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  “Must he?” The muscles in his jaw had contracted and the sinews in his neck were tight, and abruptly Libby realized that he was not fully dressed. He wore a dark dressing gown over trousers and a shirt without stock or cravat. He had not even buttoned the shirt at the neck, leaving the hollow at the base of his throat and the contours of the clavicle wholly visible. And beautiful.

  From skin to bones, every part of the human body always fascinated her. Never, however, had she studied another person and felt hot tingles erupt in her own body.

  She dragged her attention up to his eyes.

  “Yes,” she pushed out between her lips. “No man will seriously consider me for an apprenticeship. Occasionally my father’s colleagues and friends speak with me about medicine, and some have even admitted they’re impressed with my knowledge. But Mr. Charles Bell is unique. His work is original and brilliant. I think this is because he has learned about the body through studying art, and he uses his own paintings and drawings to teach others. If he sees that beyond our mutual love of medical science I am also a talented painter of the human form, he might believe that I have enough natural ability to study medicine. He could aid me in finding a surgeon to take me on as an apprentice and also help me gain admittance to a school to study anatomy and chemistry. He has enormous influence, still, despite his falling out with the instructors of anatomy that precipitated his move to London.” She gripped her hands together. “Don’t you see? With the support of a man of Mr. Bell’s eminence, I could become a real surgeon. An excellent surgeon.”

  “I begin to suspect you could.”

  “Do you?”

  “Your mind clearly functions outside of the usual tracks. But I will put no one’s name on my work save my own, least of all a woman’s.”

  Panic was bleeding into her. “You say woman with such scorn.”

  “I do not paint watercolors of flowers, Miss Shaw.”

  “Exactly. You paint the human form, which is precisely the reason I have not asked this of anyone else. I beg of you. Won’t you consider this commission?”

  “My answer remains no. This interview is at an end.” He walked into the foyer.

  Nerves splintering, she followed him.

  “I will pretend to be a young man again,” she said. “You may sign the name Joseph Smart to the pictures and be not ashamed.”

  The parlor had been pale with dawn through the open curtains. But the foyer was nearly dark and she became fully aware of his size. Above average height for a man, he was neither bulky nor slender, rather lean with broad shoulders. So close to him now she felt his energy, like the energy of a mighty river that had been dammed: power impeded, hidden behind calm.

  “Good day, Miss Shaw.”

  “Don’t you see?” she said. “It is the only way.”

  “I see that your imagination far outstrips mine. Do you truly believe you can succeed in pretending to Mr. Bell that you are a man and then reveal to him the truth once he has allowed you to fool everybody in Edinburgh, including him?”

  “It’s true: he would be furious.” She nodded. “It will be best to remain a man until I pass the entrance exams to the Royal College of Surgeons. Surgical apprenticeships are typically seven years, but I am already accomplished, and apprentices are allowed to sit for exams after four years if they wish. And of course I could take the diploma exams after three sessions. I have been my father’s informal apprentice for all intents and purposes since I was a child. Without a full apprenticeship I will simply have to pay a higher fee to become a fellow in the college. But if I must I will.”

  “Your dreams are impressive, Miss Shaw, as is your confidence. But your thinking is ludicrous. Not only will people recognize that you are a woman—”

  “They didn’t at the lecture.”

  “Consider your servants. Will you take them into your confidence, hoping that they will not betray you?” A razor seemed to slice each of his words now. “I assure you, one rarely knows from which direction betrayal will come until it is too late.”

  “I will find a way to conceal it from them.” She must.

  “What of your neighbors? When they see a young man who could be the twin of Miss Shaw leave and return to your house each day, for how long will they remain oblivious to the truth? A fortnight? A month?”

  Desperation was slithering through her. “You seem to have thought through this swiftly.”

  “I have some experience with concealment.”

  Libby knew little of him except that he had the friendship of the Duke and Duchess of Loch Irvine. And she knew of his extraordinary art. And now she knew that he lived alone. Without servants.

  “I will live here,” she said. “With you.”

  There was complete silence in which, in the foyer that was finally taking on the light of morning, she saw his features slacken.

  “You will most certainly not,” he said.

  “Don’t you see how ideal this is?” Excitement was scurrying up through her. “You rarely go out or entertain. Amarantha has said so. Now, finding yourself desirous of company, you will become the patron of a young surgical student. I will be a relative of a close friend of yours—the duke or somebody else you trust not to ask questions and who lives comfortably at a distance from Edinburgh. It will be the easiest story to tell your servants, I think, one they will certainly believe. Everybody else will too. You will take in this young surgical student to make him acquainted with Mr. Bell and others of the medical community. And he—I, that is—will accomplish the rest with my brilliance and hard work.”

  “But I am not in fact desirous of company.”

  “It is a pretense.”

  “And now you are not only a youth but a distant relative of a duke?”

  “My mother was actually a duchess.”

  The black brows rose. “Your mother?”

  “My father is not my real father. My mother was the Duchess of Read, but the Duke of Read is not the man who got me on her. I don’t know exactly how it happened, for she perished when I was an infant, and nobody speaks of it. John Shaw raised me as his own. He and the Duke of Read have been friends for decades, and we visited Read Castle frequently throughout my childhood. Constance and I share the same color hair, and I am the image of the portrait of the duchess that hangs on the wall at Read Castle. Even you would marvel at the likeness.”

  “Would I?” The cutting edge had gone from his tone.

  “In this house and neighborhood nobody will know that Joseph Smart is a woman. And I will have privacy to study. It is ideal, really. And I won’t bother you. I will hide myself away in a corner of the house that you don’t use. Is there a corner you don’t use? There must be. Without servants living here, there are probably empty servants’ quarters above, and you are unlikely to even go up there anyway.”

  “Aren’t I?”

  “Of course not. I can see quite clearly you walk with pain. And it wouldn’t be forever. Once I have proven myself equal to the men in my program—indeed, their superior—I will reveal the truth and they will all have to accept me. Please. You must help me.”

  “I mustn’t. Miss Shaw, this plan is preposterous, every detail of it.”

  “The greatest advances in science have come when people have attempted the preposterous. It is not the same in art?”

  “Perhaps. But you are accepting a lot on faith.”

  “On faith? What do you mean? That I will prove—”

  “You know nothing of me.”

  Alarm wound its way from the base of her spine up into her throat. The intensity of his eyes seemed suddenly as foreign as his bronzed skin and the soft accent that inflected his English.

  “It is true,” she said. “I know almost nothing about you. But I know that the Duke of Loch Irvine entrusted you with his home. And I know that Amarantha admires you.”

  “Would you tell them of your charade?”

  He was not refusing her.

  “No. I would not wish to oblige my friends to lie on my behalf
.”

  “But you would have no qualms requiring me to lie. You assume I haven’t the morality of an Englishman or a Scot.”

  “No! Not at all. That is, I don’t know what sort of morality you have. But that hardly matters.” She twisted her hands together. “Don’t you see? I have no other potential allies.”

  He moved the step forward that brought him within inches of her, and he made no sound, not the tip of his cane or peg, his entire body in control. It must certainly cost him great effort to move with such silence, and that alarmed her.

  “In pursuit of this scheme you would make yourself entirely vulnerable to a man you do not know.” His voice was low. Intimate.

  “It is not a scheme. It is my dream.” She lifted her chin. “It has been my dream for my entire life. And I will succeed at it. I am determined to.”

  His gaze traveled over her features slowly.

  “Have you no concern for the shame this would bring upon your father?”

  “I must press forward now while he is away, while I have opportunity.”

  “For a woman of great intelligence you are remarkably ignorant.”

  She backed away a step. “What exactly do you mean by that?”

  “Even were I to agree to this charade, an artist of Mr. Bell’s discernment would notice the similarity between my style and this pretend Joseph Smart’s.”

  “Then you can make the paintings unalike. Mine can be imperfect. Slightly imperfect. Enough so that Mr. Bell will be impressed but will not notice the similarity.”

  “Would you give a person imperfect medical care?”

  “Of course not. But this is different.”

  “Not to me.”

  She understood. He had standards, just as she did. But that meant he must also have desires, just as she did.

  “I will pay you twice the proper price of each work. Thrice. I will pay for board.”

  “I have no need of your money.”

  “Then what do you want?”

  “Nothing you can give me that I do not already possess, güzel kız. I cannot help you.” He went to the door and opened it to the outside. “Good day, Miss Shaw.”

  Standing on the stoop, she watched the door shut her out with quiet yet firm finality.

  Chapter 5

  A Gentlemanly Agreement

  “’Tis no’ your finest work, sir. No’ by far.”

  Ziyaeddin’s housekeeper bustled about his studio, taking up teacups and straightening the curtains.

  He rubbed a palm over his eyes. “Thank you, Mrs. Coutts. I appreciate your candor.”

  “I always prefer the truth to empty flattery,” she said with the no-nonsense honesty of Scots that he had come to appreciate. “The lasses you finished last Saturday were less than your best too, if you dinna mind me saying.”

  “I do not mind it.” Even as he had delivered it to their parents he knew the portrait of the maidens, over which he had labored for months, lacked something. Fire. Emotion. Depth. Movement.

  Now this piece, of a wealthy lawyer and his wife, was suffering the same. They were an amiable pair. But the picture meant nothing to him: this man in his sober coat and this woman in her layers of lace. They wanted a perfect likeness, and he was able to give that to them. A perfectly uninspired likeness.

  All of his work had gone thus since that girl had called.

  Woman.

  Those lips.

  Those eyes.

  Those squared shoulders and those supple arms and that tongue from which so swiftly tripped words that came at the speed of a maddened camel.

  He set down the brush and took up his sketching pad. Scraping the chalk over the thick paper, he worked swiftly.

  “Oo, now, sir,” his housekeeper said, leaning over his shoulder. “’Tis a bonnie lass, that one.”

  “I have not yet drawn her face.”

  “There be more to a lass’s beauty than nose and lips and eyes, sir.”

  He paused. “Mrs. Coutts, how is it that you are not offended?”

  “I brought seven bairns into the world, an’ another ten bairns to my daughters too. I’ll no’ get my petticoat in a bunch over a wee nekked bum.” With a firm nod she went to the door. “I’ll be off now. Dinner’s on the stove. But you’d best have an outin’ tonight, sir. P’raps to one o’ those parties you’re always invited to.” She shook her head. “A young man shouldna be so alone.” With a rustle of starched skirts she was gone.

  She was, of course, correct. In a fortnight he had not left the house except to call on this lawyer and his wife for sittings. Other than Mrs. Coutts, his manservant, and them, he had not spoken with a human in a fortnight.

  Except Elizabeth Shaw.

  The drawings of her remained where he had left them following the public dissection. After her absurd proposal he had not taken advantage of the time he had spent that morning studying her features, as she pleaded her case to him.

  The lips on those drawings would remain imperfect. Just as the painting before him would, the couple entirely without life.

  Without life.

  A reply to his letter had come from Canning. The foreign secretary urged His Royal Highness to remain patient.

  But Ziyaeddin had heard from another as well: the Iranian ambassador, who in poetic Persian phrases had suggested that the Shahanshah was no longer averse to persuasion, that the Russian theft of lands in the last treaty could no longer be tolerated, that a prince of Persian blood must again rule there, not the imposters of the northern tribes who called themselves khans but were no more than cowards. In this reconquest Tabir would prove a welcome ally. The usurping general in Russia’s pocket must therefore be unseated.

  That time had not yet come. Respecting his sister Aairah’s wishes, and to ensure the safety of her children and the people of Tabir, Ziyaeddin remained here, fortunate that Edinburgh society was content with his fabricated history, that he had traveled from some unspecified place in Ottoman lands to learn to paint portraits in the European style.

  Biding his time.

  While he did this, a little slip of a woman who refused to wait for the world’s approval did not fear dressing as a youth and living in the house of a man she did not know in order to achieve her dream.

  Standing, he slid paper and pencil into a portfolio and left his house. It was a few short blocks to his destination.

  “Guidday,” the girl draped over the parlor couch drawled. The place was shabbily decorated, with threadbare upholstery and faded wallpaper. “Where’ve you been, sweets? We’ve no’ seen you in an age.” She wore a robe that was the suggestion of a gown only, her bosom spilling from the bodice and the skirts parting to reveal an entire stockinged leg.

  “Good day, Miss Dallis,” he said. “I trust you are well?”

  “Aye. Only longin’ for a visit from you, o’ course,” she said, stroking her fingers along her thigh in practiced seduction.

  “Have you an hour?”

  She undraped her slender limbs from the chair. With eyes bleary from whatever palliative she had consumed—gin, laudanum, opium if she’d had work lately and could afford it—she sauntered toward him.

  “For you, sweets,” she said, stroking a painted fingertip down his chest. “I’ve the whole day.”

  “I cannot pay you for the whole day.” Each shilling he spent for his own pleasure was a shilling less for Tabir. That, and he did not relish remaining in the brothel long enough to attract any of the vermin resident in the upholstery.

  “I might give you the whole day anyway.” She chuckled. “I’m wagering everybody’ll be paying gold to see my picture someday. I’ll be a regular Mona Lisa.”

  He could not help but smile. That this woman, born into poverty and selling her body for shillings, knew of the Mona Lisa did not surprise him. On the whole Scots were an informed, learned, wonderful people. His captivity chafed at him, but he could not have landed in a better place of exile.

  “The solarium, if you will,” he said.

  S
he went ahead of him, dropping her gown before he even closed the door. Hers was still a young body but worn, Scots pale yet marked with the scars of a pox suffered in her childhood. She wore it with ease, settling herself comfortably in a shaft of light from between the draperies.

  He found a chair—blessedly without upholstery—and set the sketchpad on his knee and then pencil to paper.

  “Certain you’ll only be looking today, sweets? I’d no’ mind if you touched too.”

  “No touching today, Dallis.” No touching ever. “Only drawing.”

  With so few strokes of the pencil, life was welling up like a spring beneath his ribs. There was such beauty in the simplest flesh, such poetry in the fragile vessel of the human soul: color, texture, tempests, sunrises and fire. That he had been born to rule was his destiny. That he had been created to do this was his gift.

  “Will it muck up your picture if I sleep?” Dallis said, her eyelids already drooping.

  “Not at all. Sleep on, madam.”

  “I’ve been meanin’ to ask you, sweets,” she said, her head lolling onto one shoulder. “You’ve no’ had an accident in battle or some such, more than the leg?”

  “I have not.”

  “Then all your parts work aright?”

  “They do.” As proven by those parts working fantastically well when Elizabeth Shaw had been standing a foot away from him in his foyer. Inconveniently.

  Dallis sighed. “A perfect gentleman you be, sweets. Every lass in this house would trust you with her life.”

  Well, there was something. He suspected it wasn’t every day a house full of prostitutes gave a man such faith.

  His father had also inspired faith in others. And he had had such faith in his people, in turn, that he had not seen the danger from within until it arose and struck him down.

  Elizabeth Shaw would blithely wave away the threat of betrayal from one close to her.

  Ziyaeddin knew better.

  The figure taking shape beneath his pencil danced.