Free Tempting the Bride by Sherry Thomas Page A

faint stars twinkled.
    “My goodness,” she murmured. “Who painted this?”
    “The master, my lady,” said Mrs. McCormick.
    Helena’s pleasure wilted instantly. Not him.
    “Very nice,” she said stiffly. Then, realizing she sounded insufficiently enamored, she added more truthfully, “Breathtaking.”
    She spent the next hour with Mrs. McCormick and a pair of upper maids, directing them in the arrangements of the various dresses, blouses, and skirts that had arrived in the portmanteau that Venetia’s maid had packed for her—when there was nothing she cared for less now than the whereabouts of her clothes. But she kept at the task doggedly: It was one of those overwhelmingly feminine flurries that kept away any masculine presence.
    After there was nothing more to be done for her wardrobe, she bathed and emerged to find her supper. To her surprise, it had not come with Hastings’s company. She didn’t know whether she was further relieved or insulted.
    The food she barely tasted, but the mural she could not help study with a scowling concentration. She supposed she ought not be so surprised. Hastings drew well. No reason he couldn’t have also studied oil painting. But the sheer scale of the work, the grandeur and fineness of it, spoke of a dedication she found difficult to ascribe to him.
    A sense of déjà vu stole upon her. She was certain she’d never set foot inside this room before. Yet with her initial astonishment fading, the murals began to feel like dear old friends whom she had not seen for quite some years.
    The panorama was that of Tuscany, made familiar by Renaissance masters who substituted the vistas of their native country for those of the Holy Land. It wasn’t, however, a generic sweep of hills and cypresses. The ocher-coloredhouse with those green-framed windows, where had she seen it before? The same was true of the line of pristine washing, and the small roadside shrine with bouquets of marigolds laid at the Virgin’s feet.
    A maid entered and took away Helena’s plate. Helena repaired to the vanity and ran a brush through her hair. On the vanity was a framed photograph the size of her palm of a small, fair-haired girl in profile. She puzzled over it for a moment before she realized the girl must be Hastings’s daughter.
    It was, she supposed, commendable enough of him to see to the child’s welfare. But at the same time, it infuriated her that he could have so many sins under his belt—the fathering of an illegitimate child with a Cyprian included—and still be accepted in every drawing room in the land. Whereas she had to marry the first man who would have her, or be sundered forever from the bosom of her family.
    “Lovely sight,” came Hastings’s voice.
    She glanced sharply at the connecting door. He stood in the doorway in a black dressing gown, one shoulder leaning against the doorjamb.
    “It has been a long time since I last saw you with unbound hair.”
    “You speak of the occasion when I found you loitering outside my window and pushed you off?”
    “You were murderous. I could have fallen to my death.”
    “Instead you lived to enjoy the rosebushes’ thorny embrace.”
    “I must have a yen for thorny embraces—I daresay there is no embrace thornier than yours.” He pushed offfrom the door and stalked toward her. “Let me brush your hair for you.”
    Her grip tightened on the hairbrush. “No, thank you.”
    She’d gladly whack him if he dared to take the hairbrush from her hand. But he only walked about her, unsubtly inspecting her from all angles.
    She took a deep breath. “Is there something you wish to say to me?”
    “Why speak when I can look?”
    The slow drawl of his words, the light in his eyes, the closeness of his person…Her throat constricted.
    He settled a hip on the vanity table. “Actually, let me contradict myself. I do have something to say. What do you mean, you are a virgin?”
    She rose and marched to the window to put some distance