Page 11 of The Baron Without Blame
“They are beautiful.” Her neighbors the Pemberlys had a huge collection of Company School art, but most of it featured specimens of animals or sketches of intricate architecture.
“It is beautiful countryside. I can’t tell you how many times our carriage would round a corner or come to the top of a hill and my jaw would drop into my lap in awe. And the whole Eastern world is colorful. Men, women, buildings. Everything is as colorful as it can possibly be.” Martin pointed to the painting of the cotton field. “It took me a while to see the people in this one.”
Lolly looked more closely. The cotton plants were painted in varying hues of brown with bright white blossoms. Vibrant flowers peeked from between the bushes every now and then. Except when she examined it, she realized the flowers were people. Men dressed in colors dabbed with quick, tiny brushstrokes.
“If you are at a cotton field in truth, it is filled with laborers. No matter the season. They’re either preparing the soil, planting, watering, or picking. If they don’t tend the cotton, they won’t be able to sell it back to us, and then they’ll be in even worse debt.” The excitement had drained from his voice.
Lolly ached after spending all of fifteen minutes trimming her mother’s roses. She couldn’t imagine doing it all day. Of course, the English would say that was because she was born into nobility. But Lolly could hear Frances sneering at that.We’re all God’s children, not one of us made to be inferior to another.
Frances, to whom Lolly still had not written.
“What about the mountains?” Lolly asked. “Are they also hiding some unpleasant truth from me?”
She accidentally swayed closer to him with the question. Her shoulder brushed his, sparking a fire through her fingers to her core.
Martin didn’t move as he pointed with his other arm to the mountainscape. “I never visited those mountains, so I don’t know anything beyond what I’ve heard, which is that it is desperately beautiful and remote.” He shifted his hand to indicate the sea painting, and somehow he ended up leaning that much closer to her. “This one is the port where I first arrived. It is too treacherous for the ships to come into the harbor, so they anchor in the sea and little boats carry us to land in churning waves.” Martin dropped his hand. “Anyhow, since you were kind enough to listen to me rant the other day, I wanted you to see a little bit of what I saw. I commissioned these paintings so I wouldn’t forget. I was afraid when I returned to England, I would be lulled back into complacency by the silver-tongued rhetoric of my peers. These are to remind me of all I learned.”
Lolly allowed herself a quiet, secret thrill that he had been thinking of her. Then she glared at the cotton farm to suppress the reaction. She was supposed to be indifferent to him. “Do you think it is possible to undo the harm our commerce has caused?”
He looked down at the same moment she tilted her chin up. His gaze was as intense as it was thoughtful, and Lolly had to look away.
“I think it is more like a gash in the arm.” In a sudden movement, Martin seized her arm. His fingers feathered from the base of her wrist up, skating all the way to her elbow. “The wound cannot be removed entirely, but with the proper stitching, it can heal.”
Lolly’s breath froze in her lungs. Her mouth and hands and thoughts were dry. Her whole being was her left forearm, waiting – yearning – for what his fingers would do next. For a moment, she believed they were two beings suspended in time. And then he drew his fingers backwards, down the length of her sensitive skin, until he held nothing but her palm in his two hands.
His gaze clung to her again. “I do not know what the right thing to do is. That is where I equivocate. But I must do something. I am a lord of the realm. Is it not my responsibility, designated by God at birth, to see to those who are less fortunate than me?”
It was all Lolly could do to breathe, “Yes.” She had never imagined passion could feel more potent – or pure. For a moment, all they did was stare at each other, hand in hand.
Then Lolly couldn’t stand it anymore. She launched onto her tiptoes and pressed her lips to his.
?
Martin needed to do the right thing. In every circumstance. It was the drumbeat behind each step he took.
He wanted to do the right thing. Only Lolly’s lips were so soft. She smelled of tea and biscuits. Her fingers dug five points into each of his biceps, and his whole body responded. Tongue against hers. Palms to her waist. Cock into the swell of her skirts.
This was the wrong thing. But it felt right. Natural. Perfect. Now her hands roamed downwards, flat against the sides of his jacket, drifting closer and closer to the tuck of his breeches. He brought his palms to her cheeks, reveling in the soft of her olive skin. He traced her jaw with his thumbs. She tasted so right. And she was his fiancée. And she felt perfect beneath his touch.
He wouldn’t have pulled away, no matter the right thing, except someone nearby cleared their throat.
Martin practically threw Lolly across the room. His heart hammered, expecting to see Lord Turner, and he braced for a dressing down.
But it was Maulvi. His eyes were trained on the ceiling. “Shall I return later, my lord?”
It was just like him to gallop in as Martin’s conscience. He had always been the one in the family to nudge Martin in the right direction, whether it was to mind his tutors or to write his mother more from London. Martin cleared his throat, as if that would straighten the rest of this mess out.
Lolly pressed a hand – which had so recently been measuring the expanse of his body – to her chest, as if to calm her heart. Her lips were swollen, her nose dotted the red of a cherry. At least her dress didn’t need any fixing.
Martin’s thoughts tripped over that last part. Could he really be so base? He had nearly defiled her, this woman who refused to marry him, and he was patting himself on the back for not mussing her dress?
She smiled at him. It was soft and secret and delicious, that smile.
If they were actually planning to marry, Martin could forgive his lust. But he knew Lolly would leave him. He knew she was going to venture into the world on her own; how could he dare make her mission harder as a fallen woman? He should never have touched her, much less kissed her.
“No, Mr. Maulvi.” Martin’s voice came out as a lash. “Please come in. Lady Rosalind, you will excuse us.”
Lolly blinked at him. For a moment, her face still lifted with the smile. But then, upon his dismissal, it disappeared. She looked nothing except bereft. Ravished and bereft.
