The Very Daring Duchess Part 46

But William was too engrossed in the picture to rise to Edward's challenge, too lost in the image of the rosy-cheeked young woman.

"She's the one, Edward," he said softly. "Mind how I told you before I'd know the next girl when I saw her. This is the one, in this painting. This is the girl."

"What girl?" asked Francesca, her dark eyes lighting with curiosity. "Whatever are you saying? Ah, my dear friend! You sound at last like a gentleman ready to fall in love and marry!"

"Perhaps I am, if I could only find this fair G.o.ddess of yours," said William, trying to make a jest from his inadvertent confession. The duke and d.u.c.h.ess were closer than most married couples, but there was still a good deal about his activities in the Admiralty that Edward would rather his wife didn't know, and William's trips across the Channel were among them. "A perfect English Venus like this one-how could I not fall in love outright?"

"Fah, what do you know of beauty?" Francesca wrinkled her nose with contempt. "When you look at this picture, you're seeing the girl as I painted her, not as you'd see her for yourself."

"You're saying I'm no judge of a pretty face?" asked William, bemused. Certainly all his worldly experience among the fair s.e.x should account for something. "That I've no eye for telling a sow's ear from a silk purse?"

But the d.u.c.h.ess was serious. "No, Bonnington, listen to me. Real beauty is more than a pretty face, and deeper, too. Women see more in our sisters than men ever will, and discover the beauty that comes from grace, or intelligence, or cleverness, beauty that you men so willfully overlook. You could come within three paces of this girl as she really is, and not recognize her."

"I would know this lady anywhere," said William confidently. She was so fresh and different from any other woman of his acquaintance that perhaps she truly was the girl-no, the G.o.ddess-he was meant to marry, and for perhaps an entire two seconds, he amused himself with the notion. "How could I miss such elegance, such breeding?"

"And how perfectly you prove my point, Bonnington!" said Francesca with a merry laugh. "Granting her all blessings, simply because I dressed her as a G.o.ddess!"

"You can't claim all the credit, Francesca," insisted William. "Not for that face. To have her gaze at me like that, all sweet devotion-what man could want for more?"

" 'Devotion,' hah," said Francesa, raising her gaze toward the ceiling with dismay. "When I drew this girl, Bonnington, she wasn't gazing at you. She was watching the antics of the ducks on the pond in St. James's Park. She didn't even realize I was sketching her. I never spoke to her, nor will I likely ever see her again. A great pity, that, for I'd love to draw her again."

"But surely the lady's sweetness, her gentility-"

"She was not a lady, Bonnington," said Francesca, the hoops in her ears swinging emphatically against her cheeks, "at least not how you mean it. She was an orange-seller in the park with her empty basket on the bench beside her, and her look of happiness likely came from having sold all her wares so early in the afternoon. That was what made her as beautiful as any G.o.ddess to me, and that was what I wished to capture: her satisfaction and joy in the afternoon."

An orange-seller. William smiled wryly as his sentimental ideal disintegrated. The girl would never be his countess, then, nor anyone else's. All the beauty in the world wouldn't compensate for her parading through the park selling fruit and likely herself as well. A pity, a royal pity, and William sighed with genuine regret as he looked at the painting again.

Not that he was ready to forget her completely. She still might do as his companion on board the Fancy. An orange-seller wouldn't be shy, but she'd know her place, and wouldn't cause mischief by putting on airs above her station the way Jenny had. No one of any consequence would miss her if things went wrong and she disappeared, either, for London swallowed up common girls like this each day. She'd be malleable, agreeable, and obedient, and she'd still be beautiful, no matter how Francesca had tried to deny it. The girl would do, then; she'd do.

And once he found her, perhaps he could steal a bit of that glowing, enchanting joy of hers for himself.

"Thank'ee, lad, thank'ee," said Harriet Treene, smiling as she handed the little boy his orange. He took the fruit solemnly, staring at it in his hand like a golden prize as he trotted back with it to his hovering nursemaid. The poor overbred little gentleman was so trussed up in white linen and leather slippers, his blond hair long and curled like a girl's, that it was a wonder to Harriet how the sorry mite could manage to move. If he were her son, he'd be running barefoot and free like a regular boy, getting into dirt and mischief. But then if he were hers, he'd be selling oranges, too, instead of buying them from her, and with a wry shake of her head, she shifted the remaining fruit to the front of her basket, and smoothed the checkered cloth around them.

"Sweet Indian oranges, oh, so sweet!" she called, her voice lilting up and down. Every girl had her own cry, as distinct as a bird's call, and in the four years since Harriet had begun she'd never stopped perfecting hers. It had to be loud enough to be heard over a summer crowd, yet clear and never shrill, as sweet upon a buyer's ears as the orange would be upon his tongue, and as easy to call with a tired voice at sunset as it was early on a fresh new morning.

But Harriet's workdays rarely lasted so long. To her considerable pride, she nearly always sold every last one of her share of the oranges from Shelby's wagon before the Westminster bells chimed three. Not only would her penny-laden pocket swing against her leg with a comforting heft, but she'd earn a precious hour for herself in the park.

She'd only eight more oranges left for today. On an afternoon this fair, she could sell them all to a single buyer, if luck were with her. Resolutely she lifted her head and smiled sweetly, eagerly, as if her shoulders didn't ache from her basket's straps and the sweat wasn't p.r.i.c.kling her forehead beneath her wide straw hat or trickling down her back. No, instead she must look as if selling these eight oranges were her greatest single pleasure in the world, and sound as if she meant it.

"Sweet Indian oranges, oh, so sweet! Buy me sweet Indian oranges, oh, so sweet!"

"Here, darling, here," called a man's voice behind her. "I'll try your sweet oranges."

"Ah, good day, sir, good day!" Harriet turned gracefully with the basket before her, on her toes the way she'd seen the fine ladies do so their skirts would twirl around their ankles. Gentlemen liked such niceties; she'd learned that here in the park, too. "Fine Indian oranges, sir, direct from the ship what brought them! How many shall you try, sir? How many shall you take?"

The gentleman was astride his horse, a tall bay with black-stockinged legs that seemed to echo the man's own dark polished boots and buff-colored pantaloons. With her view shaded by the broad straw brim of her hat, those well-muscled legs were all Harriet could see of the man, but they were enough to judge that he rode often and in more challenging places than this park.

He was wealthy, too. Only rich men could afford to wear breeches that were so perfectly tailored and so flawlessly spotless. Faith, even the soles of his boots were blacked and polished! A fine gentleman like this could afford the rest of her basket without thinking twice, and before Harriet lifted her gaze she lightly bit her lower lip to make it redder, then smiled.

And gasped.

He was, quite simply, the most beautiful gentleman she'd ever seen. She couldn't describe him any better than that. He had black hair cropped fashionably short, a straight nose and a firm jaw and chin with a disarming cleft, and beneath the black slash of his brows his blue eyes seemed to glint and dance with some wicked secret, just between the two of them. He was tall and lean, with broad shoulders, his clothes tailored to display his natural elegance without being foppish or overdone.

And when he returned her smile, she felt herself turn soft and melt inside like b.u.t.ter left in the sun.

"Here you are at last," he said, easily swinging himself down from the horse to stand before her. "I knew I'd find you, sweetheart, though it's taken me nigh on a week of searching through this infernal park."

Instantly Harriet's smile took on a wary edge. Was she such an addlepated ninny as that, to forget everything she'd learned here on these paths? She was eighteen, no green la.s.s; she knew something of the world. She'd seen what became of girls who disappeared into the bushes with gentlemen, eager to lift their petticoats for an extra shilling or two. Men were men, no matter how fine they dressed or how blue their eyes. "Searching for her," hah: Did he truly judge her simple enough to believe such trumpery as that?

She plucked one of her oranges from the basket, not only holding it out for him to admire, but also to remind him exactly what was for sale, and what wasn't.

"Mine be the sweetest oranges in the park, sir," she said, tossing the orange lightly in her palm. "You'll find none better, sir, not for all the silver and gold in a great Pharisee's purse."

"Pharisees? Here?" he asked, bemused, as he gently stroked his horse's nose. "In St. James's Park?"

"Aye, sir," she answered promptly, though no one else had ever questioned her about Pharisees and their habits before. "And I ask you, sir, where else would a Pharisee o' fashion go a-walking in London, eh?"

"You amaze me, la.s.s," he said, leaning forward and lowering his voice as if to share a fresh confidence with her. "Here I'd thought they'd be carried about in a sedan-chair like any other gray-bearded worthy!"

"Oh, no, sir, they be walking for their const.i.tutions, and in this very park." She grinned; she couldn't help it. Who'd have guessed such a handsome gentleman could banter like this? "Where else would you have them Pharisees go, sir? Tripping through Covent Garden to pick through yesterday's turnips?"

"To the Tower?" he asked, sweeping his arm through the air with a dramatic flourish. "To London Bridge? To White's to pa.r.s.e the rules of the faro table?"

She laughed, delighted both by the foolishness of the images and with the playful wittiness of his words. "Nay, sir, they must stay here in the park, to buy me sweet oranges!"

He chuckled in return, a warm, rich, conspiratorial sound. "Then I must be sure to look for these worthies, to pay my respects. Considering this park is home to a true G.o.ddess like you, why not Pharisees, and pharaohs, and even a sibyl or two?"

"No G.o.ddess, sir," said Harriet. "Only an honest la.s.s what wishes to make an honest bit of coin."

"Ah, but you are a G.o.ddess, and I've the proof." He reached into the front of his dark blue frock coat, and drew out a sheet of cream-colored paper. Carefully he unfolded it, and held it up for her to see. "There you are, proof enough. Can you deny now that you're Venus herself?"

Once again Harriet gasped, but this time not with admiration. The page was covered with red-chalk drawings of her, sitting beside the duck pond. The likenesses were unmistakable, her face and form as expertly captured as the portrait-prints of the queen and king pinned over the bar in every tavern in the country.

But that was exactly what unsettled Harriet, and angered her, too. Her face was, well, hers, one of the few things that truly belonged to her alone, and to see it set down there for every pa.s.serby to criticize-the too-round cheeks and the wide-set eyes, even the way her hair was curling into untidy wisps around her forehead-how could she not feel as if something had been stolen from her?

"Here now, sir, how did you come by those?" she demanded, her cheeks flushed. "I never gave no artist leave to do such a thing, and it-it be wrong, it do, like stealing!"

"Hardly," said the gentleman, surpised by her reaction. "Consider it an honor, my dear, and a flattering one at that. What woman wouldn't want her beauty captured so splendidly?"

"I wouldn't," declared Harriet, dropping the orange back into the basket and reaching for the sheet of drawings. "Those be mine, sir, mine! That thieving artist robbed me of me face, sir, sure as if he'd clipped me pocket, and I've a mind to call the watchman on him, if you don't give them pictures to me."

But the man held the sheet up in the air, out of her reach. "Ah, ah, sweetheart, pray contain your fervor! These pictures aren't mine to give away, nor would the artist who drew them be pleased to hear you call her thieving and conniving."

Harriet lowered her hand. "A woman drew them pictures?"

"A lady, you ungrateful creature," he said lightly, somehow making that sound like an endearment instead of an insult. "Her Grace the d.u.c.h.ess of Harborough. And despite how you're threatening her, she would gladly draw you again if you'd but present yourself at Harborough House. Likely she'd even pay you for your time, more than you'd make in a week selling oranges."