Page 198 of The Ladies Least Likely
“Well,” she said. “Someone taughtyouhow to kiss proper, milord Renwick.”
No one had taught him. The courtesan had laughed and said he slobbered. The prostitute in Paris hadn’t let him kiss her at all. But Harriette didn’t make him feel like a buffoon. She made him feel strong, confident, in charge, bold enough to press her against the fence and pull up those infernally enormous skirts and?—
“If ye wanted a tup, liefer ye’d done it inside, where’s we didna have to watch ye,” grumbled a man’s voice.
He had forgotten that her carriage stood in the mews just beyond them. A hulking form leaned against the step and a smaller, bent shape perched atop the huge horse waiting patiently in its traces. Ren squinted through the shadows and was shocked to find the rider was not a boy but a man, hisshoulders set at uneven angles, his legs hanging crookedly along the horse’s sides. But his striped livery hugged a chest and arms covered with wiry muscle, and his expression was sharp and mocking as he regarded Ren.
Harriette’s groom was a cripple like he was. Worse, actually. Ren stared, too many questions fogging his mind for him to voice just one. As he stuttered for breath, Harriette took the hand of the footman—a huge man, twice Ren’s size, though something about the shadows on his face seemed wrong—and climbed into the smart vehicle. The groom picked up the ribbons.
She was going to leave just like that? Without a word?
“I want to see you again,” Ren blurted, putting a hand on the side of the carriage.
She reached out gently, squeezed his fingers. He couldn’t see her face in the shadows, but he heard the sadness in her whisper. “It’s best if you don’t. For your sake. Goodbye, Ren. Be well. Be—happy.”
Her voice wavered on the last words. The groom tossed her the ribbons and the huge footman hauled himself onto the platform at the back. Harriette flicked the ribbons, and the vehicle rolled away.
Ren’s hand fell to his side. She was leavinghimthis time, going away to worlds unknown, leaving him stranded in a place he didn’t want to be.
The parting didn’t feel like a sweet sorrow. It felt like a hammer to his chest.
CHAPTER SIX
“Only look, Hari, there’s a gossip paragraph about you again in theMorning Intelligencer,” the Countess of Calenberg announced to the group of women gathered around the breakfast table in the dining room of her Charles Street home. She adjusted the reading glasses attached to the bodice of her morning gown by a long chain and read in a self-important drawl.
“The Countess of R—’s evening to welcome her son home from his tour abroad boasted many fine ornaments, among them Lady B-ss-n, who seems to adorn all the approved places, and Her Grace the Duchess of H-d-n, of whom this paper faithfully brought you every detail of her recent defeat in a suit to reclaim the estate of her late husband?—”
“We know this,Engelein,” said Princess, kicking off her jeweled slippers and shoving them beneath the long mahogany dining table. “It was quite a transformation,ja?The Duchess of Hunsdon’s bastard stepson miraculously produced marriage lines showing that he was the rightful duke, and now he is in possession of the estates, the wealth, and soon a wife. Unfortunate, since we might have pitched Hari at himotherwise.” She scratched underneath her wig, dotted with tired flowers and fading powder.
Harriette topped off her cup of chocolate and blew gently on it. “I know his intended,” she murmured. “She came to Miss Gregoire’s Academy while I was there. I ought to call on her.”
Speaking of transformation. Renwick had certainly changed from the thin, pale boy Harriette remembered. She’d put some color and muscle on him in their summer of racketing about Shepton Mallet, and she’d been certain he would hold his own at school, that his title would provide him some measure of protection along with the small defensive moves she had shown him, like where to kick a boy who was tormenting you, and how to aim a slingshot.
But the Ren who’d returned from his tour abroad was an astonishment. He’d acquired poise and polish as well as correcting his gait and, to some extent, his speech. He’d filled out to manly proportions—very nice manly proportions—and that angelic boyish face of his, with its strong lines and perfect symmetry, had become devastatingly beautiful in maturity.
Heavens, how she wished to paint him. To capture that indefinable glow that lurked in his eyes. And that expression on his face as he confronted a room full of strangers, as if he were looking past them to something very far away, some secret vista that brought him joy. What was it?
She wanted to know this Ren. Desire licked through her at the memory of that impossible, intoxicating kiss. She wanted to know him in a carnal fashion as well. There was no denying that. She lost herself in another sip of chocolate that was nearly as hot and delicious as the Earl of Renwick’s mouth.
“—listening, Hari?” Her aunt shook the paper in Harriette’s direction. “It’s about you.
“‘But the most surprising ornament was a fetching damsel in a crimson nightgown, capturing the Earl of R-nw-k’s arm andthe attention of the room. Your author knows this apparition to be Miss H-r-t Sm-th, the artist responsible for the salacious but highly entertaining sketches of the G- v- H-b-g which circulated recently among London’s printers and booksellers. Your author has it on strictest authority that Miss Sm-th is an acolyte of the eccentric Lady C-l-b-g, the foreign countess who has a penchant for collecting unattached women of artistic bent in a salon known as the Catherine Club, which’—and more of the usual. They deign to recognize my humble self?” The countess laid a heavily ringed hand to her ruffled bosom. “I am in transports.”
“Did we ever decide on the name the Catherine Club?” The demand came from Darci, who had, as a child, washed ashore in Ireland after a shipwreck and made her way into the Countess of Calenberg’s household on the tide of London’s poor and desperate. “I recall we discussed it, but never confirmed.”
With her parentage unknown, no one was able to guess where Darci’s dark curly hair, brown skin, and cinnamon eyes had come from, but frankly no one in the countess’s household much cared about anyone’s past. They lived in the present, day to day, pleasure to pleasure, and looked with dream-filled eyes toward the future.
“St. Catherine of Bologna is the patron saint of artists, among other things,” said Melike, who was fascinated with Christianity and knew more about it than the rest of the household, most of whom were negligible churchgoers at best. Melike had been the embarrassing secret of an English gentlewoman who was kidnapped abroad and sold into an Ottoman harem. The lady’s release was negotiated by the British government, but her return necessitated giving to the workhouse the daughter she’d borne to her captor, and Melike had made her way through various occupations around London until the Countess of Calenberg found her. She recalled enough of her early childhood to lendboth a Turkish and Muslim outlook on things, enhancing the supposedly exotic aura of the household.
“And we’re all artists here,” said Natalya, motioning for Harriette to pass her the chocolate. Natalya was their most recent addition. She had come to Britain as the mistress of a roving Russian prince and found herself abandoned when the prince found someone he liked better. As she was still mastering English, Natalya tended to state the obvious. “Darci is a sculptor, Melike paints jewelry, Harriette is our painter, and I—” Her soft, rounded face, usually complacent when not wreathed in sunny smiles, assumed an expression that was, for her, troubled. “What do I do again?”
“You’re our model, oh beauteous one,” Harriette said. She accepted the letter her aunt held out to her, a thick, creamy vellum bearing the Graf von Hardenburg’s seal. Harriette sighed, wondering if her past follies were coming back to haunt her. She might have fit perfectly well among the Countess of Renwick’s guests if not for the mischief created by whoever exposed her as the maker of those terribly indecent, but awfully lucrative sketches.
She didn’t want to be famous for her caricatures. She wanted to be known, and sought after, for her magnificent portraits.
“What else does the paragraph say about us, Aunt?” She might as well know, though Lady Renwick needed no further reason to bar her son from associating with Harriette. The thought of not seeing Renwick again burned her throat worse than the chocolate.
His solid heat at her side, protecting her as they faced disapproving faces, had been such a welcome discovery. His wry, mischievous sense of humor hadn’t changed a bit. And, what had always been her favorite thing about him, he still wore his heart on his sleeve.
