Chapter 26
Twenty-Six
Lucy eventually closed her sketchbook. She stood, stiff and cold from sitting, and went to the window.
She sighed out at the moonlit night, seeing distant lamplight in the night’s damp haze, the moon lighting the clouds milk blue.
She thought of the smoke hazing the candlelight at Mr Thornton’s and sighed again before closing the drapes.
She unbuttoned her dress, removed her stockings and stays, and wrapped her heavy bedrobe around her before unpinning her hair.
Her maid was long in bed, sent there by Lucy when she first arrived home in no fit state to feign composure.
Her agitated manner would only have added to her maid’s frowning disapproval.
Lucy hadn’t even taken her to Mr Thornton’s tonight, deciding her reputation was already compromised beyond what her maid’s presence could salvage, and therefore there was little point subjecting the woman to an experience she so clearly loathed.
A desultory finger-combing of her tangled curls was all she had the energy for. She picked up her candle and stepped towards her bed, then stopped, heart pounding.
Someone was knocking on her window.
“Lucy? It’s me, Jack.”
Jack?
At her window? How? She was three floors up!
She put the candle down hastily, spilling wax on her fingers but hardly heeding the sting as she rushed to the window and pulled the drapes aside.
It was Jack alright, half grinning, half grimacing as he glanced down at the distant ground.
“Any chance you could let me in? If you don’t mind, that is. ”
She pulled up the sash. It got stuck of course, but she wrenched it up with all her strength, letting in the smell of night and Jack himself, who swung a booted leg over the window ledge and climbed into the room, staggering a little on tired legs as he stood up.
“What on earth, Jack!” Lucy hissed, wary of being overheard. Her heart was still pounding, her skin hot. The breeze through the open window was chill, and she went to close it, Jack helping her when it got stuck again, his hands grazing hers where she gripped the frame.
He was flushed from the climb, or the cool night, or both, and breathing hard, his hair disordered. His dark grey eyes met hers and his grin broke out, crooked and as mischievous as it had ever been.
“Sorry,” he said.
He was very close. Too close. She stepped back and walked a pace or two across the room, wrapping her robe more tightly around herself.
“Sorry for everything,” he continued. “And now this too, I suppose.”
“What are you doing here? Are you drunk? What were you thinking?”
“No. Not drunk.” He ran a hand across his jaw, sheepish. “I wanted to see you. I didn’t plan on climbing up, but then I saw you at the window and…” He let out a breath. “My mother will be here tomorrow, Lucy. My sisters. How can I speak to you properly then?”
She stepped back to the window, still trying to collect her thoughts, and glanced down at the distant ground below with a shudder before pulling the drapes shut. Imagine if someone saw!
“I don’t even understand how you managed it.”
“It’s hardly the first time. Remember the schoolroom at home?”
“There was a great big wisteria vine! Here there’s nothing!”
Jack shrugged. “Drainpipes. A loose brick or two.”
She stared at him, every thought in disarray.
He winced in apology, but…but his gaze went to the curls falling over her shoulders then dropped to the robe she wore.
He turned away, picking up a small box from her dressing table and fidgeting with it.
Her pulse hammered everywhere, tiny taps with a silver hammer on every nerve.
Jack in her room, and she was undressed…
It was a maddening song, entrancing and unwise as fairy music.
“I’ll go,” he said, putting the box back down. “I should never have come at all.”
“Jack,” she said firmly, tightening her robe once again. “You are an idiot.”
A tight laugh escaped him. “I am, Lucy, I really am.”
“And you should definitely go.”
He nodded, jaw set, and went to the window.
“But…Jack…what did you risk your neck to come and tell me?”
His hand was already on the edge of the drape when he paused.
His fingers twisted into the fabric, and he looked at that, not her.
“That I’m sorry, Lucy.” He let go of the drape and looked her full in the eye, his expression raw.
“I’m sorry for everything. For tonight and dragging you away from Thornton’s.
For every stupid thing I’ve done or said since I saw you again at Almack’s.
I’m sorry I made you dance. I’m sorry I didn’t listen.
I’m sorry for every thoughtless, insulting thing I said to you on that drive in the park.
I shudder to think of it. And I am so, so sorry that, seven years ago, I let you leave my life.
I was a thoughtless young man, and I didn’t know what I was losing.
Now I’m an older one, and I’ve learnt it to my cost.”
It was a speech which made her need to sit down. She sunk limply to the edge of the bed.
But he still hadn’t finished.
He came toward her and went down on his knee. “Lucy…”
She was too stunned to do anything as he took hold of her trembling hand.
“Lucy,” he said again. Those lashes really were absurd, framing his eyes like that as he stared imploringly up at her.
“I’m sorrier than ever that I got in the way of your art.
You’ve told me so many times that I don’t think, and you’re right.
But I’ve been trying. I’ve been thinking ever since I left you, and I realise now that all I’ve done is align myself with your enemies when I should have been standing between you and them.
” There wasn’t even the trace of a grin on his jaw.
His lovely mouth, that full lower lip, just kept tracing one perfect word after another.
And he seemed to mean them all. “Can I help you instead? Will you let me? If I model for you now, every night until you need to complete your piece, would that be enough to let you finish it in time?”
Lucy stared. It took her a long moment to realise what he had just proposed.
“M-model for me?”
“If it’s what you need. If it helps. I’d do anything, Lucy. And you said yourself there’s nothing so very strange about it. It’s only art and what artists have been doing forever.”
Now he did grin, that very familiar one with its gleam of wild mischief. “It won’t surprise you to learn I have very little modesty. I won’t be embarrassed if you’re not. If this is how I can serve you, then so be it. My brain’s never been much use, but the flesh is willing.”
Her hand was still in his—burning hot now. She pulled it away, her palm damp.
“This is absurd, Jack! Think about it!” She did not wish to think about it. Not at all. Jack…Jack naked… “You cannot, we cannot…”
“But would it help? Would it be what you needed to finish your piece?”
A model she could study closely every night? A model she could pose as needed? And one with the…erm…classical stature. Her eyes helplessly traced the breadth of his shoulders. She could even bring her large canvas up here and work directly onto it. It was exactly what she needed. But…
“I can’t Jack. I can’t ask you to…to…” She blushed scarlet.
“An arm?” he suggested, smiling. “A leg? Would that little help?”
She couldn’t speak.
“Or am I the wrong sort of model? You said the one at Thornton’s wasn’t right. I confess I didn’t spare him so much as a glance. What is it that you need?”
“A…ah…a certain…physique.”
He frowned in thought, then raised an eyebrow.
“Muscles? Is that what you mean? All those classical art pieces are full of heroically proportioned Adonis types.” He laughed at her expression, sitting back on his heels.
“And you don’t think I’ll do, is that it?
Do you think there’s padding in my coat shoulders?
Have you ever heard the creak of a corset when I bend down?
” His grin deepened along with her blush.
“I ride, Lucy. I hunt. I box and fence and dance and row, and swim whenever I get the chance. I might just about do. I’m not the skinny twelve-year-old you last saw swimming in the river. ”
No, she knew that. Had known it since she saw him at Almack’s. Knew it long before then, when he was eighteen, nineteen, and already broadening into a man. It was why his offer now was impossible. She had never once been able to look at him and remain unaffected.
But he was already on his feet, unbuttoning his overcoat. He pulled it off, then shrugged out of the tightly fitting tailed jacket he wore beneath it. Smiling, though there was a tinge of colour on his cheeks, he unbuttoned his shirt cuff and rolled the sleeve right up above his elbow.
“Here,” he said, “I’ll just sit like this.
” He sat down on the end of her bed, a foot away from her, though the mattress dipped, tilting her towards him.
She stood up hastily, watching helplessly as he dragged a pillow over and rested his arm upon it.
“And you can draw if you like. Aren’t hands one of those devilishly tricky things to get right?
You were always complaining about it when we were younger.
And you know as well as I do how often you used to try and make me sit for you.
I hardly ever did. Couldn’t sit still. And I didn’t, I confess, like to have you look at me so closely. ”
“Why not?” she asked, curiosity getting the better of her embarrassment. After all, it was just a hand. She’d seen a fully naked man. She could cope with Jack’s hand. His bare arm. Her gaze flicked to the skin and muscle he’d revealed…
“Because,” he said, “you might not have liked what you saw.”
Lucy turned away to hide her betraying blush. The problem had always been that she liked it too much.