Night of Pleasure (19 page)

She was quiet for a moment. “No. I won’t make the decision of taking away your right to have children or exposing myself to the possibility of— Please don’t do this before London. Don’t— I won’t be there.”

He tightened his hold. “It makes no difference to me where or how I do this. The result is the same. You intend to walk out of my life.”

She closed her eyes. “Don’t do this. Please. You promised.”

“Did I?”

She set her cheek against his chest. “Mend the rift between you and your brother. You will need him. And given the way your mother speaks of his struggles, he probably needs you more.”

He squeezed his eyes shut. She was giving him walking orders. She was letting him go. Without giving him a chance to show her the sort of husband and father he could be. “I’ll mend the rift,” he murmured. “You needn’t worry in that.”

“He is the only sibling you have, Derek. Cherish it.”

What did she know about cherishing? She couldn’t even cradle what he was laying out before her very eyes. The room grew quiet and all he could hear was his own breath and hers. Though he wanted to believe there would be more heavenly nights like this between them, this was it. No more letters. No more dreaming. No more wondering. No more yearning.

This was where their story ended.

The candles still glowed but within another hour, she knew they would wane.

Long after his breaths had settled into an even rhythm that announced he had well-exhausted himself and fallen asleep after he pleasured them both a total of three times over the course of five hours, Clementine carefully slipped out of his arms.

He didn’t move. His eyes remained closed and those masculine lips remained slightly parted. The sheets of the smooth linen had been pulled up barely to his waist, exposing the muscled contours of his large, lean body.

He was so beautiful. She had always thought so. Since the moment they first met.

She lingered beside the bed for a long moment, watching him sleep. She watched that broad chest rise and fall, remembering the way it felt against her hands. Now she knew what was possible between a man and a woman. It wasn’t as fearsome as she had always imagined. But then she knew that was because it was Derek she had submitted herself to. Who knew what sort of malicious things went on between men and women around the world behind closed doors?

She only hoped that in time, Derek would forgive her.

She had already forgiven herself. After all, she knew his worth. She had always known his worth and it had always outweighed her own. This laughing, playful Adonis deserved a world she would never be able to offer him. Unlike other females, she didn’t laugh. She didn’t flirt. She didn’t sashay into a room with a whirl, looking for things to play with next. Her sense of humor was nonexistent and pathetic.

Her eyes burned. Everything about her was pathetic. And a man like Derek, her beautiful Derek, deserved so much more.

Turning, she quietly gathered up her chemise, slipping it over her naked body. A very sore body. Glancing back at him, she pattered over to the easel and gently started laying out all the paints, mentally picking out the colors she needed. Her hands moved and arranged and mixed and flowed with the one world she always whole-heartedly submitted to: painting moments of life.

She didn’t focus on what she was leaving.

She focused on what they had shared.

What she loved about painting was replicating the world around her and adding whatever color and light she pleased, molding it into the way she wanted it to be. Not what it necessarily was. She wandered over to the mirror and perused herself and her features, lifting her chemise high enough to expose her legs. Holding onto her own image in her head, she veered back over to the canvas. Dipping the tip of the largest brush she could find into black paint, she started moving the brush effortlessly across the canvas, the sound of the brush creating a rhythm in her mind as her gaze followed the lines and curves of what she saw.

Painting was the only time she ever felt in complete control of not only the world around her but her own breath. It was like seeing the stars for the first time whilst laying out on an open field with the breeze floating around her. And knowing that she was re-creating a stunning moment she would remember for the rest of her life, she painted and painted and refused to stop the brush until it was all over the canvas where it belonged.

Sunlight glimmered beneath his closed lids making him open his eyes and squint. Realizing he was alone in bed, Derek scrambled to sit up, his heart pounding. Her clothes were gone. She was gone. It was as if she had never been.

She had left without saying good-bye. Without—

Gritting his teeth, he grabbed up the pillow she had been sleeping on and whipped it off the bed, not wanting the scent of her anywhere near him. Seven goddamn of his years gone in a breath. “Fuck.”

Swiping his face that was in need of his daily shave, he pushed himself off the bed and standing naked beside it, stared at the linens, images of his body pushing into hers making it difficult for him to breathe. For all he knew she was going to submit herself next to this
friend
in Persia.

The very thought made him jump forward, savagely grip the linens and rip them off the bed. He mindlessly tugged everything off the mattress, stripping everything in between ragged breaths. Anything and everything that had touched her body. He flung it all into a large pile on the floor and even grabbed up all of the pillows and flung them all onto the linens.

He had three million now.

He could afford new linens.

Letting out uneven breaths, he swung toward the back of the easel that faced him. The easel he had set up for her. She hadn’t even taken the time to gift him the one thing he had asked of her. A moment of their embrace.

Ready to grab the canvas and throw it across the room, he stalked toward it and then jerked to a halt. The small table beside the easel and the floor around the easel were countless small bottles of paints pulled out from his wooden boxes. They had all been scattered. The wooden pallet was dabbed with various oil paints, colors smearing into one another from use and the jar of mineral spirits he had left out was murky and clouded. Eight different brushes sat in it.

His breath hitched as he quickly rounded the easel, making sure he didn’t step on anything that was laid out on the floor. As the canvas came into view, with the morning light angling in from the lattice window, he paused, his lips parting.

It was so life-like and so evocative it startled him.

On a linen covered four-posted bed, with a red velvet curtain bundled and draped off to the side of it, lay his Clementine naked in his arms, her hair beautifully spilled over the side in a wave of black silk that gleamed like real tresses in candlelight. Her nudity was covered by his own nudity, the linens tangling and rippling around their legs and waists. Their faces were dipped close to each other, barely a wisp away from a kiss, their lips delicately parted and about to join. Their eyes were half-closed, their expressions both romantic and soft.

It was so good Michelangelo most certainly would have wept. Or altogether take himself in hand and pleasured himself.

Derek brought a shaky hand to his lips and plastered his entire palm hard against his mouth in an effort to remain standing. He was never going to love another woman again.

Saturday afternoon

When a gentleman beautifully proved his golden worth to a lady by defending her honor before his own mother whilst assuring her that she was free to walk away from a seven year engagement, even after a shared night, it was up to that lady to prove her own worth in the only way she knew how. Even if it meant leaving her ruffled chaperone, Mrs. Langley, in the safety of the carriage so she could walk into a bachelor-infested townhouse that smelled like ale had been burnt on the stove.

Or at least Clementine
hoped
it was ale that had been burnt on the stove.

A muffled thump, along with several pronounced thuds, vibrated the painted walls, echoing its way from upstairs to the wooden floorboards beneath her slippered feet. Clementine swung toward the wooden narrow staircase, the sash on her bonnet swaying. The brass chandelier above her head quaked with each solid thud. Several of the melted stubs of wax threatened to tilt out of their narrow sconces.

It was like someone was trying to dismantle the house.

Tightening her hold on her beaded reticule, she glanced up toward the buxom female servant who was hurriedly coming back down the stairs after having delivered her card.

“Is everything as it should be?” Clementine asked the woman.

The young brunette came to a halt on the landing, letting out a melodious laugh that showcased surprisingly beautiful teeth. “Nothing is ever as it should be in this house.” The maid ushered Clementine toward a small receiving room off to the side. “You and that gorgeous gown of yours ought to wait right in there. I’m afraid Mr. Holbrook isn’t about, but Lord Brayton, after receiving your card, insisted on seeing you. Consider yourself lucky. He never sees anyone. Not even from his own family.”

Oh, dear. “I didn’t realize there was anyone else living with Mr. Holbrook.”

“Oh, now, everyone right down to the butcher knows the two share living quarters due to their lack of finances. It’s sad, really. Two men from well-to-do families and
nothing
to show for it.”

Clementine stared at the young woman, abashed. “You really shouldn’t belittle the circumstance of the very men who hire you.”

The maid pulled in her chin, her green eyes brightening as she set a roughened but dainty hand against the apron of her grey wool ensemble. “Oh, I’m not the rude sort, I dare say. I was raised better.” She puckered her lips, clearly not sorry. “But Mr. Holbrook owes me money, Miss Grey, and Lord Brayton thinks himself cheeky, so between the two, I have no trouble saying it.
At all
.” The woman sighed, dropping her hand. “His lordship will be down shortly. I apologize for the lack of formality, which a lady like yourself is no doubt accustomed to, but I’m the only remaining servant. I have a boy, you see, so every decision I make is for him. He rather likes it here.”

The maid edged in, the scent of scones and cinnamon teasing the air, and lowered her voice. “Now if you’ll excuse me, Miss Grey, I’ve got a long list of duties that include cleaning up all the trays. These men are messier than my six-year-old. Good day.” The maid patted her food-spattered white cap back into place and hurried past. She heaved up a large wooden tray from a dilapidated side table that was piled with chipped, dirty dishes, then clumped down the darkened corridor and disappeared around a corner.