Читать книгу Notorious Eliza - Barbara Monajem - Страница 5

Eliza Dauntry frowned at the portrait on the easel, then at the naked woman sprawled on the sofa. Something was amiss with the pink tints underlying the skin on her breasts and belly. Eliza hated not getting her portraits exactly right. On the other hand, she had come to loathe painting nudes. She didn’t think a not-quite-perfect pink would matter to the rake who had commissioned the portrait of his mistress. Most likely, he wouldn’t notice the difference.

She flicked a glance at the rake, who had insisted on watching while Eliza worked. He wasn’t looking at the portrait, nor at his voluptuous mistress.

Instead his gaze was fixed on Eliza in an all too familiar way.

The rake dismissed his mistress with a flick of the hand. “That’s enough for now, love. Mrs. Dauntry and I wish to talk.”

Oh, no. Not another one. Eliza Dauntry braced herself to deal with the rake. The trollop, justly annoyed, snatched her wrapper from the sofa but flounced away without covering her nakedness. The rake couldn’t help watching the bounce of his mistress’s breasts and the jiggle of her thighs, but Eliza knew his desire was now directed at herself.

Damn! Neither frumpy clothing, nor hair going any which way, nor smudges of paint on her nose made any difference at all. According to these indiscriminate lechers, a woman who painted one’s mistress in the nude—lavishly, wantonly nude—must be partial to being naked herself.

In a sense, they were correct, but Eliza had been a widow for five years, and although she missed sprawling naked with David, there had never been anyone else and likely never would be.

Definitely not this one.

Perhaps she should accept the commission proposed by Lord Lansdowne in a letter received that morning. A month spent at his country estate would put the cap on her ruined reputation, but he had offered her a small fortune, enough to send James, her son, to a good school for years. More important, Lansdowne was old as Methuselah. Too ancient to bed her, and he didn’t hold orgies anymore.

Meanwhile, the rake approached, a predatory gleam in his eye.

Eliza checked that her palate knife was handy, took a deep breath and prepared to defend her honor. Again.

London, several weeks later

Patrick Felham adjusted his cravat before the pierglass. Why was he so damned nervous? He had been married once before, and apart from the death of his wife, everything had gone well. He had every reason to believe Miss Wilbanks would accept his offer.

Judging by the well-appointed saloon to which he had been conducted, the butler thought so, too. Patrick’s character and appearance were generally considered more than acceptable. Although he had no title, he was heir to his great-uncle Lord Lansdowne’s lands and fortune.

The door opened. It would not do to show embarrassment at being caught preening, so he brushed an imaginary speck from his sleeve before turning to make his bow.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Felham, but Miss Wilbanks is indisposed.” The butler seemed…uneasy. There was a distinctly undignified fidget in his stance, and was that sweat on his balding pate?

“She would be most happy to receive you another day, sir.” The butler held the door wide, evidently intending to conduct Patrick speedily outdoors.

Patrick let out a breath. He’d wanted to get the thing over and done with. “I’m sorry to hear that.” He preceded the butler toward the entrance hall. “Please convey my—”

An unearthly shriek came from the storey above. “Dismiss the bitch! I’ll not have her touch me again. Not my hair, not my clothing, not my jewels—”

“Quick, sir, please!” The butler pushed Patrick through the hall to the front door. Out on the steps, his rheumy old eyes met Patrick’s. “Please excuse the liberty, sir, but she’ll have the hide out of me if she knows you heard her having a tantrum.”

Patrick ran his fingers under his cravat. Sweet, lovely Miss Wilbanks, a perfect, conformable lady and ideal stepmother for Lucy, his only daughter, was not so sweet after all.

Another narrow escape. “Damnation.”

“Indeed, sir.” The butler’s gaze was sympathetic. “Find someone else to marry.”

“I’ll do that.” Hah. What was this, his third seriously flawed prospect? Fourth? Were there no true ladies left alive?

Lucy was already eight years old. His housekeeper did her best, but Lucy needed a lady’s tutelage to prepare her for Polite Society. He must find her a mother.

Patrick put a guinea in the butler’s palm. No, the old fellow deserved more compensation for putting up with such a mistress. He scooped all the remaining coins from his pocket and thrust them at the man, then strode hurriedly down the street.

Time to resume the search for a wife. Again.

But not quite yet. He left London the following day, and the late spring evening was closing in when he reached the sleepy Sussex village where he acted as steward of the Lansdowne estate. He left his horse at the Anchor and walked down the street to the substantial brick house at the far end.

“Papa!” Lucy flew down the corridor and into his arms.

He hugged his daughter tight and followed her to the kitchen, where Mrs. Higgins, the housekeeper, had just set out Lucy’s supper. “I’ll eat in here with Lucy,” he said.

He ate a simple meal of bread and cheese and listened somewhat absently to Lucy’s chatter, at least half his mind on the daunting wife-hunt, when he noticed the extraordinary number of times she mentioned someone called James.

“Who,” he asked, “is James?”

“I told you,” Lucy said. “He showed me how to play marbles, and I taught him to fish. We made swords and shields, and I got to be a knight. James has his very own watercolors. May I have watercolors, too? Mrs. Dent and the Uncharitables don’t like James, but you will, Papa.”

“Will I?” He raised his brows at Mrs. Higgins, who evaded his eyes and put the kettle on the hob. How strange. Mrs. Higgins usually took pride in disagreeing with prosy, proper Mrs. Dent, who taught pianoforte and set far too high a value on herself. Moreover, she didn’t even chide Lucy for using Patrick’s pet name for the Ladies’ Charitable Sewing Circle.

“Some days James doesn’t care to be a knight, so he is a troubadour instead. He won’t let me be a troubadour because I can’t sing,” Lucy said.

“I take it James can sing.” Patrick cast another glance at Mrs. Higgins. She twisted her fingers in her apron and continued to avoid his eyes. Damn it all, what now?

“Yes, but the cat at the Anchor doesn’t make a good fair maiden. When James sings to her, she puts her nose in the air and stalks away.”

So far, Patrick hadn’t suffered that sort of rejection, but judging by recent experience, it would be all for the best.

“But the vicar heard James singing to the cat, and now he wants James to sing in church. James would like that, but Mrs. Dent fussed and fussed and fussed. She told Mrs. Higgins the Uncharitables would be scandalized, and that she would not play the organ if James and his mama came. But James’s mama told the vicar no, thank you, because they were going to Chichester instead to see the cathedral.”

“A pity, but perhaps we will be spared Mrs. Dent some other Sunday.”

Ordinarily Mrs. Higgins would delight in a jest at Mrs. Dent’s expense. Today, her fidgeting reminded him strongly of Miss Wilbanks’s butler.

Lucy sighed. “No, James’s mama told him they will visit St. Olave’s next, because it is so old. After that they will go home to London.”

Once Patrick had tucked Lucy into bed and kissed her good-night, he returned to the kitchen.

“I’m very sorry, sir, if I’ve done wrong letting Miss Lucy play with Master James,” Mrs. Higgins said. “But I dared not go against the old lord. Would you care for some tea, sir?”

“Yes, thank you, if you will join me.” Perhaps that would reassure her. “Now, who is this boy James, and what has Lord Lansdowne to do with him?”

“If I might make the tea first, sir?” He nodded patiently, and she bustled about the kitchen with a frenzied clinking of teapot, bowls and saucers. Why couldn’t she just come out and say it, whatever it was?

When the tea was in the pot, the bowls and saucers and sugar on the table and Mrs. Higgins perched on the edge of her chair, he tried again. “Tell me all about James, and don’t look so worried. Everything will be fine.”

“Master James is a good boy, sir, as polite and wellbehaved as one could wish.”

“He sounds unexceptionable, so what is the problem?”

She pleated her apron between her hands. “It’s the mother, sir. The old lord hired her to paint, er, up at the Court…” Her voice drifted unhappily.

“Lord Lansdowne hired a woman to cover the improper murals in the ballroom?” Obscene was more like it. No wonder Mrs. Higgins was so perturbed. She had never seen the ballroom, but she’d heard enough from servants at Lansdowne Court to fire a lurid imagination. Even so, he doubted her imaginings came even close to what had actually taken place there in Uncle Lionel’s heyday.

Hence the ultimatum Patrick had issued to his incorrigible uncle: he would marry again and move his family into the Court to keep the old lord company in his last years, on one condition—that he paint over the orgies on the ballroom walls. “I can’t bring a respectable woman here,” he’d said. Already, he had steadfastly refused to bring Lucy for visits unless the ballroom was locked and barred.

Surprisingly Uncle Lionel had agreed. “Go to London. Maybe this Wilbanks chit will be the one. When you return, the ballroom will be as good as new.”

Damn Uncle Lionel. The old roué had never cared for propriety. Patrick, as his uncle’s steward, should have insisted on making arrangements for the ballroom walls himself, but Uncle Lionel, in failing health but imperious as ever, had waved him away to look for a wife.

Devious old devil. “Why didn’t he get some workmen to do it?”

“I’m sure I don’t know, sir. She’s been at it for three weeks now, going on four.”

Four weeks to paint the ballroom walls? “The woman’s staying at Lansdowne Court?”

“Oh, no, sir, she’s in the best bedchamber at the Anchor with her own private parlor, everything paid for by Lord Lansdowne. His lordship sends the gig for her every morning. Mrs. Pear at the Anchor says as she’s a pleasant lady, quiet and keeps to herself, but dearie me, sir, what lady would agree to so much as look upon them walls?”

The answer hit Patrick like a bludgeon.

Only one.

Mrs. Higgins was talking again. “What with the painter lady not wanting her boy seeing that nasty room at the Court, and not happy leaving him with strangers neither—he’s of an age with Miss Lucy—the old lord told me to keep an eye on him. I’m sure I’m very sorry if you’re vexed, sir. Mrs. Dent says you’ll turn me off for harboring the son of an abandoned hussy, but I ask you, Mr. Felham, sir, what else could I do?”

“You did very well, Mrs. Higgins. I am not in the least vexed, and you should know better than to listen to Mrs. Dent’s spite.” It seemed pointless, but Patrick had to be sure. “What is James’s surname?”

“Dauntry, sir. James Dauntry. Miss Lucy will be right sad to see him go. Would you care for a slice of plum cake?”

“You hired Eliza Dauntry?” The next morning, Patrick paced back and forth on the hearth rug in Uncle Lionel’s bedchamber. Lord Lansdowne lay propped by a quantity of pillows, the eyes in his raddled countenance brighter than Patrick had seen them in months.

“Why not? If I’d left it up to you, you’d have whitewashed the walls and let your new wife paper them over in spirals and roses. Are you engaged to the Wilbanks chit?”

“What?” With difficulty, Patrick dragged his mind away from the visions of Eliza Dauntry that had haunted his sleep. “No, I changed my mind. She won’t do.”

“Ah,” his great-uncle said. “Well, the Dauntry’s doing a bang-up job on the walls. I knew she’d see it my way. She knows a beautiful piece of art when she sees one. Discussed the project without so much as a blush. Clever, too. She’s transforming the orgies into something entirely innocent, as long as one doesn’t know what’s underneath. Almost more titillating than the original, if you ask me, and your namby-pamby wife, whoever she may be, need never know.”

Patrick ground his teeth. So much for agreeing to the ultimatum. “That’s impossible, sir, unless Mrs. Dauntry has painted over virtually everything on the blasted walls.”

“Go see for yourself,” Lord Lansdowne said. Patrick must have made a face, for his uncle added, “When did you become such a prude? You sowed plenty of wild oats in your day. Ran with a fast set, as I recall, and as for that wife of yours…Amanda was a woman after my heart. Set the ton by the ears more times than I can remember, and I’ll bet she was lively in bed.” He grimaced. “She’d not be pleased with what you’ve become, lad.”

“She would have settled down sooner or later,” Patrick said. “We all do.”

Uncle Lionel made a rude noise. “The Dauntry hasn’t, I can tell you that. The gleam in that woman’s eyes…Have you ever met her?”

Hell, yes.

“Once or twice,” Patrick said, keeping his voice cool. “We didn’t move in the same circles, but David Dauntry was a boyhood friend.”

“That’s right, I remember now. The Dauntry’s a tantalizing piece, even in the sack she wears to paint. Not beautiful, precisely, but if I were twenty years younger…” He sighed. “I bought one of her paintings, you know. Sandcourt’s mistress. He had to sell everything a year or two ago, so I snapped it up.”

I have one of her paintings, too.

“That’s what made me think of hiring her,” Uncle Lionel said. “She understands lust.”

I know. I have her self-portrait.

Patrick had bought the damned thing—he’d had to threaten the greedy auctioneer—before it got put on the block with everything else David owned. Then, Patrick had thought of it as a protective gesture. Amanda had been alive then, and he’d only allowed himself enough of a glimpse to be sure it was indeed the self-portrait David had mentioned one day when in his cups. Patrick had put it in an attic and all but forgotten it until several months ago, when he’d begun planning for remarriage.

He couldn’t burn it. Uncle Lionel’s opinion notwithstanding, Patrick knew a magnificent painting when he saw one.

Nor could he sell it; David might be long dead, but Mrs. Dauntry was very much alive. Just because she made her living painting other men’s mistresses, it didn’t mean she should be subjected to the lewd gaze of the highest bidder.

So he had kept it. He should take this opportunity to return it to her.

Hell, no. Which meant, he supposed, that he was as bad as the rest, but at least he wouldn’t display it for hordes of dissolute friends to see. The very idea appalled him. He might look at the portrait—he had done so, several times since Amanda’s death—but that was different.

Or was it? He conjured, in his mind’s eye, the Eliza Dauntry he’d met so long ago. If ever he’d been attracted to another man’s wife, it had been she. Back then, he’d dismissed the thought even as it surfaced. He would never betray his own wife or his friend.

To be honest, he shouldn’t intrude upon Eliza’s privacy now. If she wouldn’t want him looking at her portrait, he shouldn’t.

On the other hand, everything in him rebelled at the thought of asking her if she wanted it back.

Uncle Lionel had put him in an impossible position.

“Go have a look,” Lord Lansdowne said. “Use the secret room.”

“Watch her through a peephole? By God, Uncle—”

The old lord chuckled. “Don’t get all hot under the cravat. She doesn’t like people watching her working. Told me so, but what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her. Take a peek.” He laughed again. “I dare you.”

The hair on the back of Eliza’s neck stood to attention. Old Lord Lansdowne was watching her again.

Not that she really minded. Being watched didn’t bother her, but rather the lewd talk that generally went along with it. As it turned out, Lansdowne wasn’t a bad sort. He did nothing more than look at her with an appreciative glint in his eye, and he had agreed to every one of her terms.

His steward wouldn’t be best pleased when he learned his daughter had become fast friends with the son of the infamous Mrs. Dauntry, but the man hadn’t returned yet, and her job, thank God, was almost done. James had grown accustomed to parrying insults, but that didn’t mean they didn’t hurt. He had lost playmates before and cheerfully gone out to find more. Street urchins, some of them, but as long as James didn’t take to thieving, she considered it just another form of education.

The old lord’s servants must be getting better at helping him silently into that secret room. This time, Eliza hadn’t heard a thing. She just knew. She turned casually and flicked her eyes along the wall with the peepholes. Sure enough, the one behind Poseidon was open, making a slit darker than the billows of sea between one of the trident’s prongs.

Why not give the old lord a little show? His fun was almost over. He was preparing for his own demise, poor man, covering up his beloved orgies because no one would want to live here otherwise. Eliza had come up with a good compromise. She hoped he lived long enough to enjoy it.

Why shouldn’t she have a little fun, too?

She pulled the ribbon from her hair—it needed retying anyway—and tossed it on the table. She ran her fingers through the tangles until the waves fell long and lush across her shoulders and down her back.

She stretched, thrusting her bosom forward, arching her back and closing her eyes. This wasn’t quite as vulgar and gratuitous as it seemed, or so she told herself. After nigh-on a month painting in one awkward position and another, her muscles were giving her hell. She ran her hands slowly over her bosom and down across her belly, then let them linger caressingly on her thighs. He wouldn’t see much of her curves otherwise, given the shapelessness of her painting smock. It couldn’t be more harmless: she got the fun of titillating a man who posed no threat, and he got some enjoyment in return.

She rolled her shoulders, infusing her movements with sensuous languor, and raised her arms over her head, stretching to one side and then the other, swaying slightly. What next? She turned her back to the peephole, spread her legs and took her time bending over. He wouldn’t see more than the curve of her bottom, but even if his equipment was worn-out, his imagination wouldn’t be…