“And he walked throughthatdoor.”
“Oh?” Olivia replied, blithe nonchalance breezing through the syllable, even as her gut churned in panic. The hallway beyondthatdoor led to . . . The fine hairs on the back of her neck prickled to a stand. “Mariana, I never saw to Lady Bede’s goat milk.” She landed a distracted peck on her sister’s cheek. “Lovely of you to come tonight.”
As the door closed behind her, she heard, “But, Olivia, the kitchens are the other way.” She didn’t need to see her sister’s face to envision the familiar sarcastic quirk of her lips.
It mattered not. Not now. Now that Lord St. Alban had entered this corridor.
Perhaps he’d left the soirée. Or had become lost. Perhaps.
Except both were impossibilities in this particular corridor, which had only two doors.
One led to a storage closet.
The other to her studio.
Chapter 12
How long had she been standing here, peering at Lord St. Alban through the narrow crack between the door and the wall? Thirty seconds? Thirty minutes?
The amount of time hardly made a difference. A single second was too long for him to have been in her studio. Surrounded by drawings of himself.
Drat it all, what had she been thinking during last night’s bout of insomnia? She hadn’t. What had once been a deliberate means of healing had become instinct. Something interested her, she must draw.
But it didn’t feel therapeutic, standing here, breath held, fingers curled into tight fists, sweat trickling down her spine, watching him through a gap in the door like she was the interloper. The impulse to push the door open and confront him grew weaker the longer he stood inside her studio, judging her work, violating her privacy.
How many sketches littered the walls? She had no idea of the precise number, but dozens. Some drawn from a mid-distance perspective, others more intimate, focused on individual features in a manner bordering on the . . .deviant.
Yes, that was the correct word.Obsessivewas another correct word.
She clenched her eyes shut in mortification as he strolled over to yet another image of himself and swallowed another dram of whiskey. A few swigs of whiskey sounded like a brilliant idea right now.
What was the expression on his face? All she was able to see was his unreadable profile. Was he bewildered? Amused? Or would his face reflect what she felt for herself? Embarrassment.
He took another gulp of whiskey and set the tumbler down. Before she could draw breath, he shrugged his shoulders, shed his overcoat, and draped it over the back of a chair. In the next blink, his vest was off his body. She moved not a muscle as she drank in the muscled length of his torso visible through the fine lawn of his shirt. She’d never seen him without overcoat and vest. What she’d only suspected was now confirmed.
In short, he was well-built. In expanded form, there was no denying the width of his shoulders or the trimness of his waist or the tautness of his backside through the superfine of his pants.
She nearly jumped through her skin when he began examining one of the smaller sketches, facing her. But his expression, neutral and emotionless, gave no sign of awareness that he was being watched. In fact, his fingers loosened the folds of his cravat before flicking open the top two buttons of his shirt. The whiskey found its way to his hand again as if it was a natural extension of him.
Lord St. Alban had made himself thoroughly comfortable. In her studio. Another layer of sweat broke out across her body. And she’d thought she’d drawn him into submission, purged her system of him.
Seeing him now at ease in her private space, she understood that the feeling she’d experienced at dawn hadn’t been completion, only complete exhaustion. There was no completion where Lord St. Alban was concerned. Not even close.
He ambled out of sight, and she pressed forward into the door, straining to keep her eye on him. Dressed down to his unbuttoned starched shirt and black breeches with that tumbler of whiskey carelessly in hand, he looked every inch the female fantasy of manly dishabille. So long had she spent drawing him in black and white, she’d almost forgotten that he was a flesh-and-blood man. Almost.
She inhaled deeply and caught a trace of cloves. His scent.
This limbo couldn’t go on any longer. She must face him tonight, now, if she was to have a measure of peace. If she was to face him again. If she was to face herself again.
On a bracing exhale, she pushed the door open on silent hinges and slipped into the studio, her heartbeat a ragged roar in her ears. His back to her, he remained unaware of her presence. She found the nearest wall and slumped bonelessly against it, her body a quivering bundle of anxiety and anticipation.
She wanted this man.
It was no accident that the hazy idea of taking a lover had begun to coalesce around the time she’d first set eyes on him. Her only hope lay in the unreliable notion that it would be uncomplicated.
It could be true. He didn’t have to be as complicated as she made him out to be. She could be the one complicating the air between them.
His back muscles tensed, suggesting he felt her presence in the room. He swiveled around, his gaze meeting hers, unwavering. An energy pulsed between them, sinuous and dark. An energy that would no longer be repressed. Victorious, it flared to the surface and dared them to ignore it.
