Love's Reward by Jean R. Ewing

Author:Jean R. Ewing [Ewing, Jean R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Regency Romance
Publisher: Belgrave House
Published: 1997-08-28T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

Joanna felt frantic for a moment. What on earth should she do? Leap up and let him fall to the floor? Shake him awake? Or study him, study him for the portrait that she had agreed to do for his dying sister?

He shifted a little and sighed.

Tentatively she touched his hair. He didn’t move. She ran her hand lightly over the rich waves, sensing every fiber as it moved beneath her fingers.

He has lovely hair.

What an odd thing to think about a man!

She examined his face, the eyelids closed over those dark eyes, the stress and tension smoothed away by sleep. It would be appalling to wake him, a clear act of barbarism. Why invite him to don that sarcasm and defensiveness once again, when just for a moment he had found respite from the tragic weariness that seemed to contaminate his every waking moment?

Softly she moved her forefinger to his jawbone and down the sideburn that outlined his cheek. The skin of his jaw was a little rough, prickly under her questing fingertip, alluring in its very masculinity. The small dark shape at the corner of his mouth, where a dimple might well appear, was a mole.

More boldly, she traced his eyebrow and the inviting line of his nose. Fitzroy slept on, in the dead sleep of real exhaustion. His shirt had fallen wide open at the neck, revealing the beginning of the soft hair on his chest.

How I long to touch it! Joanna thought. Oh, dear heavens, I am shameless!

In a strange agony she sat on the crate and let him sleep, while her legs pricked with pins and needles, and the hard edge of the wood bit into her flesh. Her hands lay gently on his shoulders, passively feeling the rise and fall of his breathing, while her own heart fluttered unevenly in her breast, making her limbs languid and her blood fiery.

Joanna had no idea what drove the demonic man that she had unwillingly married, but she knew that it rode him hard and without mercy. Surely the least she could do was let him find rest for a moment, without demands from her?

She let her mind drift, barely aware of the shadowed room with her easels and supplies, remembering the times he had seemed to be something different for a moment—something deeply compelling and attractive, even potentially kind.

The images shifted against her half-closed eyelids.

One of the candles guttered and went out.

Fitzroy moved a little, then murmured. “Ah, sweetheart.”

He rubbed his cheek on her skirt, then turned to bury his face against her thigh. His arms slid around her and he ran both hands up her legs and over her hips, pulling her into his embrace.

“Let me love you.” It was an undertone, said on a breath like a sigh.

Joanna fell against his chest without resistance, her legs long gone to sleep and her back stiff. Fitzroy cradled her in his arms with a tenderness that belied every notion she had ever held about rakes.

His head rested on her shoulder as his fingers gently touched the side of her neck.

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