Staring up at the segment of sky visible through the dormer windows, she tried to think, convinced she should, about their liaison-about how it had evolved, its all-consuming fire-but sleep wouldn’t be denied, and she succumbed.
He stirred her awake when the sky was still dark, when stars still sparkled, diamonds scattered by a god’s hand. He was a dark god, a shadow blocking out the stars as he rose above her, a night god claiming her, swift, certain, and sure, devastating and divine. In the dark of the night, he demanded and drove her; she sobbed, surrendered, and gave all he asked. Everything he desired. All she wanted.
Pleasure thrummed, hot and sweet through her veins, down her nerves, then completion took her and she shattered.
Later, when dawn was coloring the sky, he led her down to her room. He kissed her, then turned and went back up the hidden stairs. A silly smile on her lips, she watched until he disappeared, then waltzed across the room, and fell into bed.
As she’d arranged, no maid came to wake her until she rang. She slept until midday, then, thoroughly refreshed, rose and prepared for her day.
While Gerrard reviewed his work and planned what he would paint that night, she had a luncheon to attend, then he and she would visit Helen Purfett, after which she, Millicent, Minnie and Timms had been invited to a select afternoon tea at the Marchioness of Huntly’s London home.
That day proved a pattern card for those that followed. Other than for the fittings at Helen Purfett’s salon, she didn’t see Gerrard until he joined them for dinner. After that, he accompanied them to whatever evening engagement they’d accepted, but at ten o’clock, when the summer twilight had faded from the sky, he and she returned to Brook Street and his studio.
Her sessions posing beside the column grew steadily longer.
Their bouts of lovemaking grew progressively more intense.
More intensely intimate.
The brassy bronze gown was completed; clad in it, she stood beside the column. Courtesy of what he’d already painted, she could readily imagine she stood poised on the threshold of the Garden of Night.
About to step free of its cloying embrace.
When she needed a rest, he had her sit on a stool, her face at the same angle as when she was posed, and talk to him of the past-of her mother and Thomas, all she’d felt about their deaths and the hurt of the whisper campaign against her.
It no longer bothered her to speak of it, yet when she did, she could feel the old emotions rising through her-knew that was why he needed her to talk of it, so he could capture those feelings, all that showed in her face, for his canvas.
Increasingly, far more than she’d expected, the portrait became a shared enterprise; she hadn’t imagined that painter and subject could work together in such a way, yet with him and her, between them, they did.
She grew steadily more familiar with his work, more critically appreciative of his genius. For genius it was; the figure that took shape on the canvas was so vibrantly alive, every time she looked at it, it was a shock to realize it was her.
Since the day they’d arrived in London, she hadn’t seen Barnaby, but one evening at the end of the first week, he sought her and Gerrard out as they were strolling between the guests at Lady Chartwell’s soirée.
“There you are!” Joining them, Barnaby looked around the room. “You know, town’s not so bad in summer after all-despite the heat, it’s a dashed sight more comfortable than any damned house party.”
“And whose house party have you been attending?” Jacqueline asked.
Barnaby grimaced. “M’sister’s.” He met Gerrard’s eyes. “And she had, indeed, invited the dreadful Melissa.”
Gerrard grinned. “How did you escape?”
“Silently, in the dead of night.”
Jacqueline laughed.
Barnaby placed a hand over his heart. “Word of honor.”
“But why did you go?” she asked.
“I was chasing m’father. Ran him to earth there, and dashed if he didn’t join me in my clandestine bolt to the capital. He’s holed up in Bedford Square, swearing not to venture forth other than on official business. Useful, as it happened-I had plenty of time to bend his ear while on the way to town.”
“What did you learn?” Gerrard asked. Barnaby’s father, the Earl of Sanford, was one of the committee of peers overseeing the newly established metropolitan police force.
Barnaby glanced around, confirming that no one else stood near enough to overhear. “The pater thinks as we do-he’s rather impressed by your talents, incidentally.” Barnaby grinned briefly, then sobered. “But more to the point, he agreed I should talk to Stokes.”
“Who’s Stokes?” Jacqueline asked.
“An investigator-I understand his title will now be inspector-with Bow Street. He’s more or less a gentleman, but rather more importantly, he’s made a name for himself solving convoluted crimes of the sort we’re dealing with.” Barnaby met Jacqueline’s eyes. “I can vouch for his discretion, but given we can’t, at this stage, lay any formal complaint, all I’m hoping to get from him is some indication as to which direction his experience suggests we look in for our murderer.”
Barnaby fell silent, his gaze on Jacqueline. Understanding what Barnaby wanted-why he’d sought them out-Gerrard asked, “Are you comfortable with Barnaby discussing all we know and believe with Stokes?”
She refocused on Barnaby. “Yes. If he can help, or suggest who might be behind the murders, then of course, do speak with him.”
“Just let us know what he says,” Gerrard added.
Barnaby grinned. “Righto. I don’t plan on going back to the Hall until you’re ready with the portrait. I’ll be skulking around the traps. Send for me if you need me.”
With a snappy salute, he left them. Within minutes he was making his excuses to a disappointed Lady Chartwell.
Ten minutes later, her ladyship’s clocks struck the hour-ten o’clock. Gerrard steered Jacqueline to her ladyship’s side, and with his customary charm, excused them without, in fact, giving any real excuse. Lady Chartwell smiled, patted Jacqueline’s hand, and let them go. His town carriage was waiting; in minutes, they were on their way back to his studio.
Days passed. Jacqueline posed, Gerrard painted, and the portrait came to life.
It increasingly absorbed him, all but obsessed him. The only distraction capable of disrupting its hold was its subject, Jacqueline herself.
She commanded his attention on a level that effortlessly overrode all else, even his need to paint. How it had happened he didn’t know, but she, her nearness, knowing she was his, had become vital, the linchpin of his existence, the very essence of his future. Even while he threw his energies into her portrait, that vulnerability nagged. He hadn’t yet secured her-hadn’t yet offered for her hand and been accepted.
Time and again, he thought of mentioning it, doing the deed so it was over and done. Accomplished.
Time and again, he remembered she was, in a fashion, in his debt in terms of the portrait-she needed him and his talents to win free, to win back her life. The idea she might feel obliged to accept his offer because of that filled him with creeping horror.
If he asked her now, before the portrait was completed, how would he know, or ever be sure of, her reasons for accepting him?
Which left him facing the single, central source of his uncertainty-he still couldn’t guess what she thought. What she truly felt for him, how she saw him. For a man who’d imagined he’d understood women well, it was a humbling situation.
My dear, I’m so glad Gerrard has chosen you.”
Jacqueline blinked. She stared at the extremely old, distinctly vague but sweet old lady she’d only met five minutes before.