Page 81 of A Scandalous Kind of Duke

What she neededto do was see Leo one more time.

But the man who entered was Mr. St. Blaise.

Impatiently, she looked past him, to the empty doorway. She listened for more boots, another voice, another man.

There was no one else. Only St. Blaise and his angelic smile.

“Miss Bell, as beautiful as ever! Are you not delighted to see me?”

“I am delighted,” she said, and it was true because he was undemanding and uninteresting and made for a jolly distraction. “Entertain me.”

He obeyed, regaling her with amusing anecdotes and provocative opinions and not one mention of Leo at all.

Until he stretched and said, “My timing lacked finesse last time I was here, as Polly was also present, but perhaps you have given some thought to my proposition?”

Juno searched her memory for a proposition, but came up as blank as one of her own canvases.

His eyes widened with incredulity. “You and me? Naked? Kept man? Except I don’t actually expect you to keep me. I have Polly for that.”

Laughter poured out of her then, bright and merry. An affair with St. Blaise? What a marvelous joke.

He did not seem to think so. “The jest was not so diverting as that. It is not fair to tease me so. If you laugh so loudly at something that is only a little amusing, I must assume you are flirting with me.”

“If a woman passes you on the street, you assume she is flirting with you.”

“Yes, but that’s only because they usually are.”

She shook her head. “The only time I want to see you unclothed is if I am drawing you. Which, in the circumstances, will not happen again. So.”

He shrugged one shoulder, suddenly looking very French. “That’s too bad. We could have a good time together, indulge a passing passion, a fleeting fancy, a temporary tup. We are similar creatures, you and I.”

Something jolted down her spine. She sat bolt upright. She wasnotlike him.

Was she?

He was still talking, in a low voice no doubt honed for the purpose of talking women into bed.

“We are both creatures of sensuality. We take enjoyment in life’s transient pleasures. Why should you not fall lightly into my bed?”

Juno leaped up to pace about the sitting room. Leo also had claimed that her emotions did not endure. Was this truly her nature? Was this who she had become?

But of course she enjoyed life’s transient pleasures. Because theyaretransient, she wanted to yell, at St. Blaise, at Leo, at the world. Nothing was permanent. Seasons changed. Bodies aged. Friends moved away.

Parents left their daughter on a doorstep and disappeared.

Dukes married other, more suitable women.

One could hold on to nothing. If everything was transient, all one could do was enjoy it in the moment and never try to hold on.

That was why she had devoted herself to art, because art alone would never leave her.

She looked through the doorway to her studio, with its array of empty easels, and laughed again.

Well. Now art had left her too.

St. Blaise was watching her, eyebrows raised. She was falling to pieces.

“I’m not like you,” she said desperately, fists clenched. “I’m not.”

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