by Jess Russell
****
“Damnit, Austin.” Dev intercepted his brother in the passageway, heading for the stairs. “I’ve tried to give you the benefit of the doubt, but you continue to push me. What the hell have you to do with Sir Charles Brocket?”
Austin shoved his hands through his hair.
“Were you the one who invited him to the duke’s ball?”
“Not entirely. I did not oversee Margaret. Sir Charles is connected to a crony of Father’s and I suppose she just went down usual the list.”
“I do not want him near Anne again. Ever.”
Austin shifted his feet.
“What?”
“I am in a spot of trouble.” His brother took out his own flask and took a furtive sip.
“Trouble? In what way?”
“I seem to have overextended myself this quarter.”
This was not news. He knew his brother was in deep. “How much?”
“Under a thousand.” He raised the flask again, but Dev stayed his hand.
A conservative lie. “How much under a thousand?”
“Nine hundred and eighty-nine.” Austin at least had the scruples to look sheepish.
“And how is Havermere involved?”
“Firstly, I did not know I was meeting the earl. Sir Charles only told me he had a friend who might be able to help me with funds. I never thought to see you here.”
Lord Percy Unger toddled by with his newest doxy. The brothers nodded.
“You are to have nothing to do with Havermere.”
“What has he done to you?”
“Nothing outright, but he is Nora’s husband, and while we were discreet, he was always suspicious, hounding Nora until she ended up in my arms and eventually my bed. The cruel things he did to her—I would have called the bastard out if it wouldn’t have looked like murder.”
“He wanted you to paint the countess, didn’t he?”
“Yes, when they were newly married, he had me in to admire his prized possession. I vowed then and there I would paint her, but not for that heartless brute to hang above his mantel. When I wouldn’t do it, he hired Brocket to bully me. I didn’t know Brocket was still pimping for the man.”
Austin fidgeted with the fob on his watch.
“You only met the earl this evening?”
“Yes.”
“And what did he offer you to square your debt?”
Austin shoved his hands in his pocket and looked at the floor. “Nothing. The man is in a foul mood. The meeting proved a total waste.”
“All right.” He touched his brother’s shoulder and waited for him to meet his gaze. “I am not one to cast stones, but I caution you to rein yourself in while you still can. Take a page from my history. You don’t want to fall into debt.”
“No, I see that now. I just had a few bad days at the tables. My luck is going to change.”
“Luck? Listen, Austin, stay away from the hells for a time.”
“Right, of course you are right. Thank you, Dev. I will pay you back as soon as I’m flush.”
“Very well. I assume that will be at the beginning of next quarter.”
“Next quarter.”
“You are not involved in that ridiculous bet at White’s, are you?”
His little brother looked at the floor and then at the ceiling. “No. No, though I have been quizzed numerous times about who might be your model.” He laughed ruefully, finally meeting his gaze. “You don’t want to give me a hint as to your paramour?”
A bevy of would-be detectives, eager to uncover any shred of news, dogged Dev. He’d seen one man in a series of ridiculous disguises several times. “No. No hints. And she is only a model, not my paramour. If you’ll remember, I am lately married.”
“Yes, of course.” Austin almost smirked. “Is it not Nora Havermere then? I know she is the obvious choice, but sometimes the simplest guess is spot on. Hiding in plain sight and all.”
“Leave off, brother. Isn’t it enough I have half of London on my heels? Must I add my own brother to that rabble?”
“You are right, forgive me. Besides, you’d be barmy to use her. Havermere would have your head.”
“Fuck Havermere. Nora may do as she pleases.”
“Hmm, I wonder.” Austin looked as if he wanted to say more but wisely shut his mouth.
Ushers began to fan out to take up positions at the various doors. The act would be over soon.
“I will give you a draft for those funds. I must get back to Anne.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Stay away from Brocket.”
The roar of applause sounded.
Chapter Thirty-Three
They stayed until the end of La Traviata, but the magic of the evening had disappeared.
He stood like a skittish rabbit in the hallway next to the door to her bedchamber. The pearls glistened silver in the lamp’s light. They grazed her breasts, dipping slightly into her cleavage, leading to the perfect silvery globes of her bosom. Touch me they winked. But his wife remained mute. “Well, happy birthday, my sweet Owl. I trust I will be welcome later?”
After a whisker of hesitation, her answer was to pull him inside. She slammed the door shut and pressed him up against it.
In thirty seconds, at most, he’d flipped her, lifted her skirts, and pushed inside his sweet, generous wife.
On trembling legs, hers still wrapped about his waist, he carried her to the down filled mattress where she’d get a proper bedding. After laying her down, he yanked at his cravat and coat, then jerked his breeches, already skimming his hips, dragging them down along with his hose. Damn shoes. Hopping around, he nearly took out her bedside table before managing to shuffle them off. Then shucked off the wad of hose and breeches. He was just lifting his shirt over his head when he heard a soft snuffle.
His hedonistic bride was asleep.
Lips, bruised with his kisses, the dark fan of her lashes against her cheek, white fingers threaded in the strand of pearls. So utterly beautiful.
He watched her through several bongs of the clock. Now, time his patience was rewarded. Sliding his hand under her pillow, he pulled her closer and blew in her ear. She stirred.
“What is this?” Something cool and smooth filled his palm. He drew it out. A finger length of stone caught the light. A crystal.
“It is nothing.” Anne tried to snatch it, but he was too quick. Her hand fell back to the pillow.
Jealously reared its head. “It is clearly something, sweet Owl.” A birthday gift? “Is it a charm you must keep under your pillow?” He should not tease her. She rarely got his jokes anyway. And when she did she usually put his poor efforts to shame with her infinitely more subtle wit. His humor was a great swath of color globed on the canvas with a pallet knife, while hers was laid on with the finest miniature brush.
“It was a bridal gift.”
“From whom? Ah, let me guess, Beauchamp?” She frowned. “Ah, so it is a charm. Perhaps for fertility?” He stroked his finger over a long sheer facet. “I have a much more potent one, madam, if you would care to see.” He guided her hand down to his already bobbing cock.
“Give it to me. You are making fun.” Swifter now, she evaded his grasp and reached for the crystal.
“No, I will take good care.” He avoided her fingers easily. “After all, we need every ounce of help we can get.”
She looked away then.
Blast!
He’d ruined the mood with his teasing and then bringing up the lie of the child that was supposed to be already growing within her body. He slid the rock back under her pillow.
“Come, let us make our own magic, my Owlet.” He pulled her to him. She buried her face into his neck. Her silk hair flooded his fingers, running in rivulets over his wrists and forearms, catching in the bend of his elbow. He brought it to his lips. So soft, yet so strong. He bit a piece, feeling it against his teeth. He brushed the ends over his lips. Back and forth and then took it into his mouth his tongue jousting with the pointed tip of ha
ir.
Gently he pushed her onto her back, wanting to see the moonlight on her face. She turned away. He took the wet tip of her hair and painted her eyelids, the corner of her eye, down her cheek to circle her ear. She shuddered and licked her lips. He’d removed the pearls and loosened her gown and stays an hour or so earlier. Now, pushing the bodice down, he continued on to her breasts, carefully wetting the tip of his brush again, to flick it over her nipple which drew into a tight peak.
A small moan escaped, reward for his work.
She tried to keep these little sounds inside, still slightly embarrassed, but he could not let her off so easily. Whenever one pushed its way over her lips, he smiled.
Eventually she would be freer with her noises. He would like that too. But for now these mewling kitten sounds sent him.
He abandoned his improvised paintbrush, deciding to use his tongue instead. He found the tiny space between her front teeth. She closed her mouth. She did not like the space. He opened her again and flicked his tongue over the gap once more. I love this, his tongue said. He wanted his body to tell her what his words could not. Could she hear him?
****
Anne felt utterly spent. Her gown and beautiful pearls lay in a heap on the floor along with her stays and stockings.
Oh, if she could only let things lie. But she could not. “I would like one more gift.”
“Anything.” Her husband burrowed into her neck.
Good, he was well and sated. “I would like a promise.”
“A promise? Of course, I promise.” His lips traveled lower.
High time to see things for what they were, one way or another. This not knowing was worse than losing him. “You cannot promise. You have not yet heard what I want.”
“I don’t need to. Your wish is my command.” His lips teased her breast.
“Hmmmm. That is not wise.”
“I am not wise when it comes to you, my sweet Owl.”
“Well, you must be. You must not be rash. You must not always let your passions rule you.”
“How can they not when I am with you?”
She sat up and pulled the cover over her breasts.
“Very well.” He flopped on his back and looped his arms above his head, “I will be most attentive.”
“You have not found a model yet, have you?”
“Anne, I beg you, let us not talk of painting.” He tugged the sheet down and kissed her breast.
“James, stop. You promised me. Anything.”
“Very well. I am all ears.” He propped himself up on an elbow and scrubbed his fingers through his hair.
“The exhibition is three weeks. And the Queen expects a masterpiece. Correct?”
“Yes, but I cannot—”
“You must paint the countess.” There it was out. Not so hard.
He sat up. “What?”
“The countess—” She took a breath. “You must paint Nora Havermere.”
“Nora?” he echoed.
“Yes.” Please don’t make me say the name again. “There is no time to shilly-shally with trying to find a proper model. You must paint what you know.”
What is in your heart.
She wanted it done. Either she would win, or Nora Havermere would. But at last this uncertainty would end. She could go on when she knew what the rules of her life were going to be. She would know that the lover who came to her in the night was only that, a consummate lover, not a real husband. Or she would finally know that James was truly hers—all of him.
He took her hand in his. “Anne, I will find someone.”
She stared at her hand within his. “Tell me, are you so afraid to be in her presence? Is she such a temptation?”
“No, of course not. It is only—”
She looked up into his worried eyes.
He shook his head. “Are you sure you want this?”
“Yes, I am sure.” They would move forward together or apart, but at least she would finally know. Thrusting Nora Havermere under her husband’s nose would tip the balance. And in the end the countess would claim him as hers, or, just maybe, Anne would finally have the husband she longed for.
She made herself get up and cross to the window. Dawn was just breaking. “Now go and make a masterpiece.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Nora sat perched on the windowsill, looking wistfully out at the Thames.
Dev shifted the round brush in his hand for the flat-angled brush he held between his teeth. After spending so much time in his garret, he had a new appreciation for seascapes. How Mr. Turner could never grow tired of painting the same bit of water again and again.
He stood back. “Blasted, sod-sucking hell!” Wrong. All fucking wrong.
Already moving, a pained look on her face, Nora rubbed her bottom and cast her eyes longingly at the bread and cheese on the table.
“We’ll try the couch again.” The windowsill was a mistake. He was no Turner. Besides, the setting competed with the subject. He wanted the focus completely on her.
She flopped onto the couch. He shifted his easel to face her.
No. No. No! Having the fainting couch hauled in had been a colossal waste of effort and blunt. It was wrong. All wrong. Too fussy. Too…too utterly wrong. Too much like his paintings of old. He wanted something fresh. Something new.
“Move to this chair.”
“You might try a little civility, commander.” But she moved quickly enough.
He did not mean to bark, but his last shred of patience had fallen away two hours ago. “Can you not look quite so…”
“Quite so what?”
“As if you have just come from a lover’s bed.”
“If only,” she groused, but sat up straighter.
“Your hair is wrong. Can you make it more—managed somehow?”
She only raised an eyebrow.
“Never mind. Here, hold this. No, not that way. More simply.” He stood back, his hands out before him making a frame, his vision narrowed. “No, no damn it.” He yanked the thing from her hands and heaved it out the window. When he turned back, Nora had moved and was pouring a drink. He charged up to her, took the glass, and then tossed the liquor out the window as well. He pointed with the empty glass to the chair.
“We have not a moment to waste. I need you alert. You do realize the exhibition is in less than two weeks’ time?”
“My dearest Devlin, I could not forget if I tried.” She sighed wearily, but dutifully sat and folded her hands in her lap. “Perhaps I could wear some color? You know I look atrocious in gray.”
“This portrait is not about your beauty. That speaks for itself. It is about something more. Something—”
“Something I don’t possess.”
“Nonsense. You are one of the most generous, self-assured people I have the pleasure of inflicting myself on. And you put up with me. That alone sets you above the rest of the population.”
“Ah, such high praise indeed.” She cocked her head as if she were about to impart something to a child. “Perhaps I am the wrong subject for this masterpiece.”
He scraped off part of her nose.
“Perhaps you have moved beyond me, and now need someone quite different.”
“Rubbish. You are my muse. You always have been. You are like Mr. Turner’s harbor for me. I could paint you a hundred times and still see something new.”
“Hmmm,” was all she said. Or didn’t say.
“Blast it! Now you’ve moved again. Is there no stillness within you?”
She settled and he slapped some cadmium red onto the canvas, a highlight in her hair. Then scraped it off. Why in the blazes was it so difficult to stay still?
“Dev, I thought I saw Lily.”
Vermillion glopped out of the tube. A bloody waste of pigment. “What?”
“You heard me.” Nora twirled her finger round and round a curl that should not have even been there. Why must she have such a bloody riot of hair?
“I know the girl was not Lily.
I am not daft. Our Lily is dead. But this girl-child had the same halo of white-blonde hair. And you recall the slope of her nose and her cheek?”
He didn’t want to recall, he just wanted her to be still.
“She had that pert little nose and such high cheek bones. So very like—like our Lily. Even to her coltish lope.” A small stifled sob erupted from between her lightly pressed lips.
Oh, blast it all! “Here, take this.” He shoved an old rag at her as he knelt down beside her. She laid her head on his shoulder and wept in earnest. Her tears soon soaked through his shirt, the rag lay useless in her hand.
“All right, Devlin. I am done being a watering pot.” She sniffed. “You may paint my nose now. All that red on your pallet will not go to waste.”
“Are you sure you are well enough to go on?” Honestly, she looked like hell.
Waving away his concern she flung his rag back at him. He scraped off her left eye and part of her chin. Wrong, all bloody wrong. He had to get the shape right.
“Havermere is apoplectic.” She squirmed in the chair. “Might I have a cushion?”
“Hold still—please.”
“The bit in the Tattler about your model having ginger-colored hair got him so red in the face. I almost waved the paper in front of him like a cape in front of a bull. Perhaps then he might keel over and leave me in peace.” She shifted. Again. “Lady Bentley has been an absolute brick. You will paint her, won’t you, Dev? I promised her you would, as she has been my savior. That house is a warren of old tunnels. I enter the front door and voila! I come out behind the mews. Someone was doing some very nefarious things when they built that monstrosity.”
Why, Could. She. Not. Be. Still! And quiet!
“What? Now what have I done? You needn’t frown so, my Mad Marquess, or I shall take myself off.”
“Sorry, Nor. I do beg your pardon. It is just…” His brushes hung limply from his hands.
“I am not your wife.” She put her hands on her hips, in her best fishwife mode. “You are in but thick, my lord. Go home and see to her, Devlin.” She stretched one leg and then the other. “And if this painting goes on—which I hope you will realize it must not—you will get me a bloody cushion. A girl must have some comforts.”
