“Would that help you enjoy my embrace more, Lady Magnificent? If I were a serious man?”
“Exponentially. It would be prudent of me to embrace only serious men with serious and successful endeavors.”
“Why?”
She stitched her lips tight. Her eyes turned to marble. “My parents. They are like you. They take nothing too seriously. They avoid practicalities, as many artists do. When I leave the life they’ve … made for me here for a life I build of my own, it will not be to enter into another just like it.” She stared at the ground stone beneath their feet.
Her words felt pregnant with meaning. Her hesitations, her careful choice of words—they all said more than she actually said. And hadn’t he thought the same thing when confronted with a wobbly wardrobe just a few days ago—artists sometimes fail to recognize the practical. He’d been guilty of it himself. She held this secret close to herself, but he began to see its edges. They were as threadbare as the curtains in her home and as old as the aristocracy itself. Her family lacked for funds.
But that made no sense. Great works of art lined their walls and the marquess sponsored every promising young artist who passed his way.
Ah. Perhaps itdidmake sense. Tobias looked down at the top of Maggie’s dark head. She still stared at the rock below them, and he itched to do something, anything, to stop her silence. He wanted her to speak more, share more, to tell him about her plan to escape.
She finally lifted her head, a question in her eyes. “Is that paint?”
Not what he’d expected. “Pardon me?”
She pointed to the rock, then squatted and scraped at the stone with a fingernail. “I think the rock is painted.”
Tobias knelt beside her and scraped, too. He lifted what flecked off the surface to his face. “Well, I think we’ve found the answer to where this rock hails from.”
She chuckled. “Indeed.”
“But who knew the ancient druids painted rocks!”
She laughed fully then, her body rocking so hard, he worried she’d lose her balance and fall off. It wasn’t a long fall, but the notion of her pain pained him. He pulled her to her feet and held her close as she wheezed for breath between loud, joyous guffaws.
In the garden this morning he’d proffered and retracted a marriage proposal. This afternoon, he’d angered her with a game gone awry. But the day was not wasted. Far from it. As long as he held her safely in his arms on the edge of the world—or a rock—he would consider it an excellent day, indeed.
Additionally, he’d learned two things about her. She wanted to leave her parents’ home, and when she did, she wanted to enter a different world than one filled with unconventional artists, future-telling dreams, and fathers who named their daughters Magnificent. And her parents just might have spent their every last penny, or close to it, on their artistic obsession.
No wonder she shied away from him. The Tobias he showed the world was not more than a step away from her parents and the life Lady Maggie wished to leave behind.
But she had to marry him.
He took Maggie’s hand in his own and wrapped the other about her waist. “Waltz with me.” He grinned. She did, too, and as she set her hand on his shoulder, he swept her into a dance to music no one but he could hear.
Marrying him was Maggie’s only option. He knew that, and he knew now exactly what it would take to convince her. Tobias Blake—layabout and jokester, wearer of orange, puce, and purple—would have to become a serious man. He could do that. As long as she didn’t get too close to the real Tobias Blake, he could do whatever it took to convince her to marry him.
Chapter 7
Tobias Blake was up to something, but this time, Maggie thought it best to let his secrets be. So, instead of seeking him out after dinner, she stared at him from a safe distance across the room. Except this time her attention wasn’t riveted by some awful color on his cravat or waistcoat. She was riveted by the simple beauty of a handsome man in black-and-white evening wear. That the handsome man was Tobias made the sight somehow even more potent. Why was he dressed so simply? Quite possibly to drive her crazy.
And why was he talking to Miss Scarlett Peabody? The beautiful statuesque blonde was an amazing silhouette artist, yet Maggie had never been jealous of the woman’s talents. Tonight, however, Maggie brimmed with envy watching the other woman laugh at something Tobias had said. Whathadhe said? When he winked at Miss Peabody, Maggie’s hand curled so tightly around her teacup, it was a wonder she did not crush it.
“Maggie! Oh,Maggie!” Her mother’s voice whined at her from somewhere in the crowd.
Maggie looked over her shoulder to see her mother pushing toward her, a worried frown on her face. “What is it, Mama? Is everything all right?”
Her mother placed the back of her hand on her forehead and her other hand on Maggie’s shoulder, and with a low moan said, “It’s yourbrother.”
Of course it was. Raph and their parents were always at odds.
Her mother straightened from her semi-swooning position, and her eyes went hard as steel. “He wants to force you to wed Mr. Blake.”
Maggie’s eyes darted toward the man in question. “Does he?” Hardly surprising considering their last conversation.
“Yes. He says it is the only proper thing to do. He says that when a woman is compromised as you were and everyone sees it that she must wed the man who compromised her or, under extreme circumstances, another man.”
