“That provides a more visual illustration in my mind than I care for,” Ian said.
“The rondels in this room are extraordinary,” Beaumont went on enthusiastically. “You must take a look. Come now.”
Obediently, they tilted back their heads.
“No! No! Come down here and look up.”
“I will do no such thing, Papa,” Hero said primly, moving instead to the room’s pianoforte. “However, I will play for you until Boyle announces dinner.”
The duke scowled in disappointment, only to turn his expectant gaze to Ian, who merely shrugged and slipped out of his jacket. His new valet, Dickson, might not appreciate the rough treatment of his evening clothes, but what did it matter? It hurt no one at all to give in to the duke’s request. Dropping gracefully, he joined Beaumont on the floor.
“Ian,” the duke whispered at his side. “Isn’t that correct?”
“Aye, Harry, that’s right.”
Beaumont’s face folded into a broad smile. “I like you very much.”
“I like you as well, your grace.”
Ian tucked his arms behind his head and stared up at the ceiling. Hero began to play a complicated piece that he recognized as Mendelssohn’sOpus 30. Turning his head, he watched her face as she played. She played with passion, her eyes closed as if she felt every note in her heart. He wanted to see her face looking that same way every day, but he wanted to be the one to rouse the passion in her. He wanted to take her to heights he suspected she had never achieved.
“Spectacular, is it not?” Beaumont asked, recalling Ian’s attention to the ceiling.
Itwasa spectacular thing, as all of the friezes in the castle were. Here in the Blue Drawing Room, a trio of matching designs marched the length of the room. Circles within squares punctuated with delicate carvings of urns and vines, the corners of the square anchored with larger friezes of griffins. The white outlines of the connecting circles looked like a string of pearls against the pale blue ceiling. He appreciated the crisp clean lines of this particular room and, as did Harry, took pleasure in the rondels—circular frescos of about two feet in diameter that marked the center of every section. Each of them portrayed three of the nine muses at play in the forest. In the center, Euterpe, the muse of music, played a small harp and Terpsichore danced sensuously while Erato, the muse of love poetry, lounged against a tree with pen in hand. It was a surprisingly erotic piece even for a private drawing room.
Worth sharing.
He lay there contemplating the piece until Hero finished the opus with one softly played note. “Won’t you come take a look, my lady? I doubt you’ll be disappointed.”
“I can see it just as well from here.”
Hero met Ian’s steady gaze across the room, seeing the challenge in his eyes, as if he dared her to do something she would never have dreamed. There was more than that though. There was a dark light in his eyes that told her the dare extended to so much more than merely lying on the floor. Her impulse to comply…in all aspects astounded her.
“Please?” The husky plea sent butterflies through her stomach and Hero knew that she had little hope of denying him anything.
“Oh, very well.” She crossed the room and lowered herself down a few feet away from Ian, taming her hoop skirts into lying flat against the floor until finally she was settled in a pool of green and ivory silk. It was ridiculous, she thought, to be in such a position. “Thank goodness Papa hasn’t yet discovered the armory. I should hate to think what positions I might be forced into there.”
Ian chuckled at her grumbling and reached out to envelop her hand in his own. The warmth of his rough fingers against hers set her heart racing. The radiant heat of his body next to her drew to mind the shocking image of them side by side in bed and she surprised herself further by wondering what it would be like to feel that presence next to her every night.
“Well?”
Ian’s question prompted Hero to give her concentration to the plasterwork above. She did have to admit that the symmetry of the frieze from that angle truly did display the delicate plasterwork to its best advantage without being skewed by perspective.
“They are lovely,” she conceded. In truth, over the years that she’d lived at Cuilean, she’d never given the ceilings themselves a great deal of consideration, taking them as a part of the whole but never dissecting them into an individual element. That was Adam’s legacy. The whole of the space was so unified; there wasn’t just one factor that stood out.
Ian was that same way. She turned her head to look at him. She took him as a whole, every quality packaged together to create an extraordinary, alluring man. What were the parts of him, though? What was it about him that was so irresistible? Granted, he was an astonishingly handsome man. Rugged, dark. That was appealing, but she thought his humor even more engaging. She liked the dry wit that went along with those laugh lines. And he was caring, but modest. Each part added to the appeal of the whole until the whole was undeniably attractive.
Just like the rooms at Cuilean, and she told him so. Though she left out how she inwardly related the idea to him.
“That it is part of the whole is a fine point I hadn’t considered.” Ian nodded. “But look at the rondels. I would wager you never have before. What do you think of the muses?”
His eyes gleamed with something Hero couldn’t identify, but it wasn’t humor. Looking up at the painting, the near nudity of the muses, their postures, she saw for the first time their true nature. Romantic and sensual without being salacious. She must seem naïve not to have recognized the allusion in them before. “They’re very…er,spirited.”
A knowing grin lifted the corner of Ian’s mouth. “I was thinking that very thing.”
“I’m sure you were.” She rolled her eyes and inwardly grimaced when his smile widened. Surely, Ian was used to women with a bit more worldly polish than she’d displayed that day, and she wished that she were capable of executing the same sort of subtle innuendo.
“Theyarequite spirited,” Beaumont agreed from Ian’s other side. “Excellent choice of words, my girl. They seem a most merry trio. I wonder who the artist is.”
