by Gaelen Foley
“He is a-very sorry. He forgot that he has to teach the pianoforte lesson to the young daughters of de Lord and Lady Edgecombe.”
“I think he’s hiding from me,” Jason murmured in a mild tone.
Caradonna politely pretended not to hear. “But it would be my honor to give your guests the tour, sir! Ladies, if I may, h-here is the parlor,” he said with obvious eagerness to please as he gestured to the doorway behind them. “If you like to see, I have a-dozens of my paintings in various stages of drying all over the walls in here. Come, come!”
As they joined him in the cozy front sitting room, they were soon ooh-ing and ahh-ing over the dizzying array of his artwork on the walls.
“A few of these, of course, are Sanfratello’s. He is mainly a sculptor but also paints from time to time. But not as good as me,” the young Italian added with a jolly little half-smile.
Felicity glanced at him and would have wagered that his sparkly black eyes won him a lot of female hearts. Caradonna answered their casual questions about what inspired him, how long such impressive paintings took to make, where he had studied, and so forth. In due time, they stepped back out into the entrance hall as their tour continued.
“Across from us is a-the business office,” Caradonna explained, “and back here are the rooms Giovanelli uses as his musical conservatory.”
They followed Caradonna as he strode farther into the house, waving them cheerfully into the room behind the parlor. “This is, in truth, de dining room. We still eat here some nights, but Giovanelli has claimed it.”
He glanced around at the ceiling. “He says it has the best acoustics. Ah, the sideboard used to stand over there, but as you see, now it is reserved for de maestro’s pianoforte.”
“The room is very spacious,” Mrs. Brown remarked. “But it is a pity Mr. Giovanelli could not be here himself. I daresay it’s rather disrespectful of him.”
“Is this the piece he’s been working on?” Felicity inquired, glancing over the hand-scrawled pages of a musical score that had been laid out across the large dining table.
A metronome sat in the center, acting as a paperweight.
“Ah, I am not certain, Signorina Carvel.” Caradonna gestured toward the doorway. “Giovanelli has also taken the library across from the way. You like to see?”
They went.
Though the library walls were lined with bookshelves, the furniture had been shoved back to make room for a quartet of plain wooden chairs and music stands, clearly a place for an ensemble to practice. Stringed instruments perched upright on stands. Woodwinds rested on the desk. Jason strummed his fingers lightly over the strings of a large harp in the corner as he drifted past it, but without the resident composer on hand to comment, they grew restless and soon headed upstairs.
“The servants’ quarters are on the top floor. These are our bedchambers, but here, in the front of the house, this is my domain.” Caradonna flashed a grin over his shoulder and then led them to a bright, airy drawing room. “Because of de balcony, this room gets de best light—and de best ventilation. The turpentine odor sometimes bothers the others. Me, I don’t even smell it anymore.”
He smiled at his patron, then, hand on heart, told them, “I am very happy here and very grateful for all His Grace has allowed me to create, as this is de passion and de purpose of my life.”
Felicity smiled at Caradonna and nearly swooned herself, then she glanced at Jason, who was looking slightly abashed by the Italian’s heartfelt thanks.
“And you think what you do doesn’t matter,” she said softly, only to him.
He looked over and his gaze locked on to hers. It was a lovely thing he had done here, making it possible for these artists to express their genius, creating works of beauty for the rest of humanity to enjoy.
“It does seem like a perfect artist’s studio,” Mrs. Brown remarked as she walked over to the French doors that let out onto the balcony.
Above them were large, arched windows through which the spring sunlight poured. There were easels and paintings everywhere; half-built frames; around the walls hung sketches of everything from faces to still lifes to architecture. Rural landscapes in pastels, city scenes in charcoals. Drying brushes were neatly laid out on rags beside paint-stained palettes.
“My goodness,” Felicity murmured as she walked slowly through the room. “You really are amazingly talented, Mr. Caradonna.”
He folded his hands behind his back, beaming at her praise. “Grazie mille, signorina.”
“Explain this one to me,” Mrs. Brown said, pointing at a blurry rendition of what looked like St. James’s Palace. “That is…what does it mean?”
While Caradonna attempted to explain to her chaperone that it didn’t actually mean anything, that he had just liked the lines and the ominous look of the place that night, Felicity leaned closer to gaze at one of his works in progress.
In it, two plump, apple-cheeked children flopped in a large wing chair side by side. The older boy—about four years old, if she had to guess—had his arm around a wee girl, probably aged two.
Felicity smiled, barely noticing Jason, from the corner of her eye, watching her intensely. She was about to ask if the children’s portrait was a commission or just Caradonna’s own pursuit when the very frank sketch of a nude woman draped across a couch startled the question right out of her head.
Egads, the couch in the drawing was identical to the one right over there by the wall. Which could only mean the drawing had been done right here.
She colored at the realization, casting a furtive glance toward the piece of furniture where the naked model had lounged. It dawned on her that, obviously, some rather risqué things went on around here…supposedly in the name of art.
But then, looking closer, it was not just the couch Felicity recognized. She had seen that woman in the sketch before. She suddenly remembered where.
It was the same face she had seen peering down at her from the top of the staircase in Jason’s house the other morning! Her jaw dropped, but she recovered quickly from her shock and turned with a low huff, instantly blushing. So which one is that? she wondered in disdain. Ginger or Velvet?
“Ahem, shall we, er, continue with our tour?” Jason suggested, perhaps noticing how quiet she had become. “Caradonna, would you lead the way to the coach house?”
The artist obliged, leading them outside to the garden, and explaining on the way that both the inventor’s lab and the sculptor’s studio were situated in the coach house, which had been converted into work spaces for them.
“Sanfratello’s marble blocks are so heavy the floor inside the house itself would not support them,” Jason elaborated. “The coach house floor is made of flagstone, and of course it has no steps to get in, like the house does.”
“Si, this way, de finished sculptures can be moved onto wagons and transported to their new homes more easily,” Caradonna chimed in. “As for Mr. Sloan’s laboratory, His Grace deemed it best to put it out there, as well, i-in case of any explosions.”
Mrs. Brown stopped midway down the garden path. “Did you say explosions?”
“Mr. Sloan likes to play with chemicals,” Jason said. “They can be volatile. As can he.”
“Are you sure it’s quite safe?” the older lady asked, frowning anew.
“Very safe, ma’am.” Approaching on the right side of the coach house, he gave a casual knock on the open door of the inventor’s lab. “Sloan?”
The red-haired, bespectacled inventor was younger than Felicity had expected. As Atticus Sloan greeted them absently, she arched a brow at the small whiskered face—a white ferret—peering at them out of the pocket of the inventor’s tatty coat.
“Er, one minute, please,” the inventor said, waving them through his laboratory and on to the sculptor’s studio with an impatient gesture. “I’ve almost got it. I’m terribly sorry, but I-I really must finish this equation before I…”
He never did finish the sentence, staring off into space.
“Of course,” Jason said in amusement, apparently used to him. “Ladies, this way.”
He beckoned them through the doorway that led into the sculptor’s studio in the other half of the coach house. As they walked through the laboratory, Mr. Sloan seemed oblivious to their presence. Ignoring his patron and guests alike, he whirled around, mumbling to himself and his ferret, and resumed furiously scribbling out a long equation on his large chalkboard on the wall.
Odd fellow. How he could even concentrate with all that banging coming from the other side of the building?
Once Felicity stepped through the doorway into the sculptor’s workshop, however, it was like entering a fairyland. A white stone forest of tall marble statues waited ahead, beckoning to be explored…
Heroic figures captured in the midst of dramatic action.
Rearing horses.
Goddesses on pedestals.
Centurions with spears.
Busts of a wrathful Zeus stared down from the shelves, as though the god were tempted to hurl lightning bolts at any intruders.
A life-sized Hermes with winged hat and shoes posed in midflight, off to deliver some message between the gods.
She walked among the statutes in wonder, looking each one up and down, while Jason trailed a few steps behind her. The banging grew louder as she reached the main work in progress in the center of the studio. She tilted her head back and stared up at it in amazement.
It was a massive composition of two figures, male and female, erupting upward in a frozen moment as they contested with each other, larger than life, in three dimensions.
Perched on the scaffolding beside it, chisel in hand, was a short, swarthy man in his forties with thick, hairy forearms and powerful hands. He wore an apron over his clothes and a tool belt around his hips, and his thinning black hair was coated in white dust.
When he saw them, he jumped down off the elevated platform and came around to greet them, wiping off his hands. Felicity was mystified to think that such sublime alabaster fantasies should issue forth from such an ordinary-looking, earthy, little man.
But she liked him at once. Vitale Sanfratello was warm and gracious—and devoid of pretension—as he welcomed them to his studio as though he were just another hardworking craftsman, not a genius of renown.
As soon as Jason did the introductions, Felicity could not hold back. “Mr. Sanfratello, may I just say this statue is remarkable!” she said, staring agog at the marble duo on which he had been working. “What do you call it?”
He just smiled at her, then glanced at Jason, who answered for him.
“It is called The Seduction of Hades. That’s Hades.” He pointed to the musclebound male, then the lithe female. “That’s Persephone, and they’re going into the entrance hall of Netherford Hall as soon as they are done.”
“Ohh.” Wide-eyed, she looked up at it again. A randy Hades was in the middle of pulling his resisting young bride onto his lap.
But the sculptor had turned the Greek myth on its ear by posing the virginal goddess with just a hint of coyness in the way she looked over her shoulder at her ravisher. Instead, the suggestion was there, in stone, that it was she, the springtime goddess, who was in fact luring the dark and dangerous god of the underworld under her spell, even while Hades thought he was the one capturing her.
“It’s magnificent,” she said.
And a little shocking, apparently.
Mrs. Brown gasped when she saw it, then mumbled an excuse, and fled back into Mr. Sloan’s laboratory, even as the Scot called begrudgingly to them through the open door that he had solved the equation and was ready to give them a demonstration of something to do with voltaic current.
Jason and Felicity lingered behind, exchanging a glance as her chaperone rushed off to the safer territory of mere possible explosions.
Sanfratello took one look at them, and with a knowing glint in his eyes, followed Mrs. Brown into the scientist’s lab, taking Caradonna with him, to give his patron and Felicity a moment alone.
“What do you think?” Jason murmured, leaning closer.
“It’s very…stirring, isn’t it?”
He nodded. “To me, as well. The sketch alone was what made me take on patronage of Sanfratello. From the moment I saw the drawing, I knew this sculpture simply had to be made. I’m not sure why it speaks to me so much,” he mused aloud, staring at the pair. “It’s amazingly lifelike. You can touch it if you like.”
“Are you sure it’s all right?”
“You’re not going to break it. It’s stone, you know. Very hard.” He ran his hand slowly and deliberately up Persephone’s gauze-draped thigh to demonstrate. Then he looked at Felicity with hunger in his eyes. “Go on,” he whispered, “touch it.”
She bit her lip and then took the dare, since nobody else was watching. Reaching up, she laid her hand boldly on the muscled thigh of Hades.
Jason watched her trail a naughty, gliding caress all the way up to the statue’s alabaster groin. She cupped her hand around the contents of his fig leaf.
“You’re right,” she murmured. “Very hard.”
Shock registered in his eyes as he held her gaze for a second in ravenous fascination. Then the wickedest half-smile she had ever seen flashed across his face. “You have no idea.”
She withdrew her hand from Hades’s marble crotch and, feeling brazen, settled it against Jason’s stomach. “Then why don’t you show me?”
As she fingered a single button on his waistcoat, she could feel his chest rising, falling quickly, and she could see in his eyes that, at last, he was considering it.
Considering her in the way she had always wished him to.
Her mouth watered for his kiss, but the surest way to make him run had always been to push, so she somehow found the strength to turn away, and coyly headed for the scientist’s lab. Strolling toward the doorway, she could feel his fiery stare devouring the curves of her body. Before she drifted out of the sculptor’s studio, she sent Jason a beckoning glance over her shoulder. He was standing stock-still, watching her with searing intensity.
A thrill ran through her at his palpable desire.
Then she stepped through the doorway and went to stand obediently behind the scientist to view a demonstration involving lots of wires and batteries made from oversized jars.
It was a long moment before Jason joined them.
But by then, she had made up her mind: she had to have him. The thought pounding in her brain rather scared her, but the day had yielded one conclusion.
You’re mine, Netherford. And you always have been. Fight it all you like. But you’ve sown your wild oats long enough, my love.
The time had come for her to claim him.
But how?
On second thought, stealing a sideways glance, she caught him studying her with a taut expression, as though he were a little in pain, and she smiled to herself. Maybe her quest would not prove too difficult, after all.
Hiding her want of him as best she could, she watched the demonstration politely. The sparks from Mr. Sloan’s big, jar-shaped batteries showered and popped, but they were nothing compared to the currents of fiery attraction running between her and Jason.
Yes, Felicity decided, acutely aware of the tall, strong, needy man beside her. She had his full attention now.
It was only a matter of time.
CHAPTER 7
Rearranging the Furniture
This is all very alluring, Jason mused the next day in a state of distraction, his mind and senses still full of Felicity. But I wonder what she’d say if she knew about the children.
Sporting with demimondaines was one thing; siring illegitimate children on two different such women was quite another.
And yet, when Jason looked into the sweet little faces of his indiscretions, not for the world could he bring himself to regret either one…
Even if the little bastards didn’t like him, he thought wryly.
It had been three weeks since he
had visited the two separate households where his natural children lived—about a mile apart—in Islington. Indeed, the artists’ residence was not the only place for which he was responsible. He wasn’t much of a father, he supposed, in terms of guidance and paternal wisdom, but he did his duty by his little ones, and cared for them more than he dared admit or even knew how to show.
At least he was smart enough not to show up without an offering of some kind—a toy, trinket, or sweet. It was the only way he could get his four-year-old son not to run away and hide under the bed when he arrived just to be difficult.
So like his sire, Jason feared. What the boy’s glamorous actress of a mother told the tot about him in his absence, Jason did not even want to imagine.
She wasn’t there much. Simon was mostly being raised by carefully chosen and highly capable servants. Jason supposed if there was one advantage in how little Chloe could be bothered with her own child, it was that, at least, she wasn’t present to poison the boy’s mind against his father more frequently.
Jason really did not know why the redhead complained. She had done very well for herself by managing to get pregnant by him about five years ago. At the tender age of twenty-three, she had got herself an income for life.
Unfortunately, she was more beautiful than ever and still relished the adulation and male attention of her previous existence. She was still considered very fashionable to bed, but now she didn’t have to do it for the money. No, now she simply did it for fun, and whatever sparkly presents she could pry out of her wealthy admirers.
As long as she kept her men out of sight of their child, Jason didn’t care. He had frankly given up trying to make her stop. He had yelled at her about her titled paramours several times, had even made financial threats that he would cut off support.
But she knew full well he wasn’t cruel enough to carry out the threat, and in the end, she always shut him up easily by pointing out the hypocrisy of “Naughty Netherford,” of all people, ordering her to behave.
Ah, well.
Perhaps it was just as well that his two past concubines did not pay loads of attention to their offspring. They were not the best influences on children, anyway.