Delectably Undone! (5 page)

She looked at the shabby old cloak and trailed her fingers down Evelyn’s fine garment, which she was still wearing. It should be hung up, too….

Half an hour later she was curled in its warmth on her narrow cot in the empty lodgings. Evelyn’s male scent wrapped around her. If she closed her eyes she could pretend in her dreams that he was there, that his arms held her safely. That they fitted, belonged together.

He moaned as she kissed her way down his body until she knelt before him. Dazed, he stared down at her, read her intent. Tried to summon the strength to refuse, to say she didn’t need to do that…but his voice was as much a prisoner of her sweet sensuality as his body….

The caress of her soft breath was both promise of heaven and torture….
Please, have mercy….
He could only submit as a silken cheek stroked over his aching, heated length. He shuddered, consumed with need, as her warm breath bathed him…and she took him into her mouth. He groaned, head flung back as pleasure raked him, and slid a shaking hand through tangled fire to caress her throat. He needed to speak her name to know her, to truly possess her…. It was in his heart, on his lips, but even as he drew a shuddering breath to speak it, and turn dream to reality, the mist swirled, taking everything….

Evelyn cried out in protest, but his voice was swallowed in the mist. He tried to hold her, but she faded all the faster through his fingers into memory and then beyond memory…and there was nothing but aching need and searing loss….

He sat up, sweaty and shaken, his heart pounding as he grasped at the fading fragments of his dream. At least he supposed it had been a dream. It had felt so real…. An erotic dream? He was hard and aching, but he didn’t remember anything…not really. Just that he had wanted…wanted who?

A face slid into focus, all golden eyes and unruly curls…and his body hardened to the point of pain. He jerked upright. No! He’d sworn he wouldn’t seduce her again. He wasn’t even sure that he
had
been dreaming about Loveday.

Evelyn forced himself to think rationally. It had been months since he had been with a woman. No surprise that he was having erotic dreams.

It would be easy enough to find a mistress. The only problem was he didn’t want any of the available women. He wanted only one, a woman honor forbade him to take.

He left town at first light, grim-faced.

As house parties went it was not too bad. He knew most of the people present, and if his aunt’s machinations to match him up with Miss Phoebe Angaston—accredited Beauty and Heiress—were annoying, at least the lady herself was pleasant enough. Although holding herself aloof at first, she apparently had forgiven him for not attending the dinner and ball. Pleasant, kind, beautiful, and she was almost his own age rather than an eighteen-year-old innocent—the perfect bride, in fact.

And Evelyn couldn’t for the life of him stir up a scrap of interest in her. He liked her. She was a nice person, even delightful. It would be no hardship to marry her.

Only he couldn’t bring himself to make the offer she clearly expected. It wouldn’t be fair, because every time he tried to bring himself to the point of doing his duty to his lineage and title, he thought of having to paint over Lionel’s murals, and found something else to talk about.

Eventually, Miss Angaston brought matters to a head.

“Who is she?”

He stared. They were seated slightly apart, courtesy of Aunt Drummoyne, at a picnic. “Who’s who?”

“The woman you’re in love with.”

His throat closed and his cravat seemed likely to choke him. Kind, beautiful, charming—add second-sight to her qualifications.

“What makes you think I’m in love with someone?” Was he in love?

She smiled. “You’ve been trying to bring yourself to propose to me for the past week. Something is stopping you, and I doubt it’s fear of my reply. You stare into space constantly and you frequently look sad. As if you’ve lost something.”

“I see.” He wasn’t going to confirm or deny.
Love.

“May I make a suggestion?”

He could only nod.

“If she isn’t married, or something utterly impossible like that, then marry her. I fell in love when I was nineteen, and my father insisted that it would be better to wait for what he considered a more
suitable
husband.” Gray eyes met his. “Being young and dutiful, I obeyed. My suitor was dismissed, and now he is about to marry someone else.” Something glittered in the corner of her eye. Something that she blinked away. “I’ve lost him. My advice is that you don’t make the same mistake.” She reached out and patted Evelyn’s hand. “This is where you tell me to mind my own business.”

He shook his head. “Instead, tell me. Had I offered, would you have married me?”

She frowned. “Probably. We would get on well enough” Her smile returned. “But I think you need more than that, St. Austell.”

She came to him in the darkness of his bed. All spicy fragrance and slender limbs that wound about him. Mysterious and yet familiar, her body sliding against his, her mouth a dream of tender, teasing seduction. There were no words. Words had no place here. Only her trembling sighs and his own harsher breathing as he loved her. Slowly. Tenderly. As she yielded to him and he discovered her secrets one by one with hands that shook with restraint.

Softer, sweeter than his memories, she burned in his arms, all silken seduction. One hand fisted in her hair, holding her for his kiss. Her mouth was his, surrendered utterly to his demands as he pressed between her thighs, parted slick, swollen folds with gentle fingers, and felt at last the hot, liquid welcome of her body. He knew her now. His. All his. Only his. And at last, at last he knew his own heart.

His mouth took the soft cry as her body surrendered its innocence, and he felt deep within himself an answering pang. They were joined, fully, sweetly, and he made love to her with an aching tenderness…. Only the mist was now swirling between them, and she was fading, fading into it. Or the mist was fading into her.

He woke, her name on his lips tearing the darkness as he spilled himself in his empty bed. And he remembered his dream. Loveday. The murals. He fell back against the pillows with a groan and covered his face with his hands. It was Loveday who had been haunting his dreams. And Loveday who had modelled for those curst murals. Loveday. The woman he wanted above all others.

Unable to sleep again, in the end Evelyn rose, found a robe, and went down to the library. To his surprise, a lamp was burning in there.

A familiar voice spoke from near the fireplace. “Up rather late, aren’t you, Eve? Can’t you sleep, either?”

David Winslow, one of his guests, sat there in the dancing shadows, nursing a large brandy. At least Evelyn assumed it was brandy, since the brandy decanter was on a wine table beside him.

“No. What are you doing in here?” He hadn’t seen much of David since his friend’s recent return from Italy, and there was rarely time at a house party to really talk to anyone. Unless you were meant to be courting them.

David shrugged. “I had plans for the evening. They involved spending the night in Lady Beaumont’s chamber, but her husband showing up just before dinner put paid to that. Apparently he had the same idea.”

“Ah. How tactless of him.”

“Quite. Heard you were having some murals painted.”

Evelyn froze. “Yes. That’s right.” David had known Lionel, as well.

“By Lionel,” said David. He picked up the decanter and poured another glass of brandy, took a swallow. “Hmm. Excellent. Are you having one?”

“No.” Evelyn needed to think. He walked over to his desk and sat down. He wondered how his family was going to react when he announced that he was going to wed the penniless sister of an indigent artist. He didn’t care, any more than he should have cared six years ago. More to the point, was the indigent artist himself going to permit it?

“Just one problem,” continued David. He rose, picked up the decanter and strolled across to the table where it usually sat.

Evelyn shot him a glance. “What? With my brandy?”

David shook his head, pouring an extra glass and swirling the amber fluid around, squinting at it in the lamplight. “No. Brandy’s excellent. Problem’s with Lionel.”

His casual tone chilled Evelyn. “What’s amiss? Have you seen him?”

“You haven’t, obviously.”

Obviously?
“No. We arranged it by letter. Why?”

David regarded him thoughtfully. Without answering, he walked over to offer him the brandy.

Evelyn looked at it. “I told you I didn’t want one.”

Raising an eyebrow, David set the glass down beside him, anyway. “Lionel died in Italy six months ago. I helped Loveday bury him.”

Very carefully, Evelyn picked up the brandy glass and drained it.

He was on the way back to London before the sun rose, leaving a brief note for his aunt that explained only that he was gone, another for Phoebe Angaston thanking her for excellent advice, and a very confused and sleepy groom who had come down to find out exactly
why
a horse was being saddled at dawn.

He got into a fight, Loveday said. At the local tavern. Some bruiser didn’t like Lionel painting his girl. Beat him up. A few days later, apparently his sight failed. Gone. Just like that in both eyes. I’d been visiting them and Loveday wrote to beg me to come back and help. She said he was in despair.

Winslow’s mouth had been grim.

By the time the letter reached me Lionel was dead.

David hadn’t been able to tell him very much more. Only that he had arranged safe passage back to England for Loveday with a lady wanting a companion. That she had brought most of Lionel’s remaining work with her…and her own.

The difference Evelyn had seen in Lionel’s style had been because it hadn’t been her brother’s work at all. It was Loveday’s. She had painted the seascape—he would swear it. Loveday had always painted; he’d known that. But she’d never permitted anyone but Lionel to view her work.

Evelyn reached London in the evening, to discover Loveday had abandoned the rooms in Little Frenchman’s Yard.

“Not here,” a blowsy woman told him. “Gone, she is. Got herself a man, they say. There were one sniffin’ round a while back and she moved out right after. So I moved in.” The woman jiggled her breasts at him. “I’ll do yeh, if yeh like.”

A chill slid through him as he declined politely.
Gone.
He’d wanted her out of here, but how the devil was he supposed to find her now? With nowhere else to go, he hurried back to the Strand, hailed a hackney and gave the town house address.

He stared up at his darkened house. At this hour Loveday would be long gone, but there might be some sort of clue to where she was living. She might even have left an address with Hurley, the caretaker, or his wife.

Hurley took his time answering the banging on the area door. He glared out at Evelyn in the light of a flickering candle. “Who the he—” He broke off. “’Tis you, m’lord!”

Grumbling under his breath, Hurley found a lamp for Evelyn. “Be you stayin’ here, master?”

Evelyn realized he would have to; he’d given up the lease on his lodgings. Leaving Steynings in such a rush, he hadn’t thought about such things as a bed for the night.

Upon hearing this, Hurley grumbled even more. “Need to make up a bed in one of the spare chambers, then,” he said. “Your room’s still a main mess. Paint pots everywhere, and—” he fixed Evelyn with a disapproving eye “—Mrs. Hurley says you’ll need to cover up them paintings before any respectable maid’ll go in there! Like to have a fit, she did, when she saw them!”

His dreams and fantasies rioted on the wall. The god Apollo, with the nymph in his arms stretching up on tiptoe to kiss him, caught at that single instant just before their lips met… All longing, yearning and surrender. The god, who bore
his
face, braced, head flung back in ecstasy as she knelt, veiled only in tumbling red-gold curls, to enslave him…and the sweet moment of possession; Loveday—for it was she, and always had been—cradled in his arms, their bodies joined, two halves of a puzzle. And finally, she lay asleep in his arms, her face hidden against his shoulder, his body cradling hers. Forever.

She had painted his dreams. Even the last one, which he had not had the sense or courage to dream until now.

A soft, shocked gasp brought him around.

She was there. Sitting up, tousled and blinking in sleepy dismay in the shadows of his bed. Stunned golden eyes flickered from him to the paintings.

“I…I fell asleep.” Her husky voice stroked his senses, left him breathless, wondering what it would be like waking up to all that sleepy softness every morning. For the rest of his life. “Why are you here?”

“Partly because David Winslow told me that Lionel is dead.” Evelyn didn’t know what else to say. Hell, he didn’t even know what he felt. Only that it was going to tear him apart. “When were you going to tell me, Loveday?”

Something glimmered in her eyes. “I couldn’t,” she whispered. “It was my fault—”

Evelyn was across the room and had her in his arms before she could go on.

“Dammit! How was it your fault?” He held her against his heart, her head tucked under his chin. He knew what had happened; Winslow had told him. But Loveday needed to say it. Exorcize it before it could fester.

Her breath came raggedly. “Because I left him alone. He wanted to get outside. To the shore. So…I took him. Led him down there, and when he asked me if we’d brought anything to eat—”

“You left him sitting safely on the sand and went back to your lodgings for it.” Evelyn pressed a kiss to her hair. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“I shouldn’t have left him!” she cried, pulling free of his arms. “I knew how he felt about being blinded! And when I came back—” Her voice broke and the tears spilled over.

Evelyn drew her back into his arms. David had told him what she’d found. Her brother gone, his clothes left in a neat pile weighed down with his shoes, and a wavering line of footprints leading down to the water.

“You painted the seascape.”

Pain twisted inside her. “Yes.” Even now she didn’t understand why she had taken her paints to the shore the following evening, after some fishermen had brought home the body. Why it had spilled onto the canvas, all the loneliness of the dreaming, empty water. Then, all she had wanted was someone to hold her and tell her it was all a bad dream. Now she wanted something just as impossible.