Louise Allen - Regency Surrender - Passion And Rebellion

He took her arm and started strolling towards the door. ‘I’m so sorry. I wish I hadn’t treated you so badly. It was inexcusable. Did I put you off men for life? Is that why you never married?’

‘What makes you think I had a choice?’ She didn’t want to make it sound as if she’d been wearing the willow for him all these years. She had her pride.

‘Because you are so beautiful,’ he said bluntly. ‘Men must have been queuing up to pay their addresses to you.’

She snorted in derision. ‘Far from it. The only men who have ever shown an interest in me were...’ She’d been about to say tempted by her aunt’s money. But she didn’t want to go into that. ‘Let’s say they were put off by the claws I’ve developed over the years.’ She wasn’t the dewy-eyed débutante she’d been when she’d gone up to London for her Season. She was as far removed from that open, trusting girl as a domestic cat was from a caged lion. She trusted nobody these days, particularly not if they wore breeches. ‘When I see right through their empty compliments, they accuse me of being a harridan.’

‘Perhaps not all their compliments are empty, have you ever considered that? Just because I let you down, that doesn’t mean all men would.’

There were bound to be men out there, somewhere, who could match her. Who wouldn’t be put off by her defensiveness.

He rubbed at his stomach, wondering at the queasy feeling that came from picturing some other man courting her, marrying her and making her happy. Instinctively he made for the open air, where he would be able to breathe more easily.

‘It is nothing to do with you, whether I’ve married or not, you arrogant... Ooh, you make me so angry!’

‘Yes, it is,’ he said, stopping under the great portico and pulling her into his arms. ‘Just a little bit, anyway. Admit it. I ruined you for all other men.’

‘You conceited—’ But he cut her words off with a kiss. A kiss that started out fiery with her rage and quickly turned heated with passion.

‘Nobody else will ever kiss you like that,’ he husked, drawing back just far enough that he could speak. But his lips were still so close to hers she could feel their echo. ‘No other lover will ever make you feel the way I do.’

When she opened her mouth to make a pithy retort he silenced her with another kiss. A kiss that she felt right down to the core of her being. By the time he finished it, she’d forgotten what they’d been arguing about.

‘I think we’ve done enough sightseeing for one day, don’t you? Let’s go back to my studio and work on your portrait.’

‘In broad daylight?’ He wasn’t talking about painting her portrait at all.

‘The light in my studio will be perfect, about now,’ he said, glancing up at the sky, ‘to capture...’ he cupped her face with his hand, caressing her jaw as his words caressed her other senses ‘...all those subtle flesh tones.’

* * *

For the next few days they didn’t bother with the pretence they were going to explore Paris together. Amy went to his studio at first light and let him capture her subtle flesh tones. With his hands, his mouth, and then, later, when she was too sated to bother protesting, she let him arrange her on his couch so he could paint her.

‘What are you thinking?’ He’d stopped working, and was looking at her steadily from round the edge of the canvas he refused to let her so much as catch a glimpse of.

‘Nothing much. Nothing that would interest you, anyway.’

He pursed his lips. ‘Amy, how many times do I have to tell you that every single little thing about you fascinates me?’

When she snorted in derision, he shook his head at her. ‘It is true. Why would you think I’d bother to lie about it? I can still get you into bed any time I want. I only have to look at you like this...’ and he waggled his eyebrows at her suggestively ‘...and you turn wild.’

Only a few days ago she would have been furious at the suggestion he had any influence on her, but she’d got used to his teasing ways now. Besides, he might joke that he only had to give her a heated look for her to go up in flames, but nine times out of ten she’d done something to provoke the heated look in the first place. Such as lick her lips in a certain manner, or merely twine one of her curls round and round her finger meditatively.

He came across to the couch, knelt beside it and dropped a kiss on her exposed shoulder.

‘I will be able to paint a much better portrait if I know your innermost thoughts. I will be able to capture your essence. What makes you uniquely you.’

‘Oh, I see, it is for your art.’

‘If you like.’ He buried his face in her neck to kiss her throat. And breathe her in. And commit her fragrance to memory. The more time he spent with her, the more he regretted letting her go so easily when they’d been young enough to have forged a life together. He couldn’t help thinking that if he’d even had the courage of the mousy Fenella, they would have been together for ten years by now. Not that he wanted to get married again. It was just...if he had married Amy, it wouldn’t have been hell, that was all. From the things she’d said, he could tell that if he’d gone into politics from choice, rather than drifting into it because he’d stopped fighting his father, and if Amy had been his wife, she would have supported his wish to make a difference. She wouldn’t have sneered at every opinion he expressed that didn’t align exactly with her own. He might even have become a halfway-decent politician. Oh, nothing to compare with a Wilberforce, or a Hunt, but a man who would have been able to look at his own reflection in the mirror without despising what he saw.

But these few days she was in Paris would be all he’d ever have of her, now. He had to make them count. He had such a short time to create a lifetime of memories.

‘Well, I was thinking...’

‘Yes?’ He nuzzled the sheet she’d been using to preserve her modesty to one side.

‘About how unfair it is.’

‘What is unfair?’

She speared her fingers into his hair as he sucked one nipple into his mouth.

‘That the same rules don’t apply to men that so restrict women. A single man can take a lover and nobody much cares. But if a woman does so, she runs the risk of becoming a social pariah.’

He looked up at her sharply. ‘Are you afraid that there will be repercussions because of our affair, Amy? We’ve been discreet. I’ve deliberately kept you out of the public eye as much as possible. Well, after the Wilsons’, anyway.’

‘Have you?’ It hadn’t occurred to her that his reluctance to leave the studio for much more than the occasional glass of beer in the nearest café, which was frequented by locals, was anything more than a wish to keep her as near to a convenient bed as possible.

‘Of course I have. I have the devil of a reputation. And the last thing I want is for you to be subject to salacious gossip because you’ve been seen being a bit too...intimate with me.’

‘You seem to forget, I am a nobody. I don’t move in the kind of circles where a little gossip could ruin my reputation.’

‘That’s just where you’re wrong,’ he said fiercely. ‘I mean,’ he amended, reining himself back with what looked like a struggle, ‘just think what it would do if tales about you having a wild affair with the scurrilous Nathan Harcourt got back to Stanton Basset. They would drum you out of the...the sewing circle.’

They could try, she thought. If she’d ever been a member of such an insipid group. But there wasn’t all that much they could do. If anyone did try to make her life in Stanton Basset uncomfortable, she would just move away.

In fact, that might not be a bad idea anyway. Nothing would be the same if Fenella really did marry her middle-aged French Romeo. And it was looking increasingly likely. And she did not have any sentimental attachment to the modest house her aunt had bequeathed her, nor the quiet and rather stuffy little town itself. She could buy a much more commodious property elsewhere. Somewhere by the sea, perhaps.