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“That’s me,” she replied in a tone that thankfully did not wobble or emerge like she was a starving urchin being offered a crust of bread and willing to drop to her knees to beg. Or to do other things.
Silently fuming, she bit her cheek so hard she winced. “And who might you be?”
As if she didn’t know.
As if the world didn’t know a goddess stood on its dirty cobblestones.
The marchioness’s head tilted slightly, the left side of that tight-lipped mouth quirking slightly as though she absolutely knew that Ara was lying through her teeth. “Margot,” she said.
“What?” Dear God, why wouldn’t her bloody tongue work properly? She felt fucking brainless, the sound of the given name twisting her insides into knots. Weren’t the peerage excessively particular about their forms of address? And why did the small deviation sound so unfairly provocative?
“My name is Margot Foxglove…Lady Waverly,” the marchioness said.
“I’m Ara,” she replied dimly.
“Yes, you’ve said.” A flicker of something brewed in those storm-ridden eyes, the palest blue around the pupil brightening for a moment as the hint of amusement danced through their depths. But Ara must have imagined it because this marchioness was famous for her icy, unamused composure. “Countess Rawdon sent me.”
Ara cleared her throat. “Yes, please come in and mind the mess. I was finishing up with a piece.”
She wasn’t exaggerating—the studio looked like a tornado of chaos and color had hit it with old newssheets and random rags spread out over every inch of the floor. Paintings on canvasses lined the walls, some stacked along the floor and others fastened to whatever wall hangings she could find. With some horror, Ara belatedly realized that the chaise longue in the corner and the two mismatched armchairs were covered in clothes she hadn’t bothered to have one of the local washerwomen launder. Good God, was that a pair of dirty drawers?
Ara winced. Sometimes when the muse hit and she started to sweat from the effort, her clothes went flying. Cheeks hot, she skirted the periphery of the room and kicked the offending garment under one of the armchairs before hurriedly grabbing the rest strewn about and tossing them into an inconspicuous pile. She kicked those under the chair, too. There. That was marginally better.
But Lady Waverly wasn’t interested in the cluttered disarray. She was gliding toward the easel, which had Ara’s latest creation upon it. Despite the satin and taffeta layers of her very fashionable royal yellow dress, the woman’s sinuous body moved like water over rocks, a study in poetic motion. Her gaze flitted from painting to painting…from portraits to landscapes to animals and still-life subjects.
Biting her lower lip, Ara sucked in a breath and held it. She wasn’t a person who was low in confidence when it came to her art. But for reasons unknown, she wanted this marchioness to be impressed. Lady Waverly stopped in front of a mangy-looking dog on a small, framed canvas.
It was an odd choice for her to settle upon, but one of Ara’s personal favorites, considering its central placement over the small hearth. The dog was a stray. Pink tongue lolling out of his mouth, the look in the mutt’s adoring brown eyes held a wealth of emotion, of so much unconditional love. The purity in those eyes juxtaposed with his patchy fur and gaunt body still fascinated Ara. That a simple, starving animal could emanate so much hope. Hence the name she’d chosen for the piece.
“That’s Lucky,” she said. “He’s the market dog, but I feed him sometimes.”
The marchioness’s slender shoulders stiffened as if she’d forgotten Ara was there. “It’s a lovely piece. I had a dog once.”
Had. From the slightest, barely audible tinge of melancholy, Ara surmised that the dog in question had meant a lot to her, but the marchioness didn’t offer anything else. She studied the painting for a handful of seconds more before moving on to the next—a half-eaten apple with mottled reddish skin and the flesh bruised with the imprint of teeth as if it had been discarded mid-bite, lying near an outstretched palm. Two dark seeds rested on the surface beside it. Ara had labeled it Cyanide.
“Apple seeds can be toxic when chewed,” she explained.
The marchioness didn’t speak, though her mouth tightened infinitesimally before she walked to the last on the easel. The Countess of Rawdon’s piece. A soft hum of delight flew from her lips, the sound incongruous as if it wasn’t one often made. Not by that self-possessed mouth. “Naughty,” she remarked.
That word did all sorts of untoward things; Ara felt her nipples tighten beneath her shirt and crossed her arms over her chest in alarm. “Lady Rawdon intends it as a gift for the dowager.”
The reply was dry and couched in fondness. “Of course she does.”
Such affection suggested that they were close companions and not just acquaintances. That was good to know. While Ara had been reluctant to do the painting for many reasons, she liked and trusted the countess. Ara usually was a decent judge of character, considering her innate artistic ability to see beyond surface levels, but this woman had already gotten under her skin in a matter of minutes. That did not bode well…at least for Ara.
It had been months since she had experienced an attraction this intense.
Unrequited attraction, she reminded herself. And the marchioness might not even be of the persuasion to return her sentiments. In the theater and art world, dalliances of all sexes were an open secret, but Lady Waverly wasn’t from this world. Mayfair might as well be another planet. Ara wasn’t naïve, however. Such relations certainly did happen behind closed doors, no matter the station. But the aristocracy had more to lose with the duty of primogeniture and such, and scandal could ruin entire families.
By law, a man of any social class could receive a prison sentence for gross indecency. Ara bit back a derisive growl. As though love in any form was something indecent or shameful. Love was like air—free, vast, and open to all. She was in the minority with that opinion, however.
Moving to the right side of the room where she started to reorganize her messy supplies to find an unused canvas, Ara surreptitiously observed the lady in her space. It was the strangest thing. Despite Ara’s initial hesitancy, the marchioness’s presence in the studio felt like cool wind on a sweltering day.
One would expect that someone so standoffish might be unsettled and feel out of place. She was elegant perfection; Ara’s studio was chaos incarnate, much like her own nature. But the marchioness seemed to slot in like a missing cog…like she somehow already belonged there. It was oddly alarming to Ara, a candle being lit in front of an unsuspecting moth.
A positively stupid moth that should keep its distance from beautiful flames.
Ara could feel the singe of futility already. “Shall we begin?”
