Fiona groaned. “I have not been dishonored.”
“Daniel Sinclair,” Belle said.
All eyes turned toward Belle.
“The American. His name is Daniel Sinclair. I’m very good with names,” Belle said smugly. “Now, about this book?”
Fiona stared at her sister for a moment longer. Gen was the most practical of the younger girls, Sophie the sweetest, but Belle was an ongoing enigma. Sometimes selfish, sometimes selfless, one never knew what she would come up with next. She was a constant source of surprise.
“Yes, the book.” Fiona gathered her thoughts. “It’s not going to be a very long book, so I daresay it won’t take long to write. Lord Helmsley proposes to write a story to go along with my drawings. The book itself will consist mostly of my work.”
Gen grimaced. “Oh, not those dreadfully boring pictures you do of hills and trees and streams and whatever else you stumble upon when out-of-doors?”
“No—”
“Or those dull, tedious drawings of grapes and candles and bowls and the occasional trussed chicken.”
Belle shuddered. “I cannot imagine any kind of story worth the effort of reading that has anything whatsoever to do with trussed chickens.”
“I rather like my still lifes.” Fiona huffed. “But no, those won’t be included either.”
“Oh.” Sophie’s eyes widened. “Then this will involve the naughty pictures?”
Fiona held her breath. “What naughty pictures?”
Her sisters traded knowing glances and matching smiles.
Gen crossed her arms over her chest. “The ones with the naked people.”
Fiona groaned to herself but kept her expression impassive. “Those are simply drawings of statues and—”
Belle snorted. “Hah! We’ve seen your drawings of statues and they are decidedly different from your drawings of naked people.”
Sophie cast Fiona a pitying look. “We can certainly tell the difference, you know.” She paused, then added, “Even if we’ve never seen naked people cavorting—”
“No one was cavorting!” Fiona gritted her teeth. By God, did everyone who looked at those pictures immediately think of cavorting and frolicking and possibly even drunken orgies with laughing dark-haired men with lone dimples and invitation in their eyes? At once she pushed the shocking thought from her mind.
She drew a deep breath and faced her sisters. “You’ve been looking at my drawings.”
“Indeed we have.” Gen grinned. “For several years now.”
“But you’ve never shown any interest in my work.”
“There’s nothing at all interesting about fruit.” Belle rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. “Or trees.”
“We do rather like the ones of us, though. We think they’re very good.” Sophie cast her older sister a chastising look. “But you stopped showing any of your pictures to us long ago.”
“I didn’t think you particularly cared.”
“We didn’t, really, for the most part,” Belle said under her breath. “It was mostly fruit, after all.”
“We were shocked, Fiona, at first.” Gen paused. “Then we decided, as it was part of your art studies, that it was probably acceptable.”
“As long as no one knew,” Sophie added quickly. “Besides, we all agreed there was every possibility none of us would ever see naked people—”
“Naked men in particular,” Belle pointed out.
“—until we were married.” Sophie wrinkled her nose. “If then.”
Gen considered Fiona thoughtfully. “Can one really make one’s fortune writing a book?”
Belle scoffed. “I daresay you can if it has naughty pictures in it.”
“They’re not naughty, they’re art.” Sophie sniffed.
“They’re naked,” Belle smirked. “Naked people drawn by artists who are famous and more often than not dead, hanging on the walls of a museum, are art. Pictures of naked people in a book are naughty.”
“Although,” Gen said slowly, “I suspect they might sell well.”
“Let’s hope so,” Fiona said sharply. “Our futures depend on it.”
“In respect to our future…” Gen studied her older sister. “Regardless of whether you call it art or naughty, won’t this book of yours and Lord Helmsley’s be cause for scandal?”
“Not if no one knows of our involvement. It will be published anonymously. Our names will never be connected to it.” Fiona narrowed her gaze. “And I want your solemn promises right now that you will never, never reveal this to a solitary soul.”
The girls exchanged glances.
“I realize none of you have ever been especially good at keeping secrets, but secrecy now is of the utmost importance.” Fiona met the gaze of each sister in turn. “Should I be embroiled in the level of scandal this could produce, each of you will be disgraced as well.” She shook her head in a mournful manner. “I daresay Aunt Edwina would not look kindly upon sponsoring girls in society whose sister has—”
“We won’t say a word,” Gen said quickly.
“Never.” Sophie nodded. “Even if we were tortured by American savages.”
Belle sniffed. “And we’re offended that you think for so much as a moment that we would.”
“Good.” Fiona breathed a sigh of relief. The last thing she needed to worry about was word of this absurd venture becoming public. Why, she’d be ruined before she could so much as mutter a word of explanation. And any chance of ever finding a suitable husband would vanish. Whether you called it art or something else altogether, no gentleman would consider taking a wife who drew pictures of naked people, particularly naked men. Whether they cavorted or not. Except perhaps one.
Jonathon didn’t seem the least bit shocked by her drawings. Instead he was amused and complimentary. Indeed, he was enthusiastic about her work. It was most heartening. Jonathon was an unusual man, not at all what she’d expected of the son of a duke. But then she suspected she was not entirely what he’d expected either.
That too was most heartening.
The one thing that did not lift her spirits after Jonathon’s admission that he’d thought she was part of a hoax and he had no desire to marry her was this book scheme of Jonathon’s and Oliver’s. Even with a select clientele she couldn’t imagine she could earn the kind of money she needed and in a timely manner. It was possible, she supposed, if indeed there was an eager, if discreet, market for books of this nature. She simply had to trust Jonathon and Oliver in the matter. At the moment, what choice did she have?
“Are you sure he doesn’t want to marry you?” Gen asked.
Belle considered her sister. “Perhaps he just doesn’t want to marry you right now?”
“Isn’t it possible he might change his mind?” Sophie’s voice was thoughtful. “After all, he did kiss you.”
“Yes, he did.” Fiona smiled with the memory. “And quite nicely too.”
Belle raised a brow. “How nicely?”
Fiona grinned. “Very nicely. The man has kissed before.”
“Well…” Belle drew the word out slowly.
“I know what you’re thinking, and you can put it out of your mind right now,” Fiona said in her best no-nonsense voice. “Regardless of our circumstances, I have no desire to marry someone who does not want to marry me.”
“There are ways—”
“I will not trap him into marriage.” Fiona shook her head.
“Pity,” Belle murmured.
Fiona stifled the urge to agree with her sister, but she’d meant what she’d said about not forcing a man into marriage. Still, she had no intention of giving up the idea of marriage to Jonathon either. As far-fetched as she thought this book nonsense was, it would serve the lovely purpose of allowing her to spend a great deal of time with his lordship. And who knew what might happen then?
There was the promise of something quite wonderful in his eyes when he looked at her. And the hint of something equally wonderful deep inside her when she looked at him. It wasn’t at all like the feelings she’d had for him when she was a girl. This was hesitant, tentative, as if the emotion was entirely too powerful to acknowledge all at once. Deeper, richer and much more important. Like a stew that has simmered almost unnoticed for a very long time. Or a drawing that has been worked and reworked until it was something special and unique and perfect.
Whatever it was that lingered between the two of them, it was well worth exploring. After all, she had nothing to lose and perhaps a great deal to gain.
Six
The very next day…
Jonathon paced the length of Oliver’s library, his brow furrowed, an occasional unintelligible muttering coming from his lips. It would have been amusing if it wasn’t so, well, dull.
“Anything yet?” Fiona said hopefully, and not for the first time. Fiona sat at one end of a long table that had been brought in precisely for the purpose of working onThe Book, as she now thought of it, poised to write down his every word, although to this point she had done nothing but tap her pen, fight her growing impatience and watch Jonathon pace, which he claimed helped him to think.
“Soon,” Jonathon murmured.
Thus far—Fiona glanced at the empty page before her—he had done a great deal of pacing and possibly a great deal of thinking, but it had yet to yield any results. Every now and then Jonathon would break stride, step to the table and study one or more of her drawings. With the exception of the space directly in front of her, the table was covered with the drawings of nudes she had produced over the last few years. There were thirty-seven separate drawings in all. The majority were of women posed either individually or in groupings of twos and threes. All the studies of nude men were individual and comprised barely a third of the total. In truth, while it may appear otherwise, there were only two different men who had ever posed for Fiona and the other students, both of whom, at various times, had been intimate friends of Mrs. Kincaid.
Fiona stifled a yawn and casually glanced at the clock on the mantel at the opposite end of the room. It was too far away and too small to make out the time, but surely they had been in here forever. Oliver had left them alone to work onThe Book with a promise to keep Aunt Edwina away. All three agreed she would never understand and probably did not have a good sense ofart . Regardless, Oliver had pointedly left the door open and a footman was stationed in the hallway to avoid any hint of impropriety. Admittedly, watching Jonathon pace was not entirely unpleasant. He did cut a dashing figure, after all, but surely there was something she could be doing to help other than sitting here waiting to capture whatever literary gems dropped from his lips.
An image of Jonathon opening his mouth and an emerald popping out flashed into her head and she choked back a laugh.
He glanced at her. “Did you say something?”
“No. Nothing.” She smiled pleasantly, then paused. “However, I do have something to say.” She got to her feet, braced her hands on the table and leaned toward him. “Jonathon, we’ve been at this for hours and you’ve yet to dictate a single word.”
“Surely it hasn’t been that long.” He pulled a gold watch from his pocket and checked the time. “Why, I’ve scarcely been here a full hour yet.”
“It seems much longer.”
“It takes time, you know, to come up with an idea for a story. One just doesn’t pull it out of the air.”
“What a shame,” she murmured.
“It’s exceptionally difficult. Not at all like”—he scoffed—“drawing.”
“Drawing?”
“Yes. You have to admit, art is much easier than literature.”
She straightened and crossed her arms over her chest. “I needn’t admit anything of the sort, but do tell me why.”
“With art you start with something already created. Scenery or a vase of flowers or”—he paused for emphasis—“a nude figure, and you simply draw what you see. Literature starts with nothing but an idea, and usually a vague one at that.” He tapped his head with his forefinger. “It comes entirely from right here.”
She snorted. “It certainly hasn’t come so far.”
“It’s not easy.” His tone was lofty. “It takes time.”
“How much time?”
“One cannot write on command. Conjure up a story at a moment’s notice.”
She studied him thoughtfully. “I can.”
He scoffed. “You cannot.”
“Would you care to wager on it?”
“No!” He paused. “What would we wager?”
She thought for a moment. “A hundred pounds.”
He gasped. “A hundred pounds?”
“There’s no time like the present to begin making my fortune. And you can certainly afford to lose a hundred pounds.”
“Nonetheless, you don’t have a hundred pounds to wager. What do I get if you lose?”
“I won’t lose.” She smiled.
“Then it would be exceedingly foolish of me to wager.”
She shrugged. “As you wish.”
He studied her carefully. “If I take your wager, I do want something on the table on the slim chance that you do lose.”
“I really have little to wager.” She waved at the drawings laid out on the table. “My work, of course. An admittedly very nice wardrobe.” She smiled. “I do rather like pretty gowns, especially if they’re French.”
“I have all the French gowns I need, thank you.”
“I have some jewelry.”