Page 205 of The Ladies Least Likely
He would be with Harriette. “Tomorrow afternoon? I shall come for you in the coach.”
“Nothing so stately. I can borrow my aunt’s cabriolet.” She held one of the sketches up to him, titled “The Lord At Ease.” It showed a debonair, aristocratic man lounging on his couch, one booted foot across a knee, his elegant coat draped next to him. His shoulders looked broad, his chest powerful in the waistcoat and ruffled shirt, and there was something vaguely piratical in the chi-ro emblem hanging below his throat. There was something piratical in his expression as well as he gazed off into the distance, as if he commanded all he saw.
She’d emphasized his jaw and high cheekbones while minimizing his nose, making him look contemplative without being dreamy. The image was calm and self-assured, but with a hint of troubled feeling in the eyes, as if he reflected on difficulties. The effect was arresting, more intriguing than the lazy insolence she’d given the Graf von Hardenburg.
Was this him? Was this how Harriette saw him? His heart thumped.
“I can’t see anyone paying a ha’penny for one of those.”
“If these sketches don’t become a sensation and make all the ladies of London regard you as a primeparti, I’ll pay whatever forfeit you choose,” she replied. “Now go. Let yourself be seen in the coffee shops and clubs. Knock up some friends and stage a lark. Assure your mother that you are on the hunt for a bride and you aren’t caught in my dreadful snares.”
“I am, though,” he said as he pulled on his silk morning coat. He saw no reason to be coy with her. Harriette had seen him undressed and she had seen him aroused, simply by the way she was looking at him. She had seen him as a ruined boy, sucking back snot and tears after his tutor had caned him yet again forbeing a stupid cripple. She had seen him taunted by boys bigger than he, and she had seen the looks of horror on the faces of the lovely ladies in his drawing room last night as he limped over to meet them. No need to hide his heart from her.
“In your snares,” he added softly as she gave him a questioning look, her face uptilted, her brows dark and dramatic in her piquant face.
Her eyes shimmered with gold lights. “George Matheson. Earl of Renwick.” He startled at the name; only Amalie called him George. “You are going to make some woman a very happy countess.”
It was a polite way of setting him aside. Ren nodded and withdrew, making his way down the steps with dignified leisure. The tall butler opened the door for him and sent a boy to the mews for his horse. Ren kept his air of calm aloofness, the armor he showed to the world. He’d let none see that he was hurting. The woman he loved had sent him on his way and, moreover, wished him luck finding a countess, when he wished above all that his countess could be her.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Oh, he’s a great gorger,” Mary Darly said. She laid out the three sketches Harriette had given her on the counter of her print shop. “You’ve done him up nicely.”
“That’s him to the life, without any improving.” Harriette set down her leather-bound portfolio of sketches. “He’s rather a prime article.”
“That he is.” Mrs. Darly smiled. “People won’t know what to think when I turn from my satirical prints to handsome young bucks.”
Harriette regarded the enlarged prints hanging on the shop wall high above the neat columns of bookshelves holding Mrs. Darly’s wares. The wooden floor was swept clean, and a table near the back allowed customers to open and peruse the larger folio volumes. While the Darlys were known for their caricatures, many of them poking fun at the excesses of the fashionable, Mrs. Darly had helped make Harriette’s sketches of the Graf von Hardenburg a rage. She hoped she might do the same for Renwick.
Did she want other women looking at him and admiring him? The small voice nagged at the back of Harriette’s mind. Did she want to share him with the world?
Of course she did, she told herself. She wanted the rest of the world to recognize his many fine qualities. And if it helped draw female interest, then he would have his pick of brides, and she would have done her best by him as a friend.
Friends don’t kiss friends with open mouths and try to put hands down their breeches, the nagging voice said.
“This will be a break from my series on wigs,” Mrs. Darly announced. “Do you want to see one?”
“Oh, yes.” One artist to another, Harriette never turned down a chance to study Mrs. Darly’s work. She was a talented engraver as well as a print seller. She’d written the book on how to draw caricatures, and their prints of the exaggerated styles of a fashion craze that had lately afflicted young men had gained the Darlys’ business the nickname of The Macaroni Shop. Harriette liked visiting The Acorn in Ryders Court, as it was the shop Mrs. Darly managed herself, and she often showed Harriette her works in progress.
Harriette pressed the skirts of her polonaise gown to her legs to keep from sweeping pamphlets and broadsides off their stands as she followed Mrs. Darly through the narrow door leading to her printing parlor. She looked around with envy at the assorted presses, the large copper sheets used for engravings, the stacks of papers waiting to be printed and cut. The smells of rosin, ink, and the acids used to burn lines into the copper plates excited her nose. Mrs. Darly was a woman allowed to pursue her trade, and no one thought the less of her for it; in fact her talent was celebrated. Harriette wanted that kind of liberty and regard for herself.
The paper propped on the easel showed a print of a woman wearing a gown much like Harriette’s, but the bustle was enormously exaggerated, and the wig atop her head, crowned with ribbons, was taller than the woman herself, floating aboveher head like an enormous balloon. Harriette giggled. The figure’s self-satisfied expression made the caricature complete.
“This is marvelous. It will be as big a sensation as your Macaronis,” she said.
“Not as big a sensation as your interesting young man,” Mrs. Darly replied. “I’ll do a simple etching with some engraving, I think? To make an aquatint or a mezzotint will be more expensive and time-consuming, and might make him look more serious than we’d like. Or I could add coloring, if you wish.”
“An etching will be splendid to begin with. We can talk about making a finer set of portraits if this set becomes popular.”
With a bit of discussion, they settled on a price at which Mrs. Darly would purchase the prints, and the percentage of the profits that Harriette would receive if they sold. Sharing in the profits wasn’t something many printers offered; in fact, in this business, it was more often an author had to pay a publisher to print their book. But Harriette liked working with Mrs. Darly, woman to woman, with no nonsense, subterfuge, or haggling, as she’d found too often to be the case when she approached male print sellers. None of the condescension for a female artist, either.
“Are you taking students yet?” Mrs. Darley asked as they walked back to the front of the shop, where a group of customers had entered. “I am to the point where I’m turning people away for drawing lessons. I could send them to you if you wished.”
Harriette experienced a thrill all through her body at those words—a thrill almost as exciting as when Ren had slipped his arms about her at her worktable. “I’m not certain I’m ready to set out my sign as a drawing teacher. I’m still taking lessons myself.”
“A good thing if one is always learning,” Mrs. Darly said cheerfully. “But I expect you know enough to teach others the basic principles. I have your direction in Charles Street, and if Ifind a likely young candidate, I’ll send them your way, shall I?” Her eyes twinkled. “Another addition to the Catherine Club.”
“I don’t know why we’re calling ourselves that,” Harriette said, somewhat abashed, and giddy to think of herself as a drawing master. Inspiring and teaching young women the way her drawing instructor at Miss Gregoire’s had opened a new way of seeing the world to Harriette. For a moment she allowed herself to imagine a studio of her own, perhaps a tall-windowed shop like this one, where patrons came for sittings and eager young students came to learn at her feet. A sign over the door that said Harriette Smythe, Painter.
