by Mia Marlowe
“Yesterday you chided me for being late. Today, I was early and you’re still unhappy.” Trev decided a good offense would stand him in better stead than a good defense and Her Grace had just encouraged him to speak his mind. “Is there anyone who can please you?”
It occurred to him that he had yet to see a smile of real pleasure on her lips. He’d like to be the man to coax one there.
But for now, he had to remember his place. He was Thomas Doverspike, a common fellow who’d worked his way into her presence through guile. And she was a duchess, after all. As Trevelyn Deveridge, he might seek to charm her, but Thomas Doverspike needed a job. And he’d just been insolent to his employer.
“I ask your pardon, Your Grace. I misspoke.” He ducked his head deferentially. She regarded him for a few moments, her brows knitted together as if she were trying to weigh him for veracity.
“No, you didn’t. You said exactly what you thought,” she finally said. “No one has done that to me in a long time.”
“I’m sorry if I offend.”
“No, you’re not,” she said with a tight grin. “And I’m not sorry either. In fact, it’s rather refreshing to hear the truth from someone. I am hard to please. But it’s only because I care so deeply about my work and am rarely satisfied with it. I suppose that perfectionism spills over into other things.”
“I’m sure your paintings are quite wonderful.”
“But you wouldn’t know because you’ve never seen them.”
He shook his head.
“No one has. I am doing the entire Greek pantheon and until I finish with the major gods, I won’t have a showing. It’s rather like a symphony. No one would be satisfied with just the first movement. Each painting will be part of a larger whole.”
“Then you intend to sell them all together?”
“Sell them? Why would I do that?” she said with a frown.
“The usual reason is to make money.”
She shrugged. “Fortunately, I have no such needs.”
“Then how will you ever know if your paintings are any good? I mean, unless someone is willing to plunk down a bag of guineas for them, how do you measure their worth?”
“Art is measured by how it affects those who view it,” she said.
“And how does painting the gods affect you?” His voice was huskier than he’d intended.
She drew a few lines on her sketch pad as she pondered. The duchess didn’t seem to sense his underlying question. He drew a relieved breath.
“The gods were men idealized,” she finally said. “Don’t we all seek perfection?”
“So what you’re telling me, Your Grace, is that you’re looking for the perfect man.”
Chapter 6
“Looking for a perfect man?” Her cheeks bloomed with fresh color. “Certainly not. Besides, perfection is only an ideal. It does not exist in men. I can only strive in the creation of it.”
“And thus trump even the Almighty.” He raised a brow at her. She looked back to her sketchpad, but as Trev watched, her knuckles whitened around her chalk. Clearly, he’d struck too close to the mark. Then slowly, her mouth curved into an enigmatic smile.
“Sit down, Mr. Doverspike,” she ordered with calm.
“On what, Your Grace?”
“On your posterior, of course. Mars did not have overstuffed armchairs, you know.”
He did as he was bid, feeling even more ridiculous seated on the cold floor than he did standing. If he sat with his knees raised, his ballocks would dangle between his legs on the polished oak. If he sat with his legs straight before him, he’d feel unnaturally stiff, like a wooden marionette whose strings had been cut. He crossed his legs, Hindu-fashion, but felt too exposed by half.
The duchess sighed. “Let me help you,” she said. “I experimented with a pose last night in my sketching. Place your weight on one hip, legs to the side.”
She left her sketchpad and came to stand over him. It was a maneuver clearly designed to make him feel small.
He stared up at her without a blink, determined not to let her best him. “How do you want my arms?”
“Lean on one palm,” she suggested. “No, a little further. Here, like this, Mr. Doverspike.” The duchess knelt and positioned his hand away from his body so his torso was stretched into a reclining pose.
“You know, I’ve never been naked with a woman who didn’t call me by my Christian name,” he said. “Under the circumstances, I don’t suppose you could call me Thomas?”
“It is precisely because of the circumstances that I must call you Mr. Doverspike,” she said. “And besides, you aren’t naked. You are nude.”
“Feels naked to me.”
Her face screwed into a puzzled frown as she leaned forward and took his other hand. The heady floral fragrance she wore tickled his nostrils. Was that lilac or jasmine or some exotic mix of the two?
“I’m not quite sure where I want this other hand,” she said.
The neckline of her gown fell forward again as she leaned toward him. Trevelyn had a suggestion for where he could put his hand, but he wisely kept it to himself. His fingers tingled at the nearness of her breasts. He began to mentally count from one hundred again.
“Why did your father call you Larla? I know that’s not your given name.”
She looked at him sharply. “Larla was my baby name. It’s not important.”
“It must be to him if he still remembers it. What does Larla mean?”
Her lips twitched in a brief smile as she put his hand first on his hip and then palm down on the floor before him. “When I was a child, my ayah always said we all have secret names, names that call to our true selves.”
He watched her lips as she spoke, captivated by the play of her pointed little tongue against her teeth and lips. Secret names. Did she suspect he wasn’t really Thomas Doverspike? For a moment, he regretted the necessity of deceiving her.
“And if you learned that secret name and its meaning,” she went on, “you’d know that person as well as if you climbed into the same skin.”
He’d be satisfied with just getting next to her skin. As she fussed around him, what he could see of her was flawless, smooth and pale. He couldn’t help wondering about the parts he couldn’t see.
“Then by that reckoning, I’m halfway to knowing you, Your Grace. Now I only need discover what Larla means.”
Trevelyn knew he was being brashly forward, but how could she expect a man to sit around wearing nothing but a smile and not feel some degree of familiarity? Especially when she leaned over him, casually arranging his limbs and adjusting his posture to suit her.
“What do you think it means?” she asked as she moved his right hand from one spot to another.
Her delicate fragrance beckoned to him. When she shifted, he was rewarded with another tantalizing peek at the tops of her breasts, pale rounded mounds of perfect flesh. Would her nipples be pink and sweet as sherbet or ripe and rosy as berries? He closed his eyes and began to count backward again.
This time, in French.
Her touch was warm and where her fingers nudged and prodded a shower of sparks sizzled over his skin. For a moment he imagined her hand wandering over his groin. He bit the inside of his cheek. If he let his mind tread that road, he’d be well on his way to disgracing himself before her, spilling his seed like a callow youth in the first throes of lust.
“Doesn’t this affect you at all?” he asked, giving up trying to quell his swelling erection. “If it doesn’t, I’m guessing Larla must mean ice maiden.”
“There’s no need to be insulting,” she said with an unmistakable catch in her voice, a breathlessness that told him his nearness had moved her. “Just because I’m not helpless with lust over your nude body, does not mean I’m without feeling. I bridle myself for the sake of my art.”
“And you’re always in control?”
“I must be.”
“Care to put that notion to the test?”
She bit her lip a
nd looked away, determined to ignore his question. “Oh, botheration!” she finally exploded. “I can’t decide where to put your right hand.”
“I’ve an idea.” He reached up and placed his hand along the side of her neck, his fingers gentle on her nape. She gasped but didn’t jerk away. Slowly, he pulled her head down till her breath was a moist warmth on his face. Her lips were parted, her eyes wide. She made no move to free herself.
Trevelyn closed half the distance between their lips, watching her intently. She held her breath for a heartbeat or two; then a soft moan escaped her lips and her astonishing green eyes fluttered closed.
He took her mouth, tasting, questing. Her lips trembled beneath his, then softened. When they parted, he slid his tongue in to explore her luscious secrets. To his delight, she actually suckled him for a moment, then twisted her tongue with his in a warm, wet joust.
Definitely no ice maiden.
Trevelyn sat up straighter without releasing her mouth and cupped her cheek with his left hand. Her skin was as exquisitely soft as he’d imagined. He trailed his fingers over her silky smoothness, down her neck to brush the tops of her breasts with feather-light strokes. He toyed with the hollow between them, sliding his fingers in and out of her bodice. Then he cupped one of her breasts in his hot palm. Her nipple was hard beneath the sheer muslin of her simple dress.
She grasped both his shoulders and pushed herself away from him.
“Mr. Doverspike!”
“Larla,” he whispered.
She scrambled to her feet. “Kindly remove yourself this instant.”
He stood and cocked his head at her. “You’re giving me the sack because you enjoyed kissing me?”
“Yes. I mean no,” she stammered, realizing she’d admitted to warming to his kiss. She backed several paces. “I mean this should never have happened. There are certain proprieties that must be observed.”
He looked down at his bare body. His cock bobbed merrily. “How can there be any propriety when one of us is naked as Adam?”
“You don’t understand anything about art.” Deep in her throat, she made a noise of frustration. “You’re making a mockery of everything I’m trying to accomplish.”
He cast her a sideways glance. “You arrange matters so you spend long hours alone with naked men in circumstances that demean them. I think you need to ask yourself what it is you’re really trying to accomplish.”
Her eyes flared, then narrowed. “Get out.”
He bent to retrieve his robe and caught a flash of movement. Behind her, he saw a figure at one of the windows.
A man was grappling with an awkward black box on a tripod. It looked suspiciously like daguerreotype equipment. If that blighter had captured him kissing the duchess on one of those copper plates . . .
“I mean it, Mr. Doverspike. I want you gone this instant, do you hear?” She stamped her aristocratic foot like an empress. “At least do me the courtesy of looking at me when I speak to you.”
Trev shrugged on the robe and knotted the sash at his waist, never taking his eyes off the man at the window. The photographer realized suddenly that he’d been discovered. He snatched up his equipment and took to his heels.
“Excuse me, Your Grace.” Trevelyn pushed past her and mounted the sill. He threw open the window and turned back to her. “I’ll return shortly so you can continue to tell me how much you dislike me and want me gone.”
He dropped out of the window and disappeared into the wilds of the duchess’s overgrown garden.
Chapter 7
Clarence Wigglesworth had struck gold more surely than the horde of fools rushing off to the wastes of California. The images he just captured of the Duchess of Southwycke and her low-born model were priceless. It was more than he’d dared hope for when he convinced his editor to invest in this expensive daguerreotype equipment. Thank fortune, the newest cameras allowed the exposure time to be sliced from fifteen minutes to only one. Still, that kiss had been a protracted affair. Now Clarence’s foresight and ingenuity were about to pay off. Handsomely.
For a moment, Clarence wondered if the duchess would pay him more for the daguerreotypes than The Tattler. No, he told himself. He was a journalist, not a black-mailer. The public deserved to see one of the peers of the realm practically in flagrante delicto, taking advantage of a poor common fellow. Though truth to tell, it looked as if the bloke welcomed the duchess’s abuse. Still, the public had a right to know that the high and mighty’s feet were also made of clay. The titled gentry were just as weak, just as ordinary in their vices as anybody else.
Oh, how misery loves company.
And Clarence now had proof of Her Grace’s weakness. If only he could remember the way back through this higgledy-piggledy mess of a garden to the gate at the rear of the property. His informant had left it unlocked and the directions to the part of the house where the duchess kept her nefarious ‘studio’ were most explicit. He’d been curious to see art in progress.
Art, indeed.
So that’s what the upper crust calls it, he thought. Looked to him like a good old game of ‘hide the sausage’ in the making. What he’d seen through the window was no more artistic than what went on in your average bawdy house, though to his sorrow, he could rarely afford to visit those establishments of fleshly bliss.
It was worse, actually, he decided. After all, in Her Grace’s studio it was the man who was groveling naked on the floor.
That turn-about was enough of an affront to his sensibilities, but then when the duchess knelt down on the floor with him, well . . . it was shocking.
Deliciously shocking.
Now if he could just—
The sound of feet pounding after him down the well-worn path interrupted his thoughts. Clarence glanced back in time to see the duchess’s model bearing down on him. The man’s robe flapped about him like a demon’s tattered wings. Panic gave Clarence extra speed, but the fellow caught up to him, grabbed him and threw him to the ground.
His precious equipment clattered to earth as he rolled with his half-dressed assailant, finally coming to rest beneath the incensed artist’s model.
“What do you think you’re doing, skulking about a lady’s home like a two-penny peeper?” The man rolled Clarence onto his stomach, ground a knee into his spine and pinioned both his hands behind him.
“I’m no peeper. I’m a member of the press, a writer for The Tattler,” Clarence whined, twisting his neck so he could eye the man who had him subdued in so demeaning a fashion. “I’m only doing my job . . .” He stopped long enough to study his attacker for a moment. “Lord Deveridge?”
“No, that would be my brother,” the man said.
Clarence remembered that the Earl of Warre had two sons, twins if his memory served. So this must be the unlucky younger one. “Damned shame to miss a title by a matter of minutes, eh, guv?”
“That’s none of your concern. If you wish to be released without having your face rearranged, give me your name and be quick about it.”
Deveridge smiled as he spoke, but it was a cold smile and Clarence didn’t doubt he was in peril of a beating.
“Wigglesworth, Clarence Wigglesworth,” he said, screwing his courage to the sticking point. “You may have been born a gentleman, but I can take a bloke like you down a peg with just a few strokes of the pen. Best you remember that. You don’t want to tangle with a member of the press.”
“If you reported on the work of Parliament or the deplorable condition of drains in the city, I’d agree with your characterization of your employment. But I’ve only apprehended a sneak-thief.”
“I never stole in my whole living life,” Clarence protested. Apples from vending carts and the occasional hot bun didn’t count.
“You steal people’s good names, people who’ve not done you any harm, assassinating their characters with the poison that drips from your pen.” Deveridge leaned down menacingly. “You will not write another syllable, good, bad or indifferent, about the Duchess of Sout
hwycke.”
“But—”
“If a breath of scandal touches Her Grace in that rag you write for, believe me, you will answer for it.”
“What will you do? Sue me? I rarely have more than two coins to rub together.” Now that he recognized the man as an aristocrat, Clarence felt a little bolder. What did these cultured types know about scrabbling to make a living in London? “What can you threaten me with that’s worse than an empty belly?”
“Mr. Wigglesworth, I never make threats. I make promises,” Deveridge said with a wolfish grin. “I don’t care a fig what you might write about me, but if you sully the duchess’s name in any way, I’ll kill you.”
Judging just by his tone, Deveridge might have been making a comment on the weather, but the casualness of his lethal promise made it all the more chilling. Clarence felt his throat constrict.
“Now that we understand each other, allow me to assist you to your feet.” Deveridge stood and offered Clarence his hand. “Pity about your equipment. I hear those things are deucedly expensive.” He strolled over and yanked the damning copper plates from the daguerreotype.
For one or two heartbeats, Clarence considered fighting the man for his hard-won coppers, but Deveridge’s cold-blooded promise still threatened to loosen his bowels.
“Now if you’re interested in a true journalistic effort,” Deveridge continued pleasantly, “might I offer you a tip?”
Clarence gathered up the remains of his photographic debris, his chest heavy. His employer would have his hide for this debacle. “No, thanks. You’ve done quite enough for me already this day.”
The man shrugged in a lordly way. “Suit yourself. I was only going to suggest you make the acquaintance of Basil Philpot, the bailiff for the House of Lords. He knows everything that happens there, on and off the floor, and is quite voluble after only a pint or two. He’d be a good source for a real journalist.”
