A pang of jealousy stabbed into Eve so fiercely that she winced. She had to turn away, back toward the dressing table, before her sister could see the pain on her face. Mariah had found a second mother in Elizabeth Carlisle, while all Eve had was a ghost who still haunted her. Even now in her own reflection, her mother seemed to stare out at her from the mirror. The same eyes, the same hair…
“I’m like her, aren’t I?” Eve whispered.
Mariah smiled as she laid the dress across Eve’s bed. “Who?”
“Mama.”
Mariah laughed faintly. “In some ways, exactly like her.”
Eve’s chest constricted.
“All those stories Papa likes to tell about how rambunctious she was, all the trouble she got into, all the antics she caused.” Mariah smoothed out the gown’s skirt and checked its hem. “Apparently, she couldn’t sit still either.”
Eve’s heart began to race the way it always did when she thought of Mama, paired with that metallic taste of fear on her tongue. The same reaction that even now, fifteen years after her mother’s death, sometimes made her too terrified to fall asleep at night, for fear that she’d die just like her mother, by going to sleep and never waking up.
Mariah came up behind her and studied her reflection in the mirror. “Sitting here like this, you look exactly like her in her portrait.”
Her throat tightened. Eve didn’t have to look at the portrait to know that. She’d been only eight when Mama died, but she remembered everything about her. How could she not, when they were so similar? The beauty and grace that Dom saw in her wasn’t hers—it belonged to her mother.
Would Eve inherit her short life, as well? All things died—Eve had come to accept that since Mama’s death—whether today, five years from now, or fifty. What terrified her was wasting what precious little time she might be given to live.
Her maid knocked lightly on the door before hurrying into the room, freshly laundered undergarments and hot tongs in her hands.
Mariah leaned down to whisper in her ear. “You are beautiful, Eve, inside and out.” She kissed her cheek before pulling away to let her maid have her. “And damn the man who isn’t intelligent enough to realize that.”
She was dressed in double-time and in the carriage with Mariah and Robert on the way to Lady Hawthorne’s ball before she found a moment to take a deep breath. Her maid had outdone herself, piling her ginger hair onto her head in a coil of loose curls that accentuated the sapphire earbobs and necklace that finished her gown, the ice-blue satin shimmering in stark contrast to the jewels.
When she handed her invitation to the Master of Ceremonies to be announced, electricity tingled through her at all the possibilities for the evening, all the wonderful things she might do and see at the party.
But her excitement soon dissipated into boredom as she found herself surrounded by friends whose gossipy chatter she found tedious. Sheer mind-numbing dullness followed from one conversation after another about the season’s events, the latest fashions, the merits of muslin over wool, the drastic new changes to the Regent’s Street area and the unchanging monotony of Pall Mall…
Only when she dared to destroy the boredom by announcing her opinion that all Englishmen should take up the Scottish tradition of wearing kilts did a glimmer of excitement pulse through her.
But her friends had stared at her as if she’d sprung a second head.
With a long sigh, she snagged a glass of champagne from a passing footman. She would have to make her way to the Carlisles soon and thank the dowager duchess for securing an invitation to tonight’s ball for her. But for now she had a few minutes to take in the grand party around her.
What would Domenico make of this? Undoubtedly he’d hate it as much as she did. All the stiffness, the pained propriety of it…not that he would ever have been invited in the first place. Not with his reputation. Not when the Archbishop of Canterbury was in attendance and might have had to speak to him by accident of proximity. What Eve wouldn’t give to watch that meeting! The evening would certainly be lively then.
Her attention drifted across the ballroom as a man appeared at the top of the stairs and handed his invitation to the Master of Ceremonies. A man so achingly familiar that her heart stopped. When it started it again, the pain was made all the more unbearable by the beautiful woman on his arm.
“The most honorable the Marquess of Ellsworth!”
The glass of champagne slipped from her fingers and shattered on the floor.
Chapter 10
Impossible.
Dom stared across the crowded ballroom, unable to believe his eyes. That couldn’t be her. Not at Lady Hawthorne’s annual ball. Not among a crowd of society misses and gentlemen.
But as he caught another glimpse of her through the crush, he knew…Eve.
What he didn’t know was what the hell she was doing here.
He’d been at the ball for less than twenty minutes when the crowd parted just enough for him to catch a glimpse of a vision in ice-blue satin and sapphires standing with her back to the room—
No. He’d noticed her hair first. That special shade of burnished red. She’d had her back to him then, and he’d admired her from afar, only to have his breath ripped away when she turned her head and revealed her profile. The delicate lines of her face, the long lashes, those mischievous lips—
Her. Even in that ball gown she wore as if it were just another costume, he was certain of it. Her presence was undeniable, so was that lithe body that he knew nearly as well as his own. All those soft curves and the graceful way she held herself, the confident tilt of her head…He’d spent hours staring at nearly every inch of her.
His eyes narrowed. What the devil was she doing here? She certainly fit into the sea of satins and jewels around her, which meant she was no ordinary tradesman’s daughter. Neither was she some gentleman’s paramour, not with how reluctant she was to remove her clothes.
Which meant that the only way she could have received an invitation was if she were quality.
Christ.
“What is the matter, hmm?” Sabrina Ribaldi, Contessa di Monteriggioni, placed her hand on his arm. Not used to having the attention of the man she was with not fixed firmly on her, she craned her neck to see through the crowd at what had snatched his away. “Ah…she’s pretty.” She sniffed and looked away. “In an English sort of way.”
Dom’s mouth twisted at her backhanded compliment. Eve wasn’t simply pretty. She was breathtaking. In every sort of way. The other males in the room were simply too damnably blind to have noticed.
“Do you know her?”
“Not at all, apparently,” he muttered.
A knowing gleam shone in her eyes. “I think that I shall seek out the ladies’ retiring room to check my dress.” Her hand slipped away from his arm. “That should give you time to satisfy your curiosity about her.”
It wouldn’t begin to satisfy that, but he appreciated that she understood. “Thank you.”
“I have heard rumors about you Englishmen and how you behave.”
Oh, he was certain she had. Which was why she’d sought him out to warm her bed five years ago when he’d been visiting Rome, then again two years ago when she was first widowed and her husband barely in the ground. And why she’d contacted him as soon as she’d arrived in London a few days ago.
But he was no innocent himself. He’d hoped that an evening with Sabrina might satiate him enough to resist Eve’s unwitting temptations so that he could finish the painting.
He’d been a damned fool.
She arched a brow. “But I expect to leave this party with the same gentleman who brought me.”
Duly chastised, he smiled grimly. “Of course.”
At that moment, Eve turned around.
His gut knotted at the full sight of her. From the back, she’d been intriguing in the sparkling light of the chandeliers. Now she was simply magnificent.
Her gaze moved slowly over the crowd, and not in that expres
sion of curious boredom worn by most of the ladies in the room. No, she was hunting, her gaze passing over every man in the crowd, dismissing each and moving on.
Then she spotted him, and her gaze locked with his across the room. Electricity jolted through him at the flicker of recognition that lit her face. Neither of them moved, their gazes pinned on the other.
Sabrina brought her lips close to his ear, and her throaty laugh tickled across his cheek. “But what happens between now and then is none of my concern.”
In surprise, he tore his gaze away from Eve. Apparently, Sabrina understood a great deal.
“Thank you.” He gratefully took both of her hands in his and lifted them to his lips to kiss the backs of her fingers. “I do need to speak with her. I won’t be long.”
She reached up to straighten the knot in his cravat. The familiar gesture was most likely meant to remind him of the intimate hours they’d spent in each other’s company. But he wouldn’t be going to her bed tonight.
From the patronizing way she smiled at him, she realized the same. “Thinking back on when you arrived to collect me,” she mused, “my evening ended the moment you saw me. You compared me to her even then.”
He began to protest, but she cut him off with a finger to his lips.
“Do not lie and insult us both.” Her hand dropped away. “Your desire belongs to another. There is no harm in that.” She sent a casual glance in Eve’s direction over her shoulder. “But what truly irritates me is that I have lost to an Englishwoman.”
She glided away. He watched her until she disappeared into the crowd, her head held high and with a presence as regal as ever.
Inhaling a deep breath, he turned back to Eve.
She held his gaze for several seconds, making clear that she knew she had his full attention. Then she turned and walked away, to cross the room toward the sweeping marble stairs that led up to the piano nobile and its grand reception rooms. At the bottom of the stairs, she glanced back, just long enough to issue a silent invitation for him to follow.
So of course he did, up the stairs and around the circuit of connecting rooms…through the dining room, card room, music room…until she led him to the long, narrow gallery that fronted the width of the palatial townhouse. She hadn’t looked back since she’d climbed the stairs, yet she knew he was following her, he was certain. The two of them were that attuned to each other, even now in the midst of a crush.
Instead of continuing the circuit into the adjoining room, she walked down to the far end of the gallery, where she stopped and pretended to study the painting in front of her. What she was really doing, he knew, was finding a spot tucked away from the rest of the party where they could speak privately but not so intimately as to raise suspicions. And where he couldn’t throttle her without witnesses.
That was his Eve, all right. Beautiful, brilliant, and the most surprising woman he’d ever met.
Except that he hadn’t met her. Not this society lady. He had no idea who this woman was.
But he was damned well going to find out.
He stopped at her side and turned his attention to the painting, as if he hadn’t noticed that she was standing there. Then he leaned in to read the signature, although he didn’t care at all who the artist was.
He rolled his eyes. It was a damned fruit bowl.
“Explain,” he demanded in a low voice.
“You first, Your Lordship.”
He stiffened. She didn’t have the right to be indignant. Not when she’d played him for a fool. “Then you know who I am.”
“I know who you’re pretending to be.” She didn’t look at him, feigning just as much interest in the painting as he. “Who are you really—English lord or Italian painter?”
“Both. Who are you?”
“Eve.”
He clenched his jaw. “Your real name.”
“Eve,” she repeated with a bit of pique. “Evelyn Winslow.”
Winslow. How did he know that name? Then it smacked him with the force of a brick. Winslow Shipping and Trade. Oh good God…“You’re a shipping heiress?”
“I am not an heiress,” she corrected. “But my father does own a shipping company. If you knew Papa, you would understand the difference.”
“You let me believe you were an actress.” Although looking back now, that notion had been ridiculous from the start. An actress would never have been that well-educated and cultured. And one that modest would have starved long before Eads found her.
He grimaced inwardly. He’d been so fixated on painting her that he’d never let himself consider the truth. That the innocence he’d glimpsed in her wasn’t an act.
“I told you that I wasn’t, that day in the rain,” she reminded him. “You said it didn’t matter to you.”
He slid a long, condemning glare at her for throwing his words back at him, but she kept her eyes straight ahead on the painting and wisely refused to meet his gaze. “You know damned well what I meant. That I didn’t care if you came from the Foundling Hospital or the stews. But this—” He waved a hand at the luxurious townhouse around them, then fought down the urge to run it through his hair in frustration. “Christ.”
Dark claws reached into his chest and snatched his hopes away— Ruined, all of it.
Weeks of work bringing his vision to life, hours upon hours of painstaking brushstrokes applied one slow stroke at a time…all for nothing, wasted on a painting he could never finish or sign his own name to. A painting he couldn’t enter into the exhibition, and now it was too late to start another. A masterpiece that could never seen the light of day because Eve would be recognized at first glance. Her reputation would be ruined right along with his career.
She’d destroyed his only chance to escape the prison his life had become since he’d inherited, and the only certain way to escape Constance’s threats to expose him.
She might as well have cursed him to hell.
“For God’s sake, Eve,” he rasped out. “Why did you lie to me?”
“I never lied. I simply hid my last name. I was never more myself than when I was in the studio with you.” She studied his face, as if she’d never seen him before. That critical gaze only aggravated him more. “And you let me believe that you were Domenico Vincenzo.”
“I am Vincenzo,” he growled.
She lifted her brow silently in such a cold, accusatory stare that she would have done a nun proud.
Then she turned back toward the painting, twisting her fingers in her sapphire necklace. Which only served to draw his attention to the delicate curve of her neck.
How many times had he drawn that line? How many hours had he spent staring at her? With long white gloves that stretched up above her elbows to the edge of her capped sleeves and the sweep of the skirt that fell down to the toes of her matching slippers, she now wore more layers than he’d ever seen on her before. Every one of them ironically reminded him of how beautiful she was beneath.
How close she’d come to being his salvation, only to turn it into ashes.
“There was a mistake.” A furrow marred her brow as she tried to find the words to explain. “I’d gone to Mercer House to collect a painting, one you’d given to my sister Mariah and her husband Robert Carlisle for their wedding.”
She was related to the Carlisles? Good God, this kept getting worse! Forget being found out as Vincenzo. If anyone in her family discovered what they’d been doing, he’d be tied to a stake and used for target practice.
“But the house was in an uproar, with men carrying things in and out. When I asked about the Vincenzo painting, your man sent me to Chelsea.”
The day the porters had collected his paintings for display at the Pall Mall. The day she’d entered his life…“So you went to the studio.”
“Still attempting to collect the painting, yes.” She folded her hands demurely in front of her, although more than likely because she was growing nervous and didn’t know what to do with them. Or because she wanted to slap him. Knowing E
ve, it could have been either. “But you thought I was there to be your model.”
“You said you were.”
“I never said. You assumed. I simply went along with it, because it was all too exciting to stop.”
Bitterness formed on his tongue. She’d ruined his only chance to save his career because she’d been bored? “Was it nothing but a joke to you? A lark to fill the afternoons of a bored society lady?”
“The furthest thing from it,” she assured him somberly. “It was survival.”
He laughed darkly at the ludicrousness of that. “By pretending to be a model?”
“By making me feel alive!” The confession burst from her in a soft cry of anger and surprise. But he also sensed an inexplicable longing in her. The same longing he’d witnessed in her that day in the rain, when she’d placed her hand over his heart and asked him why he needed to paint her. “You—Vincenzo—made me feel freer and more alive than any time since my mother died. And you expected me to give that up by telling you who I really was?”
Her words chilled through him. Dear God…“Your mother’s dead?”
She gave a fierce, jerking nod and turned her face away, briefly squeezing her eyes shut. “Soon, I’ll be her age—her last age, when she died. She didn’t have a chance to live. Not to truly live, not like she should have.” She swallowed down the grief as the confession ripped from her, “I’m terrified of being like her, of not having the chance to experience life, one lived to the fullest. If I sit still, if I sleep, if I stop moving forward—”
The fear darkening her face sliced into his gut like a knife.
“I have to keep moving, don’t you see? Because my life suffocates me otherwise. Being at the studio was the most wonderful escape I could ever have hoped for.” Then she twisted the blade when she admitted in a whisper so soft that it was almost lost beneath the noise of the party, “You understand that part of me, that need to seize life with both hands. You’re the only one who ever has.”
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