The Next Best Bride by Kelly McClymer Page A

would rip up the sketches when he wasn't looking — toss them in the fire if need be, so that no one but she saw them.
    He flipped open her sketchbook and examined her work. "Do you only make pencil and ink drawings?"
    "I have worked in oils, but not often. They are difficult to manage." Not to mention that she had not wanted to ask either her brother or the duke to bear the expense and inconvenience of outfitting a studio for her painting.
    "Good. Then you shall do a series of sketches of me as we travel, and I shall choose my favorite and commission you to create it in oils to hang in our home."
    Helena swallowed. A nude. In oils. "Perhaps you should wait to see if you find it flattering."
    He looked down upon a sketch she had done of a London pickpocket. The sketch wasn't very detailed. She had seen the lad for only a moment before the duke's carriage clattered on its way. But the lean look of a hungry, wounded animal was clearly captured. The amusement leached from his features unexpectedly, and he said with a touch of bitterness, "Hang flattery, my love. Paint me as I am."
    She sighed. "Only as I see you, Rand. That is all that I can promise." She tore the sketchbook from his hands, suddenly aware of how many of her secrets it held. She wished he wouldn't use that casual endearment. The way his tongue curled around the syllables made her believe that he meant them, though his eyes told her otherwise.
    * * * * *
    She had not been lying when she told him that he would be bored trying to keep as still as the statue she had practiced her skills upon. Five nights of this torture made him wonder if he had truly lost his mind. Perhaps it would not have been so bad if he could have ended the night making love to her.
    A disadvantage of a wife, he supposed he should count it. If not for the monthly flux, he could be resting in this very bed with his wife next to him. He could be free to move, to kiss, to touch ....
    Would she let him kiss her knees? He had wanted to since the morning she had come to his room to jilt him. But he had been more than careful of her propriety. He had done little more than kiss her good night before turning over to his fitful sleep.
    His mistresses had never bothered him about such things, although looking back he supposed that those nights when they sent notes regarding "illness" — or even the nights where he found himself ministered to quite satisfactorily with only mouth and tongue and hands with no requirement for him to participate in the matter at all — those no doubt had something to do with the mysterious workings of a woman's body. But now he had a wife. Despite her lover, she was not worldly about these matters. He needed to learn patience. These things didn't last long ... did they?
    Until then, he would simply continue to imagine the ways he would please her. The ways she, he hoped, would learn in order to please him. Then, perhaps, they would find other ways to disport themselves when she was "indisposed."
    He suspected his proper little wife would be shocked to know how he was amusing himself as he reclined in tumbled splendor upon the White Boar Inn's grandest four-poster bed. Perhaps tonight he could show her some small portion of what he had imagined in these hours lying under her gaze. Yes, surely tonight he could follow up his time as a human statue by showing her the pleasures of making love.
    Had she had any of the same thoughts? She had, after all, been examining his form more closely than any of his former lovers — all without touching him with anything but her gaze. That faraway gaze that made him wonder where she went when she drew. Her head was bent over her sketchbook just now. But she knew if he moved, and made a little sound in her throat to remind him to remain still.
    He speculated for a time on whether she would blush, where, and how deeply, if he were to ask her bluntly if her flow had ceased. Of course she would, he finally decided. All over. A bright deep pink.