The Painted Lady (2 page)

Oddly enough, that pale blotted area on the female’s chest almost looked as if he had put a bit of multicolored gauze there intentionally, its near transparency tantalizing the eye with what might lie beneath. The blurred texture was a nice touch, he decided, an excellent effect, in fact, lending an air of mystery to the already bewitching figure. A gift package was always more exciting before it was unwrapped, wasn’t it? The woman’s smile almost begged a man to undress her with his eyes, but that scrap of fabric made him wait for the pleasure, heightening his hunger. Caswell could feel his own desire stirring, despite his exhaustion.

Dolly had obviously outlasted her appeal, he decided, if he was lusting after unknown incomparables after a night of loving. He’d make inquiries in the morning, for surely someone had to know such a tempting morsel. He thought he knew all the demimondaines in Town, but this unknown dasher with her knowing smile was no innocent. He’d bet his last shilling on that.

Meanwhile, his enthusiasm restored by the new inspiration, Kasey went back to work placing that one trailing curl just so, adding a fold to the gauze covering, deciding his painted lady needed no floral ornamentation in her hair. She was a rare beauty on her own, and he was a deuced fine painter, if he had to say so himself.

He finished as the sun peeped over the rooftops, and, by Harry, the painting looked even better by daylight. Kasey carried it, easel and all, to the window, despite his utter weariness. He could sleep soon enough, and for hours, drained of physical and mental energy, but entirely satisfied with this night’s efforts. Yes, he nodded to himself, this was his finest work yet. He’d even managed to capture that elusive magic whereby a subject’s eyes nearly followed the viewer and the lips seemed poised to whisper words of love—and all without a live model. Let those imitation Gainsboroughs try that!

Kasey laughed at himself as he washed his brushes again, for the last time. He was a decent-enough painter, for a duke, and that was all, even if his man Ayers swore the canvases almost breathed. Ayers was wont to say that the women were so lifelike they nearly spoke to him. Ayers, of course, was no expert, and not precisely impartial, with Kasey paying his salary.

Nevertheless, Kennard Cartland, Duke of Caswell, was pleased with his work, even if none of his paintings had ever talked to him, at least not before tonight.

He moved the easel back, away from the sunlight, and started snuffing out candles, kicking the flammable rags and his painting smock into a corner for Ayers to gather. He started to leave the attics but turned back, as if his feet were reluctant to carry him away from such a triumph.

Damn, she was beautiful, his incognita, and deucedly desirable. Kasey could feel his passions rising. He reached down to adjust his paint-spattered breeches.

“That’s disgusting.”

His hand dropped to his side. Kasey’s eyes flickered from corner to corner of the room, then landed, with relief, on the wine decanter on his work table. The bottle was still half full but, by Jupiter, must have affected him more than he realized. The wine and the lack of sleep, that was all it was.

“Well, aren’t you going to apologize, bucko?”

Usually if he overindulged, His Grace got a headache. Kasey shook his head now, trying to clear it. His head didn’t hurt a bit. Perhaps if he banged it against the doorjamb ... ?

“You wouldn’t look at a real lady that way, would you?”

He’d never touch a drop of spirits again, Kasey vowed, even as he reached for the decanter with shaking hands. If ever a man needed liquid fortification, this was it. He did not even bother with a glass.

“Faugh.”

The sun was up, his eyes were open, his painting had just said “Faugh.” Kasey sank to the floor, the wall behind him the only thing holding the duke upright. For sure his bones had gone on holiday.

“Jug-bitten jackanapes,” the woman in the painting cursed at him.

“You ... you can talk?”

“You ... you can hear?” she parodied his bewilderment.

“I’ve been trying to get your attention all night, you mutton-headed Michelangelo.”

“But ... but you are a painting, not a person. How can this be?”

“How the deuce should I know, boyo? You’re the creative genius around here.”

Ignoring her muttered, “And you made me look fat, you dim-witted dauber,” Kasey tried to make sense of her previous statement. “You mean I created you?”

He could have sworn her lip curled. “Did you see anyone else in the room tonight, clunch? Of course you painted me.”

He shook his head. “No, not that. I mean, I painted a portrait, but you .
..
” Kasey gave up and waved one hand in the air, encompassing a world of confusion. “You are talking.”

“And making more sense than you are, Duke. You painted me, so here I am. Simple.”

Simple? The orbits of the moon and planets were simple compared to this. “You mean you are some kind of Galatea?”

“I prefer girl to gal, if you don’t mind. More dignified, don’t you know.”

“No, I mean the statue, the ivory statue that came to life when Pygmalion sculpted her. Are you going to step out of the canvas next?” Kasey didn’t know if his heart could survive such a sight, and wanted fair warning.

“Alive, out of my picture? You are good, my lad, but not that good.”

“Then ... then what are you, a ghost?”

The woman considered the possibility. “Whose ghost would I be, nimwit? Your mother’s?”

Lud, his mother, half nude in his attic? Kasey choked on the sip of wine he’d taken. He’d never considered his mother’s breasts since the wet nurse arrived at his birth. “That’s revolting.”

One pale shoulder shrugged. No, Kasey told himself, that was the morning light coming through the window. Paintings did not shrug. They did not speak, either, of course. “Could you be an angel? A messenger from On High? I know I haven’t led an entirely blameless life, but if you are on some kind of divine errand, I am more than willing to reform.”

The woman made an unladylike noise. “Do I look like an angel, you dumb-as-dirt da Vinci?”

She looked like a blessed being of the boudoir, and nothing else. “A genie then, come to grant my wishes?”

“What, stuffed inside an ugly urn till you rub it? Ha! The only thing you’ve been rubbing tonight is your
—
”

Kasey interrupted with a cough. Then he was quiet, considering. There had to be an explanation for this, even if it wasn’t a rational explanation. He dredged his mind through history, folklore, legend, and literature. A witch? He’d have been turned into a toad by now, judging by that slight sneer on his painting’s beautiful face. A mirage? He wasn’t thirsty and this wasn’t the desert. A will-o’-the-wisp? She didn’t seem to be leading him anywhere, except to distraction. Then Kasey latched on to a horrific thought: She was a lamia, a demon sent here from Hell to drain the soul right out of his body. “Lud, is that what you are? A succubus?”

“Here now, Duke, I don’t do that kind of thing, by George. Nor with George.”

“Then what?” he nearly shouted. “What the deuce are you? You’re not flesh and blood, and you’re not a spirit. What in this world—what in any world—are you?”

He knew it wasn’t possible, but the woman’s eyes seemed to lower to her fingertips, as if she were studying her manicure. It was a deliberate delaying ploy, a studied mannerism, one he often used himself to depress pretensions in underlings and hangers-on. When she finally deigned to answer, it was to say, “Why, I am a pigment of your imagination, of course.”

“A
...
? Don’t you mean figment?”

A scowl line briefly formed between her eyes. “If I’d meant figs, I’d have said figs, you toplofty, turnip-headed Tintoretto. I’m a painting, aren’t I? A pigment of your imagination. Your dream, your ideal, your heart’s desire, on canvas.”

Thunderation, when had his heart ever desired a Billingsgate fishwife? The female was beautiful, but she was wasp-tongued, foul-tempered, and flat. Very flat. “No. Not even in my worst nightmares would I conjure you. Not that you are not lovely,” he added, just in case she was a witch, or a demon.

“Then I am something you are missing, some part of you that’s lacking.”

“Bah. What could I be missing? I have everything a man could want—wealth, health, family, friends, influence, you name it
.
”

“Freedom.”

“Excuse me? I am not the one stuck on an easel.”

“And I am not the one forced to paint in a garret by night, hidden away from all those friends and family. I am not the one whose mind and spirit are so split between your two lives that you create phantom lovers.”

“We are not lovers!”

“Not for lack of interest on your part, you lecherous Leonardo.”

“I am not a lecher!” Kasey could not deny his earlier desire. Even now, he could recognize the woman’s sultry appeal. If she were real, of course. “So what am I supposed to do, fall in love with you and be saved from my sorry state? Rescued, redeemed, reformed by the love of my life?”

“You’ve been reading too many of those rubbishing romances, bucko.”

“I only read one, to see what had my aunts so enthused.”

“But you enjoyed it. I know you did. Almost as much as those steamy French novels you keep hidden away. I know what you
—”

“I doubt if I could love you even if my soul depended on it.”

“Well, who is asking you to, anyway? And why should you, for that matter?”

“Well, you are here and you are beautiful, and that’s what usually happens when a man conjures up a woman.”

“Only in his dreams. His erotic dreams at that. Stop thinking with your brush handle for a change, Duke. All of your mistresses have been beautiful and you never fell in love with any of them. It makes no nevermind anyway, because I could never love you.”

That hurt. Females fawned over him everywhere he went. His Grace could have his pick of women from the highest echelons of Society to the lowest tavern wenches, yet this ha’penny’s worth of paint could not love him? She was his, his creation, his fantasy. She had to love him. He flashed her a smile, the one that showed the dimple in his left cheek, the one that never failed to win a warm response.

“Now you’re flirting with a painting? Faugh. Save it for your next mistress. Your wicked wiles mean less to me than your wealth, which is what most of your women truly desire. I could never love a man with no heart.”

Kasey knew he had a heart. Hadn’t it been lodged in his throat this last half hour?
“
I—” he started.

“You take on one mistress, then another, with a willing widow in between. You’ll take a bride when you get around to it, with as much effort as you put into purchasing a new carriage. She’ll have less effect on your life than that.”

“That’s not true.” The part about taking a bride was not, at any rate. Kasey had no intention of letting a wife interfere with his existence. “I have put a great deal of thought into the selection of my duchess.”

“Exactly. Thought. No emotion, no passion. No heart. You save that for your painting. Why, you are thinking of wedding that Granleigh female just because she is suitable.”

“That’s unfair, too. Lady Phillida is more than suitable. She is lovely and well-mannered, and I have known her forever.”

“Bah. You’ve known the gardener’s pretty niece forever, too. You wouldn’t think of wedding her.”

“It’s not the same. And I do hold Lady Phillida in great affection.”

“You hold your favorite horse in greater regard.”

“You don’t understand. That’s the way marriages are contracted in my circles.”

“I understand perfectly, you bacon-brained Botticelli. It’s heartless, that’s what, as bloodless as I am. You’ll take a wife, then a new mistress. She’ll take a lover, then another. Next thing, you’ll look into your children’s eyes and see a stranger.”

Lud, that sounded dismal even to the duke’s ears, dismal and all too common. “A marriage of convenience doesn’t have to be like that, not where there is respect, genuine liking, a basis of commonality that might lead to love.”

“With Lady Phillida? If I had a stomach I’d be nauseated. That chit is all pride and pedigree, with nothing but fluff and feathers for filling. Her character couldn’t fill a corner of my canvas, I’d wager, and she won’t hold your interest or your respect past the honeymoon.”

If that long, Kasey admitted, but not aloud, praying that the phantasmagoria could not read his mind. The duke decided to change the subject. “Uh, what am I supposed to call you?”

The portrait shook its head ever so slightly. No, that had to be a play of shadow from the thin sunlight. The woman definitely wore an expression of disgust that Kasey had never painted there, though.

“You do not have to call me, you ham-handed Holbein. Where the devil do you think I can go?”

“No, I mean how am I to address you? A name?”

“Oh. It’s your choice, of course, but what was that sculpture story you mentioned?”

“Galatea. Is that what you want to be called?”

“Not her, the downy cove who made her.”

“Pygmalion?”

“That’s right, the one who made something out of nothing. Pygmalion, Pigment
...
they are one and the same.”

Kasey had the worrisome notion that the painted lady thought she was going to make something out of him. “I cannot call you Pyg, or Pig, or Piggie. Pee is worse. How do you like Pia?”

“As in pious, or Pieta? At least you have a sense of humor, my boy.”

She could not read his mind, then. Actually he had been thinking of pain in his arse. With a degree of relief, he said, “I’ll have to think on it.” He had a great deal to think on, indeed.

“You do that, Duke. And think on fixing those extra pounds while you are at it. I swear you gave me a double chin. And that curl on my shoulder itches. You could have thought about that, before you got carried away with your last burst of creativity, you debauched David.”

Chapter Three

What a weird dream he’d had. The duke had had some odd dreams in his day—in his nights, more accurately, especially after prawns in oyster sauce—but this one won the prize for peculiar. What had started as a normal, everyday—or night—sexual fantasy had turned to terror. Devil take it, Kasey had not had a nightmare since he wore short pants. Rather than worry over the meaning behind his bad dream— Kasey would leave such interpretations to crystal-ball gazers and tea-leaf readers—he vowed to get more sleep, drink less wine, and go to bed with another blanket on him. He’d been chilled, was all, and no wonder, for he was naked, atop his mattress. The weak sun of daybreak had turned into a dank gray drizzle, and the room was cold despite the fire in the grate.