If His Kiss Is Wicked

by Jo Goodman

  “Have you considered who is likely to have painted the copies?” asked Restell.

  Emma turned her head sharply in Restell’s direction. “Mr. Charters painted them. Who else could have done so?”

  “Your uncle.”

  “Is that what you’ve been thinking? No, Sir Arthur would never do that.”

  “You are certain?”

  She hesitated. “He could not.”

  “Could not,” Restell repeated quietly. “It is curious that you should say it in that manner.”

  Emma tossed back what remained of her wine. “It is not at all curious. He could not do it; it is not in his nature.”

  “I don’t think that’s what you meant. You believe it’s no longer in his ability.”

  Emma stopped rolling the stem of her wineglass between her palms. “Now, that is a curious thing to say. What do you mean by it?”

  Restell debated the wisdom of telling her what he’d known for almost a month, and in some ways had suspected within a few days of meeting her. Tossing back the covers, he threw his legs over the side of the bed and plucked the wineglass from Emma’s hands. “Come with me.”

  He retrieved his dressing gown and hers from the armoire but ignored their slippers. “Put this on.” His tone brooked no interference, and Emma complied without question. She did not even ask where they were going but followed his lead into the hall and then to the end of it where the entrance to the servants’ staircase was hidden behind a door. He held a lamp to one side so that Emma’s way would be lighted as well as his own. They climbed past the next floor, which held additional bedrooms and what would some day be the nursery, and continued all the way to the top of the house.

  “It is not quite finished,” Restell said before he opened the door. “But you will recognize the intention.” He pushed the door aside but did not enter first. Instead, he inclined his head in Emma’s direction and indicated that she should lead the way now.

  Emma cast a curious glance at Restell, then stepped over the threshold. The lamp he held out provided a dim glow by which she could make out her surroundings, and what she saw simply seized her breath.

  “Restell.” She said his name softly, reverently, then spun about to face him.

  He saw her lips part again, but she softly pressed the back of her fingers to her mouth, stemming whatever words she meant to say. Her lovely blue-green eyes were luminous. It might have been the lamplight that made them so, but Restell found himself thinking that she lent the light radiance. A tear hovered on the rim of her lower lashes, but her effort to blink it back merely caused it to spill over the edge. He raised his hand and brushed it away with the pad of his thumb.

  “I did not mean to make you cry,” he told her. “Come, will you not look around and see what is to your liking and what must be changed?”

  Emma allowed herself to be turned gently. The studio was very nearly identical to the one Sir Arthur had in his home. She looked up and saw starlight through the glass panes set into the roof. “This is the hole in the roof you told me about,” she said, astonished and accusing in the same breath. “Do you recall? The night we came back from the hell, you told me you were—”

  Restell stepped around and kissed her. “I remember,” he said a moment later. He brushed her lips again when she looked as if she meant to go on regardless of what he’d just told her. When he straightened, he explained the whole of it. “Crowley and Hobbes were overseeing the work while we were away from home. The laborers cut through the roof but were not prepared for us to return as early as we did. At Crowley’s insistence they left—secrecy being of paramount importance—but without covering the hole. As we were in expectation of rain that evening, it seemed prudent that something should be done.”

  “And you arrived home in time to do it.”

  “I arrived home in time to settle the argument of what was to be done. I was hopeful that my wife was waiting for me in our bedroom, you see, so I was adamantly opposed to doing the work myself.”

  Blushing, Emma stepped around Restell and stood under the skylight, looking up. “It is perfect.” She stared at the starry night for several long moments. Tears welled in her eyes, but it was easier to hold them at bay with her head tipped skyward. “Absolutely perfect,” she whispered, awed. She darted a glance at Restell. “And there are four. My uncle has only three skylights.”

  Emma wandered about the studio, examining the pots and jars on the shelves, the mortars and pestles for mixing the paints, the oils, the stretchers, the bolts of linen for making canvas. There were two easels and two stools, a chaise, an armchair, and a table of such sizeable dimensions that it could only have been built in the room.

  “There will be a balcony,” Restell said, watching Emma’s face as she took it all in. He opened the doors to it and showed her that there was no sill that she must climb over to step outside. “No,” he said quickly when she approached. “You can’t go out. This is where the work stopped. We all agreed that you could not fail to notice if the house suddenly sprouted a balcony on its uppermost floor.” Although the exit was roped off, Restell closed the doors to reduce Emma’s temptation to come close to the edge.

  “It seems to me that I’ve failed to notice quite a lot,” Emma said, throwing her arms wide. “While you notice everything.” She dropped her hands to her sides. “How long have you known?”

  “You cannot even say what it is that I know, can you? What if you’ve mistaken my purpose, you’re still thinking. What if I arranged all of this so your uncle could paint here and you would not have to leave home to help him?” Restell shook his head, his smile slight and sympathetic. “Were you compelled to keep the secret by your loyalty to your uncle, or was it that some influence was brought to bear?”

  Emma frowned. “I’m not certain what you mean.”

  “Emma.” Restell said her name sternly, expecting more from her than a disingenuous response. “Not only do I know that you paint, but I am fully aware that you’ve completed a number of paintings for your uncle. The Fishing Village, for one.” Taking her hand, he drew her to the far side of the studio and raised the lamp to reveal the three sketches that were framed and mounted on the wall. “This is your work, is it not?”

  Stunned, Emma made her admission without thinking. “Yes,” she said, her voice barely audible. “Yes, they’re mine.”

  “How much of the finished work is yours?” he asked. “I have studied it on several different occasions at my mother’s, but I can’t tell.”

  She shrugged and turned away from the sketches. “It doesn’t matter. It is my uncle’s name that is attached to it.”

  “Why is that, Emma?”

  “For the obvious reason that his paintings command a goodly sum and mine would not fetch a farthing.”

  “Do you never paint for yourself?”

  She was a long time in answering. “The Fishing Village was for me,” she said quietly. “I presented Uncle Arthur with my sketches and my plan to do a large canvas, larger than anything he’d ever done. He spoke to Mr. Charters about it and was discouraged from doing a painting of that scale. I agreed to begin work on something smaller because we needed the money. My uncle contributed to the painting as best he could. The static backgrounds, the choice of colors, the broad strokes, that is often his work.”

  “Did you know why there was a need for the money?”

  “No, not entirely. I never suspected that he was a gamer. His evenings out were not something that he discussed.”

  “The gaming was Mr. Charters’s influence?”

  “I believe so, yes, though it is not fair to lay the whole of it at his feet. My uncle likes to live well, often outside his means, and he indulges Marisol’s whims. I had some inkling of that when I was privy to the arrangements made for him by Mr. Johnston, but it was clearer still when I began managing the commissions myself.”

  Restell placed the lamp on the table and nudged a stool closer to Emma so that she might sit. He spun the other stool around an
d took his seat. “When did you start painting in his stead?”

  “Perhaps three or four months after I arrived in London. It seems to me that I have always had a brush in my hand. My mother and father encouraged my interest. When I was seven they hired a painting master to develop my truly sad but precocious technique, and they spoke often of sending me to London to study with my uncle.” She shrugged lightly. “I think it was the estrangement between my mother and Sir Arthur that caused my parents to hesitate. I did not mind for myself, but I saw that it saddened my mother. She believed she was not doing right by denying me the opportunity. After my parents died, well, I really had no choice. My uncle extended the invitation before I wrote to him. He’d learned of their passing before I did, so his letter arrived soon after I came to know the truth. It seemed right that I should come to London.”

  Emma laid her hands on the tabletop and studied her splayed fingers. “I did very little except paint when I arrived. Sir Arthur allowed me to indulge my grief in his studio, and I stayed up there for the better part of every day—and sometimes the better part of a night—painting until my hands were cramped or I was near fainting with hunger. I painted what was familiar to me about my home: portraits of my parents, landscapes of the countryside, the tenant farmers laboring in the fields, the Peterborough shops and shopkeepers. I surrounded myself with memories, or mayhap it was that I guarded myself with them.

  “I was aware of my uncle’s interest in my work, just as I was aware of his interest in me.”

  “Interest in you?” asked Restell. “How so?” Though he posed the question casually, he was aware of a knot in his midsection and a chill slipping under his skin.

  “The melancholia,” Emma said. “It was finally borne home to me that his willingness to permit such self-indulgent grief was not entirely of benefit to me. I have some money, you see, a trust set up for me by my parents before they sailed to India.”

  Restell rubbed the underside of his chin with the back of his hand as he regarded Emma’s downcast profile. “So you perpetuated a fraud as large my own. You were never the poor relation.”

  She glanced at him sideways. “I hope you are not imagining that I am an heiress. It is a modest sum, but I might have lived comfortably on it for years, and with some careful planning—and an advisor such as yourself—it might have seen me well into old age. Marriage did not have to be the only choice open to me, and I could have painted at my leisure, perhaps eventually supplementing my income from the trust.”

  “So Sir Arthur’s interest in you may have been of a practical nature.”

  “It occurred to me, yes. The money will not be mine until I reach my twenty-fifth birthday. My parents were so cautious regarding my future that even marriage does not bring the money under my control. It rests with the solicitors at—”

  “Napier and Walpole,” Restell finished for her. “Of course. And Mr. Johnston helps manage your funds. That’s why you remained adamantly opposed to me speaking to him.”

  Emma offered a sheepish smile. “It was badly done of me, though it did not seem so at the time. I should have known he would say nothing about the trust, but I was afraid.”

  “I did not marry you for your money, Emma.”

  “I know, but I’d lied to you, and I selfishly did not want to be caught out. I was—I am—ashamed.”

  Restell was infinitely more concerned by the danger presented by her prevarication. “If you had been killed prior to marrying, who would have inherited the trust?”

  “Marisol.”

  It was not the answer Restell had expected to hear, but he thought he understood it. “Your mother did not want it to fall in the hands of your uncle, I take it.”

  “I suppose that was her reasoning, though he might very well have been able to control it rather than keep it under the purview of the solicitors.”

  “Did you never think it was important I should know that, Emma? You very nearly died twice before we were married, and Marisol stood to inherit a tidy sum from you.”

  “Modest,” Emma said. “Not tidy. It would not last long whether she or my uncle controlled it.”

  “Precisely how modest?”

  “Eight thousand pounds.”

  “I do not like to quibble over your adjectives, but it seems to me that ‘tidy’ rather better describes that sum than ‘modest.’ I suspect you think of it as the latter because you envisioned it having to last you a lifetime. Others may see it as making a profound difference in their lives if they had a need to, say, pay gaming debts or creditors for gowns and carriages and furbelows they could ill afford.”

  Restell gave Emma a considering look. “What will you want to do with the money once it is yours?”

  “I always thought I should like to have a studio of my own.” She reached for his hand and covered it with her own. “I suppose now I will have the means to be as generous to others as you have been to me. It will require reflection. It never occurred to me that I might have choices.” She gave his hand a squeeze. “And your suspicions about Sir Arthur are off the mark, Restell. He doesn’t know the details of my trust, most certainly not the amount. Neither does Marisol. My uncle believes my parents’ debts far outnumbered their profits in investments. It’s true that they lost money in the venture that took their lives, but the sale of the house and land was enough to manage the outstanding accounts. Their instructions to the solicitors at Napier and Walpole were most explicit: no information about the trust was to be shared beyond a select few. Mr. Johnston did not become privy to my trust until I suggested he go to the firm after being dismissed by Sir Arthur. When he was hired, I asked him to be charged with investing my money.”

  Restell offered up a warm, knowing smile. “I am not surprised. I cannot divine if you are naive and lucky or wise and blessed.”

  “I think it is that I am naive and blessed. Certainly there is an angel on my shoulder.” She removed her hand from his and brushed back a tendril of hair that had fallen across her cheek. “Are you angry that I did not tell you about my trust earlier? You do not seem so.”

  “I can hardly throw stones, can I? No, I’m not angry. I understand that you believe no one else has the particulars regarding your trust. I am more skeptical, but you know that.”

  “I do.” He was the angel on her shoulder, the reason she was so often blessed. She glanced back at the chaise. “Is it as comfortable as it looks?”

  “I couldn’t say.” Somewhat guiltily he admitted, “Crowley chose it.”

  She chuckled. “Let us hope that he had the sense to sit on it.” Tugging on the sleeve of Restell’s dressing gown, Emma urged him to stand and follow her to the chaise. “You have done wonderfully well to conceive of the plan. I would not expect that you had time enough to attend to every detail.” She curled her fingers around the silk belt at his waist. “How was it all accomplished, Restell? And outside my notice? I am not so inattentive that it could have been easy to achieve.”

  He watched her eyes but was ever so conscious of her fingers sliding along his belt. “When you were not engaged in your uncle’s work, I believe you always had an invitation to attend my mother or one of my sisters or even my father in some endeavor. Lady Rivendale was most eager to assist me.”

  “They all knew about this?”

  Restell’s expression was patently incredulous. “Good God, no. You would have had the whole of it weeks ago. Have they impressed you as people who can keep their own counsel?”

  “You are too severe, Restell.”

  “Do not misunderstand. On a matter of life and death, affairs of the crown, or who holds the winning hand at whist, my family’s silence is absolute. In endeavors such as this, where a surprise is in the offing, they cannot help but surrender every detail.”

  Emma let Restell’s satin belt slide through her fingers. She parted the dressing gown. His freshly laundered nightshirt smelled faintly of soap and rainwater. She plucked at the soft fabric, then laid her hands against his chest. “So what did you tel
l them?”

  “The truth, of course. That I required their cooperation in making certain no harm came to you.”

  “Restell!”

  He shrugged, unapologetic. “They have not forgotten the incident at Lady Rivendale’s fountain. They don’t understand its full import, but they imagine themselves involved in an intrigue and find it immensely satisfying.”

  Admonishment warred with admiration as Emma shook her head. “You have an uncanny talent for engaging others to serve your interests.”

  “So I do.”

  Undone by his perfectly boyish grin, Emma pulled him down onto the chaise. She had thought seducing him was her idea, but now she was no longer certain. “I don’t suppose it matters,” she whispered against his mouth.

  “Hmm?”

  The vibration of his lips tickled hers. Emma had not realized she’d spoken aloud. “A wayward thought,” she told him. “And wholly unimportant.” She looped her arms around his neck and brought some pressure to bear. He fit himself against her as she reclined. The warmth and strength of him did not fail to comfort and calm. Nothing intruded upon her thoughts but thoughts of loving him, and Emma was filled with the sense of the rightness of it all.

  Their lovemaking was languorous and lusty by turns and sensual exploration gave way to excitement. They laughed at themselves, tangling and twisting on the chaise, in danger of thudding to the floor as they rolled. Emma’s hair spilled over the side as Restell made a feast of her throat and breasts, and when she knelt between his thighs and bent her head, he had to brace himself with one leg to keep from rocking sideways.

  Pleasure was in the touch, the fragrance, the sight of his hand on her hip and her fingers buried deep in his hair. It was the sounds he could not hold back and the ones he whispered quite deliberately against her ear. Her skin prickled. The muscles of his back and arms grew taut. They were conscious of their own breathing, of the coursing of their blood, and the sense of friction, tension, and heat as they skimmed the surface of pleasure.