A Thief in the Nude

by Olivia Waite

  Rushmore apparently saw the resemblance. “Bloody hell,” he whispered.

  Hecuba saw an opportunity and seized it. “My mother hated wasting time and energy defending her talent on account of her sex, so after she married my father she took his surname as a pseudonym and let all the customers and critics assume she was a man. Of course this meant she couldn’t paint portraits without revealing the truth, so all my mother’s paintings were landscapes. Except these four. These she painted for herself and for her family. They ought never to have been auctioned off. She meant them to be my inheritance.”

  He took a deep breath and finally asked the question she’d known he was waiting to ask. “The Thief?”

  “My father,” she said with a sad smile. “He taught me everything I know.”

  “Bloody hell,” he repeated then fell with a thump into a nearby armchair.

  Chapter 3

  John Rushmore glanced from the painting to the woman and back. The blanket she was clutching around her was only a shade away from the impossible green of the tunic in that painting of her as a girl. He’d stared at that portrait for years now, wondering how on earth the artist had gotten that shade of green to stay so vivid when every other artist’s green hues went black and dark with age. Hecuba green it was called, and decades later it was still as rich and lustrous as the day C. F. Jones had first raised a hand and put brush to canvas.

  And Miss Jones had been there to see it happen.

  John was hit by a wave of envy so strong that he had to clench his teeth against the force of it. “Tell me about her,” he said, greedy for anything he could learn about the artist he’d idolized for so long. The fact that C. F. Jones was a woman did nothing to change the fact that she was also a genius.

  The artist’s daughter looked at him in surprise then shrugged and took a seat on a nearby ottoman. In the firelight she appeared mysterious and otherworldly, a Delphic oracle or Pythian priestess come forth to utter strange truths. He waited like a proper supplicant until she began to speak. “Her name was Cynthia. Her aunt had paid a tutor to teach her watercolors, like any genteel debutante, but my mother convinced him to teach her oils as well. She loved painting people but my grandparents considered female painters shocking and scandalous. They would have cut her off if she painted from life, as other female painters have. Her landscapes became rather fashionable at one point, and sometimes she had to ask my father to act as a go-between with galleries and would-be patrons. They made a game of it, but you could see it hurt her that she couldn’t claim her work openly without risking scandal and penury.”

  The ghost of the little girl she’d been passed briefly over her face. John heard an echo of his brother’s laughing voice. At least it wasn’t one of your landscapes. “I know something about how she must have felt,” he said quietly.

  She met his eyes then and smiled, her expression warm and open. John took a quick gulp from his glass—the whisky was a less dangerous intoxicant than a smile from Hecuba Jones. He watched a raindrop slide from her hair to her neck, the droplet gleaming like a gem in the firelight. The memory of their kiss slipped through him and left echoes behind, ripples of wind on the surface of a formerly still and untroubled lake. The green blanket had slipped off one shoulder to show the curve of her upper arm and the ivory strap of her chemise. His fingers itched to slide beneath it, to pull it down her arm, to slide both chemise and blanket down and bare the breasts he’d felt against him when he’d waltzed with her in a gallery surrounded by the paintings of other men...

  Whereas now she sat in a room surrounded by her mother’s most intimate portraits—and they belonged to someone else.

  John lurched to his feet and pulled Henry VIII from the wall. He walked to the desk, rummaged in a drawer for a knife and sliced the canvas from the frame, just as she’d done the other night. His cravat, once untied, was just long enough to knot around the rolled-up canvas to keep the painting inside safe and hidden from sight.

  Then—because he was an artist and couldn’t resist a bit of a flourish—he walked back across the study, went to one knee on the floor and with both hands outstretched presented Miss Jones with her own portrait as though it were a victor’s trophy.

  She took it with one hand, the other holding the blanket closed at her neck. For one brief, blinding second he could see this moment as he would paint it—the shadows of drapery, the warmth of fire on her skin and the halo of light around her brilliant hair. It was all he could do not to drag her up to the north attic where he’d begun a new and secret set of paintings. No one knew about those canvases—not his brother or sister or any of his society friends. They’d so dismissed his earlier work that he couldn’t bear to tell them he’d taken it up again, especially when he was still fighting his way through the darkness. Painting had become a slow and painful process, not at all like the brash fire he’d felt when younger, and he was starting to worry that neglect had burned out whatever talent he’d had, like a candle left alone too long in an empty room.

  But now he felt all the old urgency return. The vision in his head was clawing its way out through his flesh and every moment spent not painting was a moment wasted. He forgot every mocking thing his brother had said, every worry he’d nursed about failure, every ambition he still cherished despite the obstacles. He forgot that he was still down on one knee before a strange woman who’d stolen secretly into the house in the dead of night. The only thing that mattered was this moment. He stared openly, committing to memory each fold of cloth, the angles of her face in firelight, the way her still-damp hair curled close against the luster of her skin, the shadows that threatened her on every side. All of it soaked into him like water in the desert and still it was not enough.

  And then, slowly, Miss Jones bent down and pressed her mouth to his.

  The kiss blazed through him, soft though it was, and all thoughts of painting fled at the rush of pure physical need. John raised one hand to touch her cheek, to thread his fingers through that lustrous hair...

  And his hand bumped the roll of canvas she still held.

  The spell was broken and the kiss followed suit. John sat back on his heels while Miss Jones blinked down at him in surprise and, he could see, dismay. But this felt too important to get wrong, and he was getting it wrong.

  John surged to his feet and took a few hasty steps back. Her lips were still slightly parted and when she licked them the action was enough nearly to drive him back to his knees. But instead he dredged up all the dusty moral rectitude he had left and said, “I propose a bargain.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “What kind of bargain?” she asked. He couldn’t blame her for being wary. This was all highly improper, and she had no reason to trust him. John only hoped that because he’d kept her secret for nearly a day, she’d be willing to grant him a hearing.

  The idea was only half sketched in his mind and he hurried to put words around it. “I’ll trade your mother’s paintings for the opportunity to paint her daughter’s portrait. Your portrait.”

  Miss Jones widened her eyes but considered it. “All four of Mother’s for one painting of yours?”

  John took a risk. “A one-to-one exchange. Your mother’s paintings for four of mine.” He waited on tenterhooks while she considered his offer. He could easily paint a dozen portraits of this woman—a hundred—but that would be highway robbery, thoroughly unscrupulous of him to demand. Besides, she’d never agree to so steep a price.

  “A few more trifling questions,” she said eventually. John braced himself at the steel in her tone. “Are these for public display or your personal collection? How long will sittings take? Where are they to occur? What kind of garments will I be wearing? Because, Mr. Rushmore, I have no intention of posing in the nude.”

  She hadn’t rejected him entirely. He took heart from that and answered her as best he could. “The portraits will remain secret. I don’t know precisely how long each painting will take, but probably no more than one night each—I can always fill in t
he details on my own. We’ll be working in the north attic, where I’ve set up a studio with plenty of light during the day and plenty of mirrors for reflecting candlelight during evening sessions as well. I assume that late nights and clandestine hours would suit you more than mornings or afternoons?” She nodded and he went on. “I have painted nudes in the past—what artist hasn’t?—but that’s not what I want from you.”

  She tilted her head to one side, considering. “What precisely do you want from me?” she asked.

  He looked at her again, sitting proud and tall in the firelight. “I want the spark,” he said bluntly. She remained silent and he felt emboldened to explain further. “Every gesture you make, every unconscious pose you strike, makes me think of a painting. Everything—your voice, your hands, your hair, the way you stand, the way you frown. I’ve never felt this...this lit up before and I’m unwilling to dismiss it or try to ignore it and hope it goes away. I don’t want it to go away, though it’s not precisely comfortable. I need to capture just a little bit of that on canvas, because if I don’t at least try I will regret it for the rest of my life.”

  “It’s not just because I’m my mother’s daughter?”

  “It’s because you’re you,” said John. “I think your mother was a skilled enough painter to recognize a muse when she saw one.”

  For a long while Miss Jones was silent, merely watching him, clearly trying to gauge the level of his sincerity and her own willingness to go along with what appeared to be the project of a desperate, lonely lunatic. He felt strangely exposed, as though every word had stripped a garment from him and now he stood naked before her. He clenched his hands at his sides to keep his arms from folding defensively across his chest.

  Then Miss Hecuba Jones nodded again with an air of finality. “Your bargain is a fair one, I think,” she said. “We are agreed.”

  She set the rolled painting aside and put out her hand to seal the compact.

  It was so formal, so businesslike a gesture that John almost laughed. Instead he held out his hand and shook hers.

  He didn’t want to let go.

  He should let go. Even though she had agreed to sit for him, she still didn’t trust him completely. But her palm was warm and slightly calloused and he was already imagining how it would feel on his bare skin. Desire blazed up again and threatened to burn away what scraps of conscience still remained to him.

  John stared down at her, caught between letting her go and letting himself go, until her hand tugged impatiently in his. He dropped it at once and retreated until the desk bumped into the back of his upper thighs. He was breathing deeply, as though he’d thought to climb a mountain unprepared and been forced back by the chilly thinness of the air around the peak.

  By God, if he could get through a single portrait of Hecuba Jones without throwing himself at her feet and begging her for mercy it would be a miracle.

  She brushed her hand idly along the soft nap of the blanket on her knee. He wondered whether she was enjoying the softness against her skin or whether it was a nervous habit she had. “There is something I want to tell you, Mr. Rushmore. Since we have already ventured somewhat beyond the pale.”

  His brain refused to work. He nodded dumbly.

  Her gaze met his again. “I am concerned about my reputation,” she confessed, “but not about the actual fact of my virtue.” John’s breath left him in a rush of surprise. She pressed on. “I have put aside the idea of marriage, quite decisively. I have other plans for my future. Nevertheless there is something appealing in the notion of a discreetly enjoyed affair. So...without going so far as to yield entirely, I must admit that I am somewhat susceptible to your attentions. Improper though they may be.”

  She was going to kill him, really she was. “I am quite glad to hear that, Miss Jones.” If she looked below his waist, she would see precisely how glad.

  She took a deep breath, the blanket rising and falling. “You mentioned wanting to capture a spark, Mr. Rushmore. For the past two days I’ve been fighting a spark of a different sort.” She reached for her whisky, drained the glass and set it aside. “I’m speaking of attraction, of course. Physical desire.” He couldn’t look away from her face, which was as serene and composed as if she had this sort of conversation every day. Fire flickered over her lips as they shaped her next words. “This impulse is getting increasingly difficult to ignore, Mr. Rushmore, so I’ll ask you quite frankly—what do you plan to do about it?”

  John did laugh at that. It was the only thing he could do. “I’d planned to do nothing, Miss Jones,” he said, “but it seems I keep losing control and kissing you. For the past few minutes I have been struggling to remember that I am a gentleman.” It was shocking to be speaking these words. Flirtations were supposed to be couched in delicate euphemisms, sideways language and subtle allusions. One was never supposed to simply admit one was attracted. It was appalling—and more than a little thrilling, as John acknowledged to himself. “But your confession does place this...susceptibility in a new light. So I would ask in return—what should you like me to do about it?”

  “Well,” she murmured. She smiled at him again and this time her smile was sly. “If it’s up to me...”

  Miss Jones rose to her feet and dropped the blanket.

  Green wool puddled at her feet. John very nearly did the same. Her chemise and drawers were of fine lawn, and the firelight behind her showed him the curves of her figure beneath them.

  So much for moral rectitude.

  In three steps he was across the room and his mouth claimed hers. Her lips parted and her tongue slid boldly against his, but through the haze of arousal he forced himself to go more slowly than his body demanded. She was still a maiden, after all—a clever, larcenous and frankly sensual one, but a maiden nonetheless.

  If he died from this kiss, it would be worth it.

  She tasted like whisky warmed by firelight, but when John trailed one hand along her cheek and into the hair at her temple, his fingers grew damp and cool with rainwater. She shivered a little as droplets fell on her shoulder. He couldn’t resist the urge to trace his mouth over the skin where those raindrops landed. She shivered again and pulled his mouth back to hers, her own fingers clutching the front of his shirt and sliding into the neck where his absent cravat left him open for exploration. His whole body was hard and ready and trembling from the effort of holding back, so when she scraped one gentle fingernail over the sensitive skin of his chest he gasped in shock and knew he was about to lose the battle against his own desire.

  He pulled slightly away and pressed his hands on top of hers, flattening her palms against his chest just over his heart. Her fingertips were beneath the soft linen of his shirt, burning into his awareness, while her eyes sparkled up at him in the flickering light.

  “This is a very dangerous thing for us to be doing,” he said, his breathing harsh.

  She smiled teasingly at him. “Especially now that I know you’re just as fearful of this as I am.”

  “I’m not frightened of you,” he said. It was quite possibly the biggest lie he’d ever uttered.

  She didn’t answer that. Instead she leaned forward, brushing her lips against the backs of his hands. John gasped, then groaned when he felt her tongue lick briefly at the tender skin of his knuckles. “You have such beautiful hands.”

  “Jesus Christ,” he breathed.

  She leaned forward again and took the very tip of his middle finger into her mouth.

  John froze, all his muscles tense, his cock swollen and hard, all his awareness focused on the finger between her lips. If he let himself move, all would be lost—he would take her down to the carpet and fuck her senseless, self-control and preventative measures be damned. He shouldn’t have poured her that whisky—he shouldn’t have poured himself that whisky...

  When she nipped gently at his finger, everything came loose at once.

  He surged forward, lifting her from the ground and only stopping when her back met the empty wall where
her portrait had once been displayed. He trapped her there with the full weight of his body, glorying in the way she arched against him and in the press of her breasts with only his shirt and her chemise between then. Her arms wrapped around his shoulders and pulled him closer while he ravaged her mouth, teasing and taking and doing his best to torture her as much as she did him. It was rough, desperate, a tempest he couldn’t hold back, so he gave in and let his right hand slide from the curve of her waist upward, to capture one breast.

  The weight of her against his palm shook him to the core, but before he could do more than savor the feeling she pulled her mouth from his and gasped, “Wait.”

  And just like that the storm was his to control, though its strength had not lessened. He removed his hand from her breast and put it flat against the wall, where it had a chance of behaving itself. They were both panting, and John pulled away slightly to give her some room to draw breath. Her hands slid from his shoulders and came to rest on his chest again, as though she didn’t know whether to pull him close or push him away. She looked more than a bit ravished, hair tousled and lips reddened, and John felt like the worst of cads. Even now he wanted nothing more than another of those mind- destroying, soul-obliterating kisses—but not if it came at the expense of her safety, her comfort or her inclination. “I’m sorry,” he said, his gut twisting.

  “I’m not,” she replied, and just like that John could breathe easier. “I started it, if you recall.”

  As though he could forget that moment if he lived to be a thousand years old. “You might have started it but you also called a halt.” His brain was still fizzing with desire, so he let go of her waist and put both hands firmly behind his back, clenching them together in case they got him in trouble again.

  She shook her head and her fingers curled into the softness of his shirt. “This...this was too much, all at once,” she said. “I couldn’t keep up.”