Page 244 of The Ladies Least Likely
“Perhaps he will let you paint.” Ren cleared his throat, searching for a way to brighten his suddenly grim outlook. He would not give into despair in these last stolen moments together. He would wait to do that when she was gone.
“Perhaps,” he went on, “there is a whole society of female painters in Prussia. Or perhaps you can build it. You could found a society of the arts, if there is not one already.”
She chuckled. “The Prussian Academy of the Arts is one of the oldest in Europe, older than your English Royal Society, milord. Blaise Le Sueur is the current director, I believe. He goes in very much for the landscape and historical schools. I think in time I might like to move to historical subjects. Angelica Kaufman prefers them, though most people think women should stick to pastels and watercolors of fruit and such, if they paint at all.”
She poured a cup of wine and passed it to him, her fingers again deliberately brushing his. A warm tingle raced up his arm.
“I see you as a historical subject,” he said. “Minerva, or some other mighty goddess, powerful and wise.”
She chuckled again, the sound kindling heat in his chest. “There is some group of powerful women in London calling themselves the Minerva Society. Lady Bessington has business with them, I believe. My aunt mentioned once that she was interested in joining them, but they are select and elite.” She sipped her wine, her lips gleaming deep red. “Someday I’ll do a self-portrait of myself in classical robes. I’ll be one of the six women painters of antiquity that Pliny the Elder names. Timarete, Irene, Calypso, Iaia, Aristarete, and Olympias.” She spoke the names as if reciting a well-learned litany, uttering each syllable with a reverent caress.
Then she took an unladylike gulp of wine. “But I might choose to portray myself as Helena of Egypt. She painted Alexander the Great’s battles, or so Pliny says.”
Ren took a modest sip of his own wine. It roiled in his stomach after all the ale. He couldn’t afford to send any more of his wits a’wandering. “And if I were your subject? What historical figure would I be?”
She propped her elbows on the table and put her chin on them, careless as a girl. But there was nothing girlish in the smoldering stare she gave him.
“The Emperor Claudius,” she said. “I should put you against the mightiest monuments of early Rome, in a white toga and your imperial purple robe. Making sure your toga is slipping off one shoulder to reveal your splendidly manly chest.”
“Claudius the mad,” he said, his gut twisting at her answer despite her flirtatious tone. He knew his history. “Claudius, the idiot emperor with the stammer and the clubfoot.”
She shook her head, and a red-brown lock brushed her shoulder the way he longed to do. “Claudius was the wisest and the best of the early emperors,” she answered. “He made many improvements in administration. And Britain was conquered under his rule.”
“His mother, according to Suetonius, called him ‘a monster of a man, not finished but merely begun by Dame Nature,’” Ren said. “I believe that’s a faithful translation.”
“No one can be more monstrous than a mother,” Harriette whispered. “But I believe it is because they so badly want the best for their children. It still astounds me that my mother, who I would have sworn had no interest in me whatsoever, sacrificed her position and her life of ease to take me away from war and protect me as my father could no longer do.”
Ren unwisely tipped back his wine cup, taking a long draught. “How do you excuse the cruelty of fathers, then? They are trying to shape us into better men?”
Her mouth turned down at its lovely corners, her brow knitting in concern. “Ren,” she said softly. “I believe your father would be proud if he could see you now.”
Ren stared into the pudding as she cut it. He’d worked for years to improve his speech, and he’d submitted to the tortures of manipulation and surgery to correct his deformed foot. The veneer was fragile, and it held mostly because of the deference given his title, the tacit agreement not to taunt a peer.
For a moment he envied Jock, who at least could boast of his injuries as something he’d survived. Nobody pitied Jock on his crutches, not after they saw him atop a horse. If Ren were a tradesman, in the class of Abel Cain, he’d be ruthlessly twitted by the Abel Cains of his world, but the jibes would not hold revulsion, not when so many of that class bore their own scars. It was only the upper class, those born to rule, who saw such flaws as diminishing a person’s worth.
“I don’t understand how you have never reviled me.”
The confession burst from him unwillingly. He set his cup on the table and studied it so he could avoid meeting her eyes. “You have never treated me like a cripple. Like a defective.”
“My Ren.”
She said something else, but it wasn’t in English. She rose from her seat and came around the table and seated herself in his lap, her bottom nestled against his groin, her knees draped over his thighs. His cock rose instantly toward her warm, firm flesh. Her beautiful breasts were at the perfect level to feast his eyes upon, within kissing distance. She scooped the pudding with a broad spoon and held it toward him, cupping one hand beneath the utensil.
“And you have never treated me like a dirty, throwaway urchin who might have been illegitimate, and who definitely needed a lesson in manners,” she said. “Try the pudding? It turned out, unbelievably. Look, it quakes just so.” She shook the spoon gently and the custard obligingly wobbled from side to side. He leaned forward and enclosed the spoon in his mouth, feeling the sweetness rush over his tongue and down his throat as he swallowed.
“Perfect. Delicious.” He leaned forward and licked her lips, capturing the smear of butter, the trace of wine, and the warm, rich custard.
“Mmm. You’re right.”
She tossed the spoon onto the table and curled her hands in the lapel of his coat, thrusting her tongue into his mouth. He groaned as her breasts fell into his eager hands, full and warm and pliable. Her nipples tightened in his palms, and his cock surged to full and immediate attention as she shifted her legs to straddle him.
She pulled at her skirts and Ren seized on the opportunity to slip his hands inside, running his palms over her long, strong thighs and over her hips to the lush mounds of her bottom. She was gloriously warm and firm, her skin smooth as cream. She moaned as she wriggled her hips onto his erection, and Ren stiffened his back as pleasure arced through him. He was close, dangerously close to spending early, embarrassing himself and annoying her, but he didn’t see how he could clamp down on the exquisite sensations of Harriette melting in his arms, Harriette making those little moans of passion, Harriette smelling of rosewater and tasting of everything sweet.
“Rhette,” he gasped, wondering how to warn her that he wasn’t very good at this, if indeed this was even allowed. “I’m not—not going to last very l-long.”
She pushed lightly against his chest as she swung her leg off his lap and rose easily to her feet. “Then get thee to bed, and get thee naked. Up, milord,” she teased.
He meant to protest against these needlingmilordsshe’d been delivering all night, teasing him about his title as if she were still the country waif running wild around the countryside. But Harriette was steering him toward the enormous bed which stood under a red and gold canopy, occupying a full half of the room. The smell of lavender and sweet clover drifted up as she pushed him down upon it. Harriette must have made up the bed with fresh linens as he made his rounds of the house.
