Her body was warm and relaxed now, its memory of Bay imprinted on every plane and fold. She hoped she could find the switch to turn off her feelings when the month was up. It would be the challenge of her life.


“Bah.” Bay stood before the window in the morning room, watching the rain thunder down. Charlotte sat at a table, her hands flying with bobbins and thread. He had observed her, nearly growing dizzy at her dexterity. Her pattern was pinned to a little pillow. He would go cross-eyed trying to figure it all out. He’d never had the opportunity to think about lace, or many female occupations before, if it came to it. His grandmother’s interests were limited to gardening and gossip. Tramping through the mud carrying a heavy kit to kill the enemy had been his priority for a decade. The wenching and gambling afterward were his peacetime reward.

“How did you come to make lace?” he asked, bending over her shoulder. He deliberately blew his breath on her neck.

Her clever hands paused, then resumed their effort. “There was a neighbor in Bexington. Deb and I would visit her when our parents were otherwise occupied.” She looked up at him, her blue eyes somber. “They drank, you know. First as a lark, as everyone does. It was all merry fun-house parties and other entertainments. Trips to town while we stayed behind. They had scores of friends. My papa could charm the bark off a tree. My mama was the ultimate lady, always with admonishments to us girls about our deportment, but somewhere along the way her tea became spiked with brandy, and there was champagne at breakfast. Pictures started disappearing off the walls. Mr. Peachtree became a fixture in our life. Deb ran wild. And so, in the end, did I.”

“Charlie.” His voice was rough. “You were betrothed. Robert took advantage of you, the cur.”

“Perhaps I took advantage of him.” The bobbins clacked relentlessly. “I wanted to escape, you know. Deb had. I thought if I gave Robert my body, he’d marry me sooner. I was wrong.”

He placed a hand on her shoulder and her hands finally stilled. No matter what she said, Charlie had been Robert’s victim. It was a pity that a woman’s purity was more important than a man’s, but it was society’s highest dictate. He was beginning to feel the injustice of it. Ten years ago, Charlie’s black hair was not lit by silver. She had everything to hope for. She had acted in good faith, out of misplaced love, and look where it had gotten her-a solitary life working herself into premature old age. She deserved more. Much more.

Her shoulder shrugged beneath his palm. “It’s old news anyway,” she said lightly. “I’m well over it.” The bobbins wove back and forth in her hand again at their furious pace.

Bay wondered how many years it had taken for her to leave her guilt behind. The fact that she felt any was absurd-he had never regretted any sexual congress he’d ever undertaken, except perhaps with that Spanish camp follower who had raked his back like a frenzied panther. It had taken Frazier weeks of potions and ointments to get the swelling down, all the while mumbling that female fingernails would kill him sooner than a bayonet. Frazier never had much good to say about the fairer sex. But if what Charlie had said was true, he was now in the petticoat line courting one of the housemaids. It quite boggled the mind.

“You’re right. No point in dwelling on the past. Now, how would you like to plan our future?”

The bobbins slipped through Charlie’s hands. “Wh-what do you mean?”

“Our day. Obviously we can’t go out in this muck. And I’ll be damned if I sit here all day watching you make yards of lace, fascinating as it is.”

“It’s my livelihood, Bay.” She snipped a string that had gone astray.

“It needn’t be. Surely the stipend I’ve arranged for you will comfortably provide for you and all the charities you favor and all the stray cats you could ever choose to adopt. You can be a lady of leisure.”

Her lower lip jutted out. He’d seen that stubborn look many times before and couldn’t like it.

“It does not suit me to be idle.”

“How do you know if you’ve never tried?”

“I’m not meant to be a wastrel like you.”

Bay laid a hand over his heart. “A wastrel? I am mortally wounded.”

“Sorry if the truth hurts. What do you do besides ensure your pleasure?”

She was looking at him as his old governess used to, all beetle-browed and pursed-lipped.

“I manage my investments! And I collect art.”

Charlie snorted. “Art that is by its very nature suited to the advancement of your pleasure.”

How did she know he’d gazed at his paintings a time or two, his cock firmly in hand? He felt his color mount. “You are forgetting I spent a decade serving His Majesty in conditions I can assure you were not at all pleasurable.”

“Do not rest upon your laurels. What have you done lately?”

“I-I-” What had he done lately? Certainly he sent money to veterans’ charities. He tithed although he rarely attended church. He was kind to small children and animals when they crossed his path. It didn’t amount to much, not enough to brag on. “What do you think I should be doing?” he asked, turning the tables.

“What did you want to do when you were a boy? Besides be a smuggler.”

He had wanted to be an artist. His cartoons at school had been dead-on until an upperclassman objected to his depiction as a bully and only proved it by beating a young Bay to a pulp behind the dining hall. After that Bay put away his brushes and charcoal and stuck to declining Latin verbs. Anne had posed for him when they married, but he had destroyed the pencil sketches years ago. Until Angelique insisted on the ceiling fresco, he’d spent years admiring art instead of creating it. A wicked thought crossed his mind.

“I’ll show you. Stay right there.”

He took the stairs two at a time to his room. In his dressing room was a battered trunk he’d had at boarding school. Within were some dried-up watercolors, several yellowing sketch pads, and some dull sticks of charcoal. He took out his knife and sharpened the points, nicking himself in the process. Not an auspicious beginning for the rejuvenation of his artistic career.

He made a quick detour into Charlie’s room and was downstairs in minutes, the pads tucked under his arm. “Disrobe, my dear.”

Charlotte looked up at him, startled. He flattered himself to think she looked interested in an après-breakfast interlude, as was he, but first things first.

“H-here in the morning room?” she faltered.

“The light, what there is of it through all this bloody rain, is excellent.”

“Surely you know what I look like by now.”

“Indeed I do, every lovely inch. Your body is exquisite. And I wish to immortalize it.”

Charlotte seemed to notice the paper for the first time. “You want to draw me?” She made it sound as if he planned to roast her and feed her to wild animals.

“I cannot think of a more deserving subject. You give all my Italian ladies a run for their money.”

“You’re an artist.” There was an unpleasant degree of doubt in her voice.

“You remember the ceiling on Jane Street. All the angels and clouds and whatnot.”

“You painted it?”

Her openmouthed shock was comical. He didn’t think it was because she thought he was the next Michelangelo, either. “The subject matter was not my first choice, and the execution a bit rusty, I admit. But we have all the time in the world. Twenty-nine days, anyhow. I’m prepared to practice until I get your likeness right. I’ll even put wings on you, if you like.”

“I’m certainly no angel.” She abandoned her lace making and stood up. “Let me see your notebooks.”

Bay shrugged. “I haven’t touched them in years. Trust my grandmother to have squirreled everything away. She thought I had some promise.” He handed her the oldest collection of drawings. She smiled when she saw the first, a pencil sketch of his old spaniel Homer. Perhaps he should consider getting a dog again. Dogs were diverting, and if he were to rattle around in this enormous house, he’d welcome some good company.

She picked through the pages carefully. “She was right. Why did you stop drawing?”

“I suppose I outgrew it. When I was in the army, every now and again someone might ask me to sketch their horse or their portrait in a letter home, but there was little time for frivolity.”

“Let me see the rest.”

He gave her the second notebook. The pages were mostly empty, but it was clear that a large chunk had been torn away.

“What happened to the drawings?”

Bay swallowed the lump in his throat. He had hoped she wouldn’t notice. “I’m afraid they were honeymoon drawings. Once the honeymoon and my marriage were over, it didn’t seem right to keep them.”

“Oh, Bay.” She placed her hand on his sleeve. “I am sorry for you. How horrible it all must have been.”

“It seemed so at the time. But now I begin to think I made a lucky escape.” He looked down on her. Her hair was arranged too neatly on her head. Soon he would fix that.

“Lady Whitley might not have become unhinged if she had been Lady Bayard all these years.”

“You are a warmhearted girl, Charlie.” He bent to brush his lips against hers.

“Hardly a girl,” she murmured. She responded to the kiss, deepening it artlessly. At this rate he might as well throw his drawing paper in the fire and bed her on the chaise. She aroused every bit of his lust, for all she was a short, shrewish thing.

He disengaged gently. “Later, my love. Let me stir up the fire. I shouldn’t want you to catch a chill.”

“You are serious about a life study. Why can’t you draw me with my dress on?”

“Where’s the fun in that? Besides, that dress is definitely not worthy of immortalization.”