Page 82 of A Scandalous Kind of Duke

“Oh, but I think you are.”

“You have no morals, no purpose.”

He dismissed those with a lofty wave. “I have no need for those.”

“I have clients and a studio and a patroness. I have responsibilities. I have bills. I have a housekeeper. I havecats.”

“I don’t quite see the connection between cats and—”

“You may leave now.”

He rose, palms spread wide in conciliation, and sauntered toward the door.

So, your ideal man is one who will not stay,Leo had said.It is not your nature to love long.

She was not like this rake. She wasnot.

In the doorway, he shot her a sly, calculating look. “You cannot pine over Polly forever. He was always going to marry someone else. You are not the sort of woman a man like Polly marries.”

She itched to throw something at him. Her own violence startled her.

“I’m not pining,” she snapped. “Pining is for people who refuse to accept reality, and I never dreamed for a heartbeat that I might marry Leo. I would certainly never want to be a duchess.”

A smile lurked in his features. She had revealed too much. She scrounged up a show of cheerful indifference.

“I thought your mind broader than that, Mr. St. Blaise, but clearly you are as narrow-minded as the rest of them, to imagine my former friendship with Leo was anything more than just that. Are you yet another of those fools who assume that if a man and woman are alone in a room, they must be up to no good?”

“If I am, it is only because when I am alone with a woman, we get up to no good.” He released a woeful sigh. “Usually, anyway.”

His attitude was so self-mocking that Juno’s anger melted away.

“I don’t think that is something to be proud of,” she said.

He grinned. “What can I say? One must pass the time somehow, and I’m a terrible conversationalist.” Then he sketched a lazy bow, said, “A pleasure as always, Miss Bell,” and was gone.

* * *

What she neededto do was curl up in bed with her cats and stay there until the end of time.

CHAPTER21

“Oh, but it is hopeless!” Beatrice wailed. “I don’t know why I even bother!”

Juno glanced at Beatrice’s profile and then back at the painting that had apparently inspired this outburst of despair.

To be fair, it was not exactly a cheerful painting—women weeping over the bloody corpses of their men—but that was in keeping with the spirit of this new exhibition of Spanish art.

She had been eager to join Beatrice at the viewing but, unfortunately, Beatrice had insisted on attending the exhibition on its opening day, along with the rest of London. With everyone determined to be among the first to see the paintings, there was such a crush it was difficult to see any paintings at all. Although, she supposed, many of them cared less about seeing the art than about being seen to be seeing the art.

Then Juno realized Beatrice’s gaze was fixed on a stout, bland-faced lady, conversing in a group nearby.

“She did not grant me so much as a second glance,” Beatrice said in a broken whisper.

“Is she someone important?”

The question livened Beatrice right up, as her jaw dropped and her eyes went wide. “Juno Bell, how can you not know?” she whispered. “Why, that is the Viscountess Newhurst. To think we’d see someone so grand here today! I was introduced to her at Prescott’s art contest last week. She was most gracious and I invited her to my ball.” Her shoulders slumped. “And now she does not care who I am! Even after she expressed interest in your new work.”

New work? If only. Juno had hoped this exhibition might spark an image inside her, but the paintings only made her feel more on edge and dull, as if the art was building up inside her like so much sludge on her brain.

---