Chapter Ten #5
He glanced past her to his host, Heath, who, by this point, had covered his offensive grin with his hand. For Adrian, that insult coupled with the startled look on Emma’s face as she stood at the window before hurriedly closing the drapes, warned him he had walked into a very wicked trap indeed.
And here he’d thought Lady Dalrymple to be a sweet, harmless scatterbrain. “Exactly what manner of sketch is it that you have in mind?” he asked, his hand planted on his left hip.
She smiled up at him over her easel. “Hercules,” she murmured. “We have yet to add him to our Deity Collection. You don’t object, do you?”
“Object?” he echoed as Heath slithered farther down the bench in a paroxysm of suppressed laughter. “Well, I’m not entirely sure—what exactly is the Deity Collection, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“All the proceeds go to charity,” Hermia assured him.
“Hercules? He wasn’t a deity, was he?”
“Don’t move,” she muttered. “The light won’t last long as it is, and my knees feel a storm moving in. Hercules became a deity after he died. Could you do me a favor?”
She had that naughty twinkle in her eye again. “That all depends, Lady Dalrymple. What is it?”
“Do you mind pretending you’re wrestling a lion?”
His forehead creased. “Wrestling a lion?”
Miss Butterfield raised her pencil above her head. “I say, Lady Dalrymple, I think he’s supposed to be naked in this labor. At least that’s how he looked in the museum.”
Adrian glanced up in alarm. Heath was practically rolling on the ground. “I hope you’re talking about the lion, and not me.”
“Not you,” Lady Dalrymple said with a reprimanding smile. “Hercules—Lydia, do fetch my cloak for his lordship to use as a prop.”
Lydia ran back into the house and breathlessly returned a minute later with Hermia’s heavy gold velvet cloak. She held it up to Adrian, who took it in his hands with a snort of resignation.
“What am I supposed to do with this?” he asked Lady Dalrymple.
“Wrestle with it,” she said.
He twisted it around his wrist, tossed it into the air, and caught it. “Like that?”
Her mouth thinned. “One doesn’t wrestle a Nemean Lion as if it were an orange at a country fair, does one?”
Adrian stared her in the eye. “I don’t know, but I am developing a Herculean headache. May I please get down?”
“In one moment,” she replied, unruffled. “Do be patient, Hercules.”
It was at this point, with all the girls of the academy avidly sketching, and Emma hiding behind the drapes, that Adrian decided enough was enough.
Of course extricating himself from the situation was another matter.
Every time he attempted to move, Hermia gave him a look that reminded him of his grandmother. And he stayed.
Obviously, Heath had no intention of intervening, and as there was no telling how long Hermia would hold him, Adrian was debating making an unheroic if desperate escape when Charlotte Boscastle appeared in the garden.
“It’s time for deportment, everyone!”
The girls abandoned their sketches with sighs of regret and awkward curtsies in Adrian’s direction.
For a moment he could not figure out who the deuce the lot of them were curtsying at.
He chuckled when he realized it was him.
Relieved, he stepped down onto the grass, glancing past Charlotte to the house.
Emma waited at the door to gather her flock.
Adrian gazed at her delicate profile.
She seemed so sure of herself, too self-assured to appeal to most men, but her strong presence rather appealed to Adrian.
She wasn’t one to mince words. He could trust whatever she said, even if he might not like it.
And yet she still managed to carry herself like a lady should with a natural grace and regard for others.
He glanced around, suddenly realizing that both Charlotte and Heath were watching him with un-abashed interest. “Well, that was an unplanned diversion,” he said, turning his head so that he would not be tempted to stare again. “I hope I do not discover my likeness printed all over town tomorrow.”
Charlotte’s blue eyes danced with laughter. “Take heart. All monies collected are distributed to London charities.”
“Do you mean someone would actually pay to have a sketch of me?” Adrian asked, grinning.
“Unbelievable, isn’t it?” Heath strolled past him toward the house. “Your driver is here, by the way. If you’d care to stay for supper, I’ll have him wait.”
Well, that was pointed, but polite, and Adrian knew he’d more than worn out his welcome. “I’m going. Thank you, anyway. In fact, thank you for all that you’ve done.”
“You’re more than welcome, but—You are coming back again, aren’t you? I’ll wager Hermia will pester you to finish wrestling that lion.”
He hesitated. He could hear Emma informing one of the girls she’d dropped her pencils. “Of course, I’ll come back,” he said vaguely. “Soon.”
Heath studied him with a thoughtful smile. “A good friend is always welcome in my house.”
A good friend. Adrian nodded, wondering whether it was his own guilt or Heath’s intuition that gave the invitation a deeper implication.