Stroke of Genius (11 page)

“I rather doubt you have much to contribute to the
discussion of not giving offense.” She rolled her eyes. “You delight in offending others.”

He conceded her point. “Just because I choose to be unconventional doesn’t mean I don’t recognize correct behavior when I see it. I’m a keen observer of the
ton,
Grace. I can smooth your way in.”

“Very well. You may teach me about flirting,” she said as if she were granting him a favor. “
Both
kinds of flirting. Polite and impolite. What I ought to do and what I ought not.”

His mouth went dry and his cock resurrected itself at the thought of more impolite flirting with Grace. He heard himself agreeing with her before he could stop the words from coming out his mouth.

“But in the meantime, I have a commission to fulfill.”

He worked in silence, trying to sink into the peaceful realm of light and shadow, form and line. He’d complete this sculpture and collect his fee. He’d school her in polite deportment and steel himself to educate her in fleshly matters up to the brink of consummation.

He’d see her wed to a title. He’d exorcize the impishly seductive spirit that stole his sleep and now tormented his waking hours. Then he’d never have to see this infuriatingly unavailable cock-teasing New England miss ever again.

Unless it was as a member of his Unhappy Wives of Inattentive Husbands Club.

And his life would be his own again.

Grace didn’t say another word either. But when Crispin looked up, he noticed a satisfied smile playing about her lips. And a determined set to her chin.

And he was not so optimistic about his plans for the future.

Pygmalion thought he’d regained control of the stone, that he could still shape it to suit him. He evidently forgot the old saying: “Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.”

“Oh, la! This gown, she is so old-fashioned,” Claudette complained. She and Wyckham were playing an adult game of dress-up in the attiring room with some of the costumes Mr. Hawke’s patrons wore for their sculptures. Wyckham had insisted she don one of the broad-hipped court dresses, complete with panniers and bum roll.

“You look grand, luv,” Wyckham assured her with a quick kiss. He drew his fingertips over the tops of her breasts, which were pressed up and together in rising moons over the low-cut bodice. “I like to see a woman decked out in fancy court dress. You look every inch a lady.”

“Even if I can’t breathe?” He’d laced the corset so tight her ribs hurt.

“Give me half a moment and you’ll change your mind about this getup.” Wyckham dropped to his knees and disappeared beneath her skirt. His voice was muffled by the layers of petticoats, but she heard him say, “How about I take your breath away like this?”

His mouth was on her private spot in a heartbeat, licking, sucking, kissing. His tongue slipped between her delicate folds. Curiously, the inability to draw a deep breath intensified the sensations he pressed upon her.
Her knees threatened to buckle, but he grasped her bare bottom beneath the bum roll and held her upright.

She heard him chuckle.

“Spread your legs,” he ordered.

Claudette obeyed, fanning herself with a feather and ivory fancy that perfectly complemented the archaic gown.

“At least, now I see why my grandmother she did not complain of these hoops,” she said, patting his head through the layers of cloth.

Then the door to the attiring room opened suddenly and Miss Makepeace strode in.

Claudette clamped her knees together and hoped to heaven Wyckham’s feet weren’t peeping from beneath her hem. She and her mistress had indulged in some personal conversations about matters of the flesh, but Claudette suspected talking about them and being caught doing them were two different things.

“Claudette, why are you wearing that gown?”

Under the skirt, Wyckham teased her curls with his talented fingers. She squirmed a bit.

“I did not know how long you would be with Monsieur Hawke, mam’selle. I thought only to amuse myself. I meant no harm, truly.”

Miss Makepeace sighed. “I thought Mr. Wyckham was supposed to entertain you.”

The wicked man ran his tongue along the seam of her cleft. Without conscious volition, she spread her feet to shoulder width.

“Oh, you know how lazy they are, these Englishmen.” Claudette was thankful her mistress was the type to pace. That way she might not notice the flush creeping up her lady’s maid’s neck. “Always too busy wagging their tongues to attend to business.”

The lazy Englishman under her skirt wagged his
tongue in a most effective way. Then he pinched her bottom and she stifled a squeak.

Miss Makepeace stopped pacing and shot her a confiding grin. “But I thought you said he knew what to do with his tongue, Claudette.”

Then her mistress resumed her circuit of the small room.

Beneath her broad skirt, Claudette felt a silent chuckle against the skin of her inner thigh, making her small hairs sway in the heat of his breath. She rapped the protruding bump that was Wyckham’s head with her fan. He stopped his soundless laughter and began to demonstrate his tongue’s abilities in spades. Claudette forced an even tone. “Your sitting? How did…it go?”

“Fine.”

“And your plan to investigate the way of a man’s hand on a woman’s breast, how was that, mam’selle?”

“Less fine. He started to provide some exceptional research material for my writing, but we got sidetracked and I’m not sure why.”

“Monsieur Hawke, he touched you again?”

Wyckham did a good bit of secret touching of his own and Claudette’s eyes were in danger of rolling back in her head. Miss Makepeace sank onto the tufted chair in the corner.

“Oh, yes.” Her mistress’s tone was throaty and one hand drifted to her chest. “He caressed me and then he stopped abruptly and insisted we return to work.”

Wyckham stopped, too, and Claudette realized he was taking more interest in their conversation than he should. She remembered belatedly that she needed to protect Miss Makepeace’s privacy, but her own was being so sweetly invaded just now, she could hardly think straight.

“The beast! How inconsiderate!” Claudette said,
giving the bump under her skirt a sound thump when Miss Makepeace looked away. His tongue returned to torment her delicate parts and she rocked her pelvis toward him. “A gentleman should give a lady the pleasure of deciding when their liaison, she is over,
non?
”

Miss Makepeace sighed. “But Crispin Hawke is no gentleman.”

“And sometimes that is no bad thing, mam’selle.”
Mon Dieu!
Monsieur Hawke’s gentleman’s gentleman was doing wicked things with that English tongue of his. “Was it wonderful before he stopped?”

Miss Makepeace actually groaned.

“That good?” She squirmed a bit when Wyckham replaced his talented tongue with his equally talented fingers.

“I know I shouldn’t be telling you this, but I have no one else I can speak with about these things.”

“My lips, they are sealed, mam’selle,” Claudette said. And Wyckham’s were thoroughly occupied. “So it was good,
non?
”

“I had no idea it would be like that,” her mistress said. “I mean, it was strange and thrilling in the modiste’s shop, but this was entirely different. It was as if my body belonged to someone else, doing as it willed, not as I willed. And because it was so…” She waved a helpless hand, clearly at a loss to describe the sensations she’d experienced. “He made me want things. Wicked things.” She shifted uncomfortably on the chair. “Is it always like that?”

Wyckham stopped, clearly interested in Claudette’s answer.

“
Non,
mam’selle,” she said. “Sometimes it is better than others.”

“Hmmm. One’s body is the same, isn’t it? I suppose it depends on the skill of one’s partner.”

“
Oui,
on skill and…” Wyckham’s hand drifted down to her stocking garters and toyed with the top of the lace. Shivers of pleasure and need coursed over her. “And on how a woman feels about the man.”

Wyckham cupped her sex under the layers of silk and taffeta and she throbbed into his hand.

Non,
I do not have feelings for this Wyckham. He is merely an amusement until I decide I have teased Monsieur Allen long enough.

“Well, my feelings for Mr. Hawke do not bear repeating in polite company,” Miss Makepeace said, rising abruptly. “We need to go. Allen and Gus are probably waiting at the end of the lane for us.” She cocked her head and frowned. “Do you need help getting back into your own clothes?”

“Ah,
non,
mam’selle, it would…not be—how you say?—appropriate for you to help me and…I know I do not seem so, but I am shy. I wiggle into this gown. I shall wiggle out.”

Claudette gave her cork-enhanced bottom a shake.

“Very well. I’ll wait for you in the atrium garden. Ten minutes then, or I’ll ask Mr. Hawke to send someone to help you.”

As soon as the door latched behind Miss Makepeace, Wyckham rolled out from under Claudette’s skirt, laughing uncontrollably.

“What is so funny?” she demanded.

“You, shy?”

She flopped down on the floor beside him and tugged him close by his lapels.

“Let me show you how shy I am, Monsieur Wyckham.” She rolled onto her back and pulled up her skirt till her damp blonde curls were bared to his gaze. She spread her legs wide.

“I will close
mes yeux,
but you may keep yours open,”
she said as she let her eyelids flutter closed. “Your fingers are very nice. Your tongue is nicer still, but see if you can find something bigger this time.”

She peeped at him from beneath her lashes. To her amusement, he was shucking out of his trousers as if they were on fire.

As soon as he seated his fine, fat length deep within her slick folds, she wrapped her legs around his lean hips. All thoughts of the dependable, well-favored Allen, whom she fully intended to marry someday, fled from her mind.

“We must hurry,
mon cher.
“ She urged Wyckham to a quicker rhythm. “My mistress, she is a factory man’s daughter,
non?
If she says ten minutes, she means nine.”

Pygmalion couldn’t believe the work of his own hands. Or the way it tugged at his own heart.

The day before her debut at Almack’s, Grace was back in Crispin’s studio, continuing her lessons on how to flirt. Politely, this time.

“Good posture is essential. How you carry yourself speaks volumes. Don’t slouch,” he ordered.

“You sound like my mother.”

“Good Lord, I hope not.”

“Of course, she follows that up with ‘But tip your head sideways so you don’t appear quite so frightfully tall, dear!’” Grace suited her action to the words and cocked her head to one side.

“Now that really did sound like your mother,” he said.

Grace’s imitation of her mother’s trilling tone was so pitch-perfect, Crispin chuckled and for once, the lines by his eyes looked pleased instead of pained.

“Does she know you can do that?”

“What? Practically lay my ear on my shoulder?” Grace asked with a self-deprecating shrug. “Oh, I hope not, or she’ll have me going about like that all the time.”

“No, the mimicry. It was splendid. You sounded just like her.” He circled her slowly, checking every detail of her posture. He put a finger to her cheek and lifted her head gently to the upright position. “Why, you could charge admission.”

“Wonderful,” Grace said with a grimace. “I can just
hear the newsboys on the corner hawking that story. ‘Freakishly tall Bostonian heiress now does impressions.’ Line me up for a tour with the dog-faced boy.”

Crispin laughed again, but then his brows knit together in a frown. “Many a truth is spoken in jest. Do you really feel so terrible about your height?”

She started to answer flippantly about how handy she is when one needed something from the top shelf of the highboy, but she realized he was being serious. “It makes me different from other women.”

“Different is not bad.”

“But it’s not good either.” She knew she was slumping again, but this time it had nothing to do with trying to make herself smaller. She had no control over her height. The injustice of it bowed her down a bit. She glanced back at Crispin, who was simply staring at her. “Being tall as a lamppost is not generally considered one of a woman’s finer points, but if you wish to play the gallant, you may tell me otherwise.”

“When have I ever been gallant?” He shook his head. “It wouldn’t make any difference. Until you decide your height is beautiful, it won’t matter a bit if I tell you it makes you seem willowy and supple.”

He circled her again and ran his hand along her spine from her nape to below her waist, stopping just before his fingers grazed the top of her crevice. Pleasure sparked along her back and she wondered for a moment what that would have felt like had she not been wearing the thin, lawn day dress and all her underthings.

He leaned toward her ear, his voice the rumbling purr of a lion in his prime. “It doesn’t signify anything if I say I find the long line of you elegant and graceful.”

Graceful.
That was a cruel joke. She’d been having a recurring nightmare in which she tumbled headlong when bobbing the first curtsey at her debut.

“You have to find yourself beautiful, Grace,” he said simply. “It doesn’t really matter if I do.”

She digested that a moment, while he made a few adjustments to the sketch he was working on halfheartedly between his instructions on flirting.

“But the tops of all the other girls’ heads will be paddling around at the level of my chin and—” She suddenly realized he might have given her a compliment without a swipe. “You do?”

“Do what?” He looked up sharply.

“Find me beautiful?”

He dropped his gaze and made a few cross-hatching lines on the sketch pad. “If I do, it doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me,” she said softly. “Do you?”

He looked back up at her. “I do.”

I do.
It had the ring of an oath. Grace’s belly did a quick flutter. Crispin Hawke was an artist, a master of form and proportion. And he declared her beautiful with a simple “I do.”

Imagine that.

“We’re wasting time,” he said gruffly. “Please tell me you already know how to use a fan.”

She didn’t. Not in the sense he meant. Evidently English women could communicate a wealth of flirtatious intent with a few deft flicks of that accessory.

So they worked on fan language for better than an hour. It was a befuddling lexicon of “come here—go away” gestures that she was certain to make a muddle of. Grace decided to leave her fan dangling from her wrist unless she was in extreme danger of being overcome by heat.

Then Crispin schooled her on making limited but effective eye contact with gentlemen.

“Too direct and you’ll be considered overly bold,” he admonished. “Too furtive and you’ll be deemed hopelessly shy.”

How was she to find the middle ground?

“And you mustn’t encourage any fellow whom you wouldn’t seriously entertain as a suitor. Not only will a hanger-on be a bother, he’ll make more eligible men suspect your interest might be engaged.”

“What does a man consider encouragement?”

“Breathing.”

She giggled. “I am utterly without hope, then.”

“Actually, you’ll want to avoid doing what you’re doing right now if you intend to discourage someone.”

“What do you mean?”

“Smiling, laughing, accepting too many requests to dance.” He ticked her sins off on his long fingers.

She wondered if after all this instruction in flirting, she was finally engaged in the actual practice of the art. “But you haven’t asked me to dance.”

He lifted his walking stick with a grin. “Alas, I have a permanent partner I dare not set aside for long.”

“But aren’t I going to Almack’s to smile and laugh and dance?”

“One must only enjoy oneself with the right people,” he said cynically, his smile fading.

“How do I discourage the wrong ones then?”

“I’ve watched this particular dance a thousand times. It’s done with ruthlessness and premeditation in all the best ballrooms. You have to give an ineligible fellow a direct cut,” Crispin told her. “Sounds cruel, I know, but a sharp wound heals cleanest, they say.”

“You mean I have to be rude and dismissive just because I don’t want a fellow to press his suit?” The whole notion grated against her sense of kindness. “But how will I know whether I want a particular gentleman to pursue me unless I speak with him?”

“According to all reports, you, my dear Grace, are
after big game. An earl, a marquess, even a duke isn’t beyond the realm of possibility for someone whose father has such deep pockets.” Crispin’s voice held an edge of disdain. “It’s true they don’t stroll about with their titles affixed to their foreheads, but don’t worry about knowing whom you need to charm, Grace. I’ll be at your side, your faithful hunting hound ready to flush out only trophy bulls for you.”

She made a noise of frustration. “Why must you make it all seem so tawdry and calculating?”

“Because it is.” He canted toward her, his walking stick beating a relentless tattoo on the flagstone. “I know the old girls who guard the gate at Almack’s despise trade, but the marriage market is the most lucrative sort of commerce in the nation.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. Couldn’t he let her have a moment of romance? Or at least a bit of harmless excitement over her coming debut?

“How you can fail to see this as anything but a business dealing is beyond me. You are offering your father’s handsome dowry in exchange for title and prestige.”

“That’s absurd.” She fisted her hands at her waist. “And I come with my dowry in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“Ah, yes, you and your all-important maidenhead.” Crispin might have said “your all-important case of the pox” with the same inflection. He stopped before her, close enough to make her look up to meet his gaze. “In a quest for the highest titles, money is of primary consideration, but purity runs a close second. Virginity is wealth in its own right.”

“Now you’re being crude for the sake of it.”

“No, I’m being practical.” His face was a mask of misplaced anger. “It’s all about the bloodlines, you see,
and we can’t have a bastard sneaking his way into a noble cradle. For the position of a duchess or a marchioness, only the young, chaste and fertile need apply.”

“You’re wrong.” She sensed the bitterness in his tone ran deeper than his general contempt for the
ton,
but she couldn’t imagine why he was becoming quietly enraged. “I will not be bought and sold. I will marry for love.”

“But only if the gentleman can present you with the wedding gift of a ‘Lady’ before your name.” The walking stick clattered to the floor and he grasped both her shoulders. “Face the facts, Grace. You’ve already been offered for sale. The
ton
is abuzz with curiosity over who the highest bidder will be.”

She frowned up at him. “You don’t believe it’s as easy to fall in love with a titled gentleman as it is to love a tradesman?”

“On the contrary, it’s much easier. Women all over this country convince themselves of it every day.” His grip tightened on her shoulders and he gave her a slight shake. “They weigh the minor inconvenience of their wandering lord’s mistresses. They measure his general inattentiveness against the pleasure of being addressed as Lady Such-and-So. And amazingly enough, they find they adore their toad-eating titled spouses regardless.”

“I don’t care what you say, I will have love.”

His mouth descended on hers before she realized the kiss was coming. Demanding, bruising, he would not be denied.

And she didn’t want to deny him. Her lips parted beneath his, welcoming his invasion. She kissed him back, matching him nip for nip, just as fiercely.

He beckoned her to that hot, dark place, and she followed
willingly. Her nipples tingled for his touch and her core shuddered with a nameless throb. Fire streaked through her veins.

She pressed against him, joyous to feel him hard and wanting. He found her beautiful. He couldn’t help but kiss her, even though she felt him struggle with his desire. Surely he must care for her.

Then suddenly he shoved her away, holding her at arm’s length.

“There, you see, Grace,” he said, his voice husky with need. “Just the sort of thing you need to avoid. You mustn’t encourage the wrong sort, you see.”

She sensed deep pain in him and ached to ease it, but he held her away.

“We’re totally unsuited. You want a title and I have none. I have no use for virgins and you’re the proud possessor of a maidenhead.” His expression hardened. “Of course, a quick swive on the floor will remedy that defect. But I don’t have the proper lineage necessary to seal the deal. All women have their price, it seems. Pity not all of them deal in ready coin.”

Grace’s jaw dropped in shock. The man was only playing one of his abominable games with her and insulting her in the process. She pulled back her arm and gave his cheek a stinging slap. He released her immediately.

“There, Mr. Hawke. Was that cut direct enough for you?”

It seemed all the air had fled from the room. She gasped for breath and was finally able to draw enough to keep her vision from tunneling completely. The only problem was the center of her tunnel was filled with his damnably handsome face.

“Quite direct.” He fingered the red mark she’d left
on his face. “Your set-down was decisive, forceful and delivered with just the right amount of quivering rage.”

He gave her a mocking bow.

“It appears our lesson is concluded.”