Stroke of Genius

by Marlowe Mia

  “I guess that’s a good answer,” she said gaily. “I only hope I render the duke speechless as well. Wish me luck.”

  Then she waltzed out of the Abbey and out of his life as quickly as she’d come. She didn’t return that night. Or the next.

  Evidently, the duke was robbed of the gift of speech as well and decided to keep her until he recovered it.

  Madame was disappointed by Olympia’s sudden departure. She’d had hopes her new girl would raise the social standing of the Abbey’s clientel. Along with raising the fees could charge.

  But the rest of the girls said “Good riddance.” Olympia was too old to work in the Abbey, they complained. Even though her previous soft life left her skin untainted and her teeth pearlescent, wasn’t she nearly twenty-five? And being well-born meant she thought she was better than the rest of them.

  Yet didn’t it go to show that ladies could find themselves soiled beyond repair just as easily as washerwomen? And her thinking she was too good for the regular ‘gentlemen.’ Olympia didn’t belong there, the other girls at the Abbey said.

  Crispin agreed. What did a swan have to do with a bunch of mudhens?

  At night in the garret, he thought of Olympia and her snowy white shoulders. And he discovered the miraculous way his twelve-year old body could be tricked into believing she was right there with him, doing delicious, wicked things to him.

  Even if she was the duke’s mistress now, he would love her forever.

  And she would be his every time the moon showed its silver face in the grimy garret window.

  * * *

  One day a few weeks later, Crispin was carrying in the case of wine Madam had bought to serve the ‘gentlemen’ before they chose their girl for the evening. She’d probably water each goblet to make it go further, but it gave the place a touch of elegance to serve a French vintage, she said.

  Crispin doubted anything other than a lit brand could add elegance to Peel’s Abbey.

  He no longer feared Madame would sell him to the molly house. He was big enough to help protect the girls now if one of the ‘gentlemen’ got rough, and Madame had taken several commissions for his chess sets. She even provided him with better materials for his carving, but he knew there was more he could do. More he wanted to do.

  He just wasn’t sure what.

  Crispin arranged the wine bottles on the dusty cellar shelves, laying them on their sides, a long row of borrowed elegance doomed to end their days fermenting in whoremongers’ bellies. Then as he climbed up the rotting stairs, he heard her voice in the front parlor.

  Olympia.

  He leaped up the steps, two at a time. And he never descended those stairs again. She’d come for him.

  The only thing he retrieved from the attic to take with him was a scrap of linen embroidered with the initials CRS. And the only thing left to show he’d ever been there at all was a half finished set of chess pieces.

  Chapter 14

  Perhaps there was a unique element in this particular stone that made it harder than usual. Perhaps, there was a flaw, a deep cleft embedded in the marble that kept the stone from revealing its hidden form. Try as he might, Pygmalion couldn’t bend the rock to his will.

  Which, of course, made him all the more determined to succeed.

  “Don’t slouch so, Grace,” Minerva said as they rode along in their hired barouche. It was the most fashionable time of day to see and be seen in St. James Park. They were almost required to be there. “But perhaps you might manage not to sit quite so tall at the same time.”

  If you didn’t want tall offspring, you ought not to have married such a tall man, danced on the tip of Grace’s tongue, but she merely said, “Yes, Mother.”

  It was pointless to argue. She compromised by leaning more heavily on the arm rest, listing a bit toward the outer edge of the carriage. That brought the bill of her shovel-shaped sunbonnet nearer to the level of her mother’s outlandish head covering. Grace wasn’t sure, but she thought she spied two dead turtledoves artfully arranged amid the lace flowers and other frippery on her mother’s hat.

  The thing must weigh half a stone!

  “Smile, dearest. We must be seen to be enjoying ourselves.”

  Claudette, who was seated opposite them, had no problem with that directive. She’d decked herself out in her finest second-hand frock and preened with the best of them.

  “Look at that! Bah!” Claudette said. “Imagine a lady reduced to shank’s mare in such a place as this.”

  Claudette looked down her Gallic nose at the foot traffic. Ladies’ maids scuttled behind mistresses who couldn’t afford to hire a fine carriage. But even afoot, aristocratic complexions must be protected with frilly parasols.

  “I might be riding backward, but I am riding,” Grace’s maid said. “If those ladies must walk, why do they not stay home?”

  “Perhaps they prefer to walk.” Heaven knew Grace would prefer to be almost anywhere else. She wished she’d brought along a book.

  Anything but Rev. Waterbury’s Mysteries of Mythology. The eerie similarities between her erotic dream and what had happened in truth at the modiste’s shop had kept her away from that tome for days.

  She’d also managed to steer clear of Crispin. Once word circulated that the illustrious Mr. Hawke had been impressed enough by his latest subject to secure a voucher at Almack’s for her, the ton’s interest in Grace Makepeace was thoroughly piqued. She and her mother had been invited to countless interminable teas, so society matrons could satisfy their curiosity.

  Claudette gleaned intelligence for them from the servants’ grapevine. She told her employers after their first tea that rumors about the exquisite beauty of Grace’s hands had traveled from house to house.

  “So bien sur,” Claudette had said, “you must never, never remove your gloves in public. A woman’s best asset, she is always a man’s imagination.”

  So Grace kept her ‘capable’ hands carefully be-gloved at all times. Between their social obligations, fittings for her new gown and the ‘at home’ afternoons her mother arranged, her days were a blur of mindless activity. Grace had been able to plead truthfully that she was too busy to return to Crispin’s studio so he could do the casting for her sculpture.

  But sooner or later, her mother would remember she wanted that sculpture done and there would be no help for it.

  Perhaps Grace could have a small accident and break her pinky. That might do the trick.

  It would have to be the right hand, so I can still write.

  Beneath her kidskin glove, a stubborn ink stain marked the third finger of her left hand. Her retelling of Rev. Waterbury’s myths was coming along nicely, though Pygmalion’s tale was giving her fits.

  She hoped to finish the whole set while they were here in London so she could submit it to the same house that published the Mysteries of Mythology. Her whimsical version of the stories would be a good companion piece for the reverend’s dry, scholarly work.

  “Oh, I say! There’s Mr. Hawke! Yoohoo!” her mother sang out, waving her hanky like a flag of surrender.

  Don’t look, Grace ordered herself with sternness. The man made her feel things. Jumbled-up things. ‘Forget-your-own-name’ things.

  Wicked things.

  She had to look.

  Crispin alighted from an open carriage on the far side of the broad parkway. Grace’s belly twisted like a pretzel while he ambled up to the ornate front entrance of a white stonework townhouse. The gilt-trimmed door opened almost immediately and he was ushered inside by a servant in scarlet livery.

  “Oh, he must not have heard me,” Grace’s mother said, plopping back in her seat. “But seeing him reminds me. I feel perfectly horrid that I’ve kept you from your sittings with him, dear.” Her fingertips drummed on the armrest. “Perhaps we should stop and inquire for him at that house, so we can express our regrets. Obviously whomever he is visiting is at home and as long as we’re there, he can introduce us—er, I mean you, Grace. After all, this is such
a lovely neighborhood, I’m certain you’d benefit from meeting—”

  “Non, madame,” Claudette said with a vigorous shake of her head. “That is something you do not wish to be doing.”

  She glanced back to Crispin’s equipage, which was stopped along the fashionable street.

  “Monsieur Wyckeham, he has remained with the carriage, I see,” Claudette said with a relieved sigh. “C’est bien.”

  “I don’t understand, girl. Why should we not stop?” Minerva asked.

  Claudette leaned forward confidentially. “Because the woman who lives in that house, she is no lady.”

  “Well, we’re not one to stand on ceremony, Claudette. After all, our Grace isn’t titled yet either.”

  “Non, madame. You miss my meaning.” Claudette sent Grace’s mother a knowing sidelong glance. “The woman who lives behind that oh-so-beautiful door is a Cyprian.”

  Minerva’s brows drew together in puzzlement.

  “She is—how you say?—a high flyer.” Claudette cupped her lips and stage-whispered. “A courtesan.”

  Minerva’s hand flew to her mouth.

  Grace looked away from the gilt-trimmed door. She shouldn’t have been surprised. Hadn’t he admitted that very first time she posed for him that he counted courtesans as his dear friends?

  Evidently his very dear friends.

  There was only one reason for a man to darken the door of a ‘bird of paradise.’ The fact that the assignation was blatant and in the bald light of mid-afternoon made it even more wicked somehow.

  Did he frequent this one demimondaine especially or were there several who enjoyed his visits?

  Her chest constricted. He struck her as a man who would be generous with his ‘friendships.’

  Her breasts tingled as if he was toying with them once again. The man gave her all sorts of wicked feelings. Any woman he touched would feel that same loss of control, that same draining of the will, that same dangerous wanting.

  Now Crispin Hawke had managed to make her feel something she never expected.

  She folded her fashionably-gloved, ‘capable’ hands on her lap and prayed she wouldn’t be sick on the spot.

  Chapter 15

  The stone so flummoxed Pygmalion, he was forced to do something he disliked intensely. He had to ask for help. So he turned to his mentor, Aphrodite, who understood him far too well for his comfort.

  “Crispin, you naughty boy!” Olympia Dove extended a be-ringed hand as he entered her exquisitely appointed parlor. “Where have you been for the past month?”

  “Pining for your beauty, as always, Olympia.” He brought her hand to his lips and brushed her knuckles.

  She pulled her hand away and presented an expertly rouged cheek to him. “Come, give me a real kiss and I’ll forgive your lies.”

  “You’re sure I’m not interrupting anything.” Crispin gave her a dutiful peck and settled into the chintz-covered wing chair opposite her settee. “I could come back another day.”

  “No, no, the interrupting has already been done and not by you.”

  Olympia rang for tea. The butler nodded and gave her the same obeisance due a duchess before he hurried to do her bidding. She turned back to Crispin and sighed dramatically.

  “It seems I’m once again without a protector.”

  “Honestly, old girl, you change lovers more often than my man Wyckeham changes his socks.” Crispin leaned back, totally at ease. “Who was it this time?”

  “Viscount Reddington.”

  “Deep pockets, that one, by all accounts.” Crispin hooked an ankle over one knee. “Never say you broke the poor man’s heart.”

  “Don’t you mean the rich man’s heart?” The courtesan loosed a musical laugh. “Not hardly. His heart was never in danger, but something else was nearly broken.”

  Crispin chuckled with her. “Do tell.”

  “Reddy and I had been keeping company for several weeks and he’d been very generous.” She fingered the elegant filigree necklace at her throat. A cabochon sapphire large enough to choke a horse winked in the hollow of her throat.

  “But he no longer is?”

  “No, tight-fistedness wasn’t one of his faults, but alas, discretion was,” Olympia said with a lift of one shoulder. “He drew funds for me from his wife’s considerable pin money account and so we were discovered.”

  The butler arrived with an ornate silver service and finger sandwiches on a heavy tray. He deposited the repast on the low table set before Olympia.

  “Thank you, Hobson. I’ll pour out.”

  Once the butler withdrew, Olympia continued while she prepared Crispin’s tea exactly the way he liked it. No sugar, only a smidge of milk. “Last Wednesday—that was his regular afternoon, you know—who should arrive on my doorstep but his wife.”

  “Viscount Reddington married above himself as I recall. His wife’s father is the Duke of Ghent, isn’t he?”

  “Indeed and his daughter lacks none of his imperiousness, let me tell you. Under different circumstances, I feel certain I should have liked her enormously.”

  Olympia handed Crispin his tea. He inhaled its spicy fragrance. She had the aromatic blend of leaves shipped in specially from India, just for him.

  “In any case, Lady Reddington was newly arrived in town after a stay at their country estate and found him not at home.” Olympia took a sip of her own tea. “She was spitting mad that he wasn’t at their town house when she arrived and lost no time in tracking him down.”

  “How did she do that?”

  “Let’s just say their servants know whose money it is that pays their wages. One of them directed her to the ledger books.”

  “And she suspected he was here when she checked her account.” Crispin shook his head. There was something to be said for slovenly record-keeping.

  “How the man could have been so simple is beyond me.” Olympia rolled her luminous eyes and then gave Crispin a sly wink. “Fortunately, the viscount had other attributes that handily compensated for his mental deficiencies. But in any case, he heard his wife coming up the stairs and what does the man do, but jump out my boudoir window!”

  “Good God, just because I started that stupid rumor about how I got this infernal limp.”

  She shrugged. “It was the talk of the ton for weeks when you were first injured. I suppose he figured if you could do it, he could, too. And he really didn’t want to face his viscountess just then.”

  “Your chamber is up a flight, isn’t it?”

  “Two, actually.”

  “That had to hurt.” Crispin rubbed his thigh in sympathy. “Did he break anything in the fall?”

  “No, but my poor hydrangea will never be the same.” Olympia took a dainty bite of a finger sandwich and washed it down with tea. “Took to his heels through my little garden, vaulted over the fence and disappeared down the alley. I had no idea the man could run so fast.”

  She set the cup down with a slight frown. “Pity he was rather quick at other things, too.”

  Crispin stifled a laugh. He always claimed that Olympia, like the home of the gods she was named for, never aged. He saw now that wasn’t strictly true. She used more paint than ever, but it failed to conceal the faint blue under her eyes. At her temples, tiny veins showed through thinning skin. Her swan-like neck, always a prized asset, now sported the beginnings of a wattle.

  Concern pricked him. “Are you all right? Do you need anything?”

  She smiled and leaned across to feather her fingertips over his cheek. He felt as if he was twelve years old again, but this time, no longer desperately in love with her.

  “Dear boy. Don’t fret for me. My lovers are merely amusements now, in any case.”

  Crispin thought her smile seemed forced. “You’re sure?”

  “With the pensions from my past amours and the trust you established for me, I could live comfortably for several lifetimes.” Her smile faded a bit. “Whether anyone comes along to fill Reddy’s shoes or not.”

  I
n all the years he’d known her, Olympia had never been alone. After a ten year stint as a duke’s mistress, she cut a glittering swath through the upper crust. Olympia had a string of blazing affaires du Coeur with lesser aristocrats, scandalously wealthy merchants and even a few influential statesmen. If her bed stayed cold for longer than a week, it was undoubtedly because she was exhausted.

  Imagining her alone now made Crispin’s chest constrict.

  “But enough about me,” Olympia said brightly. “I love to hear what the best investment I ever made is doing. What are you working on now?”

  Crispin couldn’t deny her this pleasure. She’d earned it.

  A well-educated girl, Olympia had behaved foolishly and lost her virginity to a married man. When her family cast her out, she landed briefly in Peel’s Abbey, the miserable whorehouse where Crispin was raised. But a beauty like Olympia with a mind to match wouldn’t sell herself so cheaply. She spent every cent she could scrape together on a gown that would do credit to a princess and placed herself in the path of a duke.

  He scooped her right up and her wit and beauty, bolstered by his title and money, made her the toast of the London demimonde.

  But Olympia didn’t forget her friends. She ventured back into Cheapside and pulled the talented boy she’d met there out of the sad little house of ill-repute. She paid to send him off to study art with a master on the Continent, where his innate talent could be nourished and developed.

  So Crispin told his mentor about the multi-figured equestrian piece he was doing for Lord Brontwell’s country estate and the sculpture of Diana he was planning. He mentioned the commission he’d just accepted for the Fall of Troy and the disturbingly life-like bust he recently completed of Lady Sheppleton’s porcine nephew.

  “And when she saw it, she was speechless for a full quarter hour,” Crispin said. “Her husband insisted on paying me a bonus. For the rare gift of her silence.”

  Olympia laughed, then she cocked her head at him. “While you’re regaling me with all these doings, your eyebrows are jousting over that fine nose of yours. There’s something else, I think.”