Stroke of Genius (12 page)

“Enlighten me, please.”

Claudette plopped on the foot of Grace’s bed and hooked an ankle under her. “Monsieur Allen, he hears I am the French maid, oo-la-la! He looks at me and I see like that—” She snapped her fingers. “He thinks to make the light love with me in every cranny and nook.”

Grace had never noticed Allen giving her maid anything but a respectful, almost adoring, gaze. She really needed to become more observant.

“But if I do not so much as look at him.” Claudette turned her face away and held up both hands in a forbidding gesture. “Then Monsieur Allen, he pants after my skirts
comme un chien
—how you say?—like a dog. Come, mam’selle. We do your hair.”

Grace settled into her dressing table chair and let Claudette undo her long braid.

“But what about Mr. Wyckeham?” Grace hadn’t missed the speaking glance that passed between her maid and Crispin’s servant. That smoldering gaze was impossible to overlook. “Doesn’t he want to make light love in every cranny and nook, too?”

“
Bien sur
, and so he does!” Claudette fanned herself with one hand. “
Son derrière! C’est formidable!”

Grace blushed. She’d noticed well-formed male backsides were fine to look upon, but had never heard anyone else admit to it except Claudette. “But I don’t understand. If you intend on marrying Mr. Allen, why don’t you make love with him?”

“
Pourquoi
?” Claudette shot her a look in the vanity mirror that said she thought Grace hopelessly dense. “Because I intend to marry him, I hold myself from him,
non
? His wanting for me, it is bigger all the more,
n'est-ce pas
?”

Grace conceded her point, though the logic was tortured. “And in the meantime, you amuse yourself with Mr. Wyckeham.”

“Just so. And
tres amusant
he is!”

“But you don’t love him.”

“Love, bah! This I give for love.” Claudette put two fingers to her lips and made a spitting sound. “Love is something old rich people give to their cats. And even then, the cat, she does not give it back.”

“But you aren’t averse to lovemaking.”

“Not in the slightest pinch.” Claudette shook her head as if Grace were an incredibly slow child who would never understand. “Lovemaking is a gift. I give it to myself. With a little help from Monsieur Wyckeham,
bien sur
.”  

“So what if someday you find yourself married to Mr. Allen. Will you love him then?”

“Mam’selle, a husband is not to love. A husband is to bring home the money and chop the wood to keep the house warm.”

Grace considered her own parents’ marriage. Her father certainly brought home the money and he hired people to chop wood. And anything else that her mother might require. They wrangled with each other on almost everything. She made quiet noises of disapproval when he pulled the whisky flash from his vest pocket more often than she liked. He fumed at her schemes to recapture the grandeur of her family’s aristocratic past. Even so, they rubbed along tolerably well.

But did her parent’s love each other? Grace had no clue. 

“So once you’re married,” Grace said, fascinated with Claudette’s unorthodox views, “will you still take lovers on the side?”

Claudette cocked her head as if considering. “It depends.”

“On what?”

“On whether Monsieur Allen knows what to do with his tongue.”

Chapter 12

Pygmalion always knew the exact shape each stone should take. Imagine his surprise one day, when a stone refused to cooperate.

“No, no,” Grace’s mother said in her dissatisfied Bostonian matron’s tone. “Not the bombazine. Do you want to make her look like a frigate?”

Something inside Grace wilted.

The modiste mumbled an unintelligible apology while managing not to lose a single one of the dress pins tucked between her lips.

“Don’t you have anything else to suggest? What about a sprigged muslin?” Minerva’s hands fluttered in the air helplessly. “That should make her seem less ...”

“Less what?” Crispin glanced up from his bored perusal of the sample fabrics.

They’d been shopping for hours and so far they’d only managed to agree on a small reticule with cunning beadwork. Grace’s feet hurt. Her slippers were too small but her mother insisted she wear them because they were simply too beautiful not to be seen.

Frustrated tears pressed behind her eyes. Grace looked away, but not before she caught Crispin staring at her with a stern expression. She was sure he realized her suppressed tears weren’t from happiness over a new wardrobe.

“Less, you say? Do you hope to make her look less willowy?” he asked. “Or less interesting?”

Grace thanked him silently with a quirk of a smile.

“I only thought sprigged muslin would be more fitting for a young girl,” Minerva said with a sniff.

    “Perhaps a girl of twelve,” Crispin returned smoothly. “Anyone with eyes can see your daughter is no child.” He turned back to Grace. “By the way, how old are you, Miss Makepeace?”

He used a formal mode of address since they were in public. Modistes were notorious for gossiping tongues once the pins were removed from their mouths. But Grace suspected the seamstress hadn’t missed Crispin’s overly-familiar tone.

“I’ll be two and twenty next month,” she admitted.

“Truly? No wonder your mother wants to disguise your advanced age,” he said with a smirk.

“I’ve heard most of the debutants at Almack’s are closer to sixteen,” her mother said defensively. “Perhaps even younger.”

“Yes, but a gentleman of sense would steer clear of them,” Crispin said. “A man worthy of the name will be more drawn to a statuesque young lady like your daughter. Spare me from a chit in sprigged muslin who chatters all day like a squirrel.”

Statuesque?
No one had ever called her that before. She could almost kiss the man. Her spine straightened slightly.

“Still, some would say two and twenty is a bit long in the tooth. We should have done this years ago, but I never could convince Mr. Makepeace.” Minerva’s brows fretted as she fingered a truly ghastly bolt of green cloth. “If a girlish style can lend her some youth, what’s the harm? We don’t want to show Grace to a disadvantage.”

“Show? Is Almack’s a county fair? You make it sound as if she were a prize heifer!” Crispin mouthed ‘Mistress Vache’ to Grace behind her mother’s back.

She stuck out her tongue at him and decided he hadn’t earned a kiss, no matter how many times he called her statuesque.

“Really, that’s uncalled for!” Minerva said. “You’re putting words in my mouth.”

“One can hardly blame me for trying to improve upon them, madam.” Crispin inclined his head in what appeared to be a deferential nod. Grace was sure it was not. “Especially when your words make so little sense. Is your eyesight poor? How can you fail to see your daughter’s best qualities?”

Minerva’s mouth opened and closed like a trout flopping on a river bank. Then she gathered herself and glared up at him.

“Mr. Hawke, I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” Minerva said with a spine of steel in her tone. “I want the very best for my daughter. I assure you I’m only thinking of Grace.”

“No, I believe you’re only thinking of yourself, Mrs. Makepeace and how Grace’s appearance reflects on you,” he said evenly. “And if you like that insipid sprigged muslin, I suggest you wear it yourself. Your daughter is not the only one who could use some borrowed youth.”

Minerva puffed herself up like a wren on a window ledge. “Well, I never!”

“Probably not, and that may be your trouble.” He turned away from her mother like a potentate dismissing an unworthy subject. “Tell me Grace. What was it you liked about the bombazine?”

“Oh, you’re both impossible.” Grace put her hand to her mouth and fled from the shop, letting the door slam behind her with satisfying thwack. Before she reached the corner, she heard the staccato tap of Crispin’s walking stick behind her. She turned to face him.

He stopped, planted the walking stick between his boots, and leaned toward her.

“Well done, Grace!” He gave her an approving nod. “Don’t give her permission to demean you. If you hadn’t bolted when you did, I’d have had to drag you out by the hair.”

“Did it occur to you that I might be trying to get away from you, too?”

One of his hands shot to his chest. “Me? What did I do?”

“You were unforgivably rude to my mother,” she said with vehemence. “I won’t have you speaking to her like that!”

He frowned. “Hold a moment! In case you didn’t notice, I’m on your side.”

“There are no sides. You’re merely playing one of your infernal games again,” she said with disgust. “And you’re using me as the ball to bat back and forth.”

His lips twitched. “Perhaps a little.”

“Perhaps a lot. Besides, my mother isn’t the one who called me a cow.”

He laughed. “I thought you understood. That’s a private joke between us,
ma petite vache
.”

“It’s not very funny.”

His smile faded. “No, I can see that it’s not. Perhaps I only said it because I wanted to remind you that I stand ready to rescue you . . . again.”

“I can rescue myself, thank you very much.”
No, no, no
. She would not think about the way he fought off those ruffians at Vauxhall for her. Or the way his sharp eyes seemed to bore into her soul and see far too clearly for her comfort.

“I want you to apologize to my mother.”

“I would be happy to,” he said with a sweeping bow. “Just as soon as she apologizes to you.”

Grace folded her arms across her chest and turned to walk on. “She won’t do that. You’ve got to understand, Crispin. She means incredibly well.”

“Indeed. I’m sure a vivisectionist also has noble intent, but at the end of the day his subject is still flayed alive.”

“She honestly doesn’t realize she hurts me.” Grace picked up her walking pace.

“Someone should tell her.” Crispin fell into canting step with her.

She slanted her gaze at him. “Someone just did.”

“Then I hope the truth has its desired effect,” he said. “It’s supposed to set one free, or so I’ve heard. You should make your own choices. She’s trying to mold you into something you’re not.”

“She’s been at it for a while.” Grace laughed mirthlessly. “And she’s had the devil’s own time of it, too. I’m not the most cooperative lump of clay. But if there’s one quality my mother has in buckets, it is persistence.”

“A positive quality,” Crispin said grudgingly. “As one who wrestles with stone for a living, I can’t fail to admire persistence, even in a mother. So long as she’s not trying to run your affairs.”

“Didn’t your mother try to run yours?”

A wall slid down behind his eyes. “We’re not talking about me.”

“Perhaps we should be.”

His lips clamped shut. For the first time since she’d fallen on her face on the Hakkari carpet before him, Grace sensed that Crispin Hawke didn’t know what to say.

“I should return. Mother will be upset.” Grace did an about-face and headed back toward the dress shop. 

“Aren’t
you
upset?” he asked, keeping pace with her.

“No one cares if I’m upset.”

He caught her hand and brought her up short. “You’re wrong, Grace.”

He didn’t say anything else, but her breath was choked off just the same. Was it possible that the darling of the
ton
, London’s most celebrated artist, the cynical genius who insulted his patrons because he could, the one and only Crispin Hawke actually
cared
for someone other than himself?

The idea was ludicrous. No, this was probably just the start of some new game of his.

But if she lived to be a hundred, she’d never forget the way her heart pounded while this dangerously attractive man looked at her with something both desperately earnest and unspeakably wicked glinting in his gray eyes.

* * *

‘
Stupid, stupid, stupid,’
the tap of his walking stick repeated against the cobbles all the way back to the dress shop. Then he felt even worse when he was forced to mouth enough of an apology to appease Minerva Makepeace, that she-dragon whose tender feelings Grace seemed determined to protect.

But it made Grace happy, so he did it.

With his artistic prowess, he’d expected to be more help in choosing the right gowns for Grace. He learned quickly that what a man found pleasing counted for very little when it came to feminine fashion.

Women, it seemed, dressed to please other women. It was an obscure fact, but it was drummed into his head with thoroughness as the day droned on. 

He distanced himself from Miss Washburn, Mrs. Makepeace and her opinionated French maid when they turned to debating the relative merits of Brussels lace over French. Wyckeham, who was stuck minding the phaeton around the corner, had the best luck of the lot.

Then he noticed Grace off by herself, looking at that length of bombazine again. She was frowning down at it with complete absorption.

He moved over to stand next to her. The faint scent of vanilla tickled his nostrils. She usually didn’t wear fragrance, but this one blended perfectly with her natural scent. She was like a plate of something sinfully fresh from a baker’s oven.