Page 34 of What a Lord Wants

“Besides,” she reminded Mariah as she washed, “you’re not one to cower from real work.”

“Not in breeches.”

Eve had the good sense to look offended. “You expect me to bend over, scrub floors and walls, step up onto stools”—Pose for a notorious Italian painter with a reputation as bad as Lucifer’s—“with nothing on beneath my skirts?”

From Mariah’s dubious lift of a brow, that logic was getting Eve nowhere.

So she tried a different tack. “You wear similar clothes yourself when you work at the Gatewell School.”

A direct hit, and Mariah’s distrust melted into chagrin. Partially. Because Eve knew her sister well enough to see that suspicion still lurked inside her.

“That dress looks beautiful on you.” Eve soaped up her arms and legs. There wasn’t time to wash her hair or let it dry, so her maid would have to do the best she could with it. “Has Robert seen you in it?”

Mariah’s eyes narrowed at that obvious change of topic. “What trouble have you gotten yourself into now?”

“None.” Which was the truth.So far.

“Evelyn Margaret Winslow.” Mariah leveled her displeasure at her with all the sympathy of a cranky governess. “I know you better than anyone else in the world, and I know when you’re dissembling.”

“I haven’t lied to you.”

Although only for technical reasons, since hiding the truth wasn’t the same as lying. Because if she were lying to her sister, she would feel horrible about it, when right now she only felt an uneasy guilt bubbling in her belly.

“I was late this evening because I was in Chelsea, working.” By posing semi-nude for a handsome painter, whose kisses were utterly divine. “Ask John Coachman. He dropped me off and picked me up at the Royal Hospital.” Even though she’d slipped through the hospital and right out the back. “I lost track of time and hurried home as fast as I could.”

Thatwas the God’s honest truth, although she’d left Dom staring after her in complete bafflement. She’d have to come up with a good story for why she’d run away from him like that, and so close on the heels of kissing him, no less.

Lying to everyone she loved was beginning to wear on her. But it would only be for a little while longer. Soon the adventure would end, and all the glorious freedom she’d found in the studio would come to a grinding halt.

Along with never seeing Dom again. Her throat tightened painfully at the thought of it.

She stepped from her bath and wrapped her robe around herself. But Mariah refused to move from the doorway to let her walk past into her bedroom.

Eve gave a heavy sigh of exasperation. “Do you want to keep arguing with me about what trouble I haven’t gotten myself into, or do you want me to dress so that we’re not late to the party?”

But her sister’s face remained somber as she warned quietly, “Be careful, Evie. If people find out what you did with Burton Williams—”

“They won’t.” She stepped past Mariah into her bedroom and crossed to the dressing table. Her maid would be up soon with the curling tongs she was heating over the kitchen fire. But for now, Eve had to reassure Mariah about Burton, or she’d never be left alone to dress. “He’d never be foolish enough to tell anyone.”

Not with the Carlisle brothers still disappointed over not being allowed to tie him up and toss him onto the first ship bound for Australia.

Besides, Burton wasn’t the man who worried her.

She looked up to catch Mariah’s gaze in the mirror. Knowing she could trust in her sister’s advice, she asked, “Why did Robert notice you, when you first met him?”

“He didn’t have a choice.” Mariah smiled like a cat who’d stumbled across a mouse. “Papa forced him to.”

“No.” She lowered her voice, “I mean, as a woman.”

Her sister’s lips formed a softOof understanding. Slowly, she came up behind her. “Is that what this is about—you’ve met someone?”

Shaking her head, she bit her lip and looked away, to fuss with the hair combs on the table. “He doesn’t think of me that way.”

Mariah said nothing for a long while. Then she reached for a brush to stroke it through Eve’s hair, the way she used to when they were girls.

“And you?” Mariah asked carefully. “What way do you think of him?”

Ineveryway. Every wicked, wanton, scandalous way that a proper young lady should never think of a man. “As a teacher, I suppose.”