“How can you be so sure?”
“He agreed not to report it and I agreed to allow him to continue breathing.”
She looked askance at this astounding statement. She’d sensed danger seething about him, but would he truly do murder for her?
He cocked his head. “I told you I have contacts on the low side of respectable, Your Grace.”
She took a deep breath, trying to quell her rioting insides. “Very well. I thank you, Mr. Doverspike, for your help in preserving my honor. Now, if you will kindly get dressed and see yourself out. Please leave an address with Cuthbert where I can send the rest of your pay. I release you from my service.”
“What? You haven’t finished the painting.”
“No, and I never shall.” Tears pricked at her eyes again, but she blinked them back. “Please just go.”
“Why?”
“I think that’s painfully obvious. A line has been crossed, one that is inviolate between an artist and her subject.”
“Just because I kissed you?”
“Because I allowed you to kiss me. The fault is mine and you have my profoundest apologies, but I cannot continue to work with you.”
“Rubbish,” he said. “You hold yourself to an impossible standard. Do you think for a moment the old masters of the canvas didn’t have more than a passing acquaintance with their subjects?”
Her cheeks burned. She’d always suspected that was the case. How else did artists capture the expressions of longing and the knowing looks if there hadn’t truly been some ‘knowing’ going on?
“Nevertheless, I must ask you to leave.”
Mr. Doverspike’s mouth hardened into a tight line. “You’ll at least give me a good character, I hope.”
“Certainly, I’ll be happy to write a general letter of reference and send it round with your pay.”
“That wasn’t quite what I had in mind. I was hoping you’d introduce me to Mr. Beddington and recommend my services to him.”
Beddington. Not again. She thought she’d deflected his interest in Mr. Beddington. “That is not something I’m at liberty to do.”
“Seems to me you’re at liberty to do whatever you jolly well please, Your Grace.”
“What could I possibly say to Mr. Beddington about your services? Here stands Thomas Doverspike. He takes off his clothes well and frightens members of the press witless.”
“Hopefully not at the same time.”
A laugh erupted from her lips. “No, I daresay. Not at the same time.”
“And yet, I’ve taken my clothes off and frightened you witless, haven’t I?” He took a step to close the distance between them.
Fright wasn’t exactly the right word. Her insides jumped at his nearness, every pore in her body alive and tingling. She could still taste his kiss. She turned from him lest he see how difficult drawing a breath had become for her. “Please leave, Mr. Doverspike. I beg you.”
She heard the soft pad of his bare feet on the hardwood and drew a sigh of relief. He was going. Then the sound of rustling pages made her turn around. The man was leafing through her sketchpad.
“What are you doing?”
“Just seeing what we’ve accomplished together here.” He turned the paper sideways and screwed his face into a frown. “Do I really look that ridiculous?”
He pointed to one of the studies depicting him with the helmet and sword, chest puffed out, military bearing severely at odds with his nudity. It did seem a tad overdone to her now that she considered it afresh.
He flipped the page. “Oh,” he said, his tone thoughtful. “This is what you were trying to do this morning.”
“Yes.” It was her preliminary sketch of his reclined figure. There was tension in his shoulder muscles as her Mars leaned despairingly toward an unobtainable prize. “Mars is always depicted in military splendor, victorious and virile. I thought I’d take an entirely different tack on the subject. When two forces meet on a field of battle, one side is always declared the loser. This is the god of war in defeat.”
“More often than not, both sides lose,” he said softly. “Of course, there are some battles that can’t be avoided. I’ve fought in a few. But most wars are just mud and blood for the blokes who must fight them. In this sketch, you’ve hit upon what war truly is—failure and loss and utter stupidity. Whatever you do, Your Grace, you must finish this work.”
“I can’t,” she said. “You inspired it.”
“I inspired failure and loss and utter stupidity?”
Against her will, he drew another laugh from her.
“There, you see,” he said. “If we can laugh together, we can work together.” He held the sketch up for her to see. “This is important, madam, more important than how little esteem you have for me. This says something about war that no one else has had the courage to say. If you fail to see it through, this vision will haunt you for the rest of your artistic life.” He handed the sketchpad to her. “Isn’t that worth putting up with me for a little while longer?”
The problem wasn’t that she had too little esteem for him, but rather too much. She’d have to learn to control her response to him if she was to make this work. Still, he was right about the sketch.
“Very well, Mr. Doverspike. Kindly remove your robe and assume the position. The sun will not wait.”
Chapter 8
Her Mars groaned and shifted slightly.
“Don’t move,” Artemisia ordered. “You’ll change the way the light strikes your upraised arm.”
“If I don’t move, my upraised arm is like to fall off,” he complained.
She glanced at the mantel clock. “We have been at this for better than an hour,” she conceded. “Very well. Let’s take a break. The tea should still be hot and I asked Cuthbert to bring round some extra scones. You’ll find them under the silver tray.”
Thomas Doverspike rose to his feet and donned his robe before helping himself to the offered pastries. Artemisia draped the canvas to keep dust from settling on the fresh paint. With countless coal fires burning, London was ever so much dirtier than Bombay. She poured out two cups of tea, laced his with an extra lump of sugar just as she’d learned he liked it and poured a smidgeon of cream into hers.
“How’s it coming?” he asked between cramming bites of the flaky scones into his mouth.
“It’s taking shape.” Artemisia blew on her tea to cool it before she sipped. She slipped a hand around to massage her lower back. Life models weren’t the only ones who suffered muscle cramps.
“Can I see it?”
“Not until it’s finished.”
She’d made amazing progress on the painting in a few short days. This was going to be an important work. She could feel it in every stroke.
Her paintbrush fairly flew, but she was a stickler for detail and while parts of the figure leaped off the canvas, other portions were still flat and two dimensional. Thomas Doverspike’s lean musculature was a delight to duplicate and his skin glowed with buoyant health, but she’d left his groin area fuzzy and indistinct. She considered draping him there. A judicious sash or fig leaf would solve the problem, but her artist’s heart damned her for a coward. He was beautiful in all his parts. Even in defeat, Mars was still a virile male. It would be less than courageous if she covered him just because the sight of his willy tied her knickers in a knot.
He still experienced rampant erections, but she refrained from direct comment on them. She never tired of looking at him though, the skin over his enraged phallus tight and straining, dark with engorged blood, his ballocks drawn up in a snug mound. She found herself wondering what his shaft would feel like. Would it be smooth in her hand? Warm? The thought made her cheeks burn and something primitive flared to life in her belly.
She had to think of something else. “Now that you’ve had a bit of time to get used to it, are you finding your job easier?”
“Why do you ask?”
“A while back it sounded as though you found serving as my model demeaning,” she said. “I hope you’ve changed your thoughts on that.”
He shrugged. “Until you’ve shucked out of your skivvies and stood there, you wouldn’t understand. I guess you’d have to try the job yourself to know what it’s like.”
“I beg your pardon?” She’d surely misheard him.
“That’s not a bad idea, actually,” he said, dusting the crumbs off his hands. “It would be a nice rest for both of us. We could trade places and I could draw you for a while.”
She almost choked on her tea. “Very funny. For a moment, I thought you were serious.”
“I am.”
She set down her teacup. “Ludicrous. You’re no artist.”
“Well, you have me dead to rights there,” he said. “I’ve no eye for composition like you, but I’m not such a bad draftsman. Here. I’ll show you.”
He fetched her sketchpad and chalk and with a few deft strokes captured Pollux napping in the window, his furry feet tucked beneath his body in a manner that Artemisia thought made him look like a ‘kitty-loaf.’
“Not bad,” she admitted. His lines were clean and sure, the figure of her cat in near perfect proportions.
“I did a bit of map-making in the service,” he explained. “Well, how about it, Your Grace? Shall we turn and turn about? I promise not to give you three . . . eyes.”
“Mr. Doverspike, this is entirely irregular. It just wouldn’t be proper for someone in my position,” she protested. “It would be . . .”
“Demeaning?”
“Not at all,” she said, irritated to have been caught by her own argument.
“Then what’s stopping you? Are you afraid?”
“Certainly not,” she lied. Then because she believed whatever else art was about, it was about truth first of all, she swallowed hard and nodded.
“I must admit I was a bit afraid myself at first,” he said.
She scoffed. “You? Whatever happened to ‘Shyness-is-not-one-of-my-faults’?”
“Sometimes the only way to face your fears is to ignore them and push through,” he said. “Being nak*d—your pardon, I mean nude—before someone you barely know is daunting. But in this case, you know me.”
Did she? She still wondered about Mr. Doverspike. She liked him well enough, but he was too self-possessed for a common worker, too subtly dangerous for a member of the gentry. Even though he’d spent time nude in her presence for more than a week, he was still a puzzlement to her. Her observation skills were higher than most, but she still couldn’t discern the secrets of another human heart.
She tried to dismiss memories of his kiss from her mind, but sometimes it rose unbidden. It was like recalling a whirlwind, one that swept reason before it and left devastation in its wake. No doubt looking at his sensual mouth was clouding her judgment now since she was actually entertaining his outrageous suggestion.