Anthony watched the flash of purple silk as it was swallowed in a sea of white pinafores. A horde of lady artists was descending upon him. Men trailed behind them, some in fancy dress and others in shabby coats and floppy ties. Murmuring voices and the sounds of boots striking the dark flagstones rose to the vaulted ceiling. The students split off into classrooms, several sparing him curious glances.
Miss Lucy was nowhere to be seen.
He took a few steps forward, then stopped. No point in pursuing her. She either was a dramatic personality who delighted in fabrication or suffered some ailment of the brain. Even an addlepate could model, inertia being the sole requirement.
More students passed by. The hallway was emptying and he’d yet to see a man who looked old enough to shave. Clearly, the Visitors were not as punctual as their students.
He glanced into the nearest classroom. It was like a battlefield in plaster. Torsos without arms. Legs without torsos. Dozens of heads. The students were settling into their places. A few were shrugging out of their coats. He moved away from the door before his presence could be remarked.
He knew cursed little about art. Still, he could understand the appeal of painting Miss Lucy, and also why the canvases represented her so poorly. She didn’t look like any woman he’d ever seen in a painting, for one thing. Firstly, she was freckled. Her eyes weren’t round and limpid. They were narrow with watchfulness, the irises like sherry held to the light. Her hair didn’t flow across her shoulders or fold back in a neat wave. She piled it on her head, where the wild curls could have served as a nest for blackbirds. Everything about her face and figure was mobile, expressive. She had no perfect beauty to capture. But there was something about her that fascinated. Perhaps because it was so difficult to pin down.
He rocked on his heels, displeased with where his thoughts were heading. As he did so, he locked eyes with a maiden sitting demurely on her marble perch, one hand resting on her draped lap. She was bland and smooth and ideally proportioned. A young Greek girl. She was one of dozens of statues and plaster casts that lined the long hallway. His mother had loved such things. Marble and bronze figures depicting mythic heroes. Pottery vases. Antiquities of all kinds, selected from her father’s warehouses. Anything, really, as long as it was beautiful. Not only priceless objects, but fragile, fleeting things. She’d filled rooms with flowers that she cultivated.
The sound of a slamming door brought his head up. Stragglers. A few wild-haired young men in baggy trousers were just leaving the canteen. He recognized one of them, by family resemblance. All the Ponsonbys had that vivid, nearly crimson, red hair. The middle child, Cecil, had been a friend since boyhood. This would be the youngest. Thomas. His collar was none too clean. But his companions, they wore no collars. All of the youngsters—for they were scarcely out of their teens—looked as though they slept under open sky. Only their pale skin and expensive boots belied the raffish impression. Young men of property in the garb of paupers.
He let them pass without pressing them for information. Best not to approach queerly dressed denizens of these underground workshops. Besides, the sight of Thomas Ponsonby, last glimpsed in an Eton suit, now grown broad through the shoulders, and grown unfamiliar with starch and a good hard bar of soap, hit him like a blow. He’d missed that transformation, missed Cecil’s reaction to it, which he could well imagine: good-humored, overacted consternation. With two older sisters and two younger brothers, Cecil had always tried to provide the glue that held his siblings together, except he wouldn’t say glue. He’d say magnetic field, or horseshoe-shaped solenoid. Whenever Anthony and Cecil used to ride or row, dine or drink, they’d talked horses and sport, to be sure, but the rest had crept in. They’d divulged secret ambitions, childhood hurts.
That was why he’d been avoiding Cecil ever since he’d returned to London. They knew each other too well, and too much had happened during their years apart. There was too much he wanted to say but couldn’t. It would crack him.
Suddenly, he felt the urge to overtake Thomas. Tell your brother, tell Cecil, that . . .
What?
Nothing. It was easy enough to push Cecil out of his mind. He’d been doing it for months.
Stay put. Focus. Await Mr. Coover.
The trouble was . . . he was bad at waiting. Very bad indeed. He paced the short length of hall between classroom doors.
“Your Grace.”
He turned to the voice, low and breathless. Two more stragglers, young women, one fair, one dark, hovered in a classroom doorway. They looked far more conventional than their male counterparts, with smooth, upswept hair, jewelry, and neat muslin dresses protected by pinafores. They looked like debutantes. Eager and dewy, conscious of their charms. His hackles rose. He’d never developed a taste for them, as George had.
Palate cleansers, George had called them, and he’d set himself to seducing one, or two, between more elaborate debauches.
He himself had no desire for morsels. Nor was marriage in his immediate purview. Forming a new family under the present conditions . . . it would be a grotesquery.
The fair girl caught his eye and dropped into a flawless curtsey.
“We met at a musicale given for Miss Pitcairn. I daren’t presume that you remember.”
He didn’t. Despite her lack of presumption, the pause she provided plainly invited him to supply her name.
The dark-haired girl also curtseyed.
“Your Grace!” she trilled.
The provided pause lengthened uncomfortably.
Once upon a time, Anthony Philby went out of his way to put girls at their ease, even the petted, irksome ones who pretended their heads were stuffed with goose-feather down and fairy dust. He’d gotten on well with girls, perhaps because he understood that they were people, not poppets, however they were presented in mixed company. Any man with a sister should know as much. From the moment Effie learned to talk she’d tried to boss him, showing a strong-mindedness that only intensified with age. Most of their misadventures in the nursery were undertaken at her initiative. After he went off to school, she’d howl him down at holidays if he showed her the slightest hint of condescension.
There was an obvious flaw in his theory, however. Effie’s humanity had never kindled in George a respect for the female sex. To him, women were disposable. But then, so were men.
None of that mattered now.
The Duke of Weston put no one at ease.
They recognized him? Fine. They would get the ducal treatment.
His expression was pure ice.
“Maude Newcombe.” The fair girl smiled, a pretty smile. Determined to ignore his bad behavior. Such girls were trained to it. So men could act all the worse. It wasn’t fair, but what was?
“Susan Pickering.” The dark girl curtseyed again and Miss Newcombe slanted her a furious glance before smiling at him more widely.
“What do you think of our Schools?” Miss Newcombe edged forward and Miss Pickering had no choice but to fall back a step. Miss Newcombe lowered her voice even further, drawing him into her confidence.
“It’s not very cheerful belowground. I’d much prefer the classrooms moved upstairs.”
“Some of the rooms are like crypts,” said Miss Pickering loudly. “There’s one filled with rejected paintings that’s so gloomy I could cry.”
She did look as if she might cry, but out of frustration. Miss Newcombe, with almost imperceptible movements of her hips, was continuing to maneuver her backward.
He frowned equally upon them both. “Is this your classroom?”
They were standing in front of the room in which he’d encountered the peculiar Miss Lucy.
Miss Newcombe pulled a face.
“Unfortunately.” She sniffed. “It’s horribly stuffy. And today the weather is so enchanting. Shall we walk in the park, Your Grace?”
Miss Pickering gave a tiny gasp. “Maude! Our lesson.”
“Oh, hush. I finished my picture.” Miss Newcombe tossed her head and stepped forward, her arm sweeping up, anticipating his proffered elbow.
“Shall we?” She was really quite lovely. No doubt in her experience the elbows she anticipated materialized posthaste.
“A tempting offer.” Anthony looked at her arm but made no move to intercept it. “I’m waiting for your Visitor.”
Miss Newcombe continued her arm’s arc, lifting her hand to brush the shining curves of her hair, as though this had always been her intention.
“Mr. Barrett?” Miss Pickering sensed an opening. “He won’t be a moment.”
“Not Mr. Barrett.” He kept his tone neutral. “Mr. Coover.”
Miss Newcombe and Miss Pickering exchanged a look, united in puzzlement. Miss Newcombe shook her head.
“There’s no Mr. Coover. Alas.” She sounded a regretful note.
“There’s Miss Coover,” Miss Pickering chimed in. “Could you mean Miss Coover?”
“Miss Coover is not a Visitor,” said Miss Newcombe tartly, “so she does not signify.”
Anthony focused on Miss Pickering, who blushed deeply and let her eyes drop.
“And who is Miss Coover?” he asked.
“She’s a classmate of ours,” said Miss Pickering. Now that she held his attention, she faltered, cutting her eyes to Miss Newcombe, soliciting her help. Miss Newcombe was looking daggers. “She doesn’t signify,” Miss Pickering added hopefully.
“Her father, Mr. Coover.” Anthony felt frustratingly slow. He could see pieces now, but not the grand design. “He is also an artist?”
“She has no parents,” said Miss Pickering. “Poor Lucy.” She glanced back at Miss Newcombe with apology.
The pieces were rearranging themselves.
No Mr. Coover at all. Lucy Coover. L. Coover. Miss Lucy.
A figure appeared between the two women. A thin, long-nosed man, all in black. He’d come swiftly and silently down the hall. He looked like the Day of Judgment.
“What is the meaning of this?” His spectacles magnified his disapproval. He blinked rapidly.
“Mr. Barrett!” Miss Newcombe spun around, flushing crimson. “Thank goodness you’re here. Now we can get back to our easels. Which of course we were about to do regardless. Well.”
Her smile was painfully bright. “Mr. Barrett, the Duke of Weston. Your Grace, Mr. Barrett.”
She fluttered her lashes at Anthony. “We told you he’d be but a moment. So very nice to see you. I do hope we meet again soon.”
With palpable reluctance, she turned toward the door. Miss Pickering hesitated.
“Perhaps you would like to see our portraits?”
“He might like to very much,” said Mr. Barrett, folding his arms. “However, he will not. I, on the other hand, will be around to inspect them presently.”
At this both girls took to their heels.
Now it was Anthony who bore the brunt of Mr. Barrett’s scrutiny. He glanced over the man’s narrow shoulder down the long hallway.
Miss Lucy—Miss Lucy Coover—must have turned right at the canteen. She’d taken the stairs, then, to the library or the statue gallery. Unless there was another exit, one he hadn’t seen when he’d wandered the rooms of the second floor, she was still up there.
He would find her.
“You wanted to speak with me?”
With a start, Anthony met the Visitor’s gaze. It was altogether too keen for his liking.
“I had a question,” he said. Damned if he didn’t feel like a schoolboy, caught out in some mischief. His throat tightened. He searched for something probable.
“What do you consider the best way to begin a painting?” As he spoke, his forehead prickled. He’d sweated often as a schoolboy, waiting for the switch.
“I thought I might paint.” He had to clear his throat before going on. “But you see, I don’t know how to start.”
Each one of Mr. Barrett’s blinks seemed to tick away a minute. Was he incredulous? Or simply scornful? At last, he spoke.
“If you wish to paint a landscape, put on the canvas some semblance of the landscape. If you wish to paint a dog, put on the canvas some semblance of a dog. If you wish to paint a bowl of fruit upon a table . . . Do you grasp the general principle or should I continue?”
Were his eyes twinkling? No, it was light glinting on his lenses.
“I grasp the principle perfectly.”
“Good,” said Mr. Barrett dryly. “Now it’s only the practice you’re wanting.”
“I’m off to practice, then.” Anthony nodded at Mr. Barrett as the man turned smartly and marched into the classroom.
He exhaled then, and jogged for the stairs.
He found her in the library. She was sitting alone at a long table, scowling over an enormous book. Propped up, it would not have looked out of place at a siege, the kind of thing archers would crouch behind to nock their arrows. Open on the library table, it didn’t do a thing to hide her. Maybe she hoped the sheer force of her attention would render her invisible. She was imaginative, after all. But not so lucky.
As he came alongside her, he watched her posture change. Her shoulders stiffened. Her head lifted slightly, but she did not turn to look at him. Instead, she scowled with increased ferocity down at a color plate, reaching out to turn a heavy page with a gentleness that belied her fierce expression. The book wasn’t just a prop. She handled it like a sacred object.
“What luck,” he said. “I feared I’d lost you in the crowd.” At that, she glanced up eagerly, not at him, but at a man he’d scarcely noticed, a thin, white-haired man halfway up a ladder with a small volume in his hands, poised to return it to a high shelf. The librarian. Of course, this room of all rooms would have its sentinel.
“Mr. Naylor.” She spoke softly, but her voice carried surprisingly well in the lower register. It was a deep voice for a woman, warm and velvety. “The Duke of Weston has come to see the library.”
A valiant final effort.
“Eh?” Mr. Naylor was struggling to fit the book back in its place. “What’s that?”
She opened her mouth to answer, but Anthony reached out and touched her wrist. It was cool, the pulse leaping beneath the skin. She went still as stone. After a moment, she jerked her wrist back. He brought his head down to hers and lowered his voice.
“Miss Coover,” he said in her ear, so close a stray curl brushed his cheek. “A word.”
He had already seen her blush. Now the color leached from her face, so the freckles stood out more starkly. As did her lips. Their color was richly red. Those lips parted.
“My apologies,” she said. “I must be getting back to class.” She stood. The smile she gave him was unconvincing. “I’d love to talk, of course, but I’m terribly late.”
She started forward. With one stride, he insinuated his body between her and the door.
“Mr. Barrett won’t mind. When I left him, he was occupied with two of your classmates. Charming women.”
She folded her arms tightly beneath her breasts, the scowl returning. When she spoke, though, her tone was simply curious.
“I don’t know who you might mean.”
“Miss Newcombe and Miss Pickering.”
“Of course,” she said, looking away.
Remarkable: how much her face communicated. Much more than she intended. So. The pretty debs did not meet with her approval. Perhaps she got on better with the wild-haired young men. Yet her brand of bohemianism struck him as distinctly at odds with their studied shabbiness. Her dress, strange as it was, fit her well, emphasizing her graceful proportions, her slim torso and straight shoulders. She wasn’t fashionable by any standard he knew, but she had some other quality. Call it style.
Her slippers, he noted, were cheap, worn down at the heel.
He lifted his eyes and saw she was watching him closely.
“They assure me that there is no Mr. Coover, Visitor in Painting. Living or dead. And so, Miss Coover, we have a matter to discuss. Shall we begin?”
He hadn’t raised his voice, but she winced and glanced back at the librarian, still up his ladder, now occupied in tugging a book with both hands.
“Not here,” she said. “The Gibson Gallery.”
She walked quickly, without any affectation, the unselfconscious strides of a woman who measured distance in miles rather than lengths of ballroom. When he overtook her to open the gallery door, she stepped back and her face transformed. Gone was the flustered girl, guilty and mutinous. She seemed to forget herself altogether. She narrowed her eyes, observing his gesture, the way he turned his body, with a knowingness that unnerved him. It was as though she could see through his clothes.
Which, in a sense, she could. After all, she’d immortalized the sight.
He frowned as he pulled the door closed behind them. She was a problem. The severity of the problem remained to be seen.
He leaned against the wall, but she kept going, heedless of the fact that he no longer followed. She stopped halfway down the room, in front of a marble Roman in helmet and sandals, as though picking an ally. When at last she turned back to face him, he saw her hunted expression.
In the library, they might have been overheard. But in the gallery, she was alone. Absolutely alone. He saw her shift restlessly as she recognized her plight. A marble ally is no ally at all.
He pushed off the wall and strolled toward her until an arm span of space remained between them. He’d thought it a reasonable distance, but from where he stood, he couldn’t help but take notice of her warmth and fragrance, the subtle rise and fall of her chest. Maybe it was the contrast with the gallery’s chilly throng of motionless white figures.
She smelled like roses and common gin, a faint piney scent. His thoughts blurred. What he was experiencing now felt like anticipation—two bodies responding to each other, intuiting their perfect fit.
Maybe their bodies didn’t intuit. Maybe they communicated their intimate knowledge.
The final pieces slid into place.
He thought of her worn shoes, and, now that he looked more carefully, he recognized the mauve tinge to her eyelids, the delicate shadows beneath her eyes and her cheekbones, for what they were: signs of exhaustion. She’d polished her accent but she couldn’t fully smooth away those round vowels. An orphan, Miss Pickering had said. Short and slight from a childhood of underfeeding.
He sucked in his breath. She wasn’t a model. She was an artist—a splendid one at that. But to make ends meet, she also worked, worked in the profession most accessible to women of her class.
She was a prostitute.
An assumption that explained his intense feeling of rediscovery. He had bedded this woman, bedded her after sucking down gallons of beer and liquor, a river’s worth. Some nights were like that, as though the Thames flowed over and through him, bringing oblivion. He’d bedded her and forgotten her.
The realization did him no credit.
Before the army, he’d spent more time in brothels than he cared to recall. Collecting George. He would wait, sometimes for hours, on the grimy back stairs of public houses, in vast drawing rooms hung with silk curtains, in tiny, close chambers surrounded by silver cages of white mice and yellow canaries. In the end, he would drag, or carry, his brother to the coach while he mewled, sang, vomited. Over the years, he had made the acquaintance of dozens of prostitutes, from alley-treading three-penny uprights to bejeweled courtesans attended by serving girls in French underwear.
At which brothel, on which night, had he met Miss Coover?
Lately, he had sworn to himself—and several madams—that he had no interest in transacting. And it was true. The idea horrified him, after what George had done. He visited such houses only to assure himself that Effie hadn’t fallen so low.
But when his conscious mind slipped beneath that dark current . . . what then?
He stared down at the spiral curls piled messily atop Miss Coover’s head. His gaze dropped, caught on the curve of her bottom lip. In reaction to his regard, she drew the lip between her teeth. Guarding it.
Had he taken the time to kiss those lips? To kiss the inside of her wrist? To nuzzle her curls until he found her earlobe and sucked it between his teeth?
Alas. Drunk men seldom did.
The shame he felt wasn’t new, but the portion had increased. He might flatten beneath it.
He didn’t realize his expression had changed until he saw her swallow. He took a step back.
“You’re a terrible liar,” he told her, with a lightness he didn’t feel. “Cows aren’t known for murderous rampage.”
She shot him a quick, surprised look. A smile came and went on her lips, the first real smile he’d seen from her. It was fleeting, but impossibly lovely. She shrugged.
“I added a bull,” she said thoughtfully. “If you could see the scene as I’d imagined it, you’d feel differently, I think. The cows had a terrifying aspect.”
Dramatic, not addlepated. But he already knew that. Perhaps she was obvious about certain falsehoods out of habit—a technique deployed to distract from the greater deception. For she was adept at deception. He knew that now, too. Surely no one at the Royal Academy was aware of her other profession. Democratic plainness in dress did not necessarily signal broad-mindedness. They would never accept her as one of their own, if her secret came to light.
“I have yet to behold the cow that strikes terror in my heart,” he said.
“But of course not, you’re a war hero,” she murmured. “How silly of me.”
When not narrowed to slits, her eyes had a long, curved shape. Cat eyes. They mesmerized.
Did she seriously think his jest was a boast? That he was enough of a braggart to praise his own courage in the face of cows?
“It’s hardly that. It’s just . . . I like everything that goes on four legs.” He glanced away, gazed for a moment at the statue of a huntress and her hound.
“Dogs. Cows. Horses. Elephants. Camels.”
“Cats,” she offered.
“Cats,” he agreed, before he looked back at her and saw the mockery on her face. She hadn’t been serious. He stopped talking, pressing his lips together. Listing four-legged animals didn’t pass for conversation even in brothels.
It was the allusion to his heroism that had rattled him.
Miss Coover was waiting for him to speak with a strange expression on her face. He disgusted her. Well, of course he did. A fornicator too drunk to recall what he’d done—and no doubt too drunk to have done the thing properly—doesn’t make a good impression. If she were less intriguing, would he feel less humiliated? Pointless question. He had to address the situation head-on.
“You didn’t have to lie at all,” he pointed out. “You could have saved yourself some trouble, if you’d presented that painting to me, instead of peddling it to Adelaide Forbes.”
“Your Grace,” she said, chin lifting. “I never knew your name.”
“Oh.” He cleared his throat, nonplussed. He should be pleased he’d had that much good sense. Even blackout drunk, he’d known better than to reveal his identity.
He wasn’t pleased. He didn’t like the version of himself he saw emerging.
“I was surprised when you walked through the classroom door,” she said. “Do you know, I’d taken you for a farmer.” She laughed, and her face passed through that strange phase of beauty before it became, once again, ordinary. The freckled face of a barmaid with a barmaid’s quick, sharp eyes.
“A farmer,” he echoed. He wore a coachman’s cape when he ventured out at night, and a felt hat, far less fashionable, and eye-catching, than his fine long coat and topper. But whatever the ensemble suggested, it was a far cry from farmer. And if he’d opened his mouth . . .
Perhaps he hadn’t spoken a word to her.
In the taxonomy of drunkenness, Anthony fit into several categories, combining the self-destructive, brooding, and silent tendencies. Had he pushed her down on the bed, pushed up her skirts, saying—asking—nothing?
Oh, embarrassment could manifest as agony.
“Yes, a farmer,” she said. “But in art, shepherds are more abundant. Hence, Endymion.”
The name meant nothing to him. No doubt it was written in one of the books he’d avoided during his short stint at university. He’d been a scholar of rugby football—could recite every national code and its history—and had particularly excelled at putting what he knew into practice on the field. Other subjects he’d mastered: cricket, rowing, fencing.
“Sounds Greek,” he observed, and she thinned her lips.
That’s right. He was a perfect boor. The world’s finest education had been his to waste. How had she come by hers?
“You did see the picture?” she asked.
Their eyes locked, and she looked down. At first, he mistook her bowed head for a sign of chagrin. Acknowledgment that the picture was tantamount to a violation. But no. She was marshaling her forces for a spirited defense.
“It’s not a portrait, you understand,” she said, looking up at him intently. “It’s not you. I based Endymion on you, which isn’t the same thing. The subject is mythological.”
Several objections sprang to mind.
“Then why wasn’t Endymion the one shot for adultery?”
Her jaw dropped.
“I don’t . . . Shot?”
Stupid. He needed to contain this situation, not compound it.
Too impulsive. That had been his teachers’ complaint. And the generals’. When would he learn? Her presence shook his self-command. It was too unsettling, knowing he’d had her, fucked her, when every detail of the encounter—good or bad—had been scrubbed from his mind. How had he behaved? What kind of man was he, really, when no one was watching, when even he wasn’t watching?
He shook his head dismissively.
“It was nothing,” he said. “Never mind. Forbes holds a gun like it’s a hot eel. I’ve lost more skin shaving.”
“But he . . .” Her horror was genuine. Not a trace of her former righteousness remained.
“He intercepted the picture and recognized me.” Anthony realized that he was testing his wounded arm, moving it experimentally. Her eyes followed the motion. He pressed the arm to his side.
“And feared he understood his wife’s sudden interest in art.”
“You must believe I had no idea of such a thing!” Her exclamation carried her a step closer. The air she displaced stroked him like a finger. He tipped his head to the side, tapping his thumb against his thigh. “Mrs. Forbes bought the painting sight unseen, based on my description alone. She wanted a nude god and that’s what she received.”
“Whatever I believe, whatever myth you read . . .” He leveled her with his gaze. “Make no mistake. The subject of that picture is me.”
It was the truth as he saw it. Plain and simple. But it didn’t sit well with her. Her eyes were slits.
“If you understood anything about . . .” She bit off her protestation.
“Anything about . . .” he prompted.
“Anything!” she said. She stretched out her hands. “You are not my subject. You are the means I used to explore a classical ideal. Every figure composition needs a model. The models aren’t the point. It’s the aesthetic approach that matters. If you weren’t a . . . a . . . philistine, you’d know Endymion from the moon in the upper left corner.”
“The moon, is it?” He smiled. “So Endymion was a kind of night watchman for sheep? Even a philistine knows you need to stay awake for that. And wear a tunic,” he added, an afterthought.
She hissed at him. Not since he’d turned in a Latin composition on the back of a cricket scoring sheet had his failure of intellection incurred such wrath.
“In mythology”—she spit it out—“Endymion was a shepherd so beautiful the goddess of the moon fell in love with him and visited him while he slept. Love. Beauty. Those are the subjects of the painting.”
She was easy to annoy. He knew better than to tell her she was magnificent in her outrage. Pink had blossomed across her cheeks. He wondered if she’d had red hair as a child, red curls that darkened to this shade of copper brown. She blushed like a redhead. Face, throat.
Had he licked her nipples and watched their rose color spread? He was a philistine for forgetting.
She was muttering something. Amending her accusation. Conceited pig it sounded very like. And that last was surely idiot.
“Idiot though I may be,” he said, “I am not an artist’s model. I am the Duke of Weston. And I fear I trump your Endymion in notoriety, at least in contemporary society. And so, your classical ideal is compromised by your infelicitous choice in raw material. Mr. Forbes is not the only person who will find himself unconvinced that my face belongs to a shepherd.”
Miss Coover’s face looked thunderous.
“Isn’t he, though?” she said. “Mrs. Forbes wanted to hang the painting in her chambers. No one else will see it.”
“True enough.” Anthony pressed on as her indignant expression wavered. “I’m not worried about that picture. My present concern is . . . other pictures.”
“There are no others.” Her mouth formed a straight line. “I am sorry you were nearly killed,” she added.
In the pause that followed, he realized there were two ways of interpreting the sentence. Her look challenged him to inquire as to her meaning.
“Thank you,” he said with a smile.
“Well. That’s that. I’ll be going, then.” She drew herself to her full height. There wasn’t much of her, but her pile of curls added inches up the vertical axis.
“Miss Coover.” He held up his hand. “If you possess studies, sketches, any material whatsoever that shows my likeness, I must ask you to turn them over. I can’t—I won’t—have my figure reproduced.”
“Fine.” She didn’t look at him.
“I must also ask for your silence.” The portion of shame—it grew more enormous by the moment. He had to tamp it down, ignore it.
“I require your silence,” he clarified, putting steel in his voice. After all, he wasn’t really asking. Asking wasn’t good enough. Too much was at stake. He needed a guarantee.
Sleepless nights of drinking and whoring. He would not be reading of them in the Pall Mall Gazette.
“It is in both of our interests.” He forced himself to continue, even as her eyes found his, narrowing with apprehension. “Your silence for my silence.”
“On which subject, pray tell, can I expect your silence?” She licked her lips, nervous. “It was wrong to misrepresent myself to Mrs. Forbes,” she conceded in a rush, then caught her breath. “Do you threaten to expose me?”
She was close enough to touch. All he had to do was raise his hand. “I will keep silent on a more serious subject.”
Now her eyes looked a question. She would not make this easy for him. He forged on.
“On the subject of your employment, Miss Coover,” he said, while she blinked at him. He inhaled, prepared himself. If he couldn’t be delicate, at least he would be direct.
“I will tell no one that you are a prostitute.”