Stroke of Genius (6 page)

“Perhaps I should get back to work,” he suggested, his voice rough with pent-up desire.

“Perhaps you should,” she agreed, eyeing him as if she suspected he’d just made off with the silver.

* * *

Grace’s forearms prickled. Her fingertips had gone numb a while ago. Crispin gave her breaks to swing her arms in wide arcs from time to time, but he seemed so intent on the sketch now, she didn’t want to interrupt him.

It might lead to conversation and she’d already had more of that than she could bear. The man had her insides fluttering like a hummingbird.

Each time she closed her eyes she saw that sketch again. How easily he recreated the nude female form in minute detail.

How many women modeled for him like that?

Plenty
, she decided, uncertain why that knowledge should tighten her belly.

She had to think about something else.

Sunlight was flooding the atrium now. Architecture was surely safe.

“Your home is beautiful.”

“Hmm… Oh, the house. Yes, thank you.” He glanced up for a moment, then bent back to his work. “It serves me well.”

Grace rolled her eyes. Everything was about him. What she’d heard about artistic types was true. Narcissism was their true religion.

“I was surprised to learn from your manservant that you purchased your house.” She wiggled her toes since she had to hold her fingers steady. “It was my understanding that the finer families of London lease their dwellings, in case the neighborhood should fall out of fashion and they need to move to one more in keeping with their standing.”

Crispin snorted. “In case it’s escaped your notice, I am not counted among London’s finer families.”

“But you’re well-regarded. You move in the highest circles.”

“A crow may fly with eagles but it doesn’t brighten his wings,” Crispin said in a clipped tone.

“But everyone speak so highly of your work—”

“As they well might,” he finished for her. “The
ton
fears me because I can render them as gods or goats with equal facility and they know it.”

“Is that your aim? To inspire fear?”

“No, fear is an unworthy goal.” He bore down on the paper, shading and cross-hatching the sketch. “My aim is power. Every man aspires to power that he may live as he chooses.”

When Crispin lifted his eyes to her, there was no deference in his gaze. He had no respect for her wealth or her gender. He said and did exactly as he pleased with no thought for the rules of man or God. That stolen kiss proved it beyond doubt. If she’d met him in the cramped little alley without knowing who he was, Grace might have feared him.

“However, if fear is the path to power,” he said with a shrug, “I’ll take it where it is offered.”

Grace sighed. “If only there was a path to power for a woman.”

“There is. I have several delightful female friends who have managed to maintain control over both their person and their fortune.”

“How?”

One corner of his mouth lifted. “They are top-tier courtesans who’ve been very judicious in their choice of patrons.”

Grace snorted. “I meant a
respectable
path to power.”

He frowned. “Ah, yes. I’d forgotten how superior pure women are. Tell me, how many languages do you speak?”

“Well, my French is passable and—”

“Any courtesan worth her salt is fluent in three or four tongues and well-read in all of them. Have you entertained any crowned princes in that Boston brownstone of yours?”

Her mother had hosted a tea for the mayor once, but she supposed that wouldn’t count for much when measured against a royal guest.

“A courtesan must be able to converse wittily and intelligently with philosophers and statesmen. In my experience, ‘birds of paradise’ are possessed of exquisite taste and sensibility. I’m pleased to name them among my friends.” He moved to another position to sketch her hands from a different angle. “What about that seems unrespectable to you?”

“But a courtesan must . . .” Grace bit her tongue. She would not allow him to goad her into indelicacy. “I’m not ignorant of the world, you know.”

“I’m relieved to hear it. But if that’s the case, why haven’t you recognized that you are already on the ‘respectable’ feminine path to power? You are pursuing it even now through my services.”  A cynical smile cut across his face. “The word about town is that your father’s fortune will buy you a titled husband. That is as powerful as a
respectable
woman can hope, as powerful as she ever need be.”

She scowled at him. “You make it sound so . . . mercenary.”

Crispin bent to his work again. “Isn’t it? Services rendered for goods received.”

Grace’s arms ached so from holding them still. She pacified herself with visions of bashing him over the head with his sketchbook. “So in your view of marriage, am I the goods or the service?”

He cocked a brow at her. “Both, my dear Grace, if your future husband is a man of any luck at all.”

That sounded as naughty as his nude sketch, so she looked away, trying to imagine him on another continent. A ‘Lady’ in front of her name was her mother’s wish, not hers. But that was none of his business.

“Engaging me to sculpt your hands is a good opening gambit in the husband hunt,” he said with a smile in his tone. “It shows you to be a young woman from a family who understands and values quality.”

His ego was beyond measuring. Perhaps another continent wasn’t far enough. Another planet might do.

“Tell me. How will your campaign for ‘lady-hood’ proceed?” he asked as he rubbed a thumb across a portion of his sketch to smooth the shading. “Presentation at Almack’s, I assume.”

Grace bit her lower lip.

He chuckled. “Never say you haven’t been able to purchase a voucher.”

Grace tried to ignore him.

He made a tsking noise. “Say what you will of the she-dragons who guard the gate at Almack’s, they cannot be bought and they are well-nigh incorruptible.”

“No doubt you’ve tried.”

“For what purpose? I’m not in the marriage market. However it may interest you to know that I do possess a voucher to that exclusive establishment, awarded to me by Lady Hepplewhite after I did a bust of her eldest that pleased her.” A sardonic grin split his face. “Artistic genius is not without its compensations.”

“Or its conceit,” she murmured, then raised her voice. “For your information, I do not possess a voucher because I have not yet applied.”

Not having a voucher to Almack’s was no disgrace if you’d not attempted to secure one. If it were noised about that Grace had been turned down, it would mean Polite Society need not even acknowledge she existed. Better to put off making her application till she was more certain of the outcome.

“If you must know,” she said with exasperation, “my family and I are planning an outing to Vauxhall this evening.”

“Hmm. The pleasure gardens are frequented by the
ton
, so you’ll no doubt be seen by some of the ones you hope to impress.” When he looked up from his work, all hint of levity drained from his features. “But Vauxhall is open to the public, which means all manner of riffraff are allowed in. Beneath the revelry, the seedier side of the city is apt to burst forth. If you want my advice—”

Grace was saved from whatever Crispin had planned to say by Wyckeham’s appearance in the doorway.

“Beg pardon, sir, but you wished to be informed when the new shipment of stone arrived,” his manservant said.

“Rest yourself for a moment, Grace. I need to see to this.” Crispin grabbed his walking stick and followed his servant out without so much as a by-your-leave.

“It would serve him right if I was gone when he returned,” she muttered as she shook her arms to restore circulation to her fingertips. The tingle gave way as blood screamed back into her hands. 

The threat to disappear was an empty one. Her mother would have a fit if Grace left the sitting early. She stood and decided to take a turn around the room, pausing by each block of marble where figures were emerging from different colors of veined stone. Even unpolished, the works were bursting with life. Unapologetically human, warts and all, it was like walking through a crowd of real people frozen between one heart beat and the next.

A draped canvas stood on an easel in one corner, oddly out of place in this garden of stone. Grace padded over to investigate, lifting a corner of the sheeting.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

Crispin’s voice made her jump away guiltily before she was able to snatch a peek.

“I was just—”

“Just being a nosy female,” he finished. “Did it occur to you that if I wanted that canvas on view, I wouldn’t have left it covered?”

“I meant no harm.”

“Of course not. Your sort never do.”

His black scowl was out of all proportion to her offense.

“We’re finished for this day. Wyckeham! Show Miss Makepeace and her servant out.”

The man had just dismissed her! Grace flinched as though he’d slapped her. Then she straightened to her full height. Others might fear what he could do to them in marble, but she refused to cower.

“Excellent. I’ve had quite enough of you as well,” she said as she breezed past him. “If you don’t want anyone to look at it, I suggest you keep the canvas in your private rooms, not in your open studio.”

“Be here again at eight tomorrow morning.” He frowned at her, but his voice lost its rough edge.

“Regrettably, I have another appointment which will engage me for the entire day.” She had no such thing, but she was tired of him ordering her about. “Perhaps I can fit you into my schedule the day after, but not until nine o’clock. Good day, Mr. Hawke.”

Crispin watched her go. The full sunlight in the atrium rendered her gown nearly transparent and he was treated to a glimpse of her long legs beneath the palla.

Once she disappeared around the corner, he strode over to the canvas and yanked off the sheeting.

The sketch was of the woman who’d invaded his dreams for the past month. The wanton succubus caused him to wake with either an aching cockstand or a damp sheet and a flush of pleasure like he’d never known.

Only to be followed by yawning emptiness when he realized she was but a dream.

Capturing her on canvas had started as a lark. She was his ideal woman, he’d told Wyckeham, the one his soul was destined for, even though he knew she was nothing more than mist. He thought bringing his dream nymph to life on canvas would make sense of the recurring night phantom.

Instead it only cemented her image more firmly in his brain.

He never fancied he’d meet her in the flesh. Now that he knew her name, he doubted he’d ever be free of her. Not that he would act to make his fancies real. The idea was laughable.

“Do you think she saw it?” Wyckeham said from behind him.

“No. She wouldn’t have left so quietly otherwise.” Crispin picked up a bit of charcoal and added a tiny mole near the figure’s elbow. Then he tossed the sheeting back over the easel again. The fine linen billowed over the portrait. Anyone viewing the sketch would never believe Miss Grace Makepeace hadn’t sat for it personally.

 And in splendid nakedness.

Chapter 5

No one knew for certain why Pygmalion shoved people away, but one suspected the reason was rooted in his past.

A past he guarded as if its secrets would topple the Crown.

25 years earlier

Peel’s Abbey, a Cheapside House of Pleasure

The bells of St. Paul’s chimed the hour. Seven of the clock. The ‘gentlemen’ would be coming soon. Time to make himself scarce just as soon as he finished scrubbing the corridor outside Madame Peel’s chamber.

“No, Leo, I don’t hold with such things,” young Crispin overheard Madame tell one of her best clients. Leo was a longtime customer and one of the few who were allowed to enter her inner sanctum. “It ain’t natural.”

“But that’s what makes it so very lucrative. My friend runs the cleanest molly house this side of the Thames. Your bootblack boy is a likely lad. I assure you he’d be well treated. A regular pet, that one.”

“He’s too young,” Madame protested.

Crispin heard her bracelet tinkle merrily and pictured her imperious gesture in his head. The girls always said he had more imagination than a body needed. Even though Crispin knew the sparkly gems stuck in Madame’s bracelet were only paste, he thought it a thing of beauty. A bright spot of color in a world of gray.

“The boy’s only five or maybe six.”

“But big for his age,” the man said. “And so very comely.”

There was a long pause and the boy in question leaned closer to the crack in the door to Madame’s private chamber.

“You’re only against it because you figure the mollies cut into your business with some of the upper crust,” the man said with a laugh. “You’d be well compensated for the boy.”

In the silence that followed, Crispin didn’t dare breathe. Something inside him shivered once and then went perfectly still, a wild young thing hiding from the predator sniffing nearby.

“No,” she finally said.

He released the breath he’d been holding.