River of Fire

by Mary Jo Putney

  * * *

  An hour later, Kenneth looked up guardedly when Sir Anthony came to the office for their morning business session. However, his employer was perfectly calm and made no reference to the scene at breakfast. After taking care of the usual correspondence and household matters, Kenneth silently offered the betrothal announcement he had drafted.

  Sir Anthony read the brief, formal paragraph and handed the sheet back. "Fine, only use your title, not just your military rank." His voice became heavily ironic. "I want the world to know that my little girl has made a good match."

  Kenneth laid down the notice, feeling acutely uncomfortable. "I'm very sorry for what happened, sir."

  "You mean you're sorry you kissed my daughter?" Sir Anthony asked coolly. "Or sorry that you got caught?"

  His employer was definitely looking for blood. Deciding on honesty, Kenneth replied, "I don't regret kissing her—Rebecca is immensely attractive. But doing so was wrong, and putting her in such an awkward position was contemptible."

  "What are your intentions concerning her?" When Kenneth hesitated, the older man said irritably, "Come, Captain, surely I have a right to know."

  "I don't deny that, sir." Thinking that he would rather face an army court-martial, Kenneth said carefully, "Before last night, I had no intentions. I have no right to take a wife when the estate I inherited is on the verge of bankruptcy."

  "Rebecca is already in possession of a comfortable fortune. On my death, she will be a substantial heiress."

  Kenneth felt a prickle of anger. "Are you trying to persuade me to marry her for her money? Because if you are, it's damned insulting to both Rebecca and me. She doesn't need a fortune for a man to want her, and I will not be bought."

  Looking pleased, Sir Anthony said, "Keep your feathers down, Captain. No insult is intended. I am merely pointing out that if you want to marry her, it's foolish to let your pride stand in the way. Her fortune could set your estate to rights."

  "It appears that you want to promote this match. Why?" Kenneth asked bluntly. "As I said at breakfast, I'm no great catch. I'm a secretary, for God's sake! There are any number of men who are wealthier, better educated, and better looking."

  "Very true, but you're the only man Rebecca has shown any interest in since that damned poet," Sir Anthony said dryly. "That's a substantial qualification."

  "But you know nothing about me. I merely appeared one day and asked for work. You have no evidence about my character."

  "I don't need a sheaf of references to know what you are. A man's character is written in his face." Sir Anthony picked up a quill pen, drawing the vane through his long fingers. "I won't be here forever. My daughter has led an unusually sheltered life. She needs a husband who is kind and honest and capable. He must also appreciate art and respect her talent. Such men are not easy to find. You would do very well—if you care for her as a husband should."

  For sheer humiliation, there was nothing to match being held in high esteem by the man he had been hired to destroy. All Kenneth could think to say was, "Rebecca would not agree that she needs a husband. She will do her own choosing, I think."

  Sir Anthony gave him a gimlet stare. "You are not inexperienced with women. If you decide to exert yourself, I'm sure you could be very... persuasive."

  " 'Persuasive,' " Kenneth repeated, incredulous. "Are you hinting that I should try to seduce your daughter into marriage?"

  "A harsh way of putting it, but essentially correct," the older man said calmly. "I would be sorry to see a good match thwarted because of her stubbornness and your pride."

  Kenneth took a deep breath. "Are all interviews between fathers and potential sons-in-law this harrowing?"

  The other man chuckled. "I wouldn't know, since I eloped myself. When Helen and I returned from Gretna Green, her father informed me that her fortune would be put in trust for her children so I'd never get my greedy hands on it. I think he was disappointed that I didn't mind." His expression sobered. "A good soldier is a blend of honor and pragmatism. A man is nothing without honor—but it is often better to act from pragmatism. Rebecca is not a seventeen-year-old virgin. There is no need for you to behave as if she is."

  With that paralyzing comment, Sir Anthony got to his feet and went to the door. He paused with his hand on the knob. "I am being frank because I believe you care for my daughter. But if you hurt her, by God, I will take a horsewhip to you, even if you are twice my size and half my age."

  "Understood. But I suggest you avoid talking like this to Rebecca," Kenneth said dryly. "She would probably respond by moving out and telling us both to go to perdition."

  "You understand her very well." Smiling, Sir Anthony left.

  Kenneth exhaled roughly and rubbed his temples. He didn't actually have a headache, but he felt as if he ought to. Artists really were mad. It was the only explanation.

  Yet in his heart he knew that if he weren't at Seaton House under false pretenses, he would be very tempted by Sir Anthony's suggestion that he seduce Rebecca.

  Chapter 19

  As the morning progressed, Rebecca was unnerved to receive several notes offering best wishes on her upcoming nuptials. The blasted betrothal was taking on a life of its own.

  Then Lavinia dropped by and invited herself into Rebecca's studio. Rebecca looked up from her falling woman painting with a scowl. "I hope you're pleased with yourself. If you hadn't interfered, I would be safely ruined by now, with no more nonsense about rebuilding my reputation."

  Lavinia laughed and settled onto the sofa with a flounce of skirts. "Sheath your claws, darling. You were glad enough to be rescued at the time. I thought you would fall into a dead faint when you were discovered." She gave the silky Persian carpet draped over the sofa an appreciative caress. "You really should have chosen a more private place to make a meal of Kenneth."

  Face scarlet, Rebecca covered her canvas and lifted the Gray Ghost from a chair so she could sit down. Cuddling the cat on her lap, she said, "It wasn't exactly a matter of choice. It just happened. And I wasn't making a meal of him."

  "No?" Lavinia said skeptically. "That was not a polite little kiss. It was a full-blooded, ready-to-rip-clothes-off kind of kiss, and I speak as one who knows."

  "Lavinia!" Rebecca bent her head and concentrated on petting the cat. "You're embarrassing me."

  Taking pity, Lavinia said more moderately, "Of course you can break the betrothal later, but think carefully before you act. You could do a great deal worse than Kenneth for a husband. Not only is he madly attractive, but a viscount, and he really fancies you. You're a credit to your sex. Few women could have accomplished so much in a single evening." She gave a gurgle of laughter. "And if you marry him, Hermione will become a dowager viscountess. She'll be enraged."

  Rebecca glanced up. "You know Lady Kimball?"

  "Yes, and a nasty bit of work she is. I noticed that it was after she cornered Kenneth that the two of you bolted from the ballroom. She must have been her usual dreadful self."

  "Worse than dreadful. Wicked." Thinking that Kenneth would want to know, Rebecca continued, "What was her marriage like? Did she make Lord Kimball miserable?"

  Lavinia considered. "I don't believe so. Hermione has a keen sense of which side her bread is buttered on, which meant keeping her husband happy and being discreet about her adulteries." She cocked her head. "How did your father take the news of your betrothal?"

  "Not well," Rebecca admitted. "He started ranting that Kenneth must marry me."

  "In that case, I'll say no more on the subject." Lavinia got gracefully to her feet. "There's nothing like being told to do something for one's own good to put one off doing it." With a smile and a flutter of her fingers, she left.

  Rebecca returned to her painting, but had trouble concentrating. Instead, she found herself chewing on the end of a brush and wondering just how much Kenneth fancied her.

  * * *

  By the time Kenneth arrived for his midafternoon sitting, Rebecca had her unruly thoughts un
der control. It helped that he made no reference to their mutual dilemma. He simply scooped up the Gray Ghost and took his usual position on the sofa with the cat beside him. "How is the picture coming?" he asked.

  "Quite well. All of the basic shapes, colors, and shadows are in place, so I can begin to lay in the details. In another week or two, you'll be a free man." She would miss these sessions, but they would still have the painting lessons. She lifted her palette. "Give me your wicked pirate expression."

  "I'll never get used to this." He closed his eyes, then reopened them and looked at her with dark intensity. The effect was not so much dangerous as compelling. Profoundly masculine. It was an expression that would make Lavinia swoon on the spot.

  Rebecca took a deep breath, then began detailing the corsair's face. She would show the pirate's haunted regret on the dark reflected profile, but that was for another session. Today she would concentrate on the jaded man who could love or kill with equal ease. Now that Kenneth was her friend, it was harder for her to see that menacing side of him.

  She laid a narrow shadow along his cheek, then drew the pale line of the scar over it with one delicate stroke. That mark gave silent testimony to a perilous life. More difficult was capturing the lucent clarity of his gray eyes. World-weary eyes that had seen everything, and trusted nothing. White highlights for the chancy sparkle. Charcoal rims made them piercing, as they were in real life.

  She raised the brush for a last stroke, then halted. Half of being an artist was knowing when to stop.

  She dropped the brush into the jar of turpentine and chose another to add the faint lines at the corners of the eyes. They gave maturity as well as proof of a life lived outdoors.

  Shadows to define the chiseled cheekbones. Then the mouth. Immediately she ran into trouble. While outlining it, she had a vivid memory of what his lips had felt like on hers. A wave of heat went through her and the brush slipped. She made an exasperated sound.

  Kenneth asked, "Is something wrong?"

  "Just... just a misstroke." Avoiding his eyes, she wiped her damp palms, then scraped the paint off. Once again she tried to paint the mouth that had kissed her ear and made delicious nibbling bites down her throat....

  Again she made a mistake. To her disgust, she realized that her hand was shaking.

  Deciding to return to the face on a day when memory of his kisses was less immediate, she shifted her attention to the arm that lay along the back of the sofa. The white linen stretched at the shoulder, hinting at the strength of the body beneath the fabric. Only a little hardening of the shadows was needed. She did that, then studied the way the shirt fell around his torso.

  She had pressed herself shamelessly against him, her breasts aching as they flattened against his hard muscles....

  She dropped her gaze and swallowed against the dryness in her mouth. Being alone and private with a man, focusing totally on his body, was intensely erotic. Surely he must feel it, too, this dark, throbbing energy that charged the air between them, but she dared not look at his face to find out. She knew her own eyes would be too revealing.

  Her gaze went to his legs, and the way the dark, skin-tight breeches pulled across his thighs. She immediately looked away. Impossible even to think about working on his lower body. She would detail the hand that rested on the Gray Ghost.

  Telling herself to think like a painter, not a woman, she resumed work, glancing back and forth from her subject to her canvas again and again. Hands were almost as critical and difficult as faces. The strong bones defining his wrist turned out well, so she started on the hand itself.

  His middle finger stroked across the cat's head, gentle and sensual. The gesture triggered a vivid memory of how that powerful hand had caressed her. The warmth. The feel of his palm cupping her breast....

  Damnation, this was absurd! Yet she could not separate her awareness of him as a man from her professional perception.

  Her face must have betrayed her turmoil, for Kenneth asked, "More problems?"

  Hoping that she wasn't blushing, Rebecca thought quickly and said, "Please move your left hand an inch or so down the sofa." She moistened her dry lips and started to work on the hand that rested on the back of the sofa. The hand that had curved around her hip, pulling her close, sending tingles of liquid fire into deep, secret places....

  With an oath, she banged her palette onto the table. "That's enough for today," she said gruffly. "Let's take a tea break, then start your lesson."

  "Good. I've had enough of sitting," Kenneth said with suspicious alacrity. He stood and stretched. Entranced, she watched the sleek, leonine flex of his body. Officially, she was betrothed to this man. In tomorrow's newspapers, they would tell the world that they intended to share a bed for the rest of their lives.

  She jerked her gaze away and grabbed a rag to wipe her brush. A good thing this portrait was almost finished, she thought with exasperation. Otherwise she would need a new piece of studio equipment: a tub of icy water to cool the artist.

  * * *

  Kenneth was glad to stop posing, and even gladder that Rebecca stayed at the far end of the studio until the water boiled and the tea had steeped. It had always been difficult to sit still with nothing to do but admire Rebecca. Today it had been damned near impossible. His mind had ranged between remembering how enticing she had looked in amber silk and even more perilous thoughts of how she would look out of it.

  After the tea, he reluctantly prepared for another painting lesson. He'd come to hate them because of his miserable lack of progress. He was no better than after the first lesson. Worse, if anything.

  Rebecca's teaching was not the problem. Her comments were quiet and to the point, and she never sneered, no matter how dreadful his efforts. The fault was within him.

  The focal point of his still life was a cast taken from the head of a Greek statue. It showed Zeus, the face full of wisdom and maturity. He'd chosen it because he'd liked the expression and weathered texture. By now, he loathed the blasted thing.

  He painstakingly mixed the tints he would need. Then, expression set, he started to paint.

  While he struggled with his canvas, Rebecca sat quietly at her worktable, grinding the pigments to make pastel crayons. After mixing in the binding solution with a palette knife, she rose and came to see how he was doing.

  "The shadows on the bowl need to be sharper to indicate how reflective the surface is," she said after a brief study. "And the highlights should be warm to show that it's brass."

  She was quite right. He understood those things, had rendered similar objects in pastel and watercolor. Why couldn't he get them right with oils?

  Seeing his tight expression, Rebecca said, "It takes time, Kenneth. Don't be so hard on yourself."

  Her sympathy was the last straw. With sudden fury, he slashed his brush across the width of the canvas, smearing the heavy oils. "There will never be enough time in the world for me to learn this," he said bitterly.

  She frowned. "Your work really isn't that bad."

  "But it isn't good. It will never be good." He slapped down the palette and brush and spun away from her, stalking across the studio in a blaze of frustration. The emotions churning inside him were explosive, too violent to be contained by a human body. Only Rebecca's presence kept him from smashing everything in sight.

  "I can't do this, Rebecca. The oils won't go where I want. It's like trying to herd pigs. Even when I know what should be done, I can't get it right." He turned and gestured toward the ruined picture. "That's a waste of good paint and canvas. It's flat. Dead. Christ! I never should have tried to learn this."

  He was heading toward the door when she said crisply, "The lesson isn't over, Kenneth."

  "Yes, it is, and there won't be any more " Struggling for control, he paused with his hand on the knob. "I'm sorry, Rebecca. It was good of you to offer to teach me, but you're wasting your time."

  "Come back here, Captain," she said, her voice whip-sharp. "I obliged you by going to that blasted ball,
and you will oblige me by not giving up until we've at least tried to devise a different approach that will work for you."

  It was an argument he could not ignore. He stared at the door, inhaling and exhaling with slow deliberation. When his emotions were tamped down to a safe level, he returned to his easel. Rather than looking at his travesty of painting, he watched Rebecca. Her intent expression and tousled hair were a far more pleasing sight. He asked tightly, "Did you have such difficulty when you were learning to paint?"

  "Did, and sometimes I still do."

  "Really?" he said, surprised. "I would have thought that you were beyond such problems."

  "I don't think an artist ever gets entirely beyond," she said wryly. "Why do you think my father sometimes turns into a wild man and hurls things all over the studio?"

  He gave a lopsided smile. "I have a lot more sympathy for such actions than when I first came here."

  She perched on a stool and drummed her fingers on the tabletop as she thought out loud. "Oil paints are a medium—not an end in themselves, but simply a material that transmits ideas into visible images. In practical terms, that means that oils express your emotions. Because you want so much to master oil painting, you try too hard. You're as rigid as a marble statue, and that is transmitted to your canvas. Even though your basic drawing is fine, the overall picture is stiff, lifeless. You're crippling yourself and your work."

  He had not thought in those terms before. "That's certainly true," he agreed. "But damned if I know how to stop doing it."

  "Creative force is like a..." she searched for a phrase, "a river of fire. When it is in full flood, it blazes through the spirit with power and excitement. There are transcendent moments when an artist can do nothing wrong. Every stroke, every color is perfect. The image on the canvas comes very near to matching the image in the mind. Surely you've experienced some of that excitement when drawing."

  "Occasionally," he admitted, thinking back. "That is what you feel when you paint?"