“Trust me, those were the most gentlemanly kisses a fellow ever bestowed on the girl he adores. Come along, now.”
Olive looked down at her belly and limbs, shockingly bare. The tips of her breasts had crinkled into tiny nubs, the way they did when she climbed into the bath. What would Harry think? He had probably sketched dozens of naked women already. That was part of his training, wasn’t it? To transform the female form into art. Olive had never imagined her body as a thing of art, as a collection of curves and lines designed to entrance the viewer, to express some sort of human or feminine ideal. What if she wasn’t ideal enough? What if her bones and flesh were all wrong? What if the fraud in her soul had somehow warped her exterior, in a way that would be instantly recognizable to Harry’s true blue eyes?
She crossed her arms over her chest.
“Would it help if I removed my own clothes?” called out Harry in a stage whisper.
“No!”
“An article or two. Only fair.” His waistcoat winged into view, skidding across the floor, followed by his necktie.
“Harry, no!”
A shoe tumbled past. The other shoe.
“I’m going to keep going, Olive. Do you want me to keep going?”
“No!”
“Then come out of there. I’m picking out the studs of my shirt right now.” A few pings sounded, as of metal hitting the floor.
“Harry!”
“Do you think I’m bluffing?” A flash of white flew past, landing on top of the waistcoat.
She thought, My God, he’s serious.
And then, in horror: Trousers next.
She snatched up her pinafore, clutched it to her breasts, and stepped from the screen.
“That’s better,” Harry said warmly, but she couldn’t look up, she wouldn’t look up. She made for the cushions on the floor and sank down, trying to arrange her pinafore for the maximum possible effect, and not succeeding particularly well. A flush began to spread over her skin.
“Here, let me.” Harry’s hands appeared, pulling away the pinafore gently, like a doctor examining a wound. An instant later, a sheet of fine white muslin replaced the pinafore, and Harry’s long fingers arranged it over her shoulder, down along her breasts, under her opposite arm. Olive couldn’t breathe. Harry’s bare chest balanced before her, a very pale gold, flat with elegant muscle, exactly as beautiful as it had looked that morning, only far less frightening. His bent knees, covered with sleek black wool, appeared enormous. “Now lie down on your side,” he whispered, and she did, and he adjusted the sheet again, and this time she was quite sure that her right breast was now open to the air, but she didn’t look down, and she didn’t protest, because she could tell by the expression on Harry’s face that he thought she was perfect.
The broad hands moved lower, draping the sheet over her hip, and then he moved back and surveyed her.
“Am I up to your standards?” she said.
“Yes.” He reached for the pins in her hair and slid them free, one by one, until the curls tumbled over her shoulders and down her back, and he rose to his feet. “One more thing.”
She watched him pad across the room to the Chinese cabinet and admired the flex of muscle in his back, the little secrets of him she hadn’t even suspected. When he returned, she was watching his bare feet: not because she was shy, but because they fascinated her.
“Hold up your hair,” he said, and Olive’s eyes flew to his face, and then to his hands.
A delicate gold filigree chain hung from his fingers, weighed down by a prodigious crimson stone.
“Tell me that’s just a garnet,” Olive whispered.
Harry smiled and reached around her neck with both hands. “But that would be a lie, Olive dear. And I can’t tell you a lie. Anyway, it’s yours.” He settled back on his heels and touched her cheek. “For her price is far above rubies.”
The stone settled into the hollow of Olive’s throat, like an enormous drop of blood, cool and heavy. She touched it with one finger, not daring to look. A coal popped in the fire behind her. Harry lifted a curl of hair from her shoulder, pressed it to his lips, and picked up his sketchbook.
The air was warm, and Harry worked in a state of silent concentration, until Olive, exhausted and relaxed on the old velvet cushions, drifted to sleep, started, and drifted back.
“That’s all right,” said Harry. “Sleep if you like.”
So she allowed her heavy lids to close, terribly grateful, to the sound of the sizzling fire and the scratch of Harry’s charcoal pencil, and the utter peace of the sanctuary around them.
When she awoke, the world was black, and a woolen blanket was tucked around her, so snugly that she thought for a moment she was safe in her bed in the nunnery.
But the bed was far too comfortable, and then there was no accounting for the weight that lay like a bar across her stomach, and the warmth at her back and shoulders. The stir of breath at the nape of her neck.
Her eyes flew open. Her limbs went stiff.