His Mistress by Morning (5 page)

He pointed at a frame hanging a little higher up the stairs.

“Precious,” Finella said, walking past the portrait of the young girl, a basket overflowing with flowers cradled in her lap.

That’s me,
Charlotte thought as she passed it.

Yet how could this be? She’d just made her wish yesterday, but it was as if her entire life, the one that she remembered, had never existed, while this life had played out on some other stage without her having a single memory of it.

They had climbed up to the top of the house and were standing at the threshold of Arbuckle’s studio when from down below came a ruckus.

“I have every right to be inside here. I’ve a ticket.”

Charlotte looked from Arbuckle’s furrowed brows to Finella’s gaze, which had rolled innocently upward, as if the ceiling offered more interest than the brouhaha from below.

“Mrs. Birley, I warned you—”

“Arbuckle, my dear man,” Finella said, “you must realize that gossip will only increase the value of this painting. A percentage of which belongs to my dear girl.” She crossed her arms over her chest, looking like the Finella of old when the milkmaid sent over less than a full measure
of butter. “Speculation and rumor will only do so much, but a full report by an eyewitness will bring crowds when you auction it.”

“I do not paint before an audience. I am not some Grimaldi to be gawked at by a gaggle of geese and baboons.”

Finella snorted at such artistic temperament. “An audience is essential to making this sale a success, and Lottie concurs with me.”

They both looked at her, Finella nodding at her to affirm her statement, Arbuckle looking positively furious at this intrusion.

Charlotte swallowed. “I think, that is to say…” She glanced again from Finella to Arbuckle. “What I suppose would be best, at least for today,” she added for Finella’s benefit, “is that an audience might be a little distracting.”

Arbuckle snorted in Finella’s direction—not that the lady appeared to notice, for her nose was already pointed upward in obvious displeasure. “I suppose now I must be the bearer of bad news,” she sniffed before heading down the stairs toward the soon-to-be disappointed ticket holders.

“Come along, my girl,” Arbuckle said, taking Charlotte by the arm and leading her into his studio. “Mrs. Birley would sell your laundry in the
Times
if she thought she could make a profit.”

“She means well,” she replied, though she rather suspected Arbuckle had the truth of it; she’d seen the wink pass between Finella and Rockhurst, and she remembered how Finella had deliberately chosen the green gown this morning.

And urged Charlotte to take the earl as her new lover.

Whatever did she need a new lover for when she hadn’t
the slightest notion what to do with the current one?

“Come along, come along,” Arbuckle said, pulling her into his studio far from the echoes below, where Finella was refusing to refund the tickets she’d sold.

But all that was forgotten as her foot crossed into the artist’s inner sanctum, and she found herself awed by a world she’d never imagined. Sunshine streamed in from the windows, as well as from skylights above. The entire studio was awash in illumination.

Tripods with paintings stood patiently waiting attention at varied places in the room. The portraits were covered with Holland covers, so their contents were as mysterious as this life she’d tumbled into.

As she continued slowly into the studio, her nose wrinkled ever so slightly at the thick scent of paint, the oils and chemicals competing in acrid and sharp contest. The odors had another effect: Suddenly she was struck by an overwhelming familiar feeling.

I’ve been here
.

Arbuckle had left her side, crossing the wide space to take his place before an easel on the other side of the room. Beside it was a stool and a small table covered in pots and brushes—all awaiting the artist. Ever so carefully he removed the cover over the canvas and for a moment contemplated his work. A slow, satisfied smile plied his lips. “Helen! You are my Helen of Troy, Lottie. My masterpiece, and I have you to thank.”

Weaving her way through the painter’s works in progress, she drew closer to his masterpiece—his words, not hers—wondering how she could be the face that launched a thousand ships.

Arbuckle thinks I am his Helen?
Charlotte was still mystified by how this all could happen. Granted the
wardrobe and hair helped, but she was still just Miss Charlotte Wilmont of Queen Street, and hardly worthy of all this adulation, this lavish praise.

But before she could come around the easel, he waved his hand toward the space behind her. “Go on with you. Get changed so we can begin. Besides, I suppose you’ve fittings and appointments enough later and will be all atwitter in an hour or so to be gone.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Besides, the light is perfect right now.”

Recalling Finella’s recitation about the rest of her day, Charlotte saw no point in disagreeing with the man, so she made her way toward the screen he’d pointed at. She got behind it only to find a simple gilt crown and a long gauzy strip of fabric that she hadn’t the least idea what she was supposed to do with.

For one thing, it wouldn’t cover her and for another, the silk was nearly transparent.
Well, I might as well go naked
.

That one thought stopped her in her tracks, the image of the scandalous portrait in her bedroom coming to mind like a thunderclap. The one of her sprawled out on a divan without anything on.

Yet how could Arbuckle have painted it unless she’d been…naked.

Oh heavens, no! Whatever was she going to do?

“Perhaps he just forgot to set out the costume,” she told herself softly, forcing the words to sound reassuring. After all, he’d been painting her since she was a child, and most of his paintings were filled with a fatherly devotion.

And what were his intentions when he painted you in that Cyprian pose with that look on your face?

“Where is she?” she heard Finella call out.

There was a noise, a grunt really, from Arbuckle, and Charlotte could swear she could see the man impatiently waving a brush in the direction of the screen.

Irrationally, she looked around the cluttered corner for a place to hide.

“Dearest, whatever is keeping you?” Finella made that clucking noise in the back of her throat again. “Well, foolish me, of course you need help getting out of that gown. I’ll be right there.”

Charlotte didn’t know which was more disconcerting, having Finella call her “dearest” or offering to help her undress so she could pose in her altogether.

As the lady came bustling behind the screen, Charlotte whispered quickly, “There isn’t a costume.”

“Of course there is,” Finella said, confirming Charlotte’s worst fear by sending a quick nod toward the silk.

“But there isn’t enough to cover me,” she protested, while backing out of Finella’s reach. She took a deep breath, forcing the words from her lips. “I’ll be naked.”

She waited for the Finella of before to react, to swoon at the very mention of uncovered body parts, or at the very least, declare such a notion highly improper.

But as with everything she’d once taken for granted, this Finella didn’t even bat an eye.

“Lottie,” she said, hands fisting onto her hips, “it was your idea to pose naked again. Heavens, whatever is the matter with you today?”

Lottie’s idea, mayhap, she wanted to tell her cousin, but certainly not a notion Miss Charlotte Wilmont was going to cozen.

“Now off with those clothes,” Finella said, “or as much as it pains me to say this, I’ll tell Kimpton to stop stocking our cellars.”

Charlotte didn’t care what Finella told the baron.

She had no intention of remaining in this life, wish or not. She pushed past Finella and fled Arbuckle’s house as if the entire Greek army was hot on her heels.

“T
his is not my life, this is not my life,” Charlotte muttered under her breath all the way from Arbuckle’s studio to Mayfair. She ignored the haughty stares of those she passed, ignored the whistles and masculine taunts from passing carriages. She was making a cake of herself, and she didn’t care.

This is not my life,
she wanted to tell one and all.

She hadn’t even realized where she was going until she stood in Berkeley Square before the Marlowe town house.
At least,
she thought, sighing in relief at the sight of No. 15,
some things are still the same
.

There it was, in all its Palladian glory—with the rounded fanlight over the door, the soft cream stone, the arched windows, and the long triangular pediment across the top of the house that set it off from every other residence on that side of the square. Of course, the Marlowe house had to be different, and that carved, classical pediment gave the house its distinct flair.

Of course now that she was here, whatever was she
going to do? The idea of seeing Lord Trent again hadn’t even crossed her mind as she’d made her mad dash from Arbuckle’s.

Well, perhaps it had a little, she had to admit. But what would she say to him? Tell him everything? How she’d made a wish and woken up his mistress? Oh, yes, she had to imagine that would work out quite well.

Lord Trent, I am not who you think I am. And I am certainly not Lottie Townsend. I received this ring from my great-aunt, but it’s not a regular ring, you see. And then I made a wish, and I became this…this person, who everyone thinks is…oh, dear…I mean to say I’m certainly not your…your…

And most likely by the time she managed to stammer that out, he’d have her in his arms and be kissing her. Probably wouldn’t have heard a word she’d said, so intent on trying to get her out of “one of those moods.”

Taking a deep breath, she blew it out. She was Miss Charlotte Wilmont, she reminded herself. A gentlewoman. The daughter of a nobleman. Everything fitting and decent a young lady was supposed to be.

Her mother and Cousin Finella had certainly seen to that.

And most importantly, she was an innocent. Her virtue firmly intact.

Yet Sebastian’s words from earlier suggested something else.

I’ll be devising the perfect seduction for later. Think of that as the second act drones on
.

Tonight. This very night. Whatever would she do when he arrived and wanted to…to…seduce her?

“Dear heavens,” she muttered. “I can’t allow him in my bed.”

“Scandalous!” came an outraged protest.

In her state of shock, Charlotte hadn’t even considered that her distracted pacing before the Marlowe household might draw an audience. Blinking the dust from her eyes, she looked up at the trio poised before her on the steps.

One very shocked matron and two wide-eyed young ladies gaped at her, obviously having just heard her panicked babble. In their plain, yet proper, straw bonnets and elegant, but modest, sprigged muslin gowns, they looked the epitome of respectable Mayfair ladies out for an afternoon stroll now that they had made their call at the Marlowe household.

Perfect!
she thought. Now who else had witnessed her humiliation? Taking another glance at the ladies before her, her heart stopped at the sight of a stark black tendril of hair poking out from beneath that oh-so-plain bonnet, out from which stared a pair of wide green eyes.

“Hermione,” Charlotte whispered, barely recognizing her best friend. Gone were the bright colors and fancy feathers. And beside Lord Trent’s sister stood his mother, Lady Walbrook, minus her penchant for bold and (some may say gaudy) silks and sarcenet; and on the other, Lady Cordelia Marlowe, Hermione’s older sister, dressed in much the same dull fashion. Lady Cordelia? What was she doing in London?

“Oh, Hermione, how glad I am to find you,” Charlotte said without even thinking, reaching out to take her friend’s hand.

At the utterance of her name, Hermione colored in embarrassment and drew back in horror.

Charlotte looked from her dearest, most bosom friend to Lady Cordelia and then to Lady Walbrook and realized
that these women, whom she knew so well and loved like family, were not the same.

Just as she wasn’t the same Miss Wilmont.

The countess’s face turned a livid red. “Be off with you, baggage,” she screeched, waving her parasol at Charlotte as she might at a stray dog. “How dare you come lurking about here as if you belong!” Then she caught each daughter by the arm and pulled them away, towing them down the street and around the corner.

“But I do…” she whispered after them.
Belong
.

She looked up the steps at the house that was like her second home to find Fenwick glowering down at her. Before she could say anything (as if she would know what to say in such circumstances) the butler closed the door with a definitive thud.

He hadn’t quite slammed it, but the meaning was all too clear.

You, madame, are not welcome in this house
.

Charlotte backed away from the steps, stumbling across the curb and down into the street. Hot tears stung her eyes, ran down her cheeks as she made her way across the square and into the garden in the middle. She sank onto a bench, her hands knotting into a tangle of worry in her lap.

Between quiet sobs and hiccups, she tried to catch her breath, make sense of this utterly impossible morning. “Whatever has happened to me?”

“You made a wish, that’s what happened,” said a familiar voice.

Charlotte’s head swung in the direction, and to her shock, there seated beside her sat the charwoman from this morning. “Quince!”

“Oh, aye, that’s good you remember my name.” The woman’s wrinkled cheeks dimpled even further.

“How could I forget it?” Charlotte said, an uncharacteristic temper rising inside her. She poked a finger at the woman, now back in her flower seller’s guise, a large basket of posies perched in her lap. “What have you done to me?”

“Done to you?” The woman had the nerve to look affronted. “I gave you your wish.” She fussed over her bouquets, rearranging the already tidy flowers and ribbons.

“This is
not
what I wished,” Charlotte told her. “To be shunned by my friends, to be accosted on the streets.” She glanced over at the Marlowe house, and tears threatened to spill from her eyes. “To be thought a common…a soiled…”

“Dove?” Quince asked, handing her a worn handkerchief. “Point in fact, your wish was rather vague. You asked for love, and you got it.”

“I am not this woman,” she said, her hands fluttering from the top of her flirtatious hat, over the low cut of her bodice, and ending at her embroidered and trimmed skirt.

“Of course you are!” Quince told her, tipping her head as she surveyed her handiwork.

Charlotte leaned forward. “I haven’t the wherewithal for this life. Why, Arbuckle wants to paint me…well, I was supposed to wear…what I mean is, not supposed to…”

“Nude.” Quince looked heavenward. “My dear, if you can’t even say it, you are going to be in quite a quandary.”

Charlotte sputtered. “Exactly my point! I cannot
pose…I mean, stand about…” She still couldn’t say the word.

“Like
that,
” she finally managed. Naked. Bare to the world. It reminded her too much of how she’d found herself this morning.

Of seeing Lord Trent striding across the room without a care or a stitch…

“I think you’ve made a mistake,” Charlotte told her. “I am not this sort of woman.”

Quince clucked her tongue. “Well, you’re certainly not the Charlotte you were, but Lottie Townsend doesn’t find these situations objectionable.”

Charlotte spoke slowly and deliberately. “I am not Lottie Townsend. I have nothing in common with this creature.”

“But you are wrong,” the lady told her, still sorting her flowers. She pulled out a pansy and a rosebud. “People are such complicated creatures, my dear. Faceted, flawed, their characters ever up for interpretation. We all have varied potentials, aspects of our personalities that for whatever reasons we never explore. Society, choices, and, dare I say it, outright cowardice keep us from living out our lives completely. Charlotte Wilmont and Lottie Townsend are just different aspects of you. You aren’t doing or saying anything that isn’t true to your self.”

“But I don’t remember any of this,” Charlotte replied, waving her hands at the scenery before her. “I’ve never been married.” She paused for a moment, then lowered her voice. “I haven’t, have I?”

Quince shook her head. “No. Finella made up a story about a shipboard romance with an officer under Nelson while you two were in Italy. The tale goes that he died
at Cairo and you’ve mourned him deeply. Such a tragic history and his heroic name lends an air of respectability to your situation.”

“I was in Italy?”

The old woman grinned and nodded. “Oh, aye. Finella took you to Paris during the Peace, and then on to Italy. To give you some polish before you started your career. ’Twas a brilliant move on her part. And just look at you, so very splendid!”

Charlotte took a deep breath and shook her head. “But it’s not just me—everyone is different. Why, Cousin Finella is—”

“Quite a corker, don’t you think?”

Pressing her fingertips to her forehead, Charlotte didn’t know what to say. Cousin Finella a corker? There were so many things wrong with that statement that she didn’t know where to begin.

Quince didn’t seem to notice her distress and just kept nattering on. “Certainly, there were some small adjustments that had to be made to accommodate your wish. Most things are the same, the important ones,” she assured her. “But time is like a garden, touched by winter one year, kissed by a gentle spring the next. You never know what will take root and bloom. So you must see how you can’t adjust someone’s life without some ripples. Finella was one of the things that had to change a bit.”

“A bit? What utter nonsense! You’ve turned her upside down. Turned me into a-a-a—”

“A woman beloved by a man. That was your wish, wasn’t it? To be the woman he loves.” Quince pulled out a bundle of posies and pressed them into Charlotte’s hands. “And desired not just by Lord Trent, I’d point out. You’ve a
bevy of admirers. That’s just a little extra I tossed in.” She sighed, a dreamy look on her face. “Really, truly, no need to thank me.”

“Thank you?!” Charlotte exploded, rising to her feet, ready to throttle this well-meaning, quite possibly mad, busybody. “I’m a disgrace. Ruined.” With her heart thumping wildly and her chest heaving as she tried to catch her breath, she suddenly realized that she was making a scene. In public.

Taking a deep breath, Charlotte settled back down on the bench, willing herself to find a measure of composure.
I am a lady. I am not Lottie Townsend
. Having gained the wherewithal to continue she said, “You don’t seem to understand. Tonight, Lord Trent plans on visiting me. He thinks that we will be…he seemed to be of the opinion that we would be…”

Intimate. Lovers. In bed. Naked. Entangled
. Everything that she’d only barely managed to avoid this morning.

Heavens, wasn’t the fact that she couldn’t even manage to say any of this without blushing herself crimson and sputtering about proof enough that she wasn’t this Townsend creature?

Quince seemed unfazed. “Oh, listen to you go on as if your life is over when in fact you have everything you’ve ever desired. Charlotte, you’re no fool. This is your chance to have everything you wished for.”

“But—”

“No buts. Certainly your sensibilities are a bit shaken—”

Shaken? She was a soiled dove. A lady of ill repute.

Beloved by Sebastian Marlowe, Viscount Trent.

She pressed her lips together. There was that.
Lord Trent
.

An oh-so-changed Lord Trent. Rakish. Naked. Hardly the sensible man for whom she’d carried her quiet torch about for years.

“And what about him? What did you do to Lord Trent?” she asked.

Quince shook her head adamantly. “I didn’t change a thing about the viscount. That’s all your doing!”

“My doing? How could I have done anything? I merely went to bed last night and woke up with a—” Even as she was about to finish her sentence, a nanny with two small children strolled by, and Charlotte waited for the frowning lady and her charges to pass before she finished, lowering her voice when she did. “He’s a rake. The Lord Trent I knew”—loved, she would have said, but she certainly didn’t trust such a confession in front of this creature—“would never have been so…so…” She tried to find a word that best described him.

“Lustful?” Quince said with a sigh. “Devilish? Glorious?”

“No!” Charlotte colored. “You’re wrong. He’s all wrong. Lord Trent is a proper, respectful, honorable man.”

Quince waved a hand at her. “And he still is, but as I was saying before, you’ve changed him.”

“I’ve changed him?” Her hand went back up to her brow and she closed her eyes. This was all madness.

“Yes, you,” the lady asserted. “And quite admirably, I must point out. He was a bit of a stick before he fell into your illustrious company. Caused quite a scandal, for he dotes on you quite shamelessly.”

Charlotte put her hands over her ears. “I will not listen
to this. I do not believe it. I would never…he wouldn’t…”

“But you did, and he does,” Quince told her. “Imagine, Charlotte, what his life would have been like if he hadn’t found you. Fallen in love with you.”

“He’s in love with
her,
not me,” she argued back. “Why, up until this morning he barely knew I existed.”

“I’d say he knows now,” the lady chuckled.

“A little too much, if you ask me,” Charlotte said, feeling a bit annoyed at all this. It was one thing to wish for a man’s love, but quite another to have it—especially when he thought she was someone else.

“So would you have it back the way it was?” Quince said, an ominous note to her words. “Have him calling you by the wrong name and picking flowers for another?”

Charlotte didn’t even ask how the woman knew those things, for the image of Miss Burke rose up in her imagination more frightening than a banshee.