Why impersonate a man? Why sit among Berthold’s collection of dilettantes and wastrels to take instruction when that venture could result in a stain on the lady’s good name?
Michael took up his pen to draft an answer to the Bristol vicar, but instead watched the ink collect on the tip of the quill and drop back into the bottle, bead by bead. Why deny anybody the sacraments, especially a soul with a history of desperate mendacity?
The next time Dorcas served that exquisite orange mousse for dessert, Michael would allow himself a modest second helping.
Chapter Three
“You think to impress old Berthold by being the last to leave?” Dermot sneered.
Psyche had smelled Dermot’s approach—roses and ruin—and ignored him. Berthold had taken a few swings at his lordship’s artistry this evening, and rather than appreciate the criticism, Dermot was apparently in the mood to swing back—at an innocent target, of course.
She tried to recall the curve of Mr. Delan—Mr. Smith’s—ear, the contrast between that graceful little arc and the uncompromising angle of his jaw. The softly tousled hair and the shadow of beard stubble that—
“You ignore your betters now, Henderson?”
“You are my social superior,” Psyche said, erasing the point of the chin and sketching it in again. The result was satisfying—more accurate and more true. “Whether you are my better in this class is for Berthold to decide, isn’t it?”
She held the sketch up to assess the whole. A face was more than a collection of features, a body more than a collection of parts. The sketch was promising. Not quite good, but promising, and focusing on it would spare her further conversation with Lord Dermot.
Her voice was low for a woman—she sang with the altos or even the tenors in church—but silence had no gender and was always Henderson’s safer course.
Dermot snatched the page from her grasp. “I think you like looking at naked men, Henderson.”
By Leonardo’s beard… To stand or to remain seated? What was the masculine thing to do? Across the room, Belchamp, the only other student still working, looked up and then pretended to resume sketching.
Psyche put down her charcoal and stayed in her chair. Dermot had thrown the first verbal punch, meaning she was all but required by masculine pride to retaliate.
“Anybody who dislikes looking at our current model, my lord, has no eye for aesthetics.”
“And you have a very good eye for aesthetics, don’t you? Particularly naked-male aesthetics?” He held up the sketch with both hands grasping the same edge, as if to tear it in two.
Even a promising sketch was dear to Psyche, and she hadn’t completed that one.
“My lord,” Psyche said around a yawn, “be so good as to permit me to instruct you. This is an anatomy class. We spent weeks studying the unclothed female form to the delight of all concerned. Perhaps those occasions have slipped your recollection. The syllabus now directs us to turn our attention to the less interesting subject, as it were. If you are uncomfortable to find that our projects now require the study of men clad only in Adam’s attire, then you’d best explain your problem to Berthold.”
Belchamp snickered, and but for that audience of one, Psyche might have won the verbal sparring match.
The sound of paper tearing—a mere inch along the margin—had her on her feet. “Go on and rip it up,” she said, because that was what a young man would say. “Only a fool would submit his rough draft to Berthold anyway.”
“How pugnacious you become when I threaten your little drawing.” Dermot held her sketch out of reach with one hand and took up her stick of charcoal with the other. “I’ll just improve a bit on your feeble rendering, shall I?”
Dermot looked as if he was considering whether to scribble a beard onto the subject or use the charcoal on Psyche’s face. The shrewd part of her, determined to complete this course without incident, and another course and another after that, told her to turn the exchange humorous, to grovel, to ask Dermot’s opinion about her handling of Mr. Smith’s nose.
The part of her that had worked for nearly two hours on that sketch, and had seen Dermot bully others in the class, calculated whether she was close enough to kick him in the cods.
“You are smarting,” she said, “because you brought in the print of the flower girl and expected Berthold to ridicule the work, and he instead praised it.”
“What are you going on about?”
“Today’s critique. You submitted a cheap shop-window print and wanted to hear the artist belittled. You did not expect Berthold to instruct the class that the entire series was brilliant, because the work was honest as well as accurate.” He’d done more than that. He’d told them to buy the whole set and study each image carefully.
“A lot of budding streetwalkers trying to look sweet among the posies. Berthold is French, and look where all that sentimentalism got them.” Dermot ripped the sketch another half inch. “Are you sentimental about your work, Henderson? I think you are. Art is a ruthless business, you know. A painter cannot afford a soft heart.”
Psyche detected movement from the tail of her eye one instant before Michael Delancey nicked the sketch from Dermot’s grasp. Delancey had been careful to tug the sketch downward and spare it further damage.
“One cannot afford to act like an ass in front of witnesses either,” Delancey said, passing Psyche her sketch. “Henderson promised me a coffee, and if my lord is through being jealous of a superior talent, we’ll be on our way. You are welcome to join us, of course.”
Belchamp, who might have got off his handsome backside and intervened before Delancey’s arrival, remained seated and watching across the room.
“For coffee?” Dermot closed one eye and held Psyche’s stick of charcoal at arm’s length, as if again considering the use of her face as a canvas. He wrinkled his nose and set the charcoal on her desk. “What a quaint notion. I’ll wish you two the joy of your humble comforts. Coffee. One shudders. Steak and a decent port await me, followed by entertainments far more lively than coffee.”
He sauntered off, the picture of lordly unconcern. Psyche barely resisted the urge to boot him in the arse.
“Don’t,” Mr. Delancey muttered. “Please do not, rather. Violence rarely solves anything.”
“Tell that to him.” Psyche took one last look at her sketch, balled it up, and tossed it onto the nearest brazier. The flames leaped higher, then died as the fire consumed the last of the fresh fuel.
Mr. Delancey looked appalled. “That was very good work.”
“Dermot touched it. Let’s get that coffee, shall we?”
Psyche was in the mood for a good brandy, a taste she’d acquired before Jacob’s death, and she was in the mood to brawl.
“I was managing,” she said when she and Mr. Delancey had gained the street. “You did not have to meddle.” Darkness had long since fallen, but the neighborhood was fashionable enough that the pedestrian and wheeled traffic changed in nature rather than slackened.
“I wanted to do more than meddle,” Mr. Delancey replied as they paused at the street corner. “All the while, Belchamp sat there like a great lump, hoping to have the best gossip to offer the rest of the sycophants if you and Lord Dimwit had started a fracas.”