Surrender of a Siren (The Wanton Dairymaid Trilogy #2)(59)

Desire and jealous rage warred in his countenance, yet he remained as immobile as one of Lord Elgin’s marble sculptures. What would it take to spur the man into action? Frustrated, she blew a wisp of hair off her face and nodded in the direction of his arm. “Would you pass me the little pot of red?”

He frowned down at the scattered cakes of pigment. “Which one is the red?”

“The vermillion. Just there at your elbow. You see it.”

“This one?” He handed her a pot of Vandyke brown.

Sophia flung her palette on the table and stretched for the red pigment herself. “If you don’t wish to help me, just say so. There’s no need to tease.”

“Calm down, sweetheart. I’m not teasing you at all. I don’t see colors the way most people do, it seems.”

“What do you mean, you don’t see colors?”

He shrugged. “I see some colors. Just not as many as other people seem to see. You say, ‘red, green, brown’… they all look the same to me. If a sapphire lies next to an amethyst, I can’t tell them apart. Apparently, I had an uncle who was the same way. Once my tutor stopped beating me for mislabeling my Latin exercises, it’s never troubled me.” He turned his attention back to his book.

“But … but that’s tragic! To go through life without color? Unable to appreciate art, or beauty?”

He laughed. “Now, sweet—hold your brush before you paint me a martyr’s halo. It’s not as though I’m blind. I have a great appreciation for art, as I believe we’ve discussed. And as for beauty … I don’t need to know whether your eyes are blue or green or lavender to know that they’re uncommonly lovely.”

“No one has lavender eyes.”

“Don’t they?” His gaze caught hers and refused to let go. Leaning forward, he continued, “Did that tutor of yours ever tell you this? That your eyes are ringed with a perfect circle a few shades darker than the rest of the … don’t they call it the iris?”

Sophia nodded.

“The iris.” He propped his elbow on the table and leaned forward, his gaze searching hers intently. “An apt term it is, too. There are these lighter rays that fan out from the center, like petals. And when your pupils widen—like that, right there—your eyes are like two flowers just coming into bloom. Fresh. Innocent.”

She bowed her head, mixing a touch of lead white into the sea-green paint on her palette. He leaned closer still, his voice a hypnotic whisper.

“But when you take delight in teasing me, looking up through those thick lashes, so saucy and self-satisfied …” She gave him a sharp look. He snapped his fingers. “There! Just like that. Oh, sweet—then those eyes are like two opera dancers smiling from behind big, feathered fans. Coy. Beckoning.”

Sophia felt a hot blush spreading from her bosom to her throat.

He smiled and reclined in his chair. “I don’t need to know the color of your hair to see that it’s smooth and shiny as silk. I don’t need to know whether it’s yellow or orange or red to spend an inordinate amount of time wondering how it would feel brushing against my bare skin.”

Opening his book to the marked page, he continued, “And don’t get me started on your lips, sweet. If I endeavored to discover the precise shade of red or pink or violet they are, I might never muster the concentration for anything else.”

He turned a leaf of his book, then fell silent.

Sophia stared at her canvas. Her pulse pounded in her ears. A bead of sweat trickled down the back of her neck, channeling down between her shoulder blades, and a hot, itchy longing pooled at the cleft of her legs. Drat him. He’d known she was taunting him with her stories. And now he sat there in an attitude of near-boredom, making love to her with his teasing, colorless words in a blatant attempt to fluster her. It was as though they were playing a game of cards, and he’d just raised the stakes. Sophia smiled. She always won at cards.

“Balderdash,” she said calmly.

He looked up at her, eyebrow raised.

“No one has violet lips.”

“Don’t they?”

She laid aside her palette and crossed her arms on the table. “The slope of your nose is quite distinctive.”

His lips quirked in a lopsided grin. “Really.”

“Yes.” She leaned forward, allowing her bosom to spill against her stacked arms. His gaze dipped, but quickly returned to hers. “The way you have that little bump at the bridge … It’s proving quite a challenge.”

“Is that so?” He bent his head and studied his book. Sophia stared at him, waiting one … two … three beats before he raised his hand to rub the bridge of his nose. Quite satisfactory progress, that. Definite beginnings of fluster.

“Once, during one of my lessons with Gervais, I was sketching Michelangelo’s David, from a plate in a book. Only, I could not capture the muscles of the forearm at all.”

“Him again?” He heaved a bored sigh as he turned another page.

“Gervais stood up”—Sophia pushed back from the table and rose to her feet—“wrenched off his coat, and rolled his shirtsleeve up to the elbow.”

She placed her hand flat on the table, directly in front of Gray.

“He took my hand and dragged my fingers over every slope and sinew of his arm.” As she spoke, Sophia traced the tendons of her planted wrist with her free hand. When she skimmed her fingers up to the hollow of her elbow, she heard his breath catch. Good. More progress.