Page 191 of The Ladies Least Likely
He’d been right: she was after something. The flicker that chased through her expressive eyes told him he’d guessed true. She wasn’t the same open book he’d known, with every thought written on her gamine face. She was a woman now, with a woman’s ploys and secrets.
But she was still Harriette. She crossed her arms over her chest and scowled. He tore his eyes from the inviting swell of décolletage and the cleft between her collarbone that dared him to press his lips there, and fastened his gaze to her face.
“How did you know I wanted something?”
Her candor made him smile as it always had.
“I am the Earl of Renwick. I’m wealthy and unmarried. I’m of age and in full control of my fortune, and when Parliament opens in the fall, I’ll take my seat in the House of Lords. Ev-everyone wants something from me,” he ended bitterly.
She leaned a hip on a heavy wooden chair and shrugged, completely at ease, and the move disarmed him. It was so much like she’d been that golden, lost summer. Her eyes traveled slowly down his form, tracing the wide lapels of his tailed coat, the fall of his neckcloth, the embroidery on his waistcoat, and the march of silver buttons down his chest and belly. She studiedthe line of his thigh showing through the blue breeches, down the white stockings to his buckled slippers, and she looked thoughtful, as if she could see the clever construction of the shoe that helped turn his misshapen foot to its intended form.
He was still reeling from the sensuousness in her bold, thoughtful assessment when her eyes slid back up, and the path of her gaze left a print as hot as if she’d swept her hand along him. He shifted to ease the sudden reaction of his body.
Harriette Smythe walked into his chamber—back into his life—and every fantasy he’d harbored about her in eleven long years roared to the surface. The reality of her didn’t cast all his memories and fancies into dust, as it ought to have. She was the face and body of his unspoken longings, as if his deepest urges had taken shape before his eyes, fed by his need for her to be real.
The devil always came to offer a deal, offering the thing his victim most wanted. He knew the old stories. The devil went straight to one’s weakness, and he always exacted a painful price.
“I want to paint you,” she said.
Her breathless tone caught him first, and his eyes snagged on those carmine lips, slightly parted and moist. Lips begging to be kissed, just as the rest of her begged for him to draw her into his arms and?—
“Paint me,” he echoed. He ought to have been surprised, but he’d spent long months in the company of Harriette Smythe. He knew anything was possible with her. He stillknewher, after all this time, despite how much she’d changed, and that awareness burned him more deeply than her leisurely study had done.
She nodded. “I’m a painter. I require commissions. You’re the exciting Earl of Renwick, fresh and new on the London scene, and nobody’s done your portrait yet.” She frowned. “Have they?”
She straightened and turned suddenly, her skirts flaring about her, and despite the elaborate shaping of the gown Ren saw that beneath all the layers of fabric she was still slender and strong, the Harriette who could tramp from dawn to dusk over the Somerset hills sketching everything that captured her interest.
A painter, was she? How she would have loved what he’d seen in his years abroad, the exquisite Dutch masters and the Italian Renaissance greats, the limpid Botticellis and the riveting portraits of Velazquez, the royal art collection at the Louvre palace and the Borgia Apartments of the Vatican. He wondered if she was any good, then pushed the thought away as disloyal.
“You’ve been all over Italy.” She began to pace the room as he had been doing moments before. “Greece, too. And there are some very fine artists in France—I suppose you’ve sat for dozens of sketches. Had a portrait done in every country, by every sort of hand.” She turned on him accusingly. “Have you?”
She looked like an outraged mistress who guessed he had trifled with another on the side. Ren tamped down a smile. He’d let her paint him if she did nothing more than slop some gobs of color on a canvas and call it a likeness.
It wasn’t fair, that. All Harriette Smythe had to do was stroll back into his life and he was willing to grant her anything.
“Did you climb the tree?” he asked, wondering how she had appeared in his dressing room so suddenly, and before the window to the balcony, of all things.
She waved a hand in the air. “You’ll want to see to that, I imagine,” she said. “It’s very easy to access a window, and housebreakers could—never mind. You haven’t answered my question. Can I paint you?”
His Harriette to the core, but in this delectable shape and with the face of a fallen angel. He was lost. Ren spread his arms wide, reveling for the moment in his good fortune. After allhe’d experienced, all he’d endured, wasn’t it right that he would suddenly be granted this most magnificent and unexpected gift?
“My dear Rhette,” he said, “you may do anything you like with me.”
She snorted, which was precisely what the Harriette of old would have done. So this new Harriette, with this dangerously shapely body and distractingly soft skin and mind-blankingly lissome manner, was still his Harriette after all. The knowledge gave him a thrill of delight.
Then her eyes narrowed, the outraged mistress again. “How many other artists have painted you?”
He pretended to consider this and began counting on his fingers. “In total? None.”
Her eyes widened with disbelief. The green lines in her eyes, usually dormant, were starting to stand out. Something was moving her deeply. “Impossible.”
“I’m to sit for hours with some stranger staring at me, scrutinizing my every flaw? No, thank you.”
She stepped close, her eyes investigating every line of his face. His skin felt tight and hot.
“You must have been asked,” she said, and her voice dropped to a lower tone that made the hair on the back of his neck lift in arousal.
“Why do you say that?”
