Page 9 of Win Me, My Lord (All’s Fair in Love and Racing #5)
“None of us is getting any younger,” Sir Abstrupus tossed over his shoulder, as he made for a set of double doors that swung open with a dramatic flourish.
Bran felt questioning eyes bore into him from across the table.
Eyes he supposed he couldn’t ignore.
He allowed his gaze to slide over.
She didn’t hesitate. “Did you know about this?”
Lady Artemis Keating, ever direct.
Except when she was telling bald-faced lies.
He settled back into his chair. “No.”
On a frustrated, “Blast,” she shot to her feet and hurried after Sir Abstrupus.
While Bran hadn’t the faintest idea what new horror awaited him beyond the double doors Lady Artemis disappeared through, he was grateful for this small mercy.
He could make his way, unobserved.
What became immediately apparent to him upon entering the cavernous space Sir Abstrupus called his celestial porch, with its south-facing, floor-to-ceiling windows running its entire length all the way to the hearth at the far end and its roaring fire—the house consumed entire forests every year—Sir Abstrupus had this night planned from the start.
As it was well into the wee hours, the room held no more light than the rest of the atmospherically lit house, but a whole retinue of footmen, their gazes pointed neutrally into the mid-distance, had been placed ten feet apart around the periphery, waiting to cater to any and every whim that crossed their master’s mercurial mind.
Further, the room had been cleared of its furnishings, and in their place stood two artist’s easels holding blank canvases in the center.
Beside each was a small table set up with a brush and a pot of paint.
Sir Abstrupus stood by and watched with his usual air of mischief as Lady Artemis circled the easels, arms crossed over her chest, brow scrunched with befuddlement. At Bran’s approach, the old rogue clapped his hands together. “At last, the prodigal has seen fit to join us.”
Bran’s back teeth ground together.
He’d become accustomed to Sir Abstrupus’s mild jibes about his infirmity, but it was the skittery look in Lady Artemis’s eyes he couldn’t bear.
Oh, she gazed upon him with wariness and possibly loathing and no small bit of anger, too. But also …
Pity .
He could bear to be loathed by her.
But not pitied.
Sir Abstrupus continued. “As you are both highborn aristocrats with education and an eye toward a worldly view—” His brow crinkled. “Is it quite the thing to call a woman worldly ? In my day, if a woman was called worldly , the implication was that she sold herself on the?—”
“Please get on with it,” snapped Lady Artemis.
Sir Abstrupus shrugged with false sheepishness. “Have you heard the tale of how Michelangelo drew a perfect circle to win the papal commission for the Sistine Chapel fresco?”
“I haven’t,” said Lady Artemis.
“Yes.” Bran felt the blaze of annoyed feminine eyes.
“Ah.” Sir Abstrupus smiled as if he were the cat who got the cream. “But did you know the story is false?”
Lady Artemis heaved an exasperated sigh. “I don’t know the story at all.”
“It was the painter Giotto, in fact,” continued Sir Abstrupus.
“Pope Boniface the—” His brow wrinkled. “Seventh? Eighth? Anyway, one of those Pope Bonifaces wished to commission Giotto for some mural or another in the Vatican—not the Sistine Chapel, so we’re clear.
Anyway, he sent a courier to retrieve a sample of his work from Florence.
One can only imagine the smirk on the artist’s face as, before the courier’s very eyes, he dipped the brush tip into a pot of red paint and drew a perfect circle.
” Sir Abstrupus chuckled with a faraway smile, as if he’d witnessed the feat himself.
“A man after my own heart, really.” He shook his head and continued.
“Of course, the courier balked, but he had no choice but to take the drawing back to the pope. Much to the servant’s shock, Pope Boniface was mightily impressed by the simple perfection on display and Giotto won the commission. ”
Ah. It was easy to see what the first feat would be.
Lady Artemis’s brow gathered. “Surely, you don’t expect us to draw perfect circles.”
“Surely, I don’t.” Sir Abstrupus allowed a dramatic beat of time to tick past. “But I surely expect you to try.”
A few seconds later, Lady Artemis was standing silently before her easel, her head tilted as she considered the implements before her—canvas, brush, paint.
But hadn’t she come into herself these last ten years?
Young, moldable ladies of seventeen and eighteen years were certainly pretty and highly prized on the marriage mart. But over the course of a lady’s twenties, a true beauty only grew more so.
Lady Artemis Keating was proof of that fact.
Bran let the thought pass and took his place before his easel.
They stood only a few feet apart, nothing between them.
Actually, that wasn’t strictly true.
A past stood between them, implacable.
Still, though he wasn’t looking at her, he was so very aware of her. If he wanted, he could reach out and touch her. Would she feel the same as she once had beneath his hand?
How had it come to this ?
That Lady Artemis was within touching distance of him … That his hand tingled with the remembered feel of her.
Two feelings pounded through him—one a push, the other a pull.
He should lose this contest.
He should want to lose this contest.
After all, if he prevailed, what would he have won?
The right to train Radish on Lady Artemis’s practice track.
The right to spend more time with her.
Which was no victory.
Yet he couldn’t quite will himself to lose.
The fact was he wanted to prove something—he wasn’t entirely infirm. In a way he hadn’t felt in years, he wanted to prove it to himself.
In a larger way, he wanted to prove it to her .
It was the first time he’d wanted anything in two years.
Want … desire …
To feel want … to feel desire …
Wasn’t that feeling part and parcel of being alive?
And the fact was he hadn’t felt alive in any way that mattered in a very long time.
Until now.
He reached for his brush and glanced at the pot of paint. Red. Of course, the paint was red. Sir Abstrupus wouldn’t miss such a detail.
Though he’d never attempted it, the strict truth was Bran knew how Giotto had drawn the perfect circle. He’d learned about it at Cambridge in a lecture concentrated on Italian art.
Beside him, Lady Artemis extended her arm, the brush dripping red paint onto the white duck cloth below, and contemplated the canvas before her. If that was how she intended to go about drawing a perfect circle, she’d already made her first mistake.
Bran’s heart gave a hard thud, as if to punctuate his intention.
He could win .
And he fully meant to.
He shifted his weight further onto his good leg, adding stability to his stance, and dipped the brush tip into the paint. He only had one go at this, so he needed to make it count.
Here was where knowing the story helped. Instead of extending his arm, as Lady Artemis had, he tucked his elbow at his side, digging it firmly into his ribs and providing a base for his forearm. That was the trick—and the woman at his side didn’t know it.
He touched brush to canvas. With only his wrist as a pivot point, stiff horsehair bent to applied pressure as it rotated across canvas in a slow, graceful arc, leaving glistening red in its wake.
Less than a minute later, Bran took a step back and considered his creation.
It wasn’t perfect.
But it was identifiably a circle.
He darted a glance toward his competitor’s offering. It resembled nothing so much as an egg—a cracked egg, at that.
Though the victory hadn’t yet been called, he’d won.
What was that feeling expanding in his chest?
Was it exhilaration ?
Lady Artemis’s gaze must have shifted right, for a swift inhalation was followed by a sudden, sharp exhalation of frustration. Her fiery gaze caught his. “Shall I accuse you of conspiring with our host?”
Bran didn’t hesitate. “I’m no cheat.”
He might have growled the words.
“ No? ” she scoffed. She hadn’t hesitated either. “History suggests you might be susceptible.”
Before Bran could ask her what in the blazes she was on about, Sir Abstrupus said with no small amount of satisfaction, “So, the two of you are acquainted.”