Was that what she was doing, then—looking backward? Replicating long-gone glories? Deep down, she had suspected it. She was never the avant-garde. Her thoughts were swimming. The sun was painting reddish streaks into his black hair.
“Rossetti and Millais show that romantic beauty isn’t mutually exclusive with grave truths,” she said hoarsely. “Why does the world insist that substance worthy of acclaim always comes in the shape of machinery or old men?”
“In other words,” Blackstone said, “why is no one taking you seriously?”
His words went through her like a knife through butter and sliced open a sensitive place inside her chest. He either had a much, much more astute eye than expected, or she was hopelessly transparent. She felt gauche and exposed, that a man like him should tell her things about herself or that she had underestimated him. She resented him, him and the thick tension pulsing between them and his intent gaze and how his body heat was seeping through lilac damask into her skin like the glow of a fire. She noticed her breasts were near touching his waistcoat. She noticed his gaze dropping to her lips.
It was going to happen again.
The kiss was already hovering mere inches away. Her heartbeat came in hard, erratic thuds. But Blackstone stood quietly, dark and solid amid the white haze burning up the rest of the world.
She leaned in.
His face was close, then mouth brushed against mouth, light like a breath. She soared and swayed at the delicate contact, and his arm slid around her waist in support. When her lashes lifted, her left hand was flat against the lapel of his jacket. She stared at it, amazed at how small it looked there and that she was touching him.
This was how they stood when the main entrance door to the gallery opened and revealed her mother, frozen into a column. And Lord Oaksey. And Mrs. Hewitt-Cook. The whole group, a wall of wide eyes and hands clasped over mouths. She registered that Mr. Blackstone released her and turned to face them, his movement slow and controlled.
A creative mind had the ability to spiral deep into dark places, and sometimes she had tried to picture the moment when a great catastrophe befell her. What it would be like when she first knew her world had been upended. She had never envisioned that it would be a deathly silence, powerful enough to suffocate a whole gallery.
Two hours after the incident in his house in Chelsea, Lucian called on Julien Greenfield to begin the haggling over the daughter. A butler who greeted him with cold hostility led him directly to the patriarch’s study. Greenfield sat behind his desk, and he had company: his heir stood next to him and regarded Lucian with murder in his eyes.
“I should have you taken out the back and shot,” the banker greeted him. “Give me one reason why not.”
“How about thirty?” said Lucian. “My percentage of shares in Plasencia-Astorga. I understand you would need them to consolidate your railway portfolio in Spain.”
Greenfield leaned back in his chair. His gaze betrayed his rapid weighing of options: a deal to soften the scandal. A substantial peace offering after having had his hand forced. Worthy reasons for which to barter one of several daughters. “If you think I’ll pay a penny for them,” he then said, “you are deluded.”
“I was thinking half price,” Lucian replied.
Greenfield’s teeth ground into the tense silence. “Sit.” He gestured at the chair in front of his desk.
Zachary Greenfield made a sound of angry surprise. Greenfield turned to the young man. “Leave us, son.”
Father and son were staring at each other, locked in a wordless battle. Lucian found he was respecting the son’s righteous but futile outrage more than the father’s rational calculation. When his own stepfather had sold him for a pittance years ago, he would’ve appreciated some support in his corner.
Young Greenfield left, his shoulders stiff with suppressed emotions. Lucian took his seat and brushed an invisible fleck of smut off his sleeve, and Julien Greenfield’s gaze sharpened on him. “Not a penny,” he repeated.
Odd, how this ruddy, hard-nosed man with questionable taste in facial hair had sired a bonnie lass like Harriet. As he countered Greenfield’s propositions, Lucian’s thoughts kept straying to the young woman. She had given him one of the greatest surprises of his life when she had leaned in; it had been barely half an inch, an upward tilt of her head with her full lips slightly parted. But that moment, her face had been the only thing in existence and he had registered nothing but the petal-soft brush of her kiss. There were other upper-class daughters who would serve his plans, but he found he wanted this one. This wasn’t as much a conscious thought as the bewildering feeling that he’d give Greenfield whatever he demanded if it came to it. Though should Harriet ever find out about the details preceding their betrothal, he suspected she wouldn’t like it, not at all.