Page 132 of The Ladies Least Likely

“How long do you suppose we must wait?” Harriette asked.

She looked about at the people roaming the square, some of them the fashionable out for a stroll, others of the middling class out to watch the fashionable, and the working class going about their business.

This was an opportunity. She withdrew her porte crayon from her pocket and looked about for a convenient place to unfold her stool.

Normally the rhythm of her hand while she sketched brought her mind to calm attention, but today the thoughts ran rampant.

The whispers of the ladies in the print shop rattled her.

It was one thing to have people who were trying to sell newspapers print foolish speculations in the gossip paragraphs, but quite another to encounter the ridicule in real life.

It appeared the Countess of Renwick wasn’t alone in thinking Harriette unfit for polite company.

Renwick’s—what? Her hand slowed as the obvious occurred to her. It wasn’t Harriette’s artistic choices that had suddenly made her persona non grata in polite circles. It was the assumption that, to see the Graf in such intimate exposure, she must be his mistress.

Oh, why had she not asked Mrs. Darly to keep her authorship of the sketches of Renwick a secret?

That kiss with Ren had addled her head. All she could think about was changing the way people saw him so they perceived what she did, the nobility of his character, his gentle nature and his moral strength, along with the undeniable beauty of his person.

She wanted to erase the snickers of contempt from his peers and the looks of horror or pity from the young women who saw him approaching them.

She wanted him adored by all, as she adored him.

The new sketches would be as good as declaration that she had lifted her skirts for Ren. They confirmed her as a woman completely lacking in virtue.

Well, she hadn’t any virtue, Harriette thought savagely, smudging an errant line with the side of her hand.

She’d made some foolish decisions, tried to be mature and sophisticated before she was ready, and now she had to pay the price.

That short-sightedness and being caught up in the moment had made her unfit for the society of those to whom a woman’s virtue meant everything.

It made her unfit to marry someone like Ren.

She flipped the ruined page with enough force to tear it and attacked the fresh sheet with her crayon.

What would happen if she pursued an affair with Ren as, foolishly and off her head from the glory of his kisses, she’d more or less promised him?

Flushed with a desire she’d never known, filled with nothing but thoughts of when she could touch and taste and hold him again, heady with the triumph of knowing this large, splendid, wonderful man hungered for her, she’d been ready to grant him anything he asked.

It wouldn’t hurt him to be known as a man who had sampled Harriette Smythe. But what would it do to her?

The morning sun had given way to a grey fog, but that wasn’t what blocked Harriette’s vision when she looked up.

Three strollers stood before her, young men who apparently still subscribed to the Macaroni fashions that had made Mrs. Darly’s reputation, even though the look had fallen out of vogue.

Their wigs were at least two feet high, with side curls the size of a man’s arm.

Their coats and waistcoats glared with crimson and yellow silk, their loose breeches in a contrasting color, and they sported buttons everywhere a button could fit.

The aroma of three different kinds of scented water, overlaying the strong scent of unwashed male bodies, made Harriette’s nose recoil.

“The very likeness of yon demirep,” said the one with the tiny hat atop his wig.

He affected a high voice and the drawl that had been adopted by those of the Duchess of Devonshire’s set.

The upper of the upper crust, or aspiring to be there, Harriette guessed.

“It must be our artist knows well the demimondaine .”

That set of beautiful, often high-born women known for their sexual accessibility. Harriette’s heart sank. Did all of London now know who she was, or of her reputation, from one appearance last night at Lady Renwick’s soiree?

“Indeed, which is for sale? The portrait or the lady?” drawled a second, taking out one of a number of quizzing glasses attached to his waistcoat.

He also carried several fobs and watches, a snuff box, and what appeared to be a spyglass, a waterfall of clinking items decorating his chest. His overlong walking stick stuck out behind him, barely missing his companions’ legs as they clustered before Harriette on her stool. “And which demands the higher price?”

He was suggesting she was for sale, not the Cyprian in her sketch, the painted lady whom Jock had noted on her rounds about the square.

Harriette stiffened, curling her fingers around her crayon.

She had a devilish urge to snake out her hand and leave a long dark streak down one of the delicate white stockings cloaking a bloated calf.

“I’ll gladly sell you the sketch if you’ve taken a liking for it, sir,” she said. “Five guineas.”

The third one giggled and slurred his words. “And does that give possession for only the afternoon, or the ‘ole night?” Was he tipsy? At this time of day? “Any mon c’n get a print o’ Miss Smythe for—” he hiccupped— “a farthing or two, can’t ‘ee?”

Harriette didn’t miss his implication in the word print. “Only the sketch is for sale,” she said coldly. “And the cost is ten guineas.”

“Oh, it prices itself high, it does!” exclaimed the first rogue.

He plucked her portfolio from her hands, flipping past her current sketch to the more recent ones.

He sneered as he saw the several studies of Ren, various angles of his head, three quarters, and the full-body sketch of him lounging on the couch, looking directly at the viewer with a wicked come-hither gaze.

“Coming up in the world, are ye, Miss Smythe?” the dandy said. “Can this be due to your association with the Earl of Runtwick?”

Harriette saw red. That awful nickname couldn’t still be circulating about, not after he’d come so far and matured so much. If she were a man, she could challenge this macaroni to a duel for such an insult. As a woman, she had no weapon but words.

“You dare,” she said quietly, looking the man in the eye. “You dare . Give me back my sketches.”

“What will his lordship do?” the second sneered. “Chase us?” His fellows guffawed at this.

Harriette pushed on the walking stick he held under his arm, using it to knock the first man in the leg. He yelped and dropped her portfolio. She snatched it up, dusting gravel and dirt from the cracks and creases.

“His lordship deserves your respect,” she said in outrage. She’d faced down the young bullies of Shepton Mallet, only this time she did not have her slingshot. She could not command these fops to give Renwick his due.

“Why don’t you lick his boots for us,” sniggered the third man. “Add it to your other services.”

They strolled away, laughing amongst themselves, and Harriette shook the last bit of gravel from her papers.

Her hands trembled with anger, but her heart clenched with a heavier emotion.

There would be no denying her ownership, once they circulated, of these daring pictures of Ren with his coat off, his neck bared to the gaze.

These men had seen the sketches and would make the connection.

She’d promised Ren the popularity of her sketches would make him admired, just as her prior efforts had made the Graf von Hardenburg society’s darling.

But perhaps the attention that resulted for Ren might not be approving.

Perhaps his peers would buy the sketches and make him an object of ridicule.

Think him tainted by his association with Harriette.

And in the meantime, her reputation was in tatters. All of Society would assume she was his mistress.

She dusted off the skirts of her worn polonaise, which she didn’t have the funds to replace.

Foresight was not Harriette’s strong suit, she would be the first to admit.

But it now occurred to her that her sinking could bring any number of other people down with her.

Association with her might injure Ren’s prospects for marriage.

And a stain on his image might affect his sister’s prospects as well, for surely she had hopes of her own, no matter what her mother thought.

The papers would have far worse to say about the Countess of Calenberg’s household than that they were unconventional.

And Harriette would never be granted commissions from rich patrons if she were a scarlet woman.

Families wouldn’t hire her to paint them if they thought they could be tainted by the association.

Only the curious would enlist her, and it would be a repeat of her sittings with the squire, who had assumed she was sexually promiscuous because she was an independent woman with a skill.

She couldn’t have an affair with Ren, much as she wished to. She needed to salvage her reputation. She wanted entrée into the salons of the great, and she wanted their commissions.

She started in the direction of Cranbourne Street, overtaken by remorse. She must go back to The Acorn and tell Mrs. Darly she’d reconsidered selling her those sketches. They might harm Ren and they would certainly harm her.

But the weight of guineas in her reticule slowed and then stopped her before she had reached the cabriolet where Jock and Beater sat, still watching the parade of people about the square.

Her sketches of the Graf von Hardenburg had been a sensation; there was every possibility that Ren’s portraits would be even more popular.

With those profits she could send funds to the Demants to pay her mother’s doctor fees or provide her a small luxury.

A handful of the coins in her purse could let Sorcha do a month of marketing and pay for the roof over all of their heads.

The rest could buy Harriette pigments and canvas and a new set of brushes, all of which she needed if she wanted more work.

She owed her aunt for supporting her all of these years.

Looking up, Harriette realized she stood before the house that belonged to Sir Joshua Reynolds, one of England’s most admired painters and a man of unlimited talent and esteem. Reynolds could command virtually any price for his portraits. He was admitted into any circle and lauded for his skill.

She couldn’t achieve what he had by producing racy sketches, or if she were thought a demirep.

Popular prints wouldn’t bring her the acclaim she wanted, the regard that someone like Angelica Kauffman could command as a member of the Royal Academy of Arts, or Adelaide Labille-Guiard, painter to the French princes.

She couldn’t become Ren’s mistress. She would paint a wonderful portrait of him, the most beautiful and noble portrait she’d ever done, but she wouldn’t allow herself his kisses or his bed.

He might not like her change of heart, but surely he would understand.

He wanted a respectable wife, a household with happy children.

Those were things Harriette could not give him.

To admit that felt like covering over a canvas she’d labored over for hours and days. It felt like cutting out a piece of her. But she had to do what was best for them both.

Blinking back tears, Harriette recognized one of the glamorous figures parading toward her as Princess, looking smug and satisfied and with a blush to her cheeks not caused by rouge.

“Finished and ready to head back to Charles Street, are we?” Harriette snapped.

“What is it biting me for?” Princess blinked heavy-lidded eyes. “Did my assignation go better than yours, then?”

There wouldn’t be an assignation. Not for Harriette. She had to avoid the temptation of grown-up Ren, so handsome, so wicked, so wonderful.

The unshed tears stung Harriette’s eyes as the women crammed themselves into the tiny carriage.

Princess took the ribbons from Jock, and they jostled together as the back of the carriage dropped when Beater climbed to the groom’s platform.

Harriette steeled herself for the conversation she would have to have with Renwick.

No more foolish mistakes, no more short-sighted thinking. No more living for the sheer pleasure of the moment. She had a life to build and so did he, and in neither was there room for anything more than friendship.