He seemed quite focused on what he meant to do.
Whatever that was, it involved pulling her around the corner toward the street. He must have a vehicle here, she thought, or perhaps he intended to knock her out and stuff her in a cab. She'd look like a drunken maid out with her gent. No one would give them a second glance, especially here, where the houses were spread out and set back on their grounds.
Her heart hammered in her chest, her mind racing, her nose filled with the stench of tobacco and rank male sweat. She flailed for a hitching ring in the wall, but the man didn't give her a chance to grab it.
Then she spied the golden circle of a streetlamp up ahead. If she screamed there and struggled very
hard, someone would have to look out and see.
At least, she prayed they would. Oh, if only she'd left right away, or had the carriage wait somewhere else. She didn't know what this man wanted but she could guess. And maybe what he wanted was
worse than what she guessed.
She could die tonight.
Sickness rose in her belly. She had to swallow to keep it down. His silence, his intentness was unnerving. She would have felt better if he'd threatened her, but the only noise he made was the heavy soughing of his breath.
She tried kicking him again but her legs were tangled in her skirts.
Bloody things, she thought. Bloody, bloody stupid things.
He had her off her feet now. Her heels didn't even drag. The hand he'd clamped around her waist was making it hard to breathe. Or maybe the effect was simply fear. She felt like a doll as he carried her,
not a person at all. But she couldn't think about that now. Not about slit throats and bloody knives.
They had almost reached the lamppost. She had to take her chance.
She pretended to sag in her captor's arms, then bucked wildly as they hit the edge of misty light.
She managed a shriek, short and high, before the man slammed her scarf-wrapped skull against the
brick. The cheap wool was no shield. Spots bloomed before her eyes, but she knew she could not
afford to swoon. Frantically, she blinked her vision clear.
Then she saw it, a second figure running toward them down the street, a man in an
Inverness
coat. He shouted as he ran: "Hey! Hey there!"
The man who held her shoved her aside. He turned to escape but the second man grabbed him. They scuffled with their coats flapping—her captor's short, her rescuer's long. Their arms grappled for
purchase like wrestlers at a fair. With a boarlike grunt, her attacker smashed his forehead into Long Coat's. Long Coat let go and drove his fist into the other's belly.
The uppercut was a prize winner. Merry could hear the oof from where she huddled against the wall.
Her attacker dropped to his knees, gasping, then scrambled to his feet and ran away. The gaslight caught a slice of his face, coarse and unfamiliar. Then he disappeared into the murky night.
The whole fight hadn't lasted more than a minute.
"You all right, miss?" asked a kind, breathless voice.
Merry forced her chin away from the spot where it was tucked into her chest. The voice belonged to Long Coat, her rescuer. She was shaking too much to answer, almost too much to nod.
How odd that was: now that she was safe she could not move.
"I'm afraid he got away," the man said. Gingerly, he touched his bloodied forehead. "Stunned me a bit. Guess his head was harder than mine."
His grin was wide and slightly wry. Merry's lips twitched, but couldn't quite form a smile. Her rescuer seemed to understand. "There," he said comfortingly, crouching down beside her. "Had a scare, didn't you?"
"Y-yes," she said, the answer shaken by the chattering of her teeth.
"Only natural. You sit a minute and catch your breath. Then I'll see you safely to where you're going."
He smelled different from the other, clean and soapy and faintly of—she wrinkled her nose—yes, he smelled faintly of linseed oil.
Just as she realized who he must be, he offered an ungloved hand. She laid hers in its palm, where he covered it very gently. His hands weren't the largest she'd ever seen but they were graceful and they felt strong. The strangest sensation rippled through her, perhaps the strangest of the night, as if her whole being wanted to yield itself to his care. Nothing could have been further from her nature, and yet she could not deny the intensity of the response.
This, she thought, is how other women feel about their men.
"I'm Nicolas Craven," he said, calling her back from her distraction, "at your very humble service."
"Merry," she replied dazedly, then shook herself. "Mary, er, Colfax."
"Well, Mary Colfax, do you think your legs are steady enough for me to escort you home?"
She nodded, but they weren't because when he helped her up, she almost fell back down. She would have, in fact, if he hadn't caught her against his chest.
"Hm," he said with a gravelly chuckle, "perhaps we were a bit too optimistic."
His hold wasn't what she expected from a supposedly notorious rake. Under the circumstances, it was
as polite as it could be. As soon as she found her footing, his hands moved from her back to her elbows. They stood in the outermost arc of the lamplight, his gaze quiet and considering on her face.
"Was it someone you knew?" he asked softly.
Her eyes widened. "No," she said, shocked by the suggestion that she'd know someone who would hurt her. "No, I've never seen that man in my life. He just grabbed me and—" She shuddered. "I don't think he knew who I was, either. I was simply there at the wrong time."
The painter's lips formed a thin, harsh line. "That makes me sorrier then."
"Sorrier?"
"That I let him get away."
"Oh," she said, her shudder returning.
Seeing it, he chafed her shoulders through her coat. His eyes twinkled reassuringly. "There. I've gone
and spooked you, which I never meant to do to such a pretty spark of gold."
Merry's hand flew to her disordered hair. Gold it might be, but hardly pretty. In spite of herself, she had to squelch a tiny flare of female pride. Surely he was only being kind.
But he wasn't. The tip of his index finger drew a line across her brow and down her cheek, the touch a shimmer along her nerves. Without warning, her face prickled with sensitivity: her lips, the tip of her
nose, the delicate skin around her eyes. She tried to recall if she'd ever felt the like, then stopped when she realized her mouth was hanging open.
Amazingly, her rescuer seemed lost in admiration.
"Look at these bones," he murmured, his gaze following the path of his featherlight caress. "Look at this gorgeous skin. I'd pay a guinea a day to paint you, love, and consider the coin well spent."
"Paint me!" She almost choked on the words. "You want to paint me?"
He tugged a curl from beneath her scarf, testing it between his thumb and finger. His mouth curved in
a smile. "Yes," he said. "Do you think your employers would give you time away?"
But look at me, she wanted to say. I'm plain as a pikestaff. What idiot would want to paint me? The obvious hope in his eyes was all that kept the words inside.
Well, that and her ludicrous longing to believe him.
"I assure you," he said, misinterpreting her silence, "I am who I say. I just came from that house over there, to change a broken frame. Here." He rummaged inside the caped woolen sweep of his winter
coat. "Here's my card."
Somewhat befuddled, Merry peered at it in the lamplight. "Nicolas Craven, Artist," said the tiny black letters, followed by an address in
St. John's
Wood.
"I believe you are who you say," she admitted, not yet ready to accept the rest.
"Then you'll ask your employers' permission to pose?"
She shook her head, more in wonder than refusal. A thought was beginning to form: what it would mean if she said yes, how it might change her value on the marriage mart. What had Isabel's mother said?
No decent woman would sit for him.
As if sensing her hesitation, Mr. Craven jerked his chin toward her parents' house, a rise of Georgian marble behind the wall. "Is this where you work? For the Vances? I could speak to them, if you like. Make sure the job wouldn't endanger your position."
The offer, kindly as it was meant, restored her common sense. Even supposing she had been a maid, her mother would never tolerate the presence of a servant who'd sat for the infamous Nic Craven—no more than she'd tolerate one with followers. That his manner held nothing of lechery would not matter; his reputation would be sufficient to condemn her.
All the more reason to agree, hissed the little devil in her ear. You'd ruin yourself but good if you let him paint you.
Besides which, if he's as much a gentleman as he seems, you might not have to ruin yourself in truth.
Caught by indecision, she looked at him, really looked, for the first time since her rescue. From her glimpse of him in the house, she knew he was slender and untidy. Now she saw he was also handsome. Never had she seen a man with eyes so wonderfully expressive. One moment they twinkled boyishly.
The next they were ironic. The humorous stretch of his mouth made her want to smile along. His bones were as fine as he'd claimed hers were. His nose, narrow and aquiline, was entirely without flaw. His
jaw might have been too sharp for beauty, but it lent his face a strength it would otherwise have lacked. All of which came together to form a visage both individual and attractive.
And knowing. That most of all. She could see it in his eyes. This man had plumbed the secrets she'd always wanted to explore. This man had tasted freedoms she could only dream of. A face like Nicolas Craven's promised things.
Merry could imagine how it might make a woman weak.
"I can't," she said with true regret. The devil on her shoulder groaned, but she could not accept his offer, not even if she could devise a way to keep it secret from her parents. A daughter's reputation reflected on her family. No matter how angry Merry was, hers didn't deserve to be treated with so little consideration.
"Don't say you can't," coaxed Mr. Craven, the plea a sweet temptation. "Say you'll think about it. An artist doesn't find such inspiration every day."
Oh, how she wanted to believe him! Her hand clenched around his card, the pull to accept a palpable force. Her chest ached with it, and something deeper, something only one man had ever called from
her before.
"I can't," she said again, then slipped inside the gate before his charm, and her foolish susceptibility,
could make
her turn around.
* * *
"I want progress," Althorp intoned, "not promises."
Like dragon's breath, his words formed puffs of white in the misty predawn air. He'd instructed Lavinia
to meet him in Rotten Row, inside the Albert Gate. The Serpentine was frozen, of course, but they
were spared the hordes of skaters by the earliness of the hour. Only the groundskeepers threatened their less than splendid isolation.
Lavinia didn't know if Althorp thought he'd been seen too often in her house or if he simply wanted to prove his power to order her about. Either way, the furtive, solitary trip to get here had done nothing to calm her nerves. She hadn't dared use their carriage and had been forced to go on foot. No doubt her reckless daughter would have thought nothing of the walk, but every shadow, every sound had Lavinia jumping in her skin. Fighting to steady herself, she clutched her hands inside her sealskin muff.