by Lynne Barron
The earl’s eyes widened, drifted over her face, lingered for a moment on her lips, before dropping to sweep down her slender form adorned in flowing gold silk. He raised his gaze to hers, the merest hint of a smile upon his lips, his head tilted slightly, studying her as if she were an exotic creature, an angel dropped down from heaven to entertain him. How many times had Beatrice seen the very same expression on his father’s face?
Beatrice held her breath.
Would he recognize her?
But no. She did not exist in his world. The Earl of Hastings could no more recognize Beatrice than he could recognize a hard day’s work, an honest word, or a shilling well-earned. Foolish, naïve aristocrat. Just like his father.
The earl gave a small shake of his head and straightened. He puffed out his chest and pulled at his lace cuffs, his eyes fixed on her, his smile an invitation.
And just like that, Beatrice felt a blanket of calm descend over her. He was just a man. The thought warmed her, steadied her. He would be easily led, just like any other man. She had only to lead him where she wished him to go.
Beatrice stepped from the dim alcove into the soft yellow light of the candles. Her mind was amazingly clear. As she walked across the long marble floor, sweeping gracefully toward the Earl of Hastings, a plan was forming, taking shape. It was a plan born of the desperation and hope she had harbored in her heart for nine long years, born of the obsession that had colored every facet of her life during those lonely, lost years.
Beatrice smiled as she approached the young man, held the smile upon her lips as she dropped into a curtsy so low, so graceful, so perfectly deferential, she might have been bowing before King George himself.
Chapter One
Mayfair, London
May 1827
“Who is she?” asked Simon Carlisle, Viscount Easton.
“Isn’t she beautiful?” replied his cousin Henry Tinsdale, the Earl of Hastings.
She was beyond beautiful, Lord Easton thought as he watched her across the ballroom. She was mesmerizing. The willowy blonde had captured the attention of every person in the room as soon as she had entered on the arm of Viscount Moorehead only moments before. Simon heard whispers of conversation behind the fluttering fans of a group of ladies standing behind him.
“A scarlet dress, can you imagine?”
“Not so surprising, surely? They say she’s an artist, of all things.”
“Artist? Is that what they are calling them these days?”
While the ladies of the ton whispered and stared, the gentlemen silently watched and circled about her, gradually closing the distance. From Simon’s vantage point some twenty paces away, the men appeared to be involved in a slow dance whose moves were carefully orchestrated to appear subtle. They were anything but.
Moorehead had yet to introduce his beautiful companion to anyone in the ballroom. They simply stood off to the side of the cavernous room, as if waiting for the hordes to come to them.
With a gesture that clearly spoke of familiarity and affection, her escort placed his hand upon the small of her back and leaned in to whisper in her ear. She evidently found his remark amusing, for she tossed her head back and laughed. Even across the crowded room he could hear the echo of her laughter, mellow and dark.
Simon watched as a silky lock of golden hair slowly, ever so slowly, wrestled its freedom from one of the diamond-tipped pins holding it in place atop her head. Casually, without the slightest interruption in her whispered conversation with her escort, she reached one long, sinuous arm up, her hand caressing her neck and sweeping the wayward curl back into place. There was something inherently sensual in the movement. It struck him as terribly intimate, that casual, careless motion. Natural, he thought. There was something so natural, elemental about her.
“Who is she?” Simon asked again.
“Miss Beatrice Morgan,” the earl replied. “She has only just arrived from Paris. She is an amazing lady.”
Simon couldn’t agree more. She was tall and slim, almost boyishly so. But there was nothing boyish about the curve of her hip, clearly outlined by the vibrant red silk that caressed her form. Nor was there anything boyish in the way her small breasts rose and fell with her laughter.
As if on cue, the gentlemen who had been pirouetting about the lovely Miss Morgan began to approach her. In seconds there were half a dozen young men gathered about, begging Moorehead for introductions. Miss Morgan merely smiled as her gloved hand was lifted to one pair of lips after another. From where Simon stood watching, she appeared to say very little. Until one young rake, a friend of his cousin, Clyve was his name if he recalled correctly, said something which grabbed her attention. She held on to his hand when he would have relinquished hers and leaned forward to speak animatedly with him.
She raised her head then and looked about the room. He couldn’t be certain but she appeared to rise up onto her toes, the better to see around and above the heads of those about her. Simon smiled. There was something so childlike about her in that moment.
Miss Morgan stepped around Mr. Clyve with a few murmured words and walked forward until she was standing alone under the chandelier not ten feet away from where Simon stood. She was clearly looking for someone and obviously impatient to find her quarry. Her eyes swept past him, leaving him with a perfect view of her profile. Then she froze, slowly turned and looked right at him.
Simon was caught in her gaze. Her eyes were brown, he saw with some surprise. He would have guessed blue. But they were a deep, dark brown, like the richest chocolate. There was something familiar about those eyes, in the way they tilted upward ever so slightly, in the way the candlelight was reflected in them, in the sweeping arch of her brows.
She smiled and lips that had appeared somewhat thin and ordinary became lush and imminently kissable. She smiled as if she were ever so pleased to see him, as if he were the very person she had been searching the crowded ballroom to find. She smiled as if to welcome him home after an unbearably long absence. There was the smallest dimple just to the side of her smile and again he thought how genuine she seemed.
She made the slightest movement, a tilt of her head and a quick indrawn breath. Simon’s gaze involuntarily dropped to her chest. Look up, he ordered his wayward gaze. Look up, you fool. But his eyes refused to cooperate. Her breasts rose and fell, rose and fell. Then stopped and she was as still as a statue. His eyes snapped back up to hers.
The smile, that welcome-home smile, had disappeared as if it had never been. Now she stood quiet and still and stared back at him with—what? Sadness? Disappointment? Remembrance? Whatever it was, it caught him once more and he could not look away.
He sensed a movement to his left and tore his gaze from hers. Good God, he was standing in the middle of a ball staring at a lady as if no one else were about.
Henry stepped forward and bowed to the lady, a full, formal bow, as if before the queen herself. Miss Morgan dropped into a graceful, deep curtsy, her head bent low and one gloved hand held out before her. Certainly it was more courtesy than was warranted for an earl. Henry stepped toward her and grasped her extended hand and she looked up at him and fluttered her lashes in a playful manner before allowing him to raise her up.
Simon was taken aback by the overdone exhibition and even more so when the lady laughed her husky, dark laugh before saying, “My Lord Hastings, what a pleasure to see you again.”
“Miss Morgan, the pleasure is entirely mine,” replied the earl. He continued to hold her hand and they stood smiling at one another for longer than propriety should allow.
Simon looked from one to the other and was struck by the picture they presented. Two beautiful fair-haired people, both tall and slim, holding hands in the midst of a crowded ton affair, apparently oblivious to the scene they were creating. Heads all across the crowded room were turned toward them as ladies and gentleman unabashedly watched the spectacle unfolding before them. It would be in all the scandal sheets tomorrow. The Earl and the Artist.
Simon st
epped up beside his cousin and quietly cleared his throat.
“Oh, forgive my manners,” Henry said, finally releasing her hand. “Allow me to introduce my friend and cousin, Viscount Easton. Easton this is Miss Beatrice Morgan.”
Miss Morgan looked up at Simon. She smiled, not the wholehearted smile she had displayed previously, but a gentle tilt of her lips, her dimple winking briefly. She held her hand out to him and when he clasped her gloved fingers, he felt the warmth through the two layers of soft fabric separating their flesh.
He was surprised when she squeezed his fingers and held on when he would have released her hand after only a moment as manners dictated. She reached out her other hand to lay it gently upon his, effectively trapping his hand in hers.
“Lord Easton, I am ever so pleased to make your acquaintance,” she said.
He was at a loss for a response. No woman in his entire life had ever captured his hand this way upon first introductions. No woman had ever captured his attention as she had since the moment she had entered the room. It wasn’t that she was pushy or forward, or even overly friendly. She spoke with such sincerity. Natural.
“It is always a pleasure to meet a friend of my cousin,” Simon finally replied and immediately wished he had come up with something wittier to say. He knew he sounded stilted and cold.
If he had been surprised by her warm greeting, he was patently astonished when she said, “Please accept my deepest condolences on your father’s passing last year. He was a wonderful man who will be greatly missed.”
“Thank you,” he replied out of habit. His mind was whirling. Was she implying that she had known his father?
“I was in Italy when I heard the news and of course by the time word reached us, he had been gone for some time.” She had yet to release his hand. She was in fact slowly caressing him from knuckles to wrist and back again. It was highly improper but he could think of no way to extricate his hand without offering offense. And if he were honest, he had no wish to stop the soothing movement.
“You knew my father then?” he asked.
“Oh,” she said and her eyes widened before she looked down at their joined hands. She gave his hand a small pat and released him. “I do apologize. Sometimes I forget myself. I’ve lived abroad too long I suppose.”
She looked around the room and seemed to notice the attention they were garnishing. Instead of blushing in embarrassment upon discovering her faux pas, she lifted her head and looked from one group of gawking guests to the next. Like dominoes their gazes dropped away.
She turned back to Simon and Henry just as Moorehead joined them.
“My dear, you are creating quite a stir,” Moorehead told her with a laugh. “Hastings, Easton, how are you gentleman doing this fine night?”
Bertram Moorehead was a perpetually jovial man. Some misguided members of the ton thought him a buffoon, with his short, rotund body, shiny bald head, and booming voice. Simon knew he was a shrewd man, both financially and politically. He had inherited a bankrupt estate some thirty years ago and turned it into one of the richest in the country. He fought tirelessly for the rights of the underprivileged, especially war widows and orphans. Simon’s own father had attended Eton and Oxford with the man and had often sought his advice on financial matters. The Easton family fortunes had benefitted from more than one timely investment suggested by Moorehead.
Hastings and Moorehead fell into conversation, something to do with a horse Moorehead was considering purchasing. Simon was only partly listening. He was more interested in watching Miss Morgan. Beatrice, Henry had said. It was an appealing name, pretty and decidedly feminine.
She was standing with her hand tucked into the crook of Moorehead’s arm, smiling at both men as they debated the merits of the horse.
“Do you ride?” Simon asked. He wanted that smile directed at him once more.
“I am a country girl, my lord. I was practically born in the saddle.” He was not disappointed. She aimed that smile at him and his breath stopped.
“A country girl? From whereabouts?”
“Oh, you wouldn’t know of it. A small village called Deerfield in the North.
“I see.” She was quite right, he had never heard of it. He could not think what to say next. When was he ever tongue-tied around a woman?
She looked up at him, obviously waiting to see if he would offer something more to the conversation.
He was saved from further embarrassment when Moorehead turned to her to ask, “What say you, my girl, shall we meet up with Hastings at the park to ride tomorrow?”
“Oh Bertie, I don’t know,” she replied. “The park is ever so crowded. One cannot really ride. It’s all that showing-off nonsense.”
“Bea here doesn’t see the point in all those folks getting rigged up in their stylish riding togs only to prance about on their horses at a snail’s pace,” he explained to the gentlemen with a chuckle. “We’ll go early before the fashionable folks are even out of their beds,” he assured her.
“Even at ten o’clock yesterday there were too many people about. Lancelot could not get in a good gallop and he was cross all day.”
“We’ll meet at eight,” volunteered Henry.
“Are you sure you can be up that early?” she teased him. “I don’t recall you being an early riser.”
“Who, me?” Henry asked with a laugh.
Simon wondered how well these two knew each other. How did she know his morning habits? She hadn’t answered his question as to whether she had known his father. And she called Moorehead Bertie. He decided he would finagle an invitation from his cousin to accompany him to the park in the early hours.
“Well, my girl, if we’re to be up at dawn I must get myself off to bed,” Moorehead said.
“My lord, will you join us tomorrow to ride?” Miss Morgan asked.
Simon had been looking at Moorehead and it took him a moment to realize she had addressed her question to him. He looked at her. She looked right back at him and she was smiling, dimple and all. Smiling expectantly at him as if his answer truly mattered to her.
“It would be my pleasure, Miss Morgan,” he replied with a slight bow. And she surprised him yet again by reaching out not one hand for him to clasp but both. He instinctively grasped her hands in his and felt again that warmth as soon as they touched. She gave his hands a quick squeeze, smiling up at him all the while.
“And mine as well,” she replied.
Dropping his hands, she turned to face Henry. “My lord, should you lie abed until noon, as I suspect you will, know that Lord Easton shall join us without you. And we shall have a splendid time. And I shall give him leave to call me Beatrice.” Her eyes met Simon’s again and she winked.
Henry laughed and then lifted her hand to his lips before turning to Moorehead who joined in the conversation. But Simon could not hear a word of it. There was a roaring in his ears. A great wave of heat washed over him and for a moment he felt dizzy. This beautiful, sensuous woman with her husky laugh and dazzling smile had winked at him. He had never experienced anything like it. He had never experienced anyone like her.
“Gentlemen.” Moorehead bowed. “Until tomorrow.”
With a final smile and a little wave, Beatrice Morgan took Moorehead’s arm and sailed from the room.
Simon and Henry stood together and watched her go. Neither said a word for some time.
“Did you ever see such a thing?” one female voice behind them asked.
“That curtsy,” hissed another.
“Irreverent is what it was,” yet another said.
“And what was she doing, holding his hand that way?” asked the first.
“Who is she?”
Simon wasn’t sure which of the three had asked the question, but it was surely the question in everyone’s mind, especially his.
“Shall we go?” asked Henry. “This ball seems a bit dull, doesn’t it?”
Simon couldn’t agree more.
Comfortably ensconced in his carr
iage, he turned to his cousin and demanded, “Who is she?”
“I haven’t a clue.”
“What do you mean you haven’t a clue? You clearly know her from somewhere.”
“We met in Paris, at one of Mrs. Forsythe’s salons.”
“What on earth were you doing at one of Mrs. Forsythe’s salons?”
“Anna Forsythe is all the rage in Paris. You know they have a— what is the word I want? Liberal. Parisians have a much more liberal attitude. They are more interested in amusement than propriety. Anna Forsythe is a charming woman and she invites the most interesting people to her salons, poets and writers and actors and such.”
“And artists?” Simon asked. They say she is an artist.
“Oh yes.”
“Courtesans?” Is that what they are calling them these days?
“I’m sure there were a few of them sprinkled about the place, as well.”
“And Miss Morgan? Which is she?” Simon asked.
Henry chuckled before replying, “She is certainly an artist. As to the other, I don’t believe so.”
“What was she doing on Moorehead’s arm?”
“She and Mrs. Forsythe were quite tight. They were seen everywhere together. They had only just arrived from Italy. I believe they were in Greece together before that. As Anna Forsythe has been linked to Moorehead longer than I’ve been alive, if you are wondering if Miss Morgan is Moorehead’s mistress, I would have to think not.”
“How well do you know her?” It galled him to ask, but he needed to know. It seemed of paramount importance he determine who kept her in diamond hairpins and silk dresses.
“How now, cousin, that’s a mite personal, isn’t it?” Henry asked. He was smiling, smirking really.
“Miss Morgan indicated she knew my father.” He was loath to broach the subject but knew he must.
“Surely you are not suggesting she and your father were lovers.” Henry nearly howled with laughter. “First Moorehead, then me, and now your father? Simon, you are jumping to wild conclusions, even for you.”
“Even for me?”
“Come now, you are the most suspicious, cynical person I know.” Henry propped his feet upon the carriage seat next to Easton, crossing them at the ankles. His cousin was getting comfortable before he shared some insight or idea. Simon had seen him do it a hundred times.
