Stroke of Genius (3 page)

Her maid’s presence was enough for propriety’s sake. Besides, it wasn’t as if any member of the
ton
would be up and about at this hour.

Or in this neighborhood.

“Allen, please tell Gus to collect us here in time for tea.”

Allen’s lips twitched as if he wanted to say something else, but all he managed was, “Very good, miss.”

“The door we’re wantin’ is about halfway in,” her pint-size guide said over his shoulder. “On the left-hand side. Oh, and I wouldn’t speak to no one we meet, if I was you.”

Drawing a deep breath, Grace left the wider lane and stepped into the sunless cold of the dank little alley.

No one knew for certain why Pygmalion hated people so, but there was undoubtedly one thing he did love. His art.

Why on earth would an artistic genius bury himself here like a fox gone to ground?

Grace doubted the sun ever showed its face in the cramped alley. Cold reached out from the stone-front buildings. It slid its icy fingers down her collar, and slipped indecently under her hem.

“Careful, mam’selle.” Claudette lifted her skirts to keep them from touching the suspect cobbles and her lips formed a moue of disgust.

The alley turned sharply and Grace glanced back to the main street where Allen stood beside the carriage. He was still looking after them, so she waved him on.

“Not much farther now.” Nate shot her an encouraging grin over his shoulder.

“The little beggar is actually enjoying this,” Grace muttered, feeling both anxious and foolish at the same time. While Nate cautioned her against speaking to anyone, he must haunt holes like this every day. “If he can do it, I can do it.”

She pushed deeper into the alley. Shopkeepers were opening on either side of the narrow way. A tobacconist and a chandler squabbled over the limited display space. A sorry excuse for a milliner displayed a dozen ridiculous hats.

Grace kept her head down as she plowed ahead, conscious of the weight of eyes on her from behind curtained windows as she passed. She never tolerated small spaces well. If she’d been the excitable sort, she’d have swooned with relief when she finally reached the arched door with a chisel and hammer swinging from its nameplate. Nate pulled it open and bade her enter with a comical little bow.

“I brung her, Mr. Hawke,” he called out and then dashed around in front of her to find his master. “She’s here.”

“So I see. And right on time, too.” Crispin appeared at the far end of the arched stone foyer and ruffled the lad’s hair good-naturedly. “Off to the workshop with you, Nate. You’ve some polishing to do, I’ll warrant.”

Crispin was wearing an open-collared shirt, which reached his knees, topped by a leather apron. Serviceable trousers, plain shoes and the walking stick completed his attire. His hair was clubbed back and bound into a queue with a leather thong, accentuating his strong features.

He’d been the picture of sartorial elegance when he called at her home. Now he might as well be naked, so far as Polite Society was concerned.

How dare he expose her to gossip! No gentleman appeared before a lady without his jacket, unless he was the lady’s husband.

“Mr. Hawke,” she said in a clipped tone. “Are you in the habit of greeting all your clients in such a shameful state of undress?”

“Undress?” He snorted and held his hands out while he executed a slow turn. “Kindly tell me, Grace, is more of me exposed now than when we first met?”

The breadth of his shoulders was more impressive beneath the gauzy fabric. She could clearly make out
the girth of his biceps, but admitting it would make her cheeks heat even more.

“No?” he said with a grin. “Well, perhaps it’s just wishful thinking on your part.”

“Mr. Hawke!”

“Grace,” he returned smoothly. “Now that we have remembered each other’s names, perhaps we can get down to business. In my studio, I dress simply to spare my wardrobe. Sculpting is a messy activity, as so many pleasurable things in life are.”

He let the innuendo dangle for a few heartbeats. Grace wondered again about that desperately wicked activity called swiving.

“Be grateful I’m wearing as much as I am,” he said. “Sometimes, when the weather turns warm, I dismiss the day help and make do with the apron alone.”

Grace drew a sharp breath at the thought of him with only the rectangle of leather draped across his lap. Not exactly a fig leaf, but deucedly close! His chuckle made her want to kick herself. She had to stop letting him see he could provoke her.

“Then it is my great good fortune that spring is unseasonably cool this year,” she said as Claudette helped her out of her pelisse.

He frowned.

“Is something amiss?” Her barb had struck home! She mentally danced a small circle in glee.

“Yes,” he said with a sigh. “How am I to sculpt your hands if you’re covered to the wrists?”

She hadn’t thought of that. She’d worn the long-sleeved gown in deference to the stiff breeze.

“Most people prefer the forearms be included when I do their hands. I suppose I could do just one hand, palm up,” he suggested, “but we don’t want your father using the piece as an ash catcher for his cigars, do we?”

“My father does not smoke cigars,” she said icily. Horace Makepeace smoked a pipe, but that was beside the point. Did he think Bostonians so backward, they’d use a Crispin Hawke original as an ash catcher?

“Ah! I have it. Wyckham!” His manservant appeared in an instant. “Show Miss Makepeace to the attiring room and let her pick from the Grecian costumes. That should bare her arms sufficiently. Then escort her to the studio. And be quick about it!”

Then he turned and strode away, his walking stick rapping the flagstone floor.

“This way, if you please, miss.” Wyckham took Grace’s pelisse from Claudette with a slight bow and a rakish wiggle of his russet brows.

The unhappy Allen wallowed before Claudette like an untrained puppy, but she barely tossed him a glance. Grace noticed she favored Wyckham with a saucy smile.

Mr. Wyckham led them in the opposite direction from his master. Grace followed him through the tunnel-like foyer into…another world.

After seeing nothing but unyielding stone from the outside, Grace was unprepared for the dance of light in the open atrium spread before her. Flowers rioted in fragrant profusion and a small willow wept in one corner. A fountain pattered in the center of the courtyard and statuary dotted the open space. Her gaze swept up, past the many onion-domed windows opening to the atrium and on to the skylights above. The sun sent long shafts of liquid gold creeping down the western wall of interior windows.

“Oh, my!” Grace ground to a halt, drinking in the unexpected beauty and tranquility of the place.

“Forgive me, miss. I forget sometimes how Mr. Hawke’s home affects visitors the first time. I should have
forewarned you,” Wyckham said. “If you would be pleased to walk with me, I will tell you about what you are seeing. But we must step lively. My master doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

My master. Himself.
Crispin Hawke might not be a titled lord, but he’d certainly carved out a little kingdom and populated it with willing subjects here in Cheapside.

“By all means, let us not inconvenience a genius,” Grace said. “Proceed.”

“Mind the flags. Some have settled unevenly, but that, Mr. Hawke says, is part of their charm. Do be careful, though. He’d be upset with me if you should trip and fall aga—”

Wyckham caught himself, turned back to give her an apologetic shrug, and then continued along the colonnaded edge of the garden. Grace followed. She was too taken with her surroundings to care that Wyckham teetered on the edge of rudeness.

Like master, like servant,
she supposed.

“Mr. Hawke purchased this structure after the interior was completely gutted by fire. Only the stone outer walls were still standing. What you see here is his own design. He says he drew inspiration from his time spent studying in Venice.”

“I’d heard he studied in Paris,” Grace said.

“As you will, miss,” Wyckham said cryptically. He threw open a door and bade Grace and Claudette enter. Floor-to-ceiling wardrobes lined the walls. “Please choose whatever strikes your fancy and I shall wait without.”

Grace allowed Claudette to select a gown. Her mother claimed French maids were supposed to possess exquisite taste. In this instance, Claudette proved her mother correct. She picked out a beautiful palla, but Grace had
to remove all her undergarments for the Grecian costume to drape properly.

“This feels so…”
wicked,
she finished silently as she turned slowly before a tall looking glass. “I doubt they’d smile on this costume in Boston.”

“Oh, la! They smile on nothing in your Boston!” Claudette tossed the excess fabric over one of Grace’s shoulders and fastened it with a cameo brooch. “In London, this is—how you say?—‘quite the done thing.’”

Grace had heard the
ton
was mad for all things classical, but the gossamer fabric was so sheer, it made her feel as though she were clad in next to nothing.

Her little pointy-toed boots, which were the first stare of fashion for strolling in St. James Park, looked ridiculous with the palla. So Grace permitted Claudette to fit her with a pair of slim, gilded sandals whose leather thongs crossed her calves and tied just below the back of her knees.

Even though she was as covered as she would be in a ball gown—barring the sandals, of course—Grace fought to keep from covering herself, fig leaf-style, as Wyckham led her around the atrium. They passed a room where apprentices were sanding already carved works.

One of them was undoubtedly her young guide, but since they wore goggles and scarves to protect them from the marble dust, she couldn’t tell which one was Nate. This was one of the few rooms Grace passed that seemed to have windows open to the outside of the house. The windows were large enough to emit light and provide ventilation, but were positioned too high for anyone to see in.

It was a conundrum. Why did Crispin Hawke insist on living in Cheapside and then fashion his home as a fortress to keep the neighborhood out?

Finally, they came to Crispin’s studio. It was a long, high-ceilinged room, running the length of the garden. Wide-swung double doors were thrown open on the courtyard at intervals to bathe the room with light. Several works graced the space in various stages of completion, from uncut stone monoliths to grainy statuary, finished but for the need for his apprentices to buff the marble to smooth brilliance.

“There you are.” Crispin looked up from his worktable. Several charcoal sketches were spread out before him. “That’ll be all, Wyckham. Please see that Miss Makepeace’s maid is entertained.”

“Yes, sir.”

Claudette tossed Wyckham a long-lidded glance and took his arm without prompting. The pair disappeared quickly down the corridor.

“But—” Grace started to protest, but then remembered it was considered perfectly respectable for a lady to spend time alone with a gentleman provided they were meeting to conduct business of some sort. Her marble sculpture qualified as business.

But Crispin Hawke was no gentleman.

“Please don’t trouble yourself, Grace,” he said as if he’d read her thoughts even though his attention was focused on the sketches before him. “You’ll be safe as houses with me.”

“And why should I believe that?”

“Because if you must know,” he said with a quick glance at her, “you’re not my usual sort.”

She swallowed hard. It was one thing to know she was gawky and ungraceful, another to have it thrown in her face. As a commoner, Mr. Hawke wasn’t a suitor her mother would approve, but his bluntness still stung. She lifted her chin, determined not to let him know how his words cut her.

“I see. Is it my intellect or my refusal to hide it that irks you most?”

“Neither, those are both attractive qualities, which you obviously possess in abundance.”

Nate’s “lamppost” comment rang in her head. “My height, then. I’ve been told some men are put off by tall women.”

“I assure you I have no fear of heights.” He leaned more deeply into his sketches, the charcoal scritching across the paper. “Besides, I top you quite handily.”

She couldn’t go on listing her faults without becoming indelicate, so she simply folded her arms and waited for him to look up. “Then tell me. What ‘sort’ am I that you detest so?”

“The virginal sort.” The devil’s own grin spread across his lips.

“You are contemptible.”

“My dear Grace, you have no idea,” he agreed. “I’m a man of few principles, but one I hold sacrosanct. If there be a God, I fervently pray that He deliver me from virgins.”

“And blasphemous to boot.”

“At every damned opportunity. But you aren’t here to discuss matters metaphysical, I hope.”

He rose and came to meet her, his unusual gray eyes raking her from head to toe. When his gaze lingered on her breasts, her nipples hardened and she was achingly aware that her thin garment did nothing to hide their state. She resisted the urge to fold her arms across her chest. It would only be an acknowledgment of her body’s strange behavior.

“I must say, that costume becomes you, Grace.” His voice was husky. “You look classically lovely enough to grace any urn.”

Yesterday he’d called her “astute” in the same breath
as “spoiled.” Now she was “lovely enough” to be a suitable ornamentation for pottery! Every compliment from this man was delivered with a velvet-gloved slap.

She didn’t know how to respond. “Thank you” might let him think he’d gotten away with his backhanded swipe. Taking him to task for it would make her seem overly sensitive, so she said nothing.

“You may drape her with pearls and shower her with diamonds, but nothing so becomes a woman as silence,” he said.

That made her find her voice. “Mr. Hawke, are you incapable of civil speech?”

“Indeed, miss, I pride myself on my linguistic ability. It is, after all, what separates us from the beasts.”

He offered her his arm and she took it because it would be churlish not to, but she couldn’t bite her tongue hard enough to stifle a muttered, “What separates
some
of us from the beasts.”

His lips twitched in a smile, but he otherwise acted as though he’d not heard her.

“Let me explain how we’ll proceed. Have you ever sat for a portrait in oils?”

“Once when I was a child,” she said. “My mother wanted a family portrait, so I spent hours sitting on my father’s lap, listening to my brothers grouse about being confined inside on fine days.”

As if
they
were the ones forced to balance on their father’s bony knees for what seemed like ages.

“You have siblings?”

“Three older brothers.”