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How easily the conversation had flowed, and yet how carefully. At that time, London was abuzz about his wife’s scandalous behavior, so Juno had tactfully waited for him to mention her first. Four years and a divorce later, she was still waiting.
Indeed, one might think the scandal had concerned a different man entirely. Even during the circus surrounding the trial of his wife’s lover and the ensuing divorce, even as the published trial transcripts sold in the tens of thousands, as increasingly bawdy cartoons lined every shop window, as he became a comic character in puppet shows and the subject of songs sold on street corners— Leo had strolled through his days as if none of it had anything to do with him.
In many ways, Juno knew Leo. She knew he took his tea with lemon, and he liked a nice pork pie, and he preferred the sort of theater that made one laugh. He delighted in embroidery and artisans and arguments for reform. He despised lists, numbers, and small-mindedness. He admired his mother, adored his siblings, both respected and resented his late father.
But she did not know if he still loved his former wife, or how their lack of children made him feel. She did not know what future he dreamed of, or if he took lovers, or if he would ever love again.
She knew what people said about Leo, because people werealwaystalking about him. “Suchsprezzatura,” some cried, citing that Italian virtue of effortless skill and style, while others insisted the duke was cold and aloof.
Aloof? Cold?Leo? No: With her, Leo was playful and fun. Eyes that shade of blue could seem cold, perhaps, but Juno only saw their sparkle when he was enjoying a joke. His quietness could be mistaken for aloofness, but in fact he was shy; despite his high status and the constant glare of attention upon him, he preferred to observe than be at the center of a group. With his friends, however, he was amiable and relaxed.
Yet she couldn’t help but sense that he carefully kept a wall between them.
And why wouldn’t he? He was a splendid duke, and she was a shabby artist, and they lived in different worlds, and she must not let herself forget that, because no one else ever would.
He glanced up, caught her studying him. She unfurled the cloth from her fists.
“Thank you for ensuring I’m not late, but you need not have come yourself,” she said, a little stiffly. “I’m sure a duke has more important missions than to remind an artist of her appointments.”
“My motives are entirely selfish,” he drawled. “I must ensure you are there on time so I have someone to rescue me if Livia and Phoebe talk at me in Latin.”
“Not talking at people in Latin has always been one of my more appealing traits. As patience is yours!” she added. “I’ll dress quickly, if you don’t mind entertaining yourself—” She stopped short, taking in his boots and doeskins. “Oh, you’re not dressed for dinner either.”
He tipped Angelica off his thigh, stood, and brushed down his coat. “I’ll make my own way there. A carriage awaits you outside.”
She forced a smile. “Of course.”
Of course a duke could not be seen traveling across London alone in a carriage with an artist. Not when the duke was divorced and seeking a wife. Not when the artist was an unmarried woman. Gossip would not affect him, of course; a duke would be forgiven all manner of things. But even though artists and other bohemians were not held to the same rules of behavior as theton, Juno was an unmarried woman who had excellent connections but earned her own living, and no one knew quite what to make of someone like her.
“That is very thoughtful,” she added. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure.”
Juno watched him go, a secret treat she liked to give herself, her breath hitching at the graceful taper of his shoulders, back, thighs, the almost feline energy of his movements. Her fingers twitched. He could be captured only with sweeping, fluid lines.
In the doorway, he twisted unexpectedly; she straightened guiltily. He whisked a searching glance over her, as if to catch her transforming behind his back. It was new, his faintly troubled expression when he regarded her. The drawing of the mermaid had unsettled him.
Satisfaction bloomed in her chest as his footsteps crossed her parlor and faded down the stairs.
Serve you right if my art affected you, Leopold Halton, she thought.Serve you jolly well right.
CHAPTER3
“Ten pounds says we’ll not even finish our port before my father starts nagging me to get married,” Hadrian had grumbled to Leo when inviting him to fill the eighth seat at the Bell family dinner.
As it happened, the tricky topic of marriage did not arise until after the gentlemen had finished their post-dinner port and joined the ladies in the drawing room. And it was not Sir Gordon who started it, but Juno, when she innocently asked her cousin, “What are your plans now you are back in England, Hadrian? Do you mean to stay this time?”
She was seated on a settee across from Leo, beside her cousin Phoebe, or rather, Mrs. Grayshott as she was now, who, at five-and-twenty, had acquired an air of sophistication along with a failed marriage. Juno sat with one foot tucked up under her. When the gentlemen arrived, Lady Bell had automatically admonished her to sit properly, and Juno had automatically obeyed. But here she was again, that foot tucked up, heedless of her exposed calf and abandoned slipper. If Lady Bell had noticed, she was saving her breath, for everyone knew Juno always went her own way in the end.
In all other respects, she appeared every inch the genteel lady her aunt had raised her to be, in a pretty pale-blue gown trimmed with shiny darker-blue ribbons. Even her hair was tamely piled on her head, save for a few renegade spirals that fluttered about her neck.
The change from her dowdy work dresses was startling. Leo was not used to seeing the rounded lines of her bare arms, golden in the candlelight, or the expanse of skin above the generous swell of her bodice. Although, to be fair, while those hideous day dresses had long sleeves and high necklines, their loose-fitting folds tended to offer tantalizing hints of Juno’s curves when she stretched in her luxuriant way.
Yet neither version of Juno—neither artist nor lady—looked capable of the furious passions swirling within her drawing of the mermaid with the sailor.
That drawing. That bloody drawing.
His mind kept coming back to it throughout dinner, while Phoebe and Livia debated Greek translations over the pea soup, while Sir Gordon and young Daniel dissected law over the lamb cutlets, while Hadrian and Lady Bell discussed economics over the duck ragout, while Juno regaled them with gossip from the art world over the gooseberry tart. Conversation flowed energetically, but no one mentioned Hadrian’s mysterious scar, or Phoebe’s estrangement from her husband, or Livia’s increasing withdrawal from society, or—mercifully—Leo’s failure to contribute much to the conversation at all.
