The Painter Takes an Earl (Ladies Least Likely Book 3) by Misty Urban

Author:Misty Urban [Urban, Misty]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oliver Heber Books
Published: 2024-05-07T00:00:00+00:00

“My brother is in love with you.”

Amalie strolled at her side through the Grand Walk of Marylebone Pleasure Gardens. The paths were not crowded, and pleasant music drifted from the orchestra playing on the balcony of the pavilion. The tall, slender trees with their silvery bark and dainty leaves provided shade from the afternoon sun, and delicious aromas drifted from the shaded gallery that housed the dining area. Jock and Beater were here somewhere, having dispersed to their own amusements after Renwick’s servants let them down in the High Street of what had once been sleepy Marylebone village and was fast becoming an outpost of the great thrumming sprawl that was London. The gravel paths and trimmed trees, an island of repose in the bustling city, seemed outlined in gold, now that Harriette was looking upon her favorite retreats for what might be the last time.

Harriette glanced behind them to where Ren was surrounded by a horde of female admirers. He couldn’t walk a step without being detained by some overly friendly matron towing a demure, giggling girl or two in her wake. The ladies blushed and wafted fans before bright eyes and pinkened cheeks, looking up and down Ren’s form as if they knew what he looked like beneath his saffron silk frock coat and waistcoat with its crimson checks. And they did, thanks to Harriette and Mrs. Darly.

“Your brother and I were good friends the summer he lived in Shepton Mallet. He is kind to me based on that past affection, I think. Proven in that he has agreed to pay me an exorbitant commission for a painting I’ve not yet finished.”

“It is more than that,” Amalie insisted. “He is besotted with you. Over the moon.”

“Hmmm,” Harriette said. As she watched, Bess Hervey, who had looked upon Ren with horror in the formal drawing room of Renwick House, tapped him on the arm with her fan and laughed becomingly. She was an uncommonly handsome woman, drat her sparkling eyes. Meanwhile Charlotte Stanhope, coming up at Ren’s rear with her friends in train, ogled his backside with an unmaidenly leer. Her interested gaze roamed down his brown breeches to the riding boots which made him look casually uncaring of fashion and thus all the more fashionable.

Those girls would recoil if they knew the scars and the suffering that lay beneath Ren’s white clocked stockings and his cunningly crafted boots. Harriette felt a hitch in her stomach. He might marry a woman who would close her eyes when he came to the marital bed, lying still and passive while he went about his business of breeding her, shutting out the sight of his beautiful face inflamed with passion, his eyes that vivid and enthralling blue. He might give himself to a woman who would never strip him down and kiss and taste every inch of him, as Harriette would do, given half the chance.

As all those courtesans on his Grand Tour had done, no doubt. Reports had come back of the extraordinary satisfaction the Earl of Renwick left in his lovers.

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