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Leo let the familiar patter wash over him, as he poked through wooden toys and copper pans and a tangle of shiny satin ribbons. And then he saw—
“I’ll take that,” he said.
It was a conch shell: huge, polished, flawless. Entirely useless, of course, but entirely right.
With a sorrowful shake of his beard, Woodruff reached for the shell. “’Tis the end of days, verily the end of days, when a duke eschews diamonds and silk to give such a thing to the lady he’s courting.”
Leo fished some coins from his pocket. “Calm yourself, good fellow,” he said. “This is not for the lady I mean to court. This is a gift for a friend.”
CHAPTER2
The drawing felt almost alive under Juno’s fingers. Stormy waters crashed around a mermaid’s fishtail as she laid claim to a muscular sailor, who had not only been shipwrecked, poor fellow, but had somehow managed to lose all his clothes in the process.
“That’s the least of your worries, though, my friend,” Juno cheerfully informed her sailor, “since that beautiful mermaid is about to drag you to your doom.”
The sailor remained stoically silent, but a feline burr came from the red-cushioned window seat, where the cats were curled up together in a puddle of late-afternoon sun. Artemisia was ignoring her, striped paws crossed over her eyes, but Angelica blinked sleepily, and yawned when Juno scratched her soft gray ears.
The drawing was good, she marveled, with the faint surprise she still felt after completing a pleasing piece of work. Somehow, she had done this: captured the turmoil of the churning waves, the tautness of the sailor’s muscles as he battled nature, the sleek ribs and waist of the mermaid as she reached for him.
And yet. Her eye turned critical. The sailor’s unclothed figure was satisfactory, but his face required further changes, to disguise the model’s identity.
Humming a sea shanty, Juno went back to work, gradually becoming aware of someone watching from the studio door.
Mr. St. Blaise, presumably. Bother. She had hoped her model had left.
“You had better have your clothes on this time,” she said sternly, without looking up from the easel.
“I am happy to report that I have committed all my sins today in a state of full dress.”
The familiar drawl, dryly amused, sent warm pleasure bubbling up through her.
“Leo!” She turned with a smile. “Forgive me. I thought you were someone else.”
“Someone more naked, I presume? I am sorry to disappoint.”
“Oh, you could never disappoint, not while you blind me with your ducal splendor.”
He had arranged himself like a painting: his slender figure lazily propped up against the doorjamb, booted legs crossed at the ankles, posed just so with the light teasing his burnt-umber hair and gliding over the long angles of his face.
She let herself take him in: his artfully tousled hair and deceptively sleepy eyes, the jeweled pin glinting in his flawless cravat, the ornate embroidery on his waistcoat, the doeskin hugging his thighs. His form-fitting coat fairly smirked at her shapeless smock, and the gleam on his boots made her scuffed wooden floorboards blush with shame.
Leopold Halton, the Duke of Dammerton, looked as out of place in Juno’s humble, chaotic studio as some glittering creature from fairyland, yet his presence always felt right. Even after four years, she never tired of his unannounced visits, just as she never tired of looking at him. And why should she? Any artist would appreciate the elegance of his form, the grace of his movements, the wizardry of his tailoring.
To say nothing of the gifts he brought her. He held one up now, a lump covered by a linen handkerchief.
“My offering to the Muse,” he said.
“Very well. You may enter.”
She wiped her grubby hands and threw the cloth over the sketch to conceal it, while Leo navigated through her forest of easels to present his gift. It was his own handkerchief draped over it, and a hint of lemon verbena teased her nostrils as he folded back the linen to reveal, of all things, a conch shell.
“Oh, but this is unbelievable!” she laughed, reaching for it eagerly.
Her fingers brushed his warm palm; a pleasant tingling ensued. She carefully focused instead on the shell: the rough bumps of its spire, the smooth coolness of its inner lips.
“You find the conch shell amusing?” he asked, watching her thumb slide over the shell’s glossy pink lip.
Her grip tightened. “I find it wonderful you knew I wanted one.”
