A Study in Scandal (Scandalous)

by Caroline Linden

  “Right.” He retreated to his canvas, nudging the easel so he could more easily spy around the side and see her. “I hope you have some fondness for landscapes.”

  “Yes.” She was taking stock of the canvases stacked around the room. “Have you got a measuring tape?”

  “Oh—yes.” He scrambled to find it, tucking away another interesting fact. She knew to record the dimensions of a painting. She thanked him with a bright smile, and he felt it like a mule kick to the chest. He didn’t know her name, her family, her situation, and she had already admitted she was defying her father, who was determined to marry her to a cruel and dangerous man; all these factors should persuade him to keep her at a very wary distance, and yet he had the growing feeling that he would end up doing just the opposite.

  She worked quietly, and with some effort Gray turned his attention back to the canvas in front of him. The hurricane had been set aside; the dark-haired woman who had escaped disaster no longer interested him. He had already sketched in the broad strokes of the soaring cathedral. Once inspiration struck, he was capable of working exhausting hours, unable to think of food or sleep. For a while he worked at filling in the figures of the background: the gossiping women in fashionable gowns, the dozing gentleman with his dog half-hidden under his feet, the sanctimonious curate fawning over the red-faced nobleman commanding his attention. Only at the center did he leave a blank spot, for the girl.

  After several hours of peace, Gray dared a covert glance around the canvas. Samantha had a small portrait on the second easel. He watched as she carefully measured it, noted the dimensions, and kept writing.

  And writing. And writing some more. What was she writing?

  “Coming on all right?” he asked.

  She looked up, startled. Her eyes were as green as the Irish Sea near Kirkwood. “Yes. Would you like to see? I should have asked if you had any particular requirements.”

  “Of course.” He wiped his hands and strode across the room, telling himself it was purely to see what she’d done, and not simply to stand next to her. She handed him the book, and it took him a moment to register anything about it. Wisps of blond hair had come loose from the braided knot at her nape and curled around her neck. Even in a fairly dowdy blue dress she was beautiful.

  “Will it do?” she asked as he stared at her.

  Gray snapped his gaze down to the notebook. “Yes,” he said automatically, and then he started to really read it. It was more than adequate, to his surprise. He turned the page, and saw the same meticulous care applied to every picture. She had described them, noted the dimensions, the medium, and questions: year? subject? companion pieces? “It’s excellent,” he murmured.

  Her face glowed. “I’m so glad. I didn’t wish to disturb you to ask titles, but I left a place for them.”

  “I haven’t got titles for most,” he said absently. She had recorded everything so that he could cut the paper into slips, one for each painting, and pin them on the back as labels.

  “Once it’s complete, if you fill in the years of creation and other missing information, I’ll create a master list in chronological order for you to keep. It will help as you send pieces to dealers and exhibitions, for you can record where each painting was sent and who purchased it.”

  “How did you know to do it this way?” Gray asked, still marveling at her notes. “This is exactly what I need. How did you know?”

  He looked up in time to see the flash of alarm in her face, as if he’d just discovered something distasteful about her. Then she laughed a little. “Oh—I presumed… Did I do it well, then?”

  “Beautifully.” Another useful fact: she knew what sort of records art dealers kept. “But it’s not complete.” He held out the book. “There are no illustrations.”

  Her expression was perfectly blank, then she burst out laughing. “Those don’t belong in a catalog!”

  “In my catalog they do.” He retrieved the pencil and gave it to her. “I like dogs and horses.”

  “Horses are impossible!” But she took the pencil, her face still flushed with laughter.

  Gray grinned. “Hedgehogs. Squirrels. Deer and snakes and elephants.”

  She gave him a stern glance. Irrationally buoyed, he went back to his canvas.

  It astonished him that he could work with her in the room, but somehow he did. Mrs. Willis, well used to his painting habits, made only a token fuss about Samantha working in the studio with him, and soon his daily routine seemed to revolve around her arrival. Normally he liked quiet while he painted, as the scene came to vivid life, complete with sound, in his head. But Samantha’s presence, far from disturbing him, seemed to improve his focus. Everything came off his brush the right way, and inspiration abounded. He added a mouse to the corner, stealing crumbs from the hem of the curate’s robes. The only thing he didn’t paint a single stroke of was the girl at the center of the piece. He was waiting for her.

  It never escaped his mind that these days with Samantha would end. Every time he stole a glimpse of her bent over another picture, he felt a growing need to find some happy solution to her problem. A solution that would allow her to return home without fear. A solution that would permit her to find a more acceptable husband, one she would never run from in terror. One who would appreciate what a beauty she was, and how kind she was, and one who knew how to make her eyes light up with mischief and delight.

  He tried very hard not to let his thoughts drift too far down that path. Gray had nothing against matrimony—he was twenty-seven, after all, and certainly didn’t want to grow old alone—but he feared he would make a poor husband right now. What sort of wife would tolerate a husband who disappeared into a painting studio for hours, even days, at a time? What woman would overlook the smell of mineral spirits and oil paints? Samantha did, but only because she was hiding from something even worse. Which was not to say he enjoyed the thought of her married to someone else. And if he let himself think of another man holding her close and kissing her, nuzzling her neck until she laughed and let her eyes drop closed as the fellow laid her back and unbuttoned her dress to savor her lovely breasts… He blotted the canvas in a way that made him swear out loud.

  All in all, Gray thought the best choice was to find an argument that would dissuade her father from his course. What she chose to do after that would be her decision entirely.

  Samantha knew the idyll could not last forever.

  The question of her future hovered over her, like the grim and dour portrait of some Stratford ancestor that used to hang in the parlor where she had her dance lessons. She could almost feel that long-dead earl glaring down on her, as he had done on her lessons: shame, he seemed to whisper in disdain. She was a shame to the illustrious Stratford family, a thief and a liar and now a runaway.

  Despite many hours spent agonizing over it, she hadn’t formulated a promising plan. More than ever she wished she had some way to speak to Benedict, but with each day that slipped away, it seemed harder and harder. Mindful of her father’s presence in London, she tried to avoid leaving the house, although if Gray invited her to walk around the corner to purchase more paint, she found it hard to refuse. As long as she was with him, she felt safe.

  But Samantha knew he must be thinking about her situation, too, and was not surprised when he asked, after a few days of work on his catalog, “What did you do that angered your father?”

  She took a moment to frame her answer. “I tried to help someone I was very fond of.” How long ago it felt, that she’d fancied herself in love with Sebastian. “He was a dear friend of my brother’s and his family had suffered terrible misfortunes. I stole some money from my father and gave it to my friend, hoping it would help him.”

  “Did it?”

  She sighed bitterly. “It made things worse. My father thought he had stolen the money, and called him a thief.”

  “And your father never suspected you?”

  She shook her head. Stratford had been perfectly pleased to think Sebastian V
ane was the thief. That was the only reason she could think of for why he had never investigated the matter further.

  “But you told him,” Gray went on slowly. “And he was angry. Not shocking, I suppose.”

  “What would your father do?” she asked. “If he discovered you had lied to him.”

  “If! You speak as though it never happened.” He grinned. “It depended on the lie. If I hadn’t done my lessons, I had to do them twice, under his eye. If I fought with my brothers, he made me apologize to my mother for not heeding her instruction on proper gentlemanly deportment. She had a way of looking so disappointed, I dreaded that more than doing the Latin twice.”

  She smiled wistfully.

  “Does he know this fellow is cruel?”

  Gray’s voice made her start. She looked up to see him watching her. Today his long hair was tied back with a bit of string, and it made his dark eyes all the more piercing.

  “The fellow your father would like you to marry,” he added in a gentle voice.

  Samantha looked away. “Yes.” She could feel his gaze on her still.

  “I tried to think what my father would do if he had the power to arrange his children’s marriages at whim. Tom in particular gives him fits, and if Father could find a woman to settle him, he would move heaven and earth to get her into a church. But I can’t imagine he would want someone Tom didn’t fancy in the slightest.”

  “It’s different with daughters,” Samantha said in a low voice.

  “I thought of that, too,” Gray said, unruffled. “My conclusion there is that he’d put Rowland to rack and ruin before he gave a daughter of his to any but the most highly approved man in England. And then I suspect he’d keep his eye on the fellow all the rest of his days, to be sure his daughter was happy.”

  Unconsciously her fingers tightened on the pencil. Slowly she drew a curved line in the margin, where he had told her he wanted illustration. “But you don’t know… He has no daughter, let alone one who lied to him and stole from him…”

  “I pictured a younger version of my mother. The one time my father raised a hand to any of us boys was the time Rob—very ill-advisedly—threw off her hand and shouted at her. He thought he was too old to be scolded about his manners, and it made her weep. Father took him by the throat and pinned him up against the wall until Rob nearly soiled himself, and after that none of us dared say a smart word to our mother.”

  Samantha drew another curve, opposite the first, then two tiny triangles. “He’s not like my father.”

  “I gathered.” Gray was quiet for several minutes. Samantha’s fingers kept working, feathering lines along the lower curve, adding eyes and whiskers. “Are you of age?”

  She dropped the pencil, then blushed furiously at the question. “Yes.”

  “Then you don’t need his permission to marry.”

  Just as Jenny had suggested: If’n you run off with someone else, your pa couldn’t make you marry the other one. Samantha retrieved the pencil and finished her doodle with sharp, angry strokes. The frightened little fox gazed off the page at her, tucked under a concealing hedge. All well and good for Jenny, who was only fifteen, and Gray, who was a man, to say she could solve her problem by marrying someone else. As if there was anyone she could possibly marry…

  She looked up and caught Gray’s eyes again. No longer painting, he stood watching her with his arms folded, his face serious. And just like that, Jenny’s other suggestion welled up in her mind. If she seduced Gray, like that wicked Lady Constance in the pamphlet, she’d be ruined as a bride for the Marquess of Dorre’s son, as surely as if she eloped with someone else.

  Just as quickly as the thought came to her, Samantha recoiled from it. “What are you saying?” she snapped. She stood up and dropped the catalog on the chair. “That I should make a hasty marriage, because anyone would be better than Lord Ph—?”

  “No!” he said violently, crossing the room in three steps. “I meant that if you had another suitor, more acceptable to you, he could be prompted to save you from…” His words trailed off as first one, then a half dozen tears slid down her cheeks. “Samantha…”

  “There’s no one else,” she choked. “No other suitor—I was never allowed to have any. None of them suited Father, you see? There may not be a man in England who would marry me, and certainly none who could be called upon to conduct an illicit courtship in extreme haste—”

  He pushed a handkerchief into her hand. “I daresay there’s a hundred men in London who would leap at the chance to court you, if offered. Not that I suggested that.”

  “It would be a stupid proposal, if you did,” she raged on, unable to stop the tears. She was twenty-three, sheltered and caged by her gilded existence, without a suitor of any kind, and helpless to save herself. She didn’t even have a friend to unburden herself to but had to run away and lose herself among strangers. “You should know that.”

  “Because…?”

  “Because I can’t just marry any man I please!”

  “And why not, if you’re of age?”

  She dragged the handkerchief over her eyes once more and put it down. “Without a likely candidate, it hardly matters. I know—I’ve known all along—that I have to go back eventually. Perhaps if I stay away long enough, it will disrupt the match he’s arranged. Then it won’t matter, and I’ll spend the rest of my life at home, taking care to stay out of his sight—”

  Her despondent diatribe was cut short when Gray tipped up her chin and kissed her. Samantha inhaled in shock, but almost instantly relaxed. His lips were soft and warm against hers. She’d never been kissed before and it was…lovely. Tentatively she responded. His hands cupped her jaw, holding her, and when she made a murmur of astonishment, his tongue traced her lips in suggestion.

  It made her think of some of the more wicked things in 50 Ways to Sin. Somehow she’d managed to borrow a great many more than two from Jenny. It seemed to have catapulted Samantha headlong from innocent girl to a woman, whose longings and feelings suddenly felt normal instead of shamefully indecent. She had imagined lovemaking as something to be endured as her duty to a husband; it was the only way to provide an heir and therefore she must resign herself to it. But Constance reveled in it and abruptly Samantha knew why. Just kissing Gray was wonderful. Perhaps she too would become a notorious woman and live a decadent and independent life… She opened her mouth to his questing tongue, and promptly forgot everything else.

  She didn’t know how long the kiss lasted, but she felt breathless and disoriented when it ended, and at the same time she hoped he’d kiss her again.

  “Never say there’s not a man in England who would marry you,” Gray murmured. His hands moved over her shoulders, gliding softly down her back.

  Samantha clung to him. Kissing her wasn’t the same as wanting to marry her, but she had a feeling Gray would be more than happy to carry her over to the chaise and show her the sorts of pleasure Lady Constance wrote of. His muscles were tense and hard beneath her hands, his breathing ragged as he held her close.

  And for the first time in her life, Samantha felt bold and daring enough to do it. What would it cost her that she hadn’t already lost? She had lived her whole life knowing she would marry the man her father chose, a man who might well not want her. This could be her only chance to have a man who pleased her…

  Feeling reckless, she turned her head and pressed her lips against Gray’s jaw. The scratch of stubble made her shiver; he felt so masculine, so different, and a shiver of excitement went through her. Her arm slid around his neck and she went up on her toes to brush her lips against his.

  Gray’s arms tightened around her, pulling her against him. “If you kiss me that way, you’re asking for trouble,” he whispered, his voice a low rumble in his chest.

  “What kind of trouble?” Samantha was shocked by the breathless, eager tone of her voice. And yet she was also thrilled by the feel of him against her.

  For answer he kissed her back, his fingers plowing i
nto her hair and his mouth harder, demanding. Her lips parted in astonishment, and his tongue swept in, tasting her. He took two steps forward and her back hit the wall. Gray leaned into her, pressing their bodies together from shoulder to hip, and his knee pushed between her legs.

  Samantha gasped, and he groaned, rocking back and forth ever-so-slightly. His thigh rose between hers until it nestled against her intimately—the place Lady Constance called her quim—and instead of feeling invasive it felt so right she rubbed against him.

  With a start Gray broke the kiss. His eyes were almost black, and his chest heaved. He stared at her for a moment, his brows drawn together, then he took a big step back even though his hands remained on her, holding her to the wall. “Trouble,” he rasped. “The sort of trouble you don’t need.” Gingerly, as if afraid she’d fall over, he released her.

  She wrapped her arms around her waist, realizing her nipples were standing firm and hard under her dress. Gray looked as rattled as she felt, so she half turned away, unsure what to say. “Thank you.”

  “Thank—?” He gave a bark of rueful laughter and retreated another step. “You should slap my face.”

  “No.” She looked up at him. “I liked it.”

  His pained smile faded. He looked at her for a long, searching moment. “So did I.”

  Even though she knew it was wrong, his admission sparked a glow inside her. She ducked her head so he couldn’t see her tiny smile of delight. Her first real kiss, more thrilling and stirring than she had ever expected.

  “Samantha.” When she looked up, Gray looked more in control of himself again. “I promised you would not have to go home. I meant it.”

  “I have nowhere else—”

  “You will,” he cut off her protest. “Give me time and I will have a safe, respectable place for you to stay as long as you wish, and your father will not be able to touch you. Will you trust me?”

  She should politely refuse, but…that kiss. “Yes,” she whispered. “I do.”