Page 68 of The Art of Sinning
“For now. I may still call you out.”
“Go ahead. But you’ll be proclaiming me a coward the next day. Because I will not fight you.”
Knightford’s eyes narrowed. “That wouldn’t help your aspirations to be part of the Royal Academy.”
“But it would keep my neck intact, wouldn’t it?”
He headed away from Knightford, toward the ballroom. But it was only as he entered that he remembered something disturbing.
He still didn’t know who Lieutenant Ruston had been to Yvette.
Sixteen
Three days after the ball, Yvette sat at a table in the drawing room at Stoke Towers, putting together kits of sewing materials for the women at her favorite charity and trying not to think of Jeremy. But when her distraction led her to drop yet another needle on the rug, she cursed under her breath.
“How many of those kits have you put together?” Edwin asked from his usual post, working on his account ledgers. “A hundred?”
“It seems like it, but it’s only been fifty. I promised them seventy-five.”
“Then I suppose it’s good that Keane hasn’t been here. Though God only knows when he intends to finish that portrait I’m paying him for.”
Yes, God only knew, because Yvette certainly didn’t. She hadn’t heard anything from the dratted man. Not. One. Word. The portrait didn’t worry her; it was the search for Samuel’s son that concerned her. She needed Jeremy for that.
Though that wasallshe needed him for. She’dhad time to settle her emotions, to think through everything that had happened, and a marriage between them would never work. It simply wouldn’t. He was too... too...
Oh, what a liar she was! She missed him.
She still wanted him. And if she couldn’t have him as a husband, she might even settle for having him as a lover.
A blush heated her cheeks. Would she? She’d always sworn to steer clear of rogues, but he was no rogue. And he was the most exciting man she’d ever met. The most stimulating, and certainly the most intriguing. Whynotshare his bed? It wasn’t as if she had any impending proposals on the horizon. And the idea of never having a chance to be with him intimately—
Drat him. Surely he had to come back sometime. He had his other painting to finish.
She would have broken his rule and peeked at it, but not trusting herorthe servants, he’d hidden it somewhere. Or more likely had handed it to Damber for safekeeping. Since the servant had rushed to London as soon as his master wrote to summon him, she had no idea where the painting was. For all she knew, Damber might have dropped it into the pond.
“Lady Clarissa Lindsey!” announced a footman.
Before Yvette could do more than blink, Clarissa breezed into the drawing room and threw herself onto a chair next to Yvette with wild abandon. The woman did everything with wild abandon—rode, sang, told outrageous stories that got people laughing. Despite her blond, green-eyed china-doll exterior, she was a hellcat in skirts, which was precisely why Yvette liked her.
And if sometimes a haunted look crossed her face, well, that was Clarissa, too. Yvette only wished she knew what caused it.
“Good afternoon, Clarissa,” Edwin said without looking up from his account books. His shoulders had gone rigid the moment she entered the room. They generally did. “To what do we owe the honor of this visit?”
“I’m not visitingyou,” Clarissa said blithely. “I’m visiting Yvette.”
Edwin lifted his head, then his eyebrow. “I don’t see the distinction. The house belongs to me.”
Clarissa flashed him an arch smile. “That’s like saying that the palace belongs to the king, so no one can visit the princesses without visiting him, too.”
His gaze sharpened, and he lounged back against his chair. “Are you comparing me to the king?”
“Only if you’re bloated and red-faced and an aging debauchee. Which you clearly are not.”
“Goodness, no,” Yvette cut in, before Edwin could chide her friend for her rash words about His Majesty. “Edwin is the opposite of all those things.”
“Indeed. It’s his particular charm.” Clarissa turned to Yvette. “But I’m not here to talk about your brother.”
“Then I hope you’re here to help me put together sewing kits for the poor ladies at the charity.” Yvette pointed to a jar of needles. “Those have to be stuck through placards that we place in the kits.”
