Chapter One
“If You Could just move your leg a little to the right…” Alberto Bertoletti stroked a hand up Hebe’s leg.
She slapped it away as his fingers crept higher. “Just tell me what you want, Alberto. I can move without your help.”
The Italian painter sighed. “You are the most frustrating model I have ever used.” He threw up his hands and turned to the painting on the easel.
“Look at this work. It is lifeless! Can’t you unbend a little?
Artists need more from their models. A little affection.
How can I paint a passionate work? You are meant to be my muse. ”
Hebe rose from the pile of cushions and wrapped the sheet carefully around herself.
“Now what are you doing?” Alberto roared. “I’ve hardly painted a stroke today.”
“Because you’ve been more intent on seducing me.” Hebe glared at him. “If I wanted to be a courtesan, I would be one.”
“If you weren’t such a good model, I would have thrown you out days ago,” he said sulkily.
She rubbed her arms. A cold draft always wafted into the loft from somewhere. It was a wonder she hadn’t gotten sick. She picked up her clothes and began to dress. “Then I shall save you the trouble. And I’d like to be paid for the work I’ve done, please.”
“I don’t see why I should…”
“Unless you want me to tell all the models that you don’t pay?”
When Hebe arrived home an hour later at their small townhouse in Cheapside, her mother met her at the door. “Why are you home so early?”
“The innkeeper let me go early today.” Hebe opened her reticule and took out the coins. “Here’s the money for the week.”
Her mother took it. “My poor girl, working as a maid! I trust you came home in a hackney. I hate to think of you traveling about unescorted.” She sighed. “To think it has come to this. Your father would never have wanted…”
Hebe no longer listened. She climbed the stairs to her room.
“Have you given more thought to marrying Mr. Wainscott?” Her mother asked, following her up the stairs. “I know he’s far beneath us socially but seems a decent man and has not changed his mind. He called this morning to inquire after you.”
The expression in Mr. Wainscott’s eyes, when she’d last seen him, was a curious mix of pity and longing. Hand on the banister, Hebe swung around. “I think I’d rather die than marry him, Mama.”
“Oh. Yes. I understand, Hebe.” Her mother raised her reddened hands to Hebe’s face. “A pity he isn’t more attractive. He would take care of us and you wouldn’t have to do such dreadful work.”
Hebe averted her eyes from her mother’s reddened skin. The sight of it tore at her heart. Mama had once been proud of her beautiful hands.
Her mother retreated, and Hebe shut the door to her room.
She took out the box she kept in the bottom of her wardrobe and dropped in the few coins she’d held back.
Then she sat before the mirror. She removed the pins from her hair and brushed her long fair locks.
The shock of the last year had begun to ebb leaving a hollowness in her chest. She was determined to rise above the scandal that had enveloped her and her mother when her beloved father died.
It had left Hebe’s Season in ruins, while her suitors faded away.
Gentlemen began to make discreet offers for her to become their mistress, and men who would never have approached her before, stepped forward prepared to rescue her from her fate; men who were too old, or like Mr. Wainscott, a widower left with children to raise.
She stared at her wan face in the mirror.
With the family’s country house and their townhouse in Mayfair, both sold, they’d moved into this depressing narrow little house with just a maid and a cook.
The carriages and horses gone, and their staff, some of whom she had known all her life, all put off.
Hebe became determined to find a way to ease her mother’s worries, but her attempts fell at the first hurdle. She was told she could never be a governess, she was too attractive, and the big houses demanded staff with some experience.
While Hebe wandered the East End, she was befriended by Sally Green, who modelled regularly for a painter. Sally suggested Hebe try it and helped her find her first job.
So far, posing for artists kept her and her mother’s heads above water, and allowed her to put a little away. Successful artists paid regularly and not all were like Alberto intent on seducing her.
Poor Father hadn’t meant to leave them destitute.
But he’d considered himself a failure after he’d become involved in some dubious financial scheme and lost most of his fortune.
She and her mother only learned of it from the gossip mongers and broadsheets.
He died leaving them in debt and burdened with the shame of suicide.
Even his family had disowned them, and there was no one left from her mother’s family.
Apart from her father’s sister in Brighton who showed no inclination to help them, they were entirely alone.
Hebe sighed and rose to change her gown. She refused to place her future in the hands of any man and was determined to make her own way in the world. And when there was enough money saved, she would.
Hebe spent the next afternoon roaming the artists’ quarter.
She shared a cup of tea with Sally while she took a break from posing in her artist lover’s dreary attic.
Sally pulled across the tatty curtain to hide the painter working at a canvas.
The air was thick with the smells of oil paint and turpentine.
Hebe wished they could open a window, but Sally was barely dressed, the thin robe stretched tight over ample curves.
“There’s a gentleman looking for a new model.” Sally tossed back her long red hair and blew into the cup she held with both hands. “He’s very choosy, he’s already rejected Dora and Liza.”
They were both good models. Perhaps Hebe wouldn’t be suitable either. “Who is he?”
“Viscount Chesterton. He has a studio in Mayfair.”
“A wealthy man?”
“Yes. A sculptor,” Sally said. “His work is very well considered.”
“Marigold was modelling for some lord.”
“She was. Him. But he let her go.”
“Why? Didn’t he treat her well?”
“He was horrid. She said he made her cry.”
“Well, I’m not sure that I…”
“He gave her fifty pounds when he let her go.”
Hebe stared. “Fifty pounds? What did she have to do for it?”
“Nothing, she said.”
“I find that difficult to believe.” Hebe frowned. “Perhaps he scared her into silence.”
“Lawks!” Sally scoffed. “Marigold? I doubt a herd of bulls on the rampage through Pall Mall would scare her.”
“Can’t hurt to go and see him,” Hebe said. “I am hardened to rudeness. But first I must speak to Marigold.”
“She’s posing for an artist in Holland Park.”
“Who?”
“She didn’t tell me. Marigold likes to keep secrets, doesn’t trust us not to snatch the job from under her nose.” Sally grinned. “Don’t know why.”
Two days later, in Mayfair, Hebe waited outside Lord Chesterton’s residence, a handsome four-story townhouse in Mount Street. The butler who opened the door looked down his long nose at her. Hebe quickly explained about the note she’d sent and why she wished to see the sculptor.
“Please use the servants’ entrance in future.” He led the way past elegantly furnished rooms. At the rear of the house she went through a door that gave access to the narrow wooden servants’ stairs, leading from the kitchens up to the attics. “You’ll find his lordship in his studio at the top.”
Hebe climbed the stairs, her breath shortening with nerves.
Should she be here? Was the man a rake or a brute?
She’d met lords who were known to be both during her short Season.
She’d managed thus far to avoid baring all of herself, but she was prepared for the possibility, should he request it.
Silly to be prudish about it. It was only a body after all.
Still, some concerns niggled at her. Most artists were as poor as she was and consumed with their work.
They were anxious to earn enough from their paintings to buy paints and canvases and pay their rent.
This sculptor obviously didn’t have those concerns.
Why did he make Marigold cry? She wished she’d been able to find out. And why had he given her fifty pounds?
She came to the door at the very top and knocked.
“Come.”
She opened the door and entered a large airy space where the sun shone through a glass ceiling. A gentleman stood, chisel and hammer in hand beside a large block of pale marble. He turned to her as she entered. “Yes?”
She stopped at the door, distracted by his penetrating gaze. Tall and dark-haired, he looked strong, and lean, and he frowned at her. Might he already have engaged a model? She half expected him to send her packing.
“I heard you was lookin’ for a model, milord,” she said, adopting Sally’s manner of speech. “That’s if you haven’t found one.”
“You heard correctly.” He put the implements down on a table beside him, laden with different sized hammers, chisels, and files, then turned to study her.
Rendered nervous by his deep brown eyes she looked around.
The studio was different to the painters’ studios she’d worked in.
Far larger, it was also clean, the air tinged with the lingering odor of coffee, and something delicious.
Her empty stomach gurgled, disconcerting her further.
The sun’s rays brightened an exquisitely painted Italian screen standing in one corner and the crimson chaise longue placed before the block of marble.
A table was piled high with books, journals, and boxes of pencils beside which was a Chippendale splat-back chair, like those they used to have at home.
And not a cold draft to be found.
~~~
“Well don’t just stand there. Come in so I can see you.” Lewis beckoned with an impatient hand. “Take off your hat and coat.”
The young woman advanced cautiously into the room.
He was caught by her quiet manner, more used to being greeted with a smart quip by hip swinging confident girls.
She removed her straw bonnet drawing his eye to her abundant blonde hair, piled on her head as if she hadn’t come to grips with how to contain it.
She slipped her arms out of the garment of some indecipherable color.
Beneath it, she wore a faded blue dress with short sleeves which exposed slender, nicely shaped arms. A ribbon of a darker blue was caught beneath breasts that promised to be shapely.
When his artist’s eye finished judging her proportions, he met her cornflower blue gaze which seemed to study him as critically as he did her.
A perfect artist’s model she should be in great demand. Lewis walked over to her.
Her eyes widened, and she took a step back. “Will I suit?” she began, clutching her reticule, coat, and hat in her hands.
Was she new at this? “I shall have to see you as nature intended, of course, but I have great hopes that you will be perfect for my Aphrodite.”
“Aphrodite?” she repeated, her eyes growing wide.
Well, it wouldn’t matter if she wasn’t too bright, he thought, although he found himself disappointed at the prospect.
Might be asking too much. “An ancient Greek goddess,” he explained.
“Go behind that screen and undress. Slip on the robe you’ll find hanging there.
I shall need time to work out the best pose for the statue.
It’s my practice to make several drawings before I begin. ”
He watched her disappear behind the painted screen. “You’ve done this sort of work before?”
“Oh yes,” she said, her voice muffled as if she had her dress over her head. “Never for a sculptor though. Painters.”
“Why don’t you continue to work for artists?”
Silence. “It was the smell.”
“They smelled?”
A slight sound which could be a chuckle. “The paint and linseed oil made me sick.”
“Nothing like that here.” Lewis sorted through his charcoals. He was so eager to begin, he hadn’t even asked her name.
Such concerns fled when she emerged. The robe better displayed her excellent figure and long slim legs.
But what struck him most was her hair. Soft fair waves flowed to her waist lit with strands of gold.
Delicate of feature, she moved with grace.
Despite the way she spoke, she was nothing like his usual models.
“Your name?” he asked, almost as an afterthought.
“Hebe, milord.”
“Hebe…?”
She hesitated. “Fenchurch.”
She seemed reluctant to supply it. And she stared at him as if he might have heard of it. Oddly, Fenchurch did ring a distant bell somewhere in his brain. “Hebe? Well I’ll be darned. That’s an ancient Greek name. Is there a story behind it?”
“Me pa liked it.” She firmed her lips as if refusing to explain further.
“Hebe was the goddess of youth.” He made a swiveling motion with his finger.
“Turn around for me.” The name suited her.
As she turned, he tapped his chin, searching for the right pose.
Aware of her subtle perfume, he took in the graceful dip of her waist and the saucy jut of her bottom. “How did your father come across it?”
“It was in one of those publications. At the library. ’E was fond of the library.”
“Was?”
Golden lashes hid her eyes. “Yes. ‘E’s gone now.”
“I’m sorry.” Lewis began to arrange her pose. He felt strangely out of sorts as if he’d dreamed her up. But her skin beneath his fingers as he moved her arm was real, smooth, and pale as a pearl.
“Sit down, Hebe.” He backed away and walked over to ring the bell. “We’ll have coffee before we begin.”
“I’d be ever so grateful for a cup. Thank you, milord.”
“Call me, Lewis, please. Society never ventures into this room unless invited.” He went to the table to select his materials discovering a surprising eagerness to begin.