Free The King of Threadneedle Street by Moriah Densley Page B

and again and again, to capture it just right. In a way she was touching every glorious inch of him. Not without great effort did she clear her mind and resume blending flesh tones in pastel over the ridges of his abdomen and the provocative lines over his hips.
    Mindless of the time as it passed, when she had nearly finished, she saw that the light through the windows had crawled higher into noon skies. Only one task remained. She had waited in hope that the lapsing time would resolve the situation. “Andrew?” She willed herself not to sound as dry-mouthed as she felt. “Can you, ah, do anything about that?”
    He knew what she meant. “Only one thing, my love, but I don’t think you would go that far for the sake of your drawing. Or would you?”
    “No.”
    “Then you will have to render as you observe , ma belle artiste .” He winked. “And you will do me justice, I trust?”
    Alysia pursed her lips and set her pencil to the paper.

Chapter Five
     
    And thus I clothe my naked villainy
    With odd old ends stol’n out of holy writ,
    And seem as saint, when most I play the devil.
King Richard III, William Shakespeare
     
    She was summoned for an audience with Lord and Lady Courtenay. Unsurprisingly, they knew . Andrew did not have subtlety in his repertoire.
    No, she had not taken Lord Preston as a lover. No, she assured his mother, she was not carrying his child. Not even she, the Incomparable Delilah could work so swiftly, she had jested. Lady Courtenay had mistaken her incredulity for insolence. Yes, she understood the potential Lord Preston stored in his future and all that lay at stake.
    They simply could not believe she had no designs on Andrew; that she wasn’t trying to throw herself at him in a desperate attempt to avoid Viscount Harringer. She took little offense; two years before they had given her almost the same lecture. As she had then, Alysia surprised them by agreeing with everything they said on duty and propriety, and knowing one’s station, and so on.
    Alysia agreed to their wishes without intending to fulfill them. She had known all along it would be impossible to serve the interests of everyone at Ashton, but now it seemed that in order to do what she believed was correct, she must offend them all.
    She sat at her desk and wrote a desperate letter to the one person she hoped could help, a Mr. Conrad Cox, whom she had never met. Her mother had trusted Mr. Cox as her solicitor, and he had handled her affairs when she died.
    With regret, Alysia secured the letter to a small bundle and took one last longing glance at its contents. She left early the next morning to post it herself without the knowledge of anyone at Ashton. It was her last hope.
    ****
    Daisy, Lord Preston’s most devoted mastiff, sat expectantly on Alysia’s toes, holding a folded note in her mouth. Alysia took it and scratched behind Daisy’s ears. The paper was damp and the ink blurred. The familiar untidy scrawl read, Have you decided?
    Andrew appeared studious, his head bent over a letter at the writing desk, avoiding her gaze. She would know his sad excuse for penmanship anywhere. She glanced at the others in the drawing room; Lord Courtenay and the duke as thick as thieves seated by the hearth, and the ladies at needlepoint under the lamps. Lord Christian sat by Alysia with his studies while she sketched.
    The note reminded her uncomfortably that there was a rather private page in her sketchbook. She hadn’t offered to give it to Andrew, wanting it for herself. It would soon be one of few mementos she had of him.
    Andrew didn’t know he was at that moment the subject of her final piece at Ashton; a life-sized portrait of his head. She had finished blending highlights from the lamplight on his face and now cross-hatched the waves of his hair, more unruly than usual because he scrubbed a hand through it each time he paused to concentrate. Christian sat in her line of view, so it appeared she watched him as he studied