He needed to return things to an even footing and he forced his concentration back toward her work.
“Landscapes aren’t really your thing, are they?” he asked with sudden perspicacity.
“What makes you say that?” she asked. “You think it’s no good? Seriously, if you’re trying to get on my good side, you’re going about it the wrong way.”
He gave a short chuckle, giving in to the burst of humor her wry observation initiated.
“I didn’t say it wasn’t good. Technically, you’re doing a great job, but a photo would serve just as well.”
“Damned with faint praise,” she said wryly, snapping the lid closed on her box of paints and gathering up her brushes and the small folding table she’d rested her supplies on.
“So what is your passion?” Marcus persisted. “What is it that really sets you on fire?”
She lifted her gaze to his face but her observation of him was different from how her eyes had skipped over his features before. This time, he sensed she wasn’t looking at him as a man, but as a subject.
“Portraits,” she said with a shrug, “nudes.”
A bolt of sexual hunger rocked through him. Nudes? What would it be like to sit for her? he wondered. He rapidly extinguished the growing fire that lit through his veins. Miss Avery Cullen was getting more and more interesting by the second but he didn’t want to scare her off. Not when there was so much at stake.
“Like your great-great-uncle?” he asked.
She gave a careful nod. “You seem to know your stuff.”
“Waverly’s doesn’t make a habit of hiring idiots,” he replied.
“I’m sure it doesn’t,” she agreed as she continued to gather her things together. “You know my uncle’s work?”
“I studied him in college. Baxter Cullen’s work has always been among my favorites.” He reached for her unfinished canvas and easel. “Here, let me help you with that.”
“Thanks,” she said, to his surprise. He hadn’t expected her to accept his offer. They started to walk back toward the house. “Do you paint?”
“Not my strength, I’m afraid,” he answered with complete honesty. “But I’ve always had an appreciation for well-executed work.”
She stopped at the double set of French doors that led into the house. “I have a Baxter Cullen here, would you be interested in seeing it?”
For a second his heart skipped a beat. Was she referring to Lovely Woman—the very painting he sought to restore to his grandfather? He fought to inject the right note of interest, as opposed to overwhelming desire, into his voice.
“That would be great, if you’re sure it’s no bother.”
“It’s no bother. Come up to my studio,” Avery said.
He followed her through a well-used parlor and then up the wide wooden staircase that led to the next floor. His feet were silent on the carpet runner even while his heart beat a tattoo in his chest he was almost certain had to be audible. The second set of stairs was narrower, the handrail less ornate, but he could see the patina of time on the highly polished wood and wondered, with a tinge of bitterness, how many generations of hands had taken their right to live here for granted. He’d lay odds no one in the Cullen family, or even on Avery’s mother’s side, had ever had to sell anything just to put food on the table.
You can take the boy out of the neighborhood, he could hear his grandfather’s voice echoing in his mind, but you can’t take the neighborhood out of the boy. Well, he’d spent most of his adult life working hard to try to prove Grampa wrong on that score. One day he’d be able to give them both what they deserved, and hopefully that one day, courtesy of Avery Cullen, would be soon.
“This was the nursery, back in the day when children were seen and not heard,” Avery commented as she directed Marcus where to put the easel and painting and moved across the room to a set of sliding doors that, when opened, revealed a built-in bench and basin.
He looked around as she cleaned her brushes. The high unadorned ceilings reflected the cool light that streamed in from the tall windows. He could see why Avery used this room as a studio. But then his attention was caught by the very thing he sought.
Blood pounded in his ears as he approached the small but perfectly executed nude of a young woman bathing, and he fought to keep his breathing under control. He stopped in front of the picture and counted slowly backward from one hundred. His eyes drank in the vision in front of him. Technique aside, the rendering was near perfect. He almost felt like a voyeur, as if he’d caught a glimpse into the private life and time of the woman, as she dragged a dripping rag gracefully over one softly rounded shoulder.
A dreadful urge to simply rip the painting from its hook and race down the stairs and out of here bloomed inside. An urge he instinctively suppressed. He hadn’t waited this long just to ruin everything now but it was harder than he’d expected to finally see the painting his grandfather had been forced to sell twenty-five years ago.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Avery said from behind him. “Apparently she was one of the maids in Baxter’s household. There was a bit of a scandal over this back then. She was dismissed by Baxter’s wife, Isobel, when she saw the painting. Isobel accused the maid of having an affair with Baxter and insisted her husband destroy the picture. Obviously he didn’t. There was a rumor that he sent the painting to the maid, but we have no actual proof of who owned it after it left his house.”
“Interesting that there was no blame laid at her husband’s feet for exploiting a maid in his employment.” As hard as he tried he couldn’t keep a hint of bitterness from his voice. The underclass always bore more than its share of blame in situations like this.
Avery shrugged. “I don’t know whether there was or not. His wife was apparently quite a forceful character. Probably necessary when Baxter was oblivious to everything but his work.”
“And, no doubt, his subject.”
A small smile tugged at her lips. “Yes,” she conceded. “And his subject, although I wonder if he ever saw her as anything other than tones and light and shadows.”
Marcus clenched his jaw to hold back the words that hovered on the tip of his tongue. It wouldn’t do to let Avery know that he had no doubt that Baxter Cullen had most definitely seen his model as far, far more than that.
After all, the subject in question had been Marcus’s own great-grandmother.
Marcus forced himself to shift the conversation away from the woman in the painting. Knowing it was because of him that the nude no longer hung on Grampa’s sitting-room wall made seeing the work more emotional than he’d anticipated—and Marcus didn’t do emotion.
“How did your father come into possession of Lovely Woman?”
“Through a broker, I imagine. That’s how he bought most of his favorites, although he was pretty good at spotting bargains in estate lots and secondhand stores. Even so, he was a stickler for paying a fair price.”
“I’m surprised you have it here in your studio.”
“It’s my inspiration,” she answered simply.
“For your nudes?”
“Not just my work—for everything, really. It reminds me to look for beauty in all things, no matter what