Page 51 of To Love and to Loathe
“What a mental image,” Audley murmured, taking another sip.
“Is this the part where you threaten me if I so much as touch your sister?” Jeremy asked, taking a leisurely sip of his own. “Because in the interest of honesty, I feel the need to confess it’s a bit late for that.”
“Hardly,” Penvale said, shaking his head. “I’m more concerned about you than her.”
“Me?” Jeremy attempted a devil-may-care sort of laugh, but the effect was somewhat spoiled when he choked on his brandy and collapsed in a fit of wheezing.
“This is precisely what I was worried about,” Penvale said, watching him with what Jeremy was very much afraid was pity. “You’re already a shadow of your former self.”
“I beg to differ,” Jeremy objected. “Or were you not at the same dinner table I was? I am apparently a prime specimen on the marriage mart, judging by Lady Helen’s behavior.”
Penvale ignored this. “I just want you to be… careful.” He seemed to be selecting his words with caution, and there was not the slightest trace of humor on his face. His gaze on Jeremy was razor-sharp, and Jeremy found himself fighting the uncomfortable urge to shift in his seat like a naughty schoolboy. “My sister is… calculating. I don’t want you to fall in love with her and get your heart broken.”
“Inlove?” Jeremy asked, his voice cracking on the word. “I can assure you, I’m in no danger of that.”
“Mmm,” Penvale said skeptically, but before he could elaborate further, Audley chimed in.
“I have always thought you might be a bit besotted with her, Jeremy.”
“Besotted?”This conversation kept growing worse and worse; Jeremy gathered the remaining fragments of his dignity about himself and stood, chin up, projecting every bit of aristocratic froideur he could manage. “I have never been besotted with anyone in my entire life, and I certainly don’t intend to start with a lady I can barely exchange three civil sentences in a row with.”
“I myself have found recently that the more one denies the existence of deeper feelings, the more likely they are to exist,” Audley commented, studying his tumbler with more interest than Jeremy felt was warranted.
“I don’t wish to quarrel about this, Jeremy,” Penvale said, reaching out to grip his shoulder once more. “Nor, in perfect honesty, do I really wish to spend much time contemplating the idea of you and Diana being romantically involved.” He paused. “But she can take care of herself. And I know you can, too. Just… don’t fall in love with her. I’ve heard her rail against marriage more times than I can count. And of the two of you, I think you’re the one more likely to be disappointed with how this ends.”
Jeremy scarcely knew how to respond. He was indignant at the idea that he would be left brokenhearted by anyone, much less a certain sharp-tongued widow; he thought that Penvale did not perhaps do his sister enough credit—the Diana that Jeremy had grown to know was capable of far deeper feeling than her brother seemed to believe. Underneath it all, though, he was grateful for a friend who he knew had his best interests at heart.
“I do not anticipate Diana breaking my heart,” he said evenly at last, draining his glass in one burning gulp and setting it down on an end table with a heavy thunk. “And I think your sister is a more complicated person than you perhaps understand her to be. I’mnotin love with her,” he added firmly, “but I’ve come to realize that there’s far more to her than meets the eye, and I pity anyone who can’t see that—and appreciate it.” Relishing the sight of Penvale and Audley both rendered momentarily speechless, Jeremy nodded to them amiably.
“Good night, chaps,” he said, feeling unaccountably cheerful all of a sudden as he strode from the room.
Nineteen
The clock had barely ceasedtolling the midnight hour when Jeremy rapped upon Diana’s door.
For a moment, he experienced a fleeting, entirely uncharacteristic feeling of uncertainty—was he too punctual? Would she think him overeager? They had not been keeping terribly late hours thus far in the house party, but the late stragglers had only broken up downstairs half an hour earlier—was that enough time for her? Despite the number of women he’d bedded, the intricacies of ladies’ toilettes remained something of a mystery to him. Was thirty minutes enough time to undress and do whatever mysterious things they did in preparation for an evening of rest—or of no rest, as the case might be?
Fortunately, she saved him from himself by opening her door only a few seconds after he knocked, clad in a nightgown and wrapper and looking entirely unsurprised to see him. He must not be too early, then.
As she cast a leisurely glance up and down his person, however, new causes for anxiety reared their ugly heads. Was he attired appropriately? He’d dismissed his valet and undressed without assistance, but then had hesitated. She had assured him—in what surely had to be one of the more humiliating moments of his life—that she did not expect to paint him naked, but whatdidshe expect him to wear? He,of course, had failed to ask, and had hovered in his dressing room for a solid ten minutes, casting uncertain glances around at his many, all somehow inappropriate, articles of clothing.
Eventually, he had settled on a pair of fawn-colored breeches and a white shirt, cravat-less under a forest green banyan. He’d no idea if it was what she’d envisioned, but he also refused to spend a moment more contemplating the matter. A man had his dignity to consider, after all.
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 theton, 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.”
