Stroke of Genius (15 page)

“And when she saw it, she was speechless for a full quarter hour,” Crispin said. “Her husband insisted on paying me a bonus. For the rare gift of her silence.”

Olympia laughed, then she cocked her head at him. “While you’re regaling me with all these doings, your eyebrows are jousting over that fine nose of yours. There’s something else, I think.”

He neglected to mention his work with Grace.

“A young lady, perhaps?” she asked with shrewdness.

Crispin shifted in his seat and then leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “I could never keep anything secret from you.”

“Not even the calf-love you bore me all those years ago,” she said with an indulgent grin.

“Who could blame me? You were a goddess.”

“A goddess who wanted nothing to do with despoiling a child. But you were a very tempting boy, I’ll give you that. So tall and mature for your age. That shock of raven hair and those enormous gray eyes of yours. You tempted me sorely.”

Olympia had never been less than frank in matters of the flesh, no matter how shocking. Crispin wasn’t surprised to hear that she’d considered initiating him into manhood even at that tender age. He’d wanted her with youthful desperation at the time, but thanked her better judgment now.

Olympia was his friend and more a mother to him than the pale creature with curly dark hair who bore him. His real mother died so early in his life he barely remembered her. All he had of her was that scrap of linen he’d squirreled away in his secretary desk drawer.

Even through the years of scrabbling for himself, he wouldn’t ever part with it. It was his one link to his shadowy mother and to the well-born, anonymous gentleman with the initials CRS, who made a bastard of him.

Since Olympia lifted him from the gutter, his love for her was as deeply filial as any mother could wish.

He
was grateful she wasn’t his former lover.

“Good thing you could draw,” she admitted. “I sent you away for both our sakes.”

Crispin blessed her every day for it.  

“But you’ve drawn me off topic,” she said, and Crispin discreetly failed to point out that she was the one who veered their conversation into the past. “Tell me about this girl of yours.”

“She’s not my girl.” Crispin dragged a hand over his face.

“What’s the trouble? Is she married?”

“No, I wish she was.”

Olympia chuckled. “Ah yes, I forgot. A husband would be no impediment for you. You could simply add her to your ‘Unhappy Wives of Inattentive Husbands Club’ and bed her promptly. Is she at least betrothed?”

“Not yet,” he said. Then he spilled the whole tale. Crispin told his friend of his vivid dreams and the sketch he’d done of Grace before he even met her.

“Amazing. You know, the women at the
Abbey
told me your mother was a gypsy,” Olympia said. “They’re a mystical lot. It’s not unusual for them to see into the future. If you saw this girl in your dreams, your foreknowledge seems to confirm gypsy blood.”

“Rubbish,” he said. “Grace was just an idea rolling around my head, a figment, a—”

“A dream that came true,” Olympia mused into her teacup.

He scowled at her. “Do you want to hear the rest or not?”

She waved him on.

Crispin told Olympia about his commission to do Grace’s hands, and her planned assault on the
ton
. “She means to marry a title.”

“And you want her.”

“Yes.” The word blurted out his mouth before passing through his brain. “No.”

“Which is it?”

“I don’t know, dammit.” Crispin stood and paced the length of the room, his walking stick digging into the rich Persian weave of Olympia’s carpet with each step. “She . . . irritates me.”

“Hmmm,” Olympia purred.

“Don’t ‘hmmm’ at me.” He stopped and glared at her. “What does that mean? Hmmm!”

“Nothing at all, dear, I’m just thinking.” She put her teacup aside and clasped her hands together with obvious glee. “What about her irritates you?”

He ran a hand through his hair. “The way she talks, the way she thinks . . . Blast it all, she’s even a virgin!”

Olympia pursed her lips. “There’s a flaw that’s easily remedied.”

“Yes, but I’m not ready to be leg-shackled,” he said, resuming his pacing. “A man doesn’t play with a virgin unless he’s prepared to pay dearly for the privilege. With his whole life.”

“So you want her, but you don’t want to marry her.”

“But I’ve been . . .” He closed his eyes and felt the warmth of her breast under his palm again. Her little gasp when he tugged her nipple was burned into his brain. Now the memory leaped to his cock afresh. No, he would not torment himself again. “I’ve behaved stupidly.”

“That’s quite an admission coming from you, my brilliant friend. How stupidly? Have you taken her maidenhead?”

    “No.” Only in his sweaty, sticky wet dreams. “A man’s cock may try to lead him where his brain fears to follow, but so far, I’ve not traveled to that blessed, forbidden, damnably desirable country.”

“You want to bed her, but not wed her.”

“I believe we’ve established that fact already.” He flopped back into the chair and stretched out his bad leg. He almost asked Olympia if he might have something stronger than milk in his next cup of tea, but getting schnockered wouldn’t help his predicament. He threw up his hands. “I don’t know what to do.”

Olympia giggled. Then she chuckled. Then she laughed till tears streaked her cheeks.

“I’m glad my plight amuses you,” he said without mirth.

She swiped her eyes. “Well, it appears so simple to me. You’re the genius. I don’t know why you haven’t seen the obvious solution.”

“If you care to enlighten me, madam, I’d be profoundly grateful.”

“My dear boy, if this Grace is intent on marrying a titled gent, then by all means, you must help her. Do all you can to see her suitably wed to the sort of nobleman who will assist
your
cause.”

He frowned.

“Find her a fellow with a title in his hand and one foot in the grave.”

Crispin tried to imagine Grace agreeing to a match with someone so much older or sicker. He shook his head. “I know she’s set on a title, but I don’t think she’d go that far to get one.”

“Pity. Lots of young girls stomach a gouty old goat long enough to make a marriage legal,” Olympia said. “And then when she’s a merry widow, there you’d be to console her.”

Crispin pictured Grace in black. If the warm brown silk made her skin come alive, black would wash her out completely. And Grace wasn’t the type to marry strictly for convenience. No, she wouldn’t make a merry widow, even if she despised her husband.

“Then match her with a rake,” Olympia suggested. “And while he’s tomcatting around London, you can gallantly step in to warm her lonely bed. That way, everyone gets what they want.”

That scenario rang truer in his mind. He’d consoled many an unhappy wife. It was almost a public service. Crispin was just doing his small part to brighten the lives of the unloved.

However, he resisted seeing Grace yoked to someone who was bound to give her grief. Crispin wanted her with an ache that was almost a sickness.

But he didn’t want her to suffer for it.

“Think on it, dear boy,” Olympia said. “You’ll see that I’m right.”

He’d think on it. Thinking was all he’d been doing. Grace, when he woke. Grace, while he worked. Grace, when he lay on his bed at night, clutching his sheets and waking with a corner of his pillow tucked between his lips, sucking her tight little nipples in his dreams.

He did plenty of thinking.

But if he didn’t
do
something else soon, he was going to burst out of his own skin. 

Chapter 16

Aphrodite’s advice rolled round and round in his head. He fought against its pull with all his might, but someone should have warned him that not even the gods could resist Aphrodite.

And Pygmalion was no god.

Wyckeham cleared his throat at the threshold to Crispin Hawke’s studio.

“Go away, Wyckeham!”

“But, sir, Miss Makepeace is here.”

His master’s massive shoulders tensed. “Tell her to go away, too.”

“And how, I’d like to know, shall you fulfill your commission if you turn out your model?” Miss Makepeace spoke up from behind Wyckeham.

She pushed around him and entered the private sanctuary without permission. Wyckeham cringed, waiting for the explosive response, but Hawke didn’t even turn around to face her.

“I’ve heard you described as a genius,” she continued, “but it’s beyond even your powers to produce a miracle from thin air.”

Then Crispin Hawke turned around and gave her a sardonic bow. He’d rolled his shirtsleeves up and his hands and forearms were streaked with gray clay to the elbows.

“My dear Grace, you take an awful chance coming here unannounced. The day is warm and I seriously considered working in just my leather apron.” One dark brow arched in question. “But perhaps that happy circumstance was what you were hoping for.”

If Miss Makepeace had been a porcupine, all her quills would have been standing on end.

“Come, Claudette,” she said as she whirled about.

Wyckeham sighed. He’d hoped for a little more time with her maid Claudette, that lovely French baguette with feet. She’d fallen quickly into his feather tick the last time she was here and they’d become exceedingly fast friends. Wyckeham was planning to stretch things out this time. Adventurous, willing and incredibly wet, the blonde lady’s maid was just the sort of bedmate he preferred to polish his knob.

And this time Wyckeham hoped to wring a few “oo-la-la’s” from the little French witch.

“No, stay,” Hawke said, starting to catch Miss Makepeace by the elbow, but stopping shy of his goal because of his clay-crusted hands. “You should at least see how your sculpture is coming along.”

Hawke stepped aside and the piece he was working on came into view. The work was rising out of a mound of clay, two willowy arms, hands tilted just so. Earthen fingers grasped the tips of the hand with the unbuttoned glove. Even without a live model, the casting of Miss Makepeace’s hands was taking sensual shape.

“Oh!” She stared at it open-mouthed. “I stand corrected. A miracle worker, too.”

“Hardly,” Hawke said with more humility than Wyckeham had ever heard from him. “It would be much easier with a live model. Stay, Grace.”

Miss Makepeace nodded. “Very well.”

Wyckeham slanted his gaze at Claudette. The little minx licked her bottom lip and tossed him a wink. His willy rose like a tower in his trousers. As one, he and Claudette turned to go, anticipating Hawke’s order that he “entertain” Miss Makepeace’s maid.

“But I’d like Claudette to remain here with us,” Miss Makepeace said with determination. Wyckeham and the French wench froze in mid-step.

His willy flagged a bit.

“No, I never allow anyone but my subject in the studio when I’m working.”

Hope rose in Wyckeham’s chest and his willy with it.

“But I insist,” Miss Makepeace said.

Wyckeham’s willy retreated back into its foreskin sheath.

“And I resist. You stay here with me alone or not at all.” Hawke folded his arms across his chest, heedless of the gray stains he left on the white shirtfront.

Emboldened by the master’s stance, “Big Will” peeped out his head again inside Wyckeham’s smallclothes. There was still every chance for a frisky romp with the delectable Claudette.

“Then you leave me no choice but to go,” the lady said.

Oh, no.
This “jack-in-the-box” routine left Wyckeham slightly light-headed.
A man’s willy can only take so much teasing.

“Go, then, but I cannot answer for the consequences,” Hawke said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Miss Makepeace’s face was really quite angelic, but right now she looked as if she’d relish smashing a demon or two and hurling them back into the pit.

Starting with Wyckeham’s master.

“Just that I can’t guarantee the accuracy of the sculpture if I’m basing it solely on sketches and memory,” Hawke explained. “It would be a shame if, say, one of your lovely hands should suddenly sprout a sixth finger.”

He picked up a small lump of clay, rolled it between his palms into the likeness of a slim appendage and wiggled it at her.

“You wouldn’t.”

“Only if I must, Grace.”

Hawke’s lips twitched in a smile, but Wyckeham knew his will was like iron. He’d set his feet and there was no budging Crispin Hawke once he’d done that.

Miss Makepeace’s eyes flared and her nostrils quivered. Wyckeham couldn’t be sure she wouldn’t call Hawke’s bluff. It certainly wasn’t worth getting his hopes up—or anything else, for that matter—until she announced her decision.

Miss Makepeace made a noise in the back of her throat, somewhere between a growl and curse, and untied her bonnet.

She stays!

“Mind this for me, please,” she ordered Claudette.

Claudette dropped a saucy curtsey as she took the bonnet and slanted Wyckeham a look that set his blood surging hot again.

“Wyckeham!” Hawke’s gaze didn’t leave Miss Makepeace for even a heartbeat. Good thing. Even though she was a lady and all, she had the look of a wench who might lay into him if he let down his guard. “See that you make Miss Makepeace’s maid feel welcome.”