Page 247 of The Ladies Least Likely
“No more than you grudging me my courtesans.” He hugged her to him with one arm and kissed her forehead. “It’s never been like that for me, Rhette. They weren’t you.”
“It’s never been like that for me, either,” she said. “In fact, I didn’t know I could—well.” She skated her finger along his ribs one by one.
A possessive thrill went through him. “You’ve never hadle petite morte?”
“Not with anyone else,” she said. “And it’s not the same when I do it myself. Not nearly as—everything.”
He knew what she meant. The pleasure he gave himself was functional and felt meager, somehow, compared to the full, rich, resonating climax he’d just had. Because of her. Because he was with Harriette.
She shifted, making a face. “Not nearly as—sticky, either.”
He laughed. Laughter in bed, shared laughter, joyful laughter, instead of one partner making fun of the failures of the other. He’d not thought he could ever have this sweetness.
“Shall we clean ourselves up?”
She smiled impishly. “I believe I left some rose water in the kitchen. Do you fancy more wine?”
He wrapped his fingers around her wrist. “I fancy keeping you here always. In this bed. Never letting you go.”
She stilled, the laugher leaving her. Her dark eyes lost the gleam of joy the firelight had just reflected. “Don’t, Ren. You know we can’t.”
“We could,” he said stubbornly. “Stay hidden away. Never emerge.”
She slid out of the bed, leaving it cold and empty. She swiped her shift from the floor and pulled it over her head.
“Our excuse tonight is my mother’s funeral, and there were riots.” She turned to face him. He tried to focus on her face, not the distracting shape of her revealed by the candlelight. “At least, that is what I shall tell myself for losing my head and throwing propriety to the winds. But neither of us can hide, Ren. I have promises to keep you, and you have?—”
“Nothing,” he said roughly. He sat up in the bed, making no attempt to hide himself. She’d seen everything. She might as well see his naked heart. “I’ll have nothing when you leave, Rhette. There w-won’t be anyone else. Not for me.”
“You can’t say that,” she said, her voice anguished. “You have to marry. For the estate, for the title, so you have an heir—so there is someone to care for your sister if you…” She lifted a hand to her face, shielding her eyes. “We both have people depending on us,” she went on, forcing her voice to be steady.
“You matter to me more than any of them, Rhette,” he said. “I’m sorry if you don’t want to hear it. But it’s true.”
“Idon’twant to hear it,” she said, turning away and searching for slippers. “And it can’t be true.”
“You can’t make something so just by wishing,” he called after her, but she was already out of the room, a whisper of fabric, the soft pad of feet on the wooden floor.
The room felt cold, the light bereft of warmth, the candles dancing without heat. So his life would be, empty and lifeless, when Harriette left him.
If he could, he’d wish for a way they could be together forever. But of course they couldn’t.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“What did you say to Princess that day in your studio?” Ren asked. “When you spoke in Silesian. It wasn’t about Frederick the Great and the upheaval in the American colonies, as you said.”
Harriette paused in her task of trimming the candles and made the mistake of looking back at the bed. Ren lay there completely naked, with his hands clasped behind his head, a pose that broadened his shoulders and made his biceps bulge. Greedily she let her eyes roam his bare chest, the light brown hair covering his lean rib cage and his flat stomach, banded with muscle. He’d pulled the sheet up to cover his groin and his twisted foot, but his good leg, bent at the knee and thick with yet more muscle, showed a shape as perfect as God could have imagined. Her artistic eye appreciated the clean, strong lines of his body, but her woman’s heart fluttered at the sight.
This was her man. She’d claimed him tonight. No other woman would love him as fiercely or as wholly as she did. No other woman could be as faithful and devoted to him in her heart as she would be her whole life long, no matter whom she pledged herself to in marriage.
She banked the fire so it would last till morning and rose to face him. “I want my sketchbook. Whyever did I not bring it with me?”
“You’ve already sketched me in the nude.” He patted the crumpled sheets beside his hip, indicating her place.
But she’d left those sketches on her worktable in her studio back in Charles Street. A stupid error. She’d have to send a letter and ask Darci to pack them in her trunk and send them to her. She wanted a way to remember him, remember this, and while the image of him felt seared into her brain, she knew the tricks memory could play.
Already her stomach hurt at the thought that the hours would pass, they would be obliged to emerge from this house, and the rest of their lives would carry them far from one another. Art was the only thing that lasted. Art was the only way to defeat loss and time.
“I want to memorize you,” she said softly.
