Jeremy had managed to pry the address of Maggie’s studio from her maid, but not the exact flat number, so it wasn’t surprising that he found himself wandering about the long, dismally lit corridors, fruitlessly searching for her. The smell of turpentine was heavy in the air, as was a very distinct odor of opium, which Jeremy recognized from a brief foray into Burma. As he wandered down the hallways, he glimpsed several men painting naked women, using actual live models, robust but strangely unpleasant-looking women who stood shivering on pedestals or had draped themselves, rather uncouthly, for Jeremy’s tastes, across soiled couches. Some of the efforts he thought rather good. Then, as he passed a studio in which a man was painting not a naked woman, but a naked man, an odd thought occurred to Jeremy: Had Maggie ever painted any naked men? Was his not the first nude male body she’d ever encountered?
The idea of Maggie being in the company of an unclothed male other than himself made Jeremy feel very uncomfortable, and caused him to hasten his efforts to find her. He leaned into one studio on the third floor and asked a rather harried-looking young man, who was cleaning out his brushes at a slopbucket, “I say, but would you know where I might find Miss Herbert?”
The young man jumped, swiveled his head sharply in Jeremy’s direction, then laid aside the opium pipe he’d been drawing upon. “You mean Maggie?” he asked, in a surprisingly high-pitched voice.
“Er, yes,” Jeremy said. She was on first-name terms with these men? He’d see that an end was put to that after she became Duchess of Rawlings. “Which studio is hers?”
“Sixth floor, door to the left,” came the laconic reply. “But it’s no use askin’ her to pose for you, mate. She and that French bitch won’t take off so much as a stitch. Believe me, I’ve asked.” He put the pipe back to his lips, and sucked mournfully. “We’ve all asked.”
Jeremy cleared his throat. “I see,” he said. “Well. Thank you, then.”
“But if it’s wine you’re lookin’ for,” the young man added, just as Jeremy was leaving, “she’s not stingy with it. That’s the thing with these lady portrait painters. Won’t take their clothes off, but they’re gen’rous with their liquor.” He stared moodily at a canvas sitting on an easel in the center of the room. “’Course, they can afford to buy plenty of wine. Everybody wants their portrait painted. Hardly nobody wants a picture of the doors to Newgate prison.”
Jeremy hastily took his eyes off the depressing painting. “Yes,” he said. “Well. Good evening.” He beat a hasty retreat, before the young painter could show him any more of his masterpieces.
Three rickety flights of stairs later, and Jeremy could hear her sweet voice lilting down the corridor. He couldn’t tell precisely what she was saying, nor could he tell to whom it was she was speaking. But the leap of joy he felt in his heart at hearing her told him it hardly mattered. He’d found his Maggie, and that meant he was home.
He strode confidently through the open door to her studio.
Chapter 26
Maggie stared at him incredulously. She’d left Twenty-two Park Lane thinking that if she ever saw Jeremy Rawlings again, it would be too soon. To see him simply stroll into her studio, looking as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, was a shock from which she would not soon recover.
Not that he looked bad. Not at all. He had on evening clothes. Not his dress uniform, but actual evening clothes, black beaver-lined cloak over well-tailored black coat and trousers, white shirt and vest, a froth of a cravat at his throat. His shoes had been polished to a high sheen. Even the white evening gloves he wore were without blemish. His held his top hat in his hand, and she could see that an attempt had been made to comb his hair, but no amount of styling could control those curls. Still, to Maggie, Jeremy looked heartbreakingly handsome.
A quick glance at Berangère, who was staring at the duke in the manner of one who’d been put into a trance, revealed that her thoughts were traveling along a similar vein.
“Oh, there you are,” he had the nerve to say to Maggie, as nonchalantly as if they’d merely met on the street. “May I come in?”
“H-hullo,” Maggie stammered, wrenching her gaze from Berangère and swinging it back round to Jeremy. What was the matter with her? She was supposed to be angry with him, furiously angry with him! He had robbed her of her virginity—well, all right, she had given it to him, but why quibble over incidentals?—and here she was, scrambling up from the divan, hastily smoothing her skirt into place. She realized she was wearing a paint-smeared smock over her dress, and hurried to untie its strings. And all the time, she was thinking, He tricked you, Maggie. This man knowingly and cold-heartedly tricked you. You are not to be kind to him. You are not.
“Would you … um,” she stammered, trying desperately to sound as nonchalant as he had, “care for a glass of something? Wine?”
“Wine would be splendid,” Jeremy said, but he wasn’t looking at her. He had stepped into the high-ceilinged studio and was looking around curiously at the half-finished paintings leaning up against the walls, the wooden racks that contained completed works, the cheerful fire burning in the wood stove, the slop bucket, the sides of which were caked with paint, and, most of all, at the blond woman reclining, felinelike, across a low divan before the window.
“Hello,” Jeremy said to Berangère.
Berangère smiled beguilingly. “Hello. You must be Jerry.” Berangère rolled the r’s provocatively, in spite of the warning look Maggie cast at her.
“That’s right.” Jeremy grinned. “And who might you be?”
“Her name,” Maggie said, more sharply than she meant to, “is Berangère Jacquard, and she was just leaving.” Then, when both Jeremy and Berangère turned their heads to blink at her, Maggie had no choice but to make grudging introductions. “Your Grace, may I present Mademoiselle Jacquard? Mademoiselle Jacquard, His Grace, Jeremy, Duke of Rawlings.”
Berangère extended a slim hand toward Jeremy. “Je suis enchantée,” she purred.
“The pleasure’s mine,” Jeremy said, stooping to take that hand in his own and raising it toward his lips. With gentlemanly gallantry, Jeremy did not actually press his mouth to her knuckles, Maggie observed, but kissed the air an inch or so above Berangère’s hand. Still, he didn’t let go of that hand right away. Instead, he looked down at it. “And are you sitting for one of Miss Herbert’s portraits, Mademoiselle Jacquard?”
“Moi?” Berangère chuckled deep in her throat. “Non, non—”
“Berangère attended the same painting school as I did in Paris,” Maggie interrupted quickly. “She has come to London, like me, to try her hand at painting portraits. She rents the studio across the hall. As a matter of fact, she was just going back to work, weren’t you, Berangère?”
Berangère hadn’t taken her eyes off Jeremy’s face, any more than Jeremy had straightened up yet, or released her hand. “Il est superbe, princesse,” she said to Maggie. “Un duc diabolique. Vous êtes un vrai imbécile.”
Maggie closed her eyes in order to utter a quick prayer of thanks that Jeremy, to her knowledge, spoke not a word of French.
“The reason I asked whether you were sitting for a portrait, Mademoiselle Jacquard, is because I don’t see any paint on your fingers.” Jeremy held up the appendage in question and examined it with a speculative air. “Maggie’s are usually covered with the stuff.”
“Ah,” Berangère said knowingly. “But, unlike Marguerethe, I wear gloves when I paint. You see, the substances with which we work—the turpentine, the linseed oil—are very harsh to a woman’s delicate skin, and I want to keep my hands as soft as possible.”
What kind of idiocy was this? Maggie yanked off her painting smock. The two of them were chatting about skin, while her heart was breaking! Well, she’d put a stop to it.
“What brings you down to Chelsea, Your Grace?” Maggie inquired, wadding her painting smock into a tight ball as she spoke, then throwing it unceremoniously into a corner before going to the table where she kept the wine, and po
uring Jeremy a glass.
Jeremy straightened, taking the glass of wine from her, his top hat dangling from the fingers of his other hand. “Well, I thought I’d stop by and see what you were doing tonight. I have tickets to the ballet, and I thought we could have dinner—”
“Ballet?” echoed Berangère, sitting up alertly.
Jeremy glanced at her over his shoulder. It was clear he did not know quite what to make of Mademoiselle Jacquard, let alone her friendship with Maggie. “Er, yes,” he said, turning his attention upon Maggie once more. “The ballet. And dinner, either before or after.”
Behind him, on the couch, Berangère leaned back so that she could see around him, and mouthed, quite unabashedly, at Maggie, Je l’adore! Maggie, acutely aware of the fact that compared to Berangère, she must look a mess, what with her paint-streaked hands—she was not aware of the smudge on her forehead—and not very stylish wool dress, decided it was time to stop playing hostess. She said coldly, “I hardly think it appropriate, Your Grace, for you to be escorting a woman other than your fiancee to the theater.”
Jeremy took a sip of wine. “Oh,” he said, with infuriating matter-of-factness. “You needn’t worry about that. That little matter has been taken care of.”
“Little matter!” Maggie echoed incredulously. Berangère, watching from the divan, turned her head back and forth between them, as if she were at the theater. “Jeremy, that little matter is the future Duchess of Rawlings!”
“No,” Jeremy said. “She isn’t.”
“Oh, isn’t she?” Maggie felt ready to explode. How dare he stand there and deny what she—and every other reader of the most widely circulated newspaper in the world—had learned that very morning? “Well, you might want to let The Times know. Unlike me, they didn’t seem to fall for your ridiculous insistence that the Star of Jaipur is not a woman, but a rock.”
“I like that part,” Berangère commented from the divan. When Jeremy looked at her, she said, “The rock part, I mean. Very creative.”
“It’s not creative,” Jeremy ground out. “It’s the truth. And it isn’t a rock, it’s a sapphire. A twenty-four-carat sapphire, to be exact.”
That caused Berangère to rise to her elbows. “Twenty-four carats, did you say? Twenty-four?”
“Twenty-four carats, my foot,” Maggie said, her hands going to her hips. “The Star of Jaipur is a five-foot-tall, one-hundred-pound woman, with dark eyes and tiny feet and her own personal translator, which is evidently something I need, since I’ve somehow found myself the mistress of the man she’s supposed to marry!”
“You’re not my mistress,” Jeremy growled, obviously making an effort to remain calm. “And I’m not going to marry her.”
Maggie rolled her eyes. “Oh, I see. I’m certain that there is so little news in the world that The Times has been forced to start making things up to entertain its readers—”
“I didn’t say they made it up,” Jeremy interrupted. “I’m just saying the story wasn’t correct. I have dealt with the party responsible, and a retraction will appear in tomorrow’s edition—”
“Oh, certainly it will,” Maggie said sarcastically. “And I understand the sky is supposed to hail twenty-four-carat sapphires tomorrow, as well.”
Berangère, from the divan, suddenly sat up and said, “Someone is coming.”
Jeremy ignored her. “Do you honestly think,” he demanded of Maggie, his voice considerably lowered, and filled with unmistakable hurt, “that I would try to make you my mistress?”
Maggie looked away from him, confused. Half an hour earlier, had someone asked her that question, she’d have shouted an unequivocal yes. But now, looking at Jeremy’s serious face, his almost desperate expression, she remembered the hours they’d spent together, the way he’d held her, and she couldn’t help but wonder—
“Augustin!” Berangère cried, in tones of sheer delight as she scrambled off the couch.
Maggie whirled, a sudden roaring sound in her ears. No. It couldn’t be. It wasn’t possible.
But it was. Augustin stood in the open doorway, his top hat and cane in one hand, and a large bouquet of white roses in the other. During the course of her argument with Jeremy, Maggie had not heard his step in the hallway.
“Good evening,” he said, in a slightly wounded tone. And no wonder, Maggie thought, as her eyes rose from his satin waistcoat—Augustin, like Jeremy, was also dressed in evening clothes—to his face. She was barely able to restrain a gasp as she took in the purple bruises around both his eyes, and the painful swelling of his once aquiline nose. There was blood-encrusted cotton packed into his nostrils, and his breathing, from having climbed the six flights of stairs to the top floor of the building, was a labored wheeze.
And this was the man Jeremy suspected of having tried to kill him! This near-invalid, who clearly could not have raised a knife above his head even if he’d wanted to, he was still in that much pain! Oh, Maggie didn’t blame Jeremy, exactly, for having thought it, but the idea was simply too ludicrous. Augustin hadn’t been the one who’d tried to kill him. Augustin wasn’t capable of such violence … .
Poor Augustin! How she had wronged him! Maggie found that she could not look him in the eye. What was she going to do?
Always the gentleman, Augustin stepped into the room, gave a low bow, and presented Maggie with the roses.
“For you, ma chérie” he said, and Maggie did not miss the glance he flicked at Jeremy, as if daring him to contradict the endearment. “With my apologies for last night. It was, I’m afraid, cut short by that, er, rather unfortunate incident.”
Maggie gathered the beautifully arranged bouquet to her breast, thankful the florist had carefully stripped the blooms of thorns, yet feeling that she deserved more than a few pricks, for her hideous betrayal. Lord, how was she ever going to tell him? How could she hurt him so?
“Well,” she said, nearly sick with regret, but hoping it didn’t show too obviously. I’ll tell him tonight, she said to herself. I’ll get him alone, and I’ll tell him tonight. “Well, thank you so much, Augustin. But really, you shouldn’t have. It’s I who should be apologizing—”
“No,” Jeremy said, his deep voice calm.
Maggie shot him a quick warning glance, very much afraid they were about to have a repeat performance of last night’s debacle. Jeremy, however, went on to say, very civilly, “I should be the one apologizing. I behaved scandalously toward you, Mr. de Veygoux. I wish to offer you my sincerest apologies.” Jeremy extended his right hand stoically.
Augustin wasn’t the only one who stared down at it incredulously. Both Maggie and Berangère, after a quick glance at one another, stared at it, as well. What, Maggie wondered frantically, is Jeremy up to? Has the malaria scrambled his brains? Could he possibly want to be friends with this man? Why?
Augustin was the first to recover. He reached out and grasped Jeremy’s gloved right hand in his own. Neither man flinched at the other’s grip, though Maggie suspected a certain amount of steeliness on both their parts.
“Apology accepted, Your Grace,” Augustin said good-naturedly. “And may I say that I appreciate your protectiveness of Mademoiselle Marguerethe. She has no family, as I am sure you know, who will stand by her, so it is gratifying to know that someone, at least, cares for her.”
Jeremy, to his credit, flushed at this statement and, releasing the older man’s hand, said gruffly, “I suppose I got a little carried away last night. Maggie’s always been … ahem … like a sister to me, and … well, I just want her to be happy.”
“So do I, Your Grace,” Augustin said with a smile. Reaching out, he put an arm around Maggie’s shoulders and squeezed, looking down at her worshipfully. “So do I.”
Maggie managed to smile weakly back up at him. Oh, Lord. This was going to be dreadful.
“So,” Augustin said suddenly, his voice far too cheerful for the dour mood that pervaded the room. “What brings you here, Your Grace? Did you come to see the artist at work? She has som
e lovely things here, some lovely things. It’s a good thing you chose to visit now, since tomorrow, they’re all being packed away for transport to Bond Street. You know about her exhibition on Saturday, at my gallery? You’ll be there for opening day, of course, won’t you?”
“Indeed,” Jeremy said, his gaze straying toward Maggie’s face. She shook her head desperately, but he said, “I wouldn’t miss it.”
“Good, good,” Augustin cried. “She is going to be a smashing success, a smashing success. I wouldn’t be surprised should she be asked to exhibit at the Royal Academy this May. No, not surprised at all. Were she to win a commission from the queen herself, I would not be surprised. She is a rare one, Marguerethe is.”
“Yes,” Jeremy said, never taking his eyes from her. “She is, isn’t she?”
Augustin suddenly became aware of the direction of the duke’s gaze, and that it was bold enough to have raised the color in his fiancee’s cheeks. Looking from Maggie’s face to Jeremy’s, he asked the duke abruptly, “You did come here to see Marguerethe’s paintings, did you not, Your Grace?”
Maggie’s heart flew into her throat when she saw Jeremy’s expression. It was one of almost devilish delight. Oh, God, she thought, panicking. He’s going to tell! He’s going to tell! She wanted Augustin to know the truth, but not this way!
“Actually,” Jeremy began, “I came to see—”
Jeremy was cut off mid-sentence, however, by Berangère, who leapt up from the divan and declared, quite loudly, “His Grace came to see me.”
When all eyes, including Jeremy’s, had turned upon her incredulously, she cried, with a laugh, “La, why do you look so surprised?” She tossed her head so that her many golden ringlets bounced becomingly, then stepped to Jeremy’s side and grabbed hold of his arm with both hands. Berangère was petite enough to look doll-like beside the tall, athletically built duke—not unlike, Maggie realized, feeling something very like a knife blade slipping into her heart, how the Princess Usha would have looked beside him. “He is taking me to dinner. Dukes eat, too, you know, just like the rest of us.”
Portrait of My Heart Page 23
