Portrait of My Heart

by Patricia Cabot

  “Oh, Hill won’t be knocking,” Jeremy informed her, lazily stroking her left breast. He watched in fascination as her responsive nipple immediately hardened beneath his touch.

  “What do you mean, Hill won’t be knocking?” Maggie narrowed her eyes suspiciously at him. “You. said you drugged her. Surely …” She gasped. “Jeremy, you didn’t kill her, did you?”

  Jeremy raised an eyebrow. “Of course not. What do you take me for, Mags? I only meant that the opium I slipped her last night has a rather, er, debilitating effect on the uninitiated the following morning—”

  “You mean—”

  “She’ll probably sleep through most of today,” Jeremy said, with badly feigned regret. “If she hasn’t vomited it all up, of course.”

  “Jerry!” Maggie was so horrified, she didn’t even notice that the dog leapt excitedly to his feet at her cry, and began leaping about the bed pillows, yapping. “How could you?”

  “Stop fussing over the woman,” Jeremy said, annoyed that she kept moving out of his reach. “I’ll give her a raise when she comes to. She’ll be fine.”

  “A raise? Jerry, I haven’t been able to pay her regular wages in six months!”

  Jeremy blinked at her. “Oh, well, then. I’ll give her her back wages, a raise, and a bonus for her loyalty.”

  Maggie leaned back against the pillows, flicking an annoyed glance at him. “I think,” she said, “that the person who drugged the maid should have to walk the dog.”

  One of Jeremy’s dark eyebrows lifted. He looked as if he were trying very hard to frown, but one corner of his mouth kept curling upward, betraying his amusement at her declaration. “Oh, you think so, do you?”

  “I do,” Maggie said with a nod, leaning back against the pillows primly.

  Jeremy gave up trying to frown, and smiled instead, all of his white, even teeth showing. “All right, then,” he said with a shrug. “Come on, Jerry. Papa’s taking you for a walk.”

  The little white dog shook itself happily, and waddled to the end of the bed, where it leapt down upon an ottoman Maggie had put there for that very purpose, and from the ottoman to the floor. Jeremy threw back the bedclothes and rose, stretching until his joints popped audibly. Maggie, in the bed, knew she ought not to look at his naked backside, but she was completely incapable of tearing her eyes away. Jeremy’s buttocks were perfectly rounded, with concave indentations on either side of them, and not a hint of the coarse black hair that covered the rest of his body. He was, as Maggie had already determined, a perfect specimen of the human male, both frontward and back. How Madame Bonheur would have adored him as a model for their anatomy class! His inguinal ligament was really quite pronounced.

  “Jerry’s lead,” Maggie said, clearing her throat a little as she watched Jeremy struggle into the trousers he’d abandoned the night before at some point during their lovemaking, “is hanging on a hook in back of the door to the dressing room.”

  Growling to himself, Jeremy padded barefoot to the door, and found the collar and lead. “Right,” he said. “I’ll just pop back down to my own room for something more suitable to wear. I do think the neighbors will talk if I appear walking down Park Lane in my evening wear at nine in the morning.”

  “Whatever you like,” Maggie said airily.

  Jeremy bent to fasten the dog’s collar, but the bichon frise twisted and cavorted so excitedly, it took him nearly a minute to find the tiny gold clasp. Maggie watched from the bed, bemused. When Jeremy finally succeeded in securing the dog, he straightened, and looked at her.

  Sitting up in the white bed, with her dark hair tumbled wildly about her shoulders and a sheet tucked modestly up beneath her arms, Maggie looked exactly as he’d imagined she would after a night of torrid lovemaking. Her lips bore a slightly bruised appearance, from all the kissing they’d done, and there was a shine in her eyes he’d never seen before. More than anything, he wanted to crawl right back into bed with her. Damn the stupid dog, anyway.

  “At your peril,” he said warningly, “do you move out of that bed before I return. Do you understand me, Mags? We have some things to discuss, you and I.”

  Maggie, observing the challenge in his silver eyes, nodded mutely. She did not think arguing was worth the risk of delaying Jerry’s much-needed trip outdoors.

  Jeremy, apparently satisfied with her response, put his hand on the doorknob. When it would not turn, he reached into his trouser pocket, ignoring Maggie’s derisive snort from the bed, and pulled out the key, remembering, albeit belatedly, that he’d locked it the night before to insure no interruptions. After casting a final warning glance at Maggie, he opened the door, peered out to make sure no one was watching, then slipped into the hallway, the dog bounding excitedly behind him.

  Maggie, in the bed, smiled to herself. Jeremy had left behind his shirt, his socks, and his shoes, all strewn across the floor and jumbled with her own clothing from the night before. He was not, she noted, the world’s tidiest person, but then, neither was she. That was probably why they got along so well. Augustin was incredibly tidy, and was forever harping at her for balling her gloves into her pockets and leaving her brushes soaking overnight … .

  Then, as if someone had poured a pitcher of cold water down her back, Maggie bolted upright. Good God. Augustin. The exhibition. The exhibition was opening tomorrow night. The men were arriving to transport Maggie’s paintings at eleven. That was in—Maggie glanced at the clock on her bedside table—an hour and a half!

  In a flash, Maggie was out of bed, and tugging on the bell pull.

  Down the half, Jeremy threw open the door to his own bedroom and strode across it, Maggie’s dog leaping up against his legs, his little claws sinking in deeper and deeper each time.

  “I know,” Jeremy snapped at the dog crossly. “I’m going as fast as I can.”

  He banged open the door to his dressing room, waking Peters, who’d taken to sleeping on a cot beneath Jeremy’s many coats, despite an offer of his own room in the servants’ quarters upstairs. The valet apparently felt such a move might keep him from being readily available, should his colonel need him quickly.

  “Colonel,” he cried happily, sitting up and wiping sleep from his eyes. “Bless me, is it morning already? Where ’ave you been? I waited up as long as I could, sir—”

  “Yes, yes,” Jeremy said sourly. He dragged Jerry forward on his lead. “Walk this, will you?”

  Peters looked down at the excited little dog, and the smile on his face faded. “Colonel! You can’t be serious. Me? Walk that? I’ll be the laughingstock of the—”

  “Just do it,” Jeremy cut him off succinctly. “Now. What did you discover last night, tailing the frog-eater?”

  Peters’s scowl grew even darker. “That if ‘e’s the one what tried to kill you, ’e musta ‘ired somebody else to do it. The Frenchie don’t ’ave it in ‘im, colonel. ’Is light was out by midnight. I never saw a man less likely to stab somebody else wi’ a knife, much less run ’em over with a chaise-and-four.”

  Jeremy, flicking through the many garments hanging from rods above his head, asked irritably, “Where’s my dressing gown? The silk one?”

  Peters reached beneath the cot for his wooden leg, which he hastened to fasten on beneath the trousers he’d fallen asleep in. “Right there to your left, Colonel. You want me to keep tailin’ ’im then, sir?”

  “Yes, of course.” Jeremy thrust his arms through the wide sleeves of a dressing gown made from Indian silk, embroidered all over with images of peacocks and tigers. “What other suspects do we have? It’s got to be the frog-eater.”

  Peters looked skeptical. “If you say so, sir.”

  Jeremy reached around his valet for the Star of Jaipur, which rested in its velvet sack on top of a chest of dresser drawers. Jeremy lifted the small bag, and opened it. The heavy sapphire rolled out into his palm, winking even in the dim light of the dressing room He tossed the sapphire into the air, then caught it, and dropped it into the deep pocket of his dres
sing gown. “Anything else, Peters?”

  “Just this, sir.” Peters removed a folded square of paper from his trouser pocket. With a sinking heart, Jeremy recognized his aunt’s neat cursive, though the address looked as if it had been written in haste. Obviously hand-delivered, since it bore no postmark, its bearer had undoubtedly traveled all night to bring it from Rawlings Manor. “Looks like you’ve been found out, sir.”

  “Damned newspaper article,” Jeremy growled.

  Tearing the letter open, he scanned its contents briefly. He’d been found out, all right. Pegeen was furious. Apparently some complications—minor, but serious enough to have alarmed the surgeon—had kept her from making the trip back to London after the funeral, and Edward had stayed with her. But the fact that Pegeen was bedridden had not kept news of Jeremy’s return to England from creeping back to her. She had an uncanny knack, he remembered, too late, for ferreting out all sorts of information from the servants … even servants over a hundred miles away.

  She demanded that he return to Rawlings Manor at once with an explanation for both the engagement announcement and the fact that he’d remained in the town house with Maggie, unchaperoned, for so long. Or, the note threatened, she’d sic Edward on him.

  And if Edward should happen to miss the birth of our seventh child, she wrote, because he had to go all the way to London to fetch you, Jeremy, I shall personally never, ever forgive you. Your aunt Peggy.

  “Christ,” Jeremy said. “From bad to worse.”

  Peters, still ignoring the barking dog, said expressionlessly, “I’ve already packed your overnight kit, sir. I suspected there might ’ave been some sort of emergency.”

  “Thank you, Peters.” Jeremy stuffed the letter into his pocket, though the Star of Jaipur didn’t leave a lot of room for it. Well, he thought to himself. Perhaps a trip back to Yorkshire wasn’t entirely a bad idea. He wanted to do things properly. In cases like this, he knew, fathers were generally appealed to first. He didn’t relish the idea of asking Sir Arthur for his daughter’s hand, but it would probably be best, under the circumstances. And, as Berangère had pointed out, it might not be a bad idea to try to patch things up between Maggie and her family while he was there.

  Moving to shove his feet into a pair of Indian slippers, the toes of which curled upward, Jeremy began to issue commands, suddenly becoming very much the military leader. “Take that animal to the park, Peters, and make sure you don’t lose him. I wouldn’t let him off the lead, if I were you—”

  “Right.” Peters nodded. “Little rat like ’im might get eaten by a bigger dog.”

  “Exactly. And my chances of actually marrying the woman I want would be significantly decreased should my manservant allow her dog to perish on his morning walk.”

  “Certainly, Colonel.” Peters saluted smartly. “You can count on me.” When Jerry, eager for his walk, struck both his front paws against Peters’s wooden leg, the valet only laughed, instead of flinching in pain, as Jeremy had. “Eh, there, tiger,” he said, bending down to scratch the dog’s ears with actual affection. “Easy, now. We’ll be off as soon as I can get me a shirt on.”

  Jeremy, tying the robe’s sash around his waist, rallied internally for his return to the White Room. He did not believe for a second that Maggie had stayed abed, as ordered. When had she ever done a single thing he’d asked her to? That was certainly part of her charm. How often were dukes disobeyed? About as often as colonels, which was to say, not often.

  But the degree to which she’d managed to disobey him in this particular instance was surprising. Jeremy, returning to Maggie’s bedroom, gaped at the changes wrought in the room during the course of his brief absence. Gone was all evidence of his ever having been there … including his clothing. The bed was stripped and the dressing room door agape. From that room drifted the sounds of vigorous splashing and the nervous chatter of one of the parlormaids. A second later, Maggie herself appeared, in the tartan dressing gown he’d disparaged just the day before, her hair caught up damply in some kind of braid.

  Her eyes widened upon seeing him at the threshold of her room, and with a hasty glance over her shoulder, to insure the maid was otherwise occupied, she hissed, “What are you doing back so soon? Where’s Jerry? And what have you got on?”

  Jeremy looked down at himself. “My dressing gown,” he replied, in an injured tone.

  Maggie snorted. “I’ll say.” She stalked over to her dressing table.

  “Well,” Jeremy said. “You’re one to talk. Where’d you get the one you have on? The ragpicker’s bin?”

  “Very funny,” Maggie observed, as she dipped her fingers into a pot of cream, which she began liberally applying to her face. “Where is my dog?”

  “Peters took him to the park,” Jeremy said. He glanced crossly at the dressing room door. “I thought I told you—”

  “I cannot believe,” Maggie declared, her eyes very wide and dark as they peered out at him from all the white stuff on her face, “that you have the gall to ask a one-legged man to walk my dog. Really, Jeremy.”

  Behind her, the dressing room door swung open, and Pamela, a fresh-faced girl who’d been imported to London from the family of one of Rawlings Manor’s tenant farmers, came bustling into the room, carrying an armful of clothing. “Is this the dress you wanted, miss?” she asked, directly before colliding into Jeremy.

  “Oh!” Her blue eyes round as saucers, the maid dropped all of Maggie’s clothes and dipped a shame-faced curtsy. “Your Grace! I beg your pardon, Your Grace! I didn’t see you!”

  “Never mind that, Pamela,” Maggie said. She wiped the cream from her face before rising calmly to help the girl retrieve the items she’d dropped. “His Grace was just leaving. Weren’t you, Your Grace?”

  “In a moment, Pamela,” Jeremy said, and he bent down and seized Maggie by the arm. “I just need a word in private with Miss Herbert.” So saying, he dragged Maggie into the dressing room, where he saw traces of a hastily drawn bath. Closing the dressing room door behind them, he turned and looked down at Maggie rebukingly. “I thought I told you not to get out of that bed.”

  “I thought I told you to walk my dog,” Maggie retorted.

  “Your dog is being walked,” Jeremy pointed out. “I did not renege on my part of the bargain.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t have reneged on mine,” Maggie assured him, reaching up to adjust the lapels of his dressing gown, one of which was flipped the wrong way, “if I hadn’t remembered that I have movers arriving at my studio at eleven o’clock, and that I’ve got to be there to meet them.”

  “Movers?”

  “Yes, Jeremy. The exhibition, tomorrow night. Remember? They’ve got to transport the paintings to Augustin’s gallery—”

  At the mention of the Frenchman’s name, a glower spread across Jeremy’s face. “Look,” he said urgently. “I’ve got to talk to you.”

  “Jeremy, honestly, I haven’t time. I’m running very late. And you’ve already managed to shock Pamela to the core. We’ll talk later … .”

  She started moving toward the door, but Jeremy caught her by the sash of the hideous plaid dressing gown. When Maggie turned a questioning—and somewhat annoyed—glance toward him, he said only, “Here. I’ve got to go away for a while. Watch this for me while I’m gone, all right?”

  And, desperate to show her, since he could not seem to tell her, how he felt about her, he took the Star of Jaipur from his own dressing gown’s pocket and dropped it into hers.

  Shocked, Maggie stared not at the enormous sapphire—she seemed hardly to have noticed it—but at Jeremy’s departing back. “Away?” she echoed lamely. “Where, Jerry? Where are you going? When are you coming back?”

  But the only reply to her question was the click of her bedroom door as he closed it behind him.

  Chapter 32

  No painter, Maggie knew, liked to see her creations handled by anyone save herself. Who else but the artist can know the toil and sweat that goes into a certain work
? And then to see that work hefted by a burly man who commented that they were “pretty enough pitchers” and looked as if he hadn’t seen a bath in years … well, what artist wouldn’t experience a sense of unease?

  But for Maggie, unease over the handling of her works was the least of her worries. She also had that awkward scene with Jeremy earlier that morning to mull over. By the time she’d gathered her senses enough to go looking for him, she’d found that he hadn’t been joking … he really had gone away! His valet was nowhere to be found, either. Oh, he’d returned her dog, but then, according to a very indignant Evers, he’d disappeared out the door mere seconds later!

  Maggie supposed she hadn’t handled Jeremy and his request to “talk” very tactfully. She needn’t have been so short with him. But her mind had been full of her upcoming exhibition! Surely a woman—a business woman—could be excused for having a more pressing engagement … .

  Engagement! The very word made her want to smack her hand to her forehead. What was she going to do about Augustin? She had to find a way today to break off their engagement. She simply couldn’t go on letting him think that … well, that she could ever do what she’d been doing for two days now with Jeremy with him. It simply wasn’t in the realm of the possible. Whatever happened with Jeremy—and she was far from convinced that the two of them would ever work out a mutually amicable arrangement, except perhaps, where the bedroom was concerned; they never seemed to have any problems when they were in bed together. It was only when they got out of bed that all sorts of disasters occurred—there would never be anyone else for her. However grateful she might be to Augustin for all his kindnesses to her, she knew she could never let him … Oh, dear, she blushed to even think about it!

  It was because of these worries that what ought to have been quite simple, really, turned into a nightmare. Maggie could not seem to keep her mind on the task at hand … as Augustin, already put out with her over the fact that she arrived half an hour late to begin with, causing him to have to pay the moving men for a half hour of loitering about in the hallway, pointed out, several times.