The Next Best Bride (11 page)

It was difficult to imagine Rand with silver hair and a huge barrel belly. "I —" He leaned in to plant a kiss on her lips and then pulled back with a mischievous smile. "Consider it tonight's lesson."

Helena's will dissolved in one rush of breath.

"Very well." She wanted it. How could she object? She would rip up the sketches when he wasn't looking — toss them in the fire if need be, so that no one but she saw them.

He flipped open her sketchbook and examined her work. "Do you only make pencil and ink drawings?"

"I have worked in oils, but not often. They are difficult to manage." Not to mention that she had not wanted to ask either her brother or the duke to bear the expense and inconvenience of outfitting a studio for her painting.

"Good. Then you shall do a series of sketches of me as we travel, and I shall choose my favorite and commission you to create it in oils to hang in our home."

Helena swallowed. A nude. In oils. "Perhaps you should wait to see if you find it flattering."

He looked down upon a sketch she had done of a London pickpocket. The sketch wasn't very detailed. She had seen the lad for only a moment before the duke's carriage clattered on its way. But the lean look of a hungry, wounded animal was clearly captured. The amusement leached from his features unexpectedly, and he said with a touch of bitterness, "Hang flattery, my love. Paint me as I am."

She sighed. "Only as I see you, Rand. That is all that I can promise." She tore the sketchbook from his hands, suddenly aware of how many of her secrets it held. She wished he wouldn't use that casual endearment. The way his tongue curled around the syllables made her believe that he meant them, though his eyes told her otherwise.

* * * * *

She had not been lying when she told him that he would be bored trying to keep as still as the statue she had practiced her skills upon. Five nights of this torture made him wonder if he had truly lost his mind. Perhaps it would not have been so bad if he could have ended the night making love to her.

A disadvantage of a wife, he supposed he should count it. If not for the monthly flux, he could be resting in this very bed with his wife next to him. He could be free to move, to kiss, to touch ....

Would she let him kiss her knees? He had wanted to since the morning she had come to his room to jilt him. But he had been more than careful of her propriety. He had done little more than kiss her good night before turning over to his fitful sleep.

His mistresses had never bothered him about such things, although looking back he supposed that those nights when they sent notes regarding "illness" — or even the nights where he found himself ministered to quite satisfactorily with only mouth and tongue and hands with no requirement for him to participate in the matter at all — those no doubt had something to do with the mysterious workings of a woman's body. But now he had a wife. Despite her lover, she was not worldly about these matters. He needed to learn patience. These things didn't last long ... did they?

Until then, he would simply continue to imagine the ways he would please her. The ways she, he hoped, would learn in order to please him. Then, perhaps, they would find other ways to disport themselves when she was "indisposed."

He suspected his proper little wife would be shocked to know how he was amusing himself as he reclined in tumbled splendor upon the White Boar Inn's grandest four-poster bed. Perhaps tonight he could show her some small portion of what he had imagined in these hours lying under her gaze. Yes, surely tonight he could follow up his time as a human statue by showing her the pleasures of making love.

Had she had any of the same thoughts? She had, after all, been examining his form more closely than any of his former lovers — all without touching him with anything but her gaze. That faraway gaze that made him wonder where she went when she drew. Her head was bent over her sketchbook just now. But she knew if he moved, and made a little sound in her throat to remind him to remain still.

He speculated for a time on whether she would blush, where, and how deeply, if he were to ask her bluntly if her flow had ceased. Of course she would, he finally decided. All over. A bright deep pink. She was still unnerved by his presence. By the wedding she had not managed to escape.

When they had been led to the room by a maid, she had tried to pretend she was too tired to work, just as she had every night they traveled. He smiled, remembering the first night he had insisted she sketch him. How she stared at him with wide eyes, clutching her sketchbook in her hand and darting looks about the room as if wondering where her escape might be.

He had forestalled her delay by peeling off his waistcoat and asking, "Where should I pose?"

"In the chair?" She had pointed to a rather uncomfortable-looking easy chair perched by the fire, no doubt hoping that he would agree and she could once again suggest postponing the session.

He had thrown himself onto the four-poster, arms wide. "How about the bed?"

The scandalized look in her eye suggested she was about to make an objection to his boots on the bed linens, when she blushed, subsided, and said in a small voice, "Very well."

He had propped his arms beneath his head and stared at her.

For a moment she looked as if she might object, but then she settled herself in the chair she had first meant for him, and found a clean sheet of paper to draw upon. And she laid pen to paper.

She would have drawn him as he was; he was certain of it. But that had not suited his plans. So he had risen from the bed and come to stand over her. She held the pen inches from the paper and regarded him with curiosity. "Yes?"

"I am supposed to be nude," he had reminded her. Not that he thought she had forgotten.

Her excuse was the most feeble possible. "I thought you had changed your mind."

You hoped I had changed my mind, he thought, but did not say aloud. "I was waiting for you to undress me, as you did last night." She had done so that night without further protest. And every night since, as well.

She had blushed to her neckline, and no doubt beyond, each night. Each time she did he had the urge to peel away her clothing piece by piece and see for himself just exactly how far down her flush carried.

Prudence dictated that he save such a delightful experiment for a time when she had grown used to him — at least, a little more used to him. Could that time be tonight?

He shifted, uncomfortably aroused at the thought of making love to his wife. Tonight. He glanced at her. Had she noticed his arousal? She had posed him so that one bent leg obscured her view of that part of him. Still, she was an artist and noticed little details. Not that he was little. Surely she had to have noticed. He shifted again.

Helena made her inarticulate sound that meant he should not move and, without looking up, tucked a stray wisp of her hair behind her ear.

Suddenly feeling no more important than her tiny replica of David, he allowed his annoyance to show in his tone. "I have an itch."

Her voice sounded rusty, as if it came reluctantly from some deep well. "Don't move." Still she did not look up.

The trouble with modeling nude was that he had no boot or pocket watch to throw at her to break the spell her work put upon her. "Come and scratch for me, then."

"Mmm." Her pencil scratched at a rapid rate, She paused, frowning at the page.

"I need you to scratch my itch," he said, as loudly as he could without bringing the landlord and a dozen concerned maids to the room.

At last, she looked up. The spell had been broken. But the woman herself was left highly annoyed with him. "Can't you do it yourself?"

"I can't reach," he lied. He thought of a way to find out if he would be making love to his wife tonight or not, now that he had her full attention. "And since you are indisposed and I am forced to suffer the pangs of unrequited lust—" Her glance spent only a moment at his groin, but it was enough to tell him that she was not oblivious to the meaning of his words. Good. Perhaps she would suffer some guilt. He continued as if he had not noticed where her glance had gone. "It seems only fair that you do me that small service."

She blushed, but to his chagrin he could not tell from her expression if she was still indisposed or not. He would have to ask her outright.

She closed her sketchbook, which released him from his own spell of immobility and he sat forward, watching as she stowed her tools carefully in her basket. He was not allowed to see the sketch she was making. Sketches, actually. She had used more than one paper in the days she had been drawing him. And she had posed him differently, as well.

She came forward, stretching her back and arms as if she had done something more strenuous than run a pen over paper. He did not remark upon her movement, though; he was too busy watching the rise of her breasts as she stretched. "Where do I scratch?" she asked, her gaze carefully going no farther afield than his face.

Chapter Nine

He did not answer her question at once, though she knew what he wanted. She had become intimately, if distantly, acquainted with his body over the past five nights. The curved scar on his abdomen, the jagged one on the back of his left thigh. The crescent shape of his dimple when he wanted to coax her to stop for the evening because he was, as she had predicted, wearied to boredom by the need to be still.

The rise and fall of the part of him that indicated he was becoming increasingly frustrated by her indisposition. Catching herself, Helena redirected her gaze to his face.

As if to hide that part of him from her scrutiny — not that she would dare scrutinize it while she stood so close to him — he turned over and presented his back, rotating his right shoulder. "The itch is there, below my shoulder."

She rubbed her fingernails and fingertips along the taut muscles of his back. She rubbed thoroughly and vigorously, but he did not relax under the fury of her ministrations.

"Are you still indisposed?" At last he asked the question she did not want to answer.

Not yet. She did not know him well enough. His body perhaps, but not his heart or his mind. She moved away from him a step and stopped working on his back. "Yes."

Instantly, she wished she had not spoken. The lie came from utter cowardice. Afraid if he turned to look at her he would see her dishonesty, she focused her gaze on his back. To her horror, where her fingernails had raked his back there were fiery red marks.

He did not turn to look at her, though for a moment she thought he meant to, the way his shoulders tensed. "Damn." He butted his head into the pillow and collapsed onto the bed, his face buried under the crook of his carelessly flung arm.

Guilt swamped over her. Was the postponement more than inconvenient? Was it physically painful for him? "I'm sorry," she offered, tentatively touching the skin still inflamed from her handiwork. "Is there anything I can do?"

He turned over to face her. "Yes."

"What?" she asked carefully, afraid to move. Her hand had rested safely in the middle of his back before he turned. Now her fingers were much too close to the dratted object plaguing them both, albeit in very different ways.

He glanced quickly from her hand to her face. There was no movement of the muscles under her palm. He did not so much as draw breath. Neither did she.

Unexpectedly, the tension that vibrated from him shifted, loosened, somehow, and he grinned. As he did so, he lay back. Resting his head loosely on his clasped hands, stretching himself before her like a preening cat. "I expect you've noticed I've had some difficulty being patient."

She nodded, a brief bob of her head, dreading what must surely follow. His skin, under her hand, seemed to be growing fever-warm.

"I have been patient, haven't I?"

Helena managed another brief bob and began withdrawing her hand, slowly.

In one swift motion he captured her hand in one of his. The tension thrummed through him full force once more. "And patience should be rewarded, shouldn't it?" Both his dark eyebrows rose above green eyes that strove for innocence but fell far short.

A saying from her governess popped out of Helena's mouth with more speed than planning. "Patience is its own reward."

He laughed, holding her palm against the flat of his stomach so that she felt the vibration deep inside herself. "Helena, look at me."

She did. The naked want in his expression turned her knees to useless joints, unable to hold her upright. She leaned against the bed for support. He wanted to make love to her. And he saw no need to make even a token attempt to hide his desire. To him the need was no more than his need to eat, to sleep. Natural. Inevitable.

"Not at my face, Helena. Elsewhere."

Would he believe she didn't know what he meant? No. She closed her eyes, turned her head, and opened her eyes slowly, reluctantly.

His fingers tightened on hers as he asked softly, "What do you see?"

How to answer that? He saw it as well as she; he was not blind. She answered cautiously. "I see a certain ... elongation."

"Elongation." He paused, his thumb stroking the inside of her wrist. "I have never heard it called such before. I like it. Elongation. Is that what your lover called it?"

She tried to pull her hand away, but he held fast.

Angrily, she caught his gaze and held it. "I haven't the faintest idea what my lover called his ... elongation. Perhaps he had no need to name it."

"No? He never told you his desire for you made him stiff? Hard? Erect?"

"He did not."

"No. Well, he sorely neglected your education then. Did he by any chance teach you any names for that part of a man that ... elongates?"

"Poker." William hadn't used the term. She'd overheard two of the kitchen maids talking, once, but they'd stopped as soon as they saw her. They'd gone back to their tasks with red-faced giggles, and her anatomy lesson had ended as quickly as it had begun. William had only ever said he wanted her. He needed her. She had not even understood what it was he wanted or needed until it was done.