Lady Artemis Keating, ever direct.
Except when she was telling bald-faced lies.
He settled back into his chair. “No.”
On a frustrated, “Blast,” she shot to her feet and hurried after Sir Abstrupus.
While Bran hadn’t the faintest idea what new horror awaited him beyond the double doors Lady Artemis disappeared through, he was grateful for this small mercy.
He could make his way, unobserved.
What became immediately apparent to him upon entering the cavernous space Sir Abstrupus called his celestial porch, with its south-facing, floor-to-ceiling windows running its entire length all the way to the hearth at the far end and its roaring fire—the house consumed entire forests every year—Sir Abstrupus had this night planned from the start.
As it was well into the wee hours, the room held no more light than the rest of the atmospherically lit house, but a whole retinue of footmen, their gazes pointed neutrally into the mid-distance, had been placed ten feet apart around the periphery, waiting to cater to any and every whim that crossed their master’s mercurial mind. Further, the room had been cleared of its furnishings, and in their place stood two artist’s easelsholding blank canvases in the center. Beside each was a small table set up with a brush and a pot of paint.
Sir Abstrupus stood by and watched with his usual air of mischief as Lady Artemis circled the easels, arms crossed over her chest, brow scrunched with befuddlement. At Bran’s approach, the old rogue clapped his hands together. “At last, the prodigal has seen fit to join us.”
Bran’s back teeth ground together.
He’d become accustomed to Sir Abstrupus’s mild jibes about his infirmity, but it was the skittery look in Lady Artemis’s eyes he couldn’t bear.
Oh, she gazed upon him with wariness and possibly loathing and no small bit of anger, too. But also …
Pity.
He could bear to be loathed by her.
But not pitied.
Sir Abstrupus continued. “As you are both highborn aristocrats with education and an eye toward a worldly view—” His brow crinkled. “Is it quite the thing to call a womanworldly? In my day, if a woman was calledworldly, the implication was that she sold herself on the?—”
“Please get on with it,” snapped Lady Artemis.
Sir Abstrupus shrugged with false sheepishness. “Have you heard the tale of how Michelangelo drew a perfect circle to win the papal commission for the Sistine Chapel fresco?”
“I haven’t,” said Lady Artemis.
“Yes.” Bran felt the blaze of annoyed feminine eyes.
“Ah.” Sir Abstrupus smiled as if he were the cat who got the cream. “But did you know the story is false?”
Lady Artemis heaved an exasperated sigh. “I don’t know the story at all.”
“It was the painter Giotto, in fact,” continued Sir Abstrupus. “Pope Boniface the—” His brow wrinkled. “Seventh? Eighth?Anyway, one of those Pope Bonifaces wished to commission Giotto for some mural or another in the Vatican—not the Sistine Chapel, so we’re clear. Anyway, he sent a courier to retrieve a sample of his work from Florence. One can only imagine the smirk on the artist’s face as, before the courier’s very eyes, he dipped the brush tip into a pot of red paint and drew a perfect circle.” Sir Abstrupus chuckled with a faraway smile, as if he’d witnessed the feat himself. “A man after my own heart, really.” He shook his head and continued. “Of course, the courier balked, but he had no choice but to take the drawing back to the pope. Much to the servant’s shock, Pope Boniface was mightily impressed by the simple perfection on display and Giotto won the commission.”
Ah.It was easy to see what the first feat would be.
Lady Artemis’s brow gathered. “Surely, you don’t expect us to draw perfect circles.”
“Surely, I don’t.” Sir Abstrupus allowed a dramatic beat of time to tick past. “But I surely expect you to try.”
A few seconds later, Lady Artemis was standing silently before her easel, her head tilted as she considered the implements before her—canvas, brush, paint.
But hadn’t she come into herself these last ten years?
Young, moldable ladies of seventeen and eighteen years were certainly pretty and highly prized on the marriage mart. But over the course of a lady’s twenties, a true beauty only grew more so.
Lady Artemis Keating was proof of that fact.
