Page 47 of His Duchess of Scandal
Hermia shook her head. “I am not a parent, no, but I know that Phoebe walks away from me smiling and happy. She walks away from you in tears. I do believe that says enough, no? You are the Duke, yes, but I am your Duchess, and I can still treat her with enough patience.”
“Patience,” he snapped. “What does anybody know of patience? I have just had this contract drawn up, and now I must haveit rewritten and resent. She has just set me back at least two weeks.”
“Sheis your daughter, and it is about time you put aside your work to focus onher needs.” Hermia sucked in a ragged breath.
Charles could not help but notice how pink her cheeks were, how she panted for breath, and how close she stood.
“All she wanted to do was give you a clover she found. She ran all the way back from the woods.”
Something inside him broke upon hearing that.
It felt like that was all he was doing: breaking over these moments of clarity. He felt blinded and helpless all at once.
“You must apologize,” Hermia insisted.
“I do not follow orders.”
“Perhaps you should follow the ones coming from your wife.”
He looked up from the clover on his desk, the stem bent by an eager hand, to find Hermia’s eyes narrowed into slits.
His mind flashed to that night at Anton Bentley’s. Her breathy noises spilling into the pillow, his orders, her pleas.
“More…”
“Do not stop…”
He swallowed, pushing down the memories. He was already having enough flashbacks of that night, what with seeing Hermia so often. Knowing that a mere wall separated them at night was torture.
“And what other orders do you intend to give me?” He stepped closer to her, cocking his head. “Try to order me around, Duchess, and you will find that I do not take kindly to it.”
He had said a similar thing to her the night he had imprinted the shape of their bodies into the bed. Her eyelashes had fluttered with desire back then, and he watched as they did the same now.
Damn it, he had to stop this. He had to pull back before he let things get too far.
It took everything within him to step back, to leave her there, nearly panting.
With one last look, he motioned for her to leave, but he did not stay to make sure she obeyed.
However, after her footsteps retreated in the opposite direction, he went back into his study and grabbed the clover. He took it upstairs—not to his chamber, but to his studio, a room thatwas locked to everyone but him, Mrs. Nightgale, and two trusted footmen who moved the paintings he told them to.
Slipping into his studio, he released the breath that had been stuck in his chest for days, painful and maddening.
For days now, he had watched Hermia. The way she tucked her hair behind her ear whenever she leaned towards a flower to smell it, the way the light caught her blue eyes, turning them burnished. The small smile on her face when she thought nobody was watching her dance her fingers through pools of sunlight.
And then there was the flutter of her eyelashes at his orders. The heave of her chest. The sound of her pacing her room at night as if debating whether to knock on his door.
Charles both hoped she would and would not, for he could not give in to the temptation to take her as he once had, but he wished he could. He wished he had the excuse of losing control to have her just once more.
Words were not enough to describe the burning ache that had burrowed into him ever since he had seen her again, invited her into his house, smelled her perfume after she bathed and emerged from her room, ready for the day.
The only way he could let it all out was by painting—what he had always done whenever something plagued him.
Unbuttoning his waistcoat, he shed the layer of himself, of being a duke and a father, and became Christian Dawson, the painter that the ton raved about. He was both artist and curator, a game of two dice that he held every hand in.
A game he had not lost until he had his most coveted painting unveiled.
Usually, he painted realistic landscapes: open seas, vast skies filled with sunlight that filtered in wide rays. He painted meadows that rolled lushly, and rainfall that made rooftops glisten.
