Let It Be Love

by Victoria Alexander

  “Although,” Gen said slowly, “I suspect they might sell well.”

  “Let’s hope so,” Fiona said sharply. “Our futures depend on it.”

  “In respect to our future…” Gen studied her older sister. “Regardless of whether you call it art or naughty, won’t this book of yours and Lord Helmsley’s be cause for scandal?”

  “Not if no one knows of our involvement. It will be published anonymously. Our names will never be connected to it.” Fiona narrowed her gaze. “And I want your solemn promises right now that you will never, never reveal this to a solitary soul.”

  The girls exchanged glances.

  “I realize none of you have ever been especially good at keeping secrets, but secrecy now is of the utmost importance.” Fiona met the gaze of each sister in turn. “Should I be embroiled in the level of scandal this could produce, each of you will be disgraced as well.” She shook her head in a mournful manner. “I daresay Aunt Edwina would not look kindly upon sponsoring girls in society whose sister has—”

  “We won’t say a word,” Gen said quickly.

  “Never.” Sophie nodded. “Even if we were tortured by American savages.”

  Belle sniffed. “And we’re offended that you think for so much as a moment that we would.”

  “Good.” Fiona breathed a sigh of relief. The last thing she needed to worry about was word of this absurd venture becoming public. Why, she’d be ruined before she could so much as mutter a word of explanation. And any chance of ever finding a suitable husband would vanish. Whether you called it art or something else altogether, no gentleman would consider taking a wife who drew pictures of naked people, particularly naked men. Whether they cavorted or not.

  Except perhaps one.

  Jonathon didn’t seem the least bit shocked by her drawings. Instead he was amused and complimentary. Indeed, he was enthusiastic about her work. It was most heartening. Jonathon was an unusual man, not at all what she’d expected of the son of a duke. But then she suspected she was not entirely what he’d expected either.

  That too was most heartening.

  The one thing that did not lift her spirits after Jonathon’s admission that he’d thought she was part of a hoax and he had no desire to marry her was this book scheme of Jonathon’s and Oliver’s. Even with a select clientele she couldn’t imagine she could earn the kind of money she needed and in a timely manner. It was possible, she supposed, if indeed there was an eager, if discreet, market for books of this nature. She simply had to trust Jonathon and Oliver in the matter. At the moment, what choice did she have?

  “Are you sure he doesn’t want to marry you?” Gen asked.

  Belle considered her sister. “Perhaps he just doesn’t want to marry you right now?”

  “Isn’t it possible he might change his mind?” Sophie’s voice was thoughtful. “After all, he did kiss you.”

  “Yes, he did.” Fiona smiled with the memory. “And quite nicely too.”

  Belle raised a brow. “How nicely?”

  Fiona grinned. “Very nicely. The man has kissed before.”

  “Well…” Belle drew the word out slowly.

  “I know what you’re thinking, and you can put it out of your mind right now,” Fiona said in her best no-nonsense voice. “Regardless of our circumstances, I have no desire to marry someone who does not want to marry me.”

  “There are ways—”

  “I will not trap him into marriage.” Fiona shook her head.

  “Pity,” Belle murmured.

  Fiona stifled the urge to agree with her sister, but she’d meant what she’d said about not forcing a man into marriage. Still, she had no intention of giving up the idea of marriage to Jonathon either. As far-fetched as she thought this book nonsense was, it would serve the lovely purpose of allowing her to spend a great deal of time with his lordship. And who knew what might happen then?

  There was the promise of something quite wonderful in his eyes when he looked at her. And the hint of something equally wonderful deep inside her when she looked at him. It wasn’t at all like the feelings she’d had for him when she was a girl. This was hesitant, tentative, as if the emotion was entirely too powerful to acknowledge all at once. Deeper, richer and much more important. Like a stew that has simmered almost unnoticed for a very long time. Or a drawing that has been worked and reworked until it was something special and unique and perfect.

  Whatever it was that lingered between the two of them, it was well worth exploring. After all, she had nothing to lose and perhaps a great deal to gain.

  Chapter Six

  The very next day…

  Jonathon paced the length of Oliver’s library, his brow furrowed, an occasional unintelligible muttering coming from his lips. It would have been amusing if it wasn’t so, well, dull.

  “Anything yet?” Fiona said hopefully, and not for the first time.

  Fiona sat at one end of a long table that had been brought in precisely for the purpose of working on The Book, as she now thought of it, poised to write down his every word, although to this point she had done nothing but tap her pen, fight her growing impatience and watch Jonathon pace, which he claimed helped him to think.

  “Soon,” Jonathon murmured.

  Thus far—Fiona glanced at the empty page before her—he had done a great deal of pacing and possibly a great deal of thinking, but it had yet to yield any results. Every now and then Jonathon would break stride, step to the table and study one or more of her drawings.

  With the exception of the space directly in front of her, the table was covered with the drawings of nudes she had produced over the last few years. There were thirty-seven separate drawings in all. The majority were of women posed either individually or in groupings of twos and threes. All the studies of nude men were individual and comprised barely a third of the total. In truth, while it may appear otherwise, there were only two different men who had ever posed for Fiona and the other students, both of whom, at various times, had been intimate friends of Mrs. Kincaid.

  Fiona stifled a yawn and casually glanced at the clock on the mantel at the opposite end of the room. It was too far away and too small to make out the time, but surely they had been in here forever. Oliver had left them alone to work on The Book with a promise to keep Aunt Edwina away. All three agreed she would never understand and probably did not have a good sense of art. Regardless, Oliver had pointedly left the door open and a footman was stationed in the hallway to avoid any hint of impropriety.

  Admittedly, watching Jonathon pace was not entirely unpleasant. He did cut a dashing figure, after all, but surely there was something she could be doing to help other than sitting here waiting to capture whatever literary gems dropped from his lips.

  An image of Jonathon opening his mouth and an emerald popping out flashed into her head and she choked back a laugh.

  He glanced at her. “Did you say something?”

  “No. Nothing.” She smiled pleasantly, then paused. “However, I do have something to say.” She got to her feet, braced her hands on the table and leaned toward him. “Jonathon, we’ve been at this for hours and you’ve yet to dictate a single word.”

  “Surely it hasn’t been that long.” He pulled a gold watch from his pocket and checked the time. “Why, I’ve scarcely been here a full hour yet.”

  “It seems much longer.”

  “It takes time, you know, to come up with an idea for a story. One just doesn’t pull it out of the air.”

  “What a shame,” she murmured.

  “It’s exceptionally difficult. Not at all like”—he scoffed—“drawing.”

  “Drawing?”

  “Yes. You have to admit, art is much easier than literature.”

  She straightened and crossed her arms over her chest. “I needn’t admit anything of the sort, but do tell me why.”

  “With art you start with something already created. Scenery or a vase of flowers or”—he paused for emphasis—“a nude figure, and you simply draw what you
see. Literature starts with nothing but an idea, and usually a vague one at that.” He tapped his head with his forefinger. “It comes entirely from right here.”

  She snorted. “It certainly hasn’t come so far.”

  “It’s not easy.” His tone was lofty. “It takes time.”

  “How much time?”

  “One cannot write on command. Conjure up a story at a moment’s notice.”

  She studied him thoughtfully. “I can.”

  He scoffed. “You cannot.”

  “Would you care to wager on it?”

  “No!” He paused. “What would we wager?”

  She thought for a moment. “A hundred pounds.”

  He gasped. “A hundred pounds?”

  “There’s no time like the present to begin making my fortune. And you can certainly afford to lose a hundred pounds.”

  “Nonetheless, you don’t have a hundred pounds to wager. What do I get if you lose?”

  “I won’t lose.” She smiled.

  “Then it would be exceedingly foolish of me to wager.”

  She shrugged. “As you wish.”

  He studied her carefully. “If I take your wager, I do want something on the table on the slim chance that you do lose.”

  “I really have little to wager.” She waved at the drawings laid out on the table. “My work, of course. An admittedly very nice wardrobe.” She smiled. “I do rather like pretty gowns, especially if they’re French.”

  “I have all the French gowns I need, thank you.”

  “I have some jewelry.”

  “Nor do I want your jewelry.”

  “What then do you want, Jonathon, should I lose? Which I won’t.”

  “I don’t know. Given your limited finances, some thing simple, I should think.” He smiled in a slow and somewhat wicked manner. “A kiss would suffice.”

  “A kiss?” Surprise sounded in her voice, although she should have expected as much. “From a woman you do not wish to marry?”

  “A kiss is not cause for marriage.” He grinned. “If it was, I would be married a dozen times over.”

  “As would I.” She raised a shoulder in an offhand shrug. “However, we have already kissed. Twice, I believe.”

  “But it was under false pretenses.”

  “Ah, yes. I thought you were going to marry me and you thought I was a who—”

  “An actress,” he said quickly. “A very good actress. And as those kisses were part of a mistake, I daresay they don’t count. When you consider it that way, we have never really kissed at all.”

  She narrowed her gaze. “We haven’t?”

  “No. And a first kiss, with you, might well be worth a hundred pounds.”

  “A mere kiss, worth a hundred pounds?” She laughed lightly. “I am flattered.”

  “It’s not a mere kiss, it’s a first kiss, and as such very important.” His voice was somber, but his eyes twinkled. “Why, who knows what might happen after a first kiss.”

  “You are a charming devil, Jonathon.” And a dangerous one at that. Still, there was no real harm in enjoying a bit of flirtation with him. “So we have a wager, then?”

  “Indeed we do.” He waved a grand gesture at her drawings. “Do your best, Fiona, compose a story.”

  “Very well.” She circled the table. “Before you began your pacing and thinking, I believe you mentioned writing something along the lines of a Greek myth. Something of a classical nature.”

  “It seems to go nicely with the”—he cleared his throat—“dress or lack thereof, as well as the settings.”

  “Possibly.” She positioned herself before the table and studied the drawings in an effort to look at them with a fresh eye. As if she were seeing them for the first time.

  For the most part, each figure was drawn, or at least started, during a different lesson and generally completed during the next few lessons or so, usually without the model’s presence. Some of the more complicated drawings, those with more than one figure, had taken several sessions with posed models. Aside from the lack of clothing and perhaps setting, there was no particular theme that connected the works. For the first time, Fiona tried to look at them as a whole rather than as separately produced pieces. As if they were indeed trying to tell a story.

  “Well?” Jonathon said with a smug note in his voice. “It’s not so easy, is it?”

  “I’ve barely begun to consider this,” she muttered.

  He was right, though, about some sort of story based on myth. The figures, as well as their surroundings, sketched in with as few lines as possible so as to be vague and no more than hinted at, seemed to call for exactly that. The nudes were positioned on stone benches or leaned against marble columns or reclined beside fountains. If one looked at the pictures as illustration, a story of sorts did indeed begin to take shape.

  “You said you could do it at a moment’s notice.” He paused significantly. “I think that was the wager. If you now find you cannot—”

  “Of course I can.” She did have a glimmer of an idea, but nothing more. Still, the only way to win this wager might be to start talking and hope something brilliant came out. Even something that made no sense at all would be better than nothing. The wager didn’t stipulate that it had to be a good story. “The ancients used myth as a way of explaining what they had no explanation for. Primarily the natural world. The rise of the sun. The arrangement of the stars—”

  “The phases of the moon.” He nodded. “Go on.”

  “Well…” Well, what? She stared at the drawings for a long moment and abruptly noted a pattern of sorts. “Here we have twelve drawings of individual women.” She rearranged the display, placing the selected dozen drawings aside. “They represent the…” The what? A dozen eggs? A dozen tea cakes? “The…the months of the year.” She flashed him a triumphant smile.

  “Continue.”

  “Very well.” She put the drawings with two female figures on one corner of the table, those with three figures in another and those that consisted of male nudes in yet a third. “The males represent two primary yet opposite forces.”

  “But there are more than two drawings.”

  “Different poses but the same men.” She waved off his objection.

  “The faces look different to me,” he murmured

  “I daresay no one will note their faces, nor notice any difference in appearance,” she said dryly. “Besides, for purposes of our myth, two will serve. Now, then, as I was saying, they represent forces of nature. Opposing forces. Light and dark, perhaps. Or day and night—”

  “Good and evil?”

  “Possibly,” she said slowly. “But that doesn’t seem quite right either. If the twelve ladies are the months of the year, then the two men are—”

  “Winter and Summer.” He rested his hands on the edge of the table and leaned forward, his gaze roving over the drawings. “By Jove, that’s good. That’s very good.”

  “Yes, it is.” She cast him a smug smile, then turned back to her works. “Winter and Summer each want the months of the year. They want the…the favors of the ladies…. No. They want to possess them. That’s it. They are locked in an endless battle over possession. They want them, the months, the ladies, because…” She gestured aimlessly. The answer seemed to be just out of reach. “Because…”

  “Because the months, that is the ladies, are lovely and passionate and exciting, and”—he furrowed his brow—“the men—”

  “Gods,” she said. “They have to be gods.”

  “Absolutely. The gods then want the months because…” He thought for a moment, then grinned. “Because they are selfish beasts, as ancient gods were prone to be. Always thinking of themselves and what fun they could be having. Frolicking and eating grapes with lovely women at their beck and call. An cient gods could never have too many cavorting months around them, you know.”

  “They’re not cavorting,” she said absently, and tried to focus her thoughts. “The more months each god possesses…Of course.” S
he straightened and smacked her palm against her forehead. “The more months a god possesses, the greater his power!Over the earth, the sky—”

  “The very universe itself!”

  “Exactly.” Excitement rang in her voice. “Winter and Summer are locked in battle, in endless combat, for all eternity over possession of the months!” She stopped and wrinkled her nose. “Although we should call them something other than months. Months just doesn’t have the right sound to it.”

  “Goddesses?”

  “Something less than goddesses, I should think.”

  “Less than goddesses but definitely more than mere mortals.” Jonathon moved to a bookshelf and perused the leather-bound volumes. “Surely there’s something here that might help.”

  Fiona joined him. “Homer perhaps?”

  He nodded. “There are all sorts of deities flitting around the Iliad and the Odyssey.” He thought for a moment. “What about graces?”

  “I think there were only three.” She continued to scan the shelves.

  “It’s our story and our myth. I daresay we can do precisely as we please.” He pulled a book out and flipped open the cover. “If we want a dozen graces, we can have a dozen graces.”

  “But we do want it to make a certain amount of sense.”

  “I doubt if that’s necessary.” He paged through the book. “Given the nature of what we are trying to do, and the fact that myths are fictional in the first place, making sense might not be required.”

  “Probably not,” she murmured, and glanced at the book in his hand. “Have you found something?”

  “Not really.” He snapped the book shut and replaced it on the shelf. “What about muses?”

  She shook her head. “Too fanciful, I think. Our story is about forces of nature, not the arts.”

  “I’ve got it.” Jonathon smiled with satisfaction. “Nymphs. If I remember my classical studies right, they were minor goddesses.”

  “Excellent. Nymphs it is, then.” Fiona returned to the table, grabbed a sheet of paper, scribbled Winter on it and then wrote Summer on a second sheet. Quickly she divided the stack of male drawings into two piles, placed the page with Winter on one and Summer on the other. “Now.” She took six of the female drawings and put three on each god’s stack. “Winter and Summer have each won the hearts and loyalty of three nymphs.”