He stiffened. His brows lowered. His fists bunched the quilt.
He was going to refuse. Somehow he’d been insulted by her admiration. ‘I cannot pay much,’ she said quickly. ‘Say a shilling an hour.’ She was gabbling. She couldn’t seem to stop. ‘It would be enough buy an oilskin,’ she added with a pointed glance at his sodden coat on the nail in the back of the door.
His expression as he gazed at her was unfathomable. ‘You are a strange young woman.’
Did he see that as a good thing or as something bad? Somewhat encouraged, she let go the breath she’d been eking out in little gasps as she spoke. ‘Will you? Please?’
He looked at her for a long moment. ‘Does it mean so much to you that you’d risk your reputation?’
‘Yes,’ she said, nodding her head hard. ‘Yes, it does.’ And besides, she had no reputation worth worrying about. She was surprised he didn’t know.
‘When?’ he asked.
A shudder gripped her chest. Her throat tightened. This would decide her fate. ‘Now. Tonight.’
‘Now?’
‘You are already undressed.’
At that he laughed. A laugh from deep in his chest. It rolled over her like a summer’s day breeze, promising good things to come. She grinned back.
His laughter slowly subsided, though his smile remained. ‘A bird in the hand, is it, Miss Bracewell?’
‘Frederica,’ she said. ‘Please, call me Frederica.’
‘Frederica,’ he murmured. ‘An unusual name for an unusual girl. I’m all yours.’
Her wicked insides did a pleasurable little dance of excitement.
He meant for drawing, she pointed out crossly.
She strode around the room, narrowing her eyes. She wanted to capture him as she saw him, glorious, beautiful, dangerous. A brooding Greek god.
‘Move the cot closer to the fire, please,’ she said.
He flung the end of the quilt over his shoulder, making him look rather like a Roman senator, and dragged the cot across the room. ‘There?’
‘More at an angle, so the light falls across its length.’
He shifted one end into the room.
‘Yes. That’s good.’ She moved the table with the lantern closer. She frowned at the way the light fell and the shadows it created. ‘The light isn’t high enough.’
‘Here.’ Stretching to his full height, the curves of his biceps carved deeper by shadows, he hung the lantern from a nail on the beam above his head.
She swallowed and found her mouth dry. Anticipation. Anxiety. ‘Thank you.’ Heat rushed to her face. ‘Now take the qu-quilt off and stretch out.’
He shrugged. ‘Your wish is my command.’ He planted his feet wide. The fabric fell to the ground. It was a bit like watching the unveiling of a masterpiece, only better, because he was warm flesh and blood.
Nothing she’d seen in pictures or sculptures had prepared her for such a sight as this, though. Firelight played across the curves of his muscled shoulders and arms. Shadows and light sculpted his broad chest in a way an artist would weep to emulate. His physique was a perfect triangle, far better than da Vinci’s Vitru-vian Man with wide shoulders tapering to narrow hips. Muscle rippled across his stomach with its line of dark hair drawing her eye to the nest of dark curls between his thighs and his magnificent male member, darker in colour than she’d expected, and larger.
He looked lovely.
Desire pooled in her loins. Breathless and hot, she glanced up at his face.
A sinew flickered in his tight jaw. ‘Where do you want me?’
Clearly he’d seen her ogling as if she’d never seen a man before. She hadn’t. Not in the flesh. Not alive and vital. She opened her mouth to apologise.
No. She was an artist, she needed to inspect her model. But she had better start behaving like an artist and get down to work, or he might change his mind.
She drew in a deep shaky breath. ‘Reclining, I think. Raised on your elbow, one knee up.’
He moved to straighten the covers.
‘No. Leave them tumbled. They will make a nice contrast to your clean lines.’
He raised a brow, but stretched out and posed as she had requested, one hand covering his private parts. Her vision did not include modesty. This male was meant for pride and arrogance. ‘The other hand draped over your knee, please.’
He complied and glanced along his length. ‘I’m not going to find myself in a caricature in Ackerman’s shop window, am I?’
‘Ackerman’s?’
‘In the Strand in London. They sell salacious prints as well as views of London.’
‘You sound familiar with them.’
He stared at her; his eyes became unreadable, his expression blank. Not the expression she wanted on his face. ‘I have heard of them.’
‘Well, I am not drawing anything salacious, nor do I plan to sell this work. I simply want it for my portfolio.’ And perhaps to treasure as a memory once she left.
The picture he presented was good, but not quite right. Too formal, too tense. Ignoring the pleasurable little clenches of her body when her fingers encountered warm skin and sinew, she adjusted his arm so his wrist rested on his knee and his hand fell relaxed. She pushed and pulled at his supporting arm, until he looked like a Roman at a feast. She raised his chin a fraction so the lantern fell full on the planes of his face and threw shadows on his neck. She stepped back. And lost her breath.
Oh, God. He was lovely.
‘If you keep staring at me like that,’ he said with a half-smile, ‘you are going to have quite a different effect on some of my parts.’
Her face flamed. ‘I’m not looking at you like anything. I’m simply posing you to get the best of the light. But keep that smile.’
‘Can I ask you to hurry?’ he said. ‘We do not have all night.’
Brought back to reality in a flood of anxiety in case he changed his mind, she picked up her papers and pencils from the table and set to work. Her stomach clenched. What if she couldn’t? What if her lines and curves showed nothing but the outer shell of the man?
Her wrist seized in a knot and her fingers trembled. She forced herself to begin with his head. Slowly the flow of lines across the paper settled her heartbeat and her fluttering stomach as she focused on form and shape and play of light and shadow across skin and bone and muscle.
‘Where did you learn to draw?’ he asked.
‘From the books in my uncle’s library. When he wasn’t looking.’
He raised a brow at that. He probably thought her wicked. Mentally, she shrugged. He was probably right. With a mother like hers it wouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. And her father might have been a whole lot worse if the gossip she’d heard came anywhere close to the truth.
Or perhaps he was the one who’d bequeathed her a love of art? Hardly likely, given the low company her mother kept.
She focused on her flying fingers. ‘Did you always want to be a gamekeeper?’
He