Beautiful Beast (The Marriage Maker Book 36)

by Pearl Darling

  Athena smiled and dropped her brushes carelessly onto the ledge of her easel. “Only you seem to understand me, Bertie,” she said. “I can call you Bertie, can’t I?”

  She swept out of the room before catching the nauseated look that crossed Mr. Russell’s face.

  Minerva took her time to leave, carefully cleaning her brushes before packing them away in a small case. She turned to Ophelia and cocked her head. “I would do anything to have a man like that interested in me,” she said. The intensity of emotion tightened her cheeks. She didn’t seem to care that Mr. Russell was still in the room.

  The overt declaration was like a further dousing of cold water to Ophelia’s senses. No man had been interested in Ophelia. Especially not the rakes. Her heart shrank back down to the size of a shriveled conker. She watched Minerva walk sedately from the room, hands clenched at her sides. Even Athena had remarked on the ludicrous idea that Lord Barden was pursuing Ophelia. Such stupidity, she’d said.

  “He’s not interested in you,” Mr. Russell said. He pushed a segment of orange into his mouth and chewed, his expression serious and intent.

  She regarded him over the top of her easel, her own experience giving support to the reality of Mr. Russell’s words. “Of course not.”

  Mr. Russell stopped chewing his orange and swallowed. “A man would be a fool if he wasn’t interested in you,” he said softly.

  As Ophelia’s eyebrows climbed toward her hairline, Mr. Russell said, removing the next segment from his orange, “Raphael thinks of only one thing. The pursuit of an object for his painting, followed by a quick tumble in his bed and then—” He clapped his hands together and shot one palm across the other like a pair of cymbals.

  Ophelia jumped. What Mr. Russell described certainly sounded like interest to her. “I’m not quite sure why he would want to paint me,” Ophelia ventured.

  “You have a certain something,” Mr. Russell said. “But, Miss Weatherop, that alone will not be enough to tip him into marriage.”

  Gods, she was sick of being told she had a certain something. Everyone had a certain something, and most of them managed to turn it into a marriage promise.

  “Do you know why Raphael refuses to have his portrait done? Everyone has asked him. For me, it would be a commission to rival that of the Prince Regent’s Mistress.” Mr. Russell deftly peeled the last of his orange with quick, even strokes.

  “No. Why?”

  “Because he’s afraid that one of his ex-lovers may buy it. The thought of a woman he’s tired of trying to hang onto him repulses him. That’s why he will never marry.” Mr. Russell flicked her a serious glance as he pushed the last piece of orange into his mouth and worked his strong jaw.

  Ophelia imagined Lord Barden, Raphael, eating sweet juicy segments of fruit and shivered. The difference between her reaction to such a mundane action from Mr. Russell and the imagined act from Lord Barden was the difference between steel and silver.

  Steel was dependable, boring, commonplace. Silver had a rich gleam and glorious patina, although it tarnished quickly if one didn’t work on it.

  No wonder Lord Barden tired of his women so quickly. He didn’t work hard to get them, and the silver of their relationship dulled immediately.

  “What about you?” she asked suddenly.

  Mr. Russell choked on his orange.

  “What are you looking for?”

  Mr. Russell stared at her white faced. “A woman of fortitude,” he said as if pulling the words out from within. He ran a hand roughly through the closely cropped chestnut hair that framed his patrician features. “A woman who isn’t afraid of anything.” He paused. “I haven’t found her yet,” he whispered.

  Ophelia sank back into her seat. Was she afraid of anything? Of course, she was afraid. Over the last few years, she had become afraid of the ton, of their reaction to her name. More and more often, she’d taken shelter along the walls of the ballrooms, passing the time with her observations. Over the past few weeks in her self-imposed exile in the Wold, she’d even become afraid to speak of those very same thoughts. When she’d noted that the well on the Wold Farm was dry and tentatively warned the farmer, he’d told her not to enter farming. And when she’d seen a strange figure in the accounts over the new farm manager’s shoulder, she hadn’t even got the words out before the manager had said he’d been told ‘not to listen to that gel that painted things that weren’t there.’

  Never mind the crops had failed from lack of water, and it turned out the farm manager had a problem with sixes and nines, the rebuffs had been enough to silence her.

  A woman that wasn’t afraid, that wasn’t her.

  Ophelia watched past her easel as Mr. Russell moved on to the rest of the fruit bowl, turning his broad shoulders away from her. He was obviously not right for her, either. When Lord Barden had burst into the room, Mr. Russell’s past kindnesses had only then bloomed into a deeper show of interest. She didn’t want a man who was only interested because of another’s passions. Ophelia swallowed. Passions. Not something that had ever been in her lexicon. At least, not until she’d first seen Lord Barden up close.

  Ophelia bowed her head, though her heart had begun to shrivel again. Did she want to go back to her life of excruciating boredom, waiting for a marriage prospect to materialize? Of making observations that were never acted upon? Of sitting on the sidelines but never being involved? Of being afraid?

  Every step she’d taken, from fleeing the ton for the Wold and, in turn, returning to London, to entering the formidable hall of the London Lonely Hearts Social Club, hadn’t been the search for a husband, she realized. It had been the inevitable move forward to make some change in her life, to achieve that elusive heady moment of excitement. And now that she had finally experienced the unfamiliar buzzing in her veins, she wanted—nay—needed to feel again. So, what if there was no potential to end up with a husband to waltz with? Instead, there was the exhilarating opportunity to dance near the flame of temptation and seduction.

  Perhaps it was time to live up to her name as the Whelp of the Wolf of Weatherop Hall.

  After all, she hadn’t really anything left to lose.

  Chapter Four

  Dammit! Where had she gone? Raphael stalked through the rooms of the London Lonely Hearts Social Club like a male lion roaring for his pride. He caused visible unrest every time he pushed open a door to a room.

  He’d visited the club every day for an entire week. He’d spent time in Bertie’s art class, enduring his friend’s black scowls. He’d discussed fossils with the old men in the archaeology room. He’d even, for God’s sake, picked up a pair of shears in the dressmaking room. But he hadn’t found her again, and he hadn’t even found out the blasted girl’s name. Everybody refused to tell him. Either that, or nobody knew her.

  He had, however, found the small jeweled beetle she’d painted. It had wandered across the Club’s attic room as Bertie had shot him a particularly black look. It was far more beautiful than an orange. He understood why she’d painted it, describing its patina in rich detail.

  The thing was, he found it hard to describe who she was. Nobody seemed to recognize her from his description or, rather, refused to recognize her. He’d asked her classmates who she was, but they’d tittered and flounced away. He could have asked Bertie, but he remembered George’s words vividly, no taking other people’s friendship interests. Not knowing whether she and Bertie were involved was driving him mad, in fact. He couldn’t find the words to speak to his long-term friend, though it seemed Bertie was thawing a little. Raphael remained under oath though not to speak about the Carina affair.

  George stepped out of his study, catching Raphael as he stood uncertainly in the hall. “Ah! Lord Barden. Have you been enjoying our club?”

  “No.” Raphael was, in general, a scrupulously honest man. He had no need for lies.

  “Why don’t you come in and sit down? I understand some of your behavior is beginning to worry some of our members.”

&
nbsp; “I haven’t stolen any of their women,” Raphael said quietly as he followed George into the office. Mentally, he crossed his fingers. Not yet, anyway.

  “No, but you have taken to turning up in the most unusual places, asking questions and interrupting the gentle pleasure that some of our more withdrawn guests were using to get to know each other.”

  “I just need to see her again!” Raphael broke out. Good God—didn’t George know that the five minutes in her presence a week ago had advanced his current work to such an extent that he just needed to finish the last bits, her eyes and her mouth, just that, nothing more? Besides, for a moment, just for a moment, as he’d painted, the slime of discontent in his head had abated a little.

  “See who?” George asked, a furrow creasing his brow.

  “That’s just it!” Raphael sank into a chair. “No one will tell me her name.”

  “Describe her.”

  “She…she…has a certain something.” Oh gods. Had he really said that?

  George sighed. “For an artist, you really are not very descriptive. What color hair?”

  “Mid brown. I think. Or perhaps dark blond.”

  “Eyes?”

  “Blue. No. Green. I’m not sure.”

  “Tall, short, slim or—“

  “Medium. Curves in all the right places, I suppose.”

  George buried his face in his hands. “Do you remember anything about her apart from this certain something?”

  Raphael took a deep breath. “She has a…a vitality, a spark in her eyes from a thousand candles, a quirk to her lips when she speaks, a curve to her arms when she moves…”

  George rubbed a tired hand across his forehead. “I’m still in the dark,” he muttered. “Where did you last see her?”

  “A week ago. In the attic, in Bertie’s art class.”

  “Well, why don’t you ask Bertie? Mr. Russell, I mean?”

  “He won’t tell me. He used to be my friend and he won’t tell me.”

  George sighed. “Perhaps I can help. Who else was in the art class?”

  “An awful woman who kept jabbing me with a paint brush and who has an awful crush on Bertie.”

  “Athena,” George mumbled.

  “Another woman who had painted a passable orange and showed promise.”

  George nodded. “Minerva.”

  “And then her.”

  “Oh. Oh, yes.” A smile of unholy glee passed over George’s face. “Her.”

  “Well? Who is she?” Raphael sat forward. “Tell me!”

  George leant over his desk, picked up a piece of paper and read it slowly as if dismissing Raphael. “I only know her as the Whelp of the Wolf of Weatherop Wold.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  George shrugged and put the paper down with obvious annoyance. “As I said before, if you wish, you could set up an art class. You know already that she enjoys art. Perhaps if you start your own room, you might attract an audience.”

  Raphael leaned back. Yes, he bloody well would. And he’d pay back all those bloody shy and retiring types at the same time. He pushed himself off the chair and stalked to the door. “I might just do that.”

  After Raphael left, George lifted his hand and read the other writing on the paper.

  If he asks, tell him I am the Whelp—

  The lady’s campaign to catch the artist had well and truly begun. George shrugged. She had been well and truly apologetic when she handed him his instructions, just as she had been every time he met her. But it was the content of what she had said that was sensational. She didn’t want to marry the Beast of Barden Hall, merely engage in a little excitement.

  It didn’t bother George one jot though. Letty had clearly done well when she handed Miss Weatherop their card. They’d both noticed her waiting at the edge of the ballroom, even as she seemed to unconsciously deflect attention from herself. It was her keen observations that had given her away as a sharp mind hiding in a purposefully drab exterior.

  As soon as George had interviewed Lord Barden, he’d dared to hope that a match might be made. But he’d known that it was all contingent on the lady finally revealing her true self. Now it seemed, that goal was in sight.

  To George’s experienced mind, there was only one way in which this tempestuous episode would end.

  Especially when it involved a lady with a certain something and a man looking for that exact same thing.

  Raphael maneuvered his companion through the hall of the Charles Street Club, resisting all offers from the staff to take her coat. Fantasia was well swathed in a fur coat that covered her from her chin to her toes.

  It had taken him a week to put his plan into action. A week in which he had driven himself mad trying to find out about the Whelp of the Wolf of Weatherop Wold, and in which he had done no painting whatsoever. The bookings for other portraits were still pouring in, and the cries from his clients were becoming ever louder. But he couldn’t divert his attention. Not until he finished the current portrait. The faceless woman that even now stared out at him in the drafty drawing room of Barden Hall.

  He’d had to put a cloth over the canvas to stop it from giving him the chills, somewhere in the region of where his heart was reputed to be. It seemed the discontent that had hovered in his head had made its way to his chest.

  Even his mother was getting curious, for God’s sake, and she’d long ago given up commenting on the capricious nature of Raphael’s lifestyle.

  Deciding to drum up interest for his class one more time, he pulled Fantasia with him down into the card room. She trotted along unprotestingly. The amount of money he had offered her, and the job that she had come to do, far outweighed any comments she might have had on the situation.

  The card room, however, was empty. So too were the first-floor rooms, although a handful of men and women gathered quietly across a tray of fossils, stared at him with venom when he opened the door.

  Where on earth was everyone?

  Finally, he mounted the stairs to the third floor, pulling Fantasia along behind him up the narrow steps.

  The corridor was full of people. None of them held brushes. All stepped out of his way as he advanced to the room that he had selected.

  The small room was crammed with people. Easels were butted tightly up against each other; brushes were already in hand. All participants faced a small, empty semicircle at the front of the room by the windows.

  Twenty pairs of eyes followed his every move.

  Gods. His plan had worked beyond his wildest imagination. Everyone had come. But had she come?

  He gave Fantasia a smile. She was a good girl. In the old days after his apprenticeship in Scotland, before he’d caught the ton’s interest, he had used her briefly for what had been his bread and butter. He guided her forward into the room, edging against the wall toward the windows, and positioned her in the small empty semicircle.

  He turned to face the crowd and took a deep breath. “I am the Beast of Barden Hall, and I command you to paint!” he said quietly.

  Fantasia twirled and, in one swift movement, let her coat fall to the floor.

  The collective intake of breath drew a half smile to Raphael’s face. Turning to the crowd of easels and the white, upturned faces, he started to search for his quarry.

  She wasn’t on the front row.

  He didn’t have much time before he would begin to lose the crowd.

  She wasn’t on the second row. People were starting to look down now, about to pack up their easels.

  She wasn’t on the third…no…yes. She was. His heart thumped, for only the second time in his life.

  He had nearly missed her. She was dressed entirely in black, from chin to toe, and wore an enormous hat of fruit and roses that covered her ears. Black netting covered the top half of her face. Only by the looping way she lifted her brush did he recognize her.

  Lifted her brush.

  Oh gods. He looked around the room. None of the crowd were looking to leave. In fact, there was
an intent look of satisfaction on most people’s faces and a lot of brushes lifted with fingers measuring distances whilst others scratched outlines on their canvases in charcoal.

  Raphael risked a look at Fantasia. She stood entirely nude, from her shapely chest to the curve of her hips. She shrugged and gave him a smile.

  What on earth was he going to do?

  He risked a glance to the back of the room, but the devious woman had wedged herself in the far corner where he couldn’t reach her.

  A portly gentleman at the front of the room coughed and raised his hand. “Um. Lord Barden?”

  Cautiously, Raphael stepped round the easels to join him, and took in the smooth, fluid charcoal lines that created a professional outline of Fantasia’s body.

  “Yes, Mr.—?”

  “Lord Haverstock, actually. Never mind that. How do I show the flex to her thighs? I never manage to get that part right.”

  “You’ve done this before?”

  The lord nodded. “Of course. Quite a lot when I was younger. Always chased a lot of beauty. Threw away quite a lot, as well.” He shrugged and lowered his voice. “Don’t you find as you get older, you realize that it’s not always about that? That’s why I joined the Club.” He spluttered a cough again. “Was mighty pleased when I heard you were going to give us all a few tips. Never thought you’d be generous enough to let us get this far, though.”

  Generous? Generous? He’d been looking to shock. Not— He dismissed the thought. “Pull in two lines around the thigh, one following the outline, the other following the muscle down to the knee. Fork out the lines to give the illusion of roundness and shape. When you fill in the sketch in oils, you will be able to use flecks of white to create the same illusion.”

  Lord Haverstock gave a satisfied humph as he followed Raphael’s suggestions. “No wonder you are the foremost portrait artist in England today.”

  “I’m honored.”

  “I mustn’t keep you. Looks like you’ve got a few more people to help. Never mind the people at the door…”

  In surprise, Raphael glanced up. For a moment, he met his woman’s eyes through the netting of her veil. They sparkled. She was looking right at him, not at Fantasia. But then, the fruit hat dipped again and he saw nothing but the sea of upright paint brushes waiting to be seen.