Stroke of Genius (7 page)

From whence does genius come? Is it a fluke of nature or a gift from the gods? Pygmalion would have said it was merely a matter of survival.

Twenty-two years earlier

Peel’s Abbey, a Cheapside house of pleasure

The garret was an icebox in winter and a furnace in summer, but it was his. The air was ripe with mustiness and the ratter was long overdue, but when Crispin retreated to the garret, it was as if he escaped into a castle of his own and drew up the drawbridge. He made a pallet for himself among the old trunks and dressmakers’ dummies and stashed his few treasures in one of Madame’s cigar boxes.

He opened the box now to assure himself it was all still there. The broken Horn book he’d taught himself to read with. A scrap of chalk, a few sheaves of precious paper, the finished black king and queen from the chess set he was carving from a length of discarded teak he’d found down on the wharves. He’d talked the butcher on the next block over into saving him bone scraps. That should do for the white pieces when he got to them.

Everything he made had a purpose, but there was no reason it couldn’t also be beautiful. In the squalor of Cheapside, beauty was his refuge, his sanctuary. And since he could find so little of it, he was forced to create it every chance he could.

His black king had a fierce scowl on his royal face, terrible to behold. He thought the black queen looked a little sad, and a little like the woman he barely remembered. The one he’d called mother.

There was one more thing in his cigar box. He rarely took it out, but he did so now, carefully unfolding the bit of fine linen. It was all he had left of his mother, and it didn’t even really belong to her.

It belonged to that nameless
him.

Crispin spread the handkerchief across his thigh and traced the faded monogram. The gold threads were starting the fray, but he could still clearly make out the CRS. The
R
was much larger than the other two, so he knew it stood for the family name of the man to whom it had once belonged.

But since Crispin didn’t know what that name was, he’d gotten into the habit of reading the letters in order and thinking of the unknown “gentleman” as “Cris.”

So close to his own name. Crispin. Cris. Close as two sides of the same penny.

But there was no question which side of the coin had landed facedown in the dirt.

Pygmalion spent most of his time by himself, but it never occurred to him to be lonely. Unless he was in the company of others.

“What the devil is this?” Horace Makepeace demanded, forking up a paper-thin slice of meat and eyeing it with suspicion.

“Ham,” Lord Jasper Washburn informed him loftily. It was bad enough he’d been seated by the husband of his American cousin. Did the man have to display new depths of uncouth manners at every turn?

“How can you tell?” Makepeace pinched off a bite and wolfed it down. “Can’t hardly taste it. Why, it’s so thin, I could read a newspaper through this thing!”

“Horace, dear, that’s the point,” Cousin Minerva said, beside him. “Imagine the skill it takes to carve ham that thin. Vauxhall is positively famous for it.”

She and her husband debated the respective merits of beefsteak versus a crock of beans for “filling a body up” while Jasper glared down the table at the spot that should have been his, right between his sister and Cousin Minerva’s surprisingly comely daughter. He wasn’t
that
late in arriving for this interminable supper. They ought to have saved him the choicest place in deference to his title at the least.

Instead, the plum seat was occupied by a big, hulking commoner, a Mr. Hawke.

Jasper shouldn’t have been surprised.
Like calls to like.

“So, since we’re new to each other,” Mr. Makepeace
said between bites. “A little about me. I started working in cotton as a lad, learned a bit about the fabric game. Then I got to tinkering with a mechanical spinner one day, and damn me, if the output didn’t increase out of all knowing with the changes I made in the thingamajig. Now I own three factories all cranking out cotton thread by the bale. We’ll branch into weaving the fabric next spring. Now, tell me, Washburn, what do you do?”

Jasper dabbed at the corners of his mouth with his napkin. It wasn’t worth the effort to show he was affronted by the American calling him by Washburn, a name reserved only for his intimates. The man ought to call him “my lord” or Lord Washburn at the least. But haughty disdain was lost on this fellow.

“Actually, my good sir, breeding is everything,” Jasper said. “In this country, a man is defined not by what he does, but by who he is. Suffice it to say, I am an English lord.”

That should awe the bumpkin.

“All right,” Makepeace said affably, “what does an English lord do?”

How the man missed the point!

“I have a large country estate and various business interests.” Neither of which were terrible healthy at the moment, but that was none of this American’s affair.

“That must take some managing, I’d expect,” Makepeace said as he crammed another bite in his mouth.

For someone who complained about the Vauxhall ham, Horace Makepeace was consuming quite a lot of it.

“Actually, I have a staff and an agent who handles the day-to-day running of the estate and a man of business to see to my financial affairs.”

What little there is of them.

But that would soon change. All he need do was marry well. Jasper took a sip of the excellent vintage. At
least the American knew how to choose a good French wine. He glanced down the table at the young Miss Makepeace. If her father was truly the captain of the cotton industry he claimed to be, the chit would come to the altar with a sizable dowry.

“Trade is considered tawdry here,” Jasper went on to explain. “A gentleman does not work with his hands.”

The corners of Makepeace’s mouth turned down as he digested this information. Then he turned to the far end of the table. “What about you, Hawke? What do you do?”

“I work with my hands.” The commoner shot a cocky grin across the table and raised his goblet to Makepeace in a mock salute.

Insufferable puppy.

“Horace, dear,” Cousin Minerva said, patting her husband’s forearm, “I told you about Mr. Hawke, remember? He’s the famous sculptor.”

Oh,
that
Mr. Hawke. This one would bear watching.

“It appears I’m a tawdry tradesman and you work with your hands, Hawke.” Horace Makepeace’s belly jiggled with a laugh. “I guess that makes us no gentlemen.”

“Guilty as charged,” Hawke agreed.

“Mr. Hawke is doing a sculpture of our Grace,” Cousin Minerva said happily.

Jasper blinked in surprise. The artist was notoriously exclusive and charged the earth for his work. He’d heard the bust done for Lord Finchley cost over 10,000 pounds and the damned thing looked just like him, hooked nose and all. Hiring Hawke was a pastime best indulged in by the truly well-heeled.

If Horace Makepeace had engaged Crispin Hawke without even knowing it, he must really have the chinks.

Jasper gave Cousin Grace a fresh perusal. The familial relationship was sufficiently distant not to be an
impediment. And the breadth of the Atlantic would insure the family remained sufficiently distant as well once the nuptials were over.

Grace was easy enough on the eyes, but if her seated height were anything to go by, she was a veritable giantess. She towered over his petite sister.

Jasper was not an especially tall man. Dainty little morsels like that courtesan he’d chatted with earlier held more appeal for him.

Pity he couldn’t afford her. But he might be able to once he married. Provided he married well.

“I say, Makepeace.” Jasper leaned toward Cousin Horace with a friendly smile. “How would you like to bring the family out to visit my country estate?”

It would also insure his cousin Grace was safely out of London before any other light-in-the-pockets lordlings learned a goldmine-with-feet was in their midst.

“Oh, what a lovely idea, Jasper,” his sister Mary chimed in. “We haven’t had a house party in…oh, just ages!”

Jasper sent a warning glance to his sister. After all, supporting her, and her wretched little secret, was part of what stretched his wallet so thin. He didn’t intend a party. Just an intimate “family only” visit. A house party might expose Mary, and by extension
him,
to gossip.

“I hate to stand in the way of a party,” Mr. Hawke said, “but I do need to keep Miss Makepeace here in London in order to finish my work.”

“Well, then perhaps you could join us, Mr. Hawke,” Mary said. “We could clear out the conservatory for you. Wouldn’t it be fascinating to watch a sculptor work, Brother?”

“Fascinating,” Jasper repeated dryly. Mary finally had the good grace to remember herself and lower her gaze. Perhaps he could use the visitors as an excuse to
send her brat away. For a fortnight, for starters. Then he’d find a way to make it permanent. No need to keep the little bastard about the place forever. Jasper calculated the added social value of having Crispin Hawke in residence at Burnside Manor and decided to add his indulgent support to the idea.

“That sounds like an excellent plan,” Hawke said. “I accept. But first, I think Miss Makepeace should meet some people here in London. Not much point in making the trip all the way from Boston if you don’t have your come-out at Almack’s.”

Cousin Grace’s face pinked noticeably.

“We haven’t applied for a voucher yet,” Minerva said with a nervous giggle.

“No? Then let me settle that little matter for you,” Hawke said magnanimously. “I’m not without a bit of influence with the patronesses. Why don’t you plan on making your debut in a fortnight? That should give you plenty of time to put your dressmaker through her paces. And then after that, if you still want to run off to the country, you can. It’s not as if the English countryside is going anywhere.”

“Sounds sensible,” Horace Makepeace said. “Much obliged.”

Jasper stewed in silence and drummed his fingers on the tabletop. Who was going to help
him
secure a voucher? And he’d have to have one if he was going to pursue marriage with his well-dowered distant cousin.

“And in the meantime, Grace can continue to sit for her sculpture each day,” Hawke said.

“Not if I’m busy with the modiste and milliner,” she said tartly.

“Perhaps I may be of some assistance there as well,” Hawke said, leaning back in his chair. “Fashion is
important at Almack’s, but not all fashion favors the wearer. I might be persuaded to lend my artist’s eye to the choice of fabrics and styles most suited to enhance Miss Makepeace’s natural gifts.”

If there were a fabric or style that would lop off about five inches from her height, Jasper was wholeheartedly in favor of it. But he didn’t like the way the artist eyed his cousin.

“Really, Mr. Hawke,” Grace said, “we couldn’t impose on—”

“Oh, yes, we could,” Minerva interrupted. “Shall we collect tomorrow morning, Mr. Hawke, or would you like to meet us someplace? Oh, and Cousin Mary, you must come too, of course.”

Mary smiled shyly.

She’d better not assume she’s getting any new gowns out of the trip, Jasper thought irritably.

Hawke cast a darting glance at Grace. “I believe Miss Makepeace mentioned that she has another appoint—Ow!”

The artist jumped in his seat. Jasper wondered if his American cousin had just kicked the most famous artist in England under the table.

Well done, Cousin Grace.
If the bugger was going to cost Jasper the needless expense of a fortnight or more in town, the least he might suffer was a bruised shin.

“Are you all right, Mr. Hawke?” Mary asked.

“Fine, my lady. I don’t wish to be indelicate, but occasionally I’m plagued by a pain…” Hawke shot a pointed glare at Grace, “in the arse.”

“Oh,” Mary said with a sympathetic pat on his forearm. “Great Uncle Henry had sciatica, too, and he used to twitch just like that from time to time. He suffered for years with it, poor thing.”

“Fortunately, dear lady, my condition is likely to be a temporary one. I predict my pain will be gone in little more than a fortnight—Ow!” Mr. Hawke rose to his feet. “It seems I’ve overstayed my welcome, but I will come around to collect Miss Washburn and Mrs. Makepeace at nine of the clock tomorrow morning for our outing. Oh! And Miss Makepeace, too, of course. Good evening, Miss Washburn.” He bowed over Mary’s offered hand, then turned back to Jasper. “Lord Washboard—”

“That’s Wash
burn,
“ Jasper corrected.
Insolent dog.

“Ah, so it is. My mistake. A pleasant evening to you, sir, by any name, and to you, Mr. Makepeace.”

“Call me Horace, lad.”

“Horace,” Mr. Hawke repeated with a shallow inclination of his head and a genuine-looking smile. “But only if you do me the honor of calling me Crispin. Till tomorrow, ladies.” He doffed his hat in Grace’s direction. “You, too, Grace.”

Then Mr. Hawke turned and strolled away, leaning lightly on his walking stick. Makepeace grinned after the man as if he hadn’t just delivered a swipe at them all, his own daughter in particular.

“Insufferable! Artists are like that, I suppose,” Jasper said with exasperation. “They say that German composer Beethoven is just as forward. Won’t use the servants’ entrance. Refuses to bow to his betters. Honestly, if Crispin Hawke didn’t have so much infernal talent, he’d be crawling back to the gutter whence I suspect he came.”

“Hmm.” Horace took another bite of ham and swallowed it without chewing. “Not a drop of aristocratic blood, you think?”

“If he has, it’s from the wrong side of the blanket, if
you take my meaning.” Jasper laid a finger alongside his nose with a sly wink.

“A self-made man and a bastard to boot,” Makepeace mumbled into his wineglass. “I like him better by the minute.”

If anyone had asked Pygmalion how the stone felt when he chipped and shaped it, he’d have answered that it felt hard, missing the point entirely. And, of course, no one ever asked the stone.

“Don’t move, Grace.”

Move?
She didn’t think she could even breathe. The way his gaze swept over her, hot and knowing, it was almost as if his hands brushed her skin.

And wherever he looked, she was showing a good deal of skin.

She was back in that diaphanous palla again, but she wasn’t in Crispin Hawke’s studio. They were in a shady glade somewhere.

On her cousin’s country estate, no doubt. She had no idea how they’d come there, but she’d remember in a moment, if only Crispin would quit looking at her as if she were a fresh cherry tart and he hadn’t eaten in a week.

“
I really appreciate you stepping in like this.” His bare feet swished through the long grass. He tossed his walking stick aside. He no longer seemed to need it. “The original model for my
Diana
was an opera dancer, but she ran off with the second violinist and left me in quite desperate straits.”

His fingertips traced along her shoulder and Grace was suddenly in quite desperate straits as well. Little sparks of pleasure followed his touch. Her whole body tingled.

‘As I’m sure you’re aware,” he said as he hooked a finger under the thin shoulder strap of her gown, “the goddess of the
hunt always bares her bow arm. Ah, don’t move, remember. Allow me.”

He pulled the strap off her shoulder and let it hang uselessly at her elbow. Then he lifted her arm through the strap and the front of the palla drifted down on one side. Only her tight nipple kept the silk from dropping away completely. A deep breath would be her undoing. Her lips moved, but no sound came out.

“Now I want to make sure this drapes correctly,” he said. “She might be the virgin goddess, but we can’t have our
Diana
looking too buttoned up.”

He started at her other shoulder and trailed his hand along the neckline of the palla. The silk fell away to her waist on one side and her breast was bared. Her skin rippled with gooseflesh, but she wasn’t the least cold.

Grace drew that deep breath she’d been needing. “Crispin, I don’t think
—”

“Excellent. The last thing we need you to do right now is think. I only want you to feel.”

He brushed his knuckles over the top of her breast.

Her body sang.

He traced the crease beneath her breast and hefted the weight of it in his palm. She gnawed the inside of her cheek to keep from crying out with joy. When he circled her nipple with the pad of his thumb, a silent summons streaked from that aching peak to her womb. A warmth, a heaviness, a low drumbeat, throbbing in time with her heart, began between her legs.

Then suddenly Dionysus and his train of nymphs and satyrs burst into their glade. Crispin gave the invading god a deep, courtly bow and didn’t seem at all surprised to see the newcomers. Then the drunken godling signaled to his piper and called Grace to join in their wild dance on the long green grass.

Grace didn’t ask if she could move. She knew suddenly that Crispin wouldn’t mind in the slightest.

And even if he did, she didn’t care.

She threw off the palla and joined in the winding chain, skipping and laughing at first. She was gloriously naked and didn’t give two figs, or two fig leaves for that matter, what anyone thought about it.

Then the pan flute changed from a merry jig to a slow, sinuous tune. Grace’s body moved to match it. Sunlight kissed her naked shoulders, her bare breasts. Her long legs moved with suppleness and ease she never dreamed she possessed.

She lifted her arms in surrender as the tempo quickened and the music grew more urgent and earthy. Her hips thrust with each beat, her back arched. She cupped her breasts with both hands and thrummed her own nipples.

Then the music stopped abruptly and she was flat on her back on the sweet grass. Her vision was watery. Everything wavered before her eyes like lilies in a tidal river.

Crispin was standing over her, wearing nothing but his leather apron. Dionysus and the entire grape-leaf gang disappeared, fading away like a puff of her father’s pipe smoke.

But the dull ache between her legs remained. The grass tickled her bottom and set every fiber of her body on full alert. She groaned in frustration. The dance might be over, but she wasn’t
done.

Grace lifted her arms to Crispin in invitation. He lay down beside her and kissed her till she feared she’d die of wanting.

Then he kissed her till she stopped caring if she did.

“You know what this means, don’t you?” he asked.

She shook her head mutely

“It means you won’t be able to pose as my virgin goddess anymore.”

Was that all he cared for? Some infernal statue? She turned her face away from him. Sunlight crept over the top of the myrtle tree and…

Stabbed her right in the eye.

Grace woke with a jerk to see Claudette tossing back the heavy damask draperies and flooding her chamber with light.

“Wake up, mam’selle,” Claudette singsonged. “Your lady mother, she will not want to be waiting for you.”

Grace shifted under her sheets and realized with a start that she’d rucked up her chemise in her sleep. Her hands were resting on her bare breasts. The ache between her legs in the dream was real. Her ankles were crossed, her thighs ground tightly together. She quickly pulled her nightshift down and shot an accusing glare at the copy of Reverend Waterbury’s
Mysteries of Mythology
on her bedside table.

“That’s the last time I read you before I go to sleep,” she murmured.
Nymphs and satyrs and dancing naked on the lawn, indeed.

Of course, Reverend Waterbury could not be blamed for the exceedingly naughty parts of her dream that featured Crispin Hawke. He was the one who put the idea about swiving on the floor in her head. A Hakkari carpet was rather like long green grass, wasn’t it?

And the hazy image of him in naught but a leather apron, that came right from the devil himself. The devil who lived in Cheapside.

If only he hadn’t forced a kiss on her in his studio. If only he hadn’t teased her beyond bearing at Vauxhall.

If only he’d kissed her again when she wanted him to.

Grace threw back the sheet and climbed out of bed. “You’ll be joining us today, won’t you, Claudette?”

“
Bien sur,
mam’selle.” She gave a contented sigh. “I will see Monsieur Wyckham again. How lovely to meet an Englishman who knows why God gave him a tongue.”

That sounded more than a little naughty. Grace made a note to ask her more about what Englishmen were supposed to do with their tongues. But the tongue in
question was attached to Wyckham, Crispin Hawke’s manservant, who was probably as unreliable a fellow as his master.

“Claudette, haven’t you noticed that Mr. Allen our footman seems very taken with you?” Grace asked as Claudette helped her into her morning gown. “He appears to be a decent enough fellow.”

“Oh,
oui!
” Claudette plumped the pillows, beating them into submission before drawing up the brocade counterpane on Grace’s bed. “I shall marry your Monsieur Allen someday.”

Grace blinked in surprise.

“Then what are you doing with Mr. Wyckham?”
And his talented tongue?

“Why does the bee seek the flower?” She shrugged in a gesture that was purely French. “But it is clear you know little of men if you must ask such a question.”

“Enlighten me, please.”

Claudette plopped on the foot of Grace’s bed and hooked an ankle under her. “Monsieur Allen, he hears I am the French maid, oo-la-la! He looks at me and I see like that—” She snapped her fingers. “He thinks to make the light love with me in every cranny and nook.”

Grace had never noticed Allen giving her maid anything but a respectful, almost adoring, gaze. She really needed to become more observant.

“But if I do not so much as look at him.” Claudette turned her face away and held up both hands in a forbidding gesture. “Then Monsieur Allen, he pants after my skirts
comme un chien
—how you say?—like a dog. Come, mam’selle. We do your hair.”

Grace settled into her dressing-table chair and let Claudette undo her long braid.

“But what about Mr. Wyckham?” Grace hadn’t missed the speaking glance that passed between her maid and
Crispin’s servant. That smoldering gaze was impossible to overlook. “Doesn’t he want to make light love in every cranny and nook, too?”

“
Bien sur,
and so he does!” Claudette fanned herself with one hand.
“Son derrière! C’est formidable!
”

Grace blushed. She’d noticed well-formed male backsides were fine to look upon, but had never heard anyone else admit to it except Claudette. “But I don’t understand. If you intend on marrying Mr. Allen, why don’t you make love with him?”

“
Pourquoi?
“ Claudette shot her a look in the vanity mirror that said she thought Grace hopelessly dense. “Because I intend to marry him, I hold myself from him,
non?
His wanting for me, it is bigger all the more,
n’est-ce pas?”

Grace conceded her point, though the logic was tortured. “And in the meantime, you amuse yourself with Mr. Wyckham.”

“Just so. And
tres amusant
he is!”

“But you don’t love him.”

“Love, bah! This I give for love.” Claudette put two fingers to her lips and made a spitting sound. “Love is something old rich people give to their cats. And even then, the cat, she does not give it back.”

“But you aren’t averse to lovemaking.”

“Not in the slightest pinch.” Claudette shook her head as if Grace were an incredibly slow child who would never understand. “Lovemaking is a gift. I give it to myself. With a little help from Monsieur Wyckham,
bien sur.
”

“So what if someday you find yourself married to Mr. Allen. Will you love him then?”

“Mam’selle, a husband is not to love. A husband is to bring home the money and chop the wood to keep the house warm.”

Grace considered her own parents’ marriage. Her father certainly brought home the money and he hired people to chop wood. And anything else that her mother might require. They wrangled with each other on almost everything. She made quiet noises of disapproval when he pulled the whiskey flash from his vest pocket more often than she liked. He fumed at her schemes to recapture the grandeur of her family’s aristocratic past. Even so, they rubbed along tolerably well.

But did her parents love each other? Grace had no clue.

“So once you’re married,” Grace said, fascinated with Claudette’s unorthodox views, “will you still take lovers?”

Claudette cocked her head as if considering. “It depends.”

“On what?”

“On whether Monsieur Allen knows what to do with his tongue.”