Virginia Henley Read Online Free PDF Page B

spotted Christopher Hatton on the far side and remembered that today was his birthday, while Nick’s was still two days away. She knew it was Kit because, even from this distance, she could see the easel and canvas. She decided to join him and picked up her sketchbook.
    “Happy birthday, Kit. You’ve come out here to avoid your guests, so naturally I couldn’t resist disturbing your peace and tranquility.”
    “Hello, Imp. How did you know I was avoiding them?”
    “Your birth sign, of course. I know everything about you—your fluctuating moods, how you hide from things like a crab withdrawing into its shell. You are a well of secrecy, with a sensitive soul.”
    He was painting a still life of a pair of pheasants that he had shot earlier. The game lay on the ground beside a hunting rifle he had propped against the bole of a tree. Though his subject of dead birds was rather morbid, the variegated colors of the feathers in the painting were exact.
    Alexandra would have preferred that he paint live pheasants, but she could not deny his talent. “You are a true artist, Kit. I wonder if you really do hide a sensitive nature beneath your brash exterior?”
    “No, my brash exterior hides a brash interior.” He lifted amused gray eyes to watch her laugh. “Why the devil did you chop off your hair?”
    “I’m amazed you noticed; you’re usually far too self-absorbed,” she teased, drawing closer to admire his work. “Perhaps you should give the painting to Dottie. I noticed two Thomas Lawrence works of art missing from the walls of the formal dining room this morning. When I asked her where they were, she said she put them in the attic because she couldn’t stomach the simpering females Lawrence portrays.”
    “If she prefers me to Lawrence, she’s more than eccentric,” he said with unusual humility.
    Alexandra kicked off her slippers, which were damp with dew, curled her long legs beneath her, and took up her sketchbook. “Open your shirt at the neck, Kit. I want to draw you.”
    “Is this to be one of your cruel caricatures?”
    “Of course not! You are one of the handsomest men I’ve ever laid eyes on. You endlessly fascinate me.”
    Kit Hatton was accustomed to women reacting with fascination when they looked at him, but he didn’t welcome it in Alexandra. Though he found her beauty dazzling, he never allowed it to show. She was the only female safe from his lechery in three counties, and the reason for this was simple: If he had even looked askance at her, his father would have had them betrothed, and the trap of marriage was the last thing Kit Hatton desired at twenty-one. “I only fascinate you because I’m a twin.”
    “Most probably,” she admitted. “At least, that’s part of it.” Alexandra had decided to sketch both Nicholas and Christopher, then study their discernible differences. Nick usually brushed his dark hair straight back, while Kit had a curl that fell forward on his forehead. It puzzled her that though the two magnificent males were physically identical, only one made her weak with longing.
    Within a quarter of an hour, Rupert arrived on the scene. “So this is where you two are hiding yourselves. Come on, Kit. We have to lay out a racecourse. Hart Cavendish has arrived and he insists we race our horses this afternoon.”
    “You don’t mean Lord Hartington, the Duke of Devonshire? How the devil do you know him?” Alexandra demanded. William Spencer Cavendish was the son of the late infamous Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, and he had come into his father’s dukedom last year.
    Rupert said casually, “We were all at Harrow together when we were ratty schoolboys.”
    “Oh, I want to have a good look at him,” Alexandra declared. “He’s the one who had a fit of hysterics when his cousin Caroline Ponsonby wed William Lamb, because he thought of her as his wife !”
    “I’ll bet he was bloody glad Caro was William Lamb’s wife when she caused the scandal with Byron, who