Stroke of Genius

by Marlowe Mia

  “The little beggar is actually enjoying this,” Grace muttered, feeling both anxious and foolish at the same time. While Nate cautioned her against speaking to anyone, he must haunt holes like this one every day. “If he can do it, I can do it.”

  She pushed deeper into the alley. Shopkeepers were opening on either side of the narrow way. A tobacconist and a chandler squabbled over the limited display space. A sorry excuse for a milliner displayed a dress sample whose design was dated and overblown at best.

  Grace kept her head down as she plowed ahead, conscious of the weight of eyes on her from behind curtained windows as she passed. She never tolerated small spaces well. If she’d been the excitable sort, she’d have swooned with relief when she finally reached the arched door with a chisel and hammer swinging from its nameplate. Nate pulled it open and bade her enter with a comical little bow.

  “I brung her, Mr. Hawke,” he called out and then dashed around in front of her to find his master. “She’s here.”

  “So I see. And right on time, too.” Crispin appeared at the far end of the arched stone foyer and ruffled the lad’s hair good-naturedly. “Off to the workshop with you, Nate. You’ve some polishing to do, I’ll warrant.”

  Crispin was wearing an open-collared shirt that reached his knees topped by a leather apron. Serviceable trousers, plain shoes and the walking stick completed his attire. His hair was clubbed back and bound into a queue with a leather thong, accentuating his strong features.

  He’d been the picture of sartorial elegance when he called at her home. Now he might as well be naked, so far as Polite Society was concerned.

  How dare he expose her to gossip! No gentleman appeared before a lady without his jacket, unless he was the lady’s husband.

  “Mr. Hawke,” she said in a clipped tone. “Are you in the habit of greeting all your clients in such a shameful state of undress?”

  “Undress?” He snorted and held his hands out while he executed a slow turn. “Kindly tell me, Grace. Is more of me exposed by this attire than my formal togs?”

  The breadth of his shoulders was more impressive beneath the gauzy fabric. She could clearly make out the girth of his biceps, but admitting it would make her cheeks heat even more.

  “No?” he said with a grin. “Well, perhaps it’s just wishful thinking on your part.”

  “Mr. Hawke!”

  “Grace,” he returned smoothly. “Now perhaps we can get down to business. In my studio, I dress simply to spare my wardrobe. Sculpting is a messy activity, as so many pleasurable things in life are.”

  He let the innuendo dangle for a few heartbeats. Grace wondered again about that desperately wicked activity called swiving.

  “Be grateful I’m wearing as much as I am,” he said. “Sometimes, when the weather turns warm, I dismiss the day help and make do with the apron alone.”

  Grace drew a sharp breath at the thought of him with only the rectangle of leather draped across his lap. Not exactly a fig leaf, but deucedly close! His chuckle made her want to kick herself. She had to stop letting him see he could provoke her.

  “Then it is my great good fortune that spring is unseasonably cool this year,” she said as Claudette helped her out of her pelisse.

  He frowned.

  “Is something amiss?” Her barb had struck home! She mentally clapped her hands and danced a small circle in glee.

  “Yes,” he said with a sigh. “How am I to sculpt your hands if you’re covered to the wrists?”

  She hadn’t thought of that. She’d worn the long-sleeved gown in deference to the stiff breeze.

  “Most people prefer the forearms be included when I do their hands. I suppose I could do just one hand, palm up,” he suggested, “but we don’t want your father using the piece as an ash catcher for his cigars, do we?”

  “My father does not smoke cigars,” she said icily. Homer Makepeace smoked a pipe, but that was beside the point. Did this fellow think Bostonians so backward, they’d use a Crispin Hawke original as an ash catcher?

  “Ah! I have it. Wyckeham!” His manservant appeared in an instant. “Show Miss Makepeace to the attiring room and let her pick from the Grecian costumes. That should bare her arms sufficiently. Then escort her to the studio. And be quick about it!”

  Then he turned and strode away, his walking stick rapping the flagstone floor.

  “This way, if you please, miss.” Wyckeham took Grace’s pelisse from Claudette with a slight bow and a rakish wiggle of his russet brows.

  Grace noticed that Claudette favored Mr. Wyckeham with a saucy smile. The unhappy Allen wallowed before her like an untrained puppy desperate for her attention, but she barely tossed him a glance.

  Mr. Wyckeham led them in the opposite direction from his master. Grace followed him through the tunnel-like foyer into . . . another world.

  After seeing nothing but unyielding stone from the outside, Grace was unprepared for the dance of light in the open atrium spread before her. Flowers rioted in fragrant profusion and a small willow wept in one corner. A fountain pattered in the center of the courtyard and statuary dotted the open space. Her gaze swept up, past the many onion-domed windows opening onto the atrium and on to the skylights above. The sun sent long shafts of liquid gold creeping down the western wall of interior windows.

  “Oh, my!” Grace ground to a halt, drinking in the unexpected beauty and tranquility of the place.

  “Forgive me, miss. I sometime forget how Mr. Hawke’s home affects visitors the first time. I should have forewarned you,” Wyckeham said. “If you would be pleased to walk with me, I will tell you about what you are seeing. But we must step lively. My master doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

  My master. Himself. Crispin Hawke might not be a titled lord, but he’d certainly carved out a little kingdom and populated it with willing subjects here in Cheapside.

  “By all means, let us not inconvenience a genius,” Grace said. “Proceed.”

  “Mind the flags. Some have settled unevenly, but that, Mr. Hawke says, is part of their charm. Do be careful, though. He’d be upset with me if you should trip and fall aga—”

  Wyckeham caught himself, turned back to give her an apologetic shrug, and then continued along the colonnaded edge of the garden. Grace followed. She was too taken with her surroundings to care that Wyckeham teetered on the edge of rudeness by bringing up her unfortunate clumsiness of yesterday.

  Like master, like servant, she supposed.

  “Mr. Hawke purchased this structure after the interior was completely gutted by fire. Only the stone outer walls were still standing. What you see here is his own design. He says he drew inspiration from his time spent studying in Venice.”

  “I’d heard he studied in Paris,” Grace said.

  “As you will, miss,” Wyckeham said cryptically. He threw open a door and bade Grace and Claudette enter. Floor to ceiling wardrobes lined the walls. “Please choose whatever strikes your fancy and I shall wait without.”

  Grace allowed Claudette to select a gown. Her mother claimed French maids were supposed to possess exquisite taste. In this instance, Claudette proved her mother correct. She picked out a beautiful palla, but Grace had to remove all her undergarments in order for the Grecian costume to drape properly.

  “This feels so . . .” wicked, she finished silently as she turned slowly before a tall looking-glass. “I doubt they’d smile on this costume in Boston.”

  “Oh, la! They smile on nothing in your Boston!” Claudette adjusted the fabric tossed over one of Grace’s shoulders and fastened it with a cameo brooch. “In London, this is—how you say?—‘quite the done thing.’”

  Grace had heard the ton was mad for all things classical, but the gossamer fabric was so sheer, it made her feel as though she were clad in next to nothing.

  Her little pointy-toed boots, which were the first stare of fashion for strolling in St. James Park, looked ridiculous with the palla. So Grace permitted Claudette to fit her with a pair of slim, gilded san
dals whose leather thongs crossed about her calves and tied just below the back of her knees.

  Even though she was as covered as she would be in a ball gown—barring the sandals, of course—Grace fought to keep from covering herself, fig leaf-style, as Wyckeham led her around the atrium. They passed a room where apprentices were sanding already carved works.

  One of them was undoubtedly her young guide, but since they wore goggles and scarves to protect them from the marble dust, she couldn’t tell which one was Nate. This was one of the few rooms Grace passed which seemed to have windows open to the outside of the house. The windows were large enough to emit light and provide ventilation, but were positioned too high for anyone to see in.

  It was a conundrum. Why did Crispin Hawke insist on living in Cheapside and then fashion his home as a fortress to keep the neighborhood out?

  Finally, they came to Crispin’s studio. It was a long high-ceilinged room, running the length of the garden. Wide-swung double doors and large windows were thrown open on the courtyard at intervals. Several works graced the space in various stages of completion. There were uncut stone monoliths waiting for his touch to grainy statuary, finished but for the need for his apprentices to buff the marble to smooth brilliance.

  “There you are.” Crispin looked up from his worktable. Several charcoal sketches were spread out before him. “That’ll be all, Wyckeham. Please see that Miss Makepeace’s maid is entertained.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Claudette tossed Wyckeham a long-lidded glance and took his arm without prompting. The pair disappeared quickly down the long corridor.

  “But—” Grace started to protest, but then remembered it was considered perfectly respectable for a lady to spend time alone with a gentleman provided they were meeting to conduct business of some sort. Her marble sculpture qualified as business.

  But Crispin Hawke was no gentleman.

  “Please don’t trouble yourself, Grace,” he said as if he’d read her thoughts even though his attention was focused on the sketches before him. “You’ll be safe as houses with me.”

  “And why should I believe that?”

  “Because if you must know,” he said with a quick glance at her, “you’re not my usual sort.”

  She swallowed hard. It was one thing to know she was gawky and ungraceful, another to have it thrown in her face. As a commoner, Mr. Hawke wasn’t a suitor her mother would approve, but his bluntness still stung. She lifted her chin, determined not to let him know how his words cut her.

  “I see. Is it my intellect or my refusal to hide it that irks you most?”

  “Neither, those are both attractive qualities which you obviously possess in abundance.”

  Nate’s ‘lamp post’ comment rang in her head. “My height, then. I’ve been told some men are put off by tall women.”

  “I assure you I have no fear of heights.” He leaned more deeply into his sketches, the charcoal scritching across the paper. “Besides, I top you quite handily.”

  She couldn’t go on listing her faults without becoming indelicate, so she simply folded her arms and waited for him to look up. “Then tell me. What ‘sort’ am I that you detest so?”

  “The virginal sort.” The devil’s own grin spread across his lips. “And don’t try to tell me otherwise because your blush already confirmed my assumption.”

  “You are contemptible.”

  “My dear Grace, you have no idea,” he agreed. “I’m a man of few principles, but one I hold sacrosanct. If there be a God, I fervently pray that He deliver me from virgins.”

  “And blasphemous to boot.”

  “At every damned opportunity. But you aren’t here to discuss matters metaphysical, I hope.”

  He rose and came to meet her, his unusual gray eyes raking her from head to toe. When his gaze lingered on her breasts, her nipples hardened and she was achingly aware that her thin garment did nothing to hide their state. She resisted the urge to fold her arms across her chest. It would only be an acknowledgment of her body’s strange behavior.

  “I must say, that costume becomes you, Grace.” His voice was husky. “You look classically lovely enough to grace any urn.”

  Yesterday he’d called her “astute” in the same breath as “spoiled.” Now she was “lovely” enough to be a suitable ornamentation for pottery! Every compliment from this man was delivered with a velvet-gloved slap.

  She didn’t know how to respond. ‘Thank you’ might let him think he’d gotten away with his backhanded swipe. Taking him to task for it would make her seem overly sensitive, so she said nothing.

  “You may drape her with pearls and shower her with diamonds, but nothing so becomes a woman as silence,” he said.

  That made her find her voice. “Mr. Hawke, are you incapable of civil speech?”

  “Indeed, miss, I pride myself on my linguistic ability. It is, after all, what separates us from the beasts.”

  He offered her his arm and she took it because it would be churlish not to, but she couldn’t bite her tongue hard enough to stifle a muttered, “What separates some of us from the beasts.”

  His lips twitched in a smile, but he otherwise acted as though he’d not heard her.

  “Let me explain how we’ll proceed. Have you ever sat for a portrait in oils?”

  “Once when I was a child,” she said. “My mother wanted a family portrait, so I spent hours sitting on my father’s lap, listening to my brothers grouse about being confined inside on fine days.”

  As if they were the ones forced to balance on their father’s bony knees for what seemed like ages.

  “You have siblings?”

  “Three older brothers.”

  “How fortunate for you and yet you seem to know little of men.”

  “On the contrary, I know something of gentlemen,” she said pointedly.

  “You say that as if you think there is a qualitative difference between one man and another. I stand by my first impression. You know very little of men.” He led her to a stool with a back behind a tall table and indicated that she should sit. “You will pose here while I make the preliminary sketch.”

  “This is to be a sculpture, not a drawing,” she said as she hitched herself on the padded seat.

  “Trust me, Grace. I’ve done this before. You couldn’t bear to hold a pose as long as it will take me to carve your hands. Allow me.” He propped her elbows on the table and began trying different gestures. She forced herself to let her arms and hands go limp while he manipulated them. “Once we create a composition we can agree upon, I’ll make several detailed sketches. Tomorrow you’ll return for the casting.”

  “The what?”

  “I’ll render your sculpture in clay first,” he explained. “Then I use a pointing machine to copy the cast to stone.”

  He nodded toward a device in the corner with a long needle protruding from a wooden arm.

  “You carve the stone with a needle?”

  “No, I only use the pointer to mark specific details and depths on the stone. Hammer and chisel, those are my brush and oils. The sculptor’s art hasn’t changed much since the dawn of time.” He stepped back, frowning down at her hands. “No, this won’t do.”

  She pulled them back and folded them on her lap. “I know they aren’t my best feature.”

  “That’s not the point,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with your hands, Grace, but a piece of art should speak. The only thing I can make them say is ‘I’m capable.’ Not exactly the kind of message you hope to send your future titled husband, I’ll wager.”

  Capable. It’s what one would say of a draft horse or a hunting dog or a punctilious accountant. Her belly plummeted downward, but she shot him a glare. She would not give him permission to insult her by keeping silent.

  “Perhaps I should put my long-sleeved gown back on and find some gloves to cover my annoyingly capable—”

  “Gloves!” He cupped her cheeks and planted a quick kiss on her mouth. “You’re brilliant.�
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  The kiss startled the breath out of her.

  Their gazes met and she was sure her eyes must be wide with surprise. But Crispin must have seen something else in them, because he slowly leaned in again, covering her lips for a longer kiss. He slanted his mouth over hers, running the tip of his tongue along the seam of her lips.

  Tasting her.

  There was a loud roaring in her ears, an ocean pounding in her head. Her world spiraled down to the exquisite sureness of his mouth on hers, to the feather of his breath on her cheek, to the roughness of his chin against her smooth one. She couldn’t move. If she did, the spell might break. All she could do was bunch the extra fabric of the palla in her lap between her tightly scrunched fingers.

  Then he suddenly pulled away and turned his back on her as if nothing had happened. He made for the doorway in his canting stride, bellowing for Wyckeham.

  Good Lord! Grace gasped and brought her fingertips to her lips. They were still tingling. I just sat here. As if I was made of stone. Why didn’t I do something?

  She had done something, she realized with a sigh. She’d let Crispin Hawke kiss her silly.

  And she hadn’t wanted it to end.

  Chapter 4

  Most people see the world as a splash of rioting color.

  Pygmalion’s world was merely line and form, light and shadow, but he was untroubled by narrowness of his vision. The simplicity gave his soul room to breathe.

  Crispin closed his eyes. I must be mad.

  “Wyckeham!” His voice reverberated through the atrium and returned to him in over-lapping echoes.

  I should be locked away.

  “You called, sir.” Wyckeham loped toward the studio at a dogtrot, tucking his shirttail in as he came. Evidently, he’d taken Crispin’s order to entertain Miss Makepeace’s maid to heart.

  But Crispin couldn’t chide his servant for rash amatory exploits when he’d just committed a major sin of his own.

  Bedlam would be too good for me.

  It was bad enough that he’d kissed a virgin. It was insanity that he’d enjoyed it! His mouth still watered and his cock was downright jubilant. If he wasn’t covered with a leather apron he’d have disgraced himself with the evidence of his arousal.