Scandalous Brides Read online

  The subject of the painting rolled onto his back and beckoned to her with one long, tanned hand. “You have been working far too hard for such a lovely day, Madame Artiste. Should you not take a respite and try one of Bianca’s delightful apricot tarts?” He picked up one of the pastries, and bit into it with such relish that some of the apricot ran down his beard-shadowed chin. He had not shaved for two days, since Elizabeth had arrived in the country, and it gave him a delightful, piratical air she was trying to capture on canvas.

  “Mmm!” he murmured. “Do try one!”

  Elizabeth could not resist leaning down to kiss away the sticky fruit, but she pulled back with a laugh when his arm encircled her waist. “I should take a rest before you eat them all! You have already devoured all of the sandwiches.”

  “And who ate every bit of sole almondine at supper last night, before the plate even came to my end of the table?”

  “Touché.” She wiped her hands on a paint-stained rag, and sat down beside him, tilting her head back to let the warmth of the sun flood over her face.

  When Nicholas shifted to rest his head on her lap, her fingers crept into his silky curls. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply of the fragrance of wine, grass, paint, and Nicholas’s own evergreen soap.

  She had never been so deliciously, madly full of scream-out-loud joy. Not simply ordinary joy, as when she completed a particularly fine painting or held a baby against her heart and smelled its milky scent, but dance-around-naked, full-to-bursting, life-is-perfect joy.

  A warm day, a canvas on her easel, and this man’s head on her lap was all it took to make life absolute perfection.

  “Have you ever been so happy?” she whispered, almost to herself.

  His hand swept gently around her waist, warm and secure. “Only once before.”

  Elizabeth’s eyes opened. “Once?”

  “With Mariah.” His lips curled in a smile that was sweet with remembrance—and with teasing.

  “And who is Mariah?”

  “Oh, the love of my life. She was an angel of perfection, with golden curls and adorable freckles, right here.” He lazily tapped the end of Elizabeth’s nose.

  Freckles! “Oh? And where is this angel now?”

  “I have no idea. We had a hideous falling-out, and she left me flat.” Nicholas sighed. “My life has never been the same.” He buried his nose deeper in her muslin skirts. “It is too pitiful to recall.”

  Elizabeth frowned suspiciously. “Just when was this falling-out with the love of your life, precisely?”

  “I was seven, she was nine. An older woman. I put a mouse down the back of her dress and she never spoke to me again.”

  “You beast!” Elizabeth laughed, beating him across the shoulders with a folded napkin. “Here I was all prepared to feel sorry for you, and you were telling such a Banbury tale!”

  “Every word is true, I assure you. My life has been desolate of romance since Mariah.”

  “Now, why do I doubt that? Was there ever truly a Mariah?”

  “Certainly there was. She was our cook’s daughter. I was quite mad for her.”

  A silence fell. “You had a cook when you were growing up? Servants?”

  “Yes, of course. There was the butler ...” Too late, Nicholas saw the trap he had laid for himself. He sat up, and looked at her warily. “Yes. We had servants. My pockets were not always to let.”

  “Are your pockets to let now?”

  “Of course. I am working as your secretary, am I not?”

  “Of course.” Elizabeth framed his face in her hands, forcing him to look at her steadily, not laugh and turn away. “Nicholas, tell me about your family.”

  He did try to turn away, but she had him well and truly caught. “It is not very diverting,” he answered.

  “I do not care about being diverted. I simply want to know about your family, your home.”

  Nicholas moved away from her. “I am a bastard,” he abruptly announced.

  Elizabeth’s eyes widened in shock. “A ...” She shook her head. “I take it you are not speaking metaphorically.”

  “Quite literally, I’m afraid. My father neglected to marry my mother.”

  “I see.”

  He rushed on in the face of her silence, before he could lose all his nerve. “My father was already betrothed, you see, when my mother came up enceinte, and he refused to break off his engagement. His fiancee was the daughter of a marquis, you see, and my mother’s father was only a well-to-do cit. But my father did his duty to us, oh yes. When my mother’s family cast her out, he set us up in our house in London. I had tutors, a pony, and later Eton and Oxford, a commission in the army. He even acknowledged me, gave me a place in Society. He did his duty; more than his duty, some would say.”

  Nicholas spoke evenly, perfunctorily, but his features were tight with the strain of recalling his youth. Elizabeth wiped at her eyes with the napkin. “I would say not! Your father had a duty to love you! To be your father. And in that he failed miserably.”

  Nicholas shook his head. “He had another family to be father to, a wife and three respectable daughters, who all married well and set up their nurseries, just as they ought. I was an embarrassment, a mistake who refused to fade quietly into the background. I was wild, I flaunted myself all around Town with my racing curricle and my mistresses. I decided if he was going to hate me, it would be for a damned good reason.”

  “No!” Elizabeth was crying in earnest now, her heart breaking for the lonely boy he had been, the lonely man she was only now being allowed to glimpse. She knew all too well the heartbreak families could cause one another, when they were meant to be the ones who loved each other the most. So upset was she that she did not even blush at the mention of his mistresses. “He could not have hated you, Nicholas. No one who knows you could hate you.”

  “You should hate me, Elizabeth.”

  “Why? Because you were not born in wedlock? Believe me, my family is hardly of pristine reputation.” She threw herself upon him, clinging when he would have moved away. She forced him to look at her. “And you should know me better than that, Nicholas! I never judge people by their appearances, their families, or their fortunes. I have seen that in my own life, and it caused me nothing but pain. I can only judge by what is in a person’s heart. You have a beautiful heart. You have made the sun shine in my life every day since I met you.”

  “Elizabeth, no ...”

  She pressed her fingertips to his mouth, stopping his protests. “No. Your father was wrong, very wrong to treat you as he did, and one day he will know that. But I would never play you false, Nicholas. I would never push you to the background. I know too well what that is about. You and I, we are meant to live in the forefront of life, always.”

  “Elizabeth! Beautiful Lizzie.” He crushed her against him, his face buried against her neck, his tears wet on her skin. “You should know how much I deserve your scorn, but I could never bear it if you looked at me with hatred, God forgive me.”

  “I could never look upon you with hatred. I love you.”

  He looked up at her shining face, her eyes glowing silver. “Say it again!” he begged.

  “I love you.” She turned his face up to hers and kissed him on his cheek. “I love you, Nicholas, come what may. We are two of a kind, I knew it when I saw you at that masked ball. I have been waiting for you forever.”

  “I love you, too, my Lizzie. Always remember that, always. My heart is yours no matter what may happen.”

  Elizabeth turned to the sun, and laughed and laughed. “And my heart is yours, whatever comes. But what can come between us now? We love each other, do we not? Nothing can change that.”

  “I pray you are right.”

  “I am right. Unless you have a mad wife in the garret, as in one of Georgina’s horrid novels?”

  Nicholas laughed reluctantly. “No wives of any sort.”

  “Then we shall be together always. Nothing can part us now that you have given me your heart,
and I have given you mine.”

  “Nothing.” And Nicholas clutched her close against him.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Shall you go out tonight, my lord?”

  Peter did not even turn from his window, where he was watching people gather around one of Rome’s famed fountains as night drew near. “Out? Where would I go out to?”

  “I merely saw the letters on the table, my lord, and thought perhaps...”

  “Ah, yes. Lord Braithwaite is in residence here, and invited me to a small dinner he is having tonight. I had not thought to attend, but perhaps you are right, Simmons. I should renew his lordship’s acquaintance.”

  “Very good, my lord. Shall I lay out the blue coat?”

  Peter nodded briefly, and turned away again.

  He had decided to make the brief stop in Rome on his route to Venice. Carnivale was over in the Serene City, and most of the English in residence there had fled the somberness after the recent bacchanalia. There were many English in Rome, and he had had hopes that someone would know Elizabeth, tell him where she had gone.

  Thus far he had found no one who recognized Elizabeth’s miniatures, and no one he could claim an acquaintance with except the corpulent old Lord Braithwaite.

  Thus this evening’s festivities, though he was not feeling in the least sociable. Someone had to have seen her at some time. She could not simply have vanished, though it appeared to be so. Elizabeth was just... gone. She could be in India or China, for all he knew. Along with Old Nick Hollingsworth.

  “Damn him,” Peter whispered. “If he thinks he can thwart me, he is much mistaken.”

  “I could scarce believe it when dear old Braithwaite told me you were in Italy! Imagine—an earl, right here in the midst of our little society.”

  Peter grimaced, and nodded vaguely to his dinner partner. Lady Evelyn Deake, yellow curls bobbing and jeweled fingers flashing, had not paused for breath during the soup or fish courses. She showed absolutely no signs of slowing now that the roast lamb was on their plates. Not even Peter’s distant replies and glazed eyes could stop her.

  It was his most dreaded nightmare, being trapped at a dinner party with indifferent food, watered wines, an overheated room, and a dull dinner partner. It was almost worse than Spain.

  “Of course, we have met before,” Lady Deake continued, pausing only for a refreshing sip of wine. “At the Borthwick ball last Season. You were there with that dashing Lady Ashby!”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. That was before my dear Arthur’s passing. It was quite the crush, but I distinctly remember your arrival. Lady Ashby was wearing...” One long, varnished nail tapped at her chin. “Red velvet! Yes. And those famous rubies of hers.” She tapped playfully at Peter’s wrist with one of those nails. “Which you were rumored to have given her!”

  “Oh?” Peter vaguely remembered the ball, one of many he had plunged into after Elizabeth’s departure in the hopes that activity would distract his mind. He remembered Angela Ashby, and her cloying French perfume. But, fortunately, he had no recollection of this woman.

  “And here you are tonight! Such a coincidence.” Evelyn popped a sugared almond into her mouth and tried to smile at him alluringly as she chewed. “And I hear you are for Venice after this! I live there. What takes you to my corner of Italy?”

  Peter doubted she could claim quite all of Venice as “hers,” but he merely smiled tightly. He saw their host’s prized Leonardo painting of the Madonna over Lady Deake’s head. The Holy Mother’s dark hair, parted sleekly in the center and brushed behind her ears, reminded him of Elizabeth. “I am here for art, Lady Deake.”

  “Indeed! Well, this is certainly the place for paintings and such. You must visit my home when you are in Venice. There are some fine frescoes in the main drawing room.”

  “Yes?”

  “Yes. They are by ... oh ... I can never recall his name. V something.”

  Peter had never in his cynical life so longed to snicker impolitely at someone. He touched the damask napkin to his lips. “Verrocchio?”

  “Oh, no, that is not it. I am quite sure.”

  “Vignola?”

  “No....”

  “Veronese.” Peter was swiftly running out of V names.

  Evelyn brightened. “Yes! That is the one. I have just engaged an artist to undertake the restoring of them; they are in quite shocking condition. They are old, you know.”

  “I guessed.”

  Evelyn tittered. “It is a female artist I have engaged!”

  Peter froze. His fork, laden with lamb, was suspended in midair. For the first time that evening, he gave his full attention to his dinner partner. “Female artist?”

  “It is very scandalous, I know. But she and her sister are all the crack now. Simply everyone wants them to paint their portraits.”

  “How very fascinating, Lady Deake.” Peter gave her one of his rare, prized smiles. “Or may I call you... Evelyn?”

  Evelyn gaped at him. “Well... yes. If you like—Peter.”

  “Now, Evelyn, do tell me more about these sister artists.”

  “Well. The one I have engaged is the younger. She is quite small and plain, with hair as dark as these Italians. She is not at all like the elder, who is as tall as an Amazon, with wild red hair. I hear she is quite well known in England, though. And they have this secretary, who everyone knows must be more than simply the secretary...”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Supper at the villa was a merry one. Bianca had quite outdone herself, preparing a divine risotto with prosciutto, and a fine lemon trifle for desert. Georgina and Elizabeth had worn two of their prettiest dinner gowns. There was a good wine from the neighboring vineyard, and it flowed amid much conversation and laughter.

  When the trifle had been eaten, the ladies did not retire and leave Nicholas to his port. Instead, they joined him, and sipped at the ruby-red wine while enjoying the soft breeze from the open doors.

  “Ah, Georgie.” Elizabeth sighed. “Is this not better than going to Rome, as you originally wished?”

  “It is.” Georgina swirled the port in her glass, its depths the same color as her velvet gown. “Rome would be much too crowded at this time of year, and we would have had far too many social obligations. I like this—dinner en famille.”

  Elizabeth, too, liked the idea of that—family. She had not felt a part of such a thing since her mother and stepfather died, perhaps not even before that tragic accident. She had felt herself apart, alone. Now she felt alone no longer. All the shattered, scattered pieces of her life had now seemingly come together to form a new, wonderful whole.

  She laid one of her hands over Nicholas’s, and smiled. “Yes, this is very nice indeed. I can’t recall a nicer supper, ever.”

  “But perhaps Nicholas finds us rather dull,” Georgina said, laughter in her voice. “Perhaps he is quite missing the gay life of the city?”

  “Not at all, I assure you.” Nicholas lifted Elizabeth’s hand for a brief kiss. “The energy of you two lovely ladies has exhausted me utterly. I am glad of the country respite.”

  “But do you not miss all your admirers, Georgie?” said Elizabeth. “All the posies and billets-doux? As the post comes only once a week here, we shall hear nothing from Signor Franco or Mr. Butler, or any of the others, for several days at least.”

  “Excellent! If I never hear from either of them again it will be far too soon.”

  “But I thought you quite liked the signor!” Elizabeth exclaimed.

  “I did rather, when I thought him merely an amusing dinner partner. That all ended when he proposed to me at the Vincenzis’ party.”

  “Oh, no!” Elizabeth groaned.

  Nicholas was a bit puzzled. He was accustomed to young English ladies, such as his half sisters, who schemed and plotted and would stop at almost nothing to procure proposals from gentlemen.

  But then, when had Georgina and Elizabeth ever behaved as his half sisters did?

  “This is a bad th
ing?” he said.

  “Terrible!” answered Elizabeth. “It means that Signor Franco will never see the inside of our drawing room again.”

  Nicholas looked at Georgina. “Do you never wish to wed again, Georgina?”

  Georgina shook her head. “Have you ever been married, Nicholas?”

  Elizabeth glanced at him sharply.

  “No,” he replied. “I do not believe so.”

  “Then never do so,” Georgina said firmly. “Unless it is to Lizzie. Marriage to her would be quite out of the common way.”

  “Georgie, please!” Elizabeth laughed.

  “It is true,” Georgina protested. “And I suppose everyone should be married once, if only to see what it is like. But as for me, I shall not marry again.”

  “Georgie is quite determined to end her days the merry widow,” said Elizabeth, tipping the last of the port into her glass.

  “Yes,” said Georgina. “I shall spend my dotage in ... oh, Bath, I think, painting awful seascapes and shouting rude things at handsome young men in the Pump Room.”

  “And may we join you in your dignified retirement?” Nicholas asked, with a great grin.

  “Oh, yes, certainly. Lizzie and I shall push you about in your bath chair, and play matchmaker to your ten children.”

  “Georgina Beaumont!” Elizabeth protested with a blush.

  “I am merely teasing, Lizzie. I am certain you will have only three. And by the time we are doddering about Bath, it will be time for your grandchildrens’ come-outs.” Georgina drained the last of her port, and rose to her feet. “Now, I must retire or I shall fall asleep in what is left of this excellent trifle. Good night, my dears.”

  “Good night, Georgie,” Elizabeth called.

  Nicholas resumed his seat, and took Elizabeth’s hand between both of his. “Your sister is an extraordinary woman.”