Page 209 of The Ladies Least Likely
He stood where she indicated, and she moved around him and wrestled with the draperies at the window until the light fell as she wished. Then she came to him in a cloud of deliciousscent and adjusted his posture. He gritted his teeth and bit back the urge to snap her away. Her hands on him in a professional capacity were better than nothing at all, though truly, this torture must erase at least a hundred years in purgatory.
“But only painting. Nothing more,” he said with bitterness.
“To begin, a sketch of that posture, and some of the details of your attire.” She sat on her stool, flipped open her sketchbook, and pulled the porte crayon from her hair. She sat down to watch him, study him, learn him inside and out, the way he wanted to know her. The thought scraped his insides into a raw ache.
She had placed him so his bad leg faced her, but with his weight on his good leg, so he could prop one boot carelessly against the other like any gentleman at his ease, leaning on an available marble pilaster. He could stand like this for some time without hurting, and he didn’t doubt that she had arranged it on purpose.
I desire you. But not enough to join with him.
“What changed?” he asked roughly.
She concentrated on her paper. “Mrs. Darly of the Macaroni Shop bought three sketches of you. She made two dozen prints of the first engraving and put them on sale yesterday. By today she had sold them all. She is making more prints of that one as well as the others, and she wants more poses.” She glanced at his head, back to her paper. “More suggestive ones, this time. Clients have asked.”
Ren groaned. “But that is what you wanted, isn’t it? To draw attention to me.”
“It will work in your favor, Ren. I promise.” She didn’t sound full of conviction. “Ladies will adore and obsess over you. Men will envy and want to emulate you.”
“And they could be me, if they wished for a clubfoot that would bring them years of painful surgery and therapy andcorrective shoes, and a stammer that damns them in any company.”
“You’ll be desirable to everyone. You’ll have your pick of a bride, despite being associated with me.”
He heard the faint recrimination in her tone. She’d never admit it had hurt her that his mother all but booted her from her drawing room, calling the butler to brush her out the door like so much trash. Ren set his teeth.
“And that is your goal. To foist me on some poor, unsuspecting woman.”You and my mother. “I’m sorry my mother treated you as she did, Rhette.”
“Oh, she has good reason to do so. What young lady will entertain your addresses with me on your arm?”
“Stop it,” he said roughly. “I am proud to have you on my arm.”
“But I won’t scare off just your suitors. Your association with me may reflect poorly on your sister as well.”
His heart contracted. This was his Harriette to the core, worried about the welfare of others, whatever the cost to herself. She had never met his sister, but because Ren cared about her, Harriette extended her loyalty to Amalie as well. He couldn’t wait to introduce them.
“I doubt Amalie wants to be foisted on anybody, either. You still haven’t given me a good reason.” For denying him. For repulsing him. For breaking his heart.
She paused and looked into his eyes. “Everyone will assume I’ve opened my legs to you. There’s no way I could be a decent woman and draw such things.”
A wave of shame went through him along with a wave of hot lust at her words, the image of Harriette opening her legs for him. He’d been burning for her without any thought of what giving in to him would do to her reputation.
“I’ve already said I’d marry you, damn it.” His mother was right in that he’d put a considerable dent in the esteem and position of the Renwick name by marrying so far beneath him, but he was an earl. His estates were solvent, or mostly solvent. He could marry as he pleased, and if his mother flew up in the boughs about it, he would pack her off to a remote estate and leave her there. He didn’t care if all of society shunned him if he could have Harriette at his side.
The hand moving over her paper grew unsteady. “But I’ve already told you I am unsuited for marriage. By temperament and inclination, if not otherwise.”
Did she mean to be celibate? She had given herself to other men but had told him she meant to reform. Ren’s throat hurt. He wasn’t enough to make her choose him, despite everything. Those kisses, that flaming passion that torched his world down to nothing but her, that bond that drew him to her like a magnet—it was anotherfoolish mistake, in her book.
“What do you intend, then?” he asked quietly. “For your future.” He wanted to know. He wanted to find a way to include himself in it.
“My plan had been to paint, and gain commissions, and eventually set up a shop of my own.” Her hand trembled and she stopped, laying her crayon across the paper. She raised troubled eyes to him, her lips turned down. “But I’ve lately discovered my future is not mine to plan.”
“What do you mean?” Panic curled around his middle. He’d only been gone two days. What had happened?
She spread her hands over her face. “I am betrothed,” she said.
His heart slammed against his ribs. “What?”
“I received a missive by way of the Graf von Hardenburg, who, when he returned to Prussia, apparently located my mother’s family. They live in the part of Silesia that has latelybeen drawn into the Prussian empire, and they were quite eager to know where I was. They have been trying to find me for some time, it seems.”
She drew a long, shaky breath. Ren sagged against the false marble pillar, hoping it would hold his weight as he tried to follow her explanation.
