PortraitofPassion

Lynne
Barron

Book one in the Idyllwild series.

What’s a Viscount to do when a
mysterious lady with a secret past and a reputation frayed around the edges
suddenly appears in London? Especially when she’s in hot pursuit of his naïve
young cousin, setting the gossips’ tongues wagging, stirring his family into
pandemonium and driving him mad with her irreverent ways?

If the Viscount in question is
Simon Easton, the answer is quite simple. Seduce the beguiling lady. But Miss
Beatrice Morgan isn’t your average tarnished lady. She lives a slapdash life
wandering the globe like a gypsy, painting fantastical portraits of Duchesses
as sirens and landscapes featuring a crumbling old fountain, all the while
harboring a secret desire to return to Idyllwild, the only home she’s ever
known.

What Simon does not know is that
Beatrice just might be willing to sacrifice her honor, her virtue, her very
heart to reclaim Idyllwild.

A
Romantica®
nineteenth-century
historical romance
from Ellora’s
Cave

Chateau De Fontaine

On the outskirts of Paris

March 1827

Beatrice watched him from the shadowy alcove, half-hidden
behind a leafy green fern in a tall gilded planter. The handsome young man in a
peacock-blue waistcoat and fine gray breeches wandered around the room,
stopping to flirt with a pretty young lady here, to chat with a dissolute poet
there. His artfully tousled blond curls gleamed in the soft light from a
hundred candles. His merry blue eyes twinkled when he laughed. He laughed
often.

Just like his father. Everything about him reminded Beatrice
of the father. From his tall, muscular frame to his rich voice with its clipped
upper-crust English accent, he was his father’s son.

Only the eyes were different. The former Earl of Hastings
had possessed the deepest, warmest brown eyes, eyes a sheltered and naïve girl
could not help but trust. The young Earl of Hastings’ eyes were a vibrant blue,
as blue as the English sky on a cloudless summer day.

Beatrice waited. She waited for her rapid heartbeat to slow,
she waited for her sluggish brain to speed up, she waited for her limbs to
cease trembling. If there was one thing Miss Beatrice Morgan excelled at, it
was waiting. She had been waiting for nearly a decade for the chance to reclaim
her life, the life that only this young nobleman could return to her.

Suddenly the earl looked away from the evening’s hostess
with whom he was conversing. He looked up and across the room. As if he sensed
her presence in the shadows, his eyes found her across the room.

The earl’s eyes widened, drifted over her face, lingered for
a moment on her lips, before dropping to sweep down her slender form adorned in
flowing gold silk. He raised his eyes to hers, the merest hint of a smile upon
his lips, his head tilted slightly, studying her as if she were an exotic
creature, an angel dropped down from heaven or perhaps a fairy from an
enchanted forest come to entertain him. How many times had Beatrice seen the
very same expression on his father’s face?

Beatrice held her breath.

Would he recognize her?

But no. She did not exist in his world. The Earl of Hastings
could no more recognize Beatrice than he could recognize a hard day’s work, an
honest word or a shilling well-earned. Foolish, naïve aristocrat. Just like his
father.

The earl gave a small shake of his head and straightened. He
puffed out his chest and pulled at his lace cuffs, his eyes fixed on her, his
smile an invitation.

And just like that, Beatrice felt a blanket of calm descend
over her. He was just a man. The thought warmed her, steadied her. He would be
easily led, just like any other man. She had only to lead him where she wished
him to go.

Beatrice stepped from the dim alcove into the soft yellow
light of the candles. Her mind was amazingly clear. As she walked across the
long marble floor, sweeping gracefully toward the Earl of Hastings, a plan was
forming, taking shape. It was a plan born of the desperation and hope she had
harbored in her heart for nine long years, born of the obsession that had
colored every facet of her life during those lonely, lost years.

Beatrice smiled as she approached the young man, held the
smile upon her lips as she dropped into a curtsy so low, so graceful, so
perfectly deferential, she might have been bowing before King George himself.

Mayfair, London

May 1827

“Who is she?” asked Simon Carlisle, Viscount Easton.

“Isn’t she beautiful?” replied his cousin Henry Tinsdale,
the Earl of Hastings.

She was beyond beautiful, Lord Easton thought as he watched
her across the ballroom. She was mesmerizing. The willowy blonde had captured
the attention of every person in the room as soon as she had entered on the arm
of Viscount Moorehead only moments before. Simon heard whispers of conversation
behind the fluttering fans of a group of ladies standing behind him.

“A scarlet dress, can you imagine?”

“Not so surprising, surely? They say she’s an artist, of all
things.”

“Artist? Is that what they are calling them these days?”

While the ladies of the
ton
whispered and stared, the
gentlemen silently watched and circled about her, gradually closing the
distance. From Simon’s vantage point some twenty paces away, the men appeared
to be involved in a slow dance whose moves were carefully orchestrated to
appear subtle. They were anything but.

Moorehead had yet to introduce his beautiful companion to
anyone in the ballroom. They simply stood off to the side of the cavernous
room, framed by two potted ferns, as if waiting for the hordes to come to them.

With a gesture that clearly spoke of familiarity and
affection, her escort placed his hand upon the small of her back and leaned in
to whisper in her ear. She evidently found his remark amusing, for she tossed
her head back and laughed. Even across the crowded room he could hear the echo
of that laughter, mellow and dark.

Simon watched as a silky lock of her golden hair slowly,
ever so slowly, wrestled its freedom from one of the diamond-tipped pins
holding it in place atop her head. Casually, without the slightest interruption
in her whispered conversation with her escort, she reached one long, sinuous
arm up, her hand caressing her neck and sweeping the wayward curl back into
place. There was something so inherently sensual in the movement. It struck him
as terribly intimate, that casual, careless motion. Natural, he thought. There
was something so natural, elemental about her.

“Who is she?” Simon asked again.

“Miss Beatrice Morgan,” the earl replied. “She has only just
arrived from Paris. She is an amazing lady.”

Simon couldn’t agree more. She was tall and slim, almost
boyishly so. But there was nothing boyish about the curve of her hip, clearly
outlined by the vibrant red silk that caressed her form. Nor was there anything
boyish in the way her small breasts rose and fell with her laughter.

As if on cue, the gentlemen who had been pirouetting about
the lovely Miss Morgan began to approach her. In seconds there were half a
dozen young men gathered about, begging Moorehead for introductions. Miss
Morgan merely smiled as her gloved hand was lifted to one pair of lips after
another. From where Simon stood watching, she appeared to say very little.
Until one young rake, a friend of his cousin, Dobson was his name if he recalled
correctly, said something that grabbed her attention. She held on to his hand
when he would have relinquished hers and leaned forward to speak animatedly
with him.

She raised her head then and looked about the room. He
couldn’t be certain but she appeared to rise up onto her toes, the better to
see around and above the heads of those about her. Simon smiled. There was
something so childlike about her in that moment.

Miss Morgan stepped around Dobson with a few murmured words
and walked forward until she was standing alone under the chandelier not ten
feet away from where Simon stood. She was clearly looking for someone and
obviously impatient to find her quarry. Her eyes swept past him, leaving him
with a perfect view of her profile. Then she froze, slowly turned and looked
right at him.

Simon was caught in her gaze. Her eyes were brown, he saw
with some surprise. He would have guessed blue. But they were a deep, dark
brown, like the richest chocolate. There was something familiar about those
eyes, in the way they tilted upward ever so slightly, in the sweeping arch of
her brows, in the way the candlelight was reflected in them and seemed to
bounce back at him.

She smiled and lips that had appeared somewhat thin and
ordinary became lush and imminently kissable. She smiled as if she were ever so
pleased to see him, as if he were the very person she had been searching the
crowded ballroom to find. She smiled as if to welcome him home after an
unbearably long absence. He saw that there was the smallest dimple just to the
side of that smile and again he thought how genuine she seemed.

She made the slightest movement, a tilt of her head and a
quick indrawn breath. Simon’s gaze involuntarily dropped to her chest.
Look
up
, he ordered his wayward gaze.
Look up, you fool
. But his eyes
refused to cooperate. Her breasts rose and fell, rose and fell. Then stopped
and she was as still as a statue. His eyes snapped back up to hers.

The smile, that welcome-home smile, had disappeared as if it
had never been. Now she stood quiet and still and stared back at him with—what?
Simon wondered. Sadness? Disappointment? Remembrance? Whatever it was, it
caught him once more and he could not look away.

He sensed a movement to his left and tore his gaze from
hers. Good God, he was standing in the middle of a ball staring at a lady as if
no one else were about.

Henry stepped forward and bowed to the lady, a full, formal
bow, as if before the queen herself. Miss Morgan dropped into a graceful, deep
curtsy, her head bent low and one gloved hand held out before her. Certainly it
was more courtesy than was warranted for an earl. Henry stepped toward her and
grasped her extended hand and she looked up at him and fluttered her lashes in
a playful manner before allowing him to raise her up.

Simon was taken aback by the overdone exhibition and even
more so when the lady laughed her husky, dark laugh before saying, “My Lord
Hastings, what a pleasure to see you again.”

“Miss Morgan, the pleasure is entirely mine,” replied the
earl. He continued to hold her hand and they stood smiling at one another for
longer than propriety should allow.

Simon looked from one to the other and was struck by the
picture they presented. Two beautiful fair-haired people, both tall and slim,
holding hands in the midst of a crowded
ton
affair, apparently oblivious
to the scene they were creating. Heads all across the crowded room were turned
toward them as ladies and gentleman unabashedly watched the spectacle unfolding
before them. It would be in all the scandal sheets tomorrow.
The Earl and
the Artist.

Simon stepped up beside his cousin and quietly cleared his
throat.

“Oh forgive my manners,” Henry said, finally releasing her
hand. “Allow me to introduce my friend and cousin, Viscount Easton. Easton,
this is Miss Beatrice Morgan.”

Miss Morgan looked up at Simon. She smiled, not the
wholehearted smile she had displayed previously, but a gentle tilt of her lips,
her dimple winking briefly. She held her hand out to him and when he clasped
her gloved fingers, he felt the warmth through the two layers of soft fabric
that separated their flesh.

He was surprised when she squeezed his fingers and held on
when he would have released her hand after only a moment as manners dictated.
She reached out her other hand to lay it gently upon his, effectively trapping
his hand in hers.

“My Lord Easton, I am ever so pleased to make your
acquaintance,” she said.

He was at a loss for a response. No woman in his entire life
had ever captured his hand this way upon first introductions. No woman had ever
captured his attention as she had since the moment she had entered the room. It
wasn’t that she was pushy or forward, or even overly friendly. She spoke with
such sincerity. Natural.

“It is always a pleasure to meet a friend of my cousin,”
Simon finally replied and immediately wished he had come up with something
wittier to say. He knew he sounded stilted and cold.

If he had been surprised by her warm greeting, he was
patently astonished when she said, “Please accept my deepest condolences on
your father’s passing last year. He was a wonderful man who will be greatly
missed.”

“Thank you,” he replied out of habit. His mind was whirling.
Was she implying that she had known his father?

“I was in Italy when I heard the news and of course by the
time word reached us, he had been gone for some time.” She had yet to release
his hand. She was in fact slowly caressing the back of that hand from knuckles
to wrist and back again. It was highly improper but he could think of no way to
extricate his hand without offering offense. And if he were honest, he had no
wish to stop the soothing movement.

“You knew my father then?” he asked.

“Oh,” she said and her eyes widened before she looked down
upon their still-joined hands. She gave his hand a small pat and released him.
“I do apologize. Sometimes I forget myself. I’ve lived abroad too long I
suppose.”

She looked around the room and seemed to notice the
attention they were garnishing. Instead of blushing in embarrassment upon
discovering her faux pas, she lifted her head and looked from one group of
gawking guests to the next. Like dominoes their gazes dropped away.

She turned back to Simon and Henry just as Moorehead joined
them.

“My dear, you are creating quite a stir,” Moorehead told her
with a laugh. “Hastings, Easton, how are you gentlemen doing this fine night?”

Bertram Moorehead was a perpetually jovial man. Some
misguided members of the
ton
thought him a buffoon, with his short,
rotund body, shiny bald head and booming voice. Simon knew he was a shrewd man,
both financially and politically. He had inherited a bankrupt estate some
thirty years ago and turned it into one of the richest in the country. He
fought tirelessly for the rights of the underprivileged, especially war widows
and orphans. Simon’s own father had attended Eton and Oxford with the man and
had often sought his advice on financial matters. The Easton family fortunes
had benefitted from more than one timely investment suggested by Moorehead.

Hastings and Moorehead fell into conversation, something to
do with a horse that Moorehead was considering purchasing. Simon was only
partly listening. He was more interested in watching Miss Morgan. Beatrice,
Henry had said. It was an appealing name, pretty and decidedly feminine.

She was standing with her hand tucked into the crook of
Moorehead’s arm, smiling at both men as they debated the merits of the horse.

“Do you ride?” Simon asked. He wanted that smile directed at
him once more.

“I am a country girl, my lord. I was practically born in the
saddle.” He was not disappointed. She aimed that smile at him and his breath
stopped.

“A country girl? From whereabouts?” he asked.

“Oh you wouldn’t know of it. A small village called
Deerfield in the North,” she replied.

“I see.” She was quite right, he had never heard of it. He
could not think what to say next. When was he ever tongue-tied around a woman?

She looked up at him, obviously waiting to see if he would
offer anything more to the conversation.

He was saved from further embarrassment when Moorehead
turned to her to say, “What say you, my girl, shall we meet up with Hastings at
the park to ride tomorrow?”

“Oh Bertie, I don’t know,” she replied. “The park is ever so
crowded. One cannot really ride. It’s all that showing-off nonsense.”

“Bea here doesn’t see the point in all those folks getting
rigged up in their stylish riding togs only to prance about on their horses at
a snail’s pace,” he exclaimed to the gentlemen with a chuckle. “We’ll go early
before the fashionable folks are even out of their beds,” he assured her.

“Are you sure? Even at ten o’clock yesterday there were too
many people about. Lancelot could not get in a good gallop and he was cross all
day.”

“We’ll meet at eight,” volunteered Henry.

“Are you sure you can be up that early?” she teased him. “I
don’t recall you being an early riser.”

“Who, me?” Henry asked with a laugh.

Simon wondered how well these two knew each other. How did
she know his morning habits? She hadn’t answered his question as to whether she
had known his father. And she called Moorehead
Bertie
. He decided then
that he would finagle an invitation from his cousin to accompany him to the
park in the early hours.

“Well, my girl, if we’re to be up at dawn I must get myself
off to bed,” Moorehead said.

“My lord, will you join us tomorrow to ride?” Miss Morgan
asked.

Simon had been looking at Moorehead and it took him a moment
to realize she had addressed her question to him. He looked at her. She looked
right back at him and she was smiling, dimple and all. Smiling expectantly at
him as if his answer truly mattered to her.

“It would be my pleasure, Miss Morgan,” he replied with a
slight bow. And she surprised him yet again by reaching out not one hand for
him to clasp but both. He instinctively grasped her hands in his and felt again
that warmth as soon as they touched. She gave his hands a quick squeeze,
smiling up at him all the while.

“And mine as well,” she replied.

Dropping his hands, she turned to face Henry. “My lord,
should you lie abed until noon, as I suspect you will, know that Lord Easton
shall join us without you. And we shall have a splendid time. And I shall give
him leave to call me Beatrice.” Her eyes met Simon’s again and she winked.

Henry laughed and then lifted her hand to his lips before
turning to Moorehead, who joined in the conversation. But Simon could not hear
a word of it. There was a roaring in his ears. A great wave of heat washed over
him and for a moment he felt dizzy. This beautiful, sensuous woman with her
husky laugh and dazzling smile had winked at him. He had never experienced
anything like it. He had never experienced anyone like her.