The Education of Mrs. Brimley Read online

  Chambers chuckled deep in his throat. “You do not wish to know my thoughts, Miss Brimley.”

  His voice, low and seductive, brought her gaze round to meet his. A dark, forbidden knowledge smoldered deep in his eyes, fueling a resonant response within her. For the first time, she recognized her vulnerability, alone with this man. Awareness tingled up her spine. She stepped back, gulping a swift intake of needed air.

  He chuckled deep in his throat. “Your secret is safe.” A slight smile tipped his lips before he turned his attention back to the drawing board. “The ladies at the school wouldn’t nay-say your instructions. Make something up. They won’t know the difference.”

  “But I don’t wish to lie to the girls,” she insisted. “They trust me to tell them the truth.” Granted she had already told more misrepresentations in the past two days than she had in her entire lifetime, but lying to the Higgins sisters was necessary. Lying to children, abominable. She glanced quickly about the room. “Haven’t you a painting or a picture in a book that might assist me?”

  He traded his piece of charcoal for his glass, considering her over the rim while he drank. He tilted his head slightly. “I may have something.”

  For the first time that evening, Emma felt a stirring of hope that this scandalous foray might yield positive results.

  Chambers slipped the knob of the walking stick under his left palm and moved toward a desk pushed against a back wall. He shifted through a clutter of papers.

  “I have a friend in Paris, Auguste Rodin, who created a bronze statute of a full-size nude male. Perhaps you’ve heard of him?” He looked back at her over his shoulder. “It caused quite a stir at exhibition.”

  She shook her head. Chambers’s awkward posture suggested he’d be more comfortable if he allowed his walking prop to bear more of his weight. His pride, she guessed, disagreed. Her heart softened. She understood a thing or two about pride.

  “Some time ago, Rodin sent a letter with a drawing . . . Yes, here it is.” He brought several pages of the letter over to the dais. Shifting through them, he produced the one with a detailed drawing of a male figure. “Just as you requested, a picture of a man as God made him.”

  Proper etiquette demanded she couldn’t acknowledge her observation regarding his altered gait. She couldn’t even ask how his condition occurred, although she’d admit to being curious. Accepting the offered paper, she hesitantly pulled her gaze from his broadening smile.

  She adjusted her glasses so as to see, then memorize, every detail. Anticipation fluttered in her chest. This, after all, constituted not only the purpose of her visit, but also the culmination of all the speculation of her youth.

  The drawing portrayed an athletic man, an Adonis, she supposed. Her gaze skimmed the bare shoulders and slipped past the trim midriff, focusing instead on the forbidden area between the man’s muscular legs—that very spot deemed improper for virginal eyes.

  Her lips parted in surprise.

  “Why, it’s so small. I believe I could cover it with one hand.” As if to prove her theory, she stretched her hand, base to tip. Although she wasn’t exactly sure what she had expected, this appendage hadn’t the menacing character alluded to in so many poems. Disappointed, she turned to Chambers.

  “Why is there so much commotion over two small potatoes in a twisted sack?”

  Chambers’s eyes crinkled, his amusement at her inexperience evident. “This man is flaccid. An aroused man looks much different.”

  “Can you show me?” she asked.

  He nearly choked. “You wish to see my manhood?”

  “I thought you might have another picture.” Emma’s cheeks burned at her blunder, although she was shocked to realize a small part of her wished to answer in the affirmative. She pushed her spectacles up her nose trying to think prim, innocent thoughts.

  “I need to let the girls know what to expect.”

  His lips thinned a moment before he pivoted smartly using the stick and retreated to his easel. Derision filled his voice. “I assure you I have no interest in retaining pictures of aroused men in my studio, in my house, or on my person.”

  “You are an artist,” she insisted, not willing to let the opportunity pass. “Perhaps you can create a drawing for me, purely for scientific purposes, of course.”

  “A drawing?” He scowled, his gaze skipping from the easel to her face. He must have seen her sincerity, because the scowl softened as he returned his attention to the easel. Was that a twinkle she saw in his eye? A sly smile chased away his disdain.

  “Miss Brimley, you may recall that the girl I hired to pose for me has not materialized.”

  She nodded. “Indeed, you thought I was she earlier.”

  “You have need of information, and I have need of a model.” He smiled, reassuring her that his moment of displeasure had indeed passed.

  Her hopes lifted.

  “Perhaps we can design an agreement,” he continued, “that will satisfy both our desires.”

  “You wish to paint my portrait?” Pleasure rippled through her. Great ladies had portraits painted. She could bend to this arrangement, especially if it required more time in his presence.

  “I wish to paint you naked.” A devilish smile played about his lips. “But I’ll settle for painting you in a thin gown.”

  “Sir!” Shock paralyzed her. “Surely, you don’t mean it!”

  He positioned himself in front of her. “In exchange for information,” he added.

  “I’ve never been so insulted.” She tried to step around him, but he continued to hinder her exit. Again she regretted the absence of her fan. She would have thrashed him with it.

  “What kind of woman do you take me for?” she cried, frustrated at his efforts to thwart her.

  “A comely one, I suspect, beneath all that black.” Using the tip of his walking stick, he lifted the hem of her skirt an inch off the ground.

  “Sir!” Shocked, she slapped the material back in place. The man was incredulous.

  A bemused grin played about his mouth. He was playing with her, she realized, feeling the stab of disappointment. She had fooled herself into thinking this dandy was different, yet it was all mockery. Pain burrowed deep.

  “I refuse to be the subject of your jest.” Her lips tightened, her eyes burned. She tried to push by him, but he caught her arm.

  “There is no jest.”

  If only that were true! She looked away, afraid he might see the yearning in her eyes. Her throat tightened making words difficult. “If you meant to compliment me, I assure you—”

  “I meant no compliment.”

  Her head swung around, capturing his gaze. His brow lifted. “I was merely stating facts.”

  His ridiculous statement confirmed the joke. She jerked her arm from his grasp and turned her face from his scrutiny, before beating a hasty path toward the door.

  “Think of the girls,” he called behind her. “How are you going to prepare them for their marital duties without my assistance?”

  She paused. Logic slowed her retreat. The headmistress was to observe her class in the morning.

  “Do you have so many resources that you can abandon the one readily available to you?” His voice wove through her thoughts like rhyme through a stanza.

  Indeed, that very lack of resources had inspired her visit in the first place. If she couldn’t turn to him for answers, where could she go? She kept her back to him but listened to his calm, insistent plea.

  “How can you mislead those young, trusting girls at this crucial juncture?”

  She ignored his light mockery. He may not believe her dedication to her students, but then he wasn’t familiar with the events that had brought her to this wilderness. Now that she was here, she could never go back. First, however, she must prove to the Higgins sisters that she had knowledge of a carnal nature . . .

  “You would answer all my questions about intimacy?” she asked over her shoulder, hesitant to be reminded of his handsome visage. “No mat
ter how difficult, and with complete honesty?”

  “The difficulty, I suspect, will be yours in framing the questions.” His voice moved closer, the exposed skin on the back of her neck prickled in response. She imagined he was an arm’s span away. “Yes, I will answer all your questions,” he said, “completely and truthfully.”

  She turned to face him, surprised to find him even closer than she had approximated, uncomfortably close. She studied him anew, mentally assessing her adversary. The London popinjays had always underestimated her intelligence. Although it pained her to place him in that category, she suspected he would do the same.

  “If you will answer my questions first”—she hesitated to emphasis her sacrifice—“I will pose for you.”

  “You must think me daft.” A smile tilted his mustache. He raised one brow and shook his head. “After I fulfill your needs, what assurances do I have that you will fill mine?”

  “You have the word of a lady,” she said decisively, although in truth she suspected she could avoid meeting his demands.

  “No, I don’t think so.” His eyes narrowed. He tapped an idle rhythm with his prop on the wooden floor.

  She bit her lip, suddenly wondering if she had been the one to underestimate him. She studied him anew.

  “Let us strike a bargain,” he said, overlapping his hands on the top of the silver-knobbed cane. “My needs are for a model to pose in the Grecian fashion. You, on the other hand, require answers to questions of a personal nature.”

  He stepped closer, engulfing her in a subtle atmosphere of forbidden magnetism. She could almost taste his determination in the shared air between them, but she refused to give ground.

  “I propose that I will answer one of your questions”—his raised finger almost touched her nose—“for every item of clothing you remove as my model.”

  Her knees threatened to buckle. Surely, he could not desire her, by her uncle’s estimation a scrawny scarecrow devoid of a woman’s charms, as a model. She was no beauty. To suggest otherwise was cruel.

  “I will pose,” she said, pushing her spectacles farther up her nose, “but only fully dressed.”

  “I cannot paint what I cannot see.” A dimple flashed in his smile. Sheer willpower kept her from smiling in response.

  Chambers’s intense gaze raked her form as if fact belied his words. Never had a man regarded her with such intent, certainly not one as handsome and refined as this. His voice, soft and seductive, surrounded her with the rich scent of warmed brandy and his own unique essence. He lured her much like the famed mythological sirens. Lord help her, she could happily drown in this assault.

  “I need to see how light and shadow caress a woman’s curves.”

  Immediately, she imagined a physical heat, flowing down her chest and swirling around her waist and hips. Her mind insisted that modesty called for distance between them, but her feet refused to move.

  “I need to judge how proportion is modified by the angle of the pose.”

  Emma thought of the paintings she had viewed of women languishing in forest bowers, bending in some trivial task. Even if she were fully attired, those poses would be too risqué to consider. Still, her insides quivered at his indecent proposal.

  Chambers turned abruptly, releasing her from his enchantment. She slumped slightly, catching her breath while he strode toward his easel. “I will draw a picture of an aroused man’s private regions if you will remove just one article of clothing.”

  She should run. She should escape now while she still had her dignity, and yet . . .

  “I have already removed my cloak,” she said, a bit short of breath.

  He smiled, a subtle gesture. “And I have already shown you a picture of a naked man.”

  She considered a moment, weighing the advantages and disadvantages of compliance. “A boot,” she announced. “If I had a buttonhook, I would remove a boot. However, as it is unlikely that such an instrument would be readily available in an artist’s studio . . .”

  Chambers stepped over to his desk and returned with a long hook fashioned from a metal replica of a woman’s leg, complete with garter. “Perhaps this will help?”

  Her bluff called, Emma hesitantly accepted the bachelor tool, then sat on the only seat available, the velvet divan. She worked on her side buttons. Who would have thought the man stocked his studio as another would equip a boudoir? Beatrice’s voice slipped into her thoughts. Women come and go at all hours of the night. Emma’s hands froze in the effort to remove the loosened boot.

  Chambers placed a fresh piece of foolscap on the board and drew some quick lines on the page with his charcoal. “When a man is aroused, his manhood grows long and hard.”

  “Hard?” The word interrupted her thoughts. Her boot fell to the floor with a resounding thud. From her vantage on the dais, she couldn’t see Chambers’s face until he leaned to the side of the board. A knowing smile teased his lips.

  “He must be hard to penetrate the woman.”

  She may have doubted his answer, but he had promised to be truthful. A shiver danced up her spine at his words. Penetrate. One being inside another.

  “Is it painful?” Her voice quivered.

  He looked pointedly at her other still-shod foot. Resigned, she began to unhook the buttons.

  “Not if the man properly prepares the woman,” he said. “With preparation, the act is most pleasurable.”

  Emma removed the boot, then rubbed her stocking-clad foot, debating whether to pursue the concept of preparation.

  “Some men find a well-turned ankle very alluring.” His voice punctured her thoughts. “Yours are especially so.”

  Her lips tightened to hide the effects of his compliment. She dropped the hem of her skirt removing the sight of her ankles from his view, then stepped off the platform to view his drawing.

  “That . . . that’s grotesque!” She quickly covered her gaping mouth with a gloved hand. “That thing would frighten my poor girls to death.”

  “And what of you, fair lady?” The heat of his breath stirred the tiny hairs on the back of her neck and slid all the way down to her clenched toes. “Does the sight of an aroused man frighten you?”

  She forced herself to focus on the charcoal rendition and not the delicious tremors his words initiated. Truth be told, the turmoil created by his close physical proximity frightened her more than some paper image of an object she would likely never encounter. She edged a few steps away.

  “Don’t run away, Miss Brimley. This is what you are preparing your girls for, but it is not something to fear.”

  “I am not afraid, sir!” she offered with false bravado.

  “The union between a man and a woman is pleasurable beyond imagination,” he said, his knowing smile spreading to his captivating eyes.

  “Perhaps for the man.” Emma pointed to the daggerlike drawing. “That . . . thing . . . appears as pleasurable as a birch rod.”

  His soft chuckle held an intimate quality that heated her cheeks. “I promise you, the union is pleasurable for the woman as well, if she has the knowledge to handle the man.” He stepped closer.

  “Isn’t that why you came here, Miss Brimley?” He stood behind her. Fissions rippled throughout her body. “For the knowledge?”

  Emma knew undeniably that she was in dire trouble. His lower lip dragged across the tip of her ear. “Let me teach you.”

  The tips of her breasts tightened. He had touched her! With his lips! Panic blasted through her shock. Without further hesitation, she grabbed two fistfuls of skirt and dashed to the door.

  “Will I see you again, Miss Brimley?” His question chased her across the room.

  Her unshod feet beat a fast retreat down the wooden hallway in response.

  SO HE HADN’T MERELY IMAGINED HER INTELLIGENT and determined spirit on that ride home in the carriage. He was so foxed, he wasn’t sure if his initial impression of the new teacher was dream or reality. Probably a little of both. He smiled, feeling more invigorated now than he
had before her visit.

  Miss Brimley’s curiosity amid frequent bouts of blushing had proved surprisingly refreshing. Her cheeks colored quite nicely, a bit of rose madder mixed with pale cream. It had been a long time since he had enjoyed time spent merely talking with a woman. He chuckled a moment before summoning Thomas with the bell pull. The servant appeared immediately.

  “I suppose you’ve realized that she was not the one we anticipated,” Nicholas said, walking to the dais to retrieve her boots.

  “I’m sorry, sir. I wasn’t aware you were expecting anyone else but the model.”

  “I wasn’t.” His fingers slipped inside a boot. He frowned, noting it was still damp. “Is her rig outside?”

  “No, sir, she arrived on foot.”

  “The fool woman must have walked through the snow.” He shook his head. Most of the women in London society wouldn’t cross a street if it meant their slippers might be muddied. It required courage to call on him as she did, and desperation to come through the woods and snow. He glanced toward the hallway. A bit of guilt deflated his pleasure. Perhaps he shouldn’t have teased her as he had. “See that she gets home safely, Thomas.”

  “I’ll alert Henry.”

  “Tell Henry she’s to be delivered discreetly,” Nicholas added. “No one is to know she’s been here.” He handed the boots over to Thomas. “I’ll warrant the old biddies would have a fit if they knew she’d been consorting with the likes of me.” That returned the smile to his face. “And see that she gets something to eat. She’s too thin by half.”

  “Will we be entertaining the young woman again, sir?” Thomas asked.

  “I believe I scared her half out of her wits. I doubt she’ll return.” That realization drained his high spirits. Even though he had suspected he was challenging the teacher’s sensibilities as never before, he found he could not stop. There was something unaffected about her that pulled at his baser instincts.