Once Upon a Wallflower (9 page)

Her hand trembling shamefully, Mira managed a knock on the door, which was immediately answered with a muffled “Come in!”

The door swung open with surprising ease. Quickly, before she could lose her nerve, she crossed the threshold into Nicholas’s private chamber.

She got a vague impression of bold colors and rich, decadent textures, but before she could take in any details of the room, her attention settled on Nicholas. Nicholas, who stood in the middle of the room, turned at an angle away from the door, vigorously rubbing a bit of toweling over his head. Nicholas, who was entirely without trousers.

She stood transfixed by his naked legs extending from beneath the loose tails of his linen shirt.

Although the fireplace behind him threw him into silhouette, the ambient light from the windows revealed the details of Nicholas’s form. At once Mira saw that his left leg, the one closest to her, appeared to be completely human, not even slightly goat-like. A long, angry-looking scar ran from the middle of his thigh to his knee, where it wrapped around from the outside of his leg and disappeared from her view. There at the joint the leg appeared a bit out of line, not quite straight. But otherwise the left limb was much like the right.

And, while Mira had no reliable point of comparison, she thought that Nicholas’s legs were actually quite spectacular. The muscles running their length formed graceful arcs and intriguing shadows that were highlighted by the crisp hair that seemed to follow and complement the lines of his musculature. The effect was fascinating.

Suddenly, those remarkable muscles shifted as he turned, repositioning his wounded leg so that it was out of her sight, and she glanced up to find him staring at her from beneath the toweling still draped over his head, a wicked smile on his face.

“Good afternoon, Miss Fitzhenry. I did not expect you to respond to my invitation so quickly.”

The rush of blood to Mira’s face made her lightheaded, and she thought for an instant that she might actually swoon.

“Yes, my lord,” she choked out. “I am quick, my lord.”

He chuckled. “Mira-mine, promise me that, in the future, whenever I stand before you half-naked you will call me by my Christian name. Without my trousers I feel decidedly un-lordly.”

Though he had turned to hide his injury, he appeared otherwise unashamed of his dramatic state of dishabille. He casually drew the toweling from his head, and his hair, free from its queue, fell forward in dark, sinuous waves about his face.

With a sudden jolt of realization, Mira thought,
He is beautiful
. The epiphany shook her to her core. She had no words to describe the viscous warmth spreading through her limbs and seeping like spilled honey into the hollow beneath her belly. She did not know how to satisfy the sudden restlessness that quickened her breath and made her fingers flex with the independent yearning to touch, to caress, to grasp, to hold. But in that hot, still moment, as Nicholas’s quicksilver eyes mirrored the flash of lightning through the tower windows, Mira knew instinctually that the man before her held the key to some deep mystery.

Nicholas was the first to break the mood, taking two short steps to retrieve a pair of dry trousers from a long, low couch angled out into the room. He stepped behind an easel, which, with the large canvas propped upon it, provided a small measure of privacy. Still, however, she could hear him shuffling his feet about as he tried to don his trousers without sitting down, could hear the sibilant whisper of the fabric over his skin, and the intimacy of the situation made her shiver.

“I apologize if I have embarrassed you,” he called out. “I would not have so cavalierly invited you in, but I thought you were Pawly, my valet.”

“Yes,” Mira responded distractedly, as she tried to purge her mind of an image of Nicholas tucking his shirt into the waist of his trousers, drawing the fabric taut across his stomach, coaxing the buttons into place. “Yes, I met Pawly at the main house. He showed me the covered passageway out to the tower. But he said he had no further duties out here.”

Nicholas offered only a skeptical hum in response.

The room, cloaked in rich colors and deep shadows, was dominated by an enormous bed, long enough and wide enough that Nicholas could easily stretch out his prodigious length in any direction. Generous curtains of ruby red silk were tied back to the posters, and Mira could see the feather pillows and rumpled linens inside. Her head was suddenly filled with a vivid image of Nicholas recumbent among those pillows, those linens concealing the lean, powerful lines of his body. The vision loosened something deep within her belly, an intimate and alarming sensation, and she quickly looked away.

Her steps languid and slow, she wandered over to the farthest arc of the wall, to a space littered with Nicholas’s finished canvases.

His paintings were unlike anything Mira had seen before, unlike any of the watercolors and oils she had seen when she attended the Royal Academy’s annual exhibition. Nicholas worked in massive scale, his lines bold and irregular, creating raw wounds of ochre, crimson and bluish-black. Nicholas’s art was anguish, and Mira shuddered in visceral reaction.

Only one painting actually hung upon the wall. It was a portrait of a woman, a woman with midnight hair and moonlight eyes. Her figure was surrounded by an indistinct, swirling mass of color, as though she hung suspended in a thunderhead. One hand was raised in invitation, and she seemed to stare directly at Mira. She was not smiling, but Mira got the impression that she was amused by something, some great cosmic jest to which only she was privy.

“My mother.” Nicholas had come to stand directly behind Mira without her hearing him move, and she started at the sound of his voice.

“I do not remember her clearly. I was young when she died. But I dream of her sometimes, and this is how she looks to me then.”

“She was beautiful.”

Nicholas paused. “Yes, she was.”

After another beat of silence, he continued in a more brisk tone of voice. “So, Mira-mine, what do you think of my work?”

Mira turned to look at him. He was staring at her intently. He lifted one corner of his mouth in a jaunty smile, and cocked an eyebrow teasingly. But Mira recognized the moment as a watershed, her response as vital.

“It is wonderful,” she replied. Her voice was firm with conviction. “I have never seen such passion on canvas before. It is deeply moving.”

Nicholas flushed with pleasure.

“I am glad you approve, Mira. Most people, I think, find my work unsettling. Alarming, even. Tastes these days seem to run to portraits.” He glanced toward the portrait of his mother, and his brow wrinkled in consideration. “Other than that picture of my mother,” he said, his words slow and measured, “I have not painted a portrait in a decade, at least.” His head swung around abruptly, so that he faced Mira squarely. “Would you be willing to sit for me?”

She was stunned. “Me? Oh, Nicholas, I don’t… I am not certain I would be the best subject.”

“Of course you would,” he said, warming to the idea. “It would not take much of your time. I work largely from memory. I would only need to sketch you, which would take no more than an hour. Perhaps we could do it right now. And then I might need you to sit once more, when the work is almost complete, just to be certain that I have captured the play of light on your skin and hair.”

Mira worried her lower lip, and turned to look at the portrait of his mother. The former Lady Blackwell was a striking woman, and Mira was a poor substitute. She was not certain she could tolerate Nicholas scrutinizing her with his artist’s eye.

Still, she thought, the sitting would give her time to talk to Nicholas while he was distracted, perhaps less guarded. Who knew what she might be able to learn about the murders while he sketched.

“All right,” she finally agreed, however hesitantly.

He smiled. “Excellent.”

He looked around the studio, humming tunelessly. “Why don’t we have you sit here, just beneath this window?” He directed Mira to a graceful retiring couch covered with indigo brocade.

She sank down to perch right upon the edge of the couch, squaring her shoulders in what she hoped was a serious and refined pose.

Nicholas laughed. “Mira, relax.” He gave her shoulder a gentle shove, and then reached down to lightly grasp one of her ankles in his large, warm hand, swinging her leg up to the couch. “Lean back and put your feet up. Make yourself comfortable. And try to forget what I am doing.”

Forget what I am doing.
As if she could. She leaned back against the thick satin pillows and tried to relax. But she was acutely aware that Nicholas would be watching her, staring at her with critical eyes, observing each and every flaw in her features and committing them to canvas.

As Mira tried to settle in, Nicholas moved to an easel and took up a piece of charcoal. He studied her, eyes narrowed in a squint, for just a moment before he touched the charcoal to his canvas and began to sketch.

She breathed deeply. The air was sharp with electricity and sea salt and the pungent bite of linseed oil and paint. But beneath that harsh perfume, the narcotic scents of sandalwood and cloves marked the room unmistakably as Nicholas’s. She closed her eyes, allowing the rumble of thunder from yet another approaching storm and the rhythmic rasp of charcoal across canvas to lull her senses.

Still, she was mindful of her ulterior motive for the sitting: she needed information.

“Nicholas?” she asked, her voice hazy with relaxation. “You said you had not painted a portrait in over a decade. Did you never paint Olivia Linworth?”

For a moment, she thought he would not answer.

“No,” he finally responded tightly, “no, I never painted Miss Linworth.”

Mira let the silence stretch out between them again, washing away the small tension the mention of Olivia’s name had raised.

But then some little demon in her mind compelled her to ask about Olivia again. And this time she opened her eyes so that she could study his reaction. “What was she like?” she asked, hoping the question sounded casual.

“Who?”

“Olivia. Miss Linworth. What was she like?

“Like?” Nicholas responded absently. “Well, she was blond, and I believe her eyes were blue…”

“No,” Mira interrupted impatiently, “I did not mean to ask what she looked like. I meant, what was she like as a person? Was she kind? Did she love animals? Did she laugh a great deal?”

He stopped sketching and appeared to contemplate these questions for a moment. “I don’t really know. The only thing I can recall is that her voice was very high and thready—breathless almost—and I found that endlessly annoying.”

Annoying.

A tiny uncharitable part of Mira rejoiced at the word. She would not wish to live forever in the shadow of a dead woman, a woman who would only grow more perfect in Nicholas’s mind as the years passed. Yet it seemed he did not harbor any deep affection for Miss Linworth.

That instant of joy was followed quickly by a wave of guilt. Poor Miss Linworth. It seemed that she, too, had been an unwanted bride.

Nicholas seemed satisfied that their conversation was over, and he returned to his sketch, not saying a word but only occasionally humming a measure or two of unfamiliar music.

The more Mira thought about it, the more she felt compelled to defend Miss Linworth. After all, she was not there to defend herself. And it seemed disloyal of Nicholas to speak so unkindly about her under the circumstances.

“How rude!”

Nicholas jumped a bit in surprise at her outburst, and his charcoal skipped across the paper.

He tried to minimize the stray mark as he responded. “I don’t think it’s a question of rudeness. She could not very well help how her voice sounded.”

“Not her. You! How very rude to speak so critically of Miss Linworth.” Warming to her cause, Mira continued, “Surely you could find some positive feature on which to comment.”

Nicholas shrugged one shoulder. “I am certain Olivia possessed many admirable qualities, but I confess I was not interested enough to note any of them.”

“You cannot be serious,” she exclaimed. “You were engaged after all!”

“Mmmm. Well, we were not entirely engaged.”

“Not entirely engaged? I should think one either is or is not engaged. I am unaware of any middle ground.”

Finally Nicholas abandoned his drawing to give his full attention to Mira and his explanation. “Olivia’s father and mine are, or rather were, great boyhood friends. They were forever throwing us in each other’s path. It was generally assumed that we would marry. It would have been a terribly advantageous match all around.”

Mira sat up, riveted. “You do not sound as though
you
were eager for the match,” she commented.

“To be honest, I did not especially relish the idea, but I did not imagine I had much choice but to marry Olivia.”

“But I thought you said that you and Miss Linworth were not actually engaged,” she prodded. “If your respective parents were so set on the match, why was there no engagement?”

“Olivia was quite a few years younger than I, more near in age to Jeremy. It was no secret that he was utterly smitten with her, and she with him. Olivia’s parents would never have settled for Jeremy as a husband for her, however, because he is only a younger son with only faint prospects of a title and no money to speak of. It placed me in a rather awkward situation.”

“How so?”

Nicholas raised an eyebrow in self-deprecation. “Perhaps I am hopelessly sentimental, unduly romantic, but I did not enjoy being the one impediment to Jeremy and Olivia’s love match, the one person standing between Jeremy and the title which would have made him a suitable husband for the girl he loved.”

Mira frowned in consternation. “I am still confused, my lord. You say that your parents and hers insisted on the match, that they would not stand for Olivia marrying Jeremy. But why then were you and Olivia not engaged?”

With a sheepish shrug, Nicholas admitted, “Well, we were engaged for a time. And, publicly, we were engaged until Olivia met her death. But just the day before her fall from the curtain wall, I told Olivia that I would willingly step aside if she and Jeremy wished to elope. I even offered to help them abscond to Gretna Green and to intercede on their behalf with our parents.”