Page 122 of His Grace, the Duke
“I’m not working on anything,” he replied quickly.
“You are painting. May I see—”
“I’m not painting, I’m merely... cataloging. This is where we store art.” He gestured around at the stacks of canvases.
She pursed her lips. “Your Grace... you still have a brush in your hand.”
He glanced down. “Goddamn it.” He rattled it on the tray beside him.
She fought the urge to laugh, instead using the distraction to move around the other side of his easel. “What do you paint so secretively?”
“No—I—it’s not... well, it’s not very good,” he muttered, cheeks going pink as he watched her look at the canvas.
It was a portrait of two women with fiery red hair and freckled faces. The proportions of their faces were too narrow, but the resemblance was there. “Are... is this Elizabeth and Mariah?”
“Oh, well spotted,” he sniped. “Apparently I am accomplished enough that the identity of my muses can be discerned.”
The style of the work stirred something in her. With a gasp, she turned to face him. “They’re yours... aren’t they?”
“What?”
She brushed past him and moved for the other stacks. “No, those aren’t done either—”
She ignored him, flicking through each one, looking for similarity in stroke and style. A still life of flowers, a naked woman in profile, a pastoral scene that looked very much like a view of Alcott. “The paintings,” she murmured. “Here at Corbin House and Alcott. The gentleman on the stairs... the knight with the ugly horse by your bedroom.Youpainted them... but you don’t tell people? I saw a bill of sale for the one with the knight. It is a fake?”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “Why would I tell them, hmm? So they can laugh at me? Mock my vision? Tell me how deficient I am even in this?” He stalked off to the corner and began washing his hands, muttering under his breath.
“George Corbin, are you... are you a perfectionist?” Rosalie could hardly believe the words were coming out of her mouth.
“Me, a perfectionist?” He huffed a laugh. “Can you imagine?”
She glanced around the room again. “I... can actually. In fact, I believe you’ve never made more sense to me than you do in this moment.”
“Don’t pretend to know me,” he warned.
“You’re a perfectionist,” she repeated. “Just like James... only instead of being afraid to fail, you are afraid to even try... am I right?”
“You know nothing,” he grumbled, pushing past her to shrug himself back into his coat.
“Is that why you refuse to lift a finger to help James manage the estate? Why you dare everyone to think the worst of you... parading around with your drinking and your fornicating in stairwells, jumping out of windows when you’re bored, juggling—”
“I think you should leave,” he snapped.
She held her ground. “Why do you let yourself be so wildly unhappy by pretending to be bad at everything?”
He spun around. “What makes you think I am unhappy? I am handsome, ridiculously rich, entitled within an inch of royalty. I have everything I could ever want. All I need do is snap my fingers and it is mine.” He snapped them in her face to prove his point.
“And yet you are unhappy,” she repeated. “It is plain enough for anyone to see.”
He shrugged away. “Why did you come here? What do you want from me?”
She blinked, remembering her own unhappiness from moments before. “I... wanted to ask your advice, actually... your opinion.”
His brows shot up. “You want my opinion?”
“Yes.”
“Mine, as in . . .me?”
