“Of course?” Leisurely, he crossed his arms. “This is a refreshing change.”
She smiled and snapped the biscuit in half. “You will not quarrel with me about my project?”
“I will not quarrel. I will simply refuse.”
“You mayn’t refuse.”
“Your humor today is especially high.”
“There is reason for that.” Dropping the pieces, she leaned forward onto her elbows. “I have news that is both a great relief and very curious.”
Her posture leaning into the table pushed her breasts upward, making a cleft between them, and visible above the modest white tissue tucked into the gown there. She must think him a eunuch to display that so readily. He imagined freeing her breasts from the gown and caressing them—her—all of her, her beautiful breasts and her soft lips and all of her.
“Curious?” he managed, albeit huskily.
“I told Mr. Bridges that I had eaten bad oysters and he accepted that explanation.”
Aha. The dissection. “That is good news.”
“The news I’ve learned of Bethany is even better. She perished of heart failure. The arteries feeding the heart were normal. The bottom half of the left ventricle however was ballooned out and much larger than it should be. That could have caused cardiac arrest even in such a young woman. But there is some consolation, for she was not with child after all.”
The soft smile that lit her eyes choked him momentarily.
He untangled his tongue.
“You asked the other students?”
She waved her hand in that gesture that revealed every sinew and curve of her fingers and the taut strength of her palm, all of which he wanted on him.
“Archie and Pincushion are certain. I told neither of them that I recognized her, of course,” she said. “No one knows. Except you. But you know all my secrets.”
He wished he did not. He wished he could return to the day he had seen her at the public dissection, and instead have remained home that day. Then there would not be this desire for everything about her, breasts and lips and intelligent eyes and expressive hands and voice that tied him in knots inside.
“Do you believe she lied to you?” he said.
“No. I think she actually believed herself increasing. Her menses must have been delayed. That, added to chronic nausea from another cause, might make a young woman of her profession believe she was with child.”
“Her profession?”
“Prostitution.” She looked squarely at him. “Do you see the knot in this wood beneath my fingertip?”
He had been trying not to stare at that fingertip circling that knot—trying not to imagine it circling any and all parts of his skin. That, and the knot was not far from her breasts pressing against the table’s edge.
“Yes.” The syllable was hoarse.
“Do you see how it twists back on itself?”
“I do.”
“That is what happens to your muscles each time you force the hip and back to do the work of the knee and foot. That is why you must allow me to build a prosthesis for you.”
“For pity’s sake—”
“All right! I shan’t ask again. I will simply do it.”
“You have no understanding of the word no, do you?”
“If I allowed no to halt me from doing what I know to be right, I would not be here now, would I?”
He caught his smile halfway.
“Do you wonder how I am acquainted with prostitutes?” she said.
“No. For I believe, Elizabeth Shaw, that your heart is sufficiently wide to fit within it all the people of the world.”
Her cheeks flared with pink. It was beautiful. And disastrous. This show of mild embarrassment was tightening his cock unbearably. But he could breathe again. Honesty with her felt extraordinary.
“You should not compliment me,” she said.
He allowed his smile now. “Why not?”
Abruptly she pushed back her chair and stood. “Because it makes me want to kiss you even more than I wanted it before. And do other things I have been thinking about too.”
Other things?
“Allah, be merciful,” he mumbled. “You have got to leave this kitchen. This moment.”
“Of course I will.” She sounded angry. “But I won’t stop thinking about it.”
“Yet you must.” Hypocrite. He was a hypocrite through and through.
“I cannot,” she declared. “I never stop thinking about anything. My mind does not allow it. When a thought occurs, an idea, my mind will not release it until it has come to a satisfying conclusion. But since you will not allow me to kiss you there can be no satisfying conclusion to my curiosity about it. So perhaps you could cease saying things that make those particular thoughts especially difficult to ignore, those comments about my appearance or character that no one else I have ever known has given me.”
He couldn’t believe it. “No one?”
“No. So you must cease saying compliments. And you must cease looking at me like that—like—” She shook her head. “Or you could simply let me kiss you and I could move past the preoccupation.”
“Your remarkable mind notwithstanding,” he said with as much control as he could muster, but her cheeks were full of color, her lips parted, and he wanted her in his hands, in his mouth, beneath him. “I cannot allow you to satisfy that curiosity, however much I would enjoy it.”
Her lips fell open and her beautiful breasts rose on a tight inhalation. “Enjoy it?”
“I cannot. You cannot.”
“Why not? It isn’t as though I am a wilting maiden of the usual sort. I dress as a man every day and go about entirely with men.”
“Because whether you wish to acknowledge it or not, at present you are dependent upon me, and a man who takes advantage of a woman in those circumstances is a knave. But far more importantly, you have a project to accomplish, a project that requires all of your attention. You haven’t even a moment of time to devote to satisfying idle curiosities.”
Astonishment shone in the Mediterranean blue.
“Do not think to argue with me,” he said. “The moment you moved into this house you made yourself dependent upon me.”
“I realize that.”
“Yet my words surprise you.”
“Not those words. What if the curiosities are not idle?”
He stood up. “Go. At once.”
With a flip of her skirts she left. It was a small miracle, and a temporary reprieve only. She would return. He had no illusion that she would relent and no faith that he could resist her indefinitely.
Chapter 16
Desire
Libby did not wish to hear again the heat of anger in his voice or feel the confusion that suffused her when he studied her with his inconveniently beautiful eyes. So on Friday morning when she discovered the little jar of adhesive empty, she waited to refill it from the large bottle in his workroom until he was not at home.
He had gone out each evening since she had confessed the truth about her thoughts, to avoid her no doubt.
Following her father from the homes of noble patient to noble patient, Libby had lived as an unwanted guest in enough aristocrats’ houses—often hiding out in cabinets and stairwells—that she had glimpsed her share of gentlemen disporting themselves with servants. Her host’s stance on the matter of female dependents living in his house made him either the most unusual man in Britain or the most honorable.
Perhaps from where he came, mores were stricter. Perhaps there, gentlemen did not prey upon women as they did in Britain.
Lamp in hand, she knocked on the door of his quarters. When no answer came, she entered.
The city at night shone through the studio windows: a light through parted draperies in the building across the mews, a lamppost, and a silvery moon embraced in stars.
She stared at his bedchamber door for the count of twenty before ducking beneath the bar and pushing the panel wide.
Adorned in subdued hues,
the chamber boasted only a four-poster bed hung with midnight blue draperies, a clothespress, and an upright mirror. On the floor was a rug similar to others in the house, of Eastern design and rich, dark colors. The space suited his understated elegance, and it was redolent of his scent of cloves and paint and something else she could not define but was probably simply him—his unique essence.
Leaving the bedchamber, she crossed the studio to the easel upon which sat a portrait of a society hostess whom Libby had once met in Constance’s company. Mrs. Lily Jackson was young and lushly gowned. The background by her head seemed unfinished: the brushstrokes rough and visible, so that the subject appeared to be dragging herself out of vexed shadow, leaning from the frame as though reaching out in supplication for help.
The artist had signed the piece; it was in fact finished.
Rumor had it that Lily Jackson’s husband beat his servants with a carriage whip. And Libby had noticed that Mrs. Jackson wore thick powder, perhaps to cover abrasions. This portrait showed the truth of the woman. It was daring and extraordinary. Studying the colors and textures of the work, she felt the artist in it: his grace, his kindness and beauty, his darkness, and his acute understanding of human nature. Just as he understood her, he understood this woman and the others that he drew and painted, as though he could see into their souls.
Leaving the painting, she went into the workroom. Narrow and well lit by moonlight, it smelled of the oils used in painting and, faintly, of chemicals. On one side was a high table upon which sat bottles and jars filled with oils and colors, a terracotta jar bursting with paintbrushes, and another with the tools to make brushes: coarse hair, cotton string, wooden handles, metal ferrules, knives, and a tiny brass case. A burner and several glass flasks and pipettes populated the end of the table near the window.
Canvases stretched over wooden frames were stacked on the floor against the wall. All but one had been painted on. Setting down the lamp, Libby pulled the blank canvas away from the stack.
A nude woman gazed back at her.
Stretched out on a divan, the woman was gloriously relaxed, one arm draped on the back of the furniture and the fingertips of the other brushing the floor, her head lolling to the side and thighs resting gently together. There was no artifice to either pose or paint, only honesty and beauty. This picture was an adoration of the human body.
By the roundness of her limbs and the jewels on her fingers, Libby assumed the model was an aristocrat. That a woman of wealth would sit in the nude for a male painter was surely unusual. Libby knew that men of means often kept hired women for sex. Perhaps this model was his mistress. Perhaps in the evenings he went out to meet her.
How foolish he must think her naïve requests for kisses, he who had traveled across the world.
She drew another of the canvases forward and found another nude. This one was also bejeweled and softly round. But this time Libby recognized her. This woman was married.
She heard him enter the studio with enough time to glimpse another canvas, another nude, another married woman.
“Aha,” he said, coming close enough to look over her shoulder. “Obviously I was wrong when I saw the light here and assumed the pig had learned to carry a lamp,” he said dryly. “For Mrs. Coutts and Mr. Gibbs are not here, and I am quite certain I have forbidden you from entering my private quarters.”
“I am smarter than a pig, and I have opposable thumbs, thus the ease with which I carry a lamp. I came for more adhesive. I know this woman, even though she is mostly looking away. I recognize those moles on her neck.”
“Of course you do.” On the cool air that yet clung to his coat lingered the scent of spirits.
“She is Lady Ainsley,” she said. “Once at a ball at the Assembly Rooms I was so uncomfortable that I distracted myself by studying everybody’s skin. Their gaits and postures too, of course.” She gestured to the painting. “She looks as bored here as she did that night.”
He chuckled.
But she had said it only to be contrary. The night of that ball Lady Ainsley had adopted an air of grand ennui. In this painting, instead, she glowed with sensuality.
“She sat for you in the nude? All three of these women did? Their husbands allowed it?”
“To my knowledge, their husbands did not know of it.”
“Were they—are they your lovers?” She looked over her shoulder at him. “And don’t you dare be angry with me for asking that. Not this time.”
“They were not. They are not. They simply wished their portraits painted.”
“Yet these paintings are here. I assume the women feared to claim them, but also did not wish them sold.”
“Yes.”
“Why did they come to you?”
“You must ask them that.”
“I cannot, of course.” She looked down again at the portrait. “It is unusual that they wished nude portraits, that they were not ashamed to be naked before you.”
“Does a lady feel shame for undressing before her servant? Does an empress not step out of her bath before her slave?” His voice was without passion. There was no judgment in it, nor feeling of any sort. That flatness alarmed her.
“You are not a servant. You are a gentleman. No doubt they simply understood you as an artist, as eccentric and such.”
“Perhaps.”
“It angers you that they were willing to sit for you in this manner. Doesn’t it?”
There was a moment’s pause before he said, “Not any longer.”
She allowed her fingertips to trace the edge of the painting.
“I will not ask you why you painted them anyway, despite anger. For it is evident in each brushstroke. It is the same reason that I study medicine. I am enamored of the human body. I am driven to repair it just as you are driven to depict it.”
“You are not driven to repair. You are called to heal.”
She felt him so intensely behind her. Her body stirred with heat. Yet there was something new too, which she had not felt with him before. He considered himself her protector. He wished to keep her safe, yet so differently from the manner in which her friends and father always had. They always wanted to protect her from the morass of her own thoughts and desires. He wished to protect her for herself, so that she could pursue her dreams.
He reached forward and laid his fingertips beside hers on the painting’s frame.
“This is how I wished to paint you,” he said.
She turned her head. Every shadow on his face, every gleam of light in his hair seemed precious now, too ephemeral, as though, were she to move, the night would steal him away.
Desperation surged up in her, a wild need for closeness—for intimacy with him.
He dropped his hand from the painting and met her gaze.
She could touch him. She could simply reach up and wrap her hands around his face and feel his heat and beauty and strength, and draw him to her and finally know the caress of his lips on hers. She could satisfy the hunger that only grew stronger the longer she denied it.
“Wished?” she said. “In the past tense?”
Those perfect lips made the slight smile on one side, the smile that carved such longing inside her.
“Wished,” he said, “before I knew that you could not sit still long enough for it.”
It was not the truth. She saw the truth in his gaze that now dipped to her lips.
She could lift her arms and wrap them around his shoulders and sink her hands into his hair and feel his body against hers. There was so little space between them already, she would hardly have to move to make it so.
Scooting around him, she went out into the studio and strode swiftly toward its exit.
“You have left your lamp,” he said behind her.
“Keep it. Keep it, of course!” she shouted, and did not pause in her flight.
He wished to protect her. She could not deny him that satisfaction.
The bell rang as his manservant was departing for the day.
�
�Package for you, sir.”
“Thank you, Gibbs.” Ziyaeddin accepted it.
“Sir . . . ? The young master . . .” The Scot’s brow puckered up. “’Tis a mouse he’s become, seems, sir.”
Elizabeth Shaw was nothing like a mouse. Rather, a lion. “How do you mean?”
“He’s got a corner o’ the press stuffed full with torn stockin’s. Least eight or ten o’ them, all torn, as though he’s makin’ a wee nest in the drawer! Offered to darn ’em, I did. But he forbade me to touch ’em.”
Perhaps she hid a gown or petticoats behind the ruined stockings.
“He’d hear none o’ it! He tossed ’em in that travelin’ trunk an’ locked it up tight. Said I’d ne’er find the key. No’ that I’d be lookin’ for it, no’ if the young master dinna like!”
“Of course you wouldn’t,” Ziyaeddin said reassuringly.
“For what he’d be wantin’ torn old stockin’s, sir, I canna be guessin’.”
“No doubt he has a use for them.” Mrs. Coutts had said that his houseguest had bought large shoes and stuffed them with wadding, to appear more manly.
“Aye, p’raps, sir. But I didna wish you to believe I’ve no’ been doin’ for the young master as I do for you.”
“I trust you, Gibbs.”
“Thank you, sir.” The Scot nodded. “Good Sunday on the morrow to you.”
“And to you.” He closed the door on the chilly afternoon.
Good Sunday.
Unlikely. Not while she lived in his house, confounding his manservant, winning over his housekeeper, and making him ache with even the quickest glance.
Hours spent away from this house were not proving sufficient to undo what happened to him each time she came close.
He should cancel the sittings. Better yet, he should send her back to her friend’s house in Leith. Or he could write to Alice Campbell and entreat her to hire a house in Edinburgh and take on a young medical student as a boarder. Why hadn’t the woman done that already?
Because she wasn’t mad.
The package from the stationer’s shop bore the name Joseph Smart. Gibbs could not read. But he cut hair extraordinarily well, shaved a man with a steady hand, and kept everybody’s clothing free of paint stains on the one hand and blood on the other. And he was blessedly obtuse enough not to realize that the young master was a woman.
The Prince Page 16