For a moment, he simply stared through the window, allowing himself the pleasure of the sight of her. She had changed out of her footman’s clothes into a plain walking dress. The fabric was an appalling color, something in the yellow family that undermined her complexion, and splattered with paint. Her hair was pulled back in a loose coil at the nape of her neck, the random tendrils that had escaped ruthlessly held down by pins. He had never seen a more unruly hairstyle and if called upon to give it a name would have to settle for the Muddle.
And yet she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
The viscount was so enthralled by the sight of her, it took him a full minute to realize the subject of the painting was he.
He
was the subject of the painting.
It was still early in the evolution of the work. It was only a jumble of brushstrokes, a series of rough ideas that implied a well-thought-out concept, but it was impossible not to see his face in the high brow and broad cheekbones. If nothing else, he recognized the look in his eyes, that faintly amused way he examined the world.
Addleson wasn’t a vain man and he certainly wasn’t given to self-delusion. He had seen the images Agatha had drawn of Townshend in Newgate—terrifying, haunting, precise—and knew her depictions were not love letters to her subjects. But he couldn’t look at the face she had painted, with its jawbone far more chiseled than anything nature had given him, and not feel it was influenced by sentiment. It was impossible for him to look at it and not think she loved him.
His heart beating wildly, he tapped on the pane and saw the surprise, delight and confusion that swept over her face as she crossed the small space to the window.
“My lord,” she said, drawing the window up, “I was awaiting a note informing me that all had gone well, not a personal delivery of the information.” She stepped back to let him climb over the sash. “All did go well, did it not? You’re not here to tell me Townshend evaded exile and is meeting with Mrs. Biddle right now to publish a drawing exposing me as the author of so many caricatures?”
Up close, Addleson could see the paint splatters were not limited to her dress, for she had a brown streak across her cheek and a hint of red along her forehead. Without thinking, without answering, he leaned forward—he was already so close—and pressed his lips against the brown smudge because he could not resist. He had never seen anything more charming than Lady Agatha Bolingbroke with paint on her face and the light of curiosity in her eyes. He had only meant to kiss her lightly, a mere brush before drawing back and declaring himself, but once he felt the warmth of her skin, drawing back became impossible. The tug of desire was inexorable, and as he moved his lips to the red smear above her brow, he placed his hands on her shoulders and pulled her gently toward him. Delighting in the feel of her body against his, he moved his lips down to capture her own.
The kiss was a gentle thing, dewy and sweet, and he felt her body tense briefly with surprise before softening against his. At first, she was uncertain. Her lips were timid and cautious but after a moment, after he moved his hands from her shoulders to her back, after his arms tightened around her, the hesitance gave way to boldness and she pressed herself firmly against him, her own arms sliding up his chest. He heard her sigh, then moan, as he increased the pressure and, feeling her yield, he explored the heat of her mouth with his tongue, reveling in her daring as she responded in kind.
His need rose to an unbearable degree but despite the three tankards of Truman, he held himself in check, luxuriating in the kiss but taking it no further. The feel of her mouth, her lips, her passion was dizzying and somehow enough, and he thought he might stay exactly where he was forever, not moving, not pulling away, even when her maid came to announce bedtime.
Then he felt the stroke of her hand against his skin, her fingers making insistent patterns under his shirt, and all sense of control fled so swiftly, so completely, so irrevocably, it might never have existed at all. His lips followed her lead, tracing a path of searing kisses along her jaw and her neck and her collarbone until they reached the barrier of her dress, which he removed by gently pushing it aside. Her breasts—oh, her milky white breasts—were lush and full and pert and perfect and he stared at her reverentially for a moment before taking the rosy bud of her nipple into his mouth. The hitch of her breath, the dig of her nails into his back, the tilt of her head backward further fed his frenzy and he slid his hand downward, eager to discover more and confident of what he would find.
It was only when he skimmed his fingers over the mound of her womanhood, when he felt her tremble, when he imagined her lying entirely naked on the table with her sketchbooks and pencils, that reason returned. It was a mere sliver, just the thinnest shard of good sense, but it was enough for him to breathe the words
marry me.
When she didn’t respond, when she dragged his head up for another urgent kiss, he said it again, “Marry me.”
On a whisper of air, more breath than word, she said, “No.”
As if doused with cold water, Addleson released her and stepped back. He wasn’t a vain man, no, but neither was he unaware of his appeal and he had too much experience not to have understood her passion correctly. “No?” he asked, his tone more confused than offended.
“No,” she repeated firmly, the haze of passion slowly replaced by a burst of mortification. Her face lost all color as she tugged at her dress, pulling it up until it covered not only her breasts but half of her neck as well. Then she took another step back. “Though I do perceive the compliment you’ve paid me and am grateful for the offer.”
With his ability to think degraded by desire and drink, it took Addleson a moment to realize he had completely bungled the proposal. Curse it! It wasn’t supposed to be like this—a frenzied offer in a shabby basement room. He had planned the scene for the Bolingbrokes’ drawing room: heartfelt declaration, respectable proposal, restrained passion. Given how poorly he had handled the matter yesterday, kissing her sweetly, then bidding her good-bye coldly, he could easily imagine the confusion and suspicion his savagely ardent behavior had created. He could not blame her for distrusting his motives or his sincerity.
“I love you,” he said simply. “I love you wholly and completely and with a ferocity I had not thought possible. I loved you yesterday when I kissed you in this room, perhaps in this very spot, but it seemed wrong to declare myself while the situation with Townshend remained unresolved. But it is resolved now and I love you still. Indeed, I love you more. Please marry me.”
Agatha’s expression did not change, although she grasped her hands together so tightly her knuckles turned as white as her cheeks. “I cannot.”
If she had given any other discouraging answer, if she had just said no or apologized for not returning his regard, he might have taken a pet, bowed stiffly and clambered over the windowsill, all wounded ego and hurt pride. But she hadn’t. She had said
I cannot,
as if the matter were somehow beyond her control.
“You cannot?” he asked quietly.
She tightened the grip on her fingers. “Must not.”
Addleson found this abrupt response even more baffling than the one it sought to clarify. “I know you are very proud of your reputation as Lady Agony and under any other circumstance I would respect a woman’s desire to remain quiet, but I must insist you offer a more thorough explanation of why you
must not
marry a man who loves you quite dreadfully. Does something compel you to refuse?”
Standing before him silently, her face bereft of all color, she seemed almost to be a ghost, and he stared into her dark, fathomless eyes, fearful she might disappear before giving him an answer.
“My conscience compels me,” she said, her voice as stiff as her shoulders. “Recent events, including those of this afternoon, have convinced me to pursue my painting in earnest. I will no longer hide my skill or proclivity or try to pretend either is of questionable value to me. To that end, I have decided to apply to the Royal Academy of Arts, which, as I’m sure you know, doesn’t accept women as students. I shall make a great cake of myself, and I don’t care. But I will not make a cake of you by association. I know what it is like to be perpetually embarrassed by one’s family and it has a wearying effect on the soul. As the former Mr. Holyroodhouse, I also know how easy it is to ridicule anything that is different or unusual, how to turn someone’s strength against them. I will not expose you to that, and I will not give up my commitment to my art. Therefore, we must not marry. I’m sorry for hurting you, but I’m sure, given your temperament, you will be able to recover from this disappointment quickly.”
Addleson decided not to be insulted. It required some effort, for it hurt to hear with what little constancy the woman to whom he had just declared everlasting devotion credited him. She was the human being with whom he wanted to spend the rest of his life, not a waistcoat with an stubborn claret stain. Rather than take offense, he strove to understand her reasoning and to respect her choice to behave honorably. Her reservations, he knew, sprung from a lifelong struggle to get her parents to accept her for who she was, and having undergone a similar battle in his youth, he could not blame her for fearing a husband would do the same.
Addressing her concern with the seriousness with which it had been expressed, he said, “Your honesty means a great deal to me, and I give you honesty in return when I tell you I would be honored to assist you in your endeavor to attend the Royal Academy of Arts. I would suffer no embarrassment.”
“You believe that now, but your opinion will change once the novelty wears off,” she said with conviction. “Then you will grow to resent it.”
The idea that he would grow to resent her or her art or anything she chose to do was so preposterous, Addleson had to stop himself from smiling. He did not want her to think he was treating her deeply rooted fears with triviality. “I wouldn’t, no, not even if I lived to be one hundred and twenty years old. I am in awe of your talent and would do nothing to squander it. You must trust me on this, my dear, for I love you far too much to make you unhappy,” he explained, noting that the rigidity of her body gave her beauty an unexpected fragility, as if she were a porcelain vase that would crack under the slightest pressure.
“Then I would do it to myself out of concern for you,” she said, her tone curiously calm despite the agitation of her hands, which she clenched with frightening vigor. “I would sacrifice myself to spare your dignity and would end up resenting you.”
How coolly she made it, Addleson thought, her declaration of love that didn’t use the word but embodied the act. The fear that his cause was futile melted like snow in the warm sun. “Do you love me?”
Her eyes, obsidian orbs seething against the pale skin of her face, seared into him and he thought her hard-won control would snap. But she held fast, answering his question with the same calm reserve with which she had conducted the entire conversation. “I do love you, yes, an extraordinary amount, but that is not the point.”
Addleson felt the chaos in his heart finally settle into peace. “You have the right to your own opinion, but I most respectfully and most fervently disagree,” he said before striding to the door and opening it. He stuck his head into the hallway and called to a footman who had just exited the scullery. The servant was so shocked to see a man in Lady Agatha’s studio, he stared in confusion, then looked behind him to make sure the viscount was not addressing someone else. “Yes, you, my dear fellow. Please be so good as to inform Lord Bolingbroke his presence is required in Lady Agatha’s studio. Thank you.”
He closed the door and turned to confront Agatha’s horrified gaze.
“What have you done?” she shrieked, clearly agitated by the prospect of discovery. A clever woman—although even the dullest schoolgirl would immediately grasp the implications—she knew exactly what it would mean for both of them, and she frantically tried to push, then drag, him to the window to remove the evidence before it was too late.
Amused by her energetic and ultimately ineffective attempts to eject him from her studio, he sat down at her table, found a fresh sheet of paper and picked up a quill. “I am a perverse creature and want my humiliation ensured in writing,” he explained as he started to prepare a binding contract for the two of them to sign.
Agatha grabbed the sheet from the table, causing him to make a large black mark down its center, and tore it into a dozen pieces, despite the fact that it had only two words written on it. “Are you insane?”
Calmly, he pulled another white sheet from her sketch pad and began the document again. “At the risk of giving offense, I think I am the only sane person in the room.”
Growling with frustration, she tried to seize the fresh piece of paper, but Addleson was prepared for a renewed attack and held on with both hands. They were still wrangling over it a few minutes later when the door opened and her father walked in.
“Beddows must have gotten into the cooking sherry again because he said there’s a strange man in your—” Lord Bolingbroke broke off abruptly when he spotted the viscount in a tussle with his daughter. For a moment, he was so confused by the sight of their struggle, he didn’t say anything at all. Then the intimacy of the scene struck him, for surely he couldn’t help noticing Addleson’s untucked shirt and Agatha’s general disarray, and he yelled, “What in thunder is going on?”