His already red face flushed even more. Angus Parker was enrolled at the Academy and Nora thought he had talent. She suspected he would never be a great painter, but he could make a comfortable living if he agreed to do portraits.
“Was that all?” she asked when he continued to bounce on his heels and look nervous.
“Well, not really.”
She cocked her head and gave him a patient look.
“I’m sorry, Nat, but the gentleman who bought it asked to meet you.”
“Angus, you know how I feel about that.”
He nodded, his expression anxious. “I know it’s unusual, but he paid a great whopping pile for it.”
As if that makes some difference to me. But she smiled to soften her next words. “I’ll consider it and get back to you, Angus.” And say, no, but he didn’t need to know that.
Instead of nodding and taking his leave, he kept bouncing.
She sighed. “You’ve brought him here, haven’t you?”
Before he could answer a man emerged from the adjoining room—a dining room she used to hold the overflow from her studio.
“Hello, Natalie.”
She had to laugh. “Hello, Mr. Smith. Why am I not surprised that you were the one to find me?”
❈❈❈
Mr. Smith
Once Nora had dispatched the rather bovine-looking Angus with the pocketful of banknotes Smith had given him—after listening to his repeated assurances to Smith that he’d have the painting delivered by the end of the week—they settled in her astoundingly cluttered sitting room. In fact, he’d not been in a house this cramped, crowded, and cluttered in—well, maybe never.
“Would you care for a drink?” she gestured to a decanter and some mismatched chipped glasses which looked none to clean.
“Thank you, but I’m fine.”
She grinned at him—the rare flash of amusement that changed her face from intriguing to transcendent. “You’re afraid you’ll catch some sort of dreadful disease.”
To his surprise, his face heated—when had that last happened? Not in this decade. “Ah, go on, then—I’ll have a glass of the less brown one.”
She laughed and poured them both glasses and handed one to Smith before lowering herself into the opposite chair. She was garbed in a heavy smock-type apron and he was fairly certain she wore nothing beneath it.
He took a sip, pleasantly surprised.
“You see,” she said, lifting her glass and eyebrows.
“I’d ask how you’re doing but I can see you’re blooming.”
“Even if I’m doing it on a dung heap.”
Smith laughed. She’d always been quick, cutting, and clever. At least with him.
“I know Edward would never send you, but I sense you’ve come on his behalf.”
He blinked at this frontal assault. “You’re correct—he didn’t send me. He doesn’t know I’ve found you.”
“How did you find me?” her eyes narrowed. “Oh, wait—Charles. What a little rat.”
Smith’s amusement evaporated. “That little rat just happens to belong to me now, so I caution you to speak carefully.”
Rather than cowering at his cold tone, which generally sent grown, armed men running for cover, she laughed.
God, what a woman.
“So,” she said, throwing back the remains of her glass. “You still haven’t told me why you’re here.” She was thinner than before—and she’d already been thin—harder and more concentrated, somehow. He supposed this was the real Nora, rather than the woman who’d been Fanshawe’s kept mistress.
“Two reasons: one, I want to commission you to do a portrait, and two, Edward wants to send you a letter.”
She recoiled in surprise—and disbelief. “Edward wants. Not you, putting him up to it or, God forbid, actually writing it?”
“No, Edward said he wished he at least had your direction so that he could send you a letter.” As lies went, it was fairly pathetic.
“Hmph. And whose portrait?”
“Mine. And Charles’s.”
That made her eyes open. “You want a portrait together.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yes.”
“I’m not a portrait artist, Smith. There are people I could refer you to who would—”
“Not for this type of portrait.”
Comprehension dawned quickly in her pale eyes and she smiled a rather wicked smile that made him feel like a boy caught rubbing one off in a closet.
“You want an erotic portrait.”
“Yes, go ahead, enjoy yourself. I’m not ashamed.” Smith took a drink. Not ashamed—but bloody embarrassed. While he was proud of his body, he wasn’t sure he was proud enough to have it captured for posterity. Especially not in a portrait that would, if not get both of them killed, then certainly get them run out of the country. But he’d wagered with Charles and the little bastard had won and this was what he wanted. Smith was not a welsher.
She nodded her head, her expression watchful, speculative. But Smith, with his nose for blood and instinct for the kill, knew she would comply with both his requests.
“Give me a week to consider it—both,” she amended.
He smiled. He could spend the week deciding in which room of his she would paint their erotic portrait.
❈❈❈
“You saw her?”
“For the fifth time, Edward, yes: I saw her. As in spoke to her, not passed her on the street in a carriage.”
It was a sign of Edward’s distraction that he didn’t respond to Smith’s sarcasm.
“And she said she would welcome a letter from me.”
If Smith were a praying man, this would have been a perfect time. Instead, he said. “Yes. Apparently, the last time you two saw each other was . . . well, not a happy leave-taking.”
Edward snorted, but there was no humor in the sound. “You could say that.” He looked up suddenly, the muscles in his gaunt face taut. “Has she seen Catherine? Are the two—”
He still couldn’t say it, even though his former wife’s antics were making the scandal sheets millions of pounds.
“No,” Smith said, hoping like hell it was true. Just because he’d seen men’s clothing—dirty drawers, for God’s sake!—scattered around Nora’s vile little hovel did not mean she wouldn’t be seeing Catherine Fanshawe as well. Nora—or Natalie—even went beyond Smith’s sexual tolerance. The thought of Charles touching or being touched by another was enough to make him—
“I’m surprised,” Edward said, interrupting Smith in the mental process of beating one of Charles’s non-existent lovers to death.
“Oh?” he said, just to keep the man talking. Not an easy task these days.
“I would have thought Catherine would have found her.”
“I think Catherine has other interests these days.”
Edward blinked and then smiled, wryly. “Yes, I’ve enjoyed reading about them.”
Smith’s eyes bulged. “You can’t be serious.”
Edward shrugged. “Why not?”
Smith did something he rarely did: he sputtered.
Edward did something he did even more rarely—he gave a genuine laugh. “Oh, don’t worry about offending me. You are remembering how I controlled her every movement when she lived here. Or the foolish, vain, arrogant, and ignorant way in which I went about marrying her in the first place?”
“Well, yes, actually.”
Edward threw his head back and laughed until there were tears in his eyes.
Well, it was a day for surprises—first Nora—and now this.
When he’d composed himself, he sat back in the big black leather chair he favored, his rawboned frame—much lighter these days—relaxing for a change. “I don’t care what Catherine does. I just hope she finds some happiness in her life.” He cut Smith a quick, almost embarrassed look. “I know it sounds … weak for a man to say this about a woman who divorced him, but I got out of our marriage with far less trouble than I deserved.”
“I can see by your expression you’re thinking of money,” Edward said, surprising Smith with his astuteness. It used to be the man didn’t see past the end of his large nose.
“What do you mean, if you don’t mind me asking?”
Edward shook his head. “You didn’t see her that night—the night she lost the child.”
Smith knew almost nothing about it and had never dared to ask. He said nothing now.
“She did something to herself to get rid of the baby.”
Smith stopped breathing while the other man bled in front of him.
“She never wanted it and she never wanted me. And I swear to you, Smith,” he looked up at him with eyes raw with anguish, “As I sat there, believing she would die as well? I couldn’t believe that it took so long for me to see what I’d done to her. To me.” He gulped so loud Smith could almost feel it. “To Nora. Can you believe I never saw it until that night?”
No, Smith really couldn’t. But it was hardly what the man needed to hear right now. “I’m sorry about the child, but she didn’t die.” Smith scrambled to put his thoughts into words. He truly liked this rather thick-headed man across from him. And he didn’t like or care for many people. Indeed, the number barely exceeded one hand. “You can punish yourself until you die, and it will never erase what you did to Lady Catherine or Nora.”
Edward snorted. “If this is your idea of how to talk a person out of the—”
“Punishing yourself helps no one.”
Edward’s intense stare—as if Smith held the answer—almost melted his skin from his body.
“Do you want her back?” He didn’t have to clarify who he was talking about.
Edward’s chest expanded and expanded until he released two explosive words. “God, yes.” He dropped his shockingly white head in his hands. “But there is no way—none. The way I treated her—”
“If we’re talking about the same Nora I think she loved and encouraged a lot of your bad behavior.”
Edward’s head swung up. “Tell me what you did that night. Just—tell me.”
Again, Smith knew what he meant.
He propped his elbows on his knees and leaned forward, waiting until Edward did the same, his expression filled with such fearful anticipation it was painful to see. “We talked, Edward. That’s what we did.”
Edward blinked. “You talked.”
“Yes, talked.” He felt like he was trapped in a loop.
“You never touched her?”
Luckily Smith never hesitated. “Not except to kiss her cheek goodbye.” Even that, he could see, made the man’s mouth harden. He’d never seen such a jealous man in his life.
Well, except perhaps himself.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The first letter came the week after she began her portrait of Smith and Charles.
She’d made her decision to paint the men earlier, but the discussion about how to paint them dragged on.
“I want you to paint me with Smith’s cock buried in my arse,” Charles had declared—his declaration surprising neither Nora nor Smith since he must have said it fifty times. “And I want the picture to show the head of my cock—my piercing.”
Nora and Smith had exchanged looks and Smith had, yet again, explained why a less graphic image might be preferable. Eventually, there had been a compromise. They’d be painted on a chaise, Smith lying behind Charles, who would have an erect cock—and yes she’d make sure his precious piercing was visible—and the men flushed from an activity that would be obvious to any viewer, not that Smith had any intention of showing the portrait to anyone. Charles, on the other hand, well …
The sessions—or sexions, as Charles humorously dubbed them—were singular in her experience, but not unpleasant. Still, she was less than productive given the show the two men put on so that Charles could have an erection during the sittings. When she tried to explain she didn’t need him hard all the time, he’d pouted and Smith had given her that look that said: whatever Charles wanted, Charles got. It was accompanied by the sinister stare that she knew was supposed to flay the skin from her bones and leave her a quivering mass of fear. Smith clearly had no idea whom he was dealing with.
So, to keep Charles satisfied—in every way—the sessions were, quite frankly, two-person orgies. If such a thing existed.
They’d offered to include her, but Nora—for all that she was more than a little intrigued to feel a pierced cock inside her—had learned her lesson about being the third leg of a triangle. That meant she usually spent most of the drive home in Smith’s fine carriage relieving herself of the build-up of sexual tension that came from watching two fine male specimens fuck each other silly.
While they were both too slender for her taste—she did love a big man: big in all ways—they were fit, toned, and possessed beautiful penises. Charles was proportionate. Smith—she already knew from personal experience—was huge, or at least his cock looked huge on such a slender body.
She’d just finished another session and changed out of her painting smock—she left one at Smith’s house for convenience—and was fastening up one of her loose “artist” garments when Smith came in the room.
“Yes?” she said, her hands working at buttons.
He glanced at the open doorway with a furtive look and then said in a low voice. “I need to tell you something.”
“So I’d gathered, otherwise you wouldn’t be lurking.”
“Edward asked me about that night at Tosca’s.”
She frowned. “Why would he have brought that up after all this time?”
Smith shrugged, as guilty as a fox with a hen in its jaws. “Anyhow, I told him I never touched you except to kiss you on the cheek.”
Her hands froze. “What?”
Something that looked like embarrassment flickered across his impassive face. “I’m sorry, Nora, but I had to.”
“Smith,” she said, suddenly furious. “People have to get out of the way of a fast-moving carriage or they have to stop speaking to so-called-friends who’ve betrayed them.” She paused just to let that sink in. “They don’t have to lie about matters long past.”
“Well, not that long—”
“Why did you lie to him? I hate lies.”
“I know, I know. But I had to.”
“I want to know why?”
“Because . . .” He shoved a hand through his neat, short brown hair in an unprecedented display of agitation. “Well, because I like the man.”
Nora raised her eyebrows.
“Oh, not like that,” Smith snapped. “He’s a friend. All right? Are you happy you made me say it?”
Nora snorted. These men. Him, Edward, the whole lot of them behaving as if friendship was dangerous to their masculinity.
“I can see you might be a little . . . angry?”
Nora ignored his foolish question. “And what am I supposed to tell him if he were ever to write me—as you’ve indicated he wishes to do—and asks me about that night?” Nora wouldn’t put it past Edward to have the audacity to ask her such a thing, she knew how jealous and obsessive he was.
She could see Smith flushing even with his rather dark olive skin. “Tell him we just talked.”
She didn’t bother to hold back her laughter. It still made her wet recalling the way Smith had used her that night: he’d been almost as good as Edward with a whip and that big cock of his, which he’d made sure she became very well acquainted with before that night was over. “Oh, is that what you call it where you come from—talking?”
“Very droll.” He worked his jaw from side to side and then, “Will you keep it our secret?”
“I don’t know, Smith.” And like a bolt of lightning, it struck her.
“Nora?” he took a step back. “When you smile like that it makes me think
I should hide all my knives.”
“I’ll keep a secret if you tell me one thing. And no lying.”
“Nora, please.”
Nora stared at him, arrested. Who would have thought the stern man could beg so charmingly?
“I want your first name.”
All signs of placating and begging dissipated and the look that replaced it really did send a shiver down her spine. “I’m not even going to justify that with an answer.”
She felt like a tiny, tiny mouse backed into a corner by a huge cat. But even mice had some power.
She shrugged, pushed past his rigid person to pick up her cloak. “Then I can’t promise you what I’ll say if he asks me.”
Nora found herself pinned to the wall that had just been several feet behind her. Smith’s powerful hands were on her waist and he held pressed firmly, her feet not touching the floor.
She swallowed, but did not look away from his eyes, which put her in mind of bottomless wells. His face was as tight and haughty as those she’d seen on the Egyptian carvings—gods and kings from long ago. She would, she knew already, have to paint him wearing this expression—not in this portrait, but another with only him.
He leaned close enough to whisper the name in her ear.
Nora’s jaw dropped and his eyes narrowed to slits.
“Why, that’s a very nice name,” she said unable to keep the laughter from her voice.
“You really are a dangerous bitch, aren’t you?”
Nora grinned.
As he lowered her gently to the ground, she realized she was more aroused than she’d been in months. She needed somebody like him to manhandle her. Not him but like him.
“What are you two whispering about like a pair of thieves?”
They jumped to find Charles leaning against the doorframe. He’d put on a robe but not bothered to tie it: Nora had never met such an exhibitionist and Smith only encouraged his brattish behavior by pandering to his every whim.
Smith was suddenly sweetness and light and said without hesitation, “It’s a surprise, darling.”
Charles stood up straight, like some kind of pointer hound; his pointer already getting excited. “Ooh, what is it?”
His Harlot (Victorian Decadence Series Book 1) Page 24