River Of Fire (32 page)

She raised the brush for a last stroke, then halted. Half of being an artist was knowing when to stop.

She dropped the brush into the jar of turpentine and chose another to add the faint lines at the corners of the eyes. They gave maturity as well as proof of a life lived outdoors.

Shadows to define the chiseled cheekbones. Then the mouth. Immediately she ran into trouble. While outlining it, she had a vivid memory of what his lips had felt like on hers. A wave of heat went through her and the brush slipped. She made an exasperated sound.

Kenneth asked, "Is something wrong?"

"Just… just a misstroke." Avoiding his eyes, she wiped her damp palms, then scraped the paint off. Once again she tried to paint the mouth that had kissed her ear and made delicious nibbling bites down her throat…

Again she made a mistake. To her disgust, she realized that her hand was shaking.

Deciding to return to the face on a day when memory of his kisses was less immediate, she shifted her attention to the arm that lay along the back of the sofa. The white linen stretched at the shoulder, hinting at the strength of the body beneath the fabric. Only a little hardening of the shadows was needed. She did that, then studied the way the shirt fell around his torso.

She had pressed herself shamelessly against him, her breasts aching as they flattened against his hard muscles…

She dropped her gaze and swallowed against the dryness in her mouth. Being alone and private with a man, focusing totally on his body, was intensely erotic. Surely he must feel it, too, this dark, throbbing energy that charged the air between them, but she dared not look at his face to find out. She knew her own eyes would be too revealing.

Her gaze went to his legs, and the way the dark, skin-tight breeches pulled across his thighs. She immediately looked away. Impossible even to
think
about working on his lower body. She would detail the hand that rested on the Gray Ghost.

Telling herself to think like a painter, not a woman, she resumed work, glancing back and forth from her subject to her canvas again and again. Hands were almost as critical and difficult as faces. The strong bones defining his wrist turned out well, so she started on the hand itself.

His middle finger stroked across the cat's head, gentle and sensual. The gesture triggered a vivid memory of how that powerful hand had caressed her. The warmth. The feel of his palm cupping her breast…

Damnation, this was absurd. Yet she could not separate her awareness of him as a man from her professional perception.

Her face must have betrayed her turmoil, for Kenneth asked, "More problems?"

Hoping that she wasn't blushing, Rebecca thought quickly and said, "Please move your left hand an inch or so down the sofa." She moistened her dry lips and started to work on the hand that rested on the back of the sofa. The hand that had curved around her hip, pulling her close, sending tingles of liquid fire into deep, secret places…

With an oath, she banged her palette onto the table. "That's enough for today," she said gruffly. "Let's take a tea break, then start your lesson."

"Good. I've had enough of sitting," Kenneth said with suspicious alacrity. He stood and stretched. Entranced, she watched the sleek, leonine flex of his body. Officially, she was betrothed to this man. In tomorrow's newspapers, they would tell the world that they intended to share a bed for the rest of their lives.

She jerked her gaze away and grabbed a rag to wipe her brush. A good thing this portrait was almost finished, she thought with exasperation. Otherwise she would need a new piece of studio equipment: a tub of icy water to cool the artist.

Kenneth was glad to stop posing, and even gladder that Rebecca stayed at the far end of the studio until the water boiled and the tea had steeped. It had always been difficult to sit still with nothing to do but admire Rebecca. Today it had been damned near impossible. His mind had ranged between remembering how enticing she had looked in amber silk and even more perilous thoughts of how she would look out of it.

After the tea, he reluctantly prepared for another painting lesson. He'd come to hate them because of his miserable lack of progress. He was no better than after the first lesson. Worse, if anything.

Rebecca's teaching was not the problem. Her comments were quiet and to the point, and she never sneered,no matter how dreadful his efforts. The fault was within him.

The focal point of his still life was a cast taken from the head of a Greek statue. It showed Zeus, the face full of wisdom and maturity. He'd chosen it because he'd liked the expression and weathered texture. By now, he loathed the blasted thing.

He painstakingly mixed the tints he would need. Then, expression set, he started to paint.

While he struggled with his canvas, Rebecca sat quietly at her worktable, grinding the pigments to make pastel crayons. After mixing in the binding solution with a palette knife, she rose and came to see how he was doing.

"The shadows on the bowl need to be sharper to indicate how reflective the surface is," she said after a brief study. "And the highlights should be warm to show that it's brass."

She was quite right. He understood those things, had rendered similar objects in pastel and watercolor. Why couldn't he get them right with oils?

Seeing his tight expression, Rebecca said, "It takes time, Kenneth. Don't be so hard on yourself."

Her sympathy was the last straw. With sudden fury, he slashed his brush across the width of the canvas, smearing the heavy oils. "There will never be enough time in the world for me to learn this," he said bitterly.

She frowned. "Your work really isn't that bad."

"But it isn't good. It will never be good." He slapped down the palette and brush and spun away from her, stalking across the studio in a blaze of frustration. The emotions churning inside him were explosive, too violent to be contained by a human body. Only Rebecca's presence kept him from smashing everything in sight.

"I can't do this, Rebecca. The oils won't go where I want. It's like trying to herd pigs. Even when I know what should be done, I can't get it right." He turned and gestured toward the ruined picture. "That's a waste of good paint and canvas. It's flat. Dead. Christ! I never should have tried to learn this."

He was heading toward the door when she said crisply, "The lesson isn't over, Kenneth."

"Yes, it is, and there won't be any more." Struggling for control, he paused with his hand on the knob. "I'm sorry, Rebecca. It was good of you to offer to teach me, but you're wasting your time."

"Come back here, Captain," she said, her voice whip-sharp. "I obliged you by going to that blasted ball, and you will oblige me by not giving up until we've at least tried to devise a different approach that will work for you."

It was an argument he could not ignore. He stared at the door, inhaling and exhaling with slow deliberation. When his emotions were tamped down to a safe level, he returned to his easel. Rather than looking at his travesty of painting, he watched Rebecca. Her intent expression and tousled hair were a far more pleasing sight. He asked tightly, "Did you have such difficulty when you were learning to paint?"

"Did, and sometimes I still do."

"Really?" he said, surprised. "I would have thought that you were beyond such problems."

"I don't think an artist ever gets entirely beyond," she said wryly. "Why do you think my father sometimes turns into a wild man and hurls things all over the studio?"

He gave a lopsided smile. "I have a lot more sympathy for such actions than when I first came here."

She perched on a stool and drummed her fingers on the tabletop as she thought out loud. "Oil paints are a
medium
—not an end in themselves, but simply a material that transmits ideas into visible images. In practical terms, that means that oils express your emotions. Because you want so much to master oil painting, you try too hard. You're as rigid as a marble statue, and that is transmitted to your canvas. Even though your basic drawing is fine, the overall picture is stiff, lifeless. You're crippling yourself and your work."

He had not thought in those terms before. "That's certainly true," he agreed. "But damned if I know how to stop doing it."

"Creative force is like a…" she searched for a phrase, "a river of fire. When it is in full flood, it blazes through the spirit with power and excitement. There are transcendent moments when an artist can do nothing wrong. Every stroke, every color is perfect. The image on the canvas comes very near to matching the image in the mind. Surely you've experienced some of that excitement when drawing."

"Occasionally," he admitted, thinking back. "That is what you feel when you paint?"

"Yes, though nowhere near all the time. I think the feelings must be similar for all creative work, whether it is writing or music or teaching, or even raising a child." Her tone switched from pensive to brisk. "When there is no creative flow, the oils reflect that and fight you every inch of the way. The colors are muddy, the shapes are wrong. There's no harmony."

He grimaced. "That part I recognize."

She studied him narrowly. "You have the talent. The trick is to find a way to release it. Part of the problem is boredom. It was a mistake to try to teach you like a novice when you're already an accomplished artist in many ways. You're simply not that interested in painting a still life. You must choose a subject that you care about—something that excites you so much that you can forget about your problems with the medium and get swept up in the river of fire."

"I wouldn't miss that blasted bust of Zeus," Kenneth admitted. "But I can't imagine getting carried away by creative excitement when every brushful of paint is struggling like a company of French grenadiers."

She gave him a mischievous smile. "True. So we'll make the oils behave like a medium you've already mastered."

She turned and squeezed a dollop of azurite blue onto an empty palette. Then she slowly mixed in oil of turpentine, adding more and more until the paint was oozing like syrup. When she was satisfied with the consistency, she took a sheet of heavy paper and used a wide brush to lay a smooth wash of blue across the surface. "Thinned down, oils can be used almost like watercolor. You can work much more quickly and freely than when the oils are thick. Try it."

Doubtfully Kenneth accepted the brush and dipped it into the dilute azurite. Though the paint was heavier than watercolor, it flowed across the canvas with sensuous ease. Without conscious thought, he dipped and stroked again, creating shadings of blue like those he would use for the sky of a watercolor landscape.

He set down the brush and flexed his fingers wonderingly. "Interesting. My hand acted instinctively, as if I were working with watercolor." For an instant, he had not thought about the fact that he was using oil paint. His carefully honed manual skills had taken over.

Becoming intrigued, he squeezed burnt sienna onto the palette and thinned that. A few swirling strokes created a silhouette of Rebecca, her hair dancing about her shoulders.

She laughed. "You see the advantages?"

He frowned at the paper. "it's too easy. There has to be a reason why all oil painters don't work this way."

"The colors won't have the same depth and richness," she explained. "They'll also fade sooner than oils that have been built up more thickly."

"No matter." He added white lead to the burnt sienna and thinned it again. "I'm trying to learn, not create masterpieces for eternity." He used the tip of the brush to sketch a sleeping feline form, shadowing it with darker paint.

She gave an approving nod. "Another advantage is that dilute oils dry more quickly and can be worked over sooner. I suggest that you combine techniques. Lay in the background and general shapes with thinned paints. Then add details with thicker pigments. Wonderful oil sketches can be done that way. It's particularly good for informal portraits and landscapes."

Excitement began rising in him. He could do this.

And if it wasn't classical technique, it was a long step in the right direction. "Ginger, you're wonderful."

Without thinking, he leaned over to give her a swift, grateful kiss. But as soon as his lips touched hers, the physical awareness that had been pulsing between them all afternoon crackled to life. He could no more have ended the kiss than he could have flown to the moon. Her lips opened and their tongues touched, sliding sensually together.

Her scent was intoxicating, a blend of rosewater and oils and woman, a fragrance as unique as Rebecca. He was hungry, famished, for the yielding warmth of female strength and mystery. She nourished him with her mouth as her fingertips curled into his back like a kitten's claws.

He wrapped one arm around her slim waist and held her close. His other hand skimmed her bodice until he cradled the gentle weight of her breast. He moved his palm in a circle. She gasped and arched against him, supple and seductive.

Their mouths worked slowly, rich with subtle nuance. His hands molded her like a sculptor reveling in clay, learning the fertile swell of hips and the slimness of her waist. The delicacy of her nape and the strength of her graceful arms. The gentle curve of her belly. She gave a small cry as his hand slid lower, stroking the female tenderness hidden beneath layers of fabric. Then, chillingly, in his mind he heard Sir Anthony saying, "
I'm sure you could be very persuasive
."