“I wouldn’t gift him a garden folly to look after. He’s an irresponsible rake.”
“And yet your uncle told me that you assumed the mantle of duke with but seventeen years. You had to learn responsibility at a much younger age, why did you not allow him?”
“You heard us arguing.”
“As did the dead of Saint George’s Burying Ground.” She crossed to the fire, but not before righting the fallen miniature. Why did she feel the need to meddle with his desk? It was downright disconcerting. She opened her palms to the burning coals. “If you do not give, how can they learn? The devil makes work for idle hands.”
Casper glowered. This woman had no business interfering in family matters.
Yet her censure stung because deep within, he recognised he’d been harsh with Ernest.
Perhaps he ought to reconsider this stables venture as his brother also possessed a knack with horses, but it would require…entrustment and faith in another’s ability. It had taken years and years to trust in his own men of affairs and land managers, let alone put his rakish brother in charge. Casper had worked too damn hard to let anyone throw Rothwell coin at senseless ventures.
So instead he turned his irritation on the woman who taunted him, to seek the honesty he himself yearned for.
“Have you idle hands also, Mrs Swift? Did the devil find work for them?”
Her unfashionable skirt swished as she spun and stabbed a finger out. “How dare you!” she roared. “All I have sought to do is survive. To use the little I have at my disposal, you…sodding duke.”
Loving her fervour, he stalked near, needing answers, but… “Did you just use my peerage as an insult?”
No one had ever done that and he felt thoroughly insulted.
“Hah, a duke with enough food for half of London, who probably sits tallying his monies each night and by day goes…boating or somesuch.”
That hurt.
“I have never been bloody boating in my life,” he bellowed, incensed. “The one pleasure I allow myself is art.”
“Portraits can be cold companions, Your Grace.” She jabbed a finger into his chest. “I adore art also but have learned that beneath the emotion, it is an unshifting reflection of a moment in time. Beyond the canvas, people learn and grow with circumstance and experience.” That jabbing concluded but her fingers remained. “You need to immerse yourself, Your Grace, in colour and life and touch. To be open and thoughtful to those of this household who care for you.”
Evelyn’s scolding inflamed him, flush cheeks and rosy lips spouting words he had no wish to hear.
He reached a palm to her cheek, cold despite its scarlet hue – fire and ice. “Are you offering?”
“Offering?”
“To immerse me in…colour, life and touch.”
“Is that a proposition?” She tilted her head. “You need to be blunt, Your Grace, as having lived in Covent Garden, such poetry is wasted on me.”
On second thoughts,Evelyn did not require him to be blunt with his desires as she could hardly misinterpret the manner in which his eyes darkened, the way his hand caressed the pulse of her neck, the smile that lit his lips at the rapid flutter.
The duke wound a finger within a coil of her hair and gently tugged, seemingly mesmerised by the tone and texture.
“Poetry could never be wasted upon you, Evelyn Swift,” he rasped.
And she knew that soon she would tell him the unvarnished truth: there was no other painting; she had forged it; they were her own brush strokes; it was all her work…
Perhaps she should confess to him now, be honest, but his past assertions on that particular trait gnawed at her innards and stilled her tongue.
The doctor would arrive on the morrow, and Artemisia had retired abed with cheeks too flushed, a heaving wheeze to her chest that so terrified Evelyn.
Lady Owlswick had attended with a mustard poultice, honey syrup and slender book, and they were not too proud to turn her kindness away.
Evelyn gazed at the nobleman whose admiration caressed her face as though he considered her the finest masterpiece.
What gilded magnificence he presented tonight. With jacket discarded, his chest appeared yet broader, a cream waistcoat shot with blue silk drawing the eye. The formal attire of dinner continued with dark-blue breeches that had no business stretching so tight.
