Page 27 of 2 Books in One Bundle
They somehow felt intimate. However, he didn’t think they were from life. Still, the bitter spike of something like jealousy overcame him, because they were all of a man. Although there was a familiarity about the sketches. Matteo couldn’t put his finger on it... He kept going, and then he saw it. A full drawing of the statue of David on one page. On the other, Louisa had drawn him, not as the statue, but as if he were a real person. They must be from pictures. She’d never travelled before. The brilliance of them, sketching marble then making that marble come to life in pencil, pen and ink.
He should stop. This book was obviously private, unlike the sketches for her work. Yet he couldn’t. He was like a man possessed. Here was the woman she hid. What other secrets would he find? He wanted to know more of what made Louisa tick. He flicked over pages of detailed drawings, until the drawings changed again.
A sketch of a couple. If he’d thought that the pictures of David were somehow intimate, thiswasabout intimacy. She’d inked so few lines on the page yet there was no hiding what this drawing was about. The pair, naked. You couldn’t see their faces but there was no doubt what they were doing. He turned the page, another scene. A couple lying on a bed. Rumpled sheets. The man’s hand lazily resting on the woman’s stomach. This was like looking through a window, except into Louisa’s soul. Then the detail drawings. Hands clutching sheets, backs arched. Fingers pressing into flesh. Bodies connected.
Heat roared over him, rushing low. The weight of his desire overcoming sensible thought. He couldn’t stop turning page after page. They were magnificent, erotic. Couple after couple making love, kissing. Touching. Questing mouths and hands. Such a contrast to the innocence Louisa always portrayed to the world. He lost himself in her pictures, not thinking whether he should or shouldn’t.
Not thinking much, other than about a need to seemore. He fixed on the last picture, a naked couple entwined, wrapped together and also wrapped in what looked like...wind. With scattered leaves whirling about them as if they’d both been picked up into the air. The woman, hair long and wild, curling round them both in the maelstrom. The man. Dark hair, mouth at her throat...
Were they her fantasies? In a general continuum of the acts of lovemaking they were tame enough. But that they’d come from her at all, given for the best part of her life she’d been isolated... Here he’d spent time berating himself for kissing her, yet these pictures weren’t soft sketches filled with innocent love and romance. They scorched the pages with yearning and passion. A need he knew exactly how to fulfil...
‘What are you doing?’
He hadn’t heard the door open. Matteo snapped the sketchbook shut. A fresh heat burned through him but this wasn’t desire, it was something like shame.
Louisa looked to the sketchbook under his fingers and stormed up to him, eyes narrowed, lips thin in anger. She reached out, hand trembling. Snatched the book from the desk’s surface, holding it to her chest.
‘You had no right. That’s private.’ Her voice was so quiet. As if he’d somehow forced his way into her life and exposed her deepest secrets. Her face flushed red. Her pale skin hiding nothing. He liked the way she blushed, but this time it wasn’t something sweet and innocent. The way her mouth dropped, it was as if she were humiliated.
‘I know.’
The taint of guilt slicked over him then. He’d embarrassed her by invading her space, her privacy. It had been the wrong thing to do and he was sorry, in some ways. In others, he wasn’t sorry at all. Because he’d learned something about Louisa today.
That she desired.
‘They’re things you shouldn’t have looked at. Things I never—’
‘I’m sorry, Lu—Louisa.’
She whipped round, her hair swirling like the woman in the last picture, long, loose. Glorious. Like this, in her fury, it was as if she were on fire.
‘Oh, really? Then why were you in here?’
He held his hands out, placating. ‘I was looking for you. I didn’t know where you were, and I haven’t seen you much over the past few days. I thought you were avoiding me.’
‘I wasworking. Something I thought you might understand.’
‘I do.’ Or at least, he did now. He’d not really thought much about her work before. When she’d first worried about missing her deadline and needing her things he’d dismissed her, told her she should take a break. To have fun. Now... ‘You’re exceptionally talented.’
Her skin flared an even brighter red. Louisa chewed on her lower lip. Clutching the sketch pad to her chest. Her fingers blanched white around the edges.
‘You know what I think?’ he went on. ‘I think you’re feeling ashamed right now of what I’ve seen, and you shouldn’t.’
‘How do you knowanythingabout what I’m feeling?’
‘Because I’m human. Those pictures are all about humanity. Passion. It isn’t something to be ashamed of, or to hide. It’s normal, and I won’t judge you for it.’
It was as if she almost folded in on herself. Shoulders drooping. Hair covering her face. ‘You’re lying.’
‘Why would I lie?’
He wanted her to face him, to be proud of what he’d seen. Instead, she snorted, turned her back to him. Walked to the French doors overlooking the lake and stared outside.
‘People lie all the time, Matteo. They say one thing, mean another. Think only about themselves, not caring who they hurt in the process.’
His gut clenched, hard and angry. He wanted to ask who had hurt her. Who’d put that haunted look on her face. Who’d made her draw, not those pictures of lovemaking and ecstasy, but the darker ones. The ones that looked like, not what she craved, but what she feared. Yet he was also angry at himself. How wounded she appeared, all because of his curiosity, when he should have known better.
People were entitled to their secrets. She could keep hers. All he’d been looking for was a way in, and he’d found it. Anything to show her that living in a huge old home in the country with only staff for company was a waste. That she was a woman of passion and desire. Someone who clearly wanted more, and the world was there for her taking.
