Page 17 of His Duchess of Scandal (Brides of Scandal #1)

Chapter Eleven

“ P apa, look what I found!”

Before Charles could collect himself or look up, a blur of dark hair and pink skirts shot into his vision. He cried out right as Phoebe knocked over his full inkwell.

Ink spilled over the contract he had been reading, and he cursed violently before cutting himself off.

Slowly, he looked up at Phoebe, who stared at him with wide, panicked eyes.

“Papa, I am sorry. I got too excited to show you…” She clutched the front of her dress, where more ink had spilled. But in her palm, she held up a four-leaf clover. “Hermia helped me find it in the woods.”

Seconds later, Hermia rushed in, clapping her hand over her mouth at the sight. “Heavens. Miss Tarnen, come quickly!”

“Uh-oh,” Phoebe whispered. “It was an accident, Papa, I swear! This was not even a prank!”

“Regardless,” Charles gritted out, “you know better than to barge into my study like this. You should not even be in here, Phoebe! How many times do I have to?—”

Phoebe’s sniffles filled the room, and he felt as though he had been punched in the gut.

Heavens , he had been too harsh again.

Hermia surged forward angrily, tugging the crying girl to her side as if he was the problem.

Charles glared at her before looking at his daughter. His heart hardened even when he willed it to be kinder and softer. But why could she not just listen ?

What made him so terrible, but Hermia so good?

“Phoebe,” he said, forcing his voice to be calmer, but his words just came out too clipped. “I need you to stop crying now. Ladies do not cry.”

“Ladies do cry when their papas are being mean!” Phoebe shouted, burying her face in Hermia’s skirts.

His wife didn’t seem to mind that the girl smeared ink on her, too, and merely held her until the governess returned and took her away.

When it was just the two of them in the study, Charles rounded his desk and stopped in front of her.

He jabbed an angry finger at the spillage. “This is your idea of good teachings? She is not getting any better.”

“I told you that it takes time.”

“You are not a parent,” he ground out. “How do you know what you are doing and the methods that will work?”

He moved closer to her, not in anger but in distress, in frustration, because he so desperately wanted just an inch of whatever it was she possessed to console his daughter.

“I am her father, and I am the Duke of Branmere. There are standards she must uphold, and so far she is—she is not…”

Hermia shook her head. “I am not a parent, no, but I know that Phoebe walks away from me smiling and happy. She walks away from you in tears. I do believe that says enough, no? You are the Duke, yes, but I am your Duchess, and I can still treat her with enough patience.”

“Patience,” he snapped. “What does anybody know of patience? I have just had this contract drawn up, and now I must have it rewritten and resent. She has just set me back at least two weeks.”

“ She is your daughter, and it is about time you put aside your work to focus on her needs .” Hermia sucked in a ragged breath.

Charles could not help but notice how pink her cheeks were, how she panted for breath, and how close she stood.

“All she wanted to do was give you a clover she found. She ran all the way back from the woods.”

Something inside him broke upon hearing that.

It felt like that was all he was doing: breaking over these moments of clarity. He felt blinded and helpless all at once.

“You must apologize,” Hermia insisted.

“I do not follow orders.”

“Perhaps you should follow the ones coming from your wife.”

He looked up from the clover on his desk, the stem bent by an eager hand, to find Hermia’s eyes narrowed into slits.

His mind flashed to that night at Anton Bentley’s. Her breathy noises spilling into the pillow, his orders, her pleas.

“More … ”

“Do not stop…”

He swallowed, pushing down the memories. He was already having enough flashbacks of that night, what with seeing Hermia so often. Knowing that a mere wall separated them at night was torture.

“And what other orders do you intend to give me?” He stepped closer to her, cocking his head. “Try to order me around, Duchess, and you will find that I do not take kindly to it.”

He had said a similar thing to her the night he had imprinted the shape of their bodies into the bed. Her eyelashes had fluttered with desire back then, and he watched as they did the same now.

Damn it, he had to stop this. He had to pull back before he let things get too far.

It took everything within him to step back, to leave her there, nearly panting.

With one last look, he motioned for her to leave, but he did not stay to make sure she obeyed.

However, after her footsteps retreated in the opposite direction, he went back into his study and grabbed the clover.

He took it upstairs—not to his chamber, but to his studio, a room that was locked to everyone but him, Mrs. Nightgale, and two trusted footmen who moved the paintings he told them to.

Slipping into his studio, he released the breath that had been stuck in his chest for days, painful and maddening.

For days now, he had watched Hermia. The way she tucked her hair behind her ear whenever she leaned towards a flower to smell it, the way the light caught her blue eyes, turning them burnished.

The small smile on her face when she thought nobody was watching her dance her fingers through pools of sunlight.

And then there was the flutter of her eyelashes at his orders. The heave of her chest. The sound of her pacing her room at night as if debating whether to knock on his door.

Charles both hoped she would and would not, for he could not give in to the temptation to take her as he once had, but he wished he could. He wished he had the excuse of losing control to have her just once more.

Words were not enough to describe the burning ache that had burrowed into him ever since he had seen her again, invited her into his house, smelled her perfume after she bathed and emerged from her room, ready for the day.

The only way he could let it all out was by painting—what he had always done whenever something plagued him.

Unbuttoning his waistcoat, he shed the layer of himself, of being a duke and a father, and became Christian Dawson, the painter that the ton raved about. He was both artist and curator, a game of two dice that he held every hand in.

A game he had not lost until he had his most coveted painting unveiled.

Usually, he painted realistic landscapes: open seas, vast skies filled with sunlight that filtered in wide rays. He painted meadows that rolled lushly, and rainfall that made rooftops glisten.

But this—this new style he had adopted ever since meeting Aphrodite at Anton Bentley’s party, the woman he was now married to, was new.

He gazed upon the canvas he had been working on. It was another painting of Hermia, except it was also not.

The concept was born from what she stirred inside him, but a part of him was scared to put her features on canvas.

So he painted them in the most delicate, subtle of ways: the freckles beneath her left eye became stars—a constellation for a constellation.

He took the chocolate-brown shade of her hair and made it the base color of thread that he painted throughout the canvas, as if he could connect one part of Hermia to the next.

At the center of the canvas was the ruby-red of the wine she had served during the dinner she had organized during her first week at Branmere Hall.

He drew a heart in that shade, for that was how it felt—a heart that was so marred with scars, still leaking, but not blood. No, the heart leaked shadows, for his desire was as dark as night.

He painted the texture of silk that ribboned across the canvas… and he lost himself in his work.

Christian Dawson took over and poured every thought, every desire, and as he finished up his piece for the day, he carefully reconstructed himself back into the Duke of Branmere.

Desire was replaced with duty, and heat with coldness that would keep him safe.