The Art of Sinning (5 page)

“He's aware that I'm working on a second project while I'm here, yes. I had to tell him that much so he'd understand why I'm having him mix extra paint, stretch extra canvases, etc. But for all he knows of the subject, I might be doing a private portrait of your brother's mistress or illustrating your diary.” He grinned. “I could be up to any manner of shenanigans.”

She flashed him an arch smile. “So he's been with you long enough to know your dissolute character.”

“He knows enough,” Jeremy said blandly.

“But once the painting is exhibited, won't he guess that I modeled for it?” She strolled down the hall.

“I create six or seven works a year. If this is chosen to be hung at the Royal Academy's exhibition next summer, he won't see it until then, much less be aware of when I painted it. It could be a work from before I hired him.”

“Still—”

“Leave Damber to me.” He caught her hand to halt her. “I promise to preserve your reputation, even with him.”

Only after her eyes widened did he realize that her hand was bare. That the way he held it was intimate. That her skin was buttery soft, and her fingers more delicate than he'd expected.

That her breath had begun to quicken . . . as had his pulse. Thunderation.

He dropped her hand.

For a moment she stared at him with a look of unsettling intensity, as if trying to parse out his intentions. Then she released a ragged breath that clutched at him somewhere deep, and turned to walk briskly down the hall.

Fighting his lecherous urges, he strode after her. God, what devil possessed him? He ached to keep touching her. Which was absurd. He generally had better control over his desires.

She showed him into a spacious salon dominated by a large pianoforte. “Perhaps we could use the music room.”

She sounded perfectly demure again. Obviously he wasn't quite the temptation to her that she was to him. That ought to relieve him.

But it didn't.

“Edwin rarely comes in here,” she went on, “and it's wonderfully bright.”

“It is indeed.” He glanced around. “But aside from the fact that the earl will expect me to spend my days on the portrait, how will you keep the servants from noticing that you and I are disappearing for hours on end? Someone is bound to go looking for
you and find us here. I don't see how you can keep it a secret as long as we are in the house. I'd hoped you might have some abandoned outbuilding—”

“No, that won't work.” A frown creased her brow. “Everything is in use during the day. I suppose we could pretend to go riding and find a field somewhere . . .”

“Come now, your brother is sure to be suspicious if we say we're going riding alone together. He'll want to join us, especially when he sees me packing my canvases and sketch books, et cetera, to take along.”

She released an exasperated breath. “What if we were to do it at night after everyone has gone to sleep? Can you paint at night, in dimmer light?”

“I can and have, though it's not my favorite.” He eyed her askance. “But you're proposing that the two of us spend our evenings alone together.”

Averting her gaze, she tipped up her chin. “Yes. What of it?”

“Didn't you characterize me as the sort of man who would as soon toss you down and have my way with you as look at you? You practically accused me of being as bad as your scurrilous brother Samuel.”

“True, but I also said I know all his tricks. And yours.” She crossed her arms over her chest defensively. “If we're in a room in the manor and you misbehave, I can always call for a servant.”

“If you're naïve enough to think that threatening to call a servant would save you from seduction, then you don't know
any
man's tricks,” he said dryly.

That seemed to give her pause. As well it should. “But if you try anything with me, you won't get your
painting. And surely that's more important to you than attempting to bed one more woman in a long string of them.”

“Of course,” he said with a smooth smile.

She was right—it should be. Unfortunately, she didn't realize what a potent enchantress she was. The prospect of painting her while she was dressed in a flimsy costume had him fairly salivating.

Being alone with her at night for hours on end would be tempting fate. So of course, he must do it. He'd never been one to back down from a challenge.

“Very well,” he said, “we'll work while everyone else sleeps. But this room won't do. It's fine for the portrait, but the thing that makes it perfect for painting in the daytime will make it disastrous for our evening trysts.”

He gestured to the windows with their flimsy net curtains. “I'll need plenty of candles, lamps, and firelight to see by, and that will give away our presence to anyone who passes by below—servants, grooms, local populace. Not to mention your brother. Someone might come to investigate.”

“That's true.” Her brow furrowed. “We need something more secluded and private, but indoors. Perhaps down the hall?”

“It'll need to be far away from your brother's bedchamber or he'll hear us.”

“True.” Wandering out of the room, she looked around. “Edwin's suite is on this floor, as is yours. We can't use the library, because Edwin likes to go in there when he can't sleep. On the floor above, where my bedchamber and the others are, there might be a spare sitting room we could use.”

“Too small.” He peered up the open well of the staircase. “What's on the floor above that?”

She tensed. “Nothing, really. Just the old nursery and schoolroom.”

“The schoolroom might do.” Without waiting for her, he strode up the stairs.

“It isn't ever used,” she protested as she hurried after him. “I can't even remember the last time a fire was laid in the hearth.”

“As long as the fireplace still draws, it should be fine.”

When they reached the top floor, he paused to look around, seeing only a series of closed doors. “Which room is it?”

Looking oddly reluctant, she meandered to the end of the carpeted hall and flung a door open. “Honestly, I don't think—”

But he was already stalking past her and into the room. A drugget covered the floor and Holland cloths draped the furniture, supporting her assertion that the room wasn't used. A globe sat bare and forgotten in a corner, a blackboard hung on the wall, and a few spindly chairs were scattered about.

Best of all, in the center of the room stood a massive oak table that had obviously been deemed too marred by scratches and stains to warrant protecting. It could serve as an altar if he covered it with white fabric.

He ran his hand over the dusty surface. A pity he couldn't use it as it was. The wood had stories to tell; he could practically hear it calling to him. But the altar's surface must be pale enough to show the
blood that he would paint coursing down from his sacrifice.

His beautiful, provocative sacrifice, who remained frozen in the doorway, clearly uncertain of his choice. “Surely you don't think this will do.”

“Actually, it's perfect.”

He wandered the room in a fog of thought. He'd originally envisioned a wilderness scene, with Commerce as a stodgy fellow he meant to paint in later, looming over the lovely Art lying prone beneath his knife as her blood dripped onto the granite altar. But why should Commerce be outside? Better to use that classical frieze that spanned the schoolroom's ceiling. And the fretwork above the windows, like something out of a Grecian temple, or a bank.

Yes! The modern equivalent of the worship of money was the institution where all that money was kept! Banks often had Grecian architecture, some elements of which were in this very room.

Excitement coursing through him, he scanned the marble fireplace with its plaster medallion above, perfect for a bank. And the oak table could work as a counter, like those where clerks stood to serve the account holders.

He frowned. But the oak was still too dark to show the blood. Maybe if he—

“Mr. Keane!”

The voice startled him. Only after he turned to find Lady Yvette looking worried did he realize she'd spoken his name more than once. “Yes?”

“Where were you?”

He smiled ruefully. “Forgive me, my lady. When
I'm working I get a bit lost in the project, and my surroundings disappear.”

She nodded. “Rather like Edwin when he's working on his automatons.”

“Automatons?”

“Machines that you wind up and—”

“I know what an automaton is,” Jeremy remarked. “I just wouldn't have expected your brother to have any.”

“He does them for the boys' school we support. Says that they help the boys learn physics and mechanical skills and such. But I think he also does it because of Papa.”

“Oh?”

“Papa collected dozens through the years. At first, Edwin fiddled with them only when they broke, since Samuel and I were so amused by them.” Her face clouded over. “Then later he started making his own after Mama got sick, when he had to spend hours at her side because . . .”

Whirling on her heel, she walked into the hall. “We should go downstairs,” she said in a remote tone. “I hear Edwin calling. And it wouldn't do for him to find us up here.”

“No.” Jeremy hadn't heard anyone calling, and he doubted she had, either. Something had spooked her, and he wanted to know what.

But now wasn't the time to raise the question. He'd wait until she was posing for him and couldn't easily run off. Then he'd find out exactly why his Juno was so skittish.

Five

Yvette sat across from Edwin in the drawing room, trying not to look at Mr. Keane. It was impossible. Tonight he wore a brilliant blue tailcoat that made his eyes shine so luminously, she could stare at him for hours.

Not that he gave her the chance. As she and Edwin played chess, he sat beside the fireplace and sketched.

She couldn't believe she'd agreed to meet with him alone at night. Was she out of her wits?

No. She was a grown woman in full control of her senses. She was older now, and far wiser. Surely she could handle the likes of Mr. Keane.

If you're naïve enough to think that threatening to call
a servant would save you from seduction, then you don't know any man's tricks.

Oh, dear.

Still, he did want his painting. He would behave.

Look at him now, so intent on drawing her that he couldn't even make polite conversation. It was
somewhat lowering that he saw her only as some object to sketch. If this was how he always worked, though, she would have nothing to worry about.

“Are you sure you don't want to take my place here?” She was determined to get
some
reaction from the man. “I'm no match for Edwin at chess.”

He didn't answer. Edwin exchanged a glance with her.

“Mr. Keane?” she said sharply. “Would you like to play the next game with my brother?”

“Hmm?” The same vague expression he'd worn this afternoon crossed his face before it cleared. “Oh, sorry, no.” He tore off a sheet, balled it up, and made as if to throw it into the fire.

“Don't!” She leapt up to take the paper from him. “Let me see.”

“It's horrible,” he said, though he let her have it.

She smoothed out the sketch, then gasped. With a minimal number of strokes he'd perfectly rendered her face in profile. “It's not horrible in the least. You made me pretty.”

“You
are
pretty,” Edwin interjected.

Mr. Keane ignored him. “I made you like every other chit in England.” With a frown, he went to work again on his sketch pad. “You're better than that.”

She didn't know whether to be flattered or insulted. “I would settle for pretty,” she told him as she reverently slid the crumpled sketch into her nearby writing desk.

“Never settle for less than you deserve,” he said. “It's always a bad idea.”

The knife's edge of pain in his voice caught her
attention as she came back to where he sat slashing and shading with the pencil. “You sound as if you speak from experience.”

Mr. Keane glanced up and blinked. Then his gaze shuttered before he pointed to her chair. “Go back there and stop moving about. I want to do more sketches. I have to figure out exactly how to pose you tomorrow, and for that I need studies.”

She thrust out her chin. “Don't I get a say in the pose for my own portrait?”

“I should be the one with a say.” Edwin hunched over the chessboard. “I'm the one paying for it.”

This time they both ignored him. Mr. Keane settled back in his chair, his eyes roving her as if memorizing curves and lines. “Would you like a say? You didn't seem that enthusiastic about the portrait yesterday.”

That was before she'd realized he could make her look pretty but still herself. “I'm not averse to it. And yes, I prefer to choose the pose.”

He smiled faintly. “You don't choose the pose, my lady. It chooses you.”

“Must you always speak in enigmas?”

“At least I don't speak in street cant.” Crossing his arms over his chest, he broadened his smile. “Why do you, anyway?”

“I don't speak in it. I collect it for my dictionary.”

“But why would a lady of the realm with any number of more appropriate pastimes open to her choose to ‘collect' street cant?”

“Think of it as a scholarly pursuit.”

He raked his gaze down her in a thorough assessment that made her cheeks burn and her stomach
flip over. “You don't strike me as the scholarly type,” he said huskily.

She glanced over to Edwin, then released a breath to see her brother still concentrating on deciding his next chess move. “You hardly know me well enough to determine that.”

“True. So why don't you remedy that situation? Tell me why you collect vulgar slang instead of, say, butterflies.”

“Samuel got her into it, the scoundrel,” Edwin snapped.

Her heart faltered. She mustn't let Mr. Keane guess that her proposed bawdy house visit was connected to Samuel. She wasn't sure if she could trust the artist, and if he got even an inkling that Samuel was involved he might go to Edwin, who would quash everything. “But a long time ago, before Papa banished him from the family.”

Mr. Keane glanced from her to Edwin in confusion. “Then why are you still gathering cant for your dictionary?”

“Because it no longer has anything to do with Samuel.”
Or his friend, with whom I was infatuated. Until I realized that his interest in me was purely mercenary.
“Samuel was an aficionado of prizefighting and was always throwing terms around that I didn't comprehend. Wanting to understand him better, I started asking questions and taking notes. After a while, it became a bit of a hobby.”

“An obsession, more like,” Edwin said.

“But a purely academic one?” Mr. Keane searched her face. “I assume you've never actually been in those parts of London where it's spoken.”

“I don't need to go into such parts to learn about it,” she said defensively. “I've read all the dictionaries and Pierce Egan's books. Also, I work with several charities involving women of a lower station, and I hear their use of such slang.”

“Besides,” Edwin said, “it's not as if I would ever allow her to wander into Spitalfields or Wapping, even with an escort. It's not safe for her
or
her reputation.”

Mr. Keane shot her a glance full of meaning.

“Edwin is always concerned about my safety,” she said hastily, “even here at the estate. It's one of the disadvantages of having a much older brother.”

Edwin settled back in his chair. “You could change me out for a husband. Then you could do as you please.”

She snorted. “Do such indulgent men actually exist in society?”

“You'll never find out if you keep running them off,” her brother said sourly.

Jane had accused her of much the same thing, and Yvette was sick of it. “I can't help it if all the men I meet are as stodgy as you.”

“You mean, because they're shocked when you quiz them about vulgar terms?” Edwin glanced at Mr. Keane. “Every time she meets a sporting gentleman, she asks him about any slang he might know. It's one reason she can't acquire any respectable suitors: They decide she's either a bluestocking or rather lower than they thought.”

She sniffed. “Gentlemen make no allowances for a woman having unusual hobbies.”

“You could stop having them,” Edwin pointed out.

“You could stop tinkering with little mechanical people and start tinkering with actual living ones,” she snapped. “But I don't criticize
you
.”

“I think you just did,” Mr. Keane said gamely.

“Stay out of this!” She faced her brother. “Do you really want me to give up all my interests just to gain a husband? When you're not willing to give up yours to gain a wife?”

Mr. Keane laughed. “She's got you there, Blakeborough. What's sauce for the goose ought to be sauce for the gander.”

“Ought to be, I agree.” Edwin steepled his hands. “Sadly, in the rarefied atmosphere of our class, it is not. A man may be as eccentric as he pleases and still find a wife, especially if he has an estate and a title. But a woman, even an heiress, must be more careful if she doesn't want a man marrying her for her money alone.”

His words fired her temper. “Yes, a woman must always be more careful. And more circumspect. And more
bland.
” She glared at her brother, hands on her hips. “She must always sit just so and act just so, and never indicate one iota of what she really thinks or feels, because—”

“Stop right there!”

Mr. Keane's cry so startled her that she froze.

He leapt up to circle to the front of her. “Don't move. That's it. That's the pose
.
” Dropping into the chair across from Edwin, he began sketching furiously. “Perfect. Absolutely perfect.”

“Because she's being annoying as hell?” Edwin drawled.

“Because she's
fierce
.” Mr. Keane's gaze met hers. “Gloriously, intoxicatingly fierce.”

So was he, his eyes alight, his face wearing an artistic intensity as his pencil flew across the page.

Her pulse began to pound. “Oh, yes, paint me fierce. I like fierce.”

“Then stop smiling,” Mr. Keane chided. “Go back to how you looked before.”

As she tried to do so, Edwin let out an oath. “This isn't the sort of image I had in mind for my sister.”

Mr. Keane didn't even pause in his work. “I warned you there's a reason I don't do portraits. The sitters—or their families—never like how I portray them.”

“But it's a fishwife's pose,” Edwin complained, “with her hands on her hips like that. It's not the least bit feminine.”

“It's the most feminine pose in the world. How often do you see a man stand like that?” Mr. Keane said. “It conveys strength of purpose.”

“Yes, if the woman is an Amazon,” Edwin snap­ped.

“I'm perfectly happy to be painted as an Amazon,” Yvette got out through clenched teeth as she tried to maintain her pose. Amazons didn't let men make fools of them.

Mr. Keane smiled darkly at her. “Not an Amazon, my lady. Juno herself. You're a goddess of the first order. Amazons are soldiers in skirts, but goddesses can be both soft and fierce. That's what makes them goddesses.”

Something shifted inside her chest. No man had ever called her a goddess. Certainly no man had ever captured the strange dichotomy of her character that so put off respectable gentlemen.

And though she tried to tell herself it was just Mr. Keane's roguery at work, she couldn't deny the heat in his eyes as he spoke. It sent an answering shiver of need down her spine.

Thank heaven Edwin couldn't see how Mr. Keane was looking at her. Though unfortunately her brother could probably see
her
reaction to it.

She tried to figure out what he was thinking, but Edwin was a master at hiding his feelings. Much better at it than she. He merely glanced from her to Mr. Keane with an unreadable gaze.

“You see?” Mr. Keane showed Edwin the sketch. “What do you think?”

Edwin's face softened slightly. “You're right,” he said, a hint of awe in his voice. “She's magnificent.”

“Much better than merely pretty,” Mr. Keane said as he returned to sketching. “You're clearly a man of taste after all, Blakeborough.”

A knot formed in her stomach. She wasn't quite ready to give up looking pretty. “Let
me
see.”

“In a moment.” Mr. Keane made a few more marks on his sketch pad, then rose to approach her. He paused just short of where she stood. “Can you look at this without changing your expression?” She lifted an eyebrow, and he chuckled. “Of course you can't. I know that just from spending half a day with you.”

“Try me,” she muttered.

“It doesn't matter. The light isn't that good any
way, and I've got enough of a drawing to work with. So memorize your position, and tomorrow we'll set you in the music room as we discussed. Then I'll start blocking out the portrait. Assuming you still approve of your pose in the sketch. Do you?”

The fact that he remembered her demand to choose the pose warmed her. “It depends. Let me see how it looks.”

He turned the sketchbook toward her. It gave only the merest impression of her shape, with more detail about the face. But in a few strokes he'd managed to capture her fierce mood while somehow conveying the vulnerability beneath it.

And he hadn't made her pretty. He'd made her beautiful.

“All right?” he murmured, a gentleness in his tone.

“Yes.” She was still trying to take in how he'd done it when he lifted the edge of the paper to reveal words written on the sheet beneath.

Will you meet me in the schoolroom at midnight to begin the other? If so, point to something on the sketch.

With her heart pounding, she touched her finger to the image of her dinner gown. “Shall I wear this tomorrow, too?” She hoped her voice didn't shake as badly as her finger.

“Whatever you wish to wear is fine.”

The rasped words made her skin tingle. He stared at her with a look so pregnant with carnal possibilities that it sent her blood rushing feverishly through her veins.
Take care
.
You went down this road before, and it only led to heartache. He's a rogue. He's a rogue. He's a rogue.

A pity that her body was deaf to her warning. Her body yearned to find out exactly how much of a rogue he was. What he might say to her in private, if he might kiss her . . . how he might touch her.

She scowled. Her body had best learn to listen. Because she didn't intend to make a fool of herself ever again.

And she certainly refused to end up used and discarded like one of Samuel's women.