Page 37 of His Duchess of Scandal (Brides of Scandal #1)

Her heart skipped a beat at the nicknames, her mind flashing back to the painting of the Greek lovers, their debate at Bentley’s party. For a second, she traced her thumb over the sharp A of his signature.

There was something familiar about his handwriting that she had not noticed before, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.

Still, she did as instructed.

She readied herself for breakfast, ate excitedly, and listened to Phoebe speak about how her governess was going to take her out to the market. The girl asked her if she would like to come, but Hermia declined gently, too eager at the thought of spending the day with Charles.

Whatever he had planned, she couldn’t wait.

When she really couldn’t hold back any longer, she left the breakfast hall, seeking out Mrs. Nightgale and asking to be directed to the west wing. There wasn’t even a hint of surprise on the housekeeper’s face, just a soft smile as she nodded and led her immediately.

They stopped at the end of a hallway that Hermia had never been in, with only two doors that were placed on the left. She was taken to one, and her hands shook as it was unlocked and opened to almost darkness.

Shadows fell over the floor, and she moved deeper inside as Mrs. Nightgale curtsied and left.

“Close the door behind you.”

She looked for Charles at his quiet command, finding him in the center of the room, cloaked by the same shadows. Except, before him, on a nearby stool, a candle flickered away, illuminating a canvas. Beyond, gossamer curtains hung over the wall, and a chaise lounge faced the canvas.

Hermia slowly walked closer to him, taking in all the paintings around her.

This was it—Charles’s secret passion. The very thing he had kept from his first wife, yet was revealing to her.

“Charles,” she murmured, looking around. “This is…”

“My studio,” he said. “I have had it since I was a boy. The servants helped me keep my secret, helped me get paints and supplies in here. It was far enough away that nobody thought to look, and I could always tell my parents that I was wandering in the woods.”

“And yet you are letting me in.”

“This is me at my truest,” he told her. “And I find that I am rather enjoying letting you know the true me, Hermia. It is disarming, most definitely, for I have never wanted to be seen at my most vulnerable, but…” His eyes met hers, the candlelight reflecting in them.

“But I feel as though you can hold that vulnerability with the tenderness I have never let myself want.”

“Stargazing,” Hermia said, recalling Levi’s story of the observatory and the liquor. “Wanting a duchess who might love watching the stars with you.”

“Yes,” he admitted. “It is not—” His voice hitched. “Something I have let myself admit again since that night, but yes. That was my dream.” His eyes bored into hers. “Sometimes, I see how you look at the night sky, Hermia, and I?—”

“Know that you have found her,” she finished. “A duchess who loves watching the stars as much as you do. I might not know a great deal about them, but they are certainly pretty, and that is more than enough for me.”

“They are indeed beautiful,” he acknowledged. “But none come close to you.”

Hermia blushed, her gaze lowering. “And yet I am not as bright as them. I am good at pretending I am, but what if… what if sometimes I am just as dark as the night sky? What if I am that vast space, rather than the twinkling stars?”

Charles held out his hand to her, and she walked towards him, stripped bare by the way he showed her such a vulnerable part of himself.

She thought of the years she had wasted, the years she had not stood up to her parents. There were the nights she had sabotaged her matches out of stubbornness, and then there was?—

The naval officer.

A man she had not possessed feelings for, except for the disconcerting way the security of a life with him had been yanked from beneath her feet.

“What is it?” Charles asked. “What plagues you?”

“Nothing,” she said, realizing she was the one putting up walls now.

Charles only gazed at her, his forearm smeared with paint.

“Well—no, not nothing , but…”

“You can tell me anything,” he assured her.

“This room holds plenty of secrets already. Do not fear adding your own to it. And once you are done, allow me to show you that you are not darkness, Hermia. You are light—you are every light at once, flooding my life in a way I have been stubbornly resisting.”

And she found that she wanted to. After so many years, she was ready to speak about it.

“I was once promised to a naval officer,” she began. “He was the heir to an earldom—an only son—and had served in the navy until it was time to inherit his title. We were not in love, nowhere near. He was handsome, charming, and perhaps I would have fallen in love with him over time, but…”

She wrung her fingers and took a deep breath.

“He was killed in action. I received a very short letter from his father, ending our courtship. I was not his wife, so I did not get my full mourning period. Selfishly, I mourned the friendship we had, the security, the hope that I would no longer have to endure my mother’s matchmaking schemes.

“Barely a month after his death, I was thrust back into a ballroom, expected to resume wooing suitors, but I could not. My heart was not in it, and spitefully, I tried to push away my suitors so my mother would realize her mistake. Of course, it backfired, for I became a spinster, but I knew I had not been ready. I was nine-and-ten, on the cusp of marriage and future security, only to suddenly become three-and-twenty, preparing for the countryside, unwed, and…”

Her eyes had wandered to the paintings once more, finding comfort in not having to look at her husband head-on. But now she shifted her gaze back to him.

“And then I met my Ares at a party I should not have been to. Yet I was. And—and there you were.”

“There you were,” he answered quietly. “Boisterous, outspoken, and opinionated.”

Where there had been an accusation in his voice the last time they spoke about their meeting at the party, he was now affectionate. Softer-spoken, adoring almost.

Hermia felt her heart flutter, and she stepped closer. Charles pulled her against him, slowly turning her so her back was pressed to his chest.

He pointed to a corner of the studio—no, a whole wall , and she gasped.

“You truly did keep painting me,” she whispered. “You mentioned it over breakfast, but I did not—I did not believe it.”

“Why not?”

Because I have not been a woman worthy of being painted. I have not been anybody’s muse.

As if he could hear her thoughts, Charles murmured into her ear, “You are my muse. I cannot get you out of my head, Hermia. You are a craving I cannot sate. A yearning I cannot satisfy, no matter how much time we spend together. Do not ever think otherwise. Believe me when I tell you how much you have made a home in my mind, one that has roots and a foundation I would never tear apart.”

She took in the many canvases hanging on the wall. Some were framed, others weren’t, and she wondered how many were painted here, in this studio, and how many were painted in Branmere Hall and transported.

“I have painted you since the moment I met you, Hermia,” Charles told her softly. “And I think I will paint you forever.”

Hermia turned in his arms, unable to shake the thought of seeing his depiction of her. Every curve she had thought made her less desirable than other ladies. The hair she had always thought was too dull and lacked luster. The eyes she had wished were darker, prettier, more alluring.

Yet she saw how she was all of those things to Charles. If not to herself, then to him. Somehow.

Someway.

He took her chin between his fingertips, tipping her head up in that way that never failed to make her stomach clench.

“You are my beautiful muse,” he murmured. “And you are my equal. My Duchess.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead, and then the bridge of her nose, until he finally met her mouth. “And I promised you one last secret, did I not?”

“You did.”

After so many alluring words, her breathing was so heavy that she could hardly speak.

Charles walked her over to a canvas near the back, half hidden by a sheet, half concealed by other frames. But she recognized enough of herself to know that this was the painting, the one that had brought about their marriage.

The Hermia on the canvas was artfully wrapped in silk, lying back on dark sheets, as she had been that night.

Pressed beneath his body, she had languished and drowned in pleasure, and, without being crude, the painting showed that.

It was soaked in pleasure without being explicit, and that somehow made it more erotic.

And there, at the bottom right corner, was a golden swirl that caught her attention for the simple fact that it was different from the others around the room. For that signature was of Charles Thorne, her husband, but the other artwork held a cursive that, once again, tugged at her memory.

“I am Christian Dawson,” Charles confessed. “He is the persona I created in order to keep painting. I used my own paintings to begin curating pieces. It was not about the money, but the fact that my art was getting out there, even if under the protection of a different name.”

Christian Dawson.

Why did that name ring such loud bells?

Hermia pushed through the fog in her mind, desperately reaching for a memory just out of reach.

And then it hit her.

Christian Dawson, the painter of Ares and Aphrodite, the very thing that had started their interaction at the party.

Hermia turned in his embrace again. “You are the notorious painter with the starlight pieces?”