Chapter 30
Thirty
Jack looked down at Lucy, who was clean and comfortable now, though still as unclothed as him, the coverlet pulled up over all the curves he’d recently lost his mind over.
He was propped on one elbow, toying endlessly with the spring of one of her curls. Until, that is, his attention snagged on one of her freckles and he traced a line from it to the next one along her cheekbone, then the next, and the next, down her jaw, her throat, and down—
“Jack.”
“Sorry.” He looked up with a sheepish grin. She smiled back.
“You can do that all night, except I still need to draw you.”
“I pass muster, do I? My body is now your muse?”
She laughed, pulling the cushion from beside her head and walloping him on the shoulder. “Go and stand over there and look…heroic and brooding. And bring me my sketchbook.”
“Yes, my lady.” He gave an ironic salute, brought the sketchbook to her, then went to stand by her dressing table, one foot raised on the chair, chest exaggeratedly puffed, a hand on his hip. “Like so?”
She gave his groin a pointed look. “Very heroic.”
He laughed. “If you haven’t noticed, you’re naked in a bed and the cover has fallen to your waist. And that is far more encouragement than I need, believe me. Just being in a room with you is enough.”
She laughed but blushed, fastening her attention to her sketchbook. He smiled to himself. How she could still be shy after everything they’d just shared, he didn’t know, but it was quintessential Lucy.
The flush on her cheeks wasn’t all embarrassment though.
He eyed it with the pleasure of both memory and possession.
He’d put it there. He’d made her his own, tonight and forever, and given himself in return.
Mathematics might never have been one of his strong points, but he had the feeling some universal balance had been made whole.
A vast sum, twenty-six years in the making, had finally been solved with the perfect answer.
He was deliriously happy at any rate.
“You’re meant to look heroic, not dopey.”
It amused him even more to discover he was apparently the more romantic one of the two.
“What I look like, my darling, is a man in love.”
She grinned at him but pointed sternly to the corner of the room, so he sighed and threw his head back, resuming his pose.
It should have felt ridiculous. It did, a little. But there was no real embarrassment. That was the wonderful thing. It was all so easy. This, the whole night they’d shared. It was that joy he remembered from his youth, the feeling he’d tried to explain to George.
“Stop grinning,” Lucy said, laughing as she drew. “And don’t look at me. Look at…hmm…that lamp over there. I’m trying to get your collarbone right.”
Jack obeyed, shifting his attention, though the lamp was a poor substitute for naked Lucy. “What is this piece you’re working on? What’s it about?”
“Have you read Lord Byron’s poem?”
“Oh God, not that Childe Harold thing everyone keeps talking about? Please don’t tell me you’re yet another of his admirers?”
Lucy laughed. “You can’t deny he has a way with words, Jack. He is very talented.”
“Have you ever met the man? I didn’t like him. One of those fragile ego types.”
“Unlike you?” she asked innocently. “And I did meet him once. Caroline introduced me to him at the theatre. She knows him, of course she does.”
“Oh, she knows that whole set. And…what did you think of him?”
“Much the same as you.”
“But you’re basing a whole artwork on his poem?”
“On the poem. On the man. It’s very autobiographical, Childe Harold, though he protests it isn’t.
But the central character, the poor little lordling, so very tired of his debauched life, going to seek pastures new on a tour of Europe…
if that doesn’t sound like Lord Byron himself, I don’t know what does. ”
“Him and a hundred others. There are forever ruined nobles fleeing to Europe. Most of them to escape their creditors. I hardly see what’s heroic about it.”
“Exactly!” she said, pointing her pencil at him.
“Byron, Childe Harold, they are a type. They…the poem…it is designed to invoke our sympathy, with his ‘sick, sore heart’ and the teardrops in his eye, when really, he has brought it all upon himself. He is not a heroic figure at all, but flawed, even pathetic.”
“And that is what you are painting? A pathetic man? Why…er…why exactly am I the perfect model for it?”
“Hmm?” she said innocently. “What was that you said?”
“Lucy…”
She grinned at him, then became more serious.
“I am not painting a flawed man, or not really. What I’m painting is a real man.
Neither version of Childe Harold is correct.
He is neither heroic nor pathetic. We are all of us made up of both.
That is what I want to paint. It is this idea of…
of painting a classically heroic young man—an Adonis type, like you—in a classically heroic pose, and yet…
yet painting him as a real man. Flawed. Vulnerable. ”
Jack took his foot from the chair, suddenly feeling exposed in a way he hadn’t until now. He went to the bed and sat on the edge where Lucy’s hip lay under the bunched coverlet.
“That’s what you see, isn’t it?” he asked quietly. “The truth of people.”
“I…I don’t know. I don’t think I see anything very different to what other people see.”
“You see the truth of me. That I’m all those flawed, pathetic things. And yet…you love me? How can that be?”
“Why wouldn’t I? It’s what makes you real. It is not as though you think I am perfect.”
He smiled. “But I do, Lucy. I really do.”
“Well I’m not.”
“No. True. You’re stubborn, for one thing.” He touched her nose and she scowled. Then he leaned down to kiss her, and, after a moment, the sketchbook went sliding to the floor.
Jack woke with a start, wondering what was wrong before realising it was early morning, which explained it. He should still be asleep. Beside him, Lucy stirred, curls tickling his arm, and Jack froze once more.
It was morning. And he was still in Lucy’s bed. Oh damnation.
He leapt up, hastily collecting his scattered clothes. They were creased, having been thrown unceremoniously to the floor last night. He’d had more important things on his mind.
Lucy sat up. “What is it?”
“I shouldn’t be here!”
She looked at the window where the light came strongly between the thin gap in the drapes. “Oh,” she breathed. Then giggled.
“It’s not funny,” Jack said, suddenly fighting the urge to laugh himself as he hopped one-legged into his trousers.
“I know it’s not, but…all that care you took over my precious reputation, and now this!”
He groaned. “Don’t say it.”
“It doesn’t matter very much anyway,” she said, getting up and walking naked to her wardrobe, the action, not the words, being what momentarily wiped the troubles from his mind. She pulled on a robe. “I’m fairly sure Caroline already knows you are here.”
“She knows? How?”
Lucy came to him and began tying the neck of his shirt. “Somehow, she knew you were at my window. I’m beginning to think she has mysterious powers. Or the hearing of a cat.”
“Well I hope she didn’t hear much last night,” Jack muttered. Lucy blushed, which was absurd given everything and their current state of déshabillé. He leant down suddenly and kissed her firmly. For a moment, she melted into him, but then she was pushing him away before handing him his waistcoat.
“You look terrible,” she said happily, surveying the efforts of his dress.
He grinned. “And it is all your fault.”
“You may as well go down the stairs. Everyone will see you climbing the wall in broad daylight, and that will surely lead to only more notice being drawn.”
“And what of the servants?”
“Caroline hardly has any. You might get lucky and avoid them.”
“Well, and if I don’t,” he said, sweeping a hand at his crumpled appearance, “I can tell them I got robbed on my way home and wandered in here for help.”
“Dazed and confused?”
“Don’t I look it?”
She smiled and stood on tiptoe to press a small, sweet kiss against his lips. “Very.”
His arm slid around her waist, and he kissed her extremely soundly before, with a Herculean effort, he tore himself away.
It wasn’t the servants he met coming down the stairs but Caroline herself. She stepped out of her parlour, a letter in her hand, just as he reached the last step.
“Ah, Jack!” she said, smiling. “What an unexpectedly early visit from you. How sorry I was to miss you arrive!”
He rubbed the hot back of his neck, hat and gloves in his other hand. “Caroline…”
She laughed and turned back to the parlour. “Come and talk with me a moment, Jack. I have some things to say to you. Congratulations being one of them, of course, but no doubt you also feel you deserve an apology.”
“I’d say!” Jack followed her into the parlour.
“I’ve already guessed that charade with George was your idea, and if that’s your idea of matchmaking, you should stick to planning dinner parties.
Wouldn’t a word or two in my ear have done the trick?
Even an anonymous letter would have been less underhand. ”
“But far less entertaining! No, no, don’t frown and scowl. Aren’t you the happiest man in England? How can you frown?”
“In the whole world, Caroline, but you have to admit it was the devil of a trick to play.”
“And you have to admit you deserved it.”
He breathed a hollow laugh, turning the brim of his hat in his fingers. “You’re a rogue, Caroline.”
“Oh, I’m far worse than that.” She grinned. “But let us not talk of apologies when there is thanks to be given instead.”
“I should be thanking you, should I? When I near blew my own brains out in despair?”
“Don’t be dramatic, Jack. I mean that I should be thanking you.
Life has been exceedingly flat recently, but I’ve enjoyed every minute of it since you brought Miss Fanshaw to town.
I’ve made a new friend.” She grew as serious as she ever was, a true warmth in her eyes.
“And I’ve made another dear friend happy. ”
He shook his head, studying her for a moment. “I did think I loved you, you know.”
“And yet in two years of knowing me, you never once came close to offering.”
“Caroline—”
“Jack,” she said, half laughing. “Do you worry I’m broken-hearted?”
“No, but—”
“You only ever believed you wished to marry me because in your heart of hearts, you knew I’d never accept you. You knew I was safe, and you were safe.”
“That might be so,” he said, already sure that, as always, she understood the situation better than he did. “But what I mean is…it seems strange… Someone should love you, Caroline. You deserve it, impossible as you are.”
A fleeting sorrow crossed her face, gone in an instant. She gave him a twinkling smile. “I’d much rather be free.”
He opened his mouth, but she raised a hand. “No romantic effusions, please. Save it all for Miss Fanshaw. Let us turn ourselves to far baser subjects: not love, but money. Is the rumour I heard right? Are you…embarrassed?”
Jack let out a breath, scratching his jaw. “Temporarily. Nothing fatal. And already on the way to recovery. That’s where I go now, to my agent, to get an up-to-date reckoning.” He smiled crookedly. “I have a wedding to plan, you know. A wife to provide for.”
“Well, it’s good timing. News of your engagement will keep any creditors at bay. The whole town knows of Miss Fanshaw’s inheritance.”
Jack chuckled. “And the notice will be in the papers tomorrow. How fortunate,” he said wryly, then shook an admonishing finger at the grinning Caroline.
“But don’t, for the love of God, go telling Lucy I only married her for her money.
The last thing I need is another disaster to get in our way. Your pranking days are over, my girl.”