Dougal stopped abruptly. “You could never let me down.”
“You say that now. Wait until the abbey is crawling with treasure hunters.”
He shrugged. “It would be worth it to have you here.” He said it easily, simply. As if he wasn’t devastating her. She swallowed. She wasn’t sure if he was disappointed when she didn’t reply. What could she say? There was nothing and everything to say. While she was damning riddles and King Henry the Eighth, she would damn dowries and greedy uncles. “If there are too many options,” Dougal continued, “then we’ll have to narrow them down and pick a starting point. It doesn’t even have to be the right one.”
She let the knotted muscles of her neck relax. He was right. She was spinning in circles because she was afraid to do the wrong thing, to take the wrong path. But you had to start somewhere. Retracing your steps, starting again, changing your mind when new information came to light; these were all good things.
She wouldn’t let a riddle defeat her.
“You’re right,” she told him. “Of course, you’re right.”
“Might you remind my siblings that such a thing is possible?”
“I’ll be sure to mention it.” She chuckled, the last of her frustration fading away. Begin, begin again.
“I’ve never been inside the hothouse,” Dougal admitted. “If nothing else, I’m glad for that.”
“It’s lovely.” Meg said as they passed giant urns filled with ferns and planters of gardenias and night-blooming jasmine. The hothouse itself was larger than some of the mansions in Mayfair. “The Earl of Dunmore has a roof carved from stone in the shape of a two-story high pineapple.”
“But does he have approximately ten thousand stars painted on every ceiling of his house?”
She smiled back. “No, I don’t think he has.” She paused, steps faltering. “Nor does he have that.”
Thatreferred to what she could only assume was some Ancient roman orgy. She’d never seen that many naked bodies intertwined, and she’d been sketching nude statues for weeks now. Marble buttocks were dimpled, held in strong hands, a hard nipple rested on a tongue, mouths touched the backs of knees, thighs, and considerably more intimate places.
She felt oddly flushed to see it. Not necessarily embarrassed, though she couldn’t meet Dougal’s eyes right way, but curious. Aware. Heat throbbed between her legs, not because of the sculpture, but more because she could imagine him doing all of those things to her. And more. She wanted it. Craved it.
Dougal cleared his throat. “That’s…something.”
Meg had to swallow before she could be sure her voice would be even. “Art.”
“Yes. Art.”
They skirted it, casting about for something else to look at, to talk about. Meg felt it burning behind her, all hands and teeth and smooth skin. Open mouths.
This is what came of wandering around without a chaperone.
Not that she thought for even one moment that Lady Blackwell wouldn’t have found a way to make this more undignified.
“The Prince Regent had a hothouse built for his ceremony that has a stream and several miniature bridges,” she blurted out. She never blurted things out. “He filled it with goldfish.”
Dougal glanced at her, looked away. She realized there was a marble inner thigh behind her head. “Did he? Have you seen it?”
“No, but Priya talks about it all of the time, even five years later. She’s convinced his orchids aren’t being properly treated.” There was a row of orchids placed on stones just ahead of them, all pinks and lavenders and cream. “Don’t let Priya know you have a hothouse,” she warned. “She’ll take over. It won’t matter that it’s not hers and that you’re a duke. She is a fiend when it comes to flowers.”
“Duly warned.”
“I want to paint her as Flora, the Roman Goddess of Nature. Flora is nowhere fierce enough, but it will have to do,” she babbled. She’d decided she’d paint Dougal as a knight the first time she’d met him and that hadn’t changed. But he would be a knight who knew how to take care of his own horse, no pageboy required. There’d be leaves in his hair. Roses all around him. “Persephone would be a priestess of Isis and Tamsin… maybe a spirit of some kind? Or Anne Boleyn haunting Hever Castle, her head under her arm?”
“And you?” he asked quietly. “Who will you paint yourself as?”
It seemed too obvious to say Cinderella.
And he would ask questions. Clever ones.
She still offered him a truth, but a different version of it.
“I don’t know. It’s hard to see yourself sometimes, isn’t it?”