Page 65 of The Lady Makes Her Mark

Not that he doubted it would be an interesting picture. Too interesting, he feared. After all, he knew better than most the artist’s abilities and had seen the way she had looked at him.

No, it was the prospect of the portrait being put to its intended use. The idea of his face and his title being dangled in front of young ladies, like a flashy lure to fool a fish. The prospect, in other words, that all his aunt’s plans would succeed.

Once the picture was revealed, it would be not a beginning but an end. An end to any pretext for intimacy with Constantia. An end to the strange and eventful and unexpected journey that had brought her here. An end to a dream that for one brief hour he had let himself wish could be real.

The room seemed to hold its breath as Aunt Josephine reached for the painting. “I present to you—”

Alistair screwed shut his eyes.

A collective gasp made his heart stutter in his chest, but still he refused to look. He couldn’t imagine what could have inspired such a reaction. Had Constantia been so mischievous as to have switched out the formal portrait for the, uh, considerably more informal one she’d been working on when he’d left?

Or had she perhaps painted him with a pair of devil’s horns, as she’d once depicted Miles?

Or—?

Freddie nudged his elbow, almost upsetting his glass. “Look!”

Daring to crack open one eyelid, he discovered that the reason for the uproar had not been the painting, which was still turned toward the wall.

Instead, every eye in the room was focused on the doorway, the arched shape of which perfectly framed Constantia.

“If I may, your ladyship,” she said, and the small crowd parted as she strode, head held high, toward the easel.

She was wearing a gown of ivory silk overlaid with gold net that sparked fire with every step she took. Alistair no longer regretted the expense of the candles. Her hair was piled high on her head, rich waves of honey carefully coiled and pinned, with a few soft curls around her face.

He recognized the dress as belonging to Danny, one she had worn during her first and only London Season. And the artistry of the coiffure could probably be credited to Georgie or Freddie, or both, as he knew that the lack of a ladies’ maid last spring had driven them to excel at such things. But the posture, the crooked smile, the piercing eyes . . . those were entirely, utterly Constantia.

She looked beautiful, breathtakingly so—but not more beautiful than she had been to him when she had been wearing nothing at all.

He took half a step toward her before Freddie laid a hand on his arm. Constantia had reached the portrait and now grasped the picture by the edge of the wooden stretcher that held the canvas taut. With a gracious tip of her head to Aunt Josephine, she turned the portrait around to face the gathered guests.

But to look at it, Alistair would have had to tear his eyes away from Constantia.

Eventually, however, he became aware of other things in the room. Conversation swelled more loudly than one would expect for a party of a dozen people. Over it all, he could hear Aunt Josephine complaining about something, though that was hardly unusual. Danny, who had entered the drawing room behind Constantia, wore an irritated expression and hurried right to Harry’s side. Harry looked unhappier still.

“Well,” said Freddie, still near his elbow, “that should do the trick.”

“Trick?” he echoed absently, his attention now captured by Danny appearing to comfort their youngest sister. “What trick?”

When Freddie made no answer, he crossed the room to join Danny in her efforts. Before he reached them, he heard Harry say in a choked voice, “You said you thought she was on our side. You said she—” She broke off when Danny laid a hand over hers, signaling for quiet at their brother’s approach.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

Harry’s mouth popped open, but Danny spoke over her with determined calm. “Nothing. Really. We all knew Miss Cooper was a talented artist. And with a portrait like that, you and Aunt Josephine will surely get what you wanted.”

He had to look at the picture then, as he was quite certain he and Aunt Josephine had never seen eye to eye on anything. Because what he wanted was Constantia.

With a squeeze for Harry’s shoulder and a nod to Danny, he turned at last to face his portrait. Constantia stood to the right of the easel and Aunt Josephine to the left. Or rather, Aunt Josephine was positioned to argue and Constantia was regarding her with detached amusement.

As for the portrait itself, well . . . it was not, as he’d again begun to fear, the picture of him reclining nude on the chaise. It was also not, he felt quite certain, the sort of thing his aunt had had in mind.

Most noblemen’s portraits were serious and unsmiling. The subject’s powerful eye tended to bore into the viewer’s and send a prickle of discomfort down one’s spine.

In contrast, Constantia had painted him not quite in profile, his eyes focused on something, or someone, in the middle distance, the lips quirked in half a smile, as if he’d just told a truly terrible joke and knew his listener was fighting not to laugh. His hair was tousled, his cravat was slightly askew, and he was wearing not the elegant blue superfine, but his ancient, battered greatcoat.

“When I said I didn’t want flattery,” his aunt was saying, “I certainly did not mean for you to make him look like a farmer.”

“I think he looks . . . dashing,” insisted the rector’s wife, who, despite her age, punctuated that statement with a girlish titter.