Page 20 of His Duchess of Scandal
“What is the meaning of this?” Charles demanded, hurrying down the stairs.
The cloaked lady whirled around, her hood slipping down with how fast she moved.
He froze.
Aphrodite.
As his eyes locked onto hers, recognition flooded through him so abruptly that he halted right there on the stairs. His heart thundered in his ears.
“You.”
Her blue eyes, the color of far-off shores, widened.
“You.” She frowned, rearing back. “You? You are the Duke of Branmere?”
“And you are—” He paused. “I do not know who you are.”
Either the lady didn’t care or didn’t want to reveal herself, for she only stomped towards him, ignoring Mr. Willoby’s protests.
Charles didn’t stop her, half entranced as she filled his vision in a blur of anger.
“You!” she spat. “I do not care who or what you are, or what your title is, for I amoutraged. Why—why would you paint me the way you did and then show it to the world? Why would you say I posed for you?”
Charles blanched, raising his hands.
“I did not,” he fired back. “I did not make such a claim, nor did I intend for anybody to see that painting. It was not for public eyes. The painting was merely a?—”
“Awhat?” she hissed. “A perversion of indulgence?”
Well, you did bare yourself to me as much as I did to you.
Judging from the fire in her eyes, he knew it was not the right thing to say.
“It was a mistake,” he said. “I should not have done it. But the fact that it was shown was a mistake.”
“A mistake or not, this is preposterous.”
Heavens, he should not find her angry voice attractive, yet there was something about the way she spoke to him. She knew his rank, yet she raged at him without any care.
“Did you not think it would be discovered, eventually?” she scoffed. “I am already ruined, but you have madeeverything worse! My family—my family—Heavens, what have you done?”
What haveI done?
He barely recalled painting the Aphrodite from that night, so different from this furious woman before him.
He remembered brushstrokes that infuriated him because her skin had not glowed with moonlight as he recalled. He remembered how he thought he had not painted her curves well enough, nor the dip of her waist, but actually painting and framing it…
He had been so engrossed in the memory of her that he had not let himself think of anything but finding that likeness.
He had known—or thought he had known—that he would never see her again. Yet there she was, her features much brighter, standing in his well-lit hall, as opposed to Anton Bentley’s dimly lit corridors.
“I wanted to…”
Immortalize the woman who had expressed a refreshingly bold view of my art, who made the softest, most surprised noises when I touched her, who looked terrified going into the show but had commanded the room without even realizing it.
“You wanted to have power over me?” she hissed. “Is that it? Make you think that I owed you something, andthiswas the way to hold something over me?”
“No,” he answered sharply. “It was all an honest mistake. It was never supposed to be moved. I have a studio here, but I also have a private one in a quieter part of London. I had plans to move the painting there, in fact.”
