Portrait of a Forbidden Love--A Sexy Regency Romance Read online

  ‘Yes, in the workroom. They’re not up.’ Adelaide Stansfield rose. ‘Would you like to see them?’ She was so earnest he felt a twinge of guilt about misleading her, yet wasn’t this better for all involved? There would be no arguments, no unpleasant scenes.

  The workroom at the back of the house had been transformed into an artist’s haven. He took it in with a practiced eye; a drop cloth covered the floor, speckled with paint splatters, canvases stood propped against a wall, an easel showed a work in progress. In the mornings the light would be fantastic. He stopped and surveyed the sketches on the table. Artemisia had been busy since departing London. ‘Might I have some time to study the paintings?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course, I’ll leave the lamp.’ Adelaide Stansfield excused herself, giving him privacy. He held the light up to each canvas, not all of them complete yet. Still, the amount of work she’d done was impressive. She’d have quite the collection to show the Academy in March. They wouldn’t like it. Surely she knew that. And she’d done it anyway. The palette she’d chosen was stark and masculine. The Academy would take issue with that. Women should paint flowers and still life. Even Mary Moser had had enough sense to realise that. Women painted in pastels, in bright blues or pinks, not in grey and taupe. No, the Academy wouldn’t like it at all, not her palette, not her style, not her subject matter—geese, birds, marshes, weathered boats. She’d depicted a landscape battered by nature. It drew the eye, most certainly, but it did not please the eye, not like Constable’s landscapes of southern England with their soft colours and light.

  There were quiet steps behind him. Adelaide Stansfield had returned. ‘What do you think, Mr Rutherford?’ she solicited, her tone clearly indicating she expected him to be pleased with what he saw. He hated to disappoint her.

  ‘I shall have to consider them. They are not what I expected and I’m not sure they shall suit. Perhaps I’ll send word from the inn if I decide on any.’

  Some of her pleasantness faded. ‘I assure you this is exquisite art. You must consider the artist’s use of light and receding planes. The simplicity of the work is deceptive, sir,’ Adelaide Stansfield argued in spirited defence.

  ‘Miss Stansfield, you do your sister a great credit. But have you considered that you are biased?’ He made a bow, ‘I do appreciate your time. Thank you for the tea.’ He took his leave then before Miss Stansfield could further her case.

  * * *

  The walk back to the inn in the near dark provided an opportunity for reflection. The artwork he’d seen today had stunned him. What did Artemisia Stansfield think to prove? She’d been given licence to promote herself by painting anything she liked, anything that showed her talent to the Academy, and she’d chosen to defy convention on every front. Did she guess the probation was a sham? Did she guess that nothing would change the Academy’s mind? If not, why would she tweak their noses and throw away what she perceived as her chance? If so, what did she seek to prove with this swansong of sorts?

  * * *

  Upstairs in his chamber, Darius shed his coat and boots and settled to a warm meal of jugged hare and vegetables accompanied by a more than adequate red wine and fresh bread. He was halfway through the bottle when the answer came to him. Artemisia Stansfield was staging an invasion, one last glorious attack on the bastion of male uniformity. Did she think she stood a chance? That her invasion could succeed? It wouldn’t. She ought to save her strength for battles she could win.

  Darius set aside his napkin, the tub beside the fire steaming and ready for him. He stripped out of his clothes and sank into the blessed waters, eyes closed. Someone ought to tell her. It would be a painful lesson in the short term, one she would be reluctant to hear, but a necessary one that would save her pain in the long run. Why should she spend her life railing against a system that would never let her in? Why have a life of futile striving and desperation?

  Darius leaned his head back against the rim of the tub, letting the heat and the wine do their work. He’d once been enlightened about the limits of his own talents at the impressionable age of sixteen. He would never be anything but a dauber, a hobbyist. Anyone who’d told him otherwise was merely pandering to a lord’s son’s vanity in an attempt to curry favour. His father had been relieved when he’d set down his brush and focused on his studies. It had hurt, certainly. But in hindsight it was probably for the best. He was thirty-four now and he hadn’t touched a brush in almost two decades. Still, he’d found a way to be involved in art as a patron and a critic—both were roles much more suitable for his station. Where Viscount St Helier led, others followed. What more could he want?

  Chapter Four

  Artemisia scrunched her brow, trying to follow her sister’s story as she stripped out of her oilskin slicker and muddy boots. The day had been wet and long as she sketched rain at the estuary. She’d wanted to study the slant of the rain and its sheeting. The outing had been a success in that regard, less so in others. She’d spent the day under a canopy, drawing and trying to keep her paper dry. Now, her sister was talking of a visitor who’d come to buy her artwork.

  ‘He came all the way from London and then decided he didn’t like any of it?’ Artemisia summarised with some incredulity. It was a long way to come and then not purchase anything, not that she had anything for sale—another reason this story of Addy’s didn’t make sense. It was also a long way to come not knowing if there was any work to buy in the first place.

  ‘That’s what he said.’ Addy shook off the oilskin and hung it up on a peg in the hall.

  ‘What was his name? Did he leave a card?’ Artemisia worked off her boots. She’d worn trousers today instead of skirts for the wet estuary.

  ‘Mr Rutherford.’

  Artemisia’s hand paused on her boot. ‘Rutherford? Darius Rutherford? He was here?’ He’d not introduced himself as Viscount St Helier, but as Darius Rutherford, which meant he’d come as the art critic. Rutherford had been here and she had not.

  ‘He didn’t offer a first name. He was tall, dark-haired, dark-eyed,’ Addy described. ‘Do you know him?’

  ‘Know him? Yes, he’s an art critic. He was at the assembly meeting in December.’ What was he doing in Seasalter? It obviously wasn’t coincidence. He’d known she was here, he’d come to the farmhouse expressly to seek her out. A suspicion formed in her mind. Had he come to check on her? To bring a report back to the Academy? Artemisia tensed. ‘Did you show him the paintings?’ Addy flinched at her tone and she instantly regretted it.

  ‘Yes, did I do wrong? I thought he was here to purchase something,’ Addy apologised.

  Artemisia shook her head and hugged her sister. ‘No, you did fine, you couldn’t have known. I’m not mad at you, I’m mad at him.’ How dare he come haring over to Kent to spy on her, to mislead her sister into showing him the new collection, and how dare the Academy put him up to it? She had until March and it was only two weeks into January. It was unconscionable. She grabbed her recently divested oilskin and shrugged into it. The Academy had enough leverage as it was, they hardly needed to resort to spying on her. It merely added insult to injury that they’d now taken to invading her sanctuary.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Addy cried. ‘You just got back, dinner is waiting.’

  ‘To the Crown, to give Darius Rutherford a piece of my mind.’ Probably more than one piece, more like five or six. He’d duped her sister and encroached on her studio. He would not get away with either of those crimes.

  * * *

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing, spying on me?’ The sharp words and slamming door penetrated the relaxed fog of Darius’s brain. He sloshed upright in the tub, sending water over the edge as his eyes flashed open. Doom approached in the guise of the long-legged Artemisia Stansfield advancing towards the tub in all her temperamental glory and trousers, a full bucket of water in her hands. He didn’t think for a moment the water was warm.

  ‘Put that
down!’ The words were out of Darius’s mouth as the only defence he was able to launch, caught at his most vulnerable. The words came too late, they couldn’t stop her. Artemisia upended the bucket, sluicing ice-cold water over his head.

  ‘Damn! Do you want to kill me?’ he yelped, his delightful hot bath completely ruined and his teeth chattering from the sudden shock.

  ‘At least you saw me coming. That’s more advantage than you gave my sister.’ She pointed a long, slim finger at him. ‘You gained entrance through misrepresentation. No one misleads my sister and no one goes into my studio without my permission.’ She was a stormy sight, eyes flaring, hair loose. Not all that different than in his imaginings.

  Even muddy and bedraggled, she was a force to be reckoned with. He was unprepared and he shouldn’t have been. He should have known she’d come, that she wouldn’t allow his stealthy invasion without retaliation. He certainly hadn’t thought she’d come tonight, though. This was the second time he’d underestimated her. He would have words for whoever had not secured his door, but that couldn’t change anything now. Darius held up the white towel in a gesture of truce. ‘Let me get out of the tub so we can discuss this.’

  ‘You can stay in the tub, for all I care.’ She crossed her arms over her chest and fixed him with her grey stare.

  ‘Perhaps I’d like to get out.’ The water was cold and he recognised a dare when he heard it. Did she think he was such a prude that he’d rather lurk in a tub of cold water than emerge in front of her?

  She shrugged. ‘Suit yourself.’ Her gaze did not waver, making it clear she wasn’t going to turn away. If he wanted to get out of the tub, he’d have to do it without the benefit of modesty.

  ‘Fine.’ Darius pushed up from the water and stepped out of the tub, making no hurry to dry himself. Let her look if she wanted. He wasn’t ashamed and she wouldn’t be the first woman to see him in his altogether. He was naked and made no effort to hide it. If she could call his bluff, he could certainly call hers. She had issued the dare and he had answered with one of his own. Perhaps she felt she could not look away without admitting her challenge had been a hot-headed bluff, a confession that she hadn’t really thought he’d do it, let alone stand there in the buff, taking his own leisurely time towelling off.

  He was aware of her eyes on him, aware too that she’d have seen naked men before—artists often did. How did he compare? he wondered. He was conscious of her gaze moving objectively over his shoulders, to the curve of his buttocks as he bent to towel his legs. Her gaze would see him objectively, artistically, all muscle and smooth skin. That was her armour, of course, her protection in the game of dares they currently played. It allowed her to boldly advance. He found he wanted more than that from her. He wanted a subjective reaction, something that said she saw him as a man, not an object.

  He straightened and felt her eyes rivet on the core of him, proof that her appraisal wasn’t entirely objective. His body stirred from semi-arousal to something more obvious. He had the reaction he wanted, but at a cost to himself. Darius wrapped the towel about his hips. The game was over. A draw. He met her gaze with a challenge of his own. Had she seen anything she liked?

  ‘You’re a well-made man, from an artist’s perspective, that is,’ she answered, unabashed by the bold question in his gaze. She took a seat by the fire and crossed one trousered leg over a knee.

  ‘And from a woman’s?’ Darius took the other chair, pulling his discarded shirt over his head.

  ‘I’m sure you already know the answer to that.’ Artemisia didn’t bother to dignify the remark with a response. ‘What I’d like answered is what you are doing in Seasalter?’

  ‘I’m sure you already know.’ He tossed her words back, waiting to see her plan of attack now that her anger had waned—at least he hoped it had. He took a surreptitious look about the room in search of any remaining buckets of water. He didn’t care for another dousing.

  Subtlety and patience were not weapons in Artemisia Stansfield’s arsenal. She went right for the kill. ‘I think you’ve been sent to spy on me so that when I return in March the Academy can move their bar once more and declare my art not suitable for membership.’ The last was said with just a hint of an upward inflection. She wanted to be wrong. She wanted him to denounce her theory, to suggest that she was seeing conspiracies where there were none. He couldn’t do it.

  ‘You’re not entirely wrong,’ Darius offered after a thoughtful pause. ‘I am here to check on you, as you suspect. As to what the Academy will do with that information, I can’t say.’

  ‘Can’t say or won’t say?’ Artemisia corrected.

  ‘Miss Stansfield, I understand you are disappointed,’ Darius said, hoping to soothe her.

  Artemisia snapped at him for his efforts. ‘Disappointed? I am beyond disappointed. I am in absolute disbelief that a group of men are so intimidated by a single female’s talent that they would deny her membership for no reason other than her gender. But I am furious over the lengths to which they’d go to obscure that truth. They’ve set up a probation, knowing full well they never intend to honour it. I could paint the damn Mona Lisa and it wouldn’t be good enough for them. Whatever standard I meet they will make another.’

  She gave him a hard stare. ‘So, don’t sit there and patronise me when you are part of the problem simply by being here, by acting as their tool.’ Darius stiffened at the affront. Men had been called out for less. How inconvenient that Artemisia Stansfield was very much a woman, trousers or not.

  ‘Have you considered you do yourself no favours? I saw the artwork—it will not appeal to them. You are tweaking their noses and cutting off your own in the process.’

  ‘Shall I paint flowers, then? I promise you they won’t like them either,’ Artemisia retorted.

  ‘Since there are no flowers, I can only report on what I saw,’ he reminded her. Someone needed to counsel her to caution.

  She gave a humph. ‘Cut and run, is that it? Did you really think you could avoid seeing me? That you could dash into the farmhouse, sneak a peek at the artwork and call that a report?’ She rose and began to pace, her temper visibly riding her hard. ‘Do you know how it made me feel today when I heard you’d been there, in my studio? I felt violated, as if someone had looked into my soul, into the depths of me against my will.’

  He gave her a sharp look. ‘Against her will’ was a far stronger phrasing than merely ‘without my permission’. This was the rhetoric of rape. What did Artemisia Stansfield know about that which caused her to align it with his visit today? He had no sympathy for men who raped and, in its strictest sense, it happened far more often than he liked to admit. ‘I am sorry you see it that way.’

  ‘Apologies are cheap and easy after you already have what you wanted.’ Artemisia was not fazed. ‘Far easier to apologise than to ask for permission,’ she said sharply.

  ‘Are you never not the cynic?’ Darius retorted. ‘Not everything is a conspiracy, Miss Stansfield.’

  ‘Are you sure about that? Try seeing the world from my point of view for a few days and let me know your answer then.’

  Darius blew out a weary breath. This was going nowhere and he desperately wanted to go to bed. The day had been long and full of disappointments. ‘What do you want, Miss Stansfield? If it’s to vent your anger and give me a piece of your mind, you’ve done that. If it’s something more, I haven’t any idea what it is. If you could tell me, perhaps I might be better able to provide it.’ Appeasement wasn’t always the best conflict management strategy, but it would get him what he wanted. She would leave, he could go to bed and in the morning he could leave and get back to his life.

  ‘I want you to give me a fair report.’

  ‘I will. I saw the paintings today.’

  ‘Did you like them?’ Artemisia probed, leaning against the small mantel like a gentleman in the drawing room, an entirely manly posture. One of many tha
t she had—the way she’d crossed her leg over one knee, her tendency to shake hands. Another survival technique she’d perhaps adopted to assimilate into the male world of art, part of the armour he was coming to recognise.

  ‘My personal opinion is not relevant.’ He watched the fire pick out the amber highlights in her hair, flickers of flames among coals. It was a losing battle. No one would ever mistake her for a man.

  She arched a slim brow in challenge. ‘Since when is the opinion of an art critic not relevant? Isn’t your job all about opinions?’

  ‘Objective opinions, opinions based on the founding principles of good art. Not opinions grounded in nothing but subjective emotion. Everybody has one of those.’ He was having one right now, in fact, one that concluded Artemisia Stansfield was an unconventionally attractive woman, even in trousers.

  If she’d thought trousers made her appear less feminine, she was mistaken. Those trousers were accentuating her long legs and compactly rounded backside in ways a ballgown never would, while the mannish shirt she wore billowed gently over the high full curves of her breasts, fooling no one as to her gender.

  But that slender body of hers wasn’t the sole attraction. There were other attractions: the slim column of her throat, matched by the proud patrician length of her nose, the curve of her cheekbones which had the potential to lend her both the look of angel or Fury depending on her mood, and those alert grey eyes. A man looking for an ornament on his arm could do no better. But that man would miss the truth of her.

  She was all fire, that was her chief attraction. Men were drawn to flames, to the danger fire posed. Some to quench it, some to revel in the thrill of fighting it. Others to be consumed by it. Still others to tame it. What a feat that would be, Darius mused, to tame the fire that was Artemisia Stansfield. Taming might start with telling her the truth while she still had time to correct her course of self-destruction.