Read Online Passionate by Anthea Lawson - Free Book Online Page B

liberties.
    And she was going to finish his portrait—it really was going very well despite the unfortunate distraction at the end. There was no reason to let personal disaster ruin good work. Sketching him had been effortless, and when she had begun to paint there had been a boundless power running through her—she could not put her brush wrong. It had been heady and wonderful. She had become transported and let her defenses down. It would not happen again.
    Lily shook out her blue apron and carefully folded it.
    It had only been a kiss, after all. Likely a trifle to him, a passing fancy. Anything more than a cordial acquaintance between them was unthinkable.

Chapter 6
    James lay awake, staring up at the dim shadow of the canopy over his bed. He had been unable to find Lily that afternoon, and when she finally did appear at the dinner table she had hardly spoken to him except to say that she required him in the conservatory tomorrow afternoon.
    He had not acted in a very gentlemanly fashion, kissing his host’s niece, but he could not be sorry for it. She had been so warm in his arms, so responsive. His body still burned with the memory of her.
    Of course, it would not happen again. She was returning to London in a matter of days. A stroke of luck since he was not sure he could endure the temptation she presented for the days and weeks an expedition would last. It was madness to contemplate a dalliance. He knew the price if they were discovered, and he could not pay it. He had nothing to offer except the fool’s hope of recovering his grandfather’s journals. It was best to act the gentlemen for a short while longer, then circumstance would take care of the problem.
    He tossed and tangled in his sheets before at last falling into a fitful slumber where past and present twined hazily together. The dream came again—half memory of his departure for India, half odd, disjointed collage.
    He was standing at the ship’s rail looking down at the dock below. Lovers were embracing, wives and children waving tearful farewells, sailors and stevedores loading baggage into the ship. There was no one for James—his sister was in boarding school in York and he had not bothered to inform anyone else who might care to see him off.
    In the dream, as in real life, the ship cast off and pulled away from the dock. A bell rang, and sailors climbed in the rigging, setting out canvas to catch the offshore breeze. Slowly the people on the docks, and then the docks themselves, shrank into the distance and disappeared. He stood gripping the rail until he was the only one left, staring blindly at the cliffs and hills of England.
    This time, the dream changed. A gentle touch on his shoulder, and Lily was behind him smiling, wearing her blue painting smock. Then, in the way of dreams, they were back in the conservatory, Lily again in his arms, leaning into his kiss. She pulled back, looked deeply into his eyes for an instant, then ran. James followed, but the brick walkways twisted and the foliage had overgrown the path—he had lost her and could not find his way home.
    The dream followed him into daylight, leaving him with a vague melancholy when he woke in the gray light of dawn. The familiar pain of his old longing had echoed through him all morning.
    Now he paused before the cut-glass doors that divided the conservatory from the rest of the house. What could he say to put things aright? What would Lily require of him?
    Stepping through those doors was like stepping into a different world. No matter how gray or cold it was outside, here was a paradise of warmth and lush fragrance. Again he had entered this haven of the senses, and there was no way out but forward.
    He followed the path past carefully tended plantings and nodded to a gardener pruning a leggy hydrangea. Ahead, he could hear her voice.
    “Lord Buckley is presently in America. Mother and I are going to take tea with the Countess upon my return to London…” Seeing James, she