Oh dear.
And his robe—heavens help her sanity—his robe. Had she mentioned how short it was? She had? Well, forgive the repetition, but in her defense, her nervous system had filed for early retirement.
Wanton blinked up.
She had just pressed her lips to the ocular region of Thorne Vangloot, Duke of Arsbury.
The man whose glutes were rumored to have inspired sonnets, sculptures, and at least one international incident.
He straightened her with a jerk, his face unreadable but for the slight twitch of an eyebrow attempting its own coup d’état.
“Miss Wallflower, are you attempting to blind me?”
“No, Your Grace,” she said crisply. “Though I must admit—” she tilted her head, lashes fluttering with deceptive innocence, “—my own eyes have been rather dramatically opened.”
She curtsied with academic dignity, as though she were concluding a lecture entitled On the Unexpected Intimacy of Eyelid Contact in Steam-Filled Environments.
“Enjoy your chair.”
Wanton turned smartly—before she could melt from eyebrow exposure alone—and glanced down at the guidebook still clutched in her trembling hands.
Canova, it seemed, had not been exaggerating. That glimpse—brief, angled, partially obstructed by the tyranny of terry cloth—had confirmed the theory: His Grace’s glutes might very well be the most striking in Europe.
She swallowed. Now she had a hypothesis. One that demanded confirmation. Peer review. Possibly sketching.
Easy, Wanton! First things first—visual evidence.
She must see them. Unobstructed. Unadorned. Un-terried. Not for pleasure, obviously. Certainly not for lust. No, this was pure research. For history. For science. For the greater good of posterior scholarship.
She squared her shoulders, spine straight with purpose. A self-respecting academic never ignored a hypothesis once…presented.
And she would not rest until she had observed the Arsbury Phenomenon in its natural habitat. Preferably under ideal lighting.
Chapter three
In Which Wanton Commits Cultural Trespass, Encounters Sculptural Majesty, and Exits Via Herbaceous Humiliation
It began, as many things did in her life lately, with poor judgment—and this time, a bribe.
But once science called, she had no alternative but to obey. Did that mean she was a slave to science? The image of a robe-wearing and muscular science staring at her with a raised brow flashed through her mind and she quickly dispersed it.
Focus, Wanton!
She pressed a jar of strawberry preserves into the maid’s trembling hands—the good kind, imported from Devon, with whole fruit and enough sugar to rob sleep from an entire battalion of children. The girl hesitated only a second before shoving the preserves into her apron and nodding down the corridor.
“Five minutes,” the maid whispered, casting a fearful glance over her shoulder.
Moments later, Wanton slipped through the heavy oak door of the Duke of Arsbury’s private suite. The room was immaculate. Ascetic, even. Crisp linens, starched order, no hint of softness anywhere—except for the blazing hearth and the suspiciously fluffy rug near it. She didn’t linger on that.
“Oh, Byron’s backside,” she muttered. “What am I doing?”
She took another imprudent step into His Grace’s chamber and froze.
Bathed in a shaft of golden morning light, elevated on a plinth of black-veined marble, stood the most infamous sculpture never displayed in any gallery: Canova’s final secret.
The Duke’s Glutes.
Not in flesh and blood, but the very next best thing—immortalized in Italian marble, carved with such lifelike reverence that the curve of each cheek glowed with divine light. Commissioned, the whispers claimed, by none other than Pauline Bonaparte, who—after parting ways with His Grace—had found herself unable to bear the sight of them and had gifted the sculpture to its muse.
