He waved a dismissive arm.
He did love them, unfortunately. Made it deuced difficult to be too irritated with them.
He jolted down the stairs, needing some fresh air. The hallways above smelled too much like Tessa, but before he could find an exit, he glimpsed a particular shade of red through an open door on the first floor.
Yes, there she was, across adrawing room, near a window, sunlight making a perfect riot of her curls as she grinned at whoever she was chatting with.
That someone shifted closer to her, out from behind another group of guests.
Tilbury. Of course. And he put a few fingers on Tessa’s gloved wrist, let them linger, and Remmy knew the homicidal desire to rip those fingers off his hand.
Tessa wanted choices, and he’d make sure she knew he was one. If she could finally see him, want him, as a man, then she could learn to see him, want him, as a husband, too.
Chapter Twelve
The sun was barely up, the light shawl slipped from Tessa’s shoulder, and the pink on the tip of her paintbrush could not begin to do justice to the pink bleeding across the sky. What a riot of color.
And what a riot of emotion. After yesterday’s conversation with Remmy, she could barely pick through them. They were paints running together on a pallet, barely distinguishable. There was something squirmy and something shivery and something that felt like heat in the cheeks.
He’d watched her all night from a distance as if she were a play he was privileged to view alone and at his leisure. His gaze had been a touch along her skin during dinner and a tingle up her spine when the gentlemen joined the women afterward. He’d been lounging against the wall across from her new bedchamber when she’d retired for the night, and she’d ignored him as well as she could.
As if she’d conjured him, he appeared in the distance behind her canvas—trousers, shirt, shoes, nothing else. Shirtsleeves rolled past his elbows and collar flapping open, revealing what would be, she assumed, at a more intimate distance, the bare, muscled planes of his chest.
She picked up her chalk and began to sketch.
And he stomped down the path, bending over here and there, then standing to stomp off elsewhere. Hewas…
“Are you picking flowers?” she called out.
His head snapped in her direction, then he set his steps toward her until he was close enough for her to, first, see, yes, he was gathering flowers, then to become entirely distracted by that V of exposed chest. Her mouth went dry. He stopped next to her easel, resting a forearm atop it. His hand hung loose—the one not holding a wild and messy bouquet—and her fingers itched to keep sketching. This time an anatomical drawing, not a landscape. Long, lithe fingers, curled and relaxed, a sinewy forearm, muscled and veiny.
He slapped the poor flowers against his thigh, which was tightly encased in well-fitted trousers. “I am. These are not for you, though. Don’t get ideas.” He waved the wilting blooms at her face.
She batted them away. “I didn’t think they were. And I do not think the morning can be called good. It seems terribly hot to me.”
He grinned. “I do not think so. It’s rather mild right now.”
“You only think that because you’re so… scantily clad. You might as well be only in your smalls. Again.”
He swaggered away from her, winked. “A sight you’re eager to see.”
And she was too confounded to respond. Partly because of that wink. Partly because… he was right. And partly because the sight of his backside walking away made her a bit muddle-headed.
“Good morning!”
Tessa blinked and turned in the opposite direction. Daphne and Nora walked toward her from the house, waving.
“Do you mind if we join you?” Daphne asked.
Nora, who looked just like her older sister, yawned. “Can we walk? Otherwise, I might fall back to sleep.”
“Yes, I can walk.” Tessa looked back at Remmy, stillrambling though the garden, snapping up flowers from every bush and tree.
“Excellent.” Nora looped her arm through one of Tessa’s, and Daphne looped through the other. They practically dragged her down a path that stretched between mirror rows of long-branched trees. “I am so glad we encountered you this morning.”
They pulled her farther down the path, glancing back toward Remmy, out in the open, still collecting flowers.
“He does it for mother’s friends. Widows,” Daphne said, still watching him.
