Page 27

Blast it all to hell, this was all going wrong.

“Look,” Richard said hastily.

“I don’t know who you are, sir,” Lord Lindow began stiffly.

“I told you, he’s one of Evelyn’s models,” his wife said sternly. “Besides, the young man was about to introduce himself, so if you could cease your interruptions for more than five seconds—please, continue.”

Richard took a deep breath. This was not precisely how he would have orchestrated it.

In an ideal world, Evelyn would have been here.

She would have been able to know who he was, finally.

Not one of the aliases he’d used in France, the names so familiar to him that sometimes he’d forgotten that under the layers of meaning, there had been a Richard Sempill underneath. His true name.

Concentrate, man!

“My name is Richard Sempill, Viscount Sempill,” he said in a rush.

Though his speech was but six words, it had a remarkable effect. Lord Lindow’s brow unfurrowed, his expectation that the man before him was nothing but a common gentleman clearly confused.

Lady Lindow’s eyes widened. “Viscount?”

“Yes,” said Richard, suddenly highly conscious that he was speaking to an earl and a countess. His betters.

No, damn him, he wasn’t going to fall into that trap. Why should they be better than himself?

“I believe I knew your father,” Lord Lindow said quietly. “At least, I knew of him. A good man. I was sad to hear of his passing, though it was a long time ago.”

“A very long time ago, my lord,” said Richard, hating how his voice had become stiff.

Silence fell between the three of them, one Richard loathed but could not see how to break.

The musicians had struck up again and the dancers behind him appeared to be enjoying something closer to a jig than a waltz.

A pair of doors were thrown open to his right, and the scent of delicious food wafted through. Supper was served.

“So, you are Sempill’s son,” said Lord Lindow slowly. “Haven’t heard of you in London.”

“I am newly in town, my lord, and—”

“—and you decided to first seek out my daughter and sit for her?”

Richard could not blame the man for his obvious suspicions.

Only then did he wonder how Evelyn had been open with her parents about…

well, about how open he, Richard, was when she was drawing him.

There was no way she could have told them.

The earl would have burst into the studio and demanded Richard wed his daughter.

Heat burned through him, tying his stomach into knots. The earl and countess before him had no idea Richard had taken all of his clothes off before their daughter.

“You surprise me.” That was Lady Lindow, and Richard turned to her as she continued. “I would not have thought a viscount had much time for sitting about for my daughter to draw him.”

There was no censure in her words, but there was no encouragement, either.

Hell’s bells, what had he been thinking?

“I admit myself astonished, yet intrigued,” said Lord Lindow slowly. “Unless… Unless…”

Richard hesitated. Well, duels were technically still illegal, were they not?

It would have taken a brave man to demand a meeting at dawn, but then you never could tell with gentlemen of his father’s generation.

There were tales of duels fought over a daughter or sister’s honor even now, though they were technically illegal.

The earl was frowning. “Unless you have taken on the role of model for my daughter as… a ruse.”

Richard swallowed. “I would never—”

“As a ruse to propose matrimony to her!” Lord Lindow said triumphantly.

Richard’s mouth fell open. “I… I…”

“Oh, how wonderful!” Lady Lindow looked absolutely delighted.

“Ah,” said Richard weakly, his pulse thumping. “Well—”

“That is your intention in all this, isn’t it?” Brow drawn, lips pinched, Evelyn’s father had never looked so stern, at least in Richard’s short acquaintance with him. “Matrimony, with my daughter?”

The man had to be at least five and twenty years older than him, and Richard was certain he could win in a fight with the earl easily.

Wait a moment. Was he truly thinking about fighting Evelyn’s father?

Old habits died hard. Richard had always been very careful to ensure that no woman could ever accuse him of offering something so serious, so entirely permanent as matrimony. His instincts to deny, to escape the suggestion, rose within him.

They were met with an equally strong desire to declare that yes, he would marry her.

Richard blinked. Marry Evelyn?

It would hardly be a hardship. Marry Evelyn: be with her every day, see her grow in passion and skill with her art, encourage her, be the only one to strip naked for her…

Perhaps she could even paint in the nude. Now that would be a most interesting conversation.

Richard cleared his throat heartily and nodded. “Yes—yes. I intend matrimony. I… I wish to marry your daughter.”

And it had been said. The panic he had presumed would arise at such a pronouncement did not come.

Instead, he was filled with what could only be described as a golden light. Not that Evelyn would be satisfied with that meager description. A glittering light. A warm, honeyed light.

The Countess of Lindow was beaming. “To think, a viscount for our Evelyn!”

“I know I am not good enough,” Richard found himself saying, his tongue entirely overtaken by thoughts he could not marshal.

The earl did not look pleased by his revelation. “Dear me. Anything terrible I should know about?”

“No!” Richard said, a little too hastily. People were turning now, staring as his word echoed around the ballroom. He lowered his voice. “No, I just meant—”

“You know the sort of nonsense these young people in love say, George,” said the countess, and she placed a kiss on her husband’s cheek. “You used to say such things to me, once. I distinctly remember—”

“Yes, yes, that’s enough of that,” muttered Lord Lindow, though Richard thought he saw a smile underneath the grump. “Well, I suppose you want my blessing, man?”

Richard waited a heartbeat. He could be more polite, he supposed; but this was perhaps one of the few occasions in England where he had to stand his ground. “No.”

Lady Lindow looked swiftly at her husband, whose grump only increased.

“Because in my view, it is Evelyn’s opinion that matters,” Richard continued, his shoulders stiff and his sense crying out for him to stop. “Not yours.”

There was a most uncomfortable silence, only made more uncomfortable by the musicians finishing off the dance with a triumphant peal and the dancers applauding politely.

Lord Lindow nodded curtly. “Good man. Be off with you, and claim your woman.”

“ George !”

“Oh, he knows what I mean,” tutted the earl with a grin. “We won’t say a word to her until it’s all settled between the two of you. How’s that?”

“How’s that”?

Richard took the proffered hand and shook it in a vague daze, as though the Earl of Dalmerlington’s floor was spinning.

So, that was all it took, was it? A conversation with her parents, a handshake, and he was in almost every sense of the word engaged to be married.

Engaged. To Evelyn.

The thought fired through him. “I must find her. Now.”

“‘Must’? Don’t see why there’s such a rush.”

“Oh, George, you know we weren’t much better.” The countess grinned, and for a moment, Richard could see the young woman in her, one who looked very much like Evelyn. “Let the young people be. She’s not here, my lord. She remained at home. Isn’t that right, George?”

Richard did not wait to hear the man’s response. His feet were already taking him away from the Dalmerlingtons’ ball, out into the cool, London air, and along to a particular house behind which there was a small sort of strange studio.

There was only one place Evelyn could have been.

He found her working. Of course he would.

Evelyn’s attention was entirely fixed on the canvas before her. She did not even look up as Richard quietly opened the door and let himself into the freezing studio, a mere candle to the side the only source of light.

Even closing the door behind him with a snap did not rouse Evelyn from her work. There was a paintbrush in her mouth, her lips curled around the handle, and her brow was furrowed. There were a few paint splatters across her cheeks, as though she had leaned too closely to the easel as she’d worked.

And Richard realized he had completely fallen in love with her.

When, he did not know. How, he could not tell.

All he knew was that he had Evelyn’s parents’ blessing to marry her, and he could easily spend the rest of his life with her like this, watching her grow and succeed and excel, and he would need no other life.

“You’re watching me.”

Richard almost leapt back. Evelyn had not looked up when she had spoken—her gaze remained on the troublesome canvas—but she had spoken in a direct, soft voice that suggested she had been more than aware of him all this time.

Damn it, he really had to stop underestimating her.

“When you look into the future,” he said quietly, “what do you see?”

That gained her attention. Evelyn looked up, both hands clutching her paintbrushes now, her mouth falling open. “What sort of a question is that?”

“One I have been pondering,” Richard said quietly, slipping into the seat he now considered his chair. “Recently. Very recently.”

“What do you see in your future?”

It was most unfair of her to turn the tables on him like that, but Richard supposed she had a right to. It was a bold and personal question.

“I wasn’t sure for a long time,” he said honestly. “When I was abroad, I lived from one day to the next. I did not think much about the future at all.”

“And… And now?”

Evelyn’s voice was soft, pliable, like the oils she so rarely worked with.

Richard swallowed. Now?

He did not answer. At least, not with words.

Perhaps there were a few clues in his eyes, the way his focus meandered down her and back to her face.

She was attired in an old day gown covered in an apron, though the item had done little to prevent paint and what appeared to be charcoal from coating her gown.

His warmth, his longing, was clearly evident. Evelyn’s cheeks pinked.

“I was not expecting a midnight visitor,” she said quietly.

“It’s not midnight, is it?”

“A nighttime visitor, then,” she corrected. “I suppose you came here for a reason?”

A multitude of reasons erupted in Richard’s mind.

Because he wanted to tell her he loved her. Because he wanted to reveal the truth, the truth of who he was. Because he wanted to explain how he had spoken to her parents, gained their permission, their consent to marry her.

Because he wanted to ask her whether she would give her consent, in turn. The only consent that mattered.

And for some reason, Richard said none of this. Instead, he said, “You are so clever. I never learned to paint. No one ever taught me.”

He spotted the trap only after he had laid and sprung it.

Evelyn grinned. “Well, there’s no time like the present. How about a short lesson now?”