Page 142 of The Ladies Least Likely

“I want to make another set of sketches,” Harriette said, her breathing heavy. It was as though she’d been kissing him for hours, which she would very much like to be doing, but she wanted to draw him more than she wanted to kiss him right now.

“One of your racy prints?”

“This is just for me. So I can finish you. But I need to see—I need to understand…”

She circled her hand in the air, encompassing his tall, rangy frame.

He leaned on his good leg, a casual pose, full of elegant, arrogant ease.

It was an attitude he’d cultivated to hide his defect, and it was because she knew what he was hiding, how hard he worked to pass himself off like other men, that she loved him so completely.

His eyes darkened to indigo. “How much do you need to see?” he purred.

Oh, he was lethal. But the come-hitherness, oddly, made her rein herself in. All those courtesans. All those women who’d had the liberty to touch him as often and as thoroughly as they wanted. None of them had loved him, not like she did.

“Sit you on Darci’s couch.” She pointed toward the low couch that Princess had vacated.

“The light has shifted and is better there. Now disrobe and put this sheet over your—er, lap.” She pulled a long linen strip off a nearby statue that Darci had decided she didn’t like.

“I’ll turn my back,” she promised, and did, in an act of quite uncharacteristic modesty, one she immediately regretted.

She wanted to know every part of his body, didn’t she?

He cleared his throat. “I-I need—I need help with my coat and-and boots.”

She melted at his complete capitulation to her request. The crack in his composure, more than the plea for assistance, pulled her toward him.

She avoided his eyes while she worked his neckcloth loose and set the strip of white linen aside.

She wiped her hands on her apron so she did not leave prints on his expensive silver buttons as she worked free his coat, peeling the luscious silk from his broad shoulders.

It held the heat of his body and she resisted bringing the lavishly embroidered fabric close to her nose; she had the man before her, smelling of hair powder, boot polish, shaving soap, and some earthy undertone that was his own raw scent. It made her middle ache.

She knelt before him on the wooden floor and laid a hand on the knee of his good leg.

The intimacy of undressing him, the closeness it demanded, stole her breath.

Also, he was going to let her see his damaged foot.

He had only done so once when they were children, and by accident, the day she slipped into the Manor House over the Blinder Wall and found where his tutor had shut him in the cistern room without coat or boots because Ren had defied him about something.

She suspected the object of contention had been her.

“Am I going to need a bootjack?”

“N-no, they’re not that tight.” The muscle of his thigh was taut and warm. His heat dove into her and spread everywhere, feeding the ache between her legs.

When the fashion was for white clocked stockings and buckled shoes, Ren stood apart with his knee breeches and tall riding boots of hand-stitched black leather.

The tops were white and decorated with a small tassel dangling from the lip.

She had seen the shoes he wore the night of his mother’s gathering, the ones specially made for him by the Italian doctor, but she had given him the liberty to select his own footwear for his portrait, and he had come in boots.

She liked the rugged note of contrast to his fashionable cutaway frock coat with its curving tails and expansive collar.

He looked like a man who would do well in a drawing room but was more at ease in the open air, a man of health and vigor.

“Very well then, off they come.”

“Just what do you in-intend?”

“The Gentleman Abed. But this time—” She gulped for air— “without the shirt, please.”

“The gentleman abed without his nightshirt or cap will catch his death from the ague.” His voice was muffled as he drew the oversized shirt over his head.

“It’s warm enough in here, and I can light a fire if you wish,” she said, or meant to say.

Her throat suddenly went dry. The white linen with its ruffled sleeves drew up like an incongruously delicate curtain over his stomach, flat with muscle and drifted with tiny light-brown hairs.

His chest broadened as her eyes moved up, his ribs a strong curve flaring to broad pectoral muscles.

He tossed the shirt aside and her greedy gaze lit on the muscle corded around his shoulders, the defined upper arms.

He resembled the classical Greek statues that she and her classmates had been reduced to using for models since it was too unorthodox, even for Miss Gregoire’s Academy, to expose nude males to impressionable young women.

She’d always thought those statues a work of imagination, since most of the males she saw in her daily life had quite different proportions.

But Ren’s physique mirrored the symmetrical ideals of the ancient artists. At least above the waist.

“Ready?” she whispered. If he objected, she would not press.

She would sketch him with his clothes on and do her best. But she could already see how to remedy the problems she’d been having with his upper body, how to shade his shoulders to show their breadth, add a subtle curve to his upper chest to capture the swell of muscle, and emphasize the leanness of his waist.

Now, if she could only manage not to make his legs look like two sticks, she had a chance at a portrait that would please him and perhaps, who knew, be worthy of showing at the Royal Academy, if Angelica Kauffman thought it done well enough.

Harriette’s fingers tingled, but it was not the thought of exhibiting at the Royal Academy that charged her with excitement, or at least not that thought alone.

Ren sat before her, half naked, and slowly nodded his head, meeting her gaze with a steady trust.

She slid off his boot and swallowed as her eyes followed the shape of his leg, beautifully formed, the muscles a sensuous curve, thick and smooth at the same time. How had she never noticed that a man’s legs were such an impressive creation? But perhaps it was only Ren who was so well-shaped.

“The breeches too?” His voice was a strangled whisper.

“Best not go that far.” She wanted to shout Yes!

All of it! She wanted to peel every piece of fabric from his body and crawl over him, pressing him back upon the couch and tracing all that gorgeous, smooth muscle with her mouth.

Oh, Lord . She lowered her face, hiding her furious blush by unbuttoning the cuff of his breeches and pushing the supple fabric up over his knee.

Then she peeled off the white stocking beneath, marked with its embroidered clocks.

Her fingers trailed over his skin, the firm warm muscle, the soft hairs.

Her taut nipple brushed against his leg as she set his stocking aside, and she jerked at the contact.

He tensed as she turned to the other boot.

She felt the difference in construction, how the leather of the foot panels was lined with something thick and heavy, possibly wood.

The leather portion that covered his calf was banded with steel to provide structure and support.

She worked the boot off slowly and could not look at his face, not even when she asked, “Am I hurting you?”

“No,” he hissed, but he held himself so taut that his body vibrated.

She set the heavier boot next to its mate and pushed back the cuff of his breeches. Then she peeled off the stocking, running her fingers along his skin. The muscles of this calf were bunched and shortened, the skin crossed with scars, with a heavy line of raised skin across above his heel.

“The good doctor’s work?” she murmured, tracing the largest one, a crimson welt.

“Yes.” He pushed out the word. His hand came to her shoulder, holding her as if she might run. But also leaning on her for support. “He cut the ligaments so they will extend further.”

“Does it still hurt?”

“I don’t feel much there. It’s part of the problem, why I—” He let the words fade.

His foot as a boy had been turned inward, pointing unnaturally toward its healthier mate, and rolled so that the sole pointed toward the opposite ankle and he walked on the outside of his foot.

He still did, somewhat; she traced her fingers over the thick calluses that had formed on his skin.

His toes curled tightly, but the foot had been turned and straightened somewhat, with more scars crossing the tight, round bridge.

“Do you feel this?” She traced the scars, gently probing the bones that had formed awry, the muscles that had changed to compensate.

“I don’t understand why you’re not revolted.”

She looked up at him then and met his eyes. “The human body is fascinating to me. How it’s built. I think if I weren’t a painter, I would be a doctor.” She rose to her knees, placing a hand atop each of his thighs. “ Your body is fascinating to me,” she whispered. “Nothing about you revolts me.”

He looked into her eyes, and Harriette felt herself falling. Drowning. This was the moment, she realized even as she was in it. This was the moment that set a seal on her heart, that anchored her to him for all time.

He didn’t need to reach far to wrap his arms around her and haul her against his body.

She surrendered instantly, every scruple, every resolve, every caution dissolving in the onslaught of simple want.

Given the choice between touching Ren or not touching Ren, she would choose to touch him, every time.