Stroke of Genius

by Marlowe Mia

  Definitely the trophy bulls.

  He waited till he overheard the first grumble about the interruption of their play.

  “My lords.” Crispin favored them with a quick bow. “I understand you all have a dance with Miss Makepeace coming up. Perhaps I may assist by sitting in for each of you in turn. In that manner, your game can continue, and of course, I shall make good any wagers I undertake on your behalves.”

  The marquess frowned at him for a moment. “Do I know you, sir?”

  “Probably not, Lord Dorset,” Crispin said with a slight inclination of his head. The marquess was studying him with intensity and with a slight curl to his noble lips. Crispin wondered if a carbuncle was about to erupt on his nose.

  “This is Hawke, milord. Surely you’ve heard of him,” one of the earls piped up. “Devilishly talented, beastly expensive sculptor—”

  “And frequent loser at games of chance,” Crispin finished.

  At that admission, he was welcomed at the elite table immediately. He lost a couple hands in quick succession on purpose. No point in making them surly before they took a turn on the dance floor.

  Lord Beverley returned and Crispin moved obligingly to the next empty seat.

  “Charming girl,” Beverley said. “But a bit long in the tooth, I fear.”

  “Really?” Crispin said incredulously. “In my experience, women are like fine wine. They need a bit of age before they become interesting. I can’t imagine a man wanting to turn over the running of his household to one of those spoiled children in petticoats. I find most debutants so insipidly girlish. Miss Makepeace is a refreshing change.”

  Beverley cast a reassessing glance in her direction. “Pity she’s an American.”

  “Only half.” Crispin deliberately overbid a losing hand. “Her mother is descended from the Washburns, a venerable English family. Why, I believe she can trace her lineage back to the time of the Conqueror.”

  Thank you, Cousin Jasper for that little tidbit.

  Heads nodded approvingly. A few more hands were played and Crispin made sure to win only small pots while losing bigger ones. Each time a dancer returned to the table he was able to maneuver the conversation back to Grace.

  “It’s all well and good that her mother’s English,” Lord Middlesex said. “But what about her sire?”

  Sire. It’s a wonder these oafs don’t refer to Grace’s mother as the bitch and her as the whelp. It’s all about the bloodlines . . . unless it’s about the coin.

  “Quite the industrialist there. I believe Mr. Makepeace owns a patent on a cotton spinning machine. It’s revolutionizing the trade,” Crispin said casually.

  The card players digested and calculated that information in silence. Lord Dorset stared at him across the table, his brows beetling over his nose.

  “I don’t wish to be indelicate but . . .” Middlesex began.

  When people preface a remarks with that, they fully intend to continue on their present course, delicacy be damned. The set-down danced on Crispin’s tongue, but he clamped his lips shut for Grace’s sake.

  “I understand her father has settled a startlingly large dowry on her,” Middlesex finished. “Have any of you heard the amount?”

  Crispin named the obscene sum. A princely sum.

  Why on God’s earth should any of these three inbred popinjays expect to be paid to marry a gem like Grace? Crispin bit his tongue so hard, he tasted blood, but he had a job to do and he intended to do it.

  “Surely you’re mistaken,” Lord Dorset said.

  “I assure you, that is the amount. I have it on the highest authority,” Crispin said. Wyckeham had wangled the information from Grace’s maid, and the help always knew everything, so Crispin felt confident in the accuracy of the intelligence. “And I wouldn’t doubt more is in the offing in the future. Homer Makepeace dotes upon his daughter. His only daughter.”

  He glanced around the table and it seemed as if each set of pupils reflected the curling ‘L’ shape of the pound sign.

  The marquess, Lord Dorset, gazed toward the dancers for the first time. He’d been quiet for much of the game, but Crispin knew he was gathering information about his cohorts with every hand, like a squirrel gathering nuts for the winter. He was a rather ordinary-looking man, sandy-haired and with pale blue eyes, presentable, but unremarkable.

  If Crispin used him for a model, he’d be a goat-herd rather than a god.

  However, a marquessate carries its own gravity. Lord Dorset radiated the power of his title. Prestige dripped from every line of his rich suit of clothing. His heavy signet ring glinted in the lamplight.

  “Miss Makepeace is rather on the tall side,” he observed.

  “Indeed she is,” Crispin said. “Isn’t exceptional height an admirable trait for a man to bequeath to his sons?”

  Dorset didn’t respond. He laid down his cards and went to claim his dance. He didn’t return to the table immediately when the music finished.

  Crispin studied his cards till his vision blurred. He resisted the urge to look for Grace and wondered why his gut suddenly writhed like bucketful of eels.

  * * *

  Grace hadn’t felt this giddy since she was a child of twelve and her father let her visit his factory. She’d been accepted by the ton of London! She’d danced every dance without feeling the least bit blown. She’d managed to have brief, witty conversations with her partners while not treading on a single one of their toes. Her parents beamed from the corner.

  “Your name is on everyone’s lips,” her mother confided in excited whispers during the brief intermission. “We’ve received three invitations to dine already.”

  “That’s lovely, Mother.” She stood on tiptoe, peering over the crowd. Crispin would be so proud of her. “Have you seen Mr. Hawke?”

  Her success was his doing. She wanted him to know she was appreciative.

  “When you find him, ask him if he has anything that would make this punch more bearable,” her father grumbled. Her mother elbowed him. “What, Minerva? The lad strikes me as the practical sort. I’m just thinking Mr. Hawke might have a flask in his pocket. For medicinal purposes, of course.”

  “I don’t believe spirits are allowed here for any purpose at all, Papa, but I’ll ask when I find him.”

  Grace spotted Crispin near one of the tall Palladian windows. He leaned on his walking stick and surveyed the milling press with an expression of total boredom on his handsome features.

  She started toward him and when his gaze fell on her, his face lit up. Grace’s belly fluttered. She should have been immune to his brand of animal attraction since she’d spent so much time with him and knew him for a prickly, difficult man.

  But his sheer masculine beauty was splendid enough when his face was at rest. When he smiled, it was blinding. She almost felt she should float toward him, borne up by the heat of his gaze as if she were in the gondola of a balloon.

  Crispin started toward her and she narrowly resisted the urge to lift her skirt and run to meet him.

  “I say, Grace, have you saved a dance for me?” Her cousin Jasper caught her by the elbow.

  “Oh, dear, I don’t know.” Drat the man! Crispin was right. Her mother’s cousin was more nuisance than help. She fumbled with the gilded card attached to her wrist by a thin cord. “I’ll have to check.”

  “No need,” Crispin’s voice sounded behind her. “This one’s mine.”

  Jasper Washburn laughed. “Very funny, Hawke. You can’t mean to make a fool of yourself on the dance floor with that cane of yours.”

  Crispin bared his teeth in a feral smile. “One man’s cane is another man’s club. But if you doubt my dancing abilities, I invite you to sit down and watch. Shall we, Grace?”

  He wheeled around with Grace in tow toward the dance floor where couples were lining up to begin the cotillion.

  “Crispin, you don’t have to do this to impress me,” she said through a clenched jaw. She didn’t want him embarrassed by attempting something
he couldn’t possibly do.

  “Have a little faith in me, Grace,” he said. “I may not be the smoothest dancer in the ballroom, but if I can make it up those infernal stairs, I can make it through a few sets.”

  He swung her around and dipped in a low bow, one leg extended courtly fashion. He hooked his walking stick over one elbow. Grace responded by setting her feet in fifth position and dropping an equally low curtsey.

  Fortunately, the tune was a sedate one and the lead couple set the pace with leisurely figures. Crispin kept up admirably. He smiled at Grace on each pass, his grey eyes darkening to gunmetal.

  “I need to see you,” he whispered in her ear when they clasped hands and did a canting turn.

  After she backed into her place in line, she cocked her head and spread her hands at her side as if to say, ‘You’re seeing me.’

  When they met in the center again, he said softly, “In private.”

  She blinked hard. Everything seemed to be going so well.

  “Sounds serious,” she whispered back on the next turn. “When?”

  ‘Tonight,’ he mouthed over the heads of the couple who sashayed down the center of the two parallel lines.

  She frowned at him. He flashed an over-sized smile, signaling she shouldn’t frown. She turned the corners of her mouth up in response.

  ‘How?’ she mouthed back.

  The next time they came together for a turn he leaned toward her and murmured, “Leave your window open.”

  Her eyes flared wide and she shook her head.

  He raised one eye brow and nodded.

  “Impossible,” she hissed on the next close turn.

  “You mean improbable,” he said pleasantly as they separated. “What I suggest is hardly impossible.”

  Dancers on either side of them looked askance at Crispin since he’d spoken in a normal tone of voice. In the dipping, turning line where flirtation took on a stylized gloss, speaking glances were common. Speaking dancers were not.

  Grace tightened her lips in a firm line at him, willing him to be quiet. She’d had such a glorious night, she didn’t want anything to ruin it at the last moment. And if someone overheard Crispin Hawke insisting she leave her window open for him, her success with the ton would be short-lived indeed.

  He arched a questioning brow at her and she knew he hadn’t given up. Whatever he needed to say to her must be important for him to ask this of her.

  Urgent, even.

  ‘Trust me,’ he mouthed.

  There was a leap of faith! With a roll of her eyes, she gave him a quick nod.

  She regretted it almost instantly. If they were discovered alone in her bedchamber, she’d be hopelessly compromised. Ruined beyond redemption.

  But there was no way to take the nod back.

  Especially not when the smile on his devilishly handsome face made her heart do a double-time jig.

  Chapter 22

  ‘A prophet is not without honor except in his own country,’ or so the Good Book tells us.

  And an artistic genius gathers a few enemies close to home as well.

  Jasper Washburn glowered at Crispin Hawke’s broad back and shoulders. The man was making a damnably credible job of the slow cotillion, more’s the pity. If Washburn had an extra quid to spare, he’d pay the fiddler to switch to a lightning fast reel. Jasper would have loved to see Crispin Hawke take a tumble and land on his presumptuous arse.

  “It’s a shocking thing really, don’t you think, Lord Washburn? The way the patronesses relax the rules for the likes of Crispin Hawke,” a feminine voice said at his elbow. “Oh, I know he’s supposed to be all the rage, but it makes one wonder, doesn’t it?”

  Jasper turned to look at her. Thin-faced and bony-nosed, the woman reminded him of an ill-begotten colt that hadn’t grown into its looks yet. But while there was hope a colt might improve in time, given her age, this lady never would. Jasper recognized her. It was hard to expunge those deep crow’s feet and frown lines from one’s mind.

  “Lady Sheppleton, how lovely to see you again.” He bowed over her offered hand. Her flesh radiated cold even through her glove. “Will you be attending Lord Dorset’s horse show again this fall?”

  “No, I convinced my husband to give up Thoroughbreds altogether. All he could talk about were which stallions were due to cover which mares. So very tiresome.” Lady Sheppleton waved her fan as blithely as she waved away her husband’s equine interests. “Besides, all that hay and dust makes Manfred sneeze so frightfully, I feared for the dear boy’s health.”

  “Manfred?” Jasper thought sure Lord Sheppleton’s given name was George.

  “My nephew, of course. There he is.” The viscountess waggled her fingers to a young man on the far side of the assembly room who was helping himself to more than his share of finger sandwiches. Jasper would class him as ‘husky’ now, but if he kept up those trencherman’s ways, the fellow was well on his way to ‘portly.’

  Lady Sheppleton giggled indulgently. “Growing boy, you know.”

  Growing sideways, Jasper thought uncharitably. Pity they’d sold off their stable. A daily ride would have done the young man a world of good. “Your ward?”

  “Yes, but only until he comes into his own,” she said. “He’ll be Lord Brumford one day, you know.”

  “Must be coming soon. How old is he?”

  “Twenty-seven,” she admitted. “Would you believe it? His father’s will stipulated that the barony be held in trust until Manfred marries.”

  “Unusual clause.”

  “My brother pulled a number of royal strings to manage it.” She sighed. “Not to speak ill of the dead, but really, how is a young man to get on in the world with only a miserly stipend? And it’s so difficult to find a young lady worthy of him. Believe me, I try.”

  Jasper eyed Manfred. Lady Sheppleton’s nephew glanced about to see if anyone was looking at him and then stuffed a slice of lemon cake into his pocket.

  “Indeed, finding your nephew’s equal must be challenge.”

  “Yes, and one not made easier when Polite Society plays fast and loose with the rules.”

  Jasper caught himself before he agreed that Manfred obviously needed all the help he could get. “Yes, there seems to be a certain easing of the restrictions this evening.”

  Truth be told, his relatives were benefitting from the lowered standards, too. Homer Makepeace was so thoroughly steeped in trade, even if he’d been titled, he’d not have been admitted on his own worth. It still irked Jasper that Crispin Hawke used his influence with the patronesses to squeak his American cousins in.

  Lady Sheppleton was squinting in the artist’s direction.

  “I gather you are not a fan of the illustrious Crispin Hawke,” Jasper observed.

  “Over-rated hack, if you ask me.” She shot a glare at the artist that should have knocked him off his feet. “You should see the absolute caricature he made of the bust of Manfred we commissioned.”

  “What a pity.”

  Jasper decided privately that Lady Sheppleton was brave to order a Hawke original of her nephew. He didn’t think much of the artist as a man, but no one could argue his likenesses weren’t brutally honest.

  “I wanted to destroy the abomination, but my husband insisted on keeping it. Uses it as a wig stand in his chamber.”

  Where doubtless his wife never visits, if the viscount is a man of any luck at all.

  “Nevertheless, Crispin Hawke enjoys the patronage of the ton. Polite Society falls all over itself to lick the man’s boots,” Jasper said. “It doesn’t seem as if there’s much to be done about it.”

  “But perhaps there is,” she said enigmatically.

  He turned toward her sharply. “Madame, you have piqued my curiosity.”

  “What do we know about Crispin Hawke, I mean really know about him? Yes, he’s hailed as a genius and all that rot, but what of his background?” Lady Sheppleton’s fan wove back and forth with the hypnotic rhythm of a smoke-dazed cobra. “Where di
d he come from?”

  Jasper frowned, thinking hard. “I don’t believe I’ve ever heard.”

  “Nor have I, not beyond the blandishments about his early recognition and training with some supposed master artist on the continent.” The viscountess slid her gaze back toward the dancers. “That cousin of yours, Grace Makepeace. She’s amazingly light on her feet, for such a very tall girl.”

  Jasper nodded. It didn’t matter that Grace topped him by an inch or two. When he looked at her, all he saw were her father’s exceeding deep pockets.

  “Very kind of you to smooth her way into Almack’s,” she said with a sly tone. “Very charitable of you to allow her and her family to ride your coattails into society, Lord Washburn.”

  “Family must stick together.”

  “Quite. Especially if the relationship isn’t close enough to be an impediment to such sticking,” Lady Sheppleton said dryly. “She’s said to be no end of a catch, so far as a dowry is concerned.”

  Jasper inclined his head in her direction and wished someone would provide him with a way to escape this conversation. The dance had ended and Hawke was escorting Grace back to her parents.

  “You’re very perceptive, Lady Sheppleton.”

  The artist leaned down to say something into his cousin’s ear and her laughter tinkled across the room. Jasper’s neck heated with irritation.

  “And unless my eyes deceive me, Crispin Hawke is occupying far too much of your American cousin’s time, isn’t he?”

  Jasper shrugged, unwilling to let her sharp eyes perceive more.

  “What if someone were to discover something awful about Crispin Hawke? Something that so thoroughly discredited him in the minds of the ton no one would even dare breathe his name?” she asked in the same tone the Serpent must have used with Eve.

  The idea was more than Jasper could resist. “That, madam, would be a very happy turn of events.”

  Lady Sheppleton sighed. “Alas, such investigations are expensive and time consuming.”

  Time, he might have. Wherewithal to deal with expense, he did not.