The Gamekeeper's Lady

by Ann Lethbridge

  ‘Yes,’ she said, nodding her head hard. ‘Yes, it does.’ And besides, she had no reputation worth worrying about. She was surprised he didn’t know.

  ‘When?’ he asked.

  A shudder gripped her chest. Her throat tightened. This would decide her fate. ‘Now. Tonight.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘You are already undressed.’

  At that he laughed. A laugh from deep in his chest. It rolled over her like a summer’s day breeze, promising good things to come. She grinned back.

  His laughter slowly subsided, though his smile remained. ‘A bird in the hand, is it, Miss Bracewell?’

  ‘Frederica,’ she said. ‘Please, call me Frederica.’

  ‘Frederica,’ he murmured. ‘An unusual name for an unusual girl. I’m all yours.’

  Her wicked insides did a pleasurable little dance of excitement.

  He meant for drawing, she pointed out crossly.

  Chapter Six

  She strode around the room, narrowing her eyes. She wanted to capture him as she saw him, glorious, beautiful, dangerous. A brooding Greek god.

  ‘Move the cot closer to the fire, please,’ she said.

  He flung the end of the quilt over his shoulder, making him look rather like a Roman senator, and dragged the cot across the room. ‘There?’

  ‘More at an angle, so the light falls across its length.’

  He shifted one end into the room.

  ‘Yes. That’s good.’ She moved the table with the lantern closer. She frowned at the way the light fell and the shadows it created. ‘The light isn’t high enough.’

  ‘Here.’ Stretching to his full height, the curves of his biceps carved deeper by shadows, he hung the lantern from a nail on the beam above his head.

  She swallowed and found her mouth dry. Anticipation. Anxiety. ‘Thank you.’ Heat rushed to her face. ‘Now take the qu-quilt off and stretch out.’

  He shrugged. ‘Your wish is my command.’ He planted his feet wide. The fabric fell to the ground. It was a bit like watching the unveiling of a masterpiece, only better, because he was warm flesh and blood.

  Nothing she’d seen in pictures or sculptures had prepared her for such a sight as this, though. Firelight played across the curves of his muscled shoulders and arms. Shadows and light sculpted his broad chest in a way an artist would weep to emulate. His physique was a perfect triangle, far better than da Vinci’s Vitru-vian Man with wide shoulders tapering to narrow hips. Muscle rippled across his stomach with its line of dark hair drawing her eye to the nest of dark curls between his thighs and his magnificent male member, darker in colour than she’d expected, and larger.

  He looked lovely.

  Desire pooled in her loins. Breathless and hot, she glanced up at his face.

  A sinew flickered in his tight jaw. ‘Where do you want me?’

  Clearly he’d seen her ogling as if she’d never seen a man before. She hadn’t. Not in the flesh. Not alive and vital. She opened her mouth to apologise.

  No. She was an artist, she needed to inspect her model. But she had better start behaving like an artist and get down to work, or he might change his mind.

  She drew in a deep shaky breath. ‘Reclining, I think. Raised on your elbow, one knee up.’

  He moved to straighten the covers.

  ‘No. Leave them tumbled. They will make a nice contrast to your clean lines.’

  He raised a brow, but stretched out and posed as she had requested, one hand covering his private parts. Her vision did not include modesty. This male was meant for pride and arrogance. ‘The other hand draped over your knee, please.’

  He complied and glanced along his length. ‘I’m not going to find myself in a caricature in Ackerman’s shop window, am I?’

  ‘Ackerman’s?’

  ‘In the Strand in London. They sell salacious prints as well as views of London.’

  ‘You sound familiar with them.’

  He stared at her; his eyes became unreadable, his expression blank. Not the expression she wanted on his face. ‘I have heard of them.’

  ‘Well, I am not drawing anything salacious, nor do I plan to sell this work. I simply want it for my portfolio.’ And perhaps to treasure as a memory once she left.

  The picture he presented was good, but not quite right. Too formal, too tense. Ignoring the pleasurable little clenches of her body when her fingers encountered warm skin and sinew, she adjusted his arm so his wrist rested on his knee and his hand fell relaxed. She pushed and pulled at his supporting arm, until he looked like a Roman at a feast. She raised his chin a fraction so the lantern fell full on the planes of his face and threw shadows on his neck. She stepped back. And lost her breath.

  Oh, God. He was lovely.

  ‘If you keep staring at me like that,’ he said with a half-smile, ‘you are going to have quite a different effect on some of my parts.’

  Her face flamed. ‘I’m not looking at you like anything. I’m simply posing you to get the best of the light. But keep that smile.’

  ‘Can I ask you to hurry?’ he said. ‘We do not have all night.’

  Brought back to reality in a flood of anxiety in case he changed his mind, she picked up her papers and pencils from the table and set to work. Her stomach clenched. What if she couldn’t? What if her lines and curves showed nothing but the outer shell of the man?

  Her wrist seized in a knot and her fingers trembled. She forced herself to begin with his head. Slowly the flow of lines across the paper settled her heartbeat and her fluttering stomach as she focused on form and shape and play of light and shadow across skin and bone and muscle.

  ‘Where did you learn to draw?’ he asked.

  ‘From the books in my uncle’s library. When he wasn’t looking.’

  He raised a brow at that. He probably thought her wicked. Mentally, she shrugged. He was probably right. With a mother like hers it wouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. And her father might have been a whole lot worse if the gossip she’d heard came anywhere close to the truth.

  Or perhaps he was the one who’d bequeathed her a love of art? Hardly likely, given the low company her mother kept.

  She focused on her flying fingers. ‘Did you always want to be a gamekeeper?’

  He spoke slowly as if picking his words. His expression reverted to blank and his accent to west country. ‘I grew up on the estate of a great nobleman. I liked the work.’

  He did not say which nobleman, clearly preferring to keep his origins a secret when most would be only too eager to speak of their high connections. Was that it? Was he, like her, the unwanted bastard of some noble house? The question was poised on the tip of her tongue, but something held it back. His guarded air. His frown. Already his attitude had changed from relaxed to tense.

  Another skill needed by a portrait painter. The ability to set a subject at ease. Find a less sensitive topic. She jerked her chin towards the table, to the book he had given her. ‘Where does your brother live?’

  ‘I have no idea.’ His face grew hard, his eyes shuttered. Were there no safe topics for this man?

  She let some time elapse, worked on his shoulders, the line of his neck, before trying again. ‘Where did you g-go this evening.’

  ‘To the Bull.’ The muscles in his face relaxed.

  ‘Oh. What kind of drink do you prefer?’

  ‘Brandy.’ His answer came swiftly, then he shot her a sharp look. ‘And ale.’

  While he answered her questions, she sketched his hand in rough on a separate piece of paper. It would take too long to complete now. Fingers were hard. She moved on to his feet. Large feet at the end of long well-formed legs. ‘Do you dance?’

  ‘I do, when required.’

  ‘What kind of dances?’

  ‘Country dances, cotillions, waltzes.’

  ‘Waltzes? You know how to waltz?’ She stopped drawing and looked at him.

  His mouth thinned as if he thought he had said too much. He took a breath and deliberately ease
d his jaw. ‘Do you like to dance?’

  She wrinkled her nose. ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘All ladies love dancing,’ he scoffed as if challenging her indecision. ‘For me it was always a means to an end.’ His expression darkened to that of a brooding angel staring into the depths of hell. An expression that brooked no further questions. And fired her artist’s imagination.

  Perfect. While he lost himself in his own thoughts her pencil flew.

  A long time later she became aware of his gaze on her face.

  ‘Almost done,’ she said, looking down at her sketch. The lantern above his head flickered and died. ‘Oh, we need more oil.’

  ‘That was the last of it,’ he said, his tone resigned. ‘I have one or two candles in the dresser.’

  Guilt washed through her. Absorbed in her work, she had forgotten all about him as a person. No, not true. She had never been so aware of any individual in her life; her senses were awash with his mood, his physical presence, and, while she worked, he became part of her, intrinsic to her being, as if they were one.

  And as a result she had used up all his oil. She would beg some from Snively and bring it to him tomorrow.

  Stretching her back and rolling her shoulders, she felt the pull of muscles. He must also be stiff from remaining still for so long. ‘I am finished.’

  ‘Good,’ he said.

  Her gaze flew to his face. No longer brooding, it exuded determination. And he had not asked to see the work. Afraid he might find it hopeless, perhaps, and not want to lie?

  Frederica stared at the paper in the light from the candle on the table, at his face, his body, and saw the likeness and more. The drawing resonated with his dark persona, a simmer of anger beneath the outward calm. It was the best thing she’d ever done. At least she thought so. It still needed work. When she got back to her room and daylight she would touch it up from the memory branded on her brain.

  Sadness sat like a rock in the pit of her stomach. She often felt that way when she completed a work. But this felt worse—a sort of emptiness, because he’d been kind and she would one day leave and never see him again. There weren’t many kind people in her life.

  ‘I suppose I should go,’ she said in a hoarse breathless voice.

  He looked at her sharply. ‘I’ll walk you.’

  ‘Oh, no. I wouldn’t like you to go out in the rain again. I’ll be perfectly fine.’ She got up and packed up her papers and pencils.

  He got up, came around the table and grasped her shoulders in his big strong hands. Hands she would later draw, while she remembered their pressure on her skin and the flesh beneath. ‘Don’t be stubborn.’

  She looked up at him. At the worry in his face. At the firm set to his lips. Earlier, she had thought he might kiss her. But he’d pushed her away. He didn’t find her attractive. Of course he didn’t. A man like him would have his choice of women. And he would not choose a plain, skinny female like her.

  But he wasn’t completely immune. Of that she was sure. There had been too much heat in his gaze when he’d stared at her earlier.

  He must have thought she was awfully bold coming here at night. Wanton. Like her mother.

  Prickles of shame ran across her shoulders. ‘When we were children, S-Simon said my speech was enough to put any man off.’

  ‘Whoever this Simon is, he’s an idiot,’ he said harshly.

  He strode across the room, gloriously naked. She watched him avariciously, like a miser might watch his pile of gold glint in the firelight. He moved with a grace and an economy of movement one didn’t expect from such a large man. It was like watching a sonnet, muscle and sinew moving in perfect harmony.

  She wanted to draw him crouched at the fire, the warm glow bronzing his skin and casting shadows over muscles and sharp angles. She wanted to draw him with the flicker of the candle making his dark axe-like features seem almost satanic as he set the candles on the rough-hewn table.

  She wanted to touch him.

  He opened the lid of a battered chest in the corner.

  She came up behind him. “He is a sort of cousin.”

  He glanced over his shoulder. ‘Sort of?’

  ‘We are distant relations.’ As in on the other side of the proverbial blanket. Didn’t he know? She was sure the servants gossiped about it. She looked down into the chest. It held a couple of neatly folded shirts, trousers and some woollen stockings.

  Unable to resist, she ran a fingertip over his shoulder blade and down the knobby protrusions of his spine as she visualised the skeleton beneath, the supporting ribs, the narrow hip bones…

  He froze, mid-movement, the trousers in his hand.

  She snatched her hand back as he whirled around. His eyes blazed anger, or some equally dangerous emotion that left her breathless and trembling like the aspens in Wynchwood churchyard.

  He closed his eyes as if in pain. ‘Innocent, gently bred females do not go around running their hands over naked men.’ He pulled on the trousers, the fabric hiding his beautiful body from her hungry gaze.

  He cursed. ‘Any men. What do you think your family would say?’

  ‘I’m no innocent. And I don’t care what Uncle Mortimer thinks.’ She had tried for years to make him think well of her, to no avail. And now he was going to marry her off to Simon.

  ‘Not innocent?’ he scoffed, but there was a glimmer of hope in his expression, like a small boy eying a biscuit barrel.

  With a mother like hers, how could she be innocent? She certainly wasn’t ignorant. A book by a woman of pleasure and caricatures by Thomas Rowlandson found hidden in her uncle’s library, both deliriously explicit, had stirred illicit sensations in her body, just as his nearness induced the ache of arousal.

  ‘W-would you like to find out?’ Her words came out in a breathy rush, too eager, too desperate.

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Because you don’t find me attractive.’

  He half-groaned, half-laughed. ‘Not that. Definitely not that. I’ve had too much to drink. You’ve got your drawing and I don’t want to lose my job.’

  ‘I would never tell anyone.’

  ‘You are a naughty little puss. Do you know that? A temptress.’ His lips brushed her ear, her throat, her collarbone, sending shivers down her spine, tightening her nipples. ‘Leave now, before I take you at your word.’

  Shivers turned to rivers of molten metal in her blood. Her heart beat so hard, she could not draw breath. She turned to face him, to look into his eyes, but his thoughts were hidden by shadows cast by the fire. ‘I don’t want to go. I want to kiss you.’

  Heat flared in his eyes. ‘One kiss, then,’ he murmured seductively.

  Weak with anticipation, she lifted her chin and closed her eyes. Nothing happened.

  She opened her eyes.

  He raised a brow. ‘You said you wanted to kiss me.’

  The raised brow and the glimmer of laughter in his eyes said he thought she wouldn’t dare. Her breath stuck in her throat. Was he right? She had no experience kissing a man.

  But she had seen the pictures. She leaned forwards and brushed her mouth against his firm lips. He didn’t move. She placed her hands on his broad shoulders, feeling sinew and bone beneath her palms, along with growing heat. She touched her tongue to the seam of his lips.

  He opened his mouth. Her insides clenched more powerfully than anything she had experienced during her imaginings. His hands slid up her back, drawing her closer. Lips, warm and soft, moved over hers with persuasive pressure. Her lips parted in response.

  ‘Oh, yes, sweetheart,’ he murmured against her mouth. He licked her lower lip. A delicious thrill trickled down her spine. See, she did know. It was in her blood. She slid her hands around his neck, ran her fingers through his hair.

  He angled his head, his mouth moving and coaxing and teasing. Chills shivered through her body, leaving her weak. She parted her lips to his teasing tongue and she clung to him, panting against his wonderful mouth.

  He pull
ed away. ‘God, give me strength.’

  Ragged breaths shaking her frame, she watched him rub his palms on his thighs and realised his breathing was equally fast. ‘That is all you want?’

  He half-laughed, half-groaned. ‘What I want and what I can take are very different.’

  While she didn’t know exactly what she wanted, she knew they had been heading in the right direction during their kiss, and that it was just the beginning. When she worked on a sketch, each pencil stroke brought the design closer to completion. Heavenly perfection, if done well, a disaster if one misplaced a line. In the art of kissing, he was her master, and it seemed he was not prepared to complete this work.

  ‘You find me lacking?’

  ‘You little fool. I’m doing this for your sake. You are a lady. I’m…nothing. You will only ruin yourself.’ The words seemed torn from him, regretful, as if he truly did not want to stop.

  A sense of empowerment glowed within her, drove her to reckless abandon. She was, after all, the bastard daughter of the Wynchwood Whore. ‘I am already ruined.’

  Ruined? The word was a siren song to Robert’s beleaguered senses. He’d meant to frighten her off. Scare her silly. Instead, he’d found himself battling the demon of self-control. Was this what the cook meant by devil’s spawn? That this child-woman really was not the innocent she seemed? Was she his kind of woman after all? The kind who enjoyed casual, carefree encounters? The kind who had sampled others before him?

  His brain, still hazy with drink and clouded by lust, was partly hopeful and partly angered at the thought of another man with his hands on her delicate body.

  ‘Kiss me, R-Robert, please.’

  Did she have any idea how alluring he found her little hesitation when she said his name? God, he hoped not, or he was lost.

  He pulled her slight frame against him, cradled her in his arms, her hips against his groin, her small hands curled on his chest. It felt right. Too right. More than he deserved.

  His heart sang when she lifted her face to him, her full lips begging to be kissed.

  He couldn’t look at her enough. It was as if he needed to absorb her into his skin, into the empty place in his chest that had been cold and hard and now felt soft and warm and full of longing.