Stroke of Genius (2 page)

Those pale eyes widened in what looked like recognition when they flicked over her, but the expression was gone so quickly Grace decided she’d imagined it. Besides, if they’d met before she’d have remembered. No one would forget Crispin Hawke. His image was already burned in her mind alongside other wonders of the world.

His unhurried gaze traveled over her. The almost imperceptible twitch of his mouth gave her the distinct impression she was being weighed in the balance. She couldn’t tell whether he found her sadly wanting.

“Such a pleasure to finally meet you, sir. Grace, this is Mr. Hawke. Mr. Hawke, may I present,” her mother indicated with a wave of her hand, “my dear daughter, Miss Grace Makepeace?”

Even though the mystery of Crispin Hawke still commanded her full attention, Grace would always blame what came next on the upturned corner of her mother’s new Oriental rug. As she approached to offer her hand, palm down, as her mother had taught her, Grace caught the toe of her slipper under the carpet and fell headlong onto the Hakkari weave.

“Grace,” the footman murmured. “Aptly named.”

“Wyckeham, I usually appreciate your scathing wit,” Mr. Hawke said over his shoulder to the footman as he knelt to help her rise, “but perhaps you might save it for a more deserving subject.”

Cheeks aflame, Grace tried to pull away from his grasp. But he didn’t let her go.

When she raised her eyes to him, he was looking down at her with such intensity, her belly clenched. A whiff of his scent, a brisk, clean soapy smell with an underlying note of maleness, crowded her senses. His piercing eyes narrowed in scrutiny.

Grace was accustomed to slumping since her mother constantly reminded her that her height might be “off-putting” to potential suitors. Now she straightened her spine, but Mr. Hawke was still able to look down his fine nose at her.

The footman Wyckeham cleared his throat and the spell was broken. Mr. Hawke released his grip on Grace’s arms.

“I trust you’re now capable of remaining upright, Miss Makepeace.” One corner of his mouth curved into a crooked smile.

“Oh, please do sit down, sir.” Her mother made a distressed little noise and fluttered over to a chair across from the settee like a wounded sparrow. “Come, dear and mind your feet,” she said in a half-whisper to Grace as she patted the chair next to her before turning her attention back to the artist. “I fear we’ve kept you waiting, Mr. Hawke.”

“Nonsense, madam.” He lounged on the settee, filling the space with his larger-than-life presence. “If you feared keeping me waiting you wouldn’t have done it.”

“Oh!” Minerva blinked hard at his bluntness. Grace sank into the chair next to her, wishing she could disappear into the red velvet. Or better yet, back into the books she loved so well. “Well, as I was saying, this is my daughter, Grace, the one whose hands you’ll be sculpting—”

“That, madam, has yet to be determined.”

Grace’s head snapped up. What sort of artisan was he, picking and choosing his commissions as if he were doing his patrons a favor by accepting their money?

He was still staring at her with single-minded intensity, his dark brows drawing closer together over his nose. Fashionable or not, all his features blended together to form a most harmonious face, even when frowning. He might have stepped from Rev. Waterbury’s pages as Mars, the god of war.

Her skin tingled under his intrusive gaze. She disliked the sensation. It was almost as if he knew more about her than he ought, as though he’d read her secret journal or sneaked into her dreams some night.

“Mr. Hawke, I’m newly arrived in your country, so perhaps you might clarify something for me.” Grace raised her chin slightly. The
ton
might be delirious over Crispin Hawke, but that didn’t mean she had to be. “Is rudeness what passes for genius in England these days?”

 Mr. Hawke made a noise somewhere between a snort and a chuckle. He flicked his gaze toward her mother. “Leave us.”

 “I beg your pardon.”

 “I didn’t tell you to beg, madam, though it may come to that if you cannot follow a simple directive. I told you to leave.”

 “Oh, I couldn’t possibly,” Minerva said. “It wouldn’t be proper—”

 “Mrs. Makepeace, we’ve only just met, but I perceive in you a very earthy imagination.” He arched a knowing brow. “What improper thing
do
you think I intend to do to your daughter in your absence?” 

 Grace’s mother erupted in a coughing fit.

 “My man Wyckeham will remain with us. The proprieties will be observed at all times, but if you wish me to accept your commission, you
will
allow me to speak to Miss Makepeace without your presence.”

 “Oh, oh, . . .” Minerva was rarely at a loss for words, but the unconventional Mr. Hawke nearly reduced her to incoherence. “But how will I explain to Mr. Makepeace?”

 “If you need tell him anything, tell him you succeeded in acquiring my services. At half my usual fee.” He raised a cynical brow. “That should suffice.”

 Grace watched in surprise as her proper mother rose and abandoned her to Mr. Hawke.

 “Kindly close the door behind you,” he said, his rumbling tone more pleasant now that he was getting his way.

 “Mother!”

 “I won’t be far, dear,” Minerva said through the narrow slit in the door before it latched behind her with a loud snick.

 Crispin Hawke chuckled softly. “Dear me, Miss Makepeace, I do believe you mother thinks I’ll throw you to the floor and swive you right here in her very proper parlor.”

 Grace gaped at him. She wasn’t completely sure of all the details involved in
swiving
but she knew a casual obscenity when she heard one. She stood in shock. To cover the fact that she couldn’t bear looking at him—even unpleasant as he was, he was still too striking to consider for longer than a blink—she began pacing the room.

 “Why did you bully my mother like that?”

 “Because I could.” He propped his arms across the back of the settee, claiming the space as if by right. “Mind the rug, Grace. If you end up on the floor again, I might be tempted over-much and I very nearly promised your highly-esteemed mother there’d be no swiving today.”

 “Stop saying that word.” She shot him a glare that should have reduced him to cinders, but he only laughed. “You manipulated her for your own amusement.”

 “You’re remarkably astute for a spoiled little rich girl from Boston,” he said, managing to compliment and berate her in the same breath. “I bullied your mother because it interests me to learn how much value people assign to my work. As you deduced, it’s only a game, but a game with purpose. Money is nothing. But if someone surrenders their principles, that’s something. How else can I know my services are sufficiently appreciated for me to extend them?”

“That’s despicable. This
game
of yours is thoroughly
un
appreciated.” She flounced back onto her chair and crossed her arms over her chest. “Don’t expect me to surrender anything for your services.”

“Of course not.” He leaned forward and reached toward her. “Give me your hands.”

“What?” Was this another of his games?

“Your hands, Grace.”

She might have found his smile charming if he’d not behaved so abominably, first to her mother and then to her.

Throw me down and swive me in the parlor, indeed, you conceited swine.

Even so, there was a disconcerting flutter beneath her ribs at the thought of sharing the Hakkari carpet with Mr. Hawke.

“I must see your hands, Grace. How shall I sculpt them otherwise?”

She thrust them toward him, but made a great show of looking away, staring with complete absorption at the ormolu clock her mother had recently installed on the fireplace mantle.

“Square nails, an ink stain, a bit of a callus on your third finger.” He catalogued her hands’ attributes as if they were inanimate objects somehow disconnected to the rest of her. “You favor your left hand.”

“What of it?”

“I do too, which makes us a pair of rare birds. I perceive you are either a writer of wicked penny novels or you keep up a lively correspondence with a number of distant friends and relations.”

She glowered at him, but couldn’t fault his skills of observation. When she wasn’t reading, Grace was writing.

“You should know that I don’t flatter my models.”

“How very surprising.”

“I only mean to warn you that your hands are not your best feature.” Despite his words, he continued to massage her wrists and hands with his rough, thick fingers. When he followed her lifeline to its end at the base of her thumb, pleasure licked her palm. “Would you like to know what is, Grace?”  

“You are engaged to sculpt my hands. I care nothing for your opinion on the rest of me,” she lied.

He was outrageous and vulgar and totally impertinent. But she burned with curiosity about what he might find most pleasing about her. Asking, however, would only allow him to play yet another game.

“You should call me Miss Makepeace, you know.”

“Yes, I really should. And yet, I’ll call you Grace,” he said pleasantly as he traced between her fingers and turned her palms down to draw his thumbs over her knuckles. A little faerie of pleasure danced up her arm. “And you’ll call me . . . Mr. Hawke.”

“I certainly will not.” She pulled her hands away, her imaginary pleasure faerie disintegrating in a puff of righteous indignation. “If you insist on informality between us, it will go both ways, Crispin. Or should it be Cris?”

His wince was quick, but Grace caught it.

“Crispin will do,” he said.

“And yet,” she said with an arched brow, “I’ll call you Cris.” 

He rose to his feet, leaning on the ivory-headed walking stick. “Come to my studio in the morning. Eight of the clock sharp. Keep me waiting again, and it will be the last time.”

He strode toward the door with a slight limp.

“Perhaps that hour will not suit me,” she said, fighting the urge to follow him. She wasn’t some lake trout to be reeled in for the hooking. “Are your patrons your slaves to be ordered about?”

“No,
I
am the slave, but not to you, by God.” His footman scurried to hand him a top hat. He popped it on his head and inclined toward her in the shallowest of bows. “My master is the light. And it will not wait. Not for all the Boston Brahmins on the Charles.”

He pushed the door open, narrowly missing Grace’s mother, who crouched at the keyhole.

“Good day, madam. You may rejoice. Your daughter has sufficiently impressed me. And without anything the least earthy having transpired.” A wicked grin split his face. “This time.”

He turned back to Grace. “Scrub off that ink stain before tomorrow.” Then he disappeared around the corner into the foyer. 

Minerva’s mouth opened and closed like a carp out of water. “What did you do, Grace?”

“I don’t know, Mother. He doesn’t seem to like me a bit.”

“Perhaps not, miss,” Wyckeham said before he followed his master out. “But you interest him. And not much does.”

* * *

As Wyckeham held the door of the curricle for his master, he leaned to whisper, “Did you notice—”

“Yes, damn it, I’m not blind.” Crispin climbed into the conveyance, stepping up with his left foot and lifting his right leg with a hand beneath his thigh. He tucked it in quickly so as not to attract undo attention to his debility. “It means nothing.”

“The way you stared at her tells me it’s not nothing. They’re as like as two peas.”

Crispin seized his servant by the cravat and brought him nose to nose. “Wyckeham, if you value your position, you will shut your mouth and refrain from speech for the rest of the day unless you can present a different topic of conversation. This one is closed.”

And so was Wyckeham’s mouth.

Chapter 2

Pygmalion loved the human form, but hated mankind in general.

And mistrusted women on principle.

Crispin woke with a jerk. He’d had the dream again. The woman’s face had plagued him for a month. Now that he had a name to put with her deceptively angelic features, the vision was even less welcome.

He dragged himself from bed and limped toward the window. He pushed open his bedchamber shutters and let silver light bathe his face. Crispin inhaled deeply, taking in the scents of sweet heliotrope and spicy jasmine from the interior courtyard below.

    Seen from the outside, his home was an ugly stone block, but inside, the three stories wrapped around a central atrium, topped by exposed girders and dozens of octagonal skylights. His garden flourished year round. The fragrance distracted him a bit from the throb in his thigh, but didn’t ease the deep ache.

The moon’s face was slipping past the edge of the last skylight. Dawn wasn’t far off. There was no sense in going back to bed. If he slept, he’d just dream of her again and he didn’t want to puzzle over what that meant.

He decided to find his walking stick. He refused to think of it as a cane. Out on the narrow balcony overlooking his enclosed garden, he’d prop his leg up on the balustrade and wait for the coming day.