Chapter 13
The following morning at The Royal Academy
There was something to be said about a dashing gentleman forever frozen in time and neatly captured in a canvas. Not only could the gentleman be ogled in blatant regard, but one could, at the same time, imagine the gentleman to be the most charming of characters.
Willow was by no means an expert in art. She could hardly explain what she found appealing in any given piece that caught her fancy. Neither was she a dilettante but she did find there was something peaceful about admiring good art. For the most part, she just liked to browse over portraits to marvel at how talented the artists that painted them were—she never tired of the amount of detail they managed to express in their work.
Today, howbeit, Willow just wanted to clear her mind, and nothing opens your mental faculties and carries you away like visiting an art gallery. Alas, that was proving impossible to do.
Because her husband had decided to accompany her.
Willow cast a sidelong glance at him.
Must the man look so dashing? Like the gentleman in the portrait she was inspecting, he bled confidence and male arrogance. Unlike that man, who was leaning against a giant pillar with a charming smile, the duke was as stiff as a tree trunk.
Willow’s gaze traveled over his clenched jaw before dropping to his hands. They weren’t clenched, but there was a twitch in his thumb that belied his restlessness. The picture of a grouchy male.
A sudden urge to wrap her arms around his neck and kiss him assailed her. These days she was confronted with many such urges, so she’d become quite the expert in brushing them aside.
Her head swiveled back to the painting, her breathing shallow. Brushing them aside did not mean she was free of their effects.
Willow knew better than to fantasize about her husband. Unfortunately, regardless of all his faults, the man was tempting as sin. It was hard not to daydream and give in to bouts of hot fantasies when around him.
She snuck another peek and found his cool black eyes staring back at her.
“Do you not enjoy art?” Willow asked. Because really, she couldn’t just glance away now that he had caught her stealing lingering glances at him. And honestly, he ought to have remained home if he was only going to sulk about.
“It’s crowded.” His brooding eyes flicked beyond her to the painting she had been admiring. “And how long can one stare at Viscount Granville Leveson-Gower?”
Willow’s gaze traveled back to the portrait. That was Viscount Granville? She regarded the man in a new light. She would never have guessed.
“The man’s a stuffed-shirt.”
Willow shot her husband a look that said look who’s talking. “I believe this was painted while he served as an Ambassador in Russia.”
“Remarkable.”
“He worked himself up from a second son to a titled peer,” she pointed out, bemused. “That is something.”
“And here I thought the man could not become any staler.”
Willow bit back a smile, and then felt him tense when a trio of giggling ladies passed them. She turned to him and asked, “Why did you accompany me if you knew you’d be miserable?”
“I’m not miserable. I just don’t find pleasure in gawking at paintings of men.”
“Your posture is stiff, you are clenching your jaw, and you have a twitch in your fingers—all signs of being utterly miserable.”
“Perhaps I did not wish to deprive myself of the company of my bewitching wife?”
“But what you mean to say is that you did not wish to take the chance of me slipping away to meet my sister.”
“Were you going to meet your sister?” Black eyes scrutinized hers.
“I came to enjoy the art, Ambrose.” Willow paused. “Believe it or not, I do possess a refined appreciation for culture.”
“Of course you do.”
She huffed and moved on to the next portrait. “But the more pertinent question, I suppose, is why you are tolerating an outing you loathe when you could have sent one of your lackeys to follow me around?”
“I have those? I thought they all answered to you now?”
“If only I can bring my husband to heel, then my life would be complete.” She gave him a teasing look.
“And if only my wife would fear me.” He reached out to place his hand on the small of her back and dropped his voice. “She would read my rules and life would be so much simpler.”
“And spoil the suspense of discovering your beloved commandments from the utter vexation on your face when I break them? Surely not.”
He inhaled deeply and exhaled a rich, completely mesmerizing laugh. She stared at him, fascinated that such a melodious sound could come from him.
She moved on to the next portrait, deciding not to break the lighthearted mood that had settled over them. They gazed at the paintings in silence before Willow’s eyes landed on a portrait of two men who resembled each other. Brothers, most like.
She cast the duke another sidelong glance.
Dare she?
She might as well. It was impossible to say when he’d be in such a semi-charitable mood again. Her gaze returned to the portrait.
“You will not reconsider forcing a match between Holly and Jonathan?” she asked.
“You are finally asking me about your sister?”
His voice was soft, a mere murmur, but Willow detected nothing but amusement there. “She is your sister now, too. Just as Jonathan is my brother.”
“In-law,” he corrected. “Nevertheless, the brother you always wanted but never had, I suppose. What mischief will you and Jonathan get into, I wonder?”
“If he is anything like you, not much, I imagine.”
He raised a brow. “Will you not press me about your sister?”
Willow shrugged, her gaze locking with his. “I am easing into that conversation.”
He chuckled at that.
“Extremely unlike me, I’m aware, but given that I am bound to you,” she gave him a once over, “and your moods, till death do us part, prudence might be more fitting in this case.”
“Prudence, there is that word again.”
“I’ve grown quite fond of it since our nuptials.”
“Is that so?” he murmured, but a smile tugged at his lips as his gaze returned to the painting. “So you are not horrified at the prospect of until death do us part?”
“Horrified, no.” Oh, the look on his face. “After all, you did not respond with a pompous remark and that is what I call progress.”
When he stiffened suddenly, Willow’s senses went on high alert. She slanted him a glance. But he wasn’t looking at her or even aware of her probing gaze. She followed his line of vision to a woman standing a few yards to their right, viewing—quite arguably—the smallest portrait in the gallery. Her face was the embodiment of classic beauty: high cheekbones, plump lips, and porcelain skin. She had a wealth of sandy curls neatly pinned on her head.
Ambrose stared at her, frozen still.
“Ambrose?” Willow murmured, her voice soft with concern. “Do you know that woman?”
“I—” Ambrose shook his head. “No, she just reminded me of someone I once knew.”
Willow’s gaze fell on the girl once more and understanding dawned. Did the woman look like Ambrose’s sister, Celia? The sandy hair, her youth, and her delicate frame all matched the descriptions Willow had heard.
Willow was not sure what to do. She wanted to comfort him. Show him support. She recognized a man in pain, and despite their differences, she felt that ache right alongside him.
So she did the only thing she could think of to show him comfort: she entwined her fingers with his.
Ambrose swallowed, heart in his throat, and focussed on his wife, who was examining a painting of a woman in a pose of reversed adaption of the classical statue, the Venus de' Medici, her fingers weaved through his.
He felt unbalanced. Unsure of himself. In dire need of a diversion. Anything to take his mind off the woman standing just within reach with the uncanny resemblance to Celia. And conversation was the best diversion he could think of.
“As a boy,” he admitted, studying the lady whose hand extended to a white lily, “I dreamed of becoming a painter.”
His wife’s head angled up to him, her blue eyes glowing with surprise.
Then she smiled.
And the world seemed to stop.
Just. Like. That.
It felt as though Ambrose was staring straight into the sun. Had a woman ever smiled at him like that? Lacking any artifice? He couldn’t recall. Certainly never with such open amazement. And certainly not over something as trifling as a young boy’s dream.
“I once, briefly, wished to become a botanist.”
“You wanted to study plants?”
“Don’t sound so surprised,” she murmured dryly. “Although it must seem rather dull in comparison.”
“Not at all but I still do not see the appeal of examining shrubberies.”
“It’s hardly all shrubberies. But at the time, the appeal lay in the prospect of traveling to every continent in search of various seeds and different plant life. Unfortunately, I could never tell the difference between bindweed and knotweed.”
“There is a difference?”
Her laughter reached straight into his bones. “Of course,” she said. “Alas, Sir Joseph Banks, famed botanist, beat me to it.”
Ambrose chuckled when his wife pouted, drawing the attention of the few onlookers. He told himself there was nothing wrong with enjoying his wife’s humor. Even though it felt as if he was dropping a thousand feet from the sky.
He cleared his throat. “There are more reasons than searching for seeds to travel the globe.”
“Agreed. But at the time I was obsessed with exotic plants. Did you ever paint?”
Ambrose turned back to study the artwork on the wall. After a moment, he said “Yes, but before you get enraptured, it turned out I do not possess the patience to sit hours on end with a paintbrush clutched between my fingers.”
“No,” she murmured, teasing him with an impish smile. “I don’t suppose you do.”
Ambrose trailed after her as she moved from one painting to the next, balling his hands into tight fists to avoid taking her into his arms, which he found he suddenly desperately wanted to do.
That would be a much better distraction.
Something much like alarm lit up in his chest. A revelation hovered there. Something that twisted his stomach into knots. He hadn’t realized that, by revealing a part of himself, she may do the same, and that he might see her in a new light.
Benson’s words came back to him in a flash.
Damn valet.
An image of his sister, so pale and weak, raided his mind. A reminder of why he hadn’t opened his heart to love.
This time, it didn’t stop him.
Ambrose grabbed Willow by the hand and pulled her behind a sculpture of a young faun wearing a pine wreath and a goatskin.
And kissed her.