Plodding footfalls told her Mrs. Cobb was following but couldn’t keep up.
The most preposterous notion dawned as Venetia sped down the stairs. What if her father had gambled again, hoping to win his vowels back from the earl? What if this time Trent had won her at cards?
Reaching the open drawing room door, she stopped, smoothed her skirts, and gulped down steadying breaths. She must be careful. If she ruined her reputation, she ruined her sisters’ reputations. Maryanne, Grace…they at least deserved a chance at the lives Mother hoped they would lead—marriage, children, happiness…
The earl, she noted, had found the only warm spot in her chilly drawing room. As soon as she stepped inside, the cold seeped through her dress and wrapped its icy fingers around her bare neck. Since she never received guests, she never heated the room. At least a fire now crackled in the hearth.
His lordship stood so close to the licking flames, she feared a spark might set his trousers alight. His left elbow was propped on the mantel, between the unfortunate bric-a-brac left by the previous tenant—two candlesticks shaped like nude women and a bronze of his favorite mount.
Venetia closed the door gently behind her, then stopped short, still clutching the doorknob.
The earl balanced an open book in his large gloved hand and he lazily flipped the pages. The faint sunlight cast a bluish gleam on his coal-black hair and slanted across his straight shoulders. Even in a casual stance, he easily topped six feet and she couldn’t help but admire how his midnight-blue superfine emphasized the taper from wide back to narrow waist and lean hips. Skintight trousers displayed magnificent legs and disappeared into Hessians with a mirror finish.
She arched on tiptoe to spy around his broad frame. Pictures. The book did indeed contain pictures but she couldn’t see the detail—he stood too far away. But Tales of a London Gentleman was bound in burgundy leather, in exactly the same shade as the book lying across that massive hand.
The earl paused at a plate, then turned the book in his hand to study some detail that had caught his fancy. A flush prickled along the back of Venetia’s neck.
He moved to capture the light more fully on the page, and she saw his profile. Raven hair, darkly lashed eyes, patrician features, and wide, firm lips.
Her stomach pitched to her toes. Trent was the dark-haired gentleman who had appeared in her father’s pictures. The man she’d copied for her book. She’d thought him an invention of her father’s brush. But since he stood before her in the flesh, obviously her assumption had been wrong.
It made sense. Rodesson attended brothels and orgies and hells. Why wouldn’t he base his pictures on actual patrons? On the actual scenes he had witnessed?
The titles flew through her whirling mind. The Fair Lady Bound. The Jermyn Street Harem. The French Kiss.
Even The Trapeze in which the nude lady had been seated on a suspended bar over the gentleman’s upright—
Venetia pressed her hand to her churning stomach. Her father had changed Lord Trent’s appearance, she saw that now. She, in utter innocence, had decided to make her gentleman more handsome. By horrific accident, she had succeeded in making him look more like the actual man.
A soft groan spilled from her lips.
The earl looked up sharply and she stared into vivid turquoise eyes, the color startling and beautiful in contrast to his long sooty lashes and straight black brows.
That extraordinary shade had not appeared in her father’s pictures. Could she capture it? If she blended cobalt blue with a touch of—
“This is my personal favorite, Miss Hamilton. I think you have caught my likeness perfectly in this one.” Dangerous amusement rippled through Lord Trent’s seductive baritone and his deep masculine voice held her transfixed. “You have a remarkable talent.”
A remarkable talent. She felt a warm flush of pride, even as her knees almost buckled.
“My—my lord.” She managed a curtsy, a wobbly one, her plain gray skirts crumpling as she dipped. “I am afraid I don’t understand to what you are referring.”
He closed the book. His brows arched over those turquoise eyes—cerulean blue would do it, blended with a dab of yellow oxide—
“Your book of erotica in which I play the starring role.”
Erotica. The word flowed off his tongue in a nonchalant manner, as though they had met in the park and he had just touched his hat and commented on the rain. But it struck her with the force of a lusty slap on her backside. She thought of the pictures he was looking at, pictures she’d created, and all the confidence she’d struggled to earn evaporated in a heartbeat.
His lordship rested his elbow on the mantel and smiled at her confusion.
No. She had finally succeeded in taking charge of her life and she wasn’t about to surrender her control. Earl or no. She must bluff him. And, for the sakes of her mother and sisters, she must prove better at bluffing than her father.
She stiffened her spine. Prim disgust. That’s what she sought. She imagined Lady Plim, the wife of Sir Plim, and the sharp-tongued tartar of Maidenswode. “My lord, it may be the fashion amongst the aristocracy to carry scandalous tomes about and view them before unsuspecting women, but I am afraid your behavior is—”
He waved an elegant hand. “Don’t waste my time, Miss Hamilton. You’ve got paint on your sleeve.”
“Watercolors. A lady’s pastime.”
He chuckled and a shiver raced down her spine. She’d never heard a laugh like that. A low, rumbling, purely masculine laugh. It held a naughty suggestive sensuality that she’d never been treated to before.
He inclined his handsome head. “Rodesson has told me all about you, my dear. He came to me to plead for the return of his vowels—for the sake of his illegitimate daughters.”
Venetia flinched at the word illegitimate. It never failed to make her feel her parents’ actions had been her fault.
“But—” Her last-ditch attempt to protest that Rodesson was not her father died on her lips. His lordship knew the truth and she was not going to convince him otherwise.
He crooked his gloved finger. “Come here, Miss Hamilton. I don’t wish to shout our conversation across the room and I suspect you wouldn’t want that either.”
She glared, not willing to go at his command, but he was right, of course. She would bet pounds to pennies that Mrs. Cobb had her ear pressed to the keyhole. Reluctantly, Venetia marched toward the fireplace and the analogy of flinging herself from the pan to the flames leapt to mind.
She stopped at the worn and sagging wing chair, keeping it between them. But even separated from Lord Trent by a bulky piece of furniture, she felt small, dainty, and vulnerable confronted by his size and superb build. Her throat tightened. Her heart galloped. A quiver that she hoped was fear, but suspected wasn’t, arced down her spine.
The earl left the mantel and strolled toward her, the spine of her book cupped in his large palm. “Your father insisted he had no means of supporting his family other than the royalties for his books. He explained that his innocent eldest daughter has been forced to embark on a dangerous career painting erotica.”
What a fool her father had been! Trent was a rake, a scoundrel. He exuded so much sin and devilment, she suspected he didn’t dare walk into a church. Everything about him screamed debaucher. He moved with a tantalizing predatory grace, his twinkling eyes threatened disaster to an innocent heart, and as for his seductive, insolent grin—
“My father is aging!” she cried. “He was despondent, confused. He forgot he had painted pictures that were not previously published. Really, how could I have possibly created that sort of risqué work?”
“I