Page 20 of The Duke Undone

“Not here,” she said. “The Gibson Gallery.”

She walked quickly, without any affectation, the unselfconscious strides of a woman who measured distance in miles rather than lengths of ballroom. When he overtook her to open the gallery door, she stepped back and her face transformed. Gone was the flustered girl, guilty and mutinous. She seemed to forget herself altogether. She narrowed her eyes, observing his gesture, the way he turned his body, with a knowingness that unnerved him. It was as though she could see through his clothes.

Which, in a sense, she could. After all, she’d immortalized the sight.

He frowned as he pulled the door closed behind them. She was a problem. The severity of the problem remained to be seen.

He leaned against the wall, but she kept going, heedless of the fact that he no longer followed. She stopped halfway down the room, in front of a marble Roman in helmet and sandals, as though picking an ally. When at last she turned back to face him, he saw her hunted expression.

In the library, they might have been overheard. But in the gallery, she was alone. Absolutely alone. He saw her shift restlessly as she recognized her plight. A marble ally is no ally at all.

He pushed off the wall and strolled toward her until an arm span of space remained between them. He’d thought it a reasonable distance, but from where he stood, he couldn’t help but take notice of her warmth and fragrance, the subtle rise and fall of her chest. Maybe it was the contrast with the gallery’s chilly throng of motionless white figures.

She smelled like roses and common gin, a faint piney scent. His thoughts blurred. What he was experiencing now felt like anticipation—two bodies responding to each other, intuiting their perfect fit.

Maybe their bodies didn’t intuit. Maybe they communicated their intimate knowledge.

The final pieces slid into place.

He thought of her worn shoes, and, now that he looked more carefully, he recognized the mauve tinge to her eyelids, the delicate shadows beneath her eyes and her cheekbones, for what they were: signs of exhaustion. She’d polished her accent but she couldn’t fully smooth away those round vowels. An orphan, Miss Pickering had said. Short and slight from a childhood of underfeeding.

He sucked in his breath. She wasn’t a model. She was an artist—a splendid one at that. But to make ends meet, she also worked, worked in the profession most accessible to women of her class.

She was a prostitute.

An assumption that explained his intense feeling of rediscovery. He had bedded this woman, bedded her after sucking down gallons of beer and liquor, a river’s worth. Some nights were like that, as though the Thames flowed over and through him, bringing oblivion. He’d bedded her and forgotten her.

The realization did him no credit.

Before the army, he’d spent more time in brothels than he cared to recall. Collecting George. He would wait, sometimes for hours, on the grimy back stairs of public houses, in vast drawing rooms hung with silk curtains, in tiny, close chambers surrounded by silver cages of white mice and yellow canaries. In the end, he would drag, or carry, his brother to the coach while he mewled, sang, vomited. Over the years, he had made the acquaintance of dozens of prostitutes, from alley-treading three-penny uprights to bejeweled courtesans attended by serving girls in French underwear.

At which brothel, on which night, had he met Miss Coover?

Lately, he had sworn to himself—and several madams—that he had no interest in transacting. And it was true. The idea horrified him, after what George had done. He visited such houses only to assure himself that Effie hadn’t fallen so low.

But when his conscious mind slipped beneath that dark current . . . what then?

He stared down at the spiral curls piled messily atop Miss Coover’s head. His gaze dropped, caught on the curve of her bottom lip. In reaction to his regard, she drew the lip between her teeth. Guarding it.

Had he taken the time to kiss those lips? To kiss the inside of her wrist? To nuzzle her curls until he found her earlobe and sucked it between his teeth?

Alas. Drunk men seldom did.

The shame he felt wasn’t new, but the portion had increased. He might flatten beneath it.

He didn’t realize his expression had changed until he saw her swallow. He took a step back.

“You’re a terrible liar,” he told her, with a lightness he didn’t feel. “Cows aren’t known for murderous rampage.”

She shot him a quick, surprised look. A smile came and went on her lips, the first real smile he’d seen from her. It was fleeting, but impossibly lovely. She shrugged.

“I added a bull,” she said thoughtfully. “If you could see the scene as I’d imagined it, you’d feel differently, I think. The cows had a terrifying aspect.”

Dramatic, not addlepated. But he already knew that. Perhaps she was obvious about certain falsehoods out of habit—a technique deployed to distract from the greater deception. For she was adept at deception. He knew that now, too. Surely no one at the Royal Academy was aware of her other profession. Democratic plainness in dress did not necessarily signal broad-mindedness. They would never accept her as one of their own, if her secret came to light.

“I have yet to behold the cow that strikes terror in my heart,” he said.

“But of course not, you’re a war hero,” she murmured. “How silly of me.”