The Beautiful One (3 page)

“I'm afraid there is nothing at Stillwell for Miss Tarryton,” he said.

“Of course you weren't expecting her to arrive,” Anna said. “But perhaps there is some relative who might help? An aunt? A sister?”

“There is no one from the family here but me, and thus, she could not possibly be comfortable here. She must go to an inn and await a new situation. My butler will provide funds.”

Anna saw something die in Miss Tarryton's eyes right then. How he could reject his niece so blithely, Anna couldn't comprehend. But then, he seemed to be a man whose heart had gone missing.

He turned to the girl, and Anna glimpsed again some hint of torment behind the hardness in his eyes, but it was quickly shuttered. “Miss Black will take you away,” he said.

Anna's spine stiffened.
Oh
no
you
don't!

“Oh,” Miss Tarryton said, blinking. Her lower lip trembled for a moment before she got control of it.

“Why, thank you,” Anna interjected. “You're quite right that what she needs most now is a room in which to relax.”

“That's not—” he began, but Anna cut him off.

“How very kind of my lord to wish for his niece's immediate comfort,” she said, walking toward the rope hanging on the wall and praying he wouldn't stop her—she didn't want to consider how such a man might try. “Of course she will be too tired to do anything but rest now, after hours in a carriage.”

She pulled the bell that would summon a servant and babbled on without meeting anyone's eyes in a desperate effort to drown out the tension in the room.

“Well, it was certainly a long journey,” she said, forcing a cheerful tone and feeling like a ninny. “And such rain! Why, it's still raining now,” she said, sweeping her eyes toward the windows, where sheets of water blurred the glass in the early evening gloom. The sight made her realize that no matter what happened, she and Miss Tarryton could not reasonably set out from Stillwell that night. She didn't, however, intend to leave with the viscount's ward at all.

It was perhaps not the most proper thing to leave a young woman alone with a gentleman, but he was her guardian after all, and her uncle, and he would clearly waste no time in finding some woman, whether a relative or a governess, to see to Miss Tarryton.

The butler arrived then, saving Anna from launching into an impromptu poetry recitation.

“Miss Tarryton will need a good fire,” Anna instructed the startled butler, “as we met with rain. And a tray ought to be sent up to her room so she can retire in peace.”

The viscount grunted his acquiescence, and the servant led Miss Tarryton out and presumably to a chamber. Though how long she might stay in that chamber would depend on Anna.

What did this man have to be so bitter about anyway, with his massive grounds and his numerous servants? She stiffened her shoulders and turned around to face him.

She was met with dark eyebrows slashing over midnight-blue eyes that were not dead now, but alive with anger under their thick black lashes. With his height and his broad shoulders, Lord Grandville looked capable of anything. Dangerous.

In a heartbeat he had come closer on those long, muscular legs and stopped before her. She tipped her head up only slightly, knowing she couldn't afford to let him see the effect he was having on her. Besides, he wasn't the only one who was angry.

His hard eyes glittered down at her. “You have to take her away.”

“This young woman is your niece, and you would send her from your home?”

“Stillwell is no place for her.”

“And what is the best place for her?”

“You seem well suited to discover that. Find her another school and I will pay all the expenses of her travel and yours.”

Another man making plans for her. After what had happened with the marquess—after enduring the shock of seeing that book of drawings of herself and having to leave her home—well, the viscount was merely another bully, and she would not be pushed by him.

Outside the windows of the drawing room, a roll of thunder sounded, followed by a flash of lightning, and its energy steeled her spine.

“Even if I thought that were appropriate, which I do not, I cannot do that. I must return to Rosewood, and you must take up your responsibilities to your ward.”

“Damnation!” he boomed, and her eyes widened as she realized that he wasn't so very dead inside after all. He certainly had an opinion about this situation. As a viscount, he must have been used to getting his own way, and he doubtless thundered to instant effect. Anna, however, was well versed in manly bluster, and if she'd learned anything from her father and brother, it was not to let emotion rule her and not to back down.

“I'm afraid that where Miss Tarryton stays is now your concern only, Lord Grandville.” She thought of the girl's white knuckles and felt a pang, but then she reminded herself that not just any young lady would have been up to climbing out her window to meet a man in the dark.

“Impossible! I cannot see to the care of a young lady. No, Miss Tarryton needs firm, feminine guidance, and you appear to be a capable person to provide it. I believe you were ready to push that coach out of the ditch; my ward will be no trouble at all for you. You will take her to an inn tomorrow morning and wait with her until a new school can be found.”

“I will not,” she said, flushing hotly. “I am not in your employ for you to command as you wish.”

“I
cannot
have her here.”

His anger came off him, strong enough that she felt she might almost touch it, but she would not bow to it. Mingled with it was something desperate, like the pain of a wounded animal that lashed out at all around it. But he was not an animal; he was a gentleman, of whom civilized behavior must be expected.

“Can you not? You are her uncle by marriage and her guardian.” She thought of Miss Tarryton's fidgeting in the coach as they drew near the manor and had an insight into the girl's anxiety. “You never even sent her a letter, did you?”

* * *

A bolt of wildness shot through Will. His beloved Ginger was gone, and now her niece had come to Stillwell, hale and hearty and with that beautiful gold-red hair like Ginger's, to torment him, and he was supposed to welcome her? Never mind the absurd idea that he had anything to offer Elizabeth Tarryton beyond the funds that would take her someplace suitable.

“I bid you good evening,” said the woman. “As it is late, I trust I may avail myself of whatever your manservant can offer me in accommodation for tonight. I will depart in the morning.”

He watched her dip what was surely an ironic curtsy, doubtless believing she'd resolved things to her satisfaction, and something shattered inside him, perhaps his last remaining tie to civilization. He was so sick of the pain and the anger, of the weight that was always on him. Suddenly all he wanted was escape. This black-haired, sharp-tongued woman with her sapling body under that ugly, faded gown was making him want the one thing that might take him out of himself, even if only for a few minutes.

There was something about her, too—that boyish energy, those handsome black eyebrows arching over light brown eyes that glinted with some inner force. She was strong, alive, undamaged, and her vigor hinted at forgotten, lively things.

“Wait,” he said, even before he knew he was going to speak. An idea was forming in his mind, an idea that should have appalled him, but there was so little left of the person he'd once been that he barely even heard the dying cries of his gentleman's heart. He crossed his arms. “I have a proposal for you.”

Wariness crept into her eyes.

“Anna Black, isn't that your name?”

She hesitated before replying. “Yes.”

He'd never done anything like this before. He shouldn't have had the words. “I will pay you to spend the night.”

Her brows drew together in puzzlement. “There is no need. I am already obliged by the weather to remain tonight, and I'm sure your ward is well settled in her chamber, though I shall certainly check on her.”

He stepped closer, so that only an arm's length separated them. Her cheekbones showed angularly under taut skin, suggesting hardship, and together with her shabby gown and bonnet, told of an existence at the edge of what was acceptable. And yet, if life had brought her troubles, she didn't seem mastered by them. She hadn't let him bully her, and that emboldened him to speak now. That, and the attraction he'd felt since he'd traded words with her in the rain.

She was pretty, but in an unusual way that wasn't apparent at first glance. There was something about the way she moved, a lithe grace; it wasn't feminine exactly—not unfeminine either. It was the sort of athletic grace of a child who might clamber up a tree or take off running after a colt. Her face was smart, neat, interesting.

Actually, he imagined that with steady meals and a little grooming, she would be quite lovely. Doubtless she was unaware that she had an appealing look of dishabille with her bonnet hanging from its strings around her neck and her wild black curls floating in a blowsy halo about her head.

“Not for my ward,” he said, wanting to stop himself from saying one more wicked word even as he gave in to the despair that told him nothing mattered anymore. “For me.”

A pause as realization dawned and color flooded her face. “I cannot believe you would propose such a thing.”

Her breathing had quickened, and a distant part of his mind was shouting that he was a devil and he'd shocked her horribly. But he was unmoored from that man now. He reached up and put his palm against her cheek. Dear God, the soft warmth of a woman's skin, the give of her smooth flesh.

He read mutiny in her eyes as she pushed his hand away. “How dare you!”

“I'm willing to make it worth your while. You have the look of someone who would put a hundred pounds to good use.”

His answer was a forceful slap that left his cheek burning, as alive to sensation now as the hand that had touched her.

Her eyes crackled furiously at him. “You, my lord, have behaved like a beast from the moment I met you. For the sake of your niece, I hope you will be able to find your humanity. It has clearly gone missing.”

She turned and strode toward the door.

He'd already gone this far. He addressed the back of her head. “How do you know I won't do something dastardly to her? Or neglect her?”

She paused in front of the door, her spine as straight as a duchess's. “I'm willing to take that chance.”

He laughed, a sound that disgusted him. She turned to face him.

“Where is your soul?” she said in a low voice, looking him straight in the eye as if she'd already seen the worst that life had to offer and what he'd just done didn't astonish her. Where did she get the damned spirit to stand before him, resilient?

“Why are you so calm? Have you perhaps drawn such a proposal before?”

She blinked at his words, as if he'd hit a nerve. “Must the volume of a woman's protest gauge her innocence?” she demanded in a husky voice.

“You are very sure of yourself.”

“What else is there in this life?”

She walked through the doorway and was gone.

Anna pulled the library door closed behind her with shaking hands. The viscount's manservant appeared out of the shadows, and she wondered if he'd heard any of what had just transpired. But he merely nodded when she said she would be staying for the night and led her upstairs to a bedchamber.

She entered the room, closed the door behind her, and leaned against it, sinking to the floor in the candlelit darkness. Her limbs quivered uncontrollably. Lord Grandville's behavior had been appalling. The man was a heartless pig, and not the first one she'd encountered in the last month. She was so furious and disgusted with men in general at that moment that if God had put the fate of all males in her hands, their future would have been in grave doubt.

As soon as she stopped shaking, she would go see Miss Tarryton. The girl must be crushed by the welcome she'd received. Anna could all too easily imagine how she was feeling: alone in the world, as good as abandoned by the man who should be responsible for her.

Although Anna's father had never been cruel, as the viscount had been to his ward, perhaps that would have been easier to bear. He—her only parent—had merely been uninterested in her. What drew Matthew Bristol, beyond the medical duties he fulfilled to the grateful satisfaction of his patients, was his obsession: birds.

A precise, composed man who never chatted and disdained emotions, Dr. Bristol had spent every free moment on his studies in medicine and nature. The fact that he had no attention to spare for his children hadn't mattered so much to Anna when her brother, Lawrence, was alive, but once he was gone, she couldn't avoid the conclusion that she was little more to her father than a dinner companion.

The only time he'd shown interest in her had been when he asked her to do the drawings for his two published studies of birds,
Anatomy
of
a
Songbird
and
A
Study
of
Owls
. She'd been happy to walk the woods and fields with him as they looked for meadow pipits and long-eared owls to sketch. But when the books were done, it seemed as though his interest in her was over as well.

There had been advantages to having an unconcerned parent. No one had scolded her if she was sometimes rather tan, or noticed that she didn't dress fashionably and that she was deficient in such feminine accomplishments as graceful tea pouring. She'd learned to ride and swim by copying her older brother, read every book in the house, including her father's medical texts (the ones having to do with the reproductive process holding particular interest), and studied drawing and painting to her heart's content, becoming good enough to illustrate her father's bird books.

This last occupation gained her enough renown locally that she was engaged as a drawing tutor for the daughters of the local gentry, and she dreamed of one day using the money she earned to open a drawing school.

But being an unconcerned parent also meant that her father had never been
concerned
.

He certainly hadn't cared when she'd told him that his apprentice, who was often in their home, made her uncomfortable.

“I feel as though Mr. Rawlins watches me,” she'd said.

“He's a decent apprentice,” he'd said, not looking up from the prescription he was writing. “That's all that matters.”

Mr. Rawlins had left a few weeks before her father sickened and died, and she forgot about him—until one day a month ago.

She'd been returning from giving a lesson that afternoon. Though she had inherited the cottage after her father's death, she'd discovered that he'd been funding a fellow naturalist who was to bring him specimens from South America, and there was hardly any money left, so she had to be very careful with her tutoring earnings. But she loved teaching, even though she knew that her pupils' families thought her unusual and not the sort of woman they'd want their sons to marry.

As she approached her house, she'd seen a carriage stopped there.

She knew from the crest that it belonged to the Marquess of Henshaw, who had an estate a few miles away, but she couldn't imagine why his carriage was outside her home. The coach door had opened and the man himself had emerged, tall and grandly dressed, with a grand waistline to match.

His pink face had cracked in an enormous grin, and he'd said what a pleasure it was to see her again.

She'd politely pointed out that she'd never had the pleasure of making his acquaintance. Gleefully, he'd reached behind him into the coach and produced a big, black book of the kind Anna used for sketching.

The
Beautiful
One
was written on it in what appeared to be red sealing wax. Puzzled by a visit that was growing more bizarre by the moment, she'd looked down when he'd opened the book with a flourish, and felt as if she'd been kicked.

The first sheet of paper showed a scene she could not mistake: her own room. The artist was quite talented. There was her old wooden chair, the side of the bathtub, her window with the curtains drawn. The artist had caught her at the moment of pinning up her hair before stepping into the waiting water. With her arms raised to her head, her small breasts appeared prominent and the curve of her waist like a marker leading the eye downward toward the shadows between her legs, just as if she'd been a model posing for a study.

“There are more?” she'd managed to say, aware that the coachman could hear their conversation from his seat at the front of the coach. There were many sheets of paper underneath the first one, and more than anything, she didn't want to see what was on them.

“Of course.” The marquess had sounded puzzled. “You posed for Mr. Rawlins. He sold them to me.” He'd chuckled. “Or have you posed for so many artists that you've forgotten what you've done for whom?”

“No!”

Rawlins had, she'd realized as a sick chill spread through her body, obviously spied on her. She hadn't even known he was an artist. And a talented one, however unscrupulous.

A thought had come unbidden then, a shameful thought, because the pictures were so wrong and she was furious about them. But along with those strong feelings had come this: Someone had found her beautiful? Her, Dr. Bristol's unfeminine daughter?

“I did not pose for these,” she'd said forcefully. “I've never seen this book before.”

“Of course you haven't,” he'd said, and winked. “My dear girl, I've come to offer you a handsome fee to pose for a large painting Rawlins is doing of me. You are to be Aphrodite to my Ares. Nude, of course.”

Anna had stood speechless before she'd gathered her wits. “You have no right to those drawings. Rawlins spied on me. I beg you to burn that book and never speak of it again.”

“Do spare me the injured maiden act. It's obvious you posed for them. I've shown them to my friends, and I intend to display them.”

“You can't! I'll be ruined!”

He'd flicked a glance at the modest cottage where she'd lived all her life. The whitewash on the front door was peeling, and one of the windows was cracked.

“You are thinking much too small. Why, even now you're quite hiding yourself with that ugly coiffure and that pathetic gown. With what I will pay you for the painting, you can fix yourself up, become the toast of the art world. Your looks are unusual, and it's easy to imagine you draped across some moss, your legs bare, like a nymph…”

“Stop,” she'd whispered.

“Though I do plan to keep your name secret, Miss Bristol, until after I unveil the painting, to safeguard the mystery behind
The
Beautiful
One
. And I will pay you fifty pounds to be my Aphrodite.”

He'd left, telling her he would be back in a month, when Mr. Rawlins would have completed the Ares portion of the painting. Even before his carriage had rolled away, she'd known she'd have to leave home immediately.

She'd taken her tiny store of coins, packed quickly, and left her home, not knowing if or when she could ever come back. With no references, she'd been grateful to find the position as the Rosewood seamstress a few days later. She'd given her surname as Black, which had been her mother's maiden name and was her own middle name and would, she hoped, be easy for her to remember to use.

She had no way of knowing how many people had seen that book or whether the marquess had still not told anyone the name of the model. Doubtless she'd angered him by leaving, and he might retaliate in some way. And, of course, one other person knew her identity: the horrible Mr. Rawlins.

She was anxious to return to the school, where no one paid any attention to the lowly seamstress. Once she'd saved enough money there, she would be able to go north to her Aunt May in Yorkshire, far away from trouble.

She was, however, very concerned about Miss Tarryton. Miss Brickle had charged Anna to see the girl safely to her guardian and to assist him if necessary. Could she really in good conscience abandon Miss Tarryton to the care of the master of Stillwell Hall?

* * *

He didn't want her there, Lizzie thought, fighting the pressure of tears that wanted to come as she sat with her head in her hands at the gold-finished vanity in the room she'd been shown. With its soft blue carpet and curtains in pale salmon, the well-appointed bedchamber looked like it belonged to a different house from the oddly bare drawing room.

Being unwelcome at Stillwell had always been a possibility, even if, when she'd dreamed of leaving Rosewood, she'd discounted its likelihood. She hadn't dwelled on Grandville's not writing to her because she knew he must be busy and because her father had chosen him as her guardian, so he would have to be a good and responsible man.

What was more, Grandville had been her Aunt Ginger's husband. Although Lizzie never saw her aunt after moving to Malta, Aunt Ginger had written her, always saying how much she looked forward to seeing her again.

The dream that the man who was her uncle as well as her father's closest friend would one day come and take her to live with him had been what sustained her over the last year. But the man she'd just met was nothing like the man she'd remembered hazily as a kind fellow with nice blue eyes. And now she knew why he hadn't come.

She'd hated Rosewood from the minute she'd arrived there from Malta eighteen months earlier. The other girls had snickered at her rough ways and her unfashionable clothes, and each day that passed had only increased her disgust for the stupid “finishing” instruction that didn't seem to be finishing her for anything but more time at Rosewood. How she'd hated her stepmother for sending her there.

The only good thing she'd discovered at Rosewood, during the times she'd slipped away unnoticed, was that gentlemen quite liked her. Men, she'd found, were
exciting
.

A knock sounded on the door. Probably that manservant. Lizzie said nothing. She didn't trust her voice anyway—she had a huge lump in her throat.

“Miss Tarryton?” came a female voice. The seamstress. Doubtless she didn't care about Lizzie either, but considering what she'd seen of the woman so far, Lizzie trusted her at least to be forthright.

“What is it?”

“May I come in?”

“Please yourself.”

The door opened and she entered. The woman really would be gorgeous, Lizzie observed out of reflex, if she would just do a bit of grooming. Her black hair had been pulled back with a careless firmness that left lumpy parts where the curls had not been tamed, and her ugly blue bonnet, its ribbons still tied in a clump, was hanging from her neck carelessly, as if she'd just pushed it off her head.

Her sack-like bluish frock was plain awful. Not even Helen of Troy could have looked like anything but a dowdy matron in it. Never once during the whole carriage ride or after had the seamstress fussed at her hair, or tried to arrange her skirts so they wouldn't wrinkle, or engaged in any of the hundred little ways girls and women had of attending to their appearance. She simply seemed not to care about her looks, which Lizzie thought a foolish waste of the most important power a female had.

The seamstress also looked in need of a good meal or twenty—her cheeks were hollow, and Lizzie had noticed that she'd managed to eat all of her meat pie from the hamper they had in the coach even though they were terrible (Lizzie had discarded hers out the window), so she had to have been very hungry. Lizzie supposed from her speech and manner that she was a gentlewoman fallen on hard times.

The woman perched on the edge of the bed near where Lizzie sat at the vanity. She looked pale, and Lizzie wondered what had been said after she left the drawing room.

“What is your name again?” Lizzie asked.

“Anna Black.” The seamstress cleared her throat. “Well, Miss Tarryton, do you feel comfortable here? Do you think you will be content with your guardian?”

“How the devil should I know, and what does it matter anyway? He is my guardian.” Tears began to well in her eyes, and she hid them by looking at the wall and fought not to give in to them.

If Miss Black was taken aback at her rough words and tone, she didn't show it, and Lizzie wouldn't have cared if she had. She'd had enough of trying to be proper at Rosewood.

“If you don't mind my asking, how did Lord Grandville come to be your guardian?”

“He and my father met at university and became close, though now I don't see why. Then, when we were in Malta, Grandville became better acquainted with Aunt Ginger, who was a friend of his cousin, and eventually they married. So he is connected to me twice over.”

Lizzie shrugged even as she felt her throat constricting. “A year ago, my father and stepmother and baby brother died of a fever,” she said, pushing past the thickness in her voice. “They were in Malta. I was at Rosewood.”