ColorMeBad (2 page)

But just this once, she wished her cousin thought of her as
an ally rather than as competition. As always, when she felt the cold hand of
despair, she put her chin up and straightened her spine. “If the gentlemen will
pardon me, I feel the need to fetch my own glass of lemonade. It is dreadfully
warm in here.” She felt Anne’s relief like a weight pressing her down as she
curtsied to her host and the earl—who looked vaguely disappointed—then turned
on her heel and strode away.

She retreated to the gallery—a long, dark space high above
the ballroom where she could spy unseen on the colorful spinning of the dancers
below. Thick pillars and rounded porticoes allowed a clear view down while the
watcher herself remained shielded from sight. Up here, it was easier to discern
the patterns and movements of the crowd as a whole—the dancers, of course, had
their rhythm and symmetry, but even the movements of the groups in conversation
on the fringes were more easily understood from this height. She could see who
was being avoided, who was currently the room’s center of attention, who was
slipping out to the moonlit gardens and who was following after a too-brief
period of time. All of society’s unspoken rules were so visible when one stood
outside them.

All while she remained safe and unseen, wrapped in darkness
and solitude.

A voice broke into her thoughts. “I’d hoped not to find you
here.”

“Then you shouldn’t have looked.” Hecuba didn’t need to turn
around to know whose voice had interrupted her. But it felt cowardly to keep
her back turned to him—and worse, it felt dangerous, too close to the memory of
him behind her the other night.

So she turned around and gave him her coldest expression.

His grin widened and he took his eyes from her to glance at
the ancestors that inhabited the walls around them. “I must confess to being
jealous,” he said in that brandy-rich voice of his. “I’d thought you were
interested in my paintings and mine alone. But to catch you studying another
man’s gallery…”

Hecuba gritted her teeth. “I’m not here to steal Lord
Heatherton’s family portraits,” she ground out.

“So there really is something special about my paintings?”
Rushmore said immediately. There was a calculating gleam in his eye that
suggested his flirtatious tone hid something harder.

Hecuba took a deep breath and wrestled down her irritation.
She would not be drawn into these aristocratic games. “Is there something in particular
you want from me, Mr. Rushmore?”

He tilted his head and considered her for a moment. She felt
his scrutiny like the press of heat on a scorching summer day, everywhere and
nowhere at once. Then he held out a hand. “I would like a dance,” he said.

Hecuba folded her arms across her chest. “I am terribly
fatigued, sir,” she said, happy there was nobody around to hear. “I would make
a terrible partner.”

His mouth curved in a grin so cunning it made Hecuba suck in
a breath and go hot all over. “Would you rather I find our host and inform him
that I found you up here, only one night after you successfully stole a
painting from my brother’s home?”

She stared. “Are you really blackmailing me into dancing
with you?”

He took a step forward, hand still out and waiting for hers.
“Yes,” he said. “Please.”

She knew it wasn’t really a request and that “please”
shouldn’t have mattered. But he had her neatly trapped and she still didn’t
know why he hadn’t turned her in yet as the thief she was. She certainly
wouldn’t find out by avoiding him.

He wasn’t smiling anymore.

She glanced at his hand and remembered what it had felt like
when he’d touched her. Then she mustered up all her reserve and resolve. Surely
one simple dance would not destroy her. They would hardly touch at all.

The musicians below launched into a waltz.

Obviously the gods were out for blood.

She blew out a breath in vexation and took his hand.

His other hand went to her waist and he pulled her toward
him, just slightly closer than propriety recommended. Her treacherous blood
raced in her veins and she fought for calm. It was simple anger, she told
herself—but even she didn’t quite believe it.

The gallery was too small for the sweeping range of motion
enjoyed by the waltzing couples down below, but it didn’t matter. Held so
close, with his grip so firm on her waist and his hand warm around hers, Hecuba
could feel every motion, every tiny step, every gentle sway as they spun slowly
in tandem. The slight trembling of her hand in his felt like an earthquake, and
every light press of his fingers just above the curve of her hip went through
her like a thunderbolt. He began pulling her closer in tiny increments,
diminishing the space between them as the circle grew slower and slower until
she was very nearly pressed against his chest. His legs tangled in her skirts
and made her suddenly very aware of all the layers of fabric that separated
them—the silk of her stockings, the cotton of her petticoats, the muslin of her
skirts, the fine wool of his trousers. She stopped herself just before she
imagined all their clothing away and nothing but naked skin between them.

He bent his head and put his mouth close to her ear. “Steal
the second painting tonight,” he said.

She couldn’t have heard that properly. Maybe the rushing of
her own pulse in her ears had gotten in the way of the words he’d actually
uttered. “I beg your pardon?” she whispered.

He gazed down into her eyes—and Lord, she could just stretch
up one small inch and kisshim if she wanted to. She looked away from
him, but she could still feel his eyes on her face and was compelled to look
back. As soon as she did, he spoke again. “Come back tonight and steal the
second painting. Please.”

A mouth that beautiful shouldn’t be allowed to form
words—especially not the word “please”. And she needed that second painting.
But he couldn’t know that, could he? “And if I say that I have no interest in
paintings other than the one I took?”

His lips curved in a smile and really, she mustn’t kiss him,
mustn’t even think of it, even though they were far away with nobody there to
see. She could no more banish the thought from her mind than she could banish
the air from her lungs. Sooner or later it must surge back in. But he was
speaking again. “Then I would call you a liar as well as a thief,” he said
softly. “They’re obviously a set. You couldn’t want one without wanting the
others.” Hecuba glared daggers up at him but he was unfazed. “Say you’ll come,”
he said.

She wanted to push him away, tell him just what he could do
with his precious painting, but—damn him!—he was right. The paintings were
indeed a set and she did need all four. “What time?” she asked instead.

For one moment he glowed with eagerness then that casually
flirtatious mask was back in place. “Just past midnight should do it,” he said.
“My brother is early to bed and early to rise. He’ll think nothing of my
wanting to stay up late with a bottle in his study.”

“Midnight then,” said Hecuba with a sigh of resignation.

He brushed his lips across the plane of her cheek. “You
remember the way?” he asked.

“It was only last night,” Hecuba snapped. “My memory is
perfectly in order.”

His smile widened and his eyes warmed. “So is mine,” he said
then his mouth was on hers.

When did we stop dancing?
Hecuba wondered in the
moment before all thought was obliterated. Then there was nothing but his mouth
and his hands pressing her body against the whole length of him. She gasped and
he slipped his tongue between her lips, and that was probably wrong but it felt
so right that she wrapped her free arm around his shoulders and pulled him
toward her for more. He dropped her hand to stroke his palms down the length of
her back, all while he coaxed her mouth open wider for him, and his tongue
began to tease hers in a rhythm that surprised her even as it left her
breathless.

She had been kissed before, by a long-ago suitor in the
first flush of manhood, but that had been a gentle, tentative thing, like a
daisy pressed between the pages of a young girl’s diary, dried out and
delicate. This kiss was a rose. This kiss was wine. This kiss was everything
intoxicating and lush and dangerous, precisely the kind of thing an unmarried
miss should stay far away from.

Hecuba never wanted it to stop.

But just as she reached for more of the kiss—and for more of
the man who was sharing it—he pulled away. Staring into her eyes, he looked
just as shaken and startled as Hecuba felt inside. He took a couple of steps
back and smoothed the front of his waistcoat. Blushing, she did the same with
her skirts. “Tonight then,” he said, but there was a note of uncertainty that
hadn’t been there before.

Hecuba nodded, unsure of her voice. Then Rushmore was gone.

It rained of course. Hecuba kept her mouth shut but inwardly
cursed in two languages—English and a vulgar dialect of French she’d learned
from the old cook Father had picked up somewhere during his travels. His cakes
had been heavenly but he’d had a mouth like a pigsty. Naturally Hecuba had
spent as much time as possible in or near the kitchens, listening in.

More chilling than the rain, though, were the voices she
could hear as she crept closer through the darkened grounds of the house. She
was approaching from the outside this time, through the long double windows of
the earl’s study, in case this whole endeavor was a trap set for her by John
Rushmore, who was clearly much less honorable than his title implied.

But if there was even a chance she could get away with a
second painting… Well, she had to try.

She crouched beneath the windowsill and pressed herself flat
against the wall, which kept at least her neck free from the slithery cold of
raindrops. She could hear someone—not Rushmore, but perhaps the earl?

“After all your insistence on hanging them together,” the
man was saying, “you bring out that old portrait. It’s not a painting fit for
public viewing, John.”

Rushmore’s tone was clipped and tight when he responded. “It
was an experiment in style, based on Jones’ work. I wanted to see how far off I
was from a technical standpoint.”

The earl laughed. “Probably about as far as Serena threw it
when you finally unveiled the thing. I can still see the tear in the canvas
where it hit the corner of the mantelpiece.”

“Yes, well…” said Rushmore. There was a light clinking of
glass and the snap of a log on the fire. Hecuba shivered and wrapped her arms
around her torso to hold in as much warmth as she could.

If she were very lucky, she would overhear something useful
she could use to blackmail Rushmore the way he had blackmailed her into dancing
with him earlier. She spent enough time chafing against the restrictions of
debutante manners and life with her stern uncle and aunt. She didn’t need
another person in her life who wanted to control her—particularly an
unscrupulous peer who thought only of his own pleasure and how best to achieve
it.

The earl was speaking again. “At least it wasn’t one of your
landscapes. Those gave me nightmares for weeks. I kept dreaming I was in a
garden, but it would start to rain and all the paint began to run and the whole
world dissolved around me. Terrible.” He paused, but there was no response from
his sibling. “A good thing you never had to live off the money from your
paintings—you’d have starved!”

“At least then the landscapes might have been worth
something.” Rushmore sounded lively enough, but to Hecuba it sounded like the
same thin kind of cheer she put on when Anne made remarks about her eccentric
upbringing. Light words that wouldn’t chafe the wound beneath. “The artistic
world loves nothing more than a dead genius.”

It drew a chuckle from the earl. “Well, we all have youthful
obsessions we grow out of, I suppose.”

“Too bad you never grew out of being an ass.”

Hecuba winced—but the earl just laughed harder, his voice
moving from one side of the room to the other. “And now I’ve wounded your
pride. I’ll let you stew in peace for the rest of the night.” A door clicked
shut and the conversation was over. Hecuba waited until she heard the clink of
glass again then stretched one arm up to tap on the window.

A moment passed before she heard the study window slide
open. “Miss Jones?” came Rushmore’s voice, barely audible above the steady
sound of rain.

“Here,” she replied, emerging from beneath the windowsill.
He reached out a hand, which felt impossibly warm as it closed around her cold
fingers. Pride was cast away in favor of getting out of the cold and the wet
and the night. With the leverage Rushmore’s hold provided, Hecuba pushed
herself over the sill. Her numb toes were clumsier than usual and she staggered
a little upon landing. Rushmore put a hand on her shoulder to steady her even
as he clasped his other hand tightly around hers. His jacket was gone, as was
his waistcoat, and his shirtsleeves were indecently rolled up nearly to his
elbows.

Hecuba looked at his wrists and wondered if her fingers
could span them. Carefully she pulled her hand from his.

He gave her a knowing smile and turned to shut the window.
Hecuba left him to it and advanced to the hearth and its blazing fire. She put
her hands as close to the heat as she could bear, flexing her fingers to
restore circulation. Her nose caught the faint aroma of pipe smoke mixed with
the scent of old books, while the firelight glinted on the gilt lettering that
spelled out the titles and the names of authors. A few candles around the
perimeter of the room brightened what corners the firelight didn’t reach.

Rushmore poured a quantity of amber liquid into a small
tumbler and took it to where she stood shivering by the mantelpiece. “I nearly
had an apoplexy thinking you would waltz in while my sainted brother was here.”

“I have a bit more sense than that, thank you,” Hecuba said.

Rushmore smiled at her again and her heart lurched in her
chest. It was not comfortable and she frowned at him. “A shame,” he said. “You
waltz beautifully.”

“Is that why I’m really here tonight?” she fired back.
“Another waltz? Because I am not in the mood, Mr. Rushmore.” He grinned more
widely still and with an effort Hecuba reined in her irritation. She would
never get that second painting by being abrasive and it was clear Rushmore was
going out of his way to provoke her. To give herself a moment to think, Hecuba
took a large swallow of what turned out to be whisky. She’d expected brandy and
was pleasantly surprised. “This is excellent,” she said, but was prevented from
elaborating by another bout of the shudders.

Rushmore frowned down at her. “We need to get you out of
those clothes,” he said.

“
We
need to do no such thing,” Hecuba retorted.

“Fine,” he said. “
You
need to get out of those
clothes, unless you fancy being ill and sore of throat for the next week.” She
said nothing and he pressed onward. “I’ll turn my back, I promise. You can wrap
yourself in a blanket, sit by the fire and drink all the whisky you like while
your clothes dry.”

Hecuba mustered a sharp response, but as she opened her
mouth to speak a chill went through her and shook her so hard that she bit down
on her tongue. The whisky turned to fire when it struck the tender spot. “Very
well,” she said instead, “but you will kindly keep your distance.”

Rushmore nodded easily, as if sharing drinks with indecently
garbed women were part of his everyday experience. Perhaps it was. Hecuba’s
frown deepened but she accepted the blanket he pulled from one of the
armchairs, waited until he’d turned his back, set her whiskey on the mantel and
disrobed with all the speed of which she was capable. Shoes and stockings were
spread first on the warm stone hearth, then her black shirt and trousers. Her
chemise and drawers were mostly dry, so she kept those on while she retrieved
the blanket and wrapped herself in soft green wool. Thankfully she’d left her
stays at home—they impeded her range of motion far too much for comfortable
burglary.

She turned to find that Rushmore was standing too casually
by the window, facing away from her. Firelight danced in the windowpanes.

“You’re cheating,” said Hecuba. “I suppose you saw
everything in the reflection.”

“Not everything,” he admitted. “Not nearly as much as I
wished.”

Hecuba retrieved her whisky and considered hurling it at his
head but chose instead to take another swallow. Warmth was beginning to return
to her chilled limbs, soaking into her bones with every crackle of flame or sip
from the glass in her hand. “You may as well turn around then,” she said
through the pleasant burn of the liquor.

He turned back toward her and froze, sweeping her
green-draped form with a gaze that went from her damp, tousled hair to the curl
of blanket that warmed her bare toes. “Boadicea,” he said.

“Bless you,” she replied tartly.

He laughed at that. “I’m a painter,” he explained. “I see
dramatic potential in everything—and you look very much the barbarian warrior
queen at present.”

Hecuba didn’t want to admit how much more pleasing that was
than if he’d told her she was beautiful. It warmed her even more than the
whisky in her belly or the fire at her back. A change of subject was needed.
She looked past him to the wall where
The Thief
had hung before she’d
stolen it. Another painting had taken its place.

It was a portrait of a girl in the sunlight. She was
laughing at something with her eyes turned upward and one arm thrown above her
head as though to pluck something unseen out of the air. Sunlight—the golden
kind you only see at the end of a perfect summer’s afternoon—flowed through her
chestnut hair and over the graceful curves of her dress and lit the bright-red
flowers behind her. But although all these details were present and remarkably
vivid at first glance, the more Hecuba looked at the painting the more they
seemed to exist as accidents, ideas created by the merest slash of red or
casual sweep of gold. Close up, the individual brushstrokes were plainly
distinct, thick bars and bold sweeps of color that her fingers itched to touch.

It was only when she heard Rushmore’s voice coming from
behind her that she realized she’d dream-walked her way across the entire room
and was staring at the painting from one foot away. “That’s my sister Serena,”
Rushmore said.

His sister.
Hecuba was first pleased, then angry with
herself for being pleased. But she put that aside to stare at the portrait
again. “This is like nothing I’ve ever seen,” she said. “You’ve painted her so
vividly she could almost step out of the frame, yet I can see exactly how
you’ve built her out of brushstrokes. It’s…it’s like when you’re just waking up
from a dream and you can only half remember what you’ve been looking at.”

He smiled slightly, his own eyes intent on the painting. “My
brother objects to seeing it in his study.”

“Yes,” said Hecuba, “but your brother is an ass.”

Rushmore laughed in surprise. “So you heard that part, did
you?”

Hecuba’s eye was caught by a small irregularity—a part where
the painting had been rent then carefully but imperfectly repaired. Phrases
from the conversation she’d heard came darting back to the surface of her
memory. “This was based on C. F. Jones’ technique?”

“Yes,” he acknowledged. “I was thinking about the way his
paintings seem to dissolve at the edges, like they’re only half-real, and
wanted to see if I could get the whole subject to look that way. I didn’t get
it quite right, but I think that’s partly because the color…” He broke off.
Hecuba turned to see him staring at her in rather a more pointed way, those
brown eyes of his almost accusing. “Because the color I ought to have used,” he
said, “was Hecuba green.”

“Ah,” she murmured. “I’d wondered when you were going to
work that part out.”

“So that’s why you’re after my paintings!” he cried. “C. F.
Jones was your father.”

“No,” corrected Hecuba, “C. F. Jones was my
mother
.”

He couldn’t have looked more surprised if she’d sprouted an
extra head to tell him that fact. “Your mother?” he said. “Are you sure?”

She snorted. “I’m fairly certain, yes.”

He stared at her for a moment more then grabbed her by the
elbow and hauled her back across the room to the painting that hung to the
right of the mantelpiece. Hecuba allowed this liberty because she knew what he
was looking for—and because the journey took her back to the warmth of the
fire.

In the better light, his eyes flicked back and forth from
her face to the face in the second painting,
A Portrait of Hecuba as Henry
VIII
, in the famous style of Holbein. Hecuba remembered wearing the itchy
gold brocade and wrinkled green velvet tunic, the weight of the false crown on
her forehead, how much her arms had hurt from holding them at the proper
arrogant angle, how her feet had ached to move, how her nose had itched several
times and her mother had scolded her for scratching it and spoiling the pose.

She’d stood for two entire days, full of more irritation
than an eight-year-old girl should be able to contain. And all that wounded
dignity, impatience and fury had been captured in color by her mother’s
skillful brush so that eight-year-old Hecuba looked every inch the miniature
monarch.

Rushmore apparently saw the resemblance. “Bloody hell,” he
whispered.

Hecuba saw an opportunity and seized it. “My mother hated
wasting time and energy defending her talent on account of her sex, so after
she married my father she took his surname as a pseudonym and let all the
customers and critics assume she was a man. Of course this meant she couldn’t
paint portraits without revealing the truth, so all my mother’s paintings were
landscapes. Except these four. These she painted for herself and for her
family. They ought never to have been auctioned off. She meant them to be my
inheritance.”

He took a deep breath and finally asked the question she’d
known he was waiting to ask. “
The Thief
?”

“My father,” she said with a sad smile. “He taught me
everything I know.”

“Bloody hell,” he repeated then fell with a thump into a
nearby armchair.