Page 21 of The Art of Sinning
She showed him into a spacious salon dominated by a large pianoforte. “Perhaps we could use the music room.”
She sounded perfectly demure again. Obviously he wasn’t quite the temptation to her that she was to him. That ought to relieve him.
But it didn’t.
“Edwin rarely comes in here,” she went on, “and it’s wonderfully bright.”
“It is indeed.” He glanced around. “But aside from the fact that the earl will expect me to spend my days on the portrait, how will you keep the servants from noticing that you and I are disappearing for hours on end? Someone is bound to go looking for you and find us here. I don’t see how you can keep it a secret as long as we are in the house. I’d hoped you might have some abandoned outbuilding—”
“No, that won’t work.” A frown creased her brow. “Everything is in use during the day. I suppose we could pretend to go riding and find a field somewhere...”
“Come now, your brother is sure to be suspicious if we say we’re going riding alone together. He’ll want to join us, especially when he sees me packing my canvases and sketch books, et cetera, to take along.”
She released an exasperated breath. “What if we were to do it at night after everyone has gone to sleep? Can you paint at night, in dimmer light?”
“I can and have, though it’s not my favorite.” He eyed her askance. “But you’re proposing that the two of us spend our evenings alone together.”
Averting her gaze, she tipped up her chin. “Yes. What of it?”
“Didn’t you characterize me as the sort of man who would as soon toss you down and have my way with you as look at you? You practically accused me of being as bad as your scurrilous brother Samuel.”
“True, but I also said I know all his tricks. And yours.” She crossed her arms over her chest defensively. “If we’re in a room in the manor and you misbehave, I can always call for a servant.”
“If you’re naïve enough to think that threatening to call a servant would save you from seduction, then you don’t knowanyman’s tricks,” he said dryly.
That seemed to give her pause. As well it should. “But if you try anything with me, you won’t get your painting. And surely that’s more important to you than attempting to bed one more woman in a long string of them.”
“Of course,” he said with a smooth smile.
She was right—it should be. Unfortunately, she didn’t realize what a potent enchantress she was. The prospect of painting her while she was dressed in a flimsy costume had him fairly salivating.
Being alone with her at night for hours on end would be tempting fate. So of course, he must do it. He’d never been one to back down from a challenge.
“Very well,” he said, “we’ll work while everyone else sleeps. But this room won’t do. It’s fine for the portrait, but the thing that makes it perfect for painting in the daytime will make it disastrous for our evening trysts.”
He gestured to the windows with their flimsy net curtains. “I’ll need plenty of candles, lamps, and firelight to see by, and that will give away our presence to anyone who passes by below—servants, grooms, local populace. Not to mention your brother. Someone might come to investigate.”
“That’s true.” Her brow furrowed. “We need something more secluded and private, but indoors. Perhaps down the hall?”
“It’ll need to be far away from your brother’s bedchamber or he’ll hear us.”
“True.” Wandering out of the room, she looked around. “Edwin’s suite is on this floor, as is yours. We can’t use the library, because Edwin likes to go in there when he can’t sleep. On the floor above, where my bedchamber and the others are, there might be a spare sitting room we could use.”
“Too small.” He peered up the open well of the staircase. “What’s on the floor above that?”
She tensed. “Nothing, really. Just the old nursery and schoolroom.”
“The schoolroom might do.” Without waiting for her, he strode up the stairs.
“It isn’t ever used,” she protested as she hurried after him. “I can’t even remember the last time a fire was laid in the hearth.”
“As long as the fireplace still draws, it should be fine.”
When they reached the top floor, he paused to look around, seeing only a series of closed doors. “Which room is it?”
Looking oddly reluctant, she meandered to the end of the carpeted hall and flung a door open. “Honestly, I don’t think—”
But he was already stalking past her and into the room. A drugget covered the floor and Holland cloths draped the furniture, supporting her assertion that the room wasn’t used. A globe sat bare and forgotten in a corner, a blackboard hung on the wall, and a few spindly chairs were scattered about.
