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“I’m due for a new portrait anyway,” she said. “Thank you.”
Honoria laughed, her cheeks brightening and eyes dancing with mirth. “No, my dearest. You misunderstand. This is a nude portrait. All the rage, I assure you.”
Margot’s mouth slackened as she blinked violently, certain she’d misheard, though from Honoria’s leering countenance, she hadn’t. The cardstock singed her fingers. Even now, staring anew at the stiff rectangle, a part of her was compelled to throw it into the hearth, but another part of her vibrated with something unfamiliar. “I couldn’t,” she whispered.
“You can.” Honoria winked. “Choose yourself for once, Margot.”
And that was why, a fortnight later, Margot found herself at the address on the card in Covent Garden, her heart in her throat and her morals left firmly at home.
The coach had stopped in front of a small, narrow building nearly hidden among a warren of crowded streets, past the market square that was thronged with peddlers with carts, flower girls, cramped stalls, and costermongers. She’d dressed simply and taken the plainest of her carriages, but even her coachman seemed averse to leaving her.
“Are you certain this is where you need to be, milady?” he asked.
“Yes, I am sure, Farrows. Please return for me in two hours.” That would be enough to appease Honoria, along with her own fleetingly absurd sense of adventure that seemed to be fading by the second. Descending, she knocked on the bold red door before she lost the dregs of her courage.
“I’m choosing myself,” she whispered. And hopefully, not ruination.
Ara Vaughn squinted critically at the sea landscape painting she’d just finished. It was a commissioned piece, another for the Countess of Rawdon, one of her most ardent supporters. It featured a folly at the edge of a stormy ocean. Banal enough at first glance until one looked closely at the sprites frolicking in the breaking waves…frolicking if not so much as enthusiastically fucking. Lady Rawdon had a shameless sense of humor.
“I want to shock the sticks from their collective arses, my dear,” she’d said, vocal in her scathing opinions of the ton. “This one is a birthday present for my mother-in-law.”
She was devilishly impenitent, too.
Ara suspected that the brazen countess had desired a lot more than just her art, and while the lady was appealing, Ara tried not to mix business with pleasure. Not that being on the arm of someone like Lady Rawdon wouldn’t have opened many doors to wealthy patrons in the aristocracy—the countess was well-connected in the art and theater world—but Ara preferred to succeed on her own merit.
As it was, her paintings were already in some demand, and she did have Lady Rawdon to thank for that. A few pieces had been purchased by a young duke with an eye for color who was rumored to be part of the prince’s set, as well as by Lord Alfred Douglas, the youngest son of the Marquess of Queensberry.
Word of mouth was definitely not unwelcome.
Besides, it wasn’t as though Ara were destitute. Her father had been a prosperous vintner in France and had left her a comfortable fortune when he died. For a woman in her position, she was lucky. That inheritance allowed her to own this entire building a stone’s throw from the lovely Floral Hall, which included a few rooms on the upper floors for paying tenants, Ara’s cozy private apartments on the second level, and a spacious painting studio on the ground floor.
A sharp rap on the door had her frowning. Should she have been expecting someone? Ara glanced at the clock in the corner of the studio and balked. Goodness, was it four o’clock already? And today was Wednesday, if she recalled. No, no, it was Thursday! When the muse took her under, sometimes it took full days for her to resurface in the real world. She’d begun this painting at the start of the week.
She dimly remembered speaking with Lady Rawdon a few weeks ago about a special favor to paint a portrait for one of her recently widowed friends. And though she’d been happy to agree…an artist was ever on the hunt for different inspiration, the minute she’d been given the name, she’d cringed.
The Ice Queen herself.
Ara exhaled. Everyone with a pulse in London had heard of the aloof, proud diamond of the aristocracy, the Marchioness of Waverly. It wasn’t that she wouldn’t be a delight to paint—not with such breathtaking bone structure—but the arrogant marchioness was rumored to be the biggest bitch this side of the Atlantic.
One cutting look from her and a girl’s whole come-out could be ruined before it began. Grown men shivered in her presence. Admittedly, Ara had only seen her once at the Crystal Palace years ago during an aeronautical exhibition and her fingers had itched back then to sketch the razor-sharp lines of that angular, coldly beautiful, unsmiling face. The sheer presence she’d exuded had been entirely too aphrodisiacal.
Bloody hell, was that her at the door?
Ara glanced down at her paint-splattered shirt, loose trousers, and bare feet, and lifted a palm to her short mess of curls that had gone uncombed for days. No matter. How bad could it be? People had to expect that artists might be unkempt and greasy, and who cared what Lady Waverly thought anyway. She was likely here to bow out of the arrangement. Ara could hardly fathom that particular marchioness sitting for a portrait in her modest studio.
It probably wasn’t even her.
But when Ara shook her head and crossed the space to open the door, her mouth instantly dried. An elegantly gloved hand was partially lifted to knock and full lips parted on an intake of breath. The Marchioness of Waverly stood on the threshold in the very resplendent, very haughty flesh, a pair of mesmeric stormy gray-blue eyes widening in cool surprise.
From where Ara stood on the stoop, it put her in direct view of that unforgettable face, and the artist in her could not help but greedily catalog the features she’d only perused from afar: wide brow, winged dark eyebrows over thick-lashed eyes that glinted with wintry blue flame, a bold nose bracketed by sharp cheekbones and softened below by the decadent arch of lips that glistened as if they’d been moistened a heartbeat before. Her chin was proud, with the tiniest dimple at its center, and that exquisitely hewn jawline was a painter’s fantasy. Dark hair, swept up in artful curls, surrounded her face and offset her pale, creamy skin.
This close, Lady Waverly was, without any doubt, the epitome of pulchritude.
Ara forced herself to breathe and meet that gray-blue gaze once more.
“Miss Ara Vaughn?” That voice was both husky and imperious, and shot straight between Ara’s thighs as if the lips and tongue that housed it would be quick to follow.
She clenched her legs together and cursed inwardly. Bloody hell, gather thyself!
