Page 6 of What a Lord Wants

A large room filled with rows of canvases in wide-ranging sizes and in various stages of completion greeted her. Worktables lining the walls held brushes, jars of paint and bladders of pigments, and various metal tools of all kinds. Through the open doors, the woody scent of linseed oil engulfed her. A large easel stood in the middle of the floor, facing a cream-colored chaise longue.

Ellsworth’s man had misunderstood. Clearly. Instead of sending her to the painting, he’d sent her to a painting studio.

“Good afternoon,” a deep voice drawled from the rear of the carriage house.

And apparently directly to the artist himself.

She caught her breath as he sauntered forward. He circled her as she stood in the doorway, half of her in the studio and the other half wondering if she should flee. He moved slowly, with the natural grace of an athlete and with the deep attention of a scientist whose dark eyes coolly assessed her.

She swallowed. No one hadeverlooked at her this blatantly before. And certainly not a man so scandalously undressed in shirtsleeves and a paint-speckled brown waistcoat, with the unbuttoned collar of his shirt open wide enough to reveal his bare neck and the faint teasing of dark hair on his chest. So she did what any young lady in her situation would have done.

She looked back.

He was handsome, in a rugged, unkempt sort of way, and nothing at all like the polish of Burton Williams and her gentlemen friends. His thick, black hair spilled in an unruly mass of curls that framed his face and accentuated the dark color of his brown eyes and the faint scruff of a three-day old beard. His mouth tightened in concentration as he scrutinized her, and her pulse beat faster as she stood perfectly still, her gaze following him warily.

“Eads sent you, then?”

Eads…That must have been the butler’s name. “Yes.”

“You’ve done this before, then?” He stopped in front of her and folded his arms across his chest, drawing the shirt tight across his shoulders and giving her a glimpse of just how well developed his body was beneath.

“Never,” she answered honestly. Usually footmen were sent to fetch important goods. “Ellsworth’s man said that I should—”

“Ellsworth?” His face hardened. “You went to Mercer House?”

She forced a smile. “Well, yes. I mean, thatiswhere—”

“You’re never to go there again, understand? You’re to keep absolute silence about me and my studio.”

Well,thatwould be easy. “Whoareyou?”

His eyes narrowed for a confused beat. “You don’t know?” Then the anger smoothed from his brow, and he laughed. The rich and deep sound spun through her down to her toes. “I’m Domenico Vincenzo, the man who’s going to hire you.”

No. That was impossible…Hewas the famous Italian painter? The man as notorious for his scandalous lifestyle as for the erotic subjects of his paintings? She’d been sent to the man himself!

Then the rest of his statement slapped her—Hire her?

“There’s been a mistake,” she ventured breathlessly. “There was a lot of confusion at Mercer House, and I think—”

“The Pall Mall picture gallery. That’s probably why Eads got confused and sent you there first.”

She blinked. “Pardon?”

“The Marquess of Ellsworth is a patron of the Royal Academy of Arts and a noted collector of art. The British Institution has been trying to coax him into joining their organization, and so this year they’ve attempted to flatter him into a membership by asking him to lend several of his paintings to their old masters exhibition.” An amused gleam lit his eyes. “If the porters arrived today to take the collection to Pall Mall, then Mercer House must have been in an uproar.”

Somehow she’d lost control of the conversation. She tried again. “I’m here for thepainting.”

He shook his head. “Pigments and canvases are expensive. We’ll start with a few sketches first to see if you have the spark to be a model before I paint you.”

Her mouth fell open. He thought she was…? “I’m not a model.”

“So you said, that you’ve never done this before. You’re an actress or a singer, barmaid, prostitute—”

“I amnot!”

He grimaced. “And not at all what I expected.” Once again, he raked his gaze up and down her body, this time much slower than before and more akin to the one the young man had given her in the alley. While that man-boy’s leering had set her teeth on edge,thisman’s gaze heated her from the inside out.

“But you have potential,” he murmured as he took her chin in his paint-speckled fingers and turned her face gently to each side, studying her. “Delicate bone structure, skin like porcelain, the slight stature of a waif but with deceivingly ample curves…”