Losing a slice of her rigid composure, she glanced at him. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Damien realized his next move would reduce his power and increase hers, but he’d never been commanding around women anyway, able to bend them to his will. Frankly, he’d never desired control of that kind over anyone—or desired anyone possess that kind of control over him. He was bemused enough by the awareness flickering like a candle at the back of his mind, much as he’d been by her fingertip tracing a hot line along his jaw, to let her have control.
The sketch was in his pocket, in a precisely folded package.
Exactly as his life had been lived, secreted and contained.
Removing it, he smoothed the vellum over the balustrade’s rounded top, a portrait of a confident young man coming into crisp view. Again, he was amazed anyone had seen him like this when it wasn’t true. Gratitude lingered amongst the shards of his discomfiture, the words he’d never said to her trapped at the base of his throat.
“Where did you…” Mercy took a step closer, uncaring of damaging cream silk, dropping to her knee to get a better view of the drawing. As she gazed at him from her crouched position, he couldn’t restrain the need that rolled like a rogue wave over him. He closed his fists and his mind to it lest it conquer him. “Where did you get this?”
“The day on the archery range. Cort came across it near the hedges.”
“And you kept it all this time?”
He hummed a reply and nudged his spectacles high, explaining why he’d done so beyond him.
“I didn’t even know you’d seen me. I was a foolish hellion of a girl then.” She traced the charcoal outline of his nose, the curve of his jaw. Her touch was tentative, but she never denied being the artist. With a whispered oath, she shoved to her feet. “It’s rough and unsophisticated. Crude. Done before I found a tutor willing to teach me how to shade features, show bone and sinew in their true form. Take my time and find the soul inside the art.”
“Tutor,” he murmured, amazed she’d been able to secure one.
She read his astonishment well. “Claude Benet, if you can believe it. Although he wouldn’t admit to instructing a female if you held a knife to his throat. I used every last cent of my pin money to coerce him. The starving artist is not a cliché after all, nor is the creator who fears talent in others.”
After depositing his flute on the balustrade, Damien retrieved the sketch, folded it, and slipped it back in his pocket. He rolled his shoulders, quivers racing through his belly, honesty begging for release. “I spotted a Drury Lane poster in a shop window, and I recognized the artist. Hence, my quest to locate you.”
She rocked back, her skirts rustling, the sound lost to the brisk gust that ripped across the terrace. “But why…why did you keep the sketch?”
“Because it gave me courage to have someone, anyone, even a child, view me as a man with…” He shrugged, lost, his gaze catching hers and holding. Her eyes in the dusky light were the color of high seas and raw sapphires. “Confidence. Poise.” He laughed, hearing how inane he sounded but unable to turn the tide of honesty. “When that couldn’t have been further from the truth. I’ve always wanted to thank you for it.”
When Mercy didn’t respond, he reclaimed the flute from the railing, and turned to make his way to the ballroom. He only hoped the dung-skirted chit had left for the evening.
“Wait,” she whispered.
Damien halted, glancing back to find moonlight dancing across the pearls looped through her hair. If he’d been able to draw, he would have captured her beauty, posthaste. As it was, he tucked the vision away in a corner of his mind for later viewing.
She shook her head, a soft smile curving her lips. “I’m no longer a child, DeWitt.”
He blinked, nonplussed. Her image went hazy through the moonlit shimmer striking his lenses. “I can see that, Ainsworth.”
“13 Charlotte Street, Fitzrovia. There’s a blue door in the back, off the alley. Take it up one flight. How about tomorrow, noon?” She crossed to him, and Damien held himself from stepping back when he wanted to shove her against the rough brick and show her he recognized very well that she’d grown up. “Be careful of the runner in the corridor. It has a tear that trips everyone. Tell the woman who answers it, Miss Clark, that I invited you.”
He frowned and adjusted his spectacles. “What?”
She reached, straightening his cravat, and Damien had the sudden realization that Mercy was going out of her way to touch him. Because she wished to or merely because she wished to disconcert him, he wasn’t certain. “The Devil of Drury Lane would like to know more about the theatre’s illustrator, so she’s inviting you to her studio.”
Then his childhood admirer left him, dazed and delighted, on a Mayfair veranda.
CHAPTER THREE
WHERE HIDDEN AGENDAS ARE REVEALED
Mercy prowled the small studio she’d been leasing on the sly for two years, her nerves pinging like raindrops off a tin roof. The mantel clock counted off the seconds as she passed it, reminding her of her foolishness. It was exactly twenty past noon, and she’d yet to have any visitors.
Why in heaven’s name had she taken Damien DeWitt of all people into her confidence? Even if he’d guessed her secret, the only person who ever had, she could have denied it for eternity. No one aside from Flory, the stage manager for the Drury, knew about her. Who would imagine a woman, the daughter of a bloody earl, made money selling illustrations? It wasn’t done, was unheard of, was a scandal of the highest order. If word ever got out among society, she’d be done for. Finished. Her father would cut her off quicker than it took her to sketch an apple.
He’d threatened, and she had no reason, none, to doubt him.
“Quit pacing. You’re making me as queasy as I was on that stormy voyage from Calais.”
