“I’d rather do a likeness of horse droppings than sketch Arbuckle,” she said. The reptilian eyes, the smug smile, the expensive mahogany walking stick and gleaming boots… “Why would I draw him for you?”
“If I’m to warn Mrs. Harris and Finny to be on the lookout, if I’m to alert Dorcas and Papa, they need to know the devil when they see him.”
That explanation was plausible, but unsatisfying. Michael was determined to keep his strategies to himself, and Psyche respected that. She wasn’t exactly being forthcoming with him either.
“You need this sketch urgently, don’t you?”
“By tonight.”
“And it’s important to you?”
“Vitally.”
“Then you shall have it before you leave here, and I will do the best job I can, but, Michael, there’s something I need, too—something vitally important.”
He gathered her close, his cheek pressed to her hair. “Anything. Name it. Anything short of my life, because the children have first claim on that. I have some funds saved, not much, but I can—”
Psyche struggled free of his embrace to glower at him. “I need you. You daft, impossible man, I need you.”
His eyes lit with confusion, then humor, then a sort of bashful wonder. “Now? You are intent on having your way with me now?”
Now and forever, but she didn’t say that. “We have now, Michael. I want so much more than stolen moments with you, but now is all we can honestly offer each other.”
Michael caught her hand and kissed her fingers. “Damn Hannibal Arbuckle, church politics, filthy lucre, and damn everything.” He rested his forehead against hers. “I’m cursing, and the sky is not falling. I cannot, I will not, refuse what you offer.”
Psyche led him through the house and up to the bedroom, then assisted him from his clothing, while he performed the reciprocal courtesies for her. Every sweet moment was limned with grief, because Psyche had to admit one fact for a certainty.
Michael was allowing them this indulgence because he clearly agreed with her: Now was all they had.
Chapter Sixteen
Psyche was right to focus her talents on portraiture. Had they world enough and time, Michael would have asked her for miniatures of Bea and Thad, Papa and Dorcas, and, of course, a likeness of Psyche herself. To see a loved one’s features, to have an image to support the fading powers of memory, was a comfort beyond price.
Asking her for a sketch of Arbuckle had been a sacrilege, though the sight of her clad in only her chemise, morning sun finding fiery highlights in her dark hair, glorified every joyous impulse in Michael’s heart.
“The first time I saw you,” Psyche said, running a hand over his bare chest, “I was struck by the perfection of your proportions. The Apollo Belvedere is a clumsy approximation of you. I looked for the flaw, for the signature detail that would bring the perfect specimen to human life. Then I beheld your eyes.”
He wasn’t ready to hear this, wasn’t ready to turn their dealings into carefully preserved memories. But Psyche was baring her heart, so he listened.
“I saw the fellow at the back of the class,” he said, “sitting always in shadow and always the first to get to work. You see clearly and have confidence in your perceptions.”
She tucked close, and though the bedroom was warm enough, Michael had had the foresight to keep his breeches on. The moment called for self-restraint, not headlong sexual voraciousness.
Or perhaps it called for both?
“Your eyes were as bleak as a winter night, Michael. Nothing stirred in your gaze, nothing lit you from within. I thought you must be dull-witted, but clearly, you lacked no deficiency of intellect.”
He treasured the feel of the woman he loved, imprinted her warmth and fierceness on his soul. “My sister might argue with you.”
“You are a smart fellow, but you eschew guile. You have a thespian’s ability to play a role, and that’s as far as you’ll go. Be yourself with me.”
If the worst should happen—if evil prevailed, and Michael was brought to judgment before the law—his greatest sorrow would be that he’d failed his children. His greatest regret would be the loss of a future with the children and Psyche.
“We will be ourselves together,” he said. “More than that, I cannot ask of you.”
When she offered no argument, no scold for his stubbornness or contrariness, he kissed her. They’d said what there was to say, and the time had come for loving. He went slowly, lavishing kisses on her until she hauled him to the bed and shoved him onto his back.
When Psyche would have ravished him, he held firm to the need to cherish her.
When she would have rushed past the preliminaries, Michael entreated her, with caresses and whispered endearments, to bide with him in lovely anticipation. When they finally came together, the pleasure was as exquisite as the torment.
“Lovemaking should always be like this,” Psyche said, braced on her arms above him. “And with you, it always is.”
Michael closed his eyes lest the sight of her face transfixed with passion steal his wits. He mentally recited from Caesar’s Commentarii de Bello Gallico and tried to divide 243 by 17, all to no avail. Caesar had been a bellicose schemer brought to a bad end, and the only number that mattered was two.
“Stop it,” Psyche muttered, twining her arms around his shoulders. “Stop thinking, stop standing off to the side, stop trying to manage and cope and endure. For once, let me have all of you.”
She added a little fillip to the thrust of her hips and fused her mouth to his. Her urgency became a tangible force, greater than all of Michael’s good intentions and careful habits.
“You have me,” he said as satisfaction sparkled nearer and nearer. “You have me, all of me.”
Psyche gave him all of herself, too, and for a luminous progression of instants, they were united in wonder and bliss. Nothing came between them in those moments, and while the glory shimmered and gleamed at its fiercest, Michael believed nothing ever could.
He clung to that illusion as Psyche’s breathing eased, and she slipped into slumber, and he hung on to the fading wisps of joy as he gently arranged her beside him and spooned himself around her.
He let himself doze—he had nowhere to be until that afternoon—but hovered near enough to awareness that he knew when Psyche left the bed. She wrapped herself in the banyan he’d worn so often, took a pencil and sketch pad from the night table, and sat at the foot of the mattress, back braced against the bedpost.
“Sleep,” she said, patting the blankets draped over his foot. “I have a commission to attempt.”
“I love you.”
“Don’t distract me.” Her pencil moved over the paper, though she paused from time to time, erased a line, and then resumed.
Michael watched, wishing he had her ability to so quickly gather impressions onto paper. He’d take her likeness a hundred times a day, and a hundred more by candlelight and shadows. He had almost succumbed to slumber when Psyche hopped off the bed and came around to sit at his hip.
“Your demon, sir.” She thrust her sketchbook at him as he struggled to sit up against the pillows.
“Bloody hell, Psyche. You’ve caught him to the life.” The drawing was alarmingly accurate, and exactly what he’d needed.