Page 93 of The Muse of Maiden Lane

An expression of reluctant understanding came over her. “You’re proposing a marriage of convenience.”

“Something of the sort, yes.” Teddy honestly didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of it before. It would easily solve both their problems. From his desire to set up his own establishment, to her need to have a home of her own. He had no doubt they could make it work. They were neither of them fools.

Folding her arms, Stella paced to the window, the hem of her velvet-trimmed skirts brushing softly over the slatted floor, stirring up dust motes. Her back was very straight. “But you don’t want to marry me.”

“Don’t I?”

“You don’t want to marry anyone. You’ve said so before. You don’t want anyone to bother you.”

“And you would?”

“I daresay I might.” She glanced at him over her shoulder with a fleeting, bitter smile. “I may be quiet and unassuming in most of my life, but make no mistake, I have a wildness in me. It bursts out on occasion in the most alarming ways.”

Some of the tension in Teddy’s muscles eased. He comprehended her meaning. He’d seen that very wildness, shimmering beneath the surface of her ladylike façade. It was that which had first called to him so many months ago. Not her stillness or her gravity, but the untamed spirit beneath, as strong and unpredictable as the raging seas in a Turner painting.

“You couldn’t alarm me if you tried,” he said.

“Don’t be so sure.” Stella tugged restlessly at the fingers of one of her gloves. “I like to go fast. To take risks on occasion. To feel as though I’m a pulsebeat away from peril.”

“Galloping your mare, I know.”

“Not only galloping, but in other ways. Try as I might to behave myself, I inevitably do something rash. It might subject you to scandal.”

“What care I for scandal? I’m an artist, not a country vicar.”

“An artist with your reputation to consider. What if my conduct gave rise to malicious talk? What if…What if someone in society made me a figure of fun?”

“Remote possibilities, surely.”

She gave a hollow laugh. “Not so remote. I’ve had a poem written about me once already. It was a powerful thing. A few words, carelessly composed. Enough to ruin me, practically.”

“A poem?” Teddy arched a brow. This was the first he’d heard of it. “What did it say?”

“That I was a gray wraith searching out a husband like some manner of grandmotherly succubus.”

He was surprised into a crack of laughter.

But Stella wasn’t laughing. “It was hard enough to bear it myself. But you won’t appreciate being made a joke, not when you’re just starting out. And not when I’ll be the model of your first major piece.”

He rolled a half turn closer to her, his expression sobering. “Who wrote it?”

“The poem? I don’t know. It was anonymous.”

“You must have your suspicions.”

“None. There were any number of snickering young lords hanging about during my debut. Any one of them could have been the culprit—or more than one. The point is, I can only be small and quiet for so long, and then—”

“Forget being small and quiet,” Teddy said in a burst of passionate impatience. “I’m asking you to be conspicuous with me! To marry me and live here with me in Maiden Lane. We can do what we want, when we want. There will be nothing and no one to rein us in, save the limits of our own inclinations.”

Stella turned to him. There was a storm of conflict in her eyes. He’d confused her. Overwhelmed her. “I don’t know what I want,” she admitted. “I’ve never had the freedom to properly discover it.”

Teddy felt a fierce rush of tenderness for her. He wheeled his chair the rest of the way across the room, joining her by the window. “If we marry, you’ll have all the freedom you require,” he said. “I can’t promise you a conventional life, but I can promise you that.”

Stella slowly lowered back down onto the window seat, bringing them eye to eye. “As much freedom as a husband is willing to give a wife?”

“More,” he said. “We wouldn’t be marrying to satisfy some antiquated social convention. We’d be marrying to please ourselves.”

“Would it please you?”