Page 1 of Her Rogue to Ruin
CHAPTER1
September 1899
London, Grosvenor Square
Pemberton House study
Few would callLady Portia Hastings daring.
Or at least not the Portia she’d been all her life. Prior to the last two years, she’d been a picture of propriety. A dutiful daughter. A faithful wife.
She’d done what was expected of her, and she’d done it well.
Then a single moment changed everything.
On that day, a stone-faced solicitor informed her that she was all but penniless. Indeed, her recently departed husband had mismanaged their assets so thoroughly that the very house she thought of as her own had been won months before in a wager with one of his cronies. At least that elderly nobleman had taken pity on her and given her time to find new lodgings.
The next day, she’d decided that the new Portia would have to be bold.
And that’s when daring had come, though at first she’d worn it like an ill-fitting gown.
She’d dared to ask a wealthy noblewoman friend to support her business endeavor and loan her the cost of renting a studio. Then she’d dared to stride up to an infamous duchess and ask if she’d commission her for a portrait. And most recently, she’d dared to join a widows’ club that many considered scandalous because they discussed things like discreetly taking lovers, setting up one’s own bank account, and finding creative means of becoming financially independent.
Portia had taken those lessons to heart. She’d taken her love of art, something she’d developed skill in over the years, and made it her livelihood. Now, her commissions almost provided enough income to support herself and her aunt, who’d she’d resided with since losing her home.
It was thealmostthat kept her vigilant.
One misstep, one angry client who wished to spread their dissatisfaction far and wide, and her budding endeavor could falter. Among the aristocrats that Portia sought as clients, some balked at the very notion of a lady portraitist. After all, though two women had helped found the Royal Academy of Arts, none had been admitted as new members since. Many thought it far below an earl’s daughter and a viscount’s widow to engage in commerce at all, even of the artistic variety.
Supporting herself had been a necessity, but she’d also come to love it. The independence, the ability to make her own choices. Her father and husband had both been overbearing, believing her capable of little more than obedience.
But Portia had always known she was capable of more, and now she’d proven it to herself.
In her two years of widowhood, she’d built a reputation as a talented portraitist and cultivated friendships with other widows in the club her friend, Lady Fiona Prescott, had founded.
Look at me now, she yearned to say to those who’d doubted her.
Most recently, after meeting the popular and wealthy Lady Pemberton at a soiree the previous month, the dowager viscountess had commissioned Portia for not just one portrait but five. The first of the viscountess herself was complete, and now each of her four daughters would take turns sitting for their own.
The family was beloved and feted in fashionable society. The Perfect Pembertons, some called them. The viscountess was friends with the most powerful hostesses in London, and several had already been added to Portia’s calendar for future portraits. The boon in income was so great and so steady that it would quell her worry about finances for months to come. She felt hopeful and more confident than she had in her entire life.
“You seem pensive, Lady Hastings? I hope you’re not worried.” Miss Louisa Pemberton, her current portrait subject, noted whenever Portia fell into rumination or quieted.
“Forgive me, Miss Pemberton. Just woolgathering, but I assure you they were pleasant thoughts.”
The talkative, vibrant girl loathed silences. And her energetic nature made it hard for her to sit still as she was doing now, perched on the bow window in her brother’s study. Though the room contained so many bookshelves teeming with volumes that it felt more like a library than a study. Its broad window had the best morning light in the whole Pemberton townhouse.
“Just a little bit to the left as we decided yesterday.” Portia pointed with the end of her paintbrush after glancing at her subject.
They’d agreed on a particular pose that showed off the young lady’s chin and heart-shaped face, while also avoiding a simple straight-on portrait.
Make me look mysterious, the seventeen-year-old had insisted. So they’d chosen a pose in which she looked back at the viewer, but with much of her body captured in profile. It set off her lushly beaded Worth gown to perfection, and the morning sun lit her eyes but also cast part of her face in intriguing shadows.
“I thought perhaps you were fretting that my brother would come in,” Louisa said once she’d titled her head and returned to her pose. “But if he does, let’s agree to ignore him. Shall we?”
“Agreed,” Portia uttered the word and then sheltered behind her canvas to hide the irritation that always came at mention of the young lady’s brother.
No man on earth was more difficult to ignore than Viscount Phineas Pemberton. In fact, her inability to ignore the viscount was the single point of misery in Portia’s time spent painting the gentleman’s sisters and mother.
