Page 2 of The Duke Undone

She only meant to rouse him. She wasn’t trying to memorize the balance of his features, the shape of his mouth, the sharp peaks of his upper lip. But somehow time was passing. She could hear the factory whistles sounding and her eyes were still wandering, sliding down to his chest and arms. She’d have to run from the omnibus to make her morning lesson.

She rose, crept out onto the street. On the corner, a red-faced bobby was blowing his whistle. She’d bet her right eye the police would give the man a sniff, heave him up on the wagon, and dump him in a jail. The thought disturbed her. She turned away. There, a ragpicker, painfully young, all but hidden by the bag on his back.

She gave him a smile. “What’s your biggest piece of sacking?” The boy sized her up as he dug out a filthy rectangle of cloth. Bigger than a fig leaf, but not by much.

“A shilling,” he pronounced.

She sighed. “Never mind.” She’d sacrifice her shawl. She slipped back into the alley and covered the man’s lower body with odd reluctance. It wasn’t the shawl she regretted. It was losing the sight of him.

Back on the street, she found the boy waiting, more of his wares displayed for her on the pavement.

“There’s a man sleeping in that alleyway,” she said. “I’ll give you a tanner to stand right there and keep an eye on him. If he starts to go blue, call a bobby.”

The boy snatched the coin and grinned. He was missing both his front teeth. Probably he wouldn’t even wait for her to climb into the omnibus before he trundled off, taking the shawl with him.

“Don’t go too near,” she added. “He eats little boys.”

And he might, for all she knew. The man had certainly done nothing to deserve her sacrificing a shawl and spending sixpence. And, at this rate, missing her morning lesson.

Nonetheless, she felt protective of him.

She had to force herself to walk away.

On her way home, she took the same shortcut and hardly knew if she was happy or sad that the man was gone.

Late that evening, she found herself hunched over her sketchbook, staring at the blank page. When she shut her eyes, she could see him perfectly, see his contours and the dynamic tension latent in his resting muscles.

She inched her fingers up the pencil, hesitated. That man was someone’s son. Brother. Husband. She had no right to reproduce his likeness at a whim.

But the image was there, on the insides of her eyelids.

The seeing was a kind of feeling. She was feeling her way toward something extraordinary. She could capture it, his beauty. The heat of his slumberous, living flesh.

All alone in her little room, her great-aunt Marian asleep downstairs in the dress shop, and just overhead, hidden by the slant of the roof and by the clouds, the moon, a secret accomplice, she could put down a line, and then another, and another.

The image was there, with her in the darkness. Not that man’s body anymore, but her own vision. Hers.

She blinked her eyes open.

She pressed her pencil lead to the page.

Chapter One

London

Five months later

Perry Forbes had murder on his mind. Anthony saw this at once. The red face and popping eyes gave the game away.

Also, the revolver. The deuced fool had the barrel trained on him.

Anthony sat perfectly still behind the wide walnut desk, fingertips resting on the letter he’d just lately smoothed flat, so he could struggle to read and reread the unwelcome lines.

Amazing how quickly a day could go from bad to worse. And the unexpected turns its rapid decline could take.

Perry Forbes was as notorious for his blathering as for his dodgy business ventures. He invested in companies that sold everything from patent medicines to threshing machines and bored his acquaintances cross-eyed with details about projected profits. Often, they invested too, just to silence him. Under the best of circumstances, his appearance in a man’s study heralded hours of unholy tedium. Today it seemed to herald death.

“A little privacy for this tête-à-tête?” Anthony mustered a faint smile. “You look like a raving lunatic. Shut the door.”