he cupped her face with his hand, caressing her jaw as his words caressed her other senses ‘...all those subtle flesh tones.’
* * *
For the next few days they didn’t bother with the pretence they were going to explore Paris together. Amy went to his studio at first light and let him capture her subtle flesh tones. With his hands, his mouth, and then, later, when she was too sated to bother protesting, she let him arrange her on his couch so he could paint her.
‘What are you thinking?’ He’d stopped working, and was looking at her steadily from round the edge of the canvas he refused to let her so much as catch a glimpse of.
‘Nothing much. Nothing that would interest you, anyway.’
He pursed his lips. ‘Amy, how many times do I have to tell you that every single little thing about you fascinates me?’
When she snorted in derision, he shook his head at her. ‘It is true. Why would you think I’d bother to lie about it? I can still get you into bed any time I want. I only have to look at you like this...’ and he waggled his eyebrows at her suggestively ‘...and you turn wild.’
Only a few days ago she would have been furious at the suggestion he had any influence on her, but she’d got used to his teasing ways now. Besides, he might joke that he only had to give her a heated look for her to go up in flames, but nine times out of ten she’d done something to provoke the heated look in the first place. Such as lick her lips in a certain manner, or merely twine one of her curls round and round her finger meditatively.
He came across to the couch, knelt beside it and dropped a kiss on her exposed shoulder.
‘I will be able to paint a much better portrait if I know your innermost thoughts. I will be able to capture your essence. What makes you uniquely you.’
‘Oh, I see, it is for your art.’
‘If you like.’ He buried his face in her neck to kiss her throat. And breathe her in. And commit her fragrance to memory. The more time he spent with her, the more he regretted letting her go so easily when they’d been young enough to have forged a life together. He couldn’t help thinking that if he’d even had the courage of the mousy Fenella, they would have been together for ten years by now. Not that he wanted to get married again. It was just...if he had married Amy, it wouldn’t have been hell, that was all. From the things she’d said, he could tell that if he’d gone into politics from choice, rather than drifting into it because he’d stopped fighting his father, and if Amy had been his wife, she would have supported his wish to make a difference. She wouldn’t have sneered at every opinion he expressed that didn’t align exactly with her own. He might even have become a halfway-decent politician. Oh, nothing to compare with a Wilberforce, or a Hunt, but a man who would have been able to look at his own reflection in the mirror without despising what he saw.
But these few days she was in Paris would be all he’d ever have of her, now. He had to make them count. He had such a short time to create a lifetime of memories.
‘Well, I was thinking...’
‘Yes?’ He nuzzled the sheet she’d been using to preserve her modesty to one side.
‘About how unfair it is.’
‘What is unfair?’
She speared her fingers into his hair as he sucked one nipple into his mouth.
‘That the same rules don’t apply to men that so restrict women. A single man can take a lover and nobody much cares. But if a woman does so, she runs the risk of becoming a social pariah.’
He looked up at her sharply. ‘Are you afraid that there will be repercussions because of our affair, Amy? We’ve been discreet. I’ve deliberately kept you out of the public eye as much as possible. Well, after the Wilsons’, anyway.’
‘Have you?’ It hadn’t occurred to her that his reluctance to leave the studio for much more than the occasional glass of beer in the nearest café, which was frequented by locals, was anything more than a wish to keep her as near to a convenient bed as possible.
‘Of course I have. I have the devil of a reputation. And the last thing I want is for you to be subject to salacious gossip because you’ve been seen being a bit too...intimate with me.’
‘You seem to forget, I am a nobody. I don’t move in the kind of circles where a little gossip could ruin my reputation.’
‘That’s just where you’re wrong,’ he said fiercely. ‘I mean,’ he amended, reining himself back with what looked like a struggle, ‘just think what it would do if tales about you having a wild affair with the scurrilous Nathan Harcourt got back to Stanton Basset. They would drum you out of the...the sewing circle.’
They could try, she thought. If she’d ever been a member of such an insipid group. But there wasn’t all that much they could do. If anyone did try to make her life in Stanton Basset uncomfortable, she would just move away.
In fact, that might not be a bad idea anyway. Nothing would be the same if Fenella really did marry her middle-aged French Romeo. And it was looking increasingly likely. And she did not have any sentimental attachment to the modest house her aunt had bequeathed her, nor the quiet and rather stuffy little town itself. She could buy a much more commodious property elsewhere. Somewhere by the sea, perhaps.
Nathan startled her by getting up and stalking moodily back to his easel. Well, he’d already startled her by sounding so protective of her reputation, when he’d never given a fig for his own. From the things she’d read about him, particularly in the last weeks before his spectacular expulsion from his party, it was almost as if he’d courted scandal for its own sake.
She would have to be careful she didn’t start thinking he cared for her. Just because he hadn’t seduced her when she’d been a girl, and had proposed to her when he discovered she’d been a virgin, that did not mean she was anything special to him. It only meant he had a conscience. That he wasn’t the hardened rake the newspapers made him out to be.
Not that he might be falling in love with her.
She had to remember that he was a master of this game. He’d had plenty of other lovers. He was probably as charming and apparently tender with all of them. She mustn’t lower her guard with him, not even for an instant. Or he would wound her. Oh, he wouldn’t mean to. He clearly regretted having hurt her before. It was part of what made him so irresistible.
‘You said,’ came his disembodied voice from the other side of the easel, ‘that your family turned against you after I...married Lucasta. Can you tell me about it?’
‘Why do you want to hear about that?’
‘Maybe I want absolution. You said that your reasons for not marrying were not my fault and implied other things were far more important than just my abandonment. Besides, I have this insatiable curiosity about you. I want to know every little detail of your life.’
‘So you can paint a better portrait of me,’ she sighed. ‘Yes, you said that before.’
‘You don’t sound as though you believe me,’ he complained. ‘If it isn’t for that, then what other reason could I possibly have for wanting you to divulge your innermost thoughts?’
She sighed again. ‘You are in one
