Meet the Earl at Midnight (Midnight Meetings) (29 page)

“I’d better leave before I do something foolish, like press myself on a woman in need of a good night’s sleep.”
Or
stay
with
you
and
never
leave.

His body protested the change of plans. Edward rose from the settee and winced. He adjusted his breeches from the pressure building at the placket. He faced the fire, not willing that she see the effect a little tenderness and intimacy had on him. Of course she likely knew; his Lydia was no babe in the woods.

He moved closer to the hearth to collect himself, all while planning to tend the mellow fire. Edward crouched down, his legs spread wide to give more space in his breeches. He settled another log on the iron grate and stared, hypnotized by the dancing orange and yellow flames. Coming here tonight, he played with a deadlier fire.

And why this sudden need to be honorable with a woman of some experience? A woman he’d wed and bed soon enough? Edward’s loins clenched with deep ache, snapping him out of his haze. He flinched and a hoarse, dry chuckle escaped him. Gingerly, he stood up and jammed his hands in his coat pockets. When he faced Lydia, she tucked the night-robe about her legs, looking long in the mouth. Never had he seen so forlorn a face.

“You will take yourself off to bed, won’t you?” he asked, not trusting himself to help her with that task.

“Yes.” She gave the barest nod.

“You understand…my leaving?”

“As long as you understand my desire that you stay.”
Forever.

Sad, dark-lashed eyes had some kind of power over him. The emotion in her limpid green gaze reached inside him. The wanting pummeled his gut from loss and denial.

“Good night, Lydia.”

Edward retreated to his room before he caved into temptation and never left. The air shrouded him with cool emptiness. His mind moved, but not racing with its usual speed of thought. Somehow his feet led him to his study, where he sat at his desk and propped his boots on the desktop. Tonight, even his treasured books held no allure.

***

As
the
clock
struck
midnight…

Edward grabbed a candelabrum from a hall table, and in a fog of tiredness, strode to the ballroom. His bootsteps echoed in the cavernous spaces. All were abed in the house when he pushed the ballroom’s double doors wide. He honed in on the makeshift art studio and held the flickering candles at shoulder height, unwrapping one burlap painting after another. He needed to know, to understand.

Perhaps his diminished state of exhaustion opened him, a physical weakening that affected his soul. This past year, no, these past three years had been hard. Maybe the entrancing connection he’d made with the woman upstairs, the first of its kind, opened channels he’d left solidly dammed. But his body was loose-jointed and free, ready to accept,
to
feel
, what came his way. A novel notion to be sure.

What was it Lydia said? Something about letting his feelings respond to what he saw. He let himself see, all right. He chuckled dryly again. No, this wasn’t an exact science. This went far beyond his realm of comfort, but he’d let come what may and not try to analyze it. Some habits, though, didn’t fade away from one lesson, he decided, when gaining an inkling of victory over one piece and another.

“Let’s see what you wish to tell me,” he said aloud, pulling burlap from paintings, “or should I say ‘what you wish to tell the world’?”

Lydia had painted proper English landscapes, two of them. Not eye-catching at all. Though of reputable quality and excellent images, nothing that stirred the soul. They could be like everyday women in sturdy English morning dresses: you’d know something covered a wall, but it didn’t dress it.

Then she became more interesting by going outside the lines of acceptable subjects. Her smaller painting featured a country maid, her breast half-bare as she nursed her babe in a kitchen.

The image would not grace the wall of any grand English drawing room, but the painting, excellent and appeasing to the eye, tore back the curtain of formal veneer. Intimacy, of the deep and trusting kind, struck him with awe. Lydia had captured love and tenderness, yet the mother looked facedown at her swaddled child. There was no eye contact of the subject with the viewer.

Could one even say an art piece
looks
back
at the viewer? The mesmerizing image rattled him.

How did Lydia do that?

He glanced at the lone easel. That square hidden under cloth called to him.

He walked briskly to that covered easel and tore back the cloth cover, revealing the small canvas square that vexed him most. The cover bunched in his left hand and draped to the floor like a woman’s skirts.

The
Chinese
Pear
Tree
. The piece played with his insides, luring him.

“Art,” he said under his breath. “What am I
not
seeing?”

Lydia’s words from the other day still stung. Her instruction harangued him. This was his third time coming back to view this piece since that meeting. The first time he snuck away for a perfunctory few minutes, staring at several paintings in the family art gallery, staring at family portraits, and then viewing some of the famous pieces, but ending with this one. Seeking to examine art in different lights, he found himself going back to a few that he liked. The second time, viewing the work in daylight hours, availed nothing new.

Each time he ended face-to-face with
The
Chinese
Pear
Tree
.
Why?

Edward raised the candelabrum higher, squinted at the painting, and exhaled his exasperation. After victory with the painting of the mother and babe, why couldn’t he see this one? Enough.

“I’m going to bed,” he said, growling the words.

Just as he turned, candlelight flickered, and shadows flitted across the tree. The action tricked the eye, as if the tree moved. He jerked from the strange perception and squinted again. The cover cloth dropped to the ground. He hoisted the candelabrum higher. There. The half-hidden fruit, waiting like a woman dancing in the shadows. He touched stiff, dried paint.

The play of light drew his attention to the hidden fruit. Words poured from his lips.

“Lines…less distinct…a specter of an object, shapes…rather than definitive lines showing completion.” He took two more steps back. “That’s why I think it’s unfinished. Only the forefront has thin, completed lines. The fruit appears whole, yet—”

He moved closer and inspected the background foliage. More fruit, ethereal silhouettes, hidden behind leaves. So like a woman, layers of revelation and hidden depths.

“How did she do that?” he whispered and looked over at the other uncovered paintings along the wall.

Some were quite traditional. Others brought to mind a different feel, something primal. His eyes were drawn to the tantalizing Chinese pear tree. That center fruit still looked very much to him like a woman’s nude bottom. The side of his mouth quirked at the possibility that the image could be a self-portrait of sorts.

There’s only one way to confirm that.

He grinned yet, something else bedeviled him. The distinct foreground, what was at the surface, was obvious.

“What we see, what
I
see is evident, yet only surface.” He smiled. “Ah, Lydia, the remaining treasures need to be searched out and wooed by the patient beholder. You and I are much more than what the outside world sees.”

One needed to take a longer look to find and plumb those rich depths. The dark-haired woman sleeping upstairs taught him as much. This painting was her siren call. To him.

Edward let loose a peal of laughter, whole and round, that bounced around the ballroom as euphoria filled him. He was like a blind man newly sighted. Candles wobbled and dripped wax on the floor.

What he
felt
was primal, passionate, and pure. Like Lydia. Yes, Lydia was the best kind of pure. Honest and refreshing with enticing mystery. Her art reflected her, and she reflected her art.

Truth, like an alluring woman, sat right before his eyes.

Seventeen

When we have gold, we are in fear.

When we have none, we are in danger.

—English Proverb

No matter the woman, from scullery maid to lofty queen, sex leveled her playing field. Hadn’t that always been the case from the most ancient of times? Oh, some of the fairer sex held a trove of talents, others wealth and keen minds, but the one consistent line through the fabric of time was sex and sensuality. Women wielded so much power, much more than men, in the give and take of sensual pursuits. Then, why, why, why after only one kiss to her knee was she considering tossing all and sundry to the wind?

Stay or go? That was the question.

There was no delicate way to put this as she pushed off the answer to the last possible moment. Avoidance remained a coward’s path, and Lydia ran headlong down it with both eyes shut, like some kind of fool. For two days she embraced indecision, and peace of mind was the cost, with discomfort her reward. Lud, but the pressure was horrid.

But what an intoxicating kiss.
To
her
knee.
And there were Edward’s caresses to consider. Why did his touch fan flames wherever his fingers skimmed flesh? Just thinking about where his hand had touched caused a minor shiver.

She closed her eyes and let the headiness play out in her mind. The surprise: images of laughing and talking, trading quips and barbs with his lordship came to the fore. Was this really about the lure of sex? Of gold? Art? Or something else?

When Lydia opened her eyes, the bristles of her new ox-hair paintbrush fanned the canvas, smearing blobs of paint. Canvas stretched that morning, and already the painting had turned to a messy disaster. Like her. Lines failed to form, shapes didn’t mesh. Two agonizing days had crawled by with tossing and turning over her ladyship’s offer, when she should have slept. Misery and melancholy claimed her when she should have been wide awake and vibrant about her future. Today, by sunset when the countess returned, she had to decide: stay or go.

Lady Elizabeth’s scandalous offer tempted her in ways she couldn’t fathom.

At the same time, the offer reviled her in ways she was just beginning to probe.

The primary reason to leave was her art; the singular reason to stay was a man.

Why did Edward have to come to her room last night with his honest, sensual appeal that touched her to the core? She was certain his lordship was knocked back a step or two, as well, by that nocturnal visit. Oh, he had to be as affected as her by the surprising closeness that had filled the room, encircling them on the settee. His body had responded to the novel caresses they’d exchanged.

Strange, though they were hardly sexual, her body craved him. Her hoyden’s mouth quirked sidewise, recalling the way he’d tried to hide his arousal by poking at the fire; she was glad he shared some discomfort from their unique situation.

At the moment, the tempting man was sweating in one of his silliest pursuits: Edward participated in a jump-rope race against Jonas Bacon. Both grown men had spent more than an hour practicing swordsmanship, fencing mostly with short swords. They worked to best the other at one feat of athleticism after another, laughing their way through the ballroom. In the current competition, Sanford Shipping’s man of business lagged far behind the fleet-footed earl, who whipped his rope in a frantic race to reach one hundred jumps before Mr. Bacon.

“…ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred!” Edward crowed his victory, dropping the long hemp rope as he raised both fists high.

His chest heaved under the sweat-dampened shirt. He gave her a bold smile and a bow, playing to his attentive audience of one. Linen clung to both men’s torsos, since both had claimed with her presence in the ballroom, they would honor propriety and keep their shirts on. She glanced over the top of her new, larger canvas at the boyish display. When she looked back at the canvas, her brush had smeared a new arc of muddied color: this was nothing like the exotic specimen she’d seen, the
butterfly
bush
it was called, beginning to bloom in the greenhouse.

She exhaled long and rubbed her rag so hard across the canvas that the easel’s legs rattled and scraped the floor.

“Why the glum face?” Edward walked toward her, wiping a towel across his nape. He breathed heavily from his unusual sprint. “I thought you’d be euphoric with my mother gone. No countess lessons today.”

He managed a wide smile that showed nice even teeth. With moisture dotting his hairline, his queue near undone, and shirt untucked, Edward looked more like a laborer ending his day than any nobleman. How could she let a man throw her off this much?

“Perhaps like you, I wish to work uninterrupted.” She dropped the rag to her feet and took a step back to contemplate how she’d rework this piece.

Lydia dabbed and mixed a shade of onyx and blue and red, trying to achieve the perfect purplish hue, but even her palette had become a disarray of smeared colors. She bristled at his lightheartedness. How could he smile and be so at ease? Of course, his world was ordered and known; hers was the one thrown into disorder and uncertainty. Part of her was tempted right then to spill the news of his mother’s offer, just to relieve the pressure.

“Ah, we’ve reached an understanding then on the importance of work, my work at least,” he said with a teasing wink while moving around to see the latest project. “I’ll have you know I’ve once again become an astute pupil of Aristotle.”

“And what exactly have you learned?” she asked, cranky and out of sorts.

“That I’m attracted to a distinct and brilliant woman.”

Her lips parted. Why did he have to say wonderful things like that and look incredibly handsome and appealing? The soft way he said those words was as effective as his touch, though at the moment he kept his hands to himself. Edward gave her his brash smile, and the scarred skin creased handsomely, as did the unscarred cheek. What woman in her right mind could turn away from him? Her brush hung midair, thick with purple, and she cleared her throat, trying for prim control.