Page 42 of The Duke's Stolen Heart
Chapter 14
Antonia did not need rescuing. A note arrived in her distinctive hand late that evening.
Havencrest -
I am bone-weary after twelve hours of toil, but I have it. I know the best way to get the Heart’s Cry. We won’t even need to steal it. But you will need to get me back into Almack’s, and I will need to learn how to cheat at whist.
Tomorrow morning, the usual place and time.
-A.
Wise of her not to sign her full name to such a damning missive, not that Malcolm had any intention of letting it exist long enough for anyone to find it. He had slept badly and rolled out of bed at the first grey hint of light, impatient to see Antonia.
Margaret’s plea yesterday had thrown one fact into sharp relief. He hadn’t felt so alive in years as he had since the day he had spied Antonia and her quick fingers slide the lower half of the Heart’s Cry from the pale breast of an aging courtesan. Their interactions, whether disposing of a dead body or dancing to the mechanical clicks of a metronome in an unheated dance studio, embedded beneath his skin like the hooks of a burr. Annoying, but impossible to ignore.
To ease the ache of burgeoning tenderness Malcolm spent the first hour at the studio scratching out likenesses of his mother’s face. The discovery of his mother’s ruined miniature portrait among his father’s personal possessions after his death had sparked him to take lessons in hopes of having it restored. Alas, not one sketch had ever come close enough for an artist to repair it. Despite a quarter-century of scathing remarks about women in general and his mother in particular, the previous Duke of Havencrest had never been able to let his wife go. He had never remarried. Malcolm had spent a few years resenting his abortive attempt at marriage before finally coming to the conclusion that Kitty had spared him from making them both miserable.
The side of his palm turned gray and smudged the paper. Malcolm wiped it clean with a cloth dipped in kerosene and kept drawing until the tips of his fingers turned stiff with cold. He continued furiously, lost in thought, until the door burst open and Antonia’s light steps tapped quickly over the bare wood.
“I am sorry I overslept. I haven’t worked that hard in years, but I have it, Malcolm. I know how we can get the Heart’s Cry—” Antonia halted abruptly as she caught sight of his drawings. A sense of shame crumpled up Malcolm’s confidence like a discarded scrap. His pride rose and tried to choke him.
“Those aren’t pictures of…” She trailed off. “Not your mother. Of a woman.” The jumble of incoherent words told him just how badly his art had shocked the normally unflappable Antonia. She had blanched as white as parchment until her full red lips were the only things to stand out. Malcolm shuffled the stacks into place. Outside the church bell tolled eleven. He had been here since eight. Three entire hours of scribbles had resulted in a near-perfect likeness of Antonia’s face. Her long neck curved down to naked shoulders and round breasts with tightly beaded nipples. Malcolm had spent a good deal of time perfecting the precise pucker of her areola.
Too much time. Discards of his efforts littered the floor, defying his efforts to collect them. Malcolm had long believed himself immune to embarrassment, but the fervor with which he had worked to draw the likeness of her naked body reclining in different positions—most utterly depraved—caused a prickling heat to rise up the sides of his neck.
“I thought I would hear you coming up the stairs,” he mumbled, crouching to grasp a stray page that had fluttered beneath the table. Antonia overcame her horror and captured a stack of his middle-hour attempts to draw her face and breasts. She flipped through them, her dark eyes wider than he had ever seen them.
“Please tell me these aren’t pictures of your mother,” she asked, ambling toward the window to scrutinize his handiwork.
“You know they aren’t. I can hardly remember what she looks like anymore.” Malcolm swallowed. His cravat was trying to strangle him. “They are of you.”
“Me?” Antonia echoed. Two bright spots bloomed over her cheeks. “You have a vivid imagination. I look nowhere near this pretty.”
“‘Pretty’ is an inadequate word to describe your beauty and you know it.” He finally shoved the drawing paper into its folio and stalked toward her. Malcolm stopped short upon reaching her side. He had committed a violation. No matter how well she was taking it, he could hardly snatch his drawings out of her hands. “Give them to me. They are nothing but scribbles that do no justice to you. I will burn these insults in the grate this evening.”
“I want to keep one.” Antonia offered him a sheaf, but retained the most complete version in her other hand outstretched from her body.
What? Malcolm realized he had spoken aloud when she responded.
“I want to keep it. As a memento. May I have it, since you intend to feed it to the flames?”
He had been lying, and she knew it. “Why?”
“Because you have quite a bit of skill. I have never had a picture made of me. My mother might like it.”
“You cannot send that picture to your mother,” Malcolm sputtered, aghast.
“You don’t know my mother,” Antonia said flatly. Malcolm heard the note of bitterness in her tone and wondered, not for the last time, about her past. “I send her money when I can. But my stepfather, Cyrus, despises me. He makes her return it. I know how badly they need funds because she always keeps a portion, though. My mother tries to have things halfway. She always has. He—they—never quite liked me.” She stopped. After a beat of hesitation, she continued softly, “I am not Cyrus’s daughter.”
Malcolm inhaled. He managed to get close enough to pluck the drawing from her grasp. “Your mother does not need to see this. Not now, not ever. I was in error to create it. I will destroy it.”
“Why?” Antonia pleaded. “Why did you draw me like that?”
Because he could not stop thinking about her. Malcolm saw her naked and pliant every time he closed his eyes. But his teeth and tongue trapped the words where they stopped in his throat, too raw to acknowledge aloud. Instead, he changed the topic. “Lady Margaret Evendaw has offered her hand in marriage.”
Antonia gaped at him, then frowned as if deciding whether or not to let it pass. Then, with characteristic bravado, she laughed. “Did you say yes?”
“In truth, Lady Margaret has offered me the ideal aristocratic marriage. Once there is an heir I am at leisure to seek any pleasures I like outside her bedroom, provided I claim any offspring she presents to me.”
