His smile became supercilious. ‘You’ll soon outgrow your childish hobbies.’
‘I assure you I’ll never outgrow painting,’ she said through gritted teeth. Why was it that women’s passions were considered so insignificant, as though they could easily be put aside for polite society? Did no one understand the passion that drove her?
Benedict Cole’s face flashed again into her mind.
He was a man who understood painting.
And passion.
Down deep her stomach rippled.
‘You’re young.’ Lord Warley licked his lips. ‘There’s nothing you could be sure about at your age.’
He had only been a few years ahead of George at school. ‘I might be young, but I do know my own mind.’
‘I appreciate spirit in a girl.’
Before Cameo moved he was on his feet. Looming over her, he pressed her backwards, hard, into the wrought-iron chair, banging her head against the trellis.
No! He meant to kiss her. She couldn’t bear it. Not with the memory of Benedict’s lips still burned on to hers. In a surge of strength she pushed him away.
Leaping to her feet, she seized her necklace as if it were a talisman. ‘I’d like to go into the ballroom.’
‘Yes, of course. The moonlight, your beauty...forgive me.’
As he took her arm, his eyes did not meet hers. Sickened, Cameo realised he wasn’t sorry at all.
She’d been right to avoid being alone with him. All her suspicions about him had been right all along.
Backed up against the trellis, Lord Warley had trapped her like a bird in a cage. Right where he liked a woman to be.
‘She look’d: but all
Suffused with blushes—neither self-possess’d Nor startled, but betwixt this mood and that.’
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson:
‘The Gardener’s Daughter’
‘What have you been doing, Miss Ashe?’
Cameo jumped. From her place by the window she’d been surveying Benedict Cole at work. He’d positioned her in a different pose today, half-reclining, but he hadn’t touched her once, just barked sharp commands at her to get the angle right.
He was behaving as if he had never kissed her. Two could play at that game. If he was going to use his artistic discipline, then she would use hers, too.
‘What do you mean, Mr Cole?’ she asked coolly.
He laid down his pencil. ‘It seems to me you have barely slept.’
‘How did you...?’
‘You’re pale and you have the slightest shadows beneath your eyes. They were not there before. What have you been doing all night?’
Did Benedict Cole miss anything? She could hardly tell him she had attended Lady Russell’s ball, then stayed up late drawing, desperate to make up for lost time, and when she had at last laid her head on the pillow, memories of their kiss kept her tossing and turning until dawn.
‘I was... I was...sewing.’ She must think of something. ‘I...I do mending for extra money. Luckily Mrs Cotton, the woman who kindly took me in, if you remember, taught me her excellent skills with the needle. It’s come in most useful.’
‘I had almost forgotten the estimable Mrs Cotton,’ Benedict said in a dry voice. ‘So she taught you needlecraft, how fortunate. I shall have to take up your services.’
‘My...services?’
‘Alas. As I am a bachelor, I find many of my shirts require attention I cannot give them.’
In a few long strides Benedict left his easel and went to a chest of drawers near his bed. It seemed bigger than ever today, with its great carved wooden headboard. All too clearly she pictured him in that bed. Her neck and cheeks flushed hot again.
From a drawer he retrieved a white shirt, similar to the one he wore beneath his dark red waistcoat. He came across the room and passed her the shirt, brushing her skin. At his touch, Cameo gave a jolt he surely couldn’t mistake.
If he, too, felt the current that flared between them he revealed no sign. ‘There’s a seam gone, there. Can you fix it?’
Holding the shirt up to the light of the window, she saw a seam had indeed torn across the shoulder, given way in what must have been a powerful stretch.
As she lifted the shirt closer the powerful masculine scent coming from the garment made her giddy. She suppressed her unexpected primitive urge to bury her face in the linen.
‘Well?’
Her head bent, she examined the rip with what she hoped appeared a professional air. ‘This is quite easy to mend. I’ve repaired similar garments.’
‘Have you indeed? Is that your trade?’
‘My trade?’ She was echoing him once more, unable to string a sentence together.
‘Yes, your trade. You mentioned Mrs Cotton brought you up. But what do you do now to earn your keep?’
‘Oh. My keep.’ For a moment her mind went as empty as a blank canvas. ‘Well, I, well, I’m a...governess.’
‘You don’t sound too sure.’
‘Oh, well, what I mean is, I’m usually a governess, but the family, the children, they’re away at the moment. In the country. Derbyshire. Yes, Derbyshire,’ she babbled. ‘That’s why I can come here and model for you.’
His expression remained dubious.
Cameo coughed. ‘And while they’re away I take in sewing, too. For extra money. I can certainly fix this. Would you like me to do it now?’
‘No, I’m not expecting you to mend it instantly,’ he said, with an impression of amusement. Relief flooded her. If he insisted, he would soon witness her poor performance at plain sewing. Her fancy embroidery stitches would look most out of place on his shirt.
‘Perhaps you can add it to your mending basket in your lonely nursery, with your young charges away. But I must ask you to promise not to do any more sewing too late into the night. If I’m to complete this painting I must have you fresh-faced.’
As if pulling on her cloak, she assumed the meek manner of Miss Ashe. ‘I’m sorry.’
His sharp glance made her realise he suspected her meekness as much as her mending.
Benedict returned to his easel. Yet another story she’d told him. Part of her was pleased she’d come up with something so quickly; part of her felt sick at having to tell more lies. It was beginning to be hard to keep track of them all. She’d told her mama she was taking extra riding lessons. That explained her absence at home. But all the lies troubled her.
It soothed her mind to watch Benedict at work. He’d moved on from drawing to painting now, using a fine brush tipped with black paint. He painted more slowly than he sketched, more deliberately. His strong fist clasping the paintbrush moved powerfully yet lightly across the canvas. His hands... She recalled the firm yet gentle way Benedict had held her, when his lips had met hers, so different from Lord Warley’s attempted grab at Lady Russell’s ball. The way he’d trapped her...nausea rose in her stomach. If only their fathers hadn’t been such good friends.
Benedict’s irate voice shot across the room. ‘Now you’re making a face. Your mouth is all