The Secret to Seduction (13 page)

That’s when she saw Mr. Wyndham. An easel was balanced before him, and he held a paintbrush between his teeth as he stabbed away at a canvas from a palette of colors near him with another brush:
Dot dot dot dot dot dot dot.
And then he transferred the brush in his hand to his teeth deftly and the brush between his teeth to his hand, and went at the canvas with broader sweeping motions, a bit like waving a wand. His shirt was remarkably colorful, splashed everywhere with evidence of previous efforts. No doubt it had once been white. She couldn’t get a look at his trousers from where she stood, but she suspected they were in the same condition as his shirt.

Wyndham looked up and noticed her, and plucked the brush away from his teeth to smile at her. “Well, good afternoon, Miss Fairleigh. I hope you’re feeling better.”

“Yes, thank you, Mr. Wyndham. I don’t wish to intrude. I’ll just—”

“You shan’t be interrupting. Come, tell me what you think of my picture.”

She moved closer and ventured a peek at the canvas. She saw trees, two of them, the needled variety, against a twilight sky. There wasn’t much else on the canvas yet. She supposed the dotting motion had created the blades of grass at the foot of the trees, and the sweeping had created the sky.

“It’s not very good, is it?” He said this matter-of-factly, with no evidence of disappointment, and no sign that he was fishing about for a compliment.

“Well…I . . .” She didn’t know whether she thought it good or not. She’d certainly seen pictures that pleased her more. She was a fair hand at watercolors, but only a fair hand, as she hadn’t much training and truthfully not a good deal of interest in it. And besides, her work at the vicarage left her no time for that sort of thing.

They looked very much like trees, his trees; his sky looked very much like a sky. No doubt it would be an adequate picture when he was finished with it.

“I fear I’m not qualified to judge a painting, Mr. Wyndham.”

“Nonsense. Do you like it, or don’t you, or don’t you know?”

“I suppose I don’t know,” she confessed.

“Ah,” he said cheerfully, folding his arms across his chest. “There you have it. A painting of any merit would have inspired
some
opinion, Miss Fairleigh, and I suspect you have the sensibilities to judge at your disposal, should you choose to use them. I fear I’m average at best, though I would have preferred to own a bit of talent. But Rawden
will
insist on commissioning paintings from me, and his commissions keep me in blunt. He professes to enjoy them, the trees and hills and whatnot. I wouldn’t presume to question his taste in that regard. His taste is usually flawless.”

“Perhaps you should trust his taste then, Mr. Wyndham. Perhaps you are being too modest.”

This seemed to strike him as funny. “
No one
has ever accused me of being too modest, Miss Fairleigh. What I am not is delusional. And I think this may be a pity, because I sometimes believe delusion is the better part of talent. Look at Coleridge, for instance.”

“The poet?” she asked, a little uneasy.

“Never a sober day in his life,” Wyndham confirmed carelessly. “Opium, alcohol, women.” He squinted at his painting for a moment, then lunged forward, rubbed at it with his thumb, then rubbed his thumb on his shirt.

Opium, alcohol, and women.
Good heavens. An alarming reminder that The Libertine came by his nom de plume rather honestly, given the company he kept.

“And that little piece you played last night on the pianoforte? You play quite well, by the way, Miss Fairleigh.”

“Oh? Do I? I—”

“Rawden commissioned it from a small French fellow named La Valle, who composes quite beautifully when he’s not in his cups, and he’s usually in his cups. I’m afraid Rhys rather
keeps
him in his cups, given the number of pieces he’s commissioned. Otherwise, no one would ever know of him.”

“But it was a beautiful piece,” she said, half appalled.

Wyndham laughed up at her. “One does not preclude the other. Art does not require sobriety, Miss Fairleigh.”

“But what of the earl?”

“Oh, Rhys is quite a different case altogether. He’s dabbled in everything that can prevent a man from being sober, of course, but his great tragedy is that he cared for none of it. Came back from the war full of poetry, for some reason. And poetry seems to be his curse and his blessing.”

Such drama, all of these artistic people, with their talk of pain and curses. Sabrina was relieved again to think that she wasn’t subject to being whipped about by undue passion. It was interesting to hear that the earl had come back from the war full of poetry, however.

“But is he a good poet?”

“He’s an extraordinary poet,” Wyndham said matter-of-factly. “And I believe his poetry would shock you to your bones, Miss Fairleigh. Do I shock you now?”

“Yes,” she said fervently.

Wyndham laughed. “I apologize. I honestly don’t know how to speak to proper young ladies, having never spent time with one. But I don’t frighten you.” This last was a statement.

“Strangely, no.” It was a jest.

“What a pity.” He smiled at her then, and seemed to look at her fully. She half suspected he’d been
out
to shock her, that his little speech had been a monologue of sorts in part for his own entertainment, for all of these artistic people seemed rather enamored of themselves.

But now he was noticing her in earnest. Mr. Wyndham was handsome, too, she couldn’t help but note, with a silent apology to Geoffrey. Lean, as though he never ate very much, not terribly muscular, with russet hair. His nose was a bit strong and blunt—she suspected it had been broken once—but the rest of his face was elegant, and his eyes were narrow and dark, which suited him: they were rather like the crossbow slits cut into castle walls. The intelligence beaming from them was more concentrated for all of it.

Sabrina turned when she heard boots strike marble behind her. And there was the earl himself. She felt her body bracing in his presence, as though all of her faculties needed to be marshaled to take him in.

“Good afternoon, Miss Fairleigh.” Such a lovely, low voice. It must be a family characteristic, as Geoffrey was capable of such a voice when he gave a sermon, though his was softer, more of an entreaty than a command. “Are you feeling better, then?”

“Yes, thank you. Mrs. Bailey brought up a headache powder and chocolate.”

The earl laughed at this. “Oh, most of the world’s ills can be solved with headache powder and chocolate. Did she smile at you? I can never get her to smile, no matter how I try, and she has been with La Montagne for as long as I can remember.”

The blizzard wind had triumphantly found the chimney for the room, and sent the fire wildly dancing for an instant.
Everything
seemed to become more extreme in the earl’s presence.

“No,” she finally remembered to answer. “I fear she didn’t smile.” Thinking that if the earl couldn’t get her to smile, then Mrs. Bailey was an impenetrable fortress.

“Are you troubling Miss Fairleigh, Wyndham?”

“She was offering an opinion on my painting.”

“And did she like it?”

“She ‘doesn’t know.’?” Wyndham made it sound like he was quoting her.

“Oh, Miss Fairleigh.” The earl mimicked clutching a knife to his heart. “Don’t you know that’s the worst possible thing you can say to an artist?”

He was teasing.

“As I’ve said very little to artists before this week, perhaps Mr. Wyndham will find it in his heart to forgive me,” she said lightly.

Good heavens. Was she
flirting
? She
was
flirting. Sabrina blinked, disconcerted by this thought. It had just popped out, the flirting.

The earl turned to her. “Your friends have gone on a journey to visit the Colberts, Miss Fairleigh.”

“Yes,” she confirmed, a bit cautiously.

“And you are alone here.”

“Yeees,” she repeated.

“Are you concerned about what your father, Vicar Fairleigh, might think, of you left alone without your chaperone?”

How bright his eyes were when he was teasing.

“My father would assume an earl would perhaps be possessed of more manners and scruples than other men, and shouldn’t worry on my behalf.”

This probably wasn’t at
all
what Vicar Fairleigh would think, but it made the earl laugh again. She realized she very much enjoyed watching him laugh.

“I hope you will join us on the tour of the house, Miss Fairleigh. Wyndy, please change your shirt. I won’t have you walking about covered in paint.”

Wyndham cheerfully stood and began packing away his painting supplies.

“I hesitate to leave you alone with the earl, Miss Fairleigh, but I shall return very shortly. And he only bites when requested.”

He winked as he departed.

“And even then, it’s rather pleasant,” came the purring voice of Miss Licari, who had just prowled into the room.

All this talk of biting no doubt had a prurient meaning. Sabrina decided it was intended to make her uncomfortable, and for that reason she refused to feel uncomfortable.

“The stained-glass windows are very beautiful,” she said, pretending she hadn’t heard. “The moon looks so pensive.”

The whimsical observation was out of her before she could stop it.

“Pensive?” The earl looked a moment, his expression unreadable. And then he looked up at the windows Sabrina had been admiring earlier, at the solemn stained-glass moon presiding over the vivid splash of stars, and appeared to give this serious thought. “I suppose it does, doesn’t it? The windows were made in a tiny mountain town in Italy—Tre Sorelle—by a craftsman who does extraordinary work. Signor Giovanni Santoro. I commissioned them because they reminded me of something my friend Damien Russell said at Waterloo. And because, of course, I thought they suited the stars on the ceiling. Signore Santoro and I discussed colors for them, and how the light would shine through them and make a reflection on the floor at very specific times of day.”

“He is a cur,” Sophia said in her voice that made it sound as though she were just waking up and stretching deliciously. “Santoro. But he makes lovely things,” she allowed.

Sabrina never knew quite what to say to Sophia Licari.

The singer was radiant today, an aria in a dress. Fair hair pinned up, a gown the color of mulberries in heavy silk, the neckline of which possessed only a glancing acquaintance with propriety. The mounds of her breasts peeked up out of it like a pair of pearls.

Sabrina cast a surreptitious glance down at her own neckline, which was appropriate to the weather outside. A practical dress. And then she glanced up and noticed that the earl was doing the very same thing at the very same time. His glinting eyes flicked up to meet hers.