To Love and to Loathe (The Regency Vows #2)(68)

Except, of course, that in this moment he was certain that he’d chosen all wrong, that she wouldn’t wish to paint him at all, that she’d cast him out of her bedchamber—

“Come in,” she said, stepping back to allow him entrance, neatly nipping his anxiety in the bud. As he walked into the room, he gave himself a bit of a mental shake; he’d bedded some of the most beautiful women of the ton, for Christ’s sake. Why should one sharp-tongued widow reduce him to his current state of incoherence?

As she closed and bolted the door behind him, he paused to survey the room. A fire crackled in the fireplace, casting a romantic glow upon their surroundings; she also had the heavy drapes at the window flung wide, allowing moonlight to flood the room. She had set up an easel and canvas before the window, and had moved one of the armchairs a bit back from the fireplace so that it faced her instead.

“I take it I’m to sit there?” he asked, gesturing toward the chair as she moved past him deeper into the room.

“I think so.” She stood with her hands on her hips, surveying the scene before them. The moonlight gilded her skin, making her complexion even more luminous than usual; he clenched his hands at his sides to resist the urge to reach out and touch her, to claim all of that soft, glowing skin with his own flesh.

“I don’t want you in direct moonlight because I think firelight will suit you better,” she explained, turning to him. “But I didn’t want you to sit too close to the fireplace, since that corner of the room is full of shadows. But I think that if you sit in that chair”—she gestured at it casually, and he was somehow fascinated by the lazy grace of that single hand movement—“then we’ll strike the right balance.” She bit her lip. “Does that suit you?”

It took him a moment to register her question, so distracted was he by the way her curves were silhouetted by the moonlight behind her. “Er,” he said belatedly, dragging his eyes upward to her face with some difficulty, “whatever you think is best.”

She batted her eyelashes. “Oh, how I have waited these many years to hear you say those words.” She motioned to the chair. “Sit.”

“Yes, madam.” He brushed past her to take a seat in the chair indicated, unashamed to admit that he walked significantly closer to her than was strictly necessary in the process. He did not think he had imagined her sharp intake of breath as he did so. He paused in the act of lowering himself into his seat. “Shall I remove the banyan, or…?”

She scrutinized him for a moment, her brow slightly furrowed. Perversely, he rather enjoyed this look—there was nothing remotely amorous in it, and he knew that, in that moment, she was examining him in a purely objective, aesthetic sense. But he liked watching her do it—he liked the faint line between her eyebrows and the way she tapped her chin gently with an index finger, her elbow cushioned in one palm. When she was in company, everything about her seemed oh-so-slightly calculated—her posture just so, the arching of an eyebrow in invitation. It was refreshing to see her like this instead, entirely unaware of her appearance, completely focused on something else.

Someone else, in this case: him.

“Leave it on for now,” she said after a few moments of thought. “I think it brings out the warmth of your skin.” She shrugged with a bit of a laugh. “Not that it matters terribly much at the moment—I’ll just be sketching you first.” She retreated to her easel and, ignoring the canvas, picked up a worn leather-bound notebook that he hadn’t noticed. She seated herself on a stool that he thought she might have purloined from her dressing table, picked up a worn stub of pencil, and opened the notebook. She lifted her knees so that her bare feet rested on an ottoman she’d placed before her and the notebook could perch on her knees; then she looked up and met his gaze. Her mouth twitched.

“You can relax a bit,” she said. “You look like a young lady at finishing school, about to be asked to walk about the room with a book on her head.”

He allowed his posture to slacken, sinking back deeper into the armchair. He was surprised at how uncomfortable he felt, fully clothed, sitting here before her. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this nervous to be alone with a woman. “Do they really do that? At finishing schools, I mean?”

Her mouth quirked up on one side even as she lifted her pencil and began to make a series of rapid strokes. “Never having been to school myself, I can’t say for sure, but I’ve heard the anecdote from more than one lady of my acquaintance.”

“All private governesses for you, if I recall?” he asked—he found that filling the space between them with conversation made him feel less like he was a fish in a fishbowl.

“For a while,” she agreed, her eyes on the paper before her. “My uncle and aunt allowed me to be tutored with Penvale, until he went away to Eton—I think they didn’t want the expense of hiring a separate governess for me until it was necessary, but I had no complaint, since it ensured I received a far more useful education than I might have otherwise. Until he left, of course.” The movement of her hand paused for a moment and her eyes flicked upward to study him again. In the candlelight, they appeared more brown than hazel.

“Once Penvale left for school, they hired a governess for me for a spell—I was the daughter of a viscount, after all, and they didn’t want anyone to claim they weren’t giving me a proper education. I was taught watercolors. We continued with my study of French, and I dabbled a bit on the pianoforte. I was dreadful at it,” she added.