“I can be decadent, Miss Greenfield.”
The warmth of her fine skin touched his cheek, for the distance between them had shrunk to nothing. If he were to lean down, he’d be close enough to taste the corner of her mouth. He wanted to. The room dimmed and blurred as the urge took him, while her face remained precisely etched, down to the last golden freckle.
“Harriet.”
He straightened and stepped back.
Greenfield’s son was next to his shoulder and he hadn’t sensed him coming. The young man put his body between him and the girl, his eyes cold with distrust. At last, here was the vigilant Lucian had been expecting from the moment he had gone to the dessert table. He nearly asked, What took you so long, fool?
“Mr. Blackstone was explaining things to me about art,” Harriet told her brother, her voice a little shaky.
“It was the other way around,” Lucian said.
The hostility in Zachary Greenfield’s gaze only intensified.
Lucian looked past him at the girl. “I recently opened my collections in Chelsea to visitors,” he said, and she promptly turned white as chalk.
“How interesting,” young Zach said coolly.
“I’d like to extend an invitation to the tour next Saturday,” Lucian continued. “And if you like what you see, Miss Greenfield, perhaps I could interest you in supporting my new charity for aspiring artists.”
“Charming, but whether she attends your tours is not for Harriet to decide,” Zachary Greenfield snapped, and clasped a possessive hand around his sister’s elbow. “Harriet, Mother wishes to speak to you before she opens the buffet.”
“Zachary,” Harriet muttered. She was redder in the face than when her aunt had insulted her brains earlier. Seemed like she wasn’t used to being treated like chattel in front of strangers, and she made her displeasure known. Her cheeks were still flushed when she permitted her brother to lead her away.
Lucian ate his luncheon thinking that his one true mission today was to convince Harriet Greenfield’s father to send her back to his house in Chelsea.
An hour later, his mission had been successfully completed in the smoking room, and he was again in a muggy carriage en route to Belgravia. He sifted through the gossip Matthews was reporting from his time downstairs at the Greenfield house and found there was nothing of interest except talk of an imminent betrothal of the youngest Greenfield daughter to a knight.
“As for the public visits to my gallery,” Lucian said.
“Yes?” Matthews was scrabbling for the little notebook and pencil he always carried in his breast pocket.
“Put them back on the list.”
Matthews’s face brightened in the shadows. “Gladly.”
“We’ll have the first tour next Saturday. Also, have a charity set up by then, one that supports aspiring artists.”
His assistant glanced up from the page. “A tour is possible, but a charity—I’m afraid it, erm, will be a challenge to find patronesses of quality on time.”
“Make it known, discreetly, that Greenfield’s daughter will support the charity, and they’ll come flocking.”
Matthews had gone still. His gaze was on the floor.
“Sir,” he eventually said. “Greenfield’s daughter …”
“Yes?”
“Will … will any harm come to her?”
Lucian contemplated him. “If the answer were yes, what would you do?”
The man’s shoulders sagged. “I’m much obliged to you, sir,” he murmured. “But it pains my conscience to abet the demise of an innocent girl.”
“Demise,” Lucian repeated, contempt lacing his voice. He wondered what it would take before Matthews legged it. Murder, he guessed. Matthews couldn’t afford to bite the hand that fed him.
He drew back the carriage curtain and squinted against the glistening brightness outside. A row of identical white Belgravian terrace houses blindingly reflected the sun like fresh snow, and the contours of the street continued to glow behind his eyelids. Belgravia. One of London’s wealthiest districts, now his home. Even these middle-class houses here on the fringes had looked palatial to his eyes when he had first explored the area years ago. The air had smelled of lilac, and the calm and neatness of the place had made his body tense with diffuse alertness. He had stood on the pavement in his fine attire and top hat, feeling strangely outside his own skin, and had half expected any of the gents walking past to see him for what he was and chase him off these streets. His wealth, his new life, had felt brittle, like a soap bubble, ready to burst into oily speckles at the tap of a fingertip. Surrounded by clean white splendor, he had had memories of hunger pangs and a cold that bit to the bone. When passing by this particular row, he still sometimes wondered what his grandmother would have said had he given her one of those pristine homes with two columns holding up a portico. He could’ve set her up in a mansion, but she would’ve refused anything more flash; Nanny MacKenzie had taken pride in making do.