Free Portrait Of A Lover by Julianne MacLean

wrong?”
    He glanced down at her briefly while he paced, then turned his back on her and looked across the lake. He rested his hands on his hips.
    “Mr. Edwards?”
    He faced her and spoke tersely. “I apologize. You did nothing wrong. I am just struggling with the logic of what we are doing. By all rights, you are forbidden to me, Miss Lawson. Forbidden. Do you understand that?” He gestured down at her with a hand. “But you’re so bloody hard to resist.”
    Growing increasingly uneasy, Annabelle tugged her skirts down to cover her ankles and boots. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps it had been extremely imprudent of her to row out to a private island in secret with a man her family would never approve of.
    “We should go,” he said flatly. “I don’t want to miss my train.” He offered his hand to her.
    She gathered her skirts and took his hand, letting him pull her to her feet. “Will I get to finish the painting?”
    She didn’t know why she was asking him that now. She supposed that despite the rising tension between them, she couldn’t bear the thought that she would never see him again.
    He considered it for a moment, and then, as if he could read her mind, answered the real question she was asking. “I enjoyed myself with you today, Miss Lawson. More than I should have. I suppose my dilemma lies in the fact that I don’t wish to hand myself over to you, only to be casually tossed away someday in the future because I am beneath you. And we both know I am.”
    Annabelle felt her brow furrow with both surprise and umbrage. “I’m not like that. I would never treat a person in such a cavalier manner. I don’t toss people away.”
    He stared intently at her for a long moment. “But your family might. It happens all the time.”
    She narrowed her eyes at him. “Did someone toss you away once? A woman? Did you love her?”
    She didn’t know where that bold question had come from. All she knew was that she wanted to understand Mr. Edwards in the deepest way possible.
    After a long pause he shook his head. “No, there was no woman. At least no one I’ve ever…” He didn’t finish.
    Annabelle was surprised at how relieved she was to hear that he was not carrying a torch for someone. Perhaps she would be his first love.
    He was certainly hers. She knew it already, because she had never felt like this before. Ever. She hadn’t even known such extreme emotions were possible.
    “I want to finish the painting,” she firmly said.
    He wet his lips and didn’t answer right away. His chest was heaving with indecision. Then at last he said in a quiet voice, “So do I.”
    Annabelle inhaled deeply with another wave of relief. “When?”
    “Next Sunday? Same time?”
    A whole week seemed too long to wait to see him again. She would go insane. But in the end she agreed because there was no way around it. He had his clerkship in London.
    She would simply have to accept that she would spend the next seven days dreaming of him, and fighting the insurmountable fear that he would leave her standing at the lake, waiting and waiting again, just as he had at the gallery.

Chapter 6
    T he following Sunday, Annabelle arrived at the lake and was pleased to discover she would not be kept waiting—for there in the boat, casually lounging back, was Mr. Edwards.
    And he was there waiting for her every Sunday afternoon for the next six weeks.
    It was the happiest, most romantic summer of her life. Mr. Edwards always brought two fishing poles, and he and Annabelle spent countless hours sitting in the small boat, bobbing up and down in the waves, enjoying the summer heat and the peaceful outdoors.
    It wasn’t all peaceful and relaxing, of course. One particular afternoon they argued when Mr. Edwards tried to show her how to gut a fish.
    Annabelle proudly won the argument, drawing the line at hooking a worm, which she had become quite an expert at, she could not deny. She no longer squealed for any reason, not even when a