Any romantic entanglement between them could only end in heartbreak.
Alex was a man used to corralling his appetites. He gave up sugar and whisky, for heaven’s sake.
He should be able to forgo kissing one charming, aristocratic lass.
Besides at the moment, he faced a more perilous question—
How was he to navigate the main staircase on crutches?
The brace was nothing short of miraculous. His leg continued to ache, but the brace held it steady and firm, finally allowing him to stand upright and move unaided.
He hadn’t been exaggerating when he said he felt like a prisoner set free.
But learning to move smoothly on crutches was going to take practice.
Alex swung down the hallway to the main staircase, surveying it as a mountaineer sussing out the best way to climb a munro in the Cairngorms.
Well, as with climbing a mountain, he supposed one simply had to take the first step.
With two footmen watching and ready to help if needed, Alex descended the stairs, hopping down them one at a time. It took a ridiculously long time, and he was inordinately proud of himself when he reached the bottom. The footmen clapped their approval, so perhaps he was not alone in celebrating the wee accomplishment.
Cousin Lottie was waiting for him in the library, looking even lovelier than normal in an embroidered blue frock.
He couldn’t squelch the grin on his face as he came to a stop before her.
“Impressive,” she said. “You make locomotion via crutch appear effortless.”
“Thank ye.” He looked around the room with its expanse of bookcases. “Now where is this masterpiece of Cousin Gabriel’s I was promised?”
She waved a hand behind him. “You are going to have to turn around.”
Alex pivoted and looked up. And up. And up.
He stared in absolute silence.
The painting was enormous. Easily twelve feet tall and nearly as wide, stretching high above the fireplace.
“As I said yesterday, Father kept begging Gabriel to come home from Rome, saying he missed him. Gabriel sent this instead.”
“This precise painting?” Alex surveyed the canvas.
“Yes.”
The painting was done in a neoclassical style, focusing on sharp, realistic details. A figure angled through the frame edge-to-edge, his unclothed body facing the viewer straight on, his limbs and torso painted with clear muscular definition. Enormous feathered wings floated above the figure’s shoulders and a halo rimmed his head.
Alex squinted. “What does it say across the bottom there?”
“When this you see, please think on me,” Lottie recited at his side, a hint of laughter in her voice. “In case you were wondering, it is indeed a self-portrait.”
“Pardon?!” Alex looked at her and pointed back to the enormous canvas. “That’s a self-portrait?”
“Yes.”
“Your cousin painted a portrait of himself as the Archangel Gabriel?”
“Ourcousin,” Lottie leaned her head toward him. “It’s the family’s pride and joy.”
Alex blinked. The sheer scope of the vanity on display in the portrait was . . .
