Page 21 of His Mistress, His Muse, and Other Madness
But Lady Cordelia possessed beauty enough to be a muse, to be a mistress, and she wanted the one thing her attendance at such a house party could give—access to people ready and willing to spend all their money on art. Surrounded by artists and those who supported them, surely she could find someone to help her when his family no longer would.
Slowly, he rose to his feet, brain buzzing.
To solve all their problems at once, he need only ask her to pretend to be his mistress.
Six
Cordelia had been awake an hour when the sun poured through her bedroom window and a hellish banging started at her front door. She stuck her head out of her window, looked below. The gargoyle? He stood on her doorstep, knocking as if the hounds of Hell were nipping at his heels and her door remained his only sure way to safety.
She hissed. Then she ran. Into the hallway and down the stairs to fling open the front door. “What are you doing?” she demanded, pulling her wrapper tightly closed before her. “You’ll wake the neighbors.” He had likely brought more horrid news with him, and she did not currently have the emotional fortitude to endure it. “Go away.”
“I’ve a proposition for you.” His eyes glittered, and he braced a hand on the doorframe, high above her head and pushed forward. A lock of hair fell across one of his eyes and casting shadows over his sculpted, scruff-roughened face. He’d clearly not shaved that morning.
“A… a proposition?” She pulled her wrapper tighter, her heart kicking up its rhythm.
“Let me in, and I’ll tell you.”
She looked down the street to the right then down the street to the left then finally across the street. Abandoned in all directions. They were alone, but insidealonewould become somehowmore. Particularly with the silence of the early morning wrapping tight around them. “You’ve never visited this early. You should wait for an appropriate hour.” She slipped into the foyer and shoved the door closed.
Tried to. Barely got an inch. His booted foot stopped it.
He nudged the door with his toe and pressed closer as it swung wide. “It’s important.”
She retreated even farther, needing more space between herself and his lean frame, taut and stretched out so close to her own.
He took the step back as an invitation and pressed into the foyer, shutting the door behind him.
“I did not give you leave to—”
He strode down the hall.
After one breathless, furious moment, she hurried after him, followed him into her parlor. “You will leavenow, my lord.”
He’d walked to the window across the room, but he spun quick, curt, and returned to her. “I’ll help you find supporters for your school.”
That truly knocked her backward, stole her breath. If her heart had been racing before, it meant to win the race now. “Do not play with me,” she managed to say.
“I don’t, and I won’t give you my help for free. I need a favor. And it is an unsavory one.”
“What is it?”
“You won’t like it.”
“Tell me.”
He opened his mouth, but offered no more insight. Hesitation crept into his gaze and his gestures as his hand pushed through his dark hair. “I don’t like it.”
“Tell me,” she demanded, striding forward. “I will decide how unseemly it is.” She would do anything, perform almost any favor, to keep her dream alive and herself safe within it.
“I need you to attend a house party with me. We’d leave today and be gone for a week. A fortnight possibly.”
“A house party…” Her still morning-tired mind tried to snatch at some memory, a recent one.
“And during that time, you must pretend to be my model, my… muse. My”—he licked his lips—“mistress.”
Surely he could not mean… “The house party Lady Balantine spoke of?”
“I know asking you to do this makes me less than a gentleman, and in the minds of the other guests, you will be less than a lady.” His words sounded strained, difficult to speak. “But I need this, and I can see no other way. If you help me, I will help you.”
