Page 62 of What a Lord Wants

At that moment, he would have given his entire fortune for her to blush. But although her smile stayed in place, her face remained as tellingly pale as before. Her eyes glistened in the lamplight, and he feared she might start sobbing.

“Come, Miss Winslow.” He took her arm and wrapped it around his to lead her away. “Let’s return to the Old Masters. There’s a Rembrandt deserving of our attention.”

As they moved away, the crowd parted for them like the Red Sea. The patrons were still unconvinced that Eve wasn’t the woman in the painting. But the artists who had been waiting couldn’t have cared less and surged forward to attack their own canvases, just as they did every year. Thank God for that tradition and the distraction it provided from Eve, however fleeting.

He guided her through the galleries, gesturing at the paintings around them just as he had before. But this time he stopped occasionally to laugh and shake his head, encouraging her to do the same. He only prayed that her family was smart enough to leave them alone. If her reputation had any chance of being saved, they needed to finish the last act of their little play.

“I’m going to be sick,” she whispered.

“No, you’re not.” A firm command.

“Dom—”

“Breathe,” he ordered and gave her hand a squeeze. “Just breathe,mia bella.” Dear God, how pale she was! He suspected that only the lingering shock of seeing the painting on the wall kept her from breaking down.

“I want to leave.” She began to tremble, and he heard her teeth chattering when she forced out, “Now.”

“You have to remain, or everyone will think that it’s really you in that painting.”

“Itisme! Dear God…” She whipped her gaze up to him. “What did you do?”

The ferocity in her amber depths stunned him. So did the raw pain behind that accusation. “You think I would wound you like this?”

She looked away, but not before the expression of betrayal on her face plunged like a knife into his heart. It was a stark reminder of how others had abused her trust and attacked her. She’d once accused him of being no better than those men, but he wasnothinglike them.

“I would neverhurt you like that,” he assured her, meaning it with his entire heart. “There must have been a mix-up with the paintings at Mercer House.”

His chest sank. No, not a mix-up. His own damn fault. He’d told Davies that he had a new masterpiece to enter into the exhibition, had even arrogantly attached his own name to it. Dominick James. But that was before he knew who she truly was.

“I will get you out of this with your reputation intact,” he promised.

“How?” Her voice cracked.

“I will,” he asserted, even though he had no idea himself how he would. “You have to stay here until we’ve made a complete circuit of the galleries. You’ll say your goodbyes to the Carlisles. Then your sister, Robert, and the duchess will leave with you. Their presence will help tamp down suspicions about the painting, and tomorrow, I’ll make certain that the man who supposedly painted that picture releases notice to all the papers that it was an actress he paid to pose for him and not you.”

“It won’t work.” Her voice was little more than a defeated breath.

“It will.” He smiled brightly at her, knowing everyone was watching. “Until then, keep an astonished smile on your face and your head high.”

“I don’t want to smile.” Her fingernails dug into his arm. “I want to rip that painting off the wall!”

The fighting spirit still lay inside her…thank God. She’d need it to get through the difficult days ahead. “Taking it down will only confirm suspicions that it’s you.”

“Too late,” she whispered, blinking rapidly. “I’m ruined.”

“I will not let that happen.”

“You can’t fix this, Dom,” she choked out hopelessly. “My life is destroyed.”

“I willnotlet that happen,” he repeated, the resolve hardening inside him. When he delivered her back to her family, he whispered to her as he released her hand, “I promise you.”

Chapter 17

Eve sat at her dressing table and stared emptily at her reflection. The past four days had been pure agony. But now there was no anguish, no grief as she stared at the stranger in the mirror. She’d moved beyond pain, until all that was left inside her was utter desolation.

Her world had ended.

All hell had rained down upon her since the preview. Gossip and rumors, direct cuts, rescinded invitations, laughs thrown directly into her face, scowls from matrons as if she were evil personified—all of that when no one could be certain that the woman in the painting was even her. The humiliation had gotten so bad that she’d locked herself in her room and refused to come out, no matter how much Mariah had pleaded with her.