Temptation and the Artist, page 12
Stephen thought about it. “You’re happier around him.”
“Am I?” Aline asked, smiling. Of course, I am. “So are you, I think.”
“And Mr. Flowers likes him. He doesn’t glare at him anymore, except in fun. You probably should marry him. Then we can all be happy. He’s not like the prince, is he?”
Aline swallowed. “No, he’s not like the prince. Do you miss your stepfather?”
“Not really. He was kind enough, but he didn’t really see me. I wasn’t comfortable there. I like it here, though. In town. And I would like to live in the country, too. Stephen can teach me how to ride better.”
“I’m sure he will.”
Basil was an odd mixture of childishness and maturity, shrewdness and naivety. Perhaps all children were. His words echoed around her mind as they wandered around the entertainments and returned to the hotel to pack up the last of their things. Something had bothered her though she couldn’t put her finger on what.
“Mr. Dornan was looking for you, madam,” Burton said as they returned to the room. “He asked that you step up to his studio when you return.”
“Very well,” Aline said calmly, though, in fact, she was both surprised and pleased by the invitation. She hadn’t seen a great deal of him since their return to Renwick’s. Although he had dined with them each night, and taken every opportunity to befuddle her with ravishing kisses, he had been working mostly on his paintings, for which, it seemed, he no longer needed her to sit. Or was that why she had been summoned?
She made her familiar way to the room next to the staff stairs on the floor above and knocked. The door opened at once, and Stephen stood there in his shirt-sleeves, although there were no obvious signs of paint on him.
His eyes lit up at the sight of her, making her heart race, although he seemed unusually serious.
“Aline, come in. Thank you. I wanted you to see them now because I know you will be honest with me, and I am afraid of being too involved to see straight.”
He closed the door behind her while she watched him warily. “You’re babbling. That means you’re worried.”
“Damnably worried, if you’ll pardon my language. Will you look at the portraits?”
Only then did she realize he had all the easels set up with uncovered canvases. “Of course.”
He took her hand and led her to the easels. And suddenly, there she was in the rose garden, a bundle of exquisite, colorful roses in her arm while she reached for a higher bloom and glanced back with an expression that betrayed both humor and hurry. Something about it made her blush.
“It’s me,” she blurted.
“So is this.” He led her to the next, where she sat at an outside table in the sunshine, eating ice cream with an expression of innocent yet sensual bliss.
Her blush deepened. “I can never eat ice cream again.”
“I hope you will,” he said fervently.
Still stunned by her own likeness, she stumbled after him to the next portrait. Basil sat beside her with a piece of cake. She had sewing work in her hand, but her attention was on her son, not politely or even foolishly besotted as some people looked at their offspring, but with utter, genuine enjoyment of his company.
“That is it,” she said in wonder, moving on to the next picture, where she sat on the bed, teasing and yet…seductive. And a little unsure. He had caught that. He caught everything.
Dragging her gaze free, she stared at the largest of the paintings, the one of her twirling around in the “secret” garden under the lantern light and the moonlight. She was rapt, delighted, excited, and yet content in her wonder. He had caught the movement of her swirling gown, the sheer joy of the moment, and more.
“This,” she whispered as the tears threatened. “This. Oh, Stephen. Oh, Stephen,” She turned into his arms and he held her.
“That bad?” he murmured ruefully into her hair.
“That good!” she retorted fiercely. “That astonishingly. They are so insightful, I almost wish they were of someone else, but then I wouldn’t know…”
“Wouldn’t know what?” he asked, stroking her hair with one hand while he tilted up her chin with the other.
“That you know me, that you see me. You have made me beautiful, but I’m me as I’ve never seen myself, as no one has but you… Basil said to me just a little while ago that the prince, my late husband, hadn’t really seen him, and it just came to me that he hadn’t really seen me either. Everyone has ideas about me, and perhaps I foster that, I hide… But you see me, and you love me anyway.”
To stop the stream of words, she kissed him fiercely. “We see each other. We can worry for each other because we care. God, I do love you, Stephen. Will you marry me?”
Stephen’s face lit up in one of those dazzling smiles she’d seen a lot more of since coming to Renwick’s, but she only caught a glimpse of it before he blocked out the light and kissed her until the world was warm and dark and swirling with passion.
It was the work of moments to fall on the bed and mere minutes to release the powerful surge of emotion in the sweetest, most satisfying way.
It took a little longer to pack off Stephen’s paintings to Paris, and a week or so after that to marry. They went to Paris for their wedding journey, and Aline was much feted as the model of the winning entries of the competition. Various artists and art lovers tried brazenly to entice her away from her husband. But they never stood a chance. Stephen was and remained her sole love and the only gentleman of pleasure she wanted.
About Mary Lancaster
Mary Lancaster lives in Scotland with her husband, three mostly grown-up kids and a small, crazy dog.
Her first literary love was historical fiction, a genre which she relishes mixing up with romance and adventure in her own writing. Her most recent books are light, fun Regency romances written for Dragonblade Publishing: The Imperial Season series set at the Congress of Vienna; and the popular Blackhaven Brides series, which is set in a fashionable English spa town frequented by the great and the bad of Regency society.
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Lancaster, Mary, Temptation and the Artist
