He turned onto his stomach and threw his arm over her. She turned her head to him. Their noses almost touched.
“You made me seduce you again,” she said. “It doesn’t seem fair. You are supposed to seduce me.”
“I don’t break my promises, unless forced to, like today.”
“But you are supposed to be the bad one, not me. You are the one with the reputation.”
“Not as a rake. Not as a scoundrel.”
“No. As irresistible. I suppose I have proven that true once again.”
“Do not blame me if you know that you should not have what you want, and you decide to take what you want anyway.”
She turned her head, to look at the windows again. “It is pleasant lying like this. I suppose we cannot much longer.”
He was too comfortable to move. “Dinner is not for several hours.”
He began falling asleep, and dwelled on the cusp when she spoke again. “I am afraid a little about tomorrow night. I become more fretful with each passing hour. Even with that gown, I may not be suitable for such a fashionable assembly.”
She worried thatshe would not do. That reminded him of Whitmere’s assessment that indeed she would do.
“When you gaze in a looking glass, I do not know what you see, Eva. Not what I have seen since I almost knocked you down with my horse that day, that is obvious.”
“What did you see that day, besides an angry spinster standing in a puddle?”
“I saw a woman who knew herself, and who had the self-possession to scold a stranger. A lovely woman with changeable eyes. A brave lady, who did not lie to herself about the unladylike notions entering her head during that argument.”
“You were not supposed to notice the last part. I thought I was very good at hiding it.”
“Were my own thoughts not following the same path, you might have succeeded. But when two people share a sexual attraction that powerful that quickly, it is impossible to hide.”
She pressed her lips to his. “Also impossible to deny, it appears. It is very unfair that I must.”
In his mind, he began piecing together reassurance that he would not expect her to lapse again, but delicious rest seduced him into silence. That and the fact that he would be lying.
***
The even northern light, gray now and deepening fast, showed Gareth’s profile with heightened clarity. Subtle shadows formed, barely visible, that required the lightest touch with her chalk to imitate.
She sat in the chair she had moved to the side of the bed, down near its foot so she could challenge herself with a deeper perspective. Gareth lay on his stomach, his body uncovered, the arm that had embraced her still extended over the space where she had lain. Her sketchbook page showed his outline, and now she tried to make the figure real.
She studied his face long and hard, and with each moment she became less the artist and more the woman. She saw that face above her in her frenzy of pleasure, severe and sensual, not calm and almost soft like now. She saw it kind, with intimate humor in his eyes when he teased her.
She looked down and realized she had made no marks on the paper for some time. The light would fade soon, and she must wake him to leave. She finished the head, but not in detail. She drew efficiently so she had enough to call forth a memory of how beautiful he looked right now. Then she moved to his shoulders,trying hard to capture the complexity of anatomy there through highlights and shadows.
She had finished his shoulders and much of his back when the light became useless. She set her sketchbook and chalk on the table with the still life, and went to the bed. She touched his shoulder.
“You must go now. Dinner is in less than an hour.”
He sat up, wiped his eyes, and reached for his garments. Ten minutes later he appeared the same as when he had entered this chamber. Elegant. Confident. Devastating.
He would look the same tomorrow night, only better. She would enter that ball on his arm. His gift to her was a night to remember forever, and one that few women ever knew.
Only the memory that would never die was that of this moment, while she watched him fix his cuffs in the chamber’s shadows. She would never forget the emotion having its way with her.
Desire, he called it. Tempestuous and compelling, but still mere desire. Transitory. Not love the way the poets described. That was an illusion, invented to pretty up base lust.
Perhaps so. She lacked the experience to argue, or to contain and control it.
