Page 8 of My Fake Mistress
On a trestle table, set up in the shade, the staff had laid out afternoon tea. Lemonade, cakes, sandwiches. The guests began to dribble towards it as their light laughter caught on the warm summer breeze. Julian threw his shin-guards onto the ground, beside his gloves. Where was Henderson? He was usually impossible to separate from a spread. Fear licked his stomach, one part protective, one part possessive.
‘Yvette,’ he called, forcing his voice steady. ‘Where is your friend?’
Yvette waved a lazy hand. ‘She went inside to find another painting.’
Was it wise to leave the grounds so abruptly to hurtle his way through the house and up the stairs? Probably not. But he felt that as Blythe’s protector—even her pretend one—he had an obligation to keep more than just Carlson from her path.
For not the first time in his life, Julian cursed the wordgentlemanunder his breath. No one would have dared to consider Penelope or Yvette in such a way, but things were different with Blythe. As much as Yvette accepted her as an equal, others did not see her as such.
To a man like Henderson, that made her fair game.
And she was his, dammit.
As far as they knew, anyway.
Julian rushed into the attic, the door banging shut behind him. ‘Blythe? Are you here?’
The only reply was a startled squawk, and a sniff.
She sat in her chair before the easel, by the window, but unlike the day before when her face had been full of life, today her expression was pained, her eyes misty with tears. He crossed the room in quick strides and grabbed her by the shoulders. ‘Why are you upset. Did someone hurt you? Did Henderson—’
‘I have no idea who you are talking about.’ She firmly pushed his hands from her shoulders. Julian stayed static, still reaching. He straightened his whites and loosened his collar button as embarrassment mixed with relief.
‘Henderson is a rogue,’ he explained. ‘Worse than Carlson. He expressed an… an interest in you. I wanted to ensure he hadn’t found you. When I saw you crying, I thought…’
All the sadness left her face, and her eyes brightened. ‘That’s very kind of you. No one has watched out for me for a very long time.’ She gestured to the painting on the easel. ‘It’s this. It’s so damaged. I don’t know how to start.’
‘What about your sponges, and your magic potion?’ His breath stilled in his chest as his heartbeat returned to normal. Well, not normal. But into a slightly different rhythm, the one he now associated with having her close.
‘This one is different. Cleaning won’t help. I need to remove the lacquer and then repaint some sections.’
Julian moved to stand behind her, curious about the painting, and its condition. Like the landscape, it had a grey pall over it, but also mixed with a slightly sickly-looking yellow tint. Some of the paint had cracked, distorting but not quite fracturing the image of a beautiful woman, naked, in repose, while her lover stood before her. Even though he’d never seen the work before, he recognised the couple instantly. Venus and Mars, the eternal clandestine couple, enthralled by each other’s bodies, before their discovery and entrapment in Vulcan’s net. It had probably been collected by one of his forebears and sent up here by his parents as part of their obsession with morality.
‘If you don’t know how to restore it, you don’t have to,’ he said.
‘It will die if I don’t,’ she whispered. ‘It’s not that I don’t know how, I do. But it takes more than just potions to restore a painting like this. You have to understand it. To feel it. To know the intentions of the artist, otherwise you are likely to distort their vision and replace it with your own. But when I look at this, there’s so much that I don’t understand.’
She looked so bereft, staring into the flaking slivers of the painting, as if trying to dredge inspiration from an empty well, and from a deep, slightly dark place inside, Julian felt that wildness, long pent up and dormant, begin to rouse. Innocence and confusion swirled in her crystal green eyes.
Beginning at the small indentation at the base of her skull, Julian made one slow, trailing stroke along her nape until he buried his finger in the bunch of her lace collar, then circled the small swell of her vertebrae. The sun lit small wispy hairs, their frail erections catching light as bumps coursed over her, down her neck, and along her exposed forearms.
‘You don’t understand what she’s feeling?’ he asked, his finger inching up, then back along its journey again.
‘I do. I mean, I have. I know whatdown therecan feel like. But her expression. The way she looks at him. And he at her. I don’t know what that’s like.’
'It’s different when someone helps you find pleasure. And when you give it in return. It’s more than just sensation and feeling. There’s a reason men hunger for paintings of Venus or Danae. It’s not to see a woman conquered. It’s to see her ascendant. The satisfaction of sharing that moment is transcendent.’
He splayed his hand, curving around her delicate neck. Catching her chin between his thumb and forefinger, he tilted her face up. ‘Would you like me to show you what it’s like? Would you like me to help you understand?’
Her gaze held his, her eyes a forest of uncertainty and want. From his position, he could take in the lovely, long line of her, and her tongue that flicked between her teeth, making her lips glossy, and the slight gap in her bodice that revealed a hint of her breasts restrained beneath her corset and her chemise.
‘Oh yes,’ she said, her eyes still locked on his. ‘I would like that very much.’
‘Would you like to move away from the window?’
Her eyes flicked to the painting, then outside to where a few house guests dotted the lawn, likely engaged in their own dalliances and diversions. ‘I would like to stay here.’
‘But we might be seen,’ he said, even as a delicious shiver rattled through him. Already half hard, he rubbed himself between her shoulder blades, savouring the heavenly connection. He released his hold on her chin to slip his hand down her bodice, and she held her pose, her stare unflinching.
