A Lady's Dream Come True - Grace Burrowes Page 0,68
nightgown with Dirk. She kept that inanity behind her teeth. Dirk was dead and gone. For the first time since losing him, she could regard his death as not entirely a sorrow. He’d had a fine life, made great art, and had many friends. She’d been lucky to be his wife.
But her life had not ended with his passing. Not nearly.
Oak watched her, his smile patient, as if he knew exactly what he asked of her.
“Braid my hair, please,” she said. “Then you will assist me to disrobe.” Never before had she given orders in the bedroom, though why not? Why not state what she needed and desired, the better to see those needs met?
Oak made short work of tidying up her hair, and then she was standing beside the bed as he unbelted her dressing gown and drew it from her shoulders.
“The nightgown, too, Vera. I wouldn’t want it to get torn.”
“Torn?”
He gathered up the two sides of her décolletage in his fists. “Rent asunder and flung who knows where.”
Like my wits. “No tearing needed. Would you see to the candles?”
“Soon.” He hung the dressing gown over its customary hook on the bedpost. “I want to see you. I want to know the shade of your breasts by firelight—rose alabaster, perhaps. I want to see the curve of your hip and learn the exact line of your belly as it flows down to your mons. I want to know if your second toe is longer than the first and which hip is higher.”
“You are not painting me.”
He undid the bow holding her nightgown gathered at her décolletage. “And you are not the blushing maid of the shires, if you ever were.”
She studied him for a long moment, seeing in his eyes both desire and a challenge. “I am not the blushing maid of the shires, and I am not a coward either.” She drew the nightgown over her head, threw it at him, and stood before him, allowing him to inspect her more closely than she’d ever inspected herself.
Oak’s body knew exactly what the next steps should be.
He should toss Vera onto the bed—gently, of course—then fall upon her in a mad passion and thrust his way to glory. Recent self-indulgence meant he probably had enough restraint to ensure Vera traveled with him on that lovely road.
Probably wasn’t good enough. Not for the goddess standing before him, as naked as she’d arrived into the world. As the past week had rolled along, Oak had gradually come to appreciate what taking a lover would mean to Vera, how it would mark a turning point in the progression from wife, to widow, to an independence few women ever negotiated.
She was, in essence, leaving home, as Oak had left home. When she’d tossed her nightgown at him, she’d tossed him a challenge: Be worthy of my courage, for you’ll not have an opportunity like this again.
“Never,” he said, “has the need to sketch so thoroughly challenged the desire to copulate.” Vera was sturdy, as countrywomen were sturdy, with defined musculature on her legs and arms. But ye gods, she was also curved. Her hips flared generously from her waist, and her belly wasn’t quite flat, but rather echoed the contours of Renaissance nudes. Her breasts were full and pale, and indeed, rose alabaster would have done them justice.
The whole of her was lovely, and Oak had the ungallant thought that if Dirk Channing hadn’t painted his wife nude, Channing had been an idiot.
“What?” she said, chin coming up.
Oak draped her nightgown across the foot of the bed. “You kept your nightgown on when you slept with your husband?”
“I did, and he blew out the candles.”
Oak took a step closer. “You asked him for those sops to modesty?”
“No. If he’d expected differently of me, I would have accommodated him. He was my husband.”
“He was a fool,” Oak said, sending up a prayer that Channing was at least resting in peace. “My guess is, he was self-conscious about his own less than youthful appearance by the time you came along. He pretended to defer to your nonexistent maidenly vapors rather than risk coming up short before his lovely wife.”
“He was proud. Most men are.”
Oak was ready to have done with any mention of the late, great, vain Dirk Channing. “You loved him. You did not care if he was a picture of manly vigor. You wanted only to please him and build a life with him. He could have held you through the night,