Page 56 of Lyon of Least Resistance

The master…

Cordelia closed her eyes, but the action only served to push the long-dormant memory to the fore—thick, stubby fingers digging into her arms, pinning her in place, while she choked on the stench of male sweat and stale liquor…

“Lady Bedford?”

A hand caught her arm, and Cordelia glanced up to see the maid’s soft brown eyes staring at her, wide with concern. Then a blush colored Tilly’s cheeks.

“Perhaps you’re…” The maid’s blush deepened. She couldn’t have failed to hear Georgiana call Cordelia a slut.

“I’m what?” Cordelia asked, unable to disguise the sharpness in her tone.

“Well, you’re newly wed, and there’s many a lady who finds she’s with child after the wedding night.”

Cordelia placed a hand over her belly. Might she be carrying James’s child? She had wanted nothing more than to have a child conceived out of love. But there was no love in the bedchamber on their wedding night: only anger, pain, and regret.

She lowered her hand and moved toward her half-emptied trunk.

“I can tend to that for you,” Tilly said. “That is, if you’d like me to. I’m acquainted with the duties of a lady’s maid, and I’d like to serve you. Mrs. Case said to put everything in its proper place, and I don’t want to disappoint her.”

Cordelia smiled at the eager young woman. Perhaps if she’d been sent into service rather than to London, she might have been in Tilly’s position herself.

“Very well,” she said, “that’s most kind of you, Tilly. You may unpack the trunk as you see fit. I’ll trust you to know where to place everything properly.”

She glanced inside the trunk and pulled out an item wrapped in a cloth.

“Except for this.”

“What is it?”

Cordelia unwrapped the cloth and held up the painting. As a wedding gift, Isidore had commissioned a framer to set it in a thin wooden frame.

She glanced about the bedchamber—a room twice the size of her boudoir at the Lyon’s Den, furnished in shades of blue and yellow. The windows looked full east, which meant that the chamber would be filled with light in the mornings.

She crossed the floor to a painting on the wall. The artistry of the painter was to be admired, for it was a perfectly executed landscape demonstrating skill at the craft. But other than depicting a field of cattle in appropriate proportions, with purple-hued hills in the background giving the right sense of distance, the painting failed to speak to her soul.

Unlike the painting that had won her heart.

She lifted the landscape from the hook and replaced it with painting of the roses. Then she stood back and smiled. It would be the first thing she saw when she woke each morning.

“Did you paint that, ma’am?”

Cordelia turned to see the maid staring at the painting, her eyes narrowed as if she were trying to understand why anyone might like it. But Tilly only saw the execution—the strokes of the brush and the shapes of the flowers. She did not see the soul of the man who had created them.

“No, Tilly.”

“It’s not very…”

“To me it’s the most beautiful painting I’ve ever seen,” Cordelia said. “And it’s not to be moved from here…or ever touched by anyone by myself. Do you understand?”

Tilly’s eyes widened and she stepped back. “Of course, Your Ladyship. Sorry if I offended.”

“You didn’t, Tilly,” Cordelia said. “It’s just that…the painting… It’s…”

“I understand,” the maid said, then she gestured to the discarded landscape. “Shall I remove this?”

“No, there’s no need,” Cordelia said. “There’s a space near the door where it could be hung.”

“Of course, I’ll get Robert to do it.”