The Nude (full-length historical romance) (4 page)

He stopped pacing to tower over Elsbeth.

She clasped her hands in her lap, squeezing them tightly together to keep from trembling. She reminded herself she’d never seen him strike anyone, but then again she’d never seen him so angry, his cheeks so red.

Surely, he wouldn’t strike her.

“You must tell me who this—this Dionysus is,” he demanded. “I will call the cove out if I have to.”

“Nooo,” Lady Baneshire wailed.

He waved away his wife’s distress. “He will do the right thing by you. I will insist upon it. He will marry you if that is what society demands.”

“Marriage?” Elsbeth’s head turned icy cold at the horrifying thought. The green urns sitting on shelves in the alcove swam in and out of view. “I cannot marry.” Lord Baneshire appeared to have floated away.

Elsbeth drew a fortifying breath and straightened her shoulders. All she could seem to think about at that moment was the first time her husband had flown into a rage. He’d tossed her onto his bed, twisted her long hair in his hand, ripped at her gown, and—

“No! I
will not
marry again!”
Never
again
.

Her uncle crouched down beside her chair. “You will if I demand it. As your closest living male relative, I’m responsible for your actions.” He took her hand in his. His blue eyes, eyes so much like her mother’s, softened just a touch. “This is the only way to protect your name and to keep the
ton
from turning against my family. So tell me, Elsbeth, who painted that portrait of you?”

It was difficult to look her uncle in the eye and say what she had to say. It was even harder to keep the tears from falling. Somehow she managed both.

“I—don’t—know,” she said with great care.

Lord Baneshire’s expression darkened. He dropped her hand and stood with a rush. “You refuse me? It’s a fool’s folly to protect the blackguard who did this to you—who did this to your family. He has brought ruin upon us all.” He prowled the green parlor like a tiger in the depths of a jungle. “Everyone out.” He pointed to the closed double wooden doors. “I must speak to Elsbeth alone.”

Olivia and Lauretta’s faces drained of all color.

“Papa,” Lauretta cried, “it’s not her fault.”

“She honestly didn’t know about that painting. I saw her. She appeared as shocked as the rest of us,” Olivia wailed.

“Out!”

“Come girls.” Lady Baneshire led the two teary-eyed girls toward the door.

“Please, Papa, please. Don’t send our Elly away.” Large tears dropped down Olivia’s pretty, round cheeks.

The parlor door closed with a loud clank. “Send the chit away,” he grumbled as he marched back toward Elsbeth. “If only a scandal could be so easily snuffed. Girls!” He waved an angry arm in the air. Elsbeth winced as if he’d dealt her a blow. “I’ve been cursed with girls! Not a blasted son in the bunch!”

“I will leave your home if you wish it,” she offered bravely. Truly, she had no other place to go other than out into the chilly London streets, but she would leave if he asked it of her.

“And then what would you do?” he asked. The redness of his cheeks deepened. “You would run away from your responsibility? From protecting my children’s futures? You would abandon them to the worst of the gossips?”

“No! No, I would never abandon Olivia and Lauretta. I only wish to—”

“Then tell me his bloody name!”

Lord help her, he was going to hit her. She slipped from her chair and rushed for the door only to have her uncle grab her arm and spin her around.

“You won’t escape so easily,” he warned, and tossed her back into the chair. “And I had such high hopes for you. I had thought you had bloomed into a gentlewoman much like your mother. Now there was a lady with a steadfast and trustworthy head on her shoulders. A model. A paragon. Henrietta never hesitated to scold me till I feared my ears would bleed should I dare step over the line of propriety. Even when my father was willing to look the other way, my sister wouldn’t.”

Baneshire closed his eyes and moaned.

“For you to stand here and lie to me without a shiver of remorse, it chills my blood. It’s impossible for me to believe that you wouldn’t know the man’s name. He wouldn’t have been able to paint such a painting unless you’d willingly posed for him . . . like a bloody whore. Damnation, I can’t abide to be in the same room with you.”

He marched toward the door and stopped just before his hand touched the knob, his shoulders cinching with tension. “Your husband,” he whispered. “Were the rumors about his perversions true?”

“No,” she said. Not precisely a lie. Her husband’s rages were sadistic, much worse than what any of the gossipy members of the
ton
could ever imagine.

“Then why, Elsbeth? Why did you do this?”

To that she had no answer her uncle would be willing to believe. She had lied too well for too long to expect him to believe the truth now.

* * * * *

Dionysus lit a solitary candle before turning the brass key in the cellar door’s heavy lock. He used his shoulder to jar the swollen door from the rotting jam and then raised the candle, shedding a flickering light into the cavernous space. Not enough light for someone unfamiliar with the uneven stairway. Yet he knew each stone step well. With a quick stride he nearly flew down the last steps. He’d come, not to paint, but to gaze on his latest work—his obsession—his madness.

Her smiling lips, her haunting eyes, her golden hair were forever imprinted in his mind. Those delicate features, perfection in the form of womanhood.

And still he didn’t know her name.

She was the Earl of Baneshire’s niece. But Baneshire came from a rather large family, and so did his wife. She could be the daughter of any number of the respected families populating the
ton
.

She’d been married and must have loved her husband dearly. The pain shadowed in those eyes could only be borne from great suffering. Terrible sadness.

Dionysus knew such pain. If only she could peer into his eyes, she’d recognize a fellow, suffering creature. And perhaps, her soft, upstanding gaze could heal.

He closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. The lovely image of her—the one he called Perfection—swirled into view.

A flash of a memory.

Nearly a decade ago he was a young man just completing his studies at Oxford, tall and lanky, still shy and uncertain of his own power. When the weather was pleasant, he would escape Merton College just as the sun rose and hide among the trees near the Iffley water mill, trying to capture in oil and canvas the elusive slant of light of the sun’s golden rays as they skidded off the mill pond’s glassy surface. With the wooded hills and lush pastures forming a gentle bucolic backdrop, he once believed he’d never find another subject that could keep his artistic attentions so enthralled.

But that was before
she
walked into the scene.

A young woman still dressed for the schoolroom, she’d gathered her wide skirts into her hands and dashed across the grassy field. Two matrons, one clearly a lady aunt or mother, chased after the child. The girl’s golden locks tumbled free from the pins and flowed freely in the gentle breeze.

His breath caught in his throat. It took no great feat of artistic talent to recognize the budding woman, hovering oh so near to sweet ripeness, in the schoolgirl. Given a year or two, she would be married.

He gulped at the thought and swung away with those uncomfortably long arms of his and crashed into his easel. His paints and brushes scattered onto the dew-moistened grass.

“Damn and blast,” he muttered as he dipped to his knees and started gathering up his mess, all the while praying the women wouldn’t spot him, praying that if they did, they wouldn’t come over to speak to him.

If that young beauty came over and turned her sapphire gaze toward him . . . His heart hammered painfully enough in his chest at the mere thought of speaking to her.

He glanced up. The girl was still sprinting across the field, her long legs carrying her as gracefully as a young doe. She waved a bouquet of yellow flowers in the air and danced circles in front of her harried-faced guardians.

“So this is where you sneak off to every morning, Pole.” Hubert, a thick bully who lived for the day he’d be able to take his father’s title, punched Dionysus in the arm with such force the paintbrushes tumbled to the ground again.

Dionysus rose. He wiped at the grass stains on his breeches and maneuvered himself in front of the painting he’d been laboring over. “Leave off, Hubert. A man’s entitled to some time away.”

Hubert tossed back his head and boomed a laugh. “What are you trying to hide there, Pole?” He pushed Dionysus aside with a meaty paw and crossed his arms as he studied the painting.

Dionysus gasped when he saw it himself. In the center of the unfinished landscape the beginnings of the dancing schoolgirl’s face had appeared. His hand, without his mind’s permission, had captured but a fraction of her beauty.

Hubert looked out over the field and quickly spotted the sensuous phantasm. She was laying out a blanket among a throng of wildflowers. His lips quirked up into a grin.

“I didn’t realize you indulged in, in—what would your uncle call it?—in a female’s talent, Pole,” he said as his gaze remained trained on the young woman. He licked his wide lips. “I certainly can’t fault you in your choice of subjects, though. Zounds, that chit would make a man of my ilk a mighty fine wife.” His grin grew by wolfish proportions.

“I-I can’t imagine what you mean. I only paint landscapes. The child intruded into my work, that is all,” he protested, though Hubert’s interest had already been turned.

“Child? She’s sixteen, if not a day,” Hubert said, and snatched the wet painting from the easel.

“Hand that back!”

“If you don’t want your uncle learning of this frivolous pursuit of yours, you’ll do as I demand,” Hubert said.

His uncle’s efforts to forcefully mold Dionysus into a hard, no-nonsense man—the exact opposite of his dreamy father—were common knowledge at Merton College. The blood drained away from his head at the thought of pricking his uncle’s ire. He backed down and stood unmanned, silently cursing his bloody weaknesses and his wretched fear of his uncle, as he watched Hubert swagger toward the bevy of women, the wet painting swinging in his paws.

More than eight years later, his heart still thundered, his breath still fled at the thought of speaking to the lovely angel Hubert had so boldly approached that spring morning. But he didn’t need to speak to her, for he now possessed the painting. He crossed the dimly lit workroom to his pile of discarded canvases where he’d hidden it away from anyone’s eyes but his.

Tossing the canvases aside, one by one his muscles grew taut, eager to drink in the view of her rose-petal lips and her creamy body.

He lifted the last of the canvases and stared at the bare, stone floor. “What trickery is this?” he whispered, dragging both his hands through his hair. He tugged at the strands until his scalp burned. “Where is she?”

His mind raced, his chest constricted, frightened to consider the possibilities. His painting—the proof of his madness was gone.

Someone must have found it.

Taken it.

* * * * *

It had taken only two days for the
ton
’s censure to fall on the entire Baneshire household, confirming Elsbeth’s worst fears. Because of her position as chaperone to Baneshire’s daughters, not one member of the
ton
dared send an invitation for fear of her inadvertent attendance. And yesterday, Sir Donald Gilforth had paid a call to Lauretta. She’d been expecting him to propose marriage. But instead, he coldly broke off their relationship, announcing that in light of Elsbeth’s scandal, he needed to think of his unmarried sisters’ reputations. And that he didn’t dare let his name continue to be associated with theirs. Elsbeth decided right then and there that something drastic had to be done to remedy this disaster. And soon.

Early in the afternoon the very next
day, Elsbeth hastily departed
from the Baneshire town house. None of the servants raised an eyebrow or questioned the wisdom of her venturing out alone on foot with only her oilskin cape for protection from the freezing rain.