Chapter 5

CHAPTER 5

S lowly Selina circumnavigated the light-filled conservatory as if she were admiring the exotic fruits and flowers.

"A little to the right, Edward," she murmured. "Yes, two inches more. And angle the easel. That's right. When I am at your side, pretending interest, His Grace mustn't see my hands. Then, if anyone else enters, I can leave and observe from outside." She pointed to a tree behind which she could conceal herself. At the very worst, she could stand and peer through the fork between two branches while she sketched.

Not that that was likely to happen, but one had to be prepared. Selina had always pretended to mix Edward's paints at his side—and Samuel's when he'd been alive and parading, also, as an artist—while quickly drawing, but the only reason the men in Selina's life had prospered was because she factored in all contingencies.

"And is there anything else I can do that would satisfy madam?"

"No need for the sarcasm. I was not the one who got themselves into hot water by promising something I could not deliver. You just assumed I'd come to your rescue when you accepted this commission."

Edward glared. "You want commissions as much as I do. And my reputation as a painter does not depend on you, Selina."

"As a landscape painter, Edward; no, it does not. But as a portraitist, you cannot capture a likeness as I can, and that is why I am here. No need to snap. Oh, Your Grace!"

Caught by surprise, Selina dipped a curtsey, wishing she'd left a few minutes earlier, as planned. She hoped the duke had heard nothing of their exchange.

Besides which, the less the duke observed her, the better. With Edward's real wife not having been seen in public in five years, there was bound to be speculation over what Lady Boothe was like.

How mad she really was.

Edward had tried to persuade Selina not to attend the small dinner party the duke was holding tonight. He'd begged her to plead a megrim. If people saw that Selina, his supposed wife, was adept at table talk, he said, then Edward would be criticized for continuing to keep his real wife supposedly under lock and key. Not that Anna really was under lock and key, though her freedom was limited.

As was Selina's. But this visit to Lord Chauncy was going to change all that. Selina wasn't going to squander her one opportunity to wear the lovely gown she'd been refashioning each of these last three years since her widowhood. She intended to ensure Edward's commission was the first of many. Edward would realize her worth and Selina would no longer be forced to molder away in the country like poor Anna.

Of course, Selina would also be wise to balance expectations and appear ‘just sufficiently mad enough' that she'd not be considered an outright threat but could still go out and about with Edward. Still, that shouldn't be hard. Being a little outspoken was enough to concern society. Ladies who spoke their minds were—quite frankly, Selina had realized to her cost—a danger to themselves.

"Lady. Boothe."

She rose slowly. Lord Chauncy eyed her cautiously. As if she were a creature as strange and exotic as the pineapple he was attempting to cultivate in his hothouse. Despite his striking looks, the breadth of his shoulders, and his disconcerting magnetism, Selina supposed he was little different from her late husband and her brother. He would tolerate an opinionated, outspoken woman as little as they.

"Your Grace." She held his gaze because he was, to her surprise, still looking at her, a small furrow between his eyes, as if she did not match what he was expecting.

And Selina responded with a small thrill at his interest. Not interest that suggested he perhaps found her comely. But that he found her interesting.

Interesting, she supposed, because he thought her mad.

She felt Edward's concerned stare and wavered between doing something that poor Anna might have done before Edward decided to entirely deny her any involvement in society—or whether to keep her head down.

She chose the latter, but not before matching his Grace's stare with a long, hard look of her own.

Why not? If he could stare, so could she, and he'd not think anything of it other than that he was looking into the eyes of a woman whose mind was with the fairies.

But, as she lowered her gaze, she could not resist a remark that not only came surprisingly from the heart but was indeed something poor Anna would have said.

"You have eyes I could drown in, Your Grace," Selina murmured, staring pointedly now at the ground so that she could hide her smile as she felt Edward's horror and embarrassment scorch her from a full three feet away.