Page 12 of A Scandalous Kind of Duke

Sipping his port, Leo risked a glance at Juno, but her attention was on the chocolate truffles, and her choice of which to eat next.

* * *

The party soon broke up,as the Bell family scattered to prepare for a ball. Leo waited for them in the drawing room, with Juno for company. She would not attend the ball, for hers was the world of risqué salons and soirees instead.

She paused to study a painting; he joined her at the wall. It was her own work, from her youth, depicting a young Phoebe and Livia clad in togas and lecturing in a Greek agora, while renowned philosophers listened at their feet.

She tilted her head to look at him. “You’ve been quiet this evening. What are you thinking about?”

Leo shrugged.

“More of your secrets,” she said softly, and turned back to the painting.

It felt oddly unsettling, like she was slipping away.

“How old were you when you painted that?” he asked.

She pursed her lips, considering. “About sixteen, I think. They must have been about fourteen and twelve.”

“Your affection for them shines through.”

“They were already so learned, even back then. I never could keep up with their clever arguments.”

“Not one of them can do what you do and they know it.”

She traced a corner of the frame. “It’s peculiar, isn’t it? I do not lack confidence, yet a small part of myself is still ashamed and frightened like that grubby ten-year-old who showed up on their doorstep, not knowing which fork to use and hardly able to read, while my bluestocking cousins were already studying Greek. Sometimes, that little child tells me I’m not good enough.”

“Showed up,” Leo thought. The family always phrased it thus, as if little Juno had arrived at the Bell’s country home in Longhope Abbey of her own volition, like a stray cat, rather than being left there by her artist parents, who had decided that a child no longer fit into their plans.

On one of their morning walks, Leo had said,You never mention your parents,to which she replied,I never think of them. They had no time for me, so I have no time for them.Her jaw had turned uncharacteristically hard, her shoulders stiff, her eyes flinty, so he’d known not to mention it again.

In many ways, Leo knew Juno. He knew she craved experience and chased sensation, and avoided the written word whenever she could. She enjoyed long walks in nature, but hated the way exertion turned her cheeks pink. She believed in superstitions, but worked hard and left nothing to luck. She followed rules only when they suited her, and never tried to hold anything that did not want to stay.

But he did not know what future she dreamed of, or if she still took lovers, or what she thought of in the night, when she woke up alone.

Her merry laugh bubbled between them. “Listen to me, getting so pensive! ’Tis the effect of this reunion, I suppose, stirring up that old feeling that I didn’t belong, though they welcomed me from the start. Do we ever outgrow our younger selves, I wonder, or do they remain within us like ghosts, misbehaving at the slightest provocation?” She studied his profile. “Then when I met you…” Her hesitation pulsed between them. “Well, I suppose that’s why I felt comfortable with you, the first time I encountered a truly like-minded soul.”

“Until you went to Vienna,” he reminded her. “Which abounded in like-minded souls.”

“Yes. Of course.”

“You were thriving in Vienna. Among your own people, immersed in art. I had never seen you so radiant.”

Her brow creased with confusion. Warmth crept over his neck. He ought not to have said anything.

But that was part of his tangled memory of Juno in Vienna: how he had admired her, been happy for her, even as her blithe words tore his heart to shreds.

Light glinted off her silver earrings as she swung back to the painting. “I was so very proud of this, but now I cringe at my poor technique. I’ve changed much since then.”

“Your choice of subject matter has certainly changed,” he said pointedly.

Again she laughed. “Oh dear, I really should not have let you see that drawing today. I never show ones like that.”

“Then you have others like it.”

Foolish to insist. Wiser by far to keep distance between them. And yet… That drawing had left him ravenous.

“Is it so important to keep such artworks secret?” he asked.

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