Wanted to make them long to know her. Wanted to shove her peculiar beauty in their ...
The hair at the back of his neck prickled, then stood up on his arms like grass in a sudden wind. He
froze, blind to everything but the image crystallizing in his mind.
Yes.
He had to shove her in their faces. Literally. He had to flatten the picture's depth. Brighten the colors. Sharpen the shadows.
A chill shivered down his spine as he grabbed a blank canvas and stood it on the easel. The chalk was
in his hand almost before he knew he'd wanted it.
In three quick strokes he drew the tailor's window. This frame within a frame would make each viewer the Peeping Tom, the one resident of
Coventry
who could not resist a look. The tailor's room he'd leave in darkness, the better to blind them with the noonday light outside. Through this blaze would ride Godiva, close enough to touch. Her eyes would flash, her smile seduce. No lady, she, no slave to convention. She'd meet each gaze directly and dare the world to disapprove. One night with her, the
men would think, and I'd die a happy man.
And the women ... Well, maybe the women would cluck their tongues and maybe they would smile, inside, where they knew they shared Godiva's power.
Nic felt as if a god had seized his arm. The sketch seemed to draw itself, quick, sure streaks of umber brown. There the curve of Mary's cheek. Here the prancing lift of the horse's tail. All along it had been waiting for him to find it. And then it was done. His hand fell like a puppet with its strings cut. He was breathing as hard as if he'd run down the street he'd drawn. The picture seemed a miracle and yet he knew the source of every line. From each of his discarded efforts he'd saved a scrap of good. A turn
of the head. A balance of light and dark. He might tinker yet, just to be sure, but for all intents and purposes, the portrait he would paint was sitting on this easel.
He smiled at it, ghost though it was, his eyes welling with the immensity of his relief. He had broken through the wall.
From this point on, the rest of the work was play.
* * *
Merry smoothed her skirt for the dozenth time and cursed her trembling hands. She'd woken early to
an empty bed and had crept, thankfully unseen, to the privacy of her room. There she'd washed and dressed and stared at herself in the rusty mirror.
Her reflection told her nothing beyond the fact that her hair was now completely hopeless. She looked
no more a ruined woman than before. Her eyes did not sparkle with secrets, nor her cheeks burn with shame. If anything, she looked pale.
Despite which she was convinced the moment anyone saw her they would know.
He'd been inside her. He'd made her spend with pleasure until her breath whined out like tortured steel. He'd left his seed on her, his scent. The memory of his thrusting, eager shape had been imprinted between her legs.
Surely this was not an alteration one could hide.
Disgusted, she turned from the mirror. What did she care if Farnham guessed, or Mrs. Choate? They could not think the worse of her. This was only what they'd expected all along. She was plain Mary Colfax here, not Lady Merry Vance—neither one of whom should have been prey to such simpering fears.
She'd enjoyed herself and so had Nic. She would not be sorry. With one last tug on her bodice, she ordered herself downstairs.
Nic waited at the bottom where he bounced on his toes with unusual excitement. He wore one of his painting shirts, the ruined linen starched and ironed by the scrupulous Mrs. Choate. The collar lay open
at his neck, baring a wedge of smooth brown skin she longed to touch.
She wondered when she'd feel she had the right to caress him as she pleased.
Oblivious to her desire, Nic kissed her briskly on the cheek. "Glad you're up," he said. "Come eat
quickly. I want to work. Today is going to be a good day, Mary. Very, very good."
She let him pull her to the Chinese parlor where a breakfast of rolls and ham and coffee awaited on
a lacquered tray.
As she ate, he chattered about short perspectives and frames within frames and the necessity of challenging the viewer to become a participant in the picture. Fortunately, he required no response,
for little he said made sense to her. His gestures were sharp as he paced the crowded parlor. Watching him—his energy, his intensity—made her heart beat faster in her chest.
"Now everything will be easy," he said. "Now we'll get somewhere."
As happy as she was for his breakthrough, the suggestion that he'd soon finish the work dismayed her. Whether he realized it or not, she'd have no justification for staying once he was done. Her father might conceivably forgive a brief adventure, but not an ongoing liaison. Merry wasn't sure she'd forgive that herself, not with a man who did not—no—who could not love her.
"Nothing to it now," he declared, and snapped his fingers on a laugh.
She struggled to swallow a bite of roll.
He was too euphoric to notice her dampened mood. When she finished her meal, he pulled the tray aside and scooped her into his arms. His hold felt different from the night before: more possessive and yet
more casual, as if he'd lost any fear she might object. He carried her through the house that way, merely winking when the maid tittered behind her hand.
"Nic!" Merry protested, wishing she were silly enough to hide her face against his neck.
He chuckled and kissed her nose. "Can't be shy. We've gone beyond that, you and I."
Apparently, he also thought they'd gone beyond letting her undress herself. His sole nod to modesty was closing the studio door before he attacked her buttons. The winter light, cool but clear, poured through
the windows as he peeled each barrier in turn. He murmured praise to her, then laughed at the state of
her hair.
"Now this," he said, "is going to slow me down."
He sat her on the fake Egyptian chaise and brushed her curls himself, working with surprising patience from tip to crown, one thick section at a time. When the tangles were gone, his strokes made a sound
like a horse being curried, rhythmic and gentle, as if he meant to put her in a trance. In minutes, the waves of honey gold began to shine.
"Like that, don't you?" he said as she melted beneath his care. "Perhaps I should do this every morning."
His hand slid around to cup her breast. Merry bit back a moan. She sensed he wanted her arousal for
the painting, rather than for himself. Nonetheless, his breath hissed through his teeth when he found her stiffened nipple.
"I'd like to mark you here," he whispered, one finger circling the swollen areola. "I'd like to suck you
hard and paint the bruise."
She went liquid at his words, at the tiny tingling fireworks of his touch. He groaned, then kissed her shoulder with biting force.
"Don't tempt me," he said, rising to tug her hands. "I can't afford to waste the daylight."
"I wasn't tempting you."
He smiled with glowing eyes. "Trust me, Duchess, you tempt me just by being."
"You want me to believe that so I'll look sexy while you work."
He slid his palm down his paint-smeared shirt to the nascent ridge between his legs. Gently, shamelessly, his fingers rubbed it fuller. "I could prove how much you tempt me."
"Hah," was all she managed to get out, one glimpse of his "proof" having robbed her of her wits. She wanted him with a keenness the night before should have exhausted.
Fool, she thought.
But her traitorous body hummed as he helped her up to pose.
* * *
Dawn had barely broken the next day when Nic stuck his head in Farnham's pantry, a room that contained not just shelves and the silver safe, but also his butler's sitting area.
"Sir!" said Farnham, clearly startled. With the faintest of blushes to darken his slashing scar, he slapped the paper he'd been reading closed. "I was just about to iron this."
Nic laughed at having discovered his starchy servant in a misdeed. "So. This explains the extra
fingerprints on my
London News
." He cracked his knuckles, then took pity as Farnham began to sputter. "I'm teasing, man. I don't care if you read my paper, not even if you do leave fingerprints— which you haven't. I'm hiring a hack for Mary to ride in Regent's Park. I want the new boy to hold his head."
The butler set the paper carefully aside. "I believe young Thomas is assisting with the laundry today.
Mrs. Choate says he has a strong arm. I, however, could certainly help you hold a horse."
Nic considered this. "No. You're too big. You might block the view. Or the light. I need the boy. The laundry will have to wait."
"'Wait'?" said Farnham in a tone that suggested waiting was not advisable.
Nic hadn't the faintest idea what washing clothes entailed, nor did he care, especially when he itched to sketch Mary on that horse. "Is that a problem?" he said, his brows lifting in full expectation of having his wishes met.
Though the butler winced, he did not disappoint. "No, no," he said. "I'll order dinner from the bakeshop and Mrs. Choate will be able to finish as she'd planned."
"Good," said Nic, the issue settled. "Have the boy meet us in the garden in half an hour."
He whistled as he strolled away, feeling sharper of mind and lighter of spirit than he had since the day
he left his childhood home. Then he'd been starting his career. Now, if this picture lived up to its promise, he was about to enhance its luster.
Besides which, Mary would be thrilled with his surprise.
* * *
"Thrilled" was not the word Merry would have used, especially when Nic borrowed a pair of the new boy's breeches for her to wear.
"I need to see your legs," he'd explained as she held them up in dismay. "I've decided you'll sit astride. But don't worry. We'll cover your top with an old reefer coat. No one who sees you will guess you're
not a boy."
Merry was not so optimistic. She'd worn breeches in public on a number of notable occasions. Her appearance in them now was less than a good disguise.
"But my hair," she said weakly.
"Braid it up and stick it in a cap." He grinned as if he'd offered her a treat.
She hadn't the heart to spoil his fun.
When the new boy saw her in his knee breeches, he turned the color of a strawberry, the flush creeping over his omnipresent scarf, green today, with a crooked black stripe.
She didn't know if her appearance were the cause, but the lad seemed more turtlelike than ever,
shrinking into the layers of wool as if he wished to disappear. When she realized he was there to lead
the horse, she was tempted to fall off laughing. She hadn't needed anyone to lead her since she was
four. Mary Colfax, of course, was another story. A city girl like her, and a poor one at that, had
probably never been on a horse's back.
With that in mind, she tried to look as awkward as she could.
To her surprise—for she hadn't expected Nic to know one end of a horse from the other—he had hired a decent mount, a tall, gray mare with an elegant conformation. Though she wasn't as fine as Merry was used to, something inside her eased to feel a real horse underneath her.
The boy was easy with the mare as well, rubbing her muzzle and feeding her bits of carrot from his hand.