Since the Surrender (PG3) by Long Julie Anne

Author:Long, Julie Anne [Long, Julie Anne]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Romance, General, Historical, Fiction
ISBN: 0061341614
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2009-07-28T07:00:00+00:00

A quick circuit of the museum revealed only one other guest, a young man who appeared to be a scholar or a painter, seated before a Renaissance painting, sketching busily with his tongue between his teeth.

They saw Callender nowhere.

And they were now before the Rubinetto once more.

Chase looked about, just in case someone was watching, and surreptitiously lifted the edge of the frame. The wall beneath it was the same color as the wall surrounding it.

If the painting had indeed hung for some months, the wall behind it would have been brighter, untouched by dust or elements that might dull it.

Which meant the painting hadn’t hung for very long in that particular spot.

He glanced at Rosalind, who glanced back at him. She understood why he’d done it.

“All right, Rosalind. Look very closely at the angel.”

The great bovine stared out at them from the middle of the painting with soulful eyes, its swishing tail upraised. Up in the corner, the angel was still strumming her harp, her body arched so that her white toes pointed skyward, her toga slipping down around her plump calves, her bosom spilling forward, pink nipples exposed. Her lips were curved in a smile of dozy contentment; a pair of fluffy white wings held her aloft. She was a brunette.

“She would plummet to earth and land face first in a cow pat with wings like those.” Chase was irritated. “They would need to be at least three feet wider to get her airborne at all. She would never be able to fly, let alone be able to hold a harp while flying.”

“Thank you, Icarus,” Rosalind said. “That’s fascinating.”

He turned slowly to her and smiled with pure pleasure. She smiled back: it was impossible not to. They beamed at each other for perhaps longer than necessary.

“All right. Rosalind, if you saw this angel again in a different context, would you recognize her? If she were painted in the same colors, with the same…physique…in a…well, similar pose?”

She hesitated. “She’s rather distinctive, isn’t she?”

“Distinctive is certainly one way to describe her.”

She carefully did not look at Chase.

As the context in question was of course a painting in a brothel in which the angel was likely doing something much less innocent than strumming a harp.

She suddenly felt very shy, very green again, and she half resented him for it. It brought back the early days of her marriage to Colonel March, when she’d been so in the dark about nearly everything, from proper etiquette at a formal dinner to what precisely would happen to her on her wedding night.

She could not pretend to sophistication. She knew Chase wouldn’t have to pretend at all. About any of it. She sensed the sheer magnitude of the man’s sensual knowledge every time he touched her.

Involuntarily her thoughts steered her gaze to the room next to her, the room where she thought she’d seen a ghost, and lingered upon that grand, arrogant, sensual, curtained bed. She sucked in a short sharp breath, as desire and memory pierced.

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