swept out, her slippers dampening the rage he heard in her steps. He waited until he no longer heard her, until the house was silent around him — or as silent as an old house could be, creaking and shuddering as the temperature fell and an icy wind beat against the windowpanes. It was too cold to stay there, when a featherbed and a warming pan waited for him downstairs. His blood no longer found joy in winter, not after an endless summer in India.
But he put on his shirt, shrugged into his jacket, and returned to the paintings that lined the walls. Ellie confused him at every turn — one moment making him think she’d always loved him, the next claiming that she could never love anyone at all. Not that he blamed her; his thoughts were just as confused. Perhaps, in this life, there would never be clarity between them.
But after tonight, he realized there were two places where he might glimpse the real truth, the one she hid even from herself: in her paintings, made when she never expected him to return, and in his arms as she came undone.
He’d have endless time to exploit her weakness for him in bed. But her paintings — she might move or destroy them, especially after he’d recognized himself in her painting of Odysseus.
So in the candlelight, alone, he explored her.
And hoped that somehow, on some canvas, he might discover why she had given him up.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The next morning, at an unfashionably early hour, Nick asked one of the footmen where to find his study. He had arranged to meet Ellie, Marcus, and Ellie’s maid in hopes that they might solve the issue of the highwayman discreetly and with minimal bloodshed. Not that he wanted to see Ellie in such circumstances — not after the pleasure, and confusion, of the previous night. But when Nick found his study, he wished he hadn’t.
“Bloody hell,” he muttered as he came to a sudden stop in the center of the doorway. Studies were supposed to be male preserves, all dark wood and handsomely-bound leather books. This was…this was…
“Do you like it?” Ellie said as she came up the hall behind him. “I redecorated last year.”
“It’s…”
There were no words.
She slipped past where he stood rooted to the floor and claimed the seat behind the desk. Then she gasped, hugely and artificially, with a hand pressed to her heart as though she were an untrained Covent Garden actress. “Oh my, this is your desk now, isn’t it, Lord Folkestone? How tactless of me.”
But she didn’t stand to give way. And he didn’t want her to. The study was an affront to everything masculine — but she was somehow even more beautiful when her blue eyes were lit up with smug satisfaction. And they were certainly lit up now, as he reacted to what she had done to the room. Even her own salon, the one where he had proposed their unholy bargain on his first night in the house, was more masculine than this. His father had told him that the study, at least when it had belonged to Nick’s paternal grandfather, had held hunting trophies, ancient furnishings, and comfortable leather chairs for reading.
There were no comfortable chairs now — just a few tufted hassocks in varying shades of lavender. He walked into the room, pretending it wasn’t utterly ridiculous. The walls were hung with a soft pink damask. The desk was white and gold, with curved legs better suited to a French boudoir than an English gentleman’s retreat. The only welcome sight was the whisky decanter on one shelf — even Ellie’s hatred of him wouldn’t make her banish spirits from the room.
“I will say, Lady Folkestone, your color choices surprise me. I believe I prefer the palette you used in your painting of Circe — even with the chains.”
He couldn’t tell if she blushed or if the pinkness of the room had blinded him. Either way, she smiled. “I hope you’re always so approving of my artistic efforts.”
It was only when her eyes flickered toward the fireplace that he took a closer look at the painting above the mantel. It was the first canvas she’d ever painted of him, if he was not mistaken — and he had always hoped that the silly, besotted look on his face was due to her previous inexperience with human models, not because he actually looked at her like that.
But the painting was different than he remembered.