Page 7 of Obsession: The Unspoken Sin
Denbigh’s eyes bulged. “This…is what you are doing here?” His voice came out thick and guttural. A product of his desire at the realization that in Alice’s head, she’d conjured up and crafted this carnal masterpiece.
Denbigh had to take in a slow breath.
“How do you know of such—?” He stopped himself.
It’d be prudish of him to complete the thought, and also hypocritical. After all, he’d had lovers. He’d kept mistresses. It seemed that Alice, to create such a real rendering of carnality, had as well. Her work said as much. The jaded guardedness in her eyes only lent further confirmation.
Alice arched an impertinent blonde eyebrow. “Were you going to ask how I know about such things?”
Denbigh wanted to toss his head back and hurl and rage and snap and hiss. For surely there’d been many lovers. Even one was too many.
He’d always known what she was thinking, or he thought he had. Unfortunately, she’d always known the thoughts in his head too. It proved inconvenient at this moment, especially when he remained wholly at sea, confused and disoriented around her, when she was a rock of steadiness.
“Forgive me,” he said stiffly, “if it is not my place to put that question to you.”
“No, it isn’t, Laurence.”
She needn’t explain and didn’t have to. He deserved neither an answer or an explanation. Either way, it was abundantly clear. In the same way men sowed their oats and explored freedom, Alice proved no different.
The one difference being that she was a lady and always had been unlike any other woman he’d known. The fact remained true now and also accounted for why one such as Alice should be in this place. She was a bohemian. Now it made sense. He didn’t hate it any less. If anything, he despised it down to every last fiber of his resentful being.
Everything within him urged him to try again, to make her see reason. He opened his mouth to do just that when his gaze caught on a painting farther down the hall. The appeal died on his lips.
Pulled by the delicate golden figure centered in a portrait at the opposite end of the hall, Denbigh found himself moving toward her. It was a painting, and yet Alice’s works had always possessed a feeling of humanity and vivid realness. They weren’t just things like the watercolors and floral paintings all the other ladies in London did. He stopped before her.
The woman in the red rendering possessed pale, shimmering, silvery-white blonde hair that hung about her naked frame. She stood poised in the Garden of Eden with her body half turned towards the artist and partly concealed with her knee brought up at a slight angle. She shieldedenough of herself to hint at modesty, but the beginnings of sexual awareness. She was a mix of shy, tender, innocent with experienced Aphrodite, Goddess of Love.
He stepped closer and closer until his nose nearly kissed the canvas. There was a familiarity to this goddess, a girl dancing on the cusp of mature woman and vital innocence.
“She was my first one.” Alice’s murmuring brought him reeling to the present.
Dumbfounded, he was still lost in the artwork and confused by Alice’s words.
“Here,” she clarified. “It was the first piece I painted at the Devil’s Den.”
He looked over in consternation.
At some point, Alice had drawn next to him, where he’d examined her work with reverent eyes. She stared with critical ones at the masterpiece.
“The problem is I didn’t commit,” she explained with regret.
Alice gestured at the creation, pointing out its flaws,orrather what she perceived to be imperfections.
“See here,” she pointed. “I have her gaze downward, but the look in her eyes seductive. She does not know whether she wishes to be a temptress or a tenderhearted innocent. There was a lack of commitment on my part, and it shows completely.”
Forgetting the real discussion, he should be having with her and engrossed with her perspective and discussion about the canvas, he attended Alice. Denbigh hung on her every word, fully part of the exchange and unwilling to let her disparage that masterpiece.
“I disagree,” he said strenuously.
A wry and welcomingly familiar smile edged her lips up at the corners. “That is unsurprising.”
They shared a smile.
“Yes. Well, this time I’m not doing so with the sole intent of getting a rise out of you.”
He gave a playful tug at one of her curls. Alice swatted his hand playfully in return, and just like that, they were restored to the easy way it had always been between them.
“I’m being entirely serious, Alice,” he said more emphatically this time. “It is a masterpiece.”
