that.

  “First, I painted the entire canvas green to be the grass. Then I mixed a few colors together and painted the snake. When I showed it to Nanny, her lips twitched a bit but she just patted me on the back and said it looked great for the first time. Inspired, I showed it to Lizzie and got a different reaction entirely. I believe her words were, ‘Why did you paint a stick?’ When I tried to explain it was a snake, she cocked her head to the side and said, ‘It’s hard to tell, it really doesn’t look like either.’ The only other time I tried to paint, I kept painting over the edges of the square canvas.”

  Madison didn’t even try to hide her mirth. “Would you like to learn?” she asked, grabbing a few brushes and jars.

  “I’ll try, but I don’t think I’m teachable,” he admitted, bringing the canvas to the little table and chair by the window.

  “That’s all right. Just prop that up against the window, thank you. As Brooke mentioned, I haven’t painted in a while. I’m probably not very good anymore.”

  “Rubbish,” he countered. He left for a second to go to the common room and grabbed another chair.

  She had her back to him stirring paints when he walked back in the room. She looked so graceful standing there. He wanted to prolong the moment and watch her forever, but knew he couldn’t do that, she was expecting him to return.

  “I thought we’d use oil paints. They’re far more forgiving than watercolors,” she explained as he took a seat next to her. She finished mixing and poured a small blob of a few of the pigments on a pallet. “All right, Your Grace, shall I show you how to paint a stick or a snake?”

  He grinned and shook his head. “Neither.”

  “Oh, a square, then?” she asked with a teasing smile. “Or would you like to branch out and do a circle?”

  “Actually rhombi have always held special appeal to me,” he said, edging his chair closer to her, hopefully without her catching on.

  “Rhombi?”

  “It’s the Latin word for the plural for a rhombus. I suppose it could also be rhombuses. I just like the word rhombi better,” he said, pressing his thigh against her skirts.

  She looked at him curiously, which he interpreted to be because of his words, not actions. “I don’t mean to sound daft, but what on earth is a rhombus?”

  “It’s a shape,” he said with a shrug. “It’s a four sided parallelogram that all have equally long sides. Kind of like a square. Except a square also has four right angles, therefore, it’s called a square instead of a rhombus. The most common shape for a rhombus is the dia—”

  She leaned forward and cut him off with another quick kiss. But he was too quick, and when she went to pull away, he moved his hands up to cup her face and brought her lips back to his.

  He pressed his lips to hers and held them there, moving them slowly on top of hers, waiting for her to respond. And she did respond. Her lips moved to match his. Exerting pressure, then releasing. Carefully, he parted his lips more and ran his tongue along her bottom lip, flicking the corner of her mouth. She gasped his name and brought her hands up to rest on top of his fingers where they held her face.

  Taking advantage of her parted lips, he slipped his tongue past her lips and swept her cheeks. She tasted sweet. Like strawberries and chocolate. He moved to touch her tongue and was sweetly rewarded by hers boldly following his as he swept her cheek again.

  Hot desire shot through him, making his blood race and his temperature rise. She wanted this just as much as he did. Like him, she was powerless to stop. But rational thought entered and he knew he needed to stop. This wasn’t the right time.

  He withdrew his tongue and pulled back from her lips, eliciting a whimper of displeasure from her followed by a fetching blush. “You’re so beautiful when you’re blushing,” he murmured, making her blush deepen.

  She lowered her eyes to stare at the lower half of his face. “What were we talking about?” Her voice sounded strange. Lost. Dazed.

  “Rhombi,” he said with a roguish grin. “I was explaining wh—”

  “Stop,” she interrupted.

  “Hmm, and here I thought you were enjoying our geometry lesson.”

  She shot him a pointed look. “You’re not turning into Alex on me, are you?”

  “No,” he said, brushing a blonde curl out of her eye. “I only did that to see if you’d kiss me again.”

  She rolled her eyes. “If you want a kiss, just ask.”

  “You mean you’d kiss me if I asked?”

  “Yes. I still owe you that Waffle Law kiss, remember?”

  “Oh,” he said, disappointed. She seemed awfully eager to have him collect on that and be done with it. But there was no reason to do so when she kept giving them to him without his having to ask. “I don’t think I’m ready to use that yet,” he mused. “However, I have decided what I want to paint.”

  “What? A waffle?” she asked sardonically.

  “No,” he said, matching her snarky tone. “A landscape. I want a river running here,” he ran his fingers in a curvy line down the middle of the canvas, “and trees here, here, and here,” he tapped two fingers on three different spots on the canvas, “the rest can be rolling grass. You know, not flat, but not mountainous, either. Just hills and such.”

  “For someone who looked at a blank canvas for an hour before deciding to paint a snake that looked more like a bad stick, you sure have high aspirations,” she said, shaking her head and smiling.

  A half hour later Benjamin had more paint on his shirt and hands than was on the canvas. Not that that was saying much. The canvas was covered in paint. No, it was slathered in paint. In fact, the paint alone had to have a volume of half an inch off the canvas.

  The picture itself was no masterpiece, either. The stream was black from far too many coats and colors mixed in. The grass looked like the wind was blowing it in all different directions because of his uneven and mildly careless strokes. The trees resembled a long skinny brown stick wearing a big curly green wig. But he didn’t care. He didn’t care it looked atrocious and he was covered in paint. No, he was grinning like an idiot.

  The whole time he’d attempted to paint she’d grinned at him. She’d touched his hand to help guide his strokes. She’d laughed at his asinine jokes. She’d even calmly answered his stupid questions. All that was well worth the horrific painting he’d produced.

  “Your turn,” he said, picking up his work of art and moving it out of the way to dry. He returned a moment later with a fresh canvas and saw Madison was cleaning the brushes. “Can I help?”

  “No, I’m almost done.” She finished cleaning them and stared at the white cloth in front of her. After a few minutes she finally said, “I have no idea what to paint.”

  “Hmm, how about a landscape? I’m sure yours would turn out much better than mine.”

  She shook her head. “I’ve never been good with matching nature’s hues.”

  “What about an animal. Have you ever been to a menagerie?”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head again. “I’ve only seen sm
all animals like dogs, ducks, squirrels, and mice in person. I’ve only seen drawings and such of things like rhinoceroses and duckbilled platypuses, never in person.”

  He grinned at her animal choices. “All right,” he said slowly, rubbing his jaw. “What did you paint before?”

  “People,” she blurted out, turning red.

  He grinned. “All you need do is ask. How would you like me? Standing? Sitting? By the window? On the bed?” Naked, he added mentally.

  “Anywhere is fine really,” she said uneasily. “Wherever you’d feel most comfortable.”

  “Hmm,” he said, pretending to think. He already knew where he was going to pick, he just didn’t want to seem too eager. “How about I lie on the bed, that way you can turn around and have the window to your back for better light.”

  “All right,” she chirped. Her hands seemed a little unsteady as she went about squeezing fresh paint on the pallet and turning her supplies around to face him.

  Against his body’s demands, Benjamin slowly walked to the bed and lay on his side. He propped his elbow up on the pillows and leaned his head against his hand. He took the other hand and brought it to rest in front of his stomach. “Is this all right?” he asked when he was in what he thought to be as nearly a perfect position as he could get into at the time. It would be better if he and she were minus their clothes, but this would do for now.

  She looked up and a burble of laughter passed her lips. “You’re trying much too hard. Just relax.”

  He stared at her. He was relaxed. As relaxed as he could possibly be when just looking at her made his muscles tense with desire and his body ache with need. “Is this better?” he asked, even though he hadn’t done a thing different.

  “No. You haven’t moved a millimeter. Here, let me help you.” She walked up to him and pushed him onto his back. She took his right arm and laid it behind his head, then moved his left arm to his side. She looked down at his boots and pursed her lips. “I suppose you want to leave those on?”

  “No,” he exclaimed a little too loudly. “I mean, I’ve no problem if you want to take them off.”

  She walked down to his feet and undid the laces on his boots before yanking them off and letting them hit the floor with two loud thuds. She left his stockings on and walked to his waist. A hot coil of desire twisted in his stomach as she grabbed onto the bottom of his shirt and tugged it from his trousers. Then her dainty fingers arranged his shirttails then went to the buttons at the top of his shirt. She undid the top two and let it hang open in the perfect V. “Now just let me do your cuff and I’ll get started,” she murmured as she undid the buttons on the cuff that was to rest above his head. She rolled up his sleeve two rolls and set it back down.

  He scowled. “You cannot undo the cuff of one arm and not the other. It just feels wrong.” He quickly undid the other cuff and laid his arms back how she’d had them.

  “Sorry. I wasn’t going to have the full length of that arm in the picture,” she said with a shrug.

  “It’s fine,” he assured her. Then shooting her a wolfish grin, he purposely moved both his arms a little and said, “Oh, you better come rearrange me now that I’ve moved.”

  Quickly, she came back and put his arms exactly how she wanted them. “Don’t move again,” she warned.

  “Yes, Your Grace,” he teased, making her flash him a warm smile.

  Madison walked back to where she’d propped her canvas up against the back of the chair he’d been sitting earlier (how odd that the little shop in Bath carried brushes with three hairs, but not easels). She took her seat and grabbed a nearby quill.

  Using the quill, she made a light outline of his body and the bed before grabbing her brushes. Time seemed to evaporate as he lay there watching her as she’d peek up at him every few seconds then swish her brush on the canvas.

  She was so beautiful, glowing in the sunlight that streamed in the window behind her. The beams of light caught her hair and surrounded her face, making her look like an angel.

  He wouldn’t mind looking at this image forever.

  “All right, you can talk now,” Madison said softly. “I can see you’re dying to.”

  He smiled at her. “Thank you. But believe it or not, I’m content just to look at you.”

  She twisted her lips in irritation. “Of course. All right. If you wish to stare, that’s fine.”

  “It seems to me that you’re the one who wants to talk,” he mused with a smile. “What do you want to talk about?”

  “I don’t know.” She shrugged. “It just feels strange with you staring at me.”

  “You’re staring at me, too,” he pointed out.

  “Yes, because I’m painting you.”

  “And I’m looking at you because you’re painting me,” he said, trying not to laugh. She must not like people to look at her.

  She got up out of her chair and grabbed the canvas. “It doesn’t matter anyway. I’m done.”

  Rather comfortable in his position, he didn’t move as she walked over to him with the canvas. His gaze slid over the picture when she turned it toward him. “It’s a perfect likeness. You have everything exact.”

  She shrugged. “No, I missed a few things. Like right here,” she started to point to something on his face and he swiped her hand away.

  “No. It’s perfect. There are no flaws.”

  “If you say so,” she said doubtfully. “Shall we annoy Andrew and hang it up in his gallery once it dries?”

  He chuckled. “Not this one. This one goes to my gallery. However, I have an idea for Andrew’s…”

  “By the look on your face, I get the impression it’s not a nice idea,” she said, giving him the best sharp look she could manage while trying not to laugh.

  “It’s not,” he said with a grin. “However, I wouldn’t let you hang that one up, either. I wouldn’t want to deal with a jealous Andrew once Brooke caught sight of it.”

  “Oh, puh-lease,” she said, exaggerating her words and rolling her eyes.

  He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed then pulled her to come stand in between them. “You know I only tease you in that way because I know you like it.”

  “Yes. And I admit, I do enjoy such banter, even if I shouldn’t,” she said with a shy smile.

  “You’re rather peculiar for a vicar’s daughter, you know?” He took the canvas from her and set it beside him on the bed, freeing both of her hands.

  “I know,” she said easily. “I always was. Papa used to despair about what would happen to me. I’ve always had a trait for saying unsavory comments. But, for as much as my parents tried, I just didn’t absorb their advice.”

  He pulled her arms up to wrap around his neck. “Madison,” he murmured, wrapping his arms around her waist and pulling her as close to him as he could. “I think you’re perfect just the way you are, naughty banter and all.”

  She smiled down at him. “And I like you, naughty banter and all.”

  “Stay with me tonight.” His voice was quiet and steady, belying the rush of emotions and blood coursing through him.

  “I can’t,” she whispered.

  “Why not?” He moved his hands to caress her lower back.

  Her blue eyes met his and locked. “I don’t know.”

  “Then stay. We won’t do anything you don’t want. I promise.” He moved his lips to her jaw and kissed its rounded edge. “We can kiss. I know you like to kiss,” he murmured in between kisses. His lips kissed a path to her ear and softly nipped and licked the hollow behind her ear. “I can hold you tight, like I am right now.” He moved his caressing hands further up her back, broadening his movements to cover her whole back. His lips left her ear and found their way to her mouth. “I’ll only do what you wish, Madison. I’ll not force you. Ever.”

  Madison’s body might have fallen into a heap of bones and flesh if it hadn’t been for Benjamin’s hands holding her up. “Just holding and kissing?”

  “Just holding and kissing,” h
e confirmed. He flashed her a roguish smile. “And maybe a little touching, too.”

  “Touching?”

  “Maybe just a little,” he said with a wink. “Only if you want to.”

  “All right,” she agreed with a slight swallow. “I’ll stay.”

  Chapter 15

  Dinner dragged by slower than a twenty five year old horse attempting to pull a phaeton in a race. But this time it wasn’t the uncomfortable company that made dinner crawl, it was the anticipation that Madison might change her mind. Benjamin wasn’t going to press her to share his bed tonight—well, in a literal sense she would have to, but not in the metaphoric sense.

  “Are you ready?” he whispered after their meal.

  “I just need to get some things from my room,” she whispered back. Her eyes held no fear or uncertainty.

  He walked with her down the hall and to her room. “May I come in with you while you gather your things?”

  She nodded and went inside, leaving the door open for him. He went in, shut the door behind them, and watched as she gathered a few items in her arms. Seeing her juggle her comb and other toilette items, he grabbed her reticule that was right next to him and walked over to her. Holding it out to her, he helped her fill it up with the items she’d need, purposely not suggesting she grab a nightgown to add to her travel bag.

  “I think I’m ready now,” she said evenly, not a hint of emotion in her voice.

  They left the room and together left the house, making sure to avoid rooms that her sister and Andrew might be in.

  A broad smile spread across his face when they crossed the threshold to the cabin where they’d spend their first night together. He’d bungled their first attempt; he wasn’t going to mess it up again.

  “Where shall I put this?” she asked, gesturing to her reticule.

  “Anywhere you want, duchess,” he answered, walking to the window and drawing the drapes. “Are you cold?”

  “No,” she said, emptying the items from her reticule on the vanity. “I’m actually rather warm.”