But if he could present under his own name a painting of such virtuosity and masterful technique that no one would dare question its brilliance, perhaps he could leapfrog into the midst of England’s best painters. He would be able to paint freely in a way he’d never been able to do before. Not even in Italy.
An uncertain smile teased at her full lips. “So I’d make a good model?”
He bit back the answer poised at the tip of his tongue. That she might just make the best model he’d ever worked with. Even better than Elena. The perfect model for the painting that now consumed his thoughts, all because of that heady mix of innocence, anticipation, curiosity…
A challenge? No, this woman might just prove to be his salvation.
“You’ll do,” he answered, hoping nothing in the tone of his voice gave away his true thoughts or the excited pounding of his heart.
She smiled, not the delicate expression of before but one of beaming joy.
A pang of regret stabbed him that he couldn’t capture that emotion as well. Perhaps another day, when they had more time. And he would have time, as he expected her to be here for months to come. No matter how much he had to pay her, no matter if the gel continued to vex him by arriving late every day, he wasn’t letting her go until he finished his painting.
She began to sit up—
“Don’t move,” he ordered, freezing her in place.
He dropped the charcoal to the stone floor and began to color in the shadows and textures with the piece of red chalk, creating the illusion of flecks of gold in her eyes and honey-warm tones in her skin, layering in the subtle shades that gave a touch of fire and heat in contradiction to the innocence he’d managed to capture. The sketch was beautiful before. Now it was downright exquisite.
A sudden thought struck him. He paused, the chalk resting against the paper. “Take down your hair.”
When she hesitated, he suspected she might refuse.
But then she sat up, pulled out the pins, and set them aside on the end of the chaise at her feet. She shook out her locks and let them fall in a silky curtain over her bare shoulders.
A heated excitement sparked inside him. In the muted light filtering through the window above her, her hair—
Titian red.
She eased down into her original position. “Like that?”
“Exactly.” The strokes of chalk and charcoal that mimicked the softness and vibrancy of her hair were a poor imitation of the reality.
“You’re awfully young to be a famous artist,” she commented softly, which he realized was an attempt to break through the sudden intensity that had gripped him and was making her nervous.
“You know a lot of famous artists, do you?”
“Dozens.”
His lips twitched at that blatant lie. “I’m two and thirty.”
“Young.”
For an artist, perhaps. Old for a marquess without a wife and heir. “Not so young. Michelangelo was still in his twenties when he sculpted both his Pietà and David, so was Leonardo da Vinci when he painted Madonna of the Rocks. All four of Bernini’s masterpieces were finished by the time he was thirty, and Raphael was painting in the Vatican by the time he was twenty-five.”
“Well, when you put it that way,” she conceded dryly, “you’d better get busy.”
His hand stilled. He lifted his gaze from the paper, finding teasing amusement at his expense sparkling in her eyes. Another expression he longed to capture. Sweet Jesus, she could keep him busy for months!
“That is my intention,” he assured her. Then he handed her the book.
Her amusement faded into amazement. Slowly, she traced her fingertips over the sketch, as if it wasn’t real. Not until she touched it.
“You made me look beautiful,” she whispered, her eyes fixed on the page.
“You are beautiful. I simply put it on paper.” He tossed the chalk onto the tray of the nearby easel and wiped the red dust from his fingers that were perpetually marked by paint, requiring him to wear gloves whenever he was outside the studio. In Italy, his hands had been a badge of honor. Here they were anathema.
She gazed at him in wonder. “To be able to do this…I envy you.”
He shrugged, the casual gesture hiding his pleasure at her soft compliment.
He was used to cloying comments from gallery owners and collectors, as well as disparaging ones from critics. When he’d first inherited and returned to England during that terrible time when he’d felt lost and trapped in someone else’s life, he’d even gone to the Royal Academy of Arts where three of his paintings hung and eavesdropped on the student artists in order to find validation in himself and reaffirm the importance of his work. Not one of those people’s opinions affected him the way hers just did.
“It’s a life of study,” he admitted with genuine humility, grateful for the subtle reminder.
When he reached to take the sketchbook from her, she clutched it to her bosom and glared up at him as if he were a thief attempting to steal it. “What will you do with it?”
“Nothing. It’s only a test sketch.”
“May I have it?”
Quick anger flared inside him. He drawled out despite the tight clench of his jaw, “I suppose you want me to sign it.”
She blinked in confusion. “Why would I want that? I know you drew it.”
“But the person you sell it to won’t.”
“Oh, I will never sell this!” Then she laughed, a sound as sparkling as her eyes, and one that both eased his anger and utterly captivated him. “I can’t even show it to anyone I know, let alone a stranger.”
Unease pricked at him. Not show her image to strangers? Did she truly have no idea what it meant to be his model? He’d thought her a challenge, not a Herculean task.
Yet he consented. “Of course you can have it.”
Which pleased her immensely, based on her beaming smile. He took the book back only long enough to tear out the page, then reached down to fetch the charcoal to sign it…Vincenzo.
With her help, he’d soon be able to sign his own name.
He rolled it up to hand it to her. “Return tomorrow at one. We’ll work in the afternoon light, in three-hour stretches, five times a week.” A thought struck him, and he pulled the sketch back just as her fingertips touched it. “Do you own a parasol?”
A puzzled frown pulled at her brow, “Yes, of course.”
“Bring it with you.” He wanted to see how she’d look if the composition were a proper portrait.
He placed the sketch onto her palm.
“Thank you,” she said quietly.
A tightness gripped his chest at the unexpected melancholy in her voice. She was thanking him for far more than the drawing, but for the life of him he couldn’t have said what. “You can dress now. We’re done for the day.”
While she changed, he searched the bookcase along the wall. He slid his hand over the embossed spines, one by one. He grinned to himself. He was feeling his way along the shelf the same way she’d traced her fingertips across the sketch. Art wasn’t real until it was felt. But how could he make her feel it so that she would relax enough to be the model he needed for his masterpiece?
She returned as he found the book he’d been seeking, and he faced her just in time to watch her replace the last of her hairpins, her silken strands wound into a chignon that made it impossible for him to discern the color. But now he knew, and a thrill passed through him at the thought of watching her unpin it again tomorrow.
“Take this with you.” He handed her the book. “Study it, especially the models.”
Her eyes gleamed with laughter. “You’re giving me homework?”
“Great craft requires constant study.” He tapped a finger against the book’s cover. “Pay attention to the emotions, theirs and yours. Art is all about emotion.”
She slid him a sly glance as she thumbed through the pages. “Really? I was told it was about mutual seduction.”
Cheeky chit. He dug out a sover
eign from his waistcoat pocket and tossed it to her. If she proved as valuable as he suspected, it wouldn’t be coins he’d soon be giving her in payment but jewels and furs. “Tomorrow. One o’clock. Don’t be late.”
With a distracted nod, she turned toward the door.
He walked over to his worktable, to check the glazes and paints that Jacopo had prepared that morning by mixing the pigments and oils. A few hours of good light remained, enough to apply more coats to a painting that he had almost finished, although he’d much rather have continued to sketch her, to learn the nuisances of her form and the subtle imperfections he had yet to see but was certain she must possess. Somewhere. Eads was on top of his game to—
“Wait!” He stopped her just as she reached the wicket in the carriage doors and was about to step into the alley.
“Yes?’
He looked at her sheepishly, feeling like a complete nodcock. Good Lord, how preoccupied must he have been not to ask before now. “What’s your name?”
“Eve.”
He nearly laughed. “Truly?”
Shrugging, she slipped out the door.
“Her name is Eve,” he murmured with an incredulous shake of his head.
Of course it was.
Chapter 3
She was late.
Again.
Evelyn hitched her skirt a few inches higher and hurried down the alley toward the studio as fast as she could without breaking into a run, her other hand holding down her bonnet, and her upper arm firmly pressed to her side to keep hold of the parasol tucked beneath.
She’d told herself that yesterday’s adventure was exactly the breath of freedom she needed, but that it couldn’t happen again. The miscommunication over the painting had led to an amazing experience, and she would cherish the sketch. More, she would always be grateful for the way Vincenzo had gazed at her, as if she were that season’s Incomparable, rather than looking upon her the way most people did—with scorn for being the unrestrained daughter of a shipping merchant.
She’d told herself repeatedly that it could never happen again. Yet sitting home last night after leaving the studio, then staring at the canopy of her bed all the sleepless night long—how was she truly expected not to want that same amazing feeling she’d had while posing for him? His dark eyes had studied her so closely that a tingling warmth in her chest had traveled out to the tips of her fingers and toes, making every bit of her feel electric. And alive.
The thought of being forced to spend the afternoon with the dowager Duchess of Trent made her stomach sink. No matter how wonderful Her Grace was, the day would have been torturous. Especially since Eve let the duchess believe that she’d forgotten all about fetching the painting from the Marquess of Ellsworth. The woman’s disappointment in her had been palpable.
The day would have been even worse had she spent it with Mariah, who dedicated her time to either working at Papa’s office in Wapping or doing charity work at the Gatewell School in St Katharine’s. Eve disliked both places. She found the shipping offices too busy and noisy for comfort, and as for the school, she couldn’t bear to go there. Because Gatewell only accepted children who had lost a parent at sea or on the docks, the place reminded her too much of the loss of her own mother.
So that morning as the long case clock in the entry hall moved closer and closer to one o’clock, Evelyn had tried to convince herself that remaining at home was for the best. That her madness over Burton Williams would be nothing compared to the scandal that would befall her if anyone discovered she’d been posing for a painter whose own reputation rivaled Lucifer’s. She’d paced and paced to physically fight down the rising dread marked by every tick of the clock and the fear that once more she was wasting precious moments of her life.
Truly, she’d tried.
Then she’d snatched up her parasol and dashed out the door.
She’d barely had time to call out an excuse—all right, a bald-faced lie—to the butler about how she’d completely forgotten about a charity board meeting at the Royal Hospital in Chelsea, assuring him that she’d return in a few hours. Sneaking out of the rear of the hospital without the driver and liveried tigers of her father’s carriage seeing her had been more difficult. But they would be fine waiting for her in front of the hospital until she was done at the studio. Then she would come back through the hospital and out the main entrance, and they would take her home. No one would be hurt, no one would be the wiser. But she’d have another day of precious freedom.
She smiled. Domenico Vincenzo had called her beautiful. Even now warmth blossomed in her chest at the memory, and she broke into a run.
She reached the studio and paused only to draw a deep breath before scurrying through the wicket. “I’m so terribly sorry that I’m late, but there was an overturned wagon and—”
She halted at the sound of voices raised in heated argument. So heated, in fact, that it took a few moments before the two people realized she was there.
When Vincenzo faced her, he ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “Eve, you’ve arrived.” He gestured at the blonde woman with whom he’d been arguing. “We were just finishing our conversation.”
If that was a mere conversation, then Eve was a blue goose. “Should I come back?”
“Yes,” the woman answered. A very beautiful woman. Based on the confident way she held herself, she knew it, too.
“No,” he corrected firmly. “We’re through here.”
“Oh, we haven’t yet begun.” Something about the way the woman said that sent an icy shiver skittering down Evelyn’s spine. Her cat-like green eyes swept over Eve in curious perusal, then she sniffed and turned away, as if she’d found her lacking. “Aren’t you going to introduce us, Dom?”
Dom. The woman was awfully familiar with him, whoever she was.
Judging from the irritation flitting across his face, making introductions was the last thing he wanted to do. Yet he motioned her forward to join them. “Eve, may I introduce you to Constance Devereaux? My former model.”
“His muse,” Constance drawled the purring correction, which caused Vincenzo to tighten his jaw. “And not so former.”
That caused his jaw to clench so tightly that the sinews in his neck pulsed.
Warily, Eve bobbed a polite but shallow curtsy. “A pleasure to meet you.” Then, just because she couldn’t help herself, she added, “Ma’am.”
He looked away, but not before Eve saw his lips twitch with amusement.
The woman pretended not to notice the sly reference to her age. “And you are…?”
“Eve is my new model,” he explained quietly, gauging the woman’s reaction as he leaned back against the worktable and folded his arms across his chest.
Constance took another assessing look at Eve. “Your new model, you say?” Her red lips broke into a slow smile, and dark amusement danced coldly in her eyes. “My! How interesting you are.” She threw a glance over her shoulder at Vincenzo, then clucked her tongue with exaggerated disappointment. “You truly do wish to take your art in a new direction, don’t you?” Another cutting glance at Eve, this one so venomous that she flinched. “The wrong one.”
Vincenzo shoved himself away from the table and angrily took Constance by the arm. She laughed, resting her other hand on his chest. Eve couldn’t help but notice the possessive way the woman curled her fingers into his waistcoat, how she shifted ever so slightly to brush her hip against his.
“We’ll only be a moment longer,” he told Eve, then led the woman aside.
Eve nodded and wandered across the studio to the bookshelves to give them privacy, certainly glad to be out of that conversation. The tension was so palpable that the air crackled.
Eve watched surreptitiously as she pretended to look at the books. Whatever was between the two of them was absolutely none of her business. She couldn’t care less if he’d painted that woman or if she was his muse. Or if she meant even more than that to him, based on the way she rested her palm on his shoulder, the
way she leaned into him until her breasts touched his chest—
Oh bother! That woman irritated Evelyn to her core.
“Questa è la ragazza che mi ha sostituito?” Constance slipped easily into fluent Italian, not bothering to lower her voice, as if certain that Eve couldn’t understand. “Another find from Covent Garden? Are you certain she doesn’t have the pox?” Then she laughed, despite the cutting coldness in her comment. “Oh my, Dom, how far you’ve fallen! To choose a doxy like her.”
“She isn’t a prostitute,” he countered, also in Italian. “She’s an actress who is well-educated and cultured, and she possesses exactly the presence I want for my next project. She’s perfect for it, in fact.”
“Perfect between your sheets, as well?”
His expression remained inscrutable. “I wouldn’t know, and I have no plans to find out.”
Constance gave another laugh, another toss of her golden blonde curls. “You truly expect me to believe that? That you chose her simply because of the way she appears on canvas?” Her fingers played with the buttons on his waistcoat, as if she were contemplating undressing him right there in the middle of the studio. “When she fails to satisfy you, what will you do? Hmm? Who will you turn to then for your pleasure?”
He stood impossibly still and straight, not moving except for a tick in his jaw where the muscle worked hard to hold in his anger.
“Stop these games and invite me back.” She leaned up to bring her lips close to his, her fingers sifting through the hair at his nape. “Admit it. Your bed is cold without me.”
“Not if I use an extra blanket,” he drawled.
Eve bit back a laugh. When Constance’s gaze narrowed murderously on her, she faked a cough.
“I know you, my Domenico.” She turned her attentions back to him. “You’re a man with great talent and greater ambitions, and you will never be satisfied without me. You’ll never find a woman who can truly replace me. Not in your studio.” She trailed a fingertip along his jaw. “Certainly not in your bed.”
What A Lord Wants Page 4
