Again, he cleared his throat, if only to mask the groan that wanted out. “All of which is a long way of saying that I have nothing but time for you, Lady Olivia. Into the evening, if need be.”
Her right foot tap-tap-tapped white marble, effectively conveying simmering vexation. Perhaps he’d gone too far. Except what he’d said didn’t feel untrue. Truth be told, he enjoyed spending time with the woman. But that particular truth had no place in this room. It was a different truth he should be pursuing.
Pointedly, he glanced around the room and set about using his time with Lady Olivia toward that end. “You must see immense potential in these blank walls. Like blank canvases to an artist’s eye.”
“Are you an artist, Lord St. Alban?” Her head canted to the side in assessment. “The subject often comes up in our conversations.”
“You mistake my meaning. ’Tis you who is the artist.” Now that he had her attention, here was his opportunity. “For example, the sketches of the Japanese scene that you”—He just stopped himself from saying dropped. Their recent conversation in the Duke’s study assured him no good would come of using that word—“rendered were quite well done.”
“A few drawings rendered do not an artist make,” she said, irritation unmistakable in her tone. “I do not care to be patronized.”
Jake swallowed another groan of frustration. There had to be some combination to her locks. He pressed on with yet a different configuration. “I was always interested in art,” he said, sounding no better than a floundering suitor. “But I never took the time to learn much about it.”
“Hmm,” was all the response she gave.
She didn’t want him here. That was clear. Whatever joy she’d been experiencing as she spun into the room had been effectively quashed by the sight of him. But she wouldn’t be rid of him just yet. Not until he’d maneuvered some usable information from her.
“Much of the Eastern art for sale in the London market comes and goes on long-haul ships like the ones my mother’s family operates.”
“Undoubtedly,” Lady Olivia replied, her tone transitioning from annoyance to disinterest. He wasn’t sure which was worse.
“Some paintings are gotten by honest merchants. Others have provenances less transparent, shadowy at best.”
He waited for a glimmer of recognition, even the scantest hint that she knew of one such painting. A set of paintings, in fact. But no such admission emerged. “To be sure,” was all she replied, her face now tilted up toward the skylight.
“In fact,” he continued, “I’ve only seen that sort of art in Japan, in a Japanese residence to be exact.”
Her gaze swung to meet his, curiosity kindling a light in her eyes. “Were you invited into Japanese homes often?”
“Once. Europeans aren’t allowed on the mainland of Japan, only on the trading island of Dejima in the Bay of Nagasaki.”
“Yet you were allowed?”
“By special dispensation. My uncles had been a year negotiating a trade deal with a powerful Nagasaki family, and they brought me along to observe the final signing.” He shifted on his feet, readying himself for the meat of the conversation. “In the room, there was a set of paintings—”
“What was it like?”
At last, he was getting somewhere. “The paintings? There was more than one of—”
“The residence.”
A disgruntled snort wanted release. He suppressed it. Patience. “Spare, sumptuous. Rich woods of cream, red, and brown. Somehow it was more than the sum of its parts.”
She nodded, slowly, as if confirming something to herself. “You mentioned a set of paintings?”
“Yes, the subject was very like your sketches.”
“Is it such an unusual subject?”
“Not at all. But what’s unusual about these paintings is that they were stolen a year later.”
Her shoulder gave a little shrug. “Art isn’t like English land. It can be bought, sold, traded, and transported,” she said, tossing the words he’d spoken in the Duke’s study back at him. “It can be stolen, too.”
“But you’re a lover of art. Doesn’t it bother you that someone would take it from its rightful owner?”
“Who truly owns art? Or has the right to?” she asked, her passion for the subject evident in her voice, her eyes, her entire demeanor. “What matters is that it’s appreciated and loved. Besides, it’s rare for art to stay in one set of hands for any length of time. Consider how many paintings from the Continent landed in England after the wars with Napoleon. It wasn’t that long ago.”
“Who knows where the Japanese paintings ended up. Is that what you’re saying?”
“Indeed,” she replied, unbothered, indifferent.
The point was this: she was exactly who knew. But did she know?
His gut told him no, but he couldn’t pursue the matter further right now or she might sense that he was fishing for information. He slouched back against the front door and waited for her to make the next move, but she seemed incredibly interested in the gray veins twisting through the white marble floor at her feet.
The tip of her tongue began absently worrying her crooked tooth, and he caught himself gazing at her mouth, captivated. He had to get her talking if only so her distracting tongue would be otherwise engaged and he could stop leering at her like a perverse wretch. “In your opinion, what would be the best type of art for a room like this one?”
“In a perfect world?”
He nodded. She was giving him something, even if it was a crumb. He could live on crumbs from her table.
For now.
Eventually, he would have the whole cake.
“A work by a Flemish artist called Vanmour. His paintings of the Ottoman court caused a bit of a commotion a century ago.” Her lips curled into a secret smile. “Particularly his painting of the dervishes. And in a perfect world that painting would be right”—She looked up at the skylight and advanced to a specific point along the wall before tapping it with her forefinger—“here in the crook of the staircase.”
Encouraged by her sudden openness, he continued along this improvised path. “Your eye would see possibility in every wall of this house.”
“Not every wall needs to be filled. There is beauty in negative space, too, my lord,” she called out as she left the room, the click-clack of her boot heels echoing through the empty house. He liked the way my lord sounded on her lips. It almost felt like an intimacy.
He followed her into what would be the front drawing room as she made her way toward its bow window. A sudden craving unfurled within him to see her spread her arms wide and take a spin, again offering a flash of slender ankles and a flash of her true self. There was apparently no end to his reactions, desires, and cravings around this woman.
A part of him—a part he would rather deny—longed to know more of her beneath the façade, more of her beyond the information she could provide him.
But it couldn’t be. He had a use for her. Just as she did for him, he reminded himself. In his experience, women didn’t take well to being used, and he couldn’t risk telling her the secret of Mina’s birth. He didn’t know enough about her relationship to the thief and the paintings. Mina deserved better than exposure to unknown risk.
“And this room, my lady?” he asked. “What pieces would you use to fill its walls?”
She glanced at him over her shoulder, a subtle smile playing about her lips. “I’d paint the walls crimson and hang Las Meninas by Velázquez. I’ve never seen it in person, but I’ve heard it’s quite magnificent.”
Graceful as a swallow in the sky, she turned in an efficient, swift swivel to face him, cheeks flushed and eyes brimming with excitement. Lady Olivia had thoroughly warmed to her subject, embodying the air of youth, bright and fresh. He couldn’t look away.
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“It does seem strange, doesn’t it?”
“What’s that?” he asked, his voice a frayed rasp in his chest.
“That a proper Mayfair townhouse could contain something so magnificent as the work of a Spanish master. Have you ever attended a dinner at Wellington’s address, Apsley House?”
He shook his head.
“Suffice it to say that we English are insatiable when it comes to having the best at the world’s expense.”
“The Dutch might rival the English when it comes to insatiability.”
Surprised blue eyes widened, and her ivory throat emitted a small, self-conscious laugh. A nervous tic of a laugh. An intoxicating laugh. He felt like sharing in it. Like forming a conspiracy with her.
“Shall we see what more this house has to offer?” she asked.
A buoyancy to her step, she flitted past him into the next room, leaving behind only her scent of lavender and sandalwood. The scent was much like her: simple and expected on the surface, but complicated with the earthy and unexpected just below. He inhaled, helpless to the urge, no choice but to follow.
“In here,” she said, her voice echoing out as she performed a slow three hundred and sixty degree turn, “I would rein in the drama. A soothing robin’s egg blue for these walls.” Her eyes drifted shut as if her entire being was concentrated on absorbing the essence of the room. “I would bring Sir Joshua Reynolds back to life to paint a four-year-old Lucy in the style of his The Age of Innocence and place the piece adjacent to the fireplace.”
Eyes shimmering with passion and vibrancy found Jake’s. And the light within no longer faded at the unwelcome sight of him.
“Perhaps even a portrait of Lucy’s first dog, Poochie the First. We now have Poochie the Second.” A smile, diffident and helpless, pulled at her lips, and she lifted one shoulder in a Gallic shrug.
Jake followed, like a pup at her heels, as she led them back to the foyer, occasionally poking her head into an empty room. Lady Olivia had never been the same woman twice around him. She’d always been a combatant in one form or another, but somehow in this empty house she’d become more companion than combatant. In this state, she was an intriguing wonder to behold.
“This foyer . . . have you ever seen anything like it?” She didn’t pause for an answer. “Observe the way the staircase winds around the room like a loose coil all the way up to the skylight.” The same beatific smile he’d witnessed yesterday in her interaction with the washerwoman illuminated her face now.
The full glory of her beaming gaze landed on him, and he basked in its warm glow.
“Shall we investigate the bedrooms upstairs?”
Chapter 9
Shall we investigate the bedrooms upstairs?
The air whooshed out of the room the instant the words crossed her lips, transforming the unexpected camaraderie of a minute ago into an uncomfortable sort of intimacy. She might burst into flame. It was possible.
Everything was wrong with that sentence.
We. There was no we. We implied togetherness. And he and she most definitely were not together.
He was Lord St. Alban. She was Lady Olivia Montfort. That was all.
Then there was the separate, but entirely too related, issue of the bedroom investigation upstairs. How unaffected by it he appeared as his hand ran along the fine wood grain of the banister. Women must invite him to investigate their bedrooms on an hourly basis.
His gaze held hers, steady and stoic. Or was that an amused glint in his eye? “After you, my lady.”
Her voice caught in her throat, and she nodded her assent. Shoulders squared, she turned away from him and toward the coiled staircase. It was a lovely staircase, calling to mind a nautilus fossil she once held as a girl. This might be her staircase . . . her house.
So why had she said those words in it? They were words spoken from the lips of a wife to her husband. From a mistress to her lover.
She set a boot on the bottom step and began to climb, the heat of his gaze setting her back ablaze. She tried to imagine all the places his eyes could rest, but her mind kept returning to one: her derriere. Displayed at eye level. The cool, open space of the foyer turned close and hot, stifling.
To make matters worse, it seemed she couldn’t keep the sway out of her hips, try as she might. She was a woman. She had hips. And, apparently, they would sway. What further indignity must she suffer before this day was done?
At last, she reached the second level, and her oblivious feet led her to the first door on the right. Her mistake instantly foregrounded itself. This was the master’s bedroom suite with its high corniced ceilings, rich mahogany paneling, and floor-to-ceiling bow window overlooking a peaceful back garden. The echo of his footsteps increased in volume as he followed her into the room.
Her body tensed, anticipating the inevitable question. The same question that had delighted her no more than a few minutes ago. He’d asked it in every other room. It only followed that he would ask it here. Such was the current state of her luck.
“Lady Olivia”—Here it came—“what masterpiece would you hang in this room?”
The last word sounded as if it had been bitten off. As if the realization of which room they occupied dawned on him in the process of speaking. Her gaze flew to meet his, and she saw confirmation in his eyes. It was possible her assumption that this sort of scenario was nothing new to him was premature.
She rather relished the idea of a discomfited Lord St. Alban. She might be able to preserve, or, more accurately, regain her state of balance if she further upset his. She hadn’t spent the last six months scandalizing the ton for naught. Perhaps it was time she profited from her outré reputation.
“What would I hang in my bedroom?” She racked her brain for a shocking sequence of words. “A rather . . . salacious . . . option would be”—Ah, she had just the thing—“one of Goya’s Majas.”
She braced herself for his reaction. Would he blush? Shuffle his feet?
His features remained unmoving. Not even the palest spark of recognition.
“Are you not familiar with the Majas?”
Lord St. Alban’s hands—his gorgeous, capable hands—splayed wide in a gesture of surrender, and he held his tongue.
“There are two,” she began, trying to keep the exasperation out of her voice. “First came The Nude Maja at the turn of the century. It depicts a woman reclining unclothed on a chaise longue. Some have called it obscene as Maja’s mons pubis is entirely exposed to her audience.”
Again, she paused for a reaction. Again, in vain. He simply stared through the bow window toward the back garden.
Olivia crossed her arms in front of her chest. “The scandal over The Nude Maja was, in fact, so great that Goya was compelled to produce The Clothed Maja three years later.”
“And which would you have in here?” he asked so softly that his words just reached her.
Her heart had no choice but to accelerate. “The Nude Maja would be the obvious pick, but . . .” she trailed off, hesitant and uncertain. How was it that she was revealing herself? Wasn’t he the one whose equilibrium should feel off? Yet she couldn’t not answer him. “I would have The Clothed Maja.”
In the window’s reflection, his eyebrows lifted in silent query. An inexplicable urge to explain herself propelled her on. “It’s the subtly differing expressions on the Majas’ faces. Even as Goya yielded to public pressure, he did so with a bit of rebellion. The clothed Maja is the saucier of the two Majas, the one more knowledgeable about her seductive prowess than her nude self.”
He met her gaze in the reflection and held it. “As is often the case with a woman confident in her own sensuality,” he spoke on a low vibration.
The air quaked between them. Her heart thundering in her chest, she remained as still as a startled deer
, unable to blink, unable to draw breath. Under no circumstances should she take this house. She’d allowed him to put his stamp on every room.
Ha. She’d not only allowed it, but had assisted it.
“No nudes?” His eyes refused to release her.
She opened her mouth to tell a lie, but it refused to form beneath the acuity of his focus. As if pulled by a strong magnet, her feet carried her forward, inch by inch, until she was close enough to touch her fingers to his back, broad and strong, and trace tense muscles corded beneath his impeccably tailored overcoat.
“Here,” she said, pointing an instructive finger over his shoulder, “two or three small nude sketches. Titians. Or Botticellis. Stacked one on top of the other.”
“There?” He touched a forefinger to the right of the windowpane. “On that intimate sliver of wall?”
An involuntary shiver pulsed from the juncture of her legs. Throat dry, she rasped a husky, “Yes,” her eyes fixed on his flawless profile.
She could stare at him all day, except she suspected looking wouldn’t be enough. Part of her begged to touch him, to stroke her fingers across his bare skin and know his every texture. Looking would never be enough.
He pivoted to face her, and she became acutely aware of how close she’d ventured. Only a scant bit of air separated her chest from his. Her head tilted back, and his gaze reclaimed hers. She detected latent ferocity within those depths. The sort that wouldn’t let her go if he ever got her between his teeth.
She wasn’t sure she would want him to.
Free will abandoned her, and she became a being motivated by pure instinct. Words like fierce and desire swirled around her head. No part of their bodies touched, yet every fiber of her being vibrated with the possibility of where those words could lead them.
To be sure, there was no bed in this room, or in this empty house, but that hardly seemed relevant. Trivialities, like beds, didn’t matter with this man, whose gaze alone incited such a wave of lust within her that all she could do was squeeze her thighs together. What further havoc could he wreak upon her?
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