Scandalous Brides Page 4

  And she felt like the lowliest beggar-girl, despite Bianca and Georgina’s efforts. She longed to run back and out in her violet silk, her best day dress. But he had already turned, and seen her lurking there, watching him.

  With a deep breath, Elizabeth pasted on her brightest smile and stepped forward, hand outstretched. She just hoped he would not notice the smudges of charcoal across her knuckles, or the paint beneath her nails. “Mr. Nicholas! Such a surprise.”

  He lifted her proffered fingers to his lips, his breath warm and sweet on her skin. “I had heard that you were in need of a secretary, Miss Cheswood.” • Secretary? What could that be? Every thought had flown out of her head at the sound of his voice. “Where could you have heard that?” she answered, surprised that her voice sounded so steady and normal when her heart was bursting.

  “Shall we say, a small bird told me? A small red bird.”

  She could not help but laugh at the wicked glint in his dark eyes. “Oh, I see. Yes.” She seated herself as regally as possible on a threadbare chaise, attempting to tuck her feet beneath her so that he could not see that her stocking had slipped from its garter and fallen to her ankle. Kicking off her slipper, she tried to pull the tube of silk up with the toes of her opposite foot.

  “You did not mention that you were in need of a position,” she said. She gestured to the fine cut of his clothes, the unscuffed boots. “Indeed, you do not look as if you need to work at all.”

  “Appearances can be deceiving, Miss Cheswood. You would do well to remember that.” Nicholas turned back to the painting he had been studying when she came in. “Is this your work?”

  Elizabeth’s mouth softened as she examined the painting, a portrait of a young mother and her infant. “Yes. The woman was a peasant, who brought us fresh milk and eggs when we were at Lake Como. She was beautiful, like a Madonna. It is one of my favorites, but it is an early work of mine, very rough.”

  Nicholas tilted his head, taking in the smiling, golden-haired mother and her fat bambino. The lines were rather rough, the background of rolling hills and trees clumsily drawn, but the woman’s vibrant personality shone like a fine red wine on a summer day. The vivid blue of her skirt shimmered. It was obvious that Elizabeth saw people, saw their true essence, and captured that on canvas. It was remarkable.

  Then his gaze shifted from the smiling peasant woman to another mother, painted on a smaller canvas. This mother was pale, her red-gold hair falling over silk-covered shoulders, her blue-gray eyes smiling at the toddler beside her. There was something about those eyes....

  “She looks remarkably like you,” he blurted out.

  “She should. She was my mother.” Elizabeth ran her eyes over the woman’s painted green gown, the fall of her hair. “She died when I was nine, long before I ever picked up a paintbrush. This was from memory, it was ... I don’t know. Fantasy? I simply ...”

  Then she came back to herself, to the dark eyes intent on her, and she could have bitten her tongue for running on so. Whatever was she thinking, to be babbling on about her mother so? And to a man who, no matter how devastatingly attractive, was a stranger. An English stranger. His eyes, those black, fathomless pools, the way he focused on her every word as if it were the most vital thing that had ever been said, they were enormously seductive. He made her quite long to tell him everything, every ugly secret she carried inside, to unburden her soul and move forward, free from guilt and pain and the whole rotten past. This man had enormous power, she sensed, but whether for good or evil she could not tell.

  He was probably quite the rake back in England. Just like someone else she knew.

  It would be so very, very foolish to give him such power over her. If he was not to be trusted, then news of her whereabouts would find its way back to England so very quickly. Peter was still her legal guardian. He would come for her, drag her away from the tenuous happiness she had found for herself in Italy.

  That Elizabeth could never bear. She could never go back to being Lady Elizabeth of Clifton Manor again. She had put all that behind her that awful night. The night she became a murderess.

  It had been folly to even paint that portrait of Isobel Whitman Everdean, the Countess of Clifton, Incomparable, Diamond of the First Water, and mother. Anyone could have recognized her.

  She would have to be very careful around this intense, unreachable man. She would be quite foolish to hire him, bring him into their household, make him privy to their secrets.

  Really.

  She couldn’t do it.

  She could not!

  “We were not speaking of my painting!” she snapped suddenly, turning her head away from her mother’s smile, the smile that seemed to say You are my daughter after all. Isobel had always had a keen eye for masculine beauty.

  Nicholas seemed unfazed by her small fit of temper. He simply looked at her with faint amusement in his handsome eyes, and came to stand beside her. He towered above her, enveloping her in his warmth and the spicy scent of his soap, surrounding her in an inescapable cocoon of ... of sheer maleness.

  Not that she especially wanted to escape, she found.

  “Were we not?” he mused, quite serene and unaware of her faintly gasping breath, the flush on her cheekbones. “And here I thought that your painting was the very reason I am here.”

  Elizabeth relented, and waved him to be seated on the chair beside hers. Anything so that he would cease looming over her, and she could think clearly again. “How did you discover I was in need of ... assistance?”

  He shrugged. “Venice is small. One hears things.”

  So it was Georgie, Elizabeth thought. A small pang of unwelcome jealousy pierced her heart with the vision of her exquisite friend laughing and whispering with this man.

  This man continued. “Despite what you may think, Miss Cheswood, I am in need of this position. I am a long way from home. Do you not want to help a fellow English patriot in need? A weak cripple, helpless and in need of an employment?” He brandished the silver-headed walking stick he had been leaning on.

  He was about as helpless as a prowling lion on the savanna, Elizabeth knew, but oh, he was lovely with that teasing gleam in his eyes. He swept his waving hair back from his forehead in one silky movement, and she almost melted into a puddle at his feet. A great, oozing puddle of female giddiness.

  She also thought more pragmatically of the pile of unpaid bills stuffed into her desk drawers, of the hours of work that were going unrewarded because no one thought it important to pay a mere woman promptly. There were so many things she needed, such as pigments, canvas, new clothes. And she could not go on forever living on Georgina’s generosity.

  If anyone could get her rightful earnings quickly, it was this man.

  Oh, but to see him every day! To look at him, talk to him, smell him. Could she do that, without throwing herself at him in some hoydenish fashion?

  Could she?

  Did she even have a choice in the matter?

  No. She did not.

  Elizabeth rose and went to the unshuttered window, staring unseeing at the crowded alleyway below. Never, ever had she felt about a man as she did this one, this mysterious stranger with the roguish glint in his eye. There was something in him, an energy, that drew her inexorably.

  She had always associated the sex act with her mother and stepfather’s frequent noisy couplings and equally noisy screaming fits. With the rough hands of her ancient “fiancé” tearing at her clothes. With the intense way Peter would sometimes watch her, after he came back from Spain a sunburnt stranger. All of it had seemed so very repulsive. The few times she had become a bit tipsy and allowed Stephen or another artist to kiss her, she had been overwhelmed with fear and pushed them away. Even with Georgina’s assurances of the joy of the act, she had not been convinced.

  Elizabeth felt none of this fear around Nicholas. From the first instant she had glimpsed him in the Piazza San Marco, she had felt only delicious warmth, giddiness, like lying in the grass on a hot sum
mer day. She had dreamed of him in her sleep after the ball, dreamed of kissing him. She had bitterly regretted the fact that they had been so rudely interrupted on the terrace.

  Was she in truth becoming the “wanton artist” she had been labeled by the more respectable society they had encountered?

  She turned away from him now in abject confusion, her palms pressed to her hot cheeks. It was all so odd! Of all the men she had met in her travels, she should feel the least safe with this one. His presence was overwhelming in their narrow house, his silences intense and watchful, as if he waited for something from her. She knew almost nothing about him.

  Nothing except the way she felt when he was near. And for now, that was enough.

  “Very well,” she answered at last, turning back to him with a smile. “You are engaged.”

  He did not answer, merely watched her. His hands moved over the head of his walking stick.

  “But you should know,” she continued, “that I cannot afford to pay you until ... well, until after you begin your duties. I have no ready blunt at the moment.” She had used the last of it on new ball gowns for Carnivale.

  “Actually, Miss Cheswood,” he interrupted, “you have something I would much prefer to ... ready blunt, until I have begun my duties and you are able to pay my wages.”

  Elizabeth stiffened. Had she misjudged this man after all? Was she not safe in his presence? She frowned. “What, pray tell, might that be, sirrah?”

  But he surprised her yet again. “One of your paintings. Any you choose.”

  She felt her jaw begin to sag, and snapped it shut. “My ... paintings?”

  “Yes. I have an idea they will be worth a great deal one day. If, however, you would rather not part with one ...”

  “No! I am quite willing to pay you in paintings. I am simply surprised that you would choose that over coin.”

  He smiled at her again, that flash of white teeth and dimples that left her dazzled. “Maybe you should give me your account books to look over, Miss Cheswood, so I may begin my duties.”

  “I have one duty for you already.”

  “Indeed? And what might that be?”

  She laughed at the naughty tilt of his grin. “Nothing terribly interesting, I’m afraid! You must call me Elizabeth.”

  “Only if you, in turn, call me Nicholas.”

  She nodded. “Done. We are very informal here, as you shall soon find.”

  As she went to retrieve the books from where she had shoved them beneath a table, Bianca came in bearing a tea tray, still wearing her bedsheet draperies. Her eyes rolled in approval at the handsome man, and she almost tripped over her train while trying to swing her hips in his direction.

  Close on her heels was Georgina, a smart feathered bonnet on her auburn curls and a green velvet cloak folded over her arm. She clapped her gloved hands at the sight of the dusty ledgers. “Excellent, Lizzie!’ she said. “I see you are finally showing good sense, and have hired Mr. Carter. So lovely to see you again, sir.” She held out her fingers, and Nicholas gallantly raised them to his lips.

  Wonderful, Elizabeth thought wryly, turning away from their giggling and smiling. Two unrepentant flirts in one household. And Georgie had even known his surname!

  But the jealousy quickly melted away under her friend’s familiar smile, her airy kiss on Elizabeth’s cheek. “Now, dear, I must be off. After you have your tea, Bianca can show Nicholas to his room.”

  “R—room?” Elizabeth stuttered. Nicholas was to sleep here, under the same roof?

  Oh, dear.

  “Is that quite proper?” she asked.

  “Oh, Lizzie, we are already a scandal! This one tiny thing cannot do us harm. And it is just the small room on the third floor. It will make things ever so much more convenient, will it not, Nicholas?” Georgina winked—winked!—at him.

  “Oh, quite, Mrs. Beaumont.” He winked back.

  Bianca wriggled and giggled.

  Elizabeth almost moaned.

  Then she laughed hysterically when the drawing room door banged open to reveal Stephen, whose face was every bit as red as his hair, except for some modeling clay stuck to his forehead.

  “You!” he roared, pointing a trembling finger at the tea-sipping Nicholas. “What are you doing here, annoying these ladies?”

  “Stevie, dear,” Georgina clucked. “He is hardly annoying us. He is Elizabeth’s new secretary.” Then she poured herself a cup of tea, and sat back to watch commedia dell’arte being played out in her very own drawing room.

  Bianca snickered.

  There was only one thing for a sensible girl like Elizabeth to do. She caught up her skirts and ran to the kitchen to fetch a pitcher of ice water to fling over their heads before they could destroy her drawing room.

  Nicholas leaned back on the narrow bed of his third-story room, examining the calling card Georgina Beaumont had pressed into his hand the night before—the card that had begun this entire crazy odyssey of playing secretary. It was almost dawn, and the drunken party who had congregated in the alleyway below his window had at last departed, leaving him alone in the grayish silence just before light.

  God’s blood, but this task had been meant to be so very simple! A spoiled miss who had imprudently fled the protection of her stepbrother, was to be found and summarily returned to where her best interests would be looked after. He was merely to snatch up the silly girl and deposit her back on Peter’s doorstep before he could have time to become at all deeply involved in this Everdean family drama. His debt to Peter, long unpaid, would be canceled when he delivered the girl, and he could return to his old life in the gaming rooms and courtesans’ boudoirs of London.

  He had a good life. He did. He was wealthy, a member of several interesting if disreputable clubs, and despite his scar women were drawn to him. He was the despair of his high-stickler stepmama and the father who only wanted to forget the reminder of his wicked youth that Nicholas was. He needed no complications, even when the complication was as delectable as Lady Elizabeth.

  Nicholas reached beneath his pillow and withdrew the miniature that Peter had entrusted him with. Even in the dim half-light her painted eyes glowed a pale silver, as misty and deceptive as a Yorkshire moor or a London morning.

  He could not deceive himself much longer. He had thought this would be the most simple of tasks, a jaunt across Italy, a mere trifle after years of warfare in Spain. An elfin beauty Elizabeth might be, and not silly and spoiled as he had thought. But she was still Peter’s sister, and for some unfathomable reason, he wanted her back in his house. It was Nicholas’s task—his only task—to see that that happened.

  And playing at being a secretary seemed the simplest way to accomplish that.

  Chapter Five

  When Nicholas came downstairs for breakfast he was still a bit pale from his thought-filled night. Yet he managed a gallant bow and a bright smile.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Beaumont. Miss Cheswood,” he greeted. “It is obvious that nothing disturbed your beauty sleep. Venice could have no two fairer flowers in any of its gardens, by my faith.”

  It was a weak bon mot at best, but it made the women laugh, particularly Georgina. She waved him to the empty place setting at the small table, which was laden with plates of toast, pots of tea and chocolate, and small jars of marmalades and jellies.

  “La, sir!” she said. “You obviously share my liking for the novels of the Minerva Press. I vow I read those very words in Lady Charlotte’s Revenge. Quite an excellent work. Have you read it?”

  “I fear I have not.”

  “I shall lend you a copy.” Georgina poured out a cup of tea and passed it to him. “And did we not say you must call us Georgina and Elizabeth?”

  “Indeed you must,” said Elizabeth. She was engaged in buttering her toast, but paused to smile at him. “As you can see, we are hardly formal here.”

  Indeed they were not. Nicholas studied the small, sunny breakfast room while he sipped at the strong tea. Blank canvases wer
e stacked along the walls, amid empty crates waiting for completed paintings to be packed in them and sent off to patrons. Plates and glasses were piled haphazardly on the sideboard, and linens peeked out of its almost-closed drawers.

  Even the women’s garments were unconventional. Georgina actually wore a dressing gown of burgundy velvet and had stuffed her auburn curls up into a snood, while Elizabeth was slightly more dressed in a yellow muslin round gown and paisley shawl.

  Nicholas had never been in such a household. Even an army tent was carefully organized and regimented, and his mistresses’ houses had been untidy and informal in a very studied way, their hair carefully coiffed even when they wore lingerie.

  This home was strange, almost exotic.

  It was wonderful.

  “We were just discussing your first task,” Elizabeth said, interrupting his ruminations.

  “Oh, yes?” he answered. He smiled at her over the rim of his teacup.

  She smiled in return, and blushed a very becoming peach. She even seemed more at ease with him this morning, after dousing him with water yesterday. Her eyes were clear and bright, her manner full of assurance.

  She might very well be shy in matters of flirtation, but she was obviously a woman in full charge of her work. When she spoke of it, or even prepared to speak of it as she now did, her shoulders straightened and her cheeks grew bright with excitement.

  “Yes,” Elizabeth answered. “I did a very large charcoal sketch some months ago for Signor Visconti, of his children. I have not yet received the promised payment. If you can collect it, you will have made a very promising beginning indeed.” She pushed a small stack of papers toward him. “Here is the contract, and a description of all dealings I have had with Signor Visconti.”