his first customer of the night and held out his hand for payment. He thanked them for their compliments and made several comments witty enough to hit their mark, judging from the way the other occupants of the table flung back their heads and laughed. But he had no idea what he’d actually said. His mind was still reeling from the shock of seeing Amethyst Dalby.
After ten years of leaving him be, she had to go and invade territory that he’d come to think of as peculiarly his own.
Not that it mattered.
And to prove it, he would damn well confront her.
He turned and scanned the restaurant with apparent laziness, hesitated when he came to her table, affected surprise, then sauntered over.
If she had the effrontery to appear in public, with her latest paramour in tow, then it was time to remove the gloves. The days were long gone when he would have spared a lady’s blushes because of some ridiculous belief in chivalry towards the weaker sex.
The weaker sex! The cunning sex more like. He’d never met one who wasn’t hiding some secret or other, be it only her age, or how much she’d overspent her allowance.
Though none with secrets that had been as destructive as hers.
‘Miss Dalby,’ he said when he reached her table. ‘How surprising to see you here.’
‘In Paris, do you mean?’
‘Anywhere,’ he replied with a hard smile. ‘I would have thought...’ He trailed off, leaving her to draw her own conclusions as to where he might have gone with that statement. He’d made his opinion of her very plain when he’d discovered how duplicitous she’d been ten years ago. Back then, she’d had the sense to flee polite society and presumably return to the countryside.
He hadn’t allowed himself to dwell on what might have become of her. But now she was here, why shouldn’t he find out? He glanced at her hand. No ring. And she hadn’t corrected him when he’d addressed her as Miss Dalby, either.
So it didn’t look as though she’d ever managed to entrap some poor unsuspecting male into marriage with a pretence of innocence. This man, this sallow-skinned, beetle-browed man whose face looked vaguely familiar, was not her husband. What then? A lover?
‘Are you not going to introduce me?’ He cocked an eyebrow in the direction of her male friend, wondering where he’d seen him before.
‘I see no need for that,’ she replied with a stiff smile.
No? He supposed it might be a little awkward, introducing a former lover to her current one. Especially if he was the jealous sort. He gave him a searching look and met with one of mutual antipathy. Was it possible the man felt...threatened? He could see why he might look like a potential competitor. Without putting too fine a point on it, he was younger, fitter and more handsome than the man she’d washed up with. Not that he saw himself in the light of competitor for her favours. God, no!
‘After all,’ she continued archly, ‘you cannot have come across to renew our acquaintance. I believe it is work you wish to solicit. Is it not?’
Of course it was. She didn’t need to remind him that whatever they’d had was finished.
‘I explained to madame,’ put in the man, proclaiming his nationality by the thickness of his accent, ‘that this is how you make your living. By drawing the likenesses of tourists.’
It wasn’t quite true. But he let it pass. It was...convenient, for the moment, to let everyone think he was earning his living from his pictures. And simpler.
And that was why he’d strolled across to her table. Exactly why.
There could be no other reason.
‘Madame wishes you to make her the swift portrait,’ said the Frenchman.
Miss Dalby shot her French lover a look brimming with resentment. He looked steadily back at her, completely unrepentant.
Interesting. The Frenchman felt the need to assert his authority over her. To remind her who was in control. Or perhaps he’d already discovered how fickle she could be, since he clearly wasn’t going to permit her to flirt with a potential new conquest right before his eyes.
Wise man.
Miss Dalby needed firm handling if a man had a hope of keeping her in her place.
He had a sudden vision of doing exactly that. She was on her back, beneath him, he was holding her hands above her head... He blinked it away, busying himself with unfolding his stool and assembling his materials. No more than one minute in her presence and he was proving as susceptible to her charms as he’d ever been. The Frenchman, on whom he deliberately turned his back as he sat down, had every reason to be jealous. He must always be fighting off would-be rivals. What red-blooded male, coming within the radius of such a siren, could fail to think about bedding her?
Even though she was not dressed particularly well, there was no disguising her beauty. As a girl, she’d been remarkably pretty. But the years—in spite of what her lifestyle must have been like to judge from the company she was now keeping—had been good to her. She had grown into those cheekbones. And the skin that clad them was peachy soft and clear as cream. Those dark-brown eyes were as deep, lustrous and mysterious as they’d ever been.
It was a pity that for quick sketches like this, he only used a charcoal pencil. He would have liked to add colour to this portrait. Later, perhaps, he would record this meeting for his own satisfaction, commemorating it in paint.
Meanwhile, his fingers flew across the page, capturing the angle of her forehead, the arch of her brows. So easily. But then she wasn’t a fresh subject. Years ago, he’d spent hours drawing her face, her hands, the curve of her shoulder and the shadows where her skin disappeared into the silk of her evening gown. Not while she was actually present, of course, because she’d been masquerading as an innocent débutante and he’d been too green to consider flouting the conventions. But at night, when he was in his room alone, unable to sleep for yearning for her—yes, then he’d drawn her. Trying to capture her image, her essence.
What a fool he’d been.
He’d even bought some paints and attempted to reproduce the colours of that remarkable hair. He hadn’t been able to do it justice, back then. He hadn’t the skill. And he hadn’t been allowed to pursue his dream by taking lessons.
‘It’s for young ladies, or tradesmen,’ his father had snapped, when they’d discussed what he really wanted to do with his life, if not follow his brothers into one of the traditional professions. ‘Not a suitable pastime for sons of noblemen.’
He could do it now, though. He’d learned about light and shade. Pigment and perspective.
His fingers stilled. In spite of what his friend Fielding had said, she wasn’t merely a brunette. There were still those rich, warm tints in her hair that put him in mind of a really good port when you held the glass up to a candle. Fielding had laughed when he’d admitted his obsession with it and clapped him on the back. ‘Got it bad, ain’t you?’
He glanced up, his hand hovering over the half-finished sketch. He might well have had it bad, but he hadn’t been wrong about her hair. It was just as glorious as it had ever been. After ten years, he might have expected to see the occasional strand of silver between the dark curls. Or perhaps signs that she was preserving an appearance of youth with dyes.
But that hair was not dyed. It could not look so soft, so glossy, so entirely...natural and eminently touchable...
He frowned, lowered his head and went back to work. He did not want to run his fingers through it, to see if it felt as soft as it looked. He could appreciate beauty when he saw it. He was an artist, after all. But then he would defy anybody to deny she had glorious hair. A lovely face. And sparkling eyes.
Though none of that altered the fact that she was poison.
He looked up, directly into her eyes, eyes that had once looked at him with what he’d thought