“Nor do I want your jewelry.”
“What then do you want, Jonathon, should I lose? Which I won’t.”
“I don’t know. Given your limited finances, some thing simple, I should think.” He smiled in a slow and somewhat wicked manner. “A kiss would suffice.”
“A kiss?” Surprise sounded in her voice, although she should have expected as much. “From a woman you do not wish to marry?”
“A kiss is not cause for marriage.” He grinned. “If it was, I would be married a dozen times over.”
“As would I.” She raised a shoulder in an offhand shrug. “However, we have already kissed. Twice, I believe.”
“But it was under false pretenses.”
“Ah, yes. I thought you were going to marry me and you thought I was a who—”
“An actress,” he said quickly. “A very good actress. And as those kisses were part of a mistake, I daresay they don’t count. When you consider it that way, we have never really kissed at all.”
She narrowed her gaze. “We haven’t?”
“No. And a first kiss, with you, might well be worth a hundred pounds.”
“A mere kiss, worth a hundred pounds?” She laughed lightly. “I am flattered.”
“It’s not a mere kiss, it’s a first kiss, and as such very important.” His voice was somber, but his eyes twinkled. “Why, who knows what might happen after a first kiss.”
“You are a charming devil, Jonathon.” And a dangerous one at that. Still, there was no real harm in enjoying a bit of flirtation with him. “So we have a wager, then?”
“Indeed we do.” He waved a grand gesture at her drawings. “Do your best, Fiona, compose a story.”
“Very well.” She circled the table. “Before you began your pacing and thinking, I believe you mentioned writing something along the lines of a Greek myth. Something of a classical nature.”
“It seems to go nicely with the”—he cleared his throat—“dress or lack thereof, as well as the settings.”
“Possibly.” She positioned herself before the table and studied the drawings in an effort to look at them with a fresh eye. As if she were seeing them for the first time. For the most part, each figure was drawn, or at least started, during a different lesson and generally completed during the next few lessons or so, usually without the model’s presence. Some of the more complicated drawings, those with more than one figure, had taken several sessions with posed models. Aside from the lack of clothing and perhaps setting, there was no particular theme that connected the works. For the first time, Fiona tried to look at them as a whole rather than as separately produced pieces. As if they were indeed trying to tell a story.
“Well?” Jonathon said with a smug note in his voice. “It’s not so easy, is it?”
“I’ve barely begun to consider this,” she muttered.
He was right, though, about some sort of story based on myth. The figures, as well as their surroundings, sketched in with as few lines as possible so as to be vague and no more than hinted at, seemed to call for exactly that. The nudes were positioned on stone benches or leaned against marble columns or reclined beside fountains. If one looked at the pictures as illustration, a story of sorts did indeed begin to take shape.
“You said you could do it at a moment’s notice.” He paused significantly. “I think that was the wager. If you now find you cannot—”
“Of course I can.” She did have a glimmer of an idea, but nothing more. Still, the only way to win this wager might be to start talking and hope something brilliant came out. Even something that made no sense at all would be better than nothing. The wager didn’t stipulate that it had to be a good story. “The ancients used myth as a way of explaining what they had no explanation for. Primarily the natural world. The rise of the sun. The arrangement of the stars—”
“The phases of the moon.” He nodded. “Go on.”
“Well…”Well, what? She stared at the drawings for a long moment and abruptly noted a pattern of sorts. “Here we have twelve drawings of individual women.” She rearranged the display, placing the selected dozen drawings aside. “They represent the…” The what? A dozen eggs? A dozen tea cakes?
“The…the months of the year.” She flashed him a triumphant smile.
“Continue.”
“Very well.” She put the drawings with two female figures on one corner of the table, those with three figures in another and those that consisted of male nudes in yet a third. “The males represent two primary yet opposite forces.”
“But there are more than two drawings.”
“Different poses but the same men.” She waved off his objection.
“The faces look different to me,” he murmured
“I daresay no one will note their faces, nor notice any difference in appearance,” she said dryly.
“Besides, for purposes of our myth, two will serve. Now, then, as I was saying, they represent forces of nature. Opposing forces. Light and dark, perhaps. Or day and night—”
“Good and evil?”
“Possibly,” she said slowly. “But that doesn’t seem quite right either. If the twelve ladies are the months of the year, then the two men are—”
“Winter and Summer.” He rested his hands on the edge of the table and leaned forward, his gaze roving over the drawings. “By Jove, that’s good. That’s very good.”
“Yes, it is.” She cast him a smug smile, then turned back to her works. “Winter and Summer each want the months of the year. They want the…thefavors of the ladies…. No. They want to possess them. That’s it. They are locked in an endless battle over possession. They want them, the months, the ladies, because…” She gestured aimlessly. The answer seemed to be just out of reach. “Because…”
“Because the months, that is the ladies, are lovely and passionate and exciting, and”—he furrowed his brow—“the men—”
“Gods,” she said. “They have to be gods.”
“Absolutely. The gods then want the months because…” He thought for a moment, then grinned.
“Because they are selfish beasts, as ancient gods were prone to be. Always thinking of themselves and what fun they could be having. Frolicking and eating grapes with lovely women at their beck and call. An cient gods could never have too many cavortingmonths around them, you know.”
“They’re not cavorting,” she said absently, and tried to focus her thoughts. “The more months each god possesses…Of course.” She straightened and smacked her palm against her forehead. “The more months a god possesses,the greater his power !Over the earth, the sky—”
“The very universe itself!”
“Exactly.” Excitement rang in her voice. “Winter and Summer are locked in battle, in endless combat, for all eternity over possession of the months!” She stopped and wrinkled her nose. “Although we should call them something other than months.Months just doesn’t have the right sound to it.”
“Goddesses?”
“Something less than goddesses, I should think.”
“Less than goddesses but definitely more than mere mortals.” Jonathon moved to a bookshelf and perused the leather-bound volumes. “Surely there’s something here that might help.”
Fiona joined him. “Homer perhaps?”
He nodded. “There are all sorts of deities flitting around theIliad and theOdyssey .” He thought for a moment. “What about graces?”
“I think there were only three.” She continued to scan the shelves.
“It’s our story and our myth. I daresay we can do precisely as we please.” He pulled a book out and flipped open the cover. “If we want a dozen graces, we can have a dozen graces.”
“But we do want it to make a certain amount of sense.”
“I doubt if that’s necessary.” He paged through the book. “Given the nature of what we are trying to do, and the fact that myths are fictional in the first place, making sense might not be required.”
“Probably not,” she murmured, and glanced at the book in his hand. “Have you found something?”
“Not really.” He snapped the book shut and replaced it on the shelf. “What about muses?”
She shook her head. “Too fanciful, I think. Our story is about forces of nature, not the arts.”
“I’ve got it.” Jonathon smiled with satisfaction. “Nymphs. If I remember my classical studies right, they were minor goddesses.”
“Excellent. Nymphs it is, then.” Fiona returned to the table, grabbed a sheet of paper, scribbledWinter on it and then wroteSummer on a second sheet. Quickly she divided the stack of male drawings into two piles, placed the page with Winter on one and Summer on the other. “Now.” She took six of the female drawings and put three on each god’s stack. “Winter and Summer have each won the hearts and loyalty of three nymphs.”
“Summer has June, July and August and Winter has January, February and”—he frowned—“December?”
“I definitely think of December as winter,” she said firmly. “The days are the shortest of the year and it’s invariably cold. Much more so than March.”
“Very well, then, Winter and Summer each have the uncontested possession of three months apiece.”
Jonathon moved to her side and studied the piles of drawings. “Should we have a god of Spring and Autumn as well?”
“I don’t think so.” She drew her brows together. “The remaining months, or rather nymphs, the ones who would belong to Spring or Autumn if we had two additional gods—”
“Perhaps they were vanquished by Winter and Summer because they were weak?”
“Excellent. So those nymphs are now free and the object of constant struggle between Winter and Summer. It’s the loyalties, even the affection of those nymphs that is always in question.” She thought for a moment. “So it’s not really a face to face battle between Winter and Summer. It’s a competition, but it’s subtler than that. Each of the gods is always trying to convince one of the spring or autumn nymphs to join him.”
“Through whatever means necessary. Trickery or bribery or…” He raised a brow. “Seduction?”
“Definitely seduction, I should think.” She met his gaze firmly. “Don’t you?”
“Seduction seems like the right way to proceed.” He stared down at her. “With gods and nymphs, that is.”
At once she was aware of how very close they stood to one another. Side by side, their shoulders nearly touched, and she wondered why she hadn’t noticed his proximity before. Or was it the wordseduction that made her so aware of him?
“And nymphs, being what they are, can be very susceptible to”—she swallowed hard—“seduction.”
“They are fickle creatures.” His gaze dropped from her eyes to her lips and back. “You can never count on a nymph to be truly faithful.”
“One would be a fool to ever depend on a nymph.” How much more foolish to depend on a man?
Especially one with broad shoulders and an infectious laugh and a wicked dimple in his cheek?
“Is that it, then?” His voice was low and…seductive.
“Is what what, then?” She stared into his blue eyes. Endless and oh, so inviting. He could say whatever he wished about their previous kisses not counting, but she could well recall the warmth of his lips on hers. The hard feel of his body pressed against hers.
“All you have of the story?” He lowered his head closer to hers as if he were about to claim his kiss. It might be worth a hundred pounds to kiss him again. To feel the way his kiss weakened her limbs and made her blood pound and her head spin. Surely that was only because he was so very skilled at it.
“No.” She fairly sighed the word.
He stilled, his lips a bare breath from hers. “No?”
“No.” She couldn’t quite hide the regret in her voice.
He paused. “Are you sure?”
“I am.” She shook her head slowly. “That’s not all to the story.”
“The story?” Confusion crossed his face, then he winced and straightened. “Ah, yes, the story.”
“The story.” She drew a deep breath and clasped her slightly unsteady hands together. The last thing she wished him to notice was that she wanted him to kiss her. More than she’d expected. “Well, it’s a myth.”
“And?” His tone was abrupt and he crossed his arms over his chest. “Go on.”
She studied him for a moment. Obviously, given his newly grumpy manner, he’d wanted to kiss her just as much as she’d wanted to kiss him. Possibility even more than he’d expected. She stifled a satisfied smile.
“And myths, as we agreed earlier, are for the express purpose of explaining a facet of nature that had no understanding, at least to the ancients.” She gestured at the drawings spread across the table. “Our story explains precisely why those months between winter and summer, the seasons of spring and fall, are sometimes colder than expected and sometimes warmer.”
His eyes narrowed in confusion. “What?”
“Come, now, Jonathon, you’re deliberately being obtuse. You understand exactly what I’m saying.” She rolled her gaze toward the ceiling. “When Winter is doing his best to seduce March, to keep her by his side, March is cold. But when Summer has flattered and cajoled and March is ready to fall into his waiting arms, March is much warmer than usual. When March is uncertain, torn between the two gods, we have storms. How severe depends on March’s emotions and the efforts of the gods to win her. The same applies to April, May, September, October and November.”
He stared at her for a long silent moment.
“Well? Say something.”