Page 193 of The Ladies Least Likely
His mother’s eyes widened with shock, and Harriette gathered that Ren did not often gainsay her. She saw the countess gathering her forces to flatten him, and indignation reared up, warring with her wiser instinct to flee.
“Perhaps I can help Ren meet a marriageable young lady,” Harriette suggested.
Milady’s penciled brows rose ludicrously high. “Renwick,” she said, enunciating each syllable, “could not possibly benefit from any informationyoucould offer.”
“I b-beg to differ, Mother,” Ren said, shifting his weight to lean toward her. “Haow—Rhette has been in town much longer than I have. She knows the young way-ladies well.”
It was fortunate Harriette had nothing in her mouth or she would have spit it across the room at this outrageous bouncer. The countess gritted her teeth as Ren turned and presented Harriette his arm. “Shall we?”
She knew to go with him would be utter folly, and she knew with equal surety that she could deny him nothing. His eyes held appeal and wariness and doubt and resignation, as if he fully expected her to reject him.
But there was something else in his gaze as well, a deep flare of interest that made some sleepy, heavy serpent in her stomach stir and lift its head. Harriette would fit among the wealthy,well-bred acquaintances downstairs about as well as Ren fit his father’s dark house, furniture, and legacy. But she also knew she would accompany this Ren to the edge of the wilderness if he wanted her to.
She shouldn’t. She’d let a man lure her into folly before and regretted it ever after. But this was Ren. He needed her.
She slid her hand around his arm, enjoying the luscious slide of silk beneath her glove and the press of warm, firm muscle beneath. A giddy sensation bubbled through her belly. She was on the arm of an earl. Her Ren, still, but so different. She wanted to learn him all over again.
She gave him a smile full of impish glee. “By all means, Renwick,” she cooed as his mother hissed again and flounced from the room. “Let us find you a bride, and then you can commission me to do a portrait of you both.”
CHAPTER FIVE
“So, your duty,” Harriette murmured as she floated down the curving staircase of Renwick House from the chambers on the second floor to the large, formal staterooms on the first. “Is that why you’ve returned to England?”
“In part,” he said briefly. He watched the stairs, not her. She glanced at the portraits and landscapes lining the plastered walls, an odd mixture of oils and watercolors, all of them conventional, none of them terribly good. “My mother’s been attempting to summon me home for years. I felt it was time.”
“Do you want to marry?”
“I must. There’s no one else. The title reverts to the Crown if I end the line.”
He halted as she paused at the curve, and she studied him. The blue of the suit brought out the deep tones of his eyes, the sky of an endless summer. He smelled like a cake of fresh soap, a blend of citrus and spice. His skin had turned bronze by exposure to sun, and she would wager the brown of his natural hair had acquired golden highlights as well. The mature lines of his face were a painter’s composition, every feature symmetrical and in proportion, but they came together in a compelling, animated way.
And he was an earl, with estates all over Britain. Every woman alive would want him.
But of course, being Ren, he wouldn’t know that. The old tenderness pinched at her heart. Eleven years abroad and he’d become an intriguing man, but the eyes looking at her were the same old Ren—guarded, hopeless. In all those years, no one had made him see his own strength or beauty.
She would. She would produce a portrait that showed him true, the depths of his mind, the integrity of his character, the playful side and the serious side and his most secret, hidden dreams. She would bring him so alive on the canvas that every viewer would see his worth; she had that power. She’d spent the past eleven years studying her craft and while she had much to learn, she was better than any other artist she’d seen hung on these walls so far.
She hugged his arm, relieved that she could do something for him. She wasn’t using him to gain a foothold among society painters. Well, she was, but he would benefit, too.
And she would make sure the bride he chose was worthy of him. She would find him someone beautiful and kind and also wealthy. Someone who could offer him everything Harriette did not have to give him.
“Your limp is much improved,” she noted as they proceeded down the broad marble staircase. He held with one hand to the elaborate bronze balustrade, and she held to him, supporting him, though he didn’t need her to. He didn’t hobble as he had as a youth, but instead he put his good foot on each step, then brought his lame foot to meet it, like a child learning to descend stairs. But he did it with such cool deliberation that one had to know him to know he was compensating for something.
“I met a doctor in Italy who is developing new cures for clubfeet,” he said. “A young professor named Scarpa. He put methrough a series of exercises and manipulations, and then he tried a surgical correction.”
A smile quirked up half his mouth. “I nearly lost my foot to sepsis, but after I pulled through, the good doctor designed me a special shoe.” He held it out to show her. "I had a cobbler here cover it in leather and make me a matched set, and if I ever break it or wear it out, I shall have to return to Italy to find Dottore Scarpa again."
“Does it hurt?”
“Always.” His smile faded as they reached the bottom of the flight and paused in the small marble hall. “In the Scandinavian folktales, when the waterborne creatures like selkies or undines come ashore and take their land form, their feet feel as if they are walking upon hot coals or knives. It is the price one pays to appear human.”
“Oh, Ren.” Brave, noble, determined Ren. She knew a bit about sacrificing to appear like others, but she didn’t walk on knives as a consequence.
The countess had already swept into one of the two formal drawing rooms from whence the sounds of conversation and amusement drifted. Harriette stood still, taking one last moment to have Ren all to herself before she had to turn him over. Was there a woman in these rooms who deserved this man?
“And your speech,” she said, searching his eyes. Where was his confidence, his assurance? There weren’t a hundred men in all of Britain who held precedence before him. He owned this house and the land it stood upon, and many other lands besides. He acted like all this was a suit he might lay aside at any moment, when he could never escape his position or what it demanded of him.
That fine lip twisted with bitterness. “There’s no remedy for that, I’m afraid. I’m going to look a fool in front of all these people, but I think that’s what my mother wants. She shows theworld that her son is a simpleton and a cripple, so she might be pitied and petted for bearing up so nobly under such affliction. Then, if I marry a girl like her, she will have someone to complain to of the burdens she’s been given to bear.”
