The Wicked Ways of a Duke(15)

Even as those thoughts went through his mind, something else stirred within him at the shining pleasure in her face, something he couldn’t quite define, something a bit like the feeling one got when an unexpected shaft of sunlight peeked out from between dark clouds on a gloomy day.

Irritated with himself for such fanciful rubbish, he tore his gaze from hers and gestured to the canvases around them. “Are you fond of art?”

“Yes. I used to draw and paint when I was a girl, and I love looking at paintings, though I don’t often have the opportunity.” She glanced past him. “That’s a Renoir, isn’t it?”

When he nodded, she moved to stand beside him. “Dance in the Country,” she read from the printed sign beside the painting.

He studied her as she studied the Renoir, and he wondered if a direct approach might be best. He could just put it to her in a simple, straightforward fashion: he liked her, she liked him, he needed money and a wife, she had money and needed a husband; it was a match made in heaven, so what about just getting on with it?

“I like this painting,” she said, bringing him out of his strategic speculations. “What a vivid expression the artist gives her face. It’s clear she’s in love.”

“Not with the man she’s dancing with, poor chap.” Rhys gestured to the woman in the painting with his hat. “Her name is Aline. She was Renoir’s mistress when he painted this.”

“His mistress? Oh, please tell me he wasn’t married to someone else at the time! I should hate that. Mistresses are such a detriment to a couple’s happiness. And what if there are children?”

Rhys became uneasy. Most women of his own circle would have accepted the inevitability of their husband keeping a mistress without any fuss. Miss Abernathy, he feared, would not be so sanguine. “He wasn’t married to someone else. In fact, he married Aline in the end.”

“Oh, I’m so glad! I adore stories with happy endings.”

He began to fear the worst. “So you are a romantic. I suppose…” He paused, striving to put just the right offhand note in his voice. “I suppose you believe in our modern ideal of marrying for love?”

She seemed surprised. “Of course. Don’t you?”

He froze. There was nothing for it. He’d been fool enough to ask the question. Forcing a smile to his lips, he lied. “Of course.”

To him, it sounded terribly unconvincing, but she seemed satisfied by his answer and turned her attention to another painting.

Damn. He realized he should have known it all along. A woman who’d had a respectable, middle-class upbringing was bound to possess all the staunch moral convictions that came with it. Her sort would never find a marriage of purely material considerations acceptable. She didn’t approve of a married man keeping a mistress, so she probably abhorred other sensible, time-honored customs, too, like marriage partners sleeping in separate beds and gentlemen spending their evenings at the club. Hell, she probably collected those commemorative plates of Victoria and Albert in scenes of domestic bliss. It was clear a direct, expeditious approach was out of the question. Rhys resigned himself to courtship.

“This is a beautiful landscape,” she commented, causing him to glance at the painting she was studying. The moment he realized what it was, he couldn’t help a surprised chuckle.

“By Jove, that’s Rosalind’s Pond.”

“You know this place?”

“I do. I know the artist as well.” He gestured to the signature in the bottom right corner with his hat. “This was painted by Earl Camden, an old school friend of mine. Whole family’s mad about art, and Cam was always mucking about with paints.”

“He’s very good.”

“Yes, he is. He visited me in Florence one year. Came to study the masters, paint the Arno, that sort of thing.”

“Is this pond in Italy?” she asked in some surprise. “It seems a very English setting to me.”

“It is English. Rosalind’s Pond is on the grounds at Greenbriar, a villa owned by his family. It’s quite near here, actually, just past Richmond, no more than an hour by train. I stayed there the summer I was seventeen. Cam and I always liked Rosalind’s Pond. Good fishing.”

She laughed. “And here I was thinking it a perfect spot for picnics.”

“Do you like picnicking, Miss Bosworth?”

“I do, though since coming to London, I’ve not had much opportunity for it. Having grown up in the country, I miss picnicking and blackberrying.”

“Ah, a country girl. Yorkshire, I’d guess, from your accent?”

“North Yorkshire, yes.”

“Pretty country up there. No wonder you miss it. Still, picnics and picking blackberries are all very well, but it’s the fishing that matters, Miss Bosworth. Excellent trout fishing in that part of the world.”

She bit her lip in apology. “I don’t know how to fish, I’m afraid.”

A cough interrupted them, and they turned to find they were blocking the view of the painting by a group of schoolboys and their tutor. They moved on to the next canvas, a rendering of the Moulin Rouge in which a woman with green skin and orange hair played a prominent role. Miss Abernathy lingered a long time over it, tilting her head this way and that, a puzzled frown on her face.

“You seem quite fascinated by this one,” he commented at last.

“I’m just wondering why her face is green.”

He didn’t tell her it was the artist’s oblique reference to absinthe. “Indigestion?” he said instead, making her laugh.

“That doesn’t seem very artistic, does it?” She shook her head. “No, Your Grace, I think it must be face paint.”

“Couldn’t be. This is a depiction of the Moulin Rouge, and none of Zidler’s girls paint their faces green. At least not that I ever saw.”

“You’ve been to the Moulin Rouge?”

Rhys turned his head at the surprise in her voice and found that she was staring at him. Her eyes were round as saucers, and he wondered if he’d made a blunder in mentioning he’d seen the Moulin Rouge’s infamous cancan dancers. Most women had a weakness for rakes—a fact for which he daily thanked heaven—but perhaps Miss Abernathy was different. Perhaps she preferred an upright, moral sort of fellow. After all, she had displayed the absurd tendency to regard him as if he were some sort of white knight ever since their first meeting.

He briefly toyed with the idea of playing up to that ideal, of prolonging her image of him as a heroic, noble figure long enough to get her to the altar, but he abandoned that notion almost at once. The newspapers brought up his notorious past with such tiresome regularity he couldn’t hope to keep it a secret. Besides, acting a role so contrary to his true nature would be deuced hard work, and he was a lazy fellow.

“I have been to the Moulin Rouge, I confess it,” he answered her. “I lived in Paris for several years before I went to Italy, and my quarters were quite near Montmartre.” His reasons for living a block from the most notorious bohemian district in Paris were quite ignoble, but he spared her the details.

“What is it like?” she asked. “Is there really an opium den there?”

“Several, I’m told, although I’ve never been in that part of the club. I’m not an opium-eater myself.” Absinthe was another matter; he’d been quite fond of the stuff back in his Paris days, but he didn’t tell her about that either. An appearance of frankness was one thing, unnecessary honesty was something else.

“Of course you’re not an opium-eater!” She shook her head and touched a hand to her temple. “Heavens, what was I thinking to ask such a question? Forgive me. I never meant to imply you had personal experience with opium dens. You’re much too good and principled a gentleman for that sort of behavior.”

She was gazing at him with such obvious admiration, he couldn’t stand it any longer. “I fear you have a mistaken impression of me, Miss Bosworth,” he said, letting the chips fall where they may. “I am not good at all. The reason I never entered the opium dens was that my fascination lay with the cancan dancers.”

“Oh.” She looked away and considered this information, and she was silent for so long that by the time she spoke again, Rhys was sure he’d ruined his chances for good and all. “Do the…” She paused and cast a quick glance around. “Do the girls really have little red hearts tattooed on their derrieres?” she asked in a whisper.

He burst out laughing at the unexpected question, earning himself several disapproving stares from the other people in the gallery. They left the room in a huff, but despite their departure, Rhys leaned down toward Miss Abernathy in a confidential manner to offer his reply, ducking his head beneath the wide brim of her hat. “The hearts are embroidered on the backsides of their drawers,” he murmured close to her ear. “Rather a treat for us chaps, especially me, since red’s my favorite color. As to the rest, they might have tattoos. I couldn’t say. We aren’t given a view of their bare behinds, more’s the pity.”

From his view, her face was in profile, but as he watched a wash of rosy color spread over the side of her face and neck, he appreciated again what an innocent she was. The skin of her earlobe, he noticed, looked velvety soft. He was almost close enough to kiss her there, and he wondered if she would like that. He inhaled the lovely lavender scent of her, and as he exhaled, he blew warm breath against her ear with deliberate intent. She moved in response, a slight shift and shiver that gave him his answer.