A Wicked Lord at the Wedding by Jillian Hunter

Author:Jillian Hunter [Hunter, Jillian]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-345-51682-4
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2009-04-13T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

By the time Sebastien reached Sir Nathan Bellisant’s rooms in St. Martin’s Lane, the rain had lightened to a drizzling fog. The walk in the damp failed to extinguish the doubts that simmered inside him. This time he would be the one to pay the surprise call. He knew of no better way to judge a man’s character than to visit him unannounced at his home. It seemed only fair. Bellisant felt comfortable calling on Eleanor at all hours.

He ought not to complain when the insult was reversed.

By Eleanor’s husband.

He knocked hard at the door and heard shuffling, a woman’s voice from within. He had just left his wife at home. It was irrational to think she’d read his intentions and had rushed to warn Bellisant before him. What would he do if the impossible presented itself and he found her here? Would he even have the heart to fight them?

Yes. He decided he would.

Dear God, he wasn’t thinking straight.

Eleanor wasn’t here.

But an intimate portrait of her was.

An elderly house keeper opened the door, her expression harried as if she’d been turning away unwelcome callers all night, and didn’t care for any of them. Sebastien did not bother to introduce himself.

A macaw screeched from a perch in the corner. He thought he heard men conversing in muted voices from the back of the house. A door closed.

He saw Bellisant standing at the bottom of the staircase, his white shirt splotched, his fair hair tied back in tangled negligence at the nape.

“Lord Boscastle,” he said, his astonishment genuine. “It’s all right, Mrs. French. You may leave us alone. Please, come in, my lord, but mind where you walk.”

Sebastien nodded, following Bellisant’s slender figure up the stairs to a drawing room studio. The air bore the mingled scent of linseed oil, spirits of turpentine, and—his nostrils flared—of absinthe. He felt Bellisant’s dark eyes regard him as he looked around the room.

Sketching easels stood before the tall sash windows. There were candles burning in at least a dozen girandoles upon the walls where paintings did not hang. Jars of paint sat upon several tables of mismatched veneers. Well-worn books tottered in piles upon the unlit hearth. What a bloody mess. He reassured himself that there was no evidence of his wife.

And then he saw her.

His gaze lifted to the painting that occupied the place of honor above the mantelpiece. Shock fired his nerves. It felt like a violation and privilege at once, to view a painting of Eleanor in such an unguarded pose. She reclined on a royal-blue couch, a black velvet band upon her tousled hair, a black silk half-mask in her hand. Her smile struck him as hauntingly sad. He recognized the gown.

But who was the lady who both tempted and held herself aloof from the beholder?

He was not an artist. Even so he could not deny Bellisant’s genius of delicacy and perception. The texture intrigued the eye. The balance of dark and light brought Eleanor so alive she might have stood between the two men who flanked the fireplace.

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