Part of me wanted this to be true; I’d waited more than a year for him to find time to show me this country. But it wouldn’t happen. Something would steal my joy.
“Cilia, we need to begin again.”
I lowered my hand onto his, not to pry it away, but to covet his heat. “Your sister said something about what a lady does in society. I don’t think you watching me on a beach will be acceptable to her.”
“Then we’ll go it alone. When we’re together, nothing else matters, Cecilia.” He spread the lace of my collar and kissed the beating vein that trembled upon my neck.
Then he looked over my shoulder toward my canvas. “You painted me in a toga with two large . . . jaguars heading toward me. Good, the likeness is mine but I’m taller, my limbs—”
He put his hands to my thighs, thick and fully filling his palms. “Sizeable,” he said with a laugh.
My breathing hitched as I shot to the table and stirred my spoon in the marmalade like it was a paintbrush. “I create things that I imagine or how I wish to see them. See the nice ankles beneath your tunic. I’ve made you manly.”
Felton glanced at the floor, his flapping feet. He had scarring on his legs and a little on his arms, from smallpox. He seemed embarrassed by the marks.
“Cilia, you’ve never needed me to pose. You can do the portraiture without me.”
With a slight nod, I offered my truth. “It’s the only time that’s ours. You step in here and you’re under my command.”
“You want to order me about? You can. I’ll do just about anything so I won’t be sent away.”
He touched points on my shoulders that were tense and ready to explode. Why did he know my body and not my soul?
I had to break this draw and decided to talk of the duke. “Tramel will see the humor of the Roman soldier.”
Felton’s lips curled down. “Don’t show him this, and refrain from saying his name with such enthusiasm. Sometimes I wonder if you prefer his company to mine.”
“You kiss better.”
Something broke in his eyes, like a mirror shattering.
I grabbed his shirt. “It’s a joke.”
Tapping a fist to his wide chest, his smooth lips, he released a shallow breath. “Gladstone, my cousin, said he caught you two . . . steeped in conversation the other week, before I returned.”
“Talking to the duke is easy. No one is more passionate about the French masters like the Le Nain brothers or Le Brun, and unlike the Gladstones, there are no jokes of massas and plantations added to the discussion.”
“What? I didn’t know. I’ll speak to my cousin.”
“No need. Tramel solved the problem. He has worked to get the rest of your family to respect his son’s Blackamoor wife.”
“Cecilia, I’m going to be around now for good. I will talk to Gladstone.”
“And Jane? And your aunt, your staff?” I looked up to the ceiling. “You’ll be all talked out when you get to me.”
Ohh. I covered my face in my palms. I hadn’t meant to confess all this. “I was supposed to sound reasoned, not hurt by everything surrounding me.”
Felton put his hand again on my arm. Still such fire in his touch. “I’m sorry.”
“Are you? You keep leaving and I must depend on my father-in-law to right things and not his allegedly liberal son.”
“What is that to mean?”
“You’re caught, Felton. Stuck between what’s expected in your society and doing the opposite to anger Tramel; and now you tell me you’re a spy.”
A new frown overtook his face. The hurt in his blue-black eyes melted a smidgeon of the hardened glaze I’d enwrapped about my fragile heart.
“Felton, you must see this is fruitless. This union is fruitless. Pray, while we are still friendly, let us end to this marriage. Jane says a church divorce or an annulment is possible.”
