Chapter 1 #2
“Tomorrow.” Amelia picked up her brush and resumed her study of the pomegranate. It looked…angry. Perhaps she was taking out her frustration with her family on the poor, blameless fruit.
“Which means he could arrive any time between now and next week,” Juliet pointed out.
True. The Windermeres ever had a loose relationship with timekeeping.
“Oh, by the by, Amelia,” said Delilah. “I’ve decided I shall attend tomorrow night’s soirée in honor of the Duke of Ripon.”
“Didn’t you say soirées celebrating decrepit, old dukes weren’t worth your time?”
“Don’t forget lecherous,” added Juliet. “She said that, too.”
“I said likely weren’t worth my time,” said Delilah, indifferently flicking a piece of lint off her skirt. “And as none of us have ever clapped eyes on the man, as reclusive as he is, well, I’m curious, and in need of society and prosecco.”
Something akin to dread filled Amelia. If Archie did, in fact, arrive tomorrow, the possibility existed that the Windermeres could be attending a society function all together—which hadn’t happened since they’d left England.
Which meant, of course, she would be playing nursemaid all night, because, quite simply, her siblings couldn’t be trusted not to be utterly and completely themselves—charming, but improper and slightly scandalous, in either word or deed or, most like, both.
A feeling jogged on the edge of memory as if…as if she was forgetting something important, like an…
Appointment.
All-too-familiar panic seized her. “What is the time?” Time just never seemed to pass in the linear fashion everyone said it did.
Delilah pulled a pocket watch from the discreet hip pocket she had sewn into all her dresses.
She’d explained it was something about being an actress and timing and honestly Amelia hadn’t been able to understand the reasoning.
She couldn’t bring herself to give a fig about time.
Signore Rossi, her Italian art instructor, did, however.
“Five minutes shy of one of the clock.”
“Blast!”
In a frantic rush that brought mean, little smiles to Delilah and Juliet’s faces—they’d heard that exact exclamation regarding this very topic more times than any of them could count—Amelia gathered her brushes and palette and shoved them into her valise, which she grabbed on the run. “I’ll be back in a few hours.”
Muted laughter followed Amelia as she dashed from the palazzo and onto the street, her feet a rapid tattoo against cobblestones.
The scents and sounds of Florence crashed into her in a frenzied rush, as they always did as she crossed one square, then another, flew down a labyrinthine maze of alleys, another square, then it was a quick turn onto a narrow street, an even quicker turn into a quiet alley.
Twenty steps later, she’d arrived, panting, at the turquoise-painted gate of Signore Rossi.
Taking no time to compose herself or wipe the sweat off her flushed brow, Amelia planted both hands on the gate that led into an exterior courtyard and began to push when it suddenly gave way and an ox plowed into her, knocking her off balance and flat onto her bottom, her skirts forming a white muslin puff around her—all in the space of two seconds.
She held a hand to her forehead and glared up at the ox.
Well, not an ox, precisely. But an ox of a man, to be sure. She couldn’t see his face as the sun was at his back, creating a halo of light around his massive hulking form.
“Please don’t apologize,” she said acidly, dusting her hands off on her skirts, before checking that nothing had spilled from her valise.
The man snorted. Rather like an ox. “That was far from my intention. Perhaps it has occurred to you that you’re entirely at fault for your current condition.”
“Why…why…” she sputtered through righteous, disbelieving shock. Never in her life had she been spoken to thusly.
And she most definitely didn’t like it.
He held out a hand, presumably to help her to her feet. She would rather grab hold of a writhing serpent.
Gathering the few remaining shreds of her dignity available to her, she managed to scramble to her feet with her modesty in place—thank you very much—even if her bottom had begun to throb.
It wasn’t until she was squarely facing the ox of a man—well, not facing precisely as he stood a good six inches taller than her and she was no diminutive woman—that a shocking fact hit her. “You’re an Englishman.”
And a noble one at that, given the clipped syllables of his speech, even if his appearance lent a different impression given that he was wearing the clothes of a laborer and his brown hair hung unfashionably long and loose about his face.
What sort of English nobleman was this ox anyway?
He grunted—like a grouchy Highland coo she’d once encountered in Scotland—and that was leave taken as he brushed past. A faint blend of scents remained—clove, sandalwood, and… Was that sweat?
Tetchy remnants of the encounter quaking through her, Amelia entered Signore Rossi’s exterior courtyard and halted, dipping a hand into the fountain depicting frolicking water sprites and bringing it to her face. She needed a quick cool-down before greeting Signore. What just happened?
Servants accustomed to her twice-a-week arrival simply nodded as she slipped through Signore’s typically Italian palazzo and into the studio, with its tremendous north-facing windows that allowed light to pour in at all hours of the day.
She found her customary easel and began readying her pencils and brushes.
A bowl of fruit had been arranged for her session today.
Perhaps not the most exciting subject, but a useful one in her education, of course.
Still, how many bowls of fruit had she painted in her life?
The lot of the gentlelady painter.
Signore Rossi and his little white dog Dolce entered the studio. “Ah, Signorina Amelia, you decided to join us today.” He ever commented on her lateness—as was his rightful prerogative—but did so with a smile on his face.
Dolce curled up on his purple velvet pillow across from her, allowing sunlight to soak into his scruffy white fur, his little face resting on a paw, gaze lazily fixed on outdoor happenings in the cypress trees. Amelia found herself doing a sketch. Just a few lines to expand upon later.
Signore glanced over her shoulder. “Ah, would you like to paint Dolce today?”
“Si,” she said, already delighting in the prospect. She rarely painted live forms with Signore.
She attempted to quiet her mind and enter the creative space where her brush would find inspiration for this little moppet of a dog.
But she was still fizzing with her collision with the ox.
Before she knew it, words were spilling from her mouth.
“I just had the most curious encounter at the entrance to your studio.”
Signore Rossi didn’t bother looking up. “Hmm.”
“With the most incredibly rude man.”
A name, she wanted a name.
All Signore gave her was another, “Hmm.”
She wasn’t to be put off so easily. The ox was a menace and an Englishman. She couldn’t let it pass. “Is he your student?”
She had to know.
Even as the question passed her lips, however, an image entered her mind. Of his hands, unrepentantly massive and masculine, like the rest of him. She couldn’t imagine those hands holding anything as delicate as a paintbrush. Surely, it would snap in two.
Signore Rossi set his charcoal down and gave her an indulgent smile. “Signorina Amelia, would you appreciate me passing your information along to all manner of those who might ask about you?”
There was but one answer, and it put her in her place. “No.”
Signore nodded, and that was her question sorted. She wasn’t to know. She was to forget the ox of an English nobleman whose face she hadn’t clearly seen.
Dolce shot to his four feet and gave a sudden round of barking at the squirrel who had the temerity to race up the cypress nearest the window. The little dog was on high defensive alert.
A chirrup of giggles escaped Amelia, and her brush sparked with inspiration. She would call the painting, Our Greatest Defender.
As her brush followed the creative muse where it led, oxes of men were forgotten.
For now.