Page 17 of A Duke in Disguise
“All right. But I’ll lay the fire,” Verity said. “You get the sketches. And if you have a bottle of wine in your room, bring that too. That’ll warm us up. Otherwise we’ll have to make do with the gin Nate keeps under the counter in the shop.”
When he entered the study, a bottle of wine under one arm and his drawings in his hand, Verity already had the fire crackling. He paused in the doorway for a moment to admire her as she knelt before the hearth. Her dress was thin and worn and decidedly out of fashion, if it ever had precisely been in fashion in the first place, which very plain garments seldom were. Her figure wasn’t statuesque, like Portia Allenby, or elegantly wispy like the women in the fashion plates he drew. She was, however, perfect. When he saw her, he felt something like relief, as if the sight of her had quenched a thirst he hardly knew he had.
He had known for what seemed like forever that his feelings for Verity Plum were on the knife’s edge between friendship and something infinitely more perilous, and he had done a damned lot of work keeping them there. But watching her lay the fire with deft and competent hands, he realized that in working so hard not to let his warmer feelings for her tip over into lust, he had let in a tide of other feelings that weren’t so easy to tame. She was necessary to him, and he thought he might be necessary to her. They knew one another so damned well it was almost intrusively intimate. How did two people negotiate attraction when their lives were already entangled? He was certain the only answer was to avoid the matter entirely, and equally certain this was a solution that wouldn’t last forever.
Verity turned towards him when he uncorked the bottle. Her gaze flicked up and down his body before darting hastily away. She produced two glasses from a desk drawer, but instead of sitting behind her desk, she sat beside him on the sofa.
“Are you going to show me your pictures?” she asked after he filled both glasses with wine.
“Or we could wait until we’re less, ah, foxed.”
She made a rude noise and held out her hand with a grabbing gesture. He handed her the first sketch and studied her face as she examined it. Lit only by flickering firelight, she was made of nothing but uncompromising hard lines softened only by shadow. He found he was holding his breath.
In the illustration she was examining, Catherine straddled her husband’s lap, and he had his head lowered to her bosom. Because of the arrangement of her dressing gown and the angle of perspective, the only exposed part of her body was a single breast. Without the benefit of a model, he had spent an afternoon in the British Museum examining a Renaissance Madonna to ensure sure he got that breast right.
“Ah,” she said.
“It’s only an—”
“It’s perfect. Although I don’t think they wore top boots in 1480.”
“I decided that if I put Perkin Warbeck in doublet and hose he’d look like a stage jester.” He had regarded the fifteenth-century portraits at the museum in some dismay, not sure how such outlandish garments could be rendered either suitably erotic or in line with his own aesthetic. “Consider it poetic license. But I can change it if you prefer.”
“No, it’s quite, ah, appealing.” She tucked her feet beneath her in a way that brought her markedly closer to him, but her gaze remained on the drawing. “I love how his hand is on her waist. You can see the marks each finger is making on her skin, through the dressing gown. Will that be apparent after the engraving?”
“Certainly it will. All the detail you see will render perfectly.” As if he didn’t know his craft. Roger had taught him well, and he wished he could see his former master’s face when he learned Ash was using his skills to such an end.
“Very well, Ash.” She elbowed him gently in the side. “I didn’t mean to besmirch your talents.”
God, she was close now. Too close and not nearly close enough. He took hold of her arm before she could pull it away. “I told you—” he said from between gritted teeth.
“I beg your pardon,” she said, sitting up straight. “I’m quite forgetting myself this evening.”
“No, for heaven’s sake, that’s not what I meant.” It had been exactly what he meant, but Verity close to him was better than Verity far away, no matter what havoc it wreaked with his mind. So he put his arm around her waist and pulled her close so they were sitting shoulder to shoulder.
“Here’s the other one,” he said, producing the second sketch. This one depicted Catherine leaning against a wall, one leg wrapped around Perkin’s waist. Their robes were a tangle of light and shadow, doing more to emphasize their undress rather than to obscure it. The focus of the picture was one of Perkin’s arms, braced against the wall. But as he looked at it, he couldn’t help but notice that he had drawn Catherine to resemble Verity. It was all there, in the jaw and the wild hair. He hadn’t meant to—not precisely—but any woman he drew turned into Verity. He’d have to alter the sketch before doing the etching.
Verity took the paper from his hand and held it at arm’s length. She fumbled in her pocket and came up with a pair of spectacles that she slipped crookedly onto her nose. “Hmm,” she said, and shifted her gaze to his face. For a moment he thought she might suspect the truth, that she might see in the drawing what she saw in the looking glass. He became very conscious of the arm that was still wrapped around her.
“All right then,” he said, striving for a normal tone, as if he weren’t thinking only of all the places their bodies touched. “I’ll carry on doing illustrations for the rest of the volume. A total of four, is that right?”
She nodded. “Four for each volume,” she said, yawning and settling her head against his shoulder. “What I like about the book, and about your drawings, is that they both seem to be enjoying each other. I don’t know what it’s like to be with a man, but it can’t be so fundamentally different than being with a woman, which I quite enjoyed. Have you ever thought about how funny it is that people go to bed with people of a different gender?”
Ash blinked. “I do believe most people’s preferences run that way,” he said, amused.
“Do you? I rather thought everybody was like me.” She raised a hand to her mouth to cover a yawn.
“Which is to say...” he prompted, unsure of what she meant.
“Desirous of all manner of people. Like Perkin Warbeck,” she said without a hint of irony, and he realized that for Verity, this novel had supplanted any history she had previously read on the topic. Perkin Warbeck was now the lover of the doomed Earl of Warwick, and there was no going back.
“You thought it a baffling coincidence that most people confined their amorous activities to one gender?” Ash tried to keep a straight face.
“Not a coincidence, but a constraint put on them by the law and fear of judgment. Which is quite understandable, of course.” She frowned, as if items were slotting into place in her mind. “But if you’re saying it’s more of an inborn preference, then I feel quite silly.”
“Not silly.” He kissed the top of her head. A terrible idea, but he had the sense that he’d fling himself headfirst towards any bad idea that brought him closer to Verity. He sat up straight and tried to clear his head. “By the way, I’ve been meaning to ask you who the author is. I didn’t recognize the handwriting or the style.” The love scenes, which had clearly been added after the body of the text was complete, were written in a messier penmanship, but that could have to do with the haste of the insertion rather than an indication that two separate authors were at work.
“I don’t know. She didn’t give a name or an address, but requested that I direct correspondence to the Fox and Hound in Leicester Square.”
