Portrait of Seduction (4 page)

“And good thing you did.” Leinz raised his glass. “Our dear girl is returned to the bosom of her family, and one less madman roams the streets of Salzburg.”

“Your pardon, my lord, but I hardly think he was a madman. His actions were too calculated. Only when his plan went awry did he behave in a desperate fashion.”

Christoph discreetly cleared his throat. The sisters’ limpid eyes, darkened by the candlelight, widened. Ingrid concealed a smile behind her napkin, and Leinz set his emptied wine glass on the table with more temper than grace.

Oliver realized his error. So preoccupied by the would-be assassin’s final whispered warning, he had mulled those events ever since. That Oliver had come to certain decisions regarding the man’s mental health would find scant welcome at a mannerly supper. Neither were such opinions expected from a valet, no matter his suit of fine clothes.

Greta stared at him. She touched the four strands of radiant pearls at her throat, pearls that surely hid evidence of the attack. “You are saying, Herr Doerger, that he was justified in what he did to me?”

Had he heard her speak before? Yes, but her words had been pinched gasps, strangled with fear. Her voice, in truth, was melodic and light—nearly childlike, but with an undercurrent of strength. But for her to misunderstand him so completely stole much of its charm.

“I had no thought to suggest anything of the sort, Fräulein Zweig. Nothing he did can be excused.” He wanted to press on and win his point. Without understanding the man’s motives, how would they learn to prevent future attacks on the duke? But he had already said too much. “Forgive me if my words caused you distress.” He shrugged but the gesture felt more like a flinch. “I am, after all, out of my element.”

Leinz grunted his agreement. The sisters had the nerve to titter. And the third course was served.

Oliver made no more attempts to join the renewed flow of conversation. It was safer that way. Even Leinz must have decided the evening would speed along more quickly without further engaging Oliver. The food came and went, orchestrated by servants whose faces blended into sameness. Oliver wanted to be done with the whole farce.

So I can go back to my other, more comfortable farce.

He glanced up to find Greta’s eyes still keen, still watching him. Good God, she was lovely—utterly beautiful, all softness of coloring and fullness of flesh. Her breasts tempted him especially, speeding the flow of his blood. A man could feast on such bounty and never ask for meat or wine. But her eyes, a deep clear blue like an Alpine summer sky, held equal power—less primal, more complex. Those eyes held secrets.

Following dinner, the men adjourned to the library for cigars and brandy. Oliver did not smoke, however, and he did not want to tempt fate with strong drink.

“Would you mind terribly, my lord, if I walk the halls instead?” He appealed to the man’s palpable snobbery. “I am unaccustomed to cuisine so rich and plentiful. My apologies.”

Leinz waved an idle hand, then returned his attention to the nearby brandy decanter. “Of course, my boy. Beyond this door and to your left is our art gallery. Enjoy yourself.” On his way out, Oliver heard Leinz’s final words on the subject. “A little culture for the lad.”

Closing his hands into fists, Oliver resisted the bone-deep urge to slam the smoking room door behind him. But that restraint was much easier than identifying polite dinner topics. He had been playing the part of a servant so long that swallowing his anger came almost automatically.

Twenty minutes later he stood before the eighth painting down a seemingly endless hallway of artwork. The walls were thick with them, like bark covering a tree. Who still displayed their paintings with such bravado? Christoph and Ingrid had shipped all their finest works to the north, where relatives in the principality of Anhalt-Dessau kept them for a fee. Preparations for what everyone assumed would be renewed French hostilities extended even to silverware and spare bolts of fabric.

Leinz’s collection shouted arrogance.

Oliver continued his perusal, aimlessly lingering over shapes and color, when a scent caught his attention. He cocked his head and inhaled slowly, trying to identify where he had encountered its like.

Linseed oil, used in mixing paint. Like the scent of Greta’s hair at the opera.

Yet he was alone in the corridor.

Leinz had been right about his lack of culture. What Oliver knew about art could fit into a spoon with room left to sweeten a demitasse of coffee. He leaned nearer to the large landscape and breathed in once more. The linseed smell was stronger there. He gouged his fingernail into a particularly heavy brush stroke. Rather than flake away, the paint stuck under his nail.

Fresh.

Oliver frowned. Copies? Just how many in that hallway were forgeries?

Upon hearing a gasp, Oliver turned and dropped into a defensive stance. Greta Zweig stood ten feet away. Her gaze alighted on him…the painting…and his hand.

Yes, her hair had smelled of paint and her hands had been stained by color. Some of the secrets in her eyes, it seemed, would be easier to discern than others.

He sketched a shallow bow, never removing his gaze from her startled face. “You do very good work,
Fräulein.
”

Greta had expected to be able to escape unnoticed. Back to her rooms. Back to her work. But the long corridor that housed her most valiant attempts at mimicking the masters was not deserted.

Herr Doerger’s cool gaze proved even more unnerving there, at a respectable distance, than it had been across the sumptuous dinner table. He had been out of his element then, stiff and wary. Not that she could blame him. Anyone might be under Uncle Thaddeus’s scrutiny. Now even the few yards between them were too scant a barrier. He saw right through her—no,
into
her. His limbs had loosened. His body seemed more at home while standing or, as he had at the Residenz,
stalking.

Leinz Manor was clearly her uncle’s domain, but Greta still felt proprietary. She had lived within its walls since the age of ten. It was her home. Yet Oliver Doerger studied her so intently as to make her want to back down.

Back down from a servant.

Greta sniffed. She could never maintain a lady’s hands nor hold up her end of a good round of gossip, but she could put an insolent servant in his place. The way he was staring at her was certainly…insolent.

“Kindly remove your eyes from my person.”

Doerger did nothing of the sort. He smiled—slowly, taking his time in mocking her request—as his gaze sauntered down to her bodice. She was probably doing him a great favor in breathing so rapidly, but her outrage only increased with every passing heartbeat.

He closed the distance between them. “No.”

“No, you won’t avert your inappropriate gaze?”

Doerger shook his head with that maddening slowness, as if chastising a child. “No, the correct reply should’ve run along the lines of ‘What work are you talking about, Herr Doerger?’ But you knew very well what I was referring to.”

Greta tongued her chipped tooth.

He raised his right hand and showed her the paint wedged beneath the nail of his index fingernail. “Just how recently did you finish that one? A week ago? Maybe two?”

“Your disrespect is unconscionable. What, exactly, are you saying?”

“I’m saying that you are quite a talent,
Fräulein.
”

She scowled. “As if you would know anything about these paintings.”

“A mere servant, yes.” His smile was quicker this time, more spiteful. “But be careful the assumptions you make.”

“Oh, and I suppose you spend your evenings studying the differences between Bosch and Bruegel?”

“Wouldn’t it twist your head in knots if I did? But the subject at hand is not how I make use of my nights.”

“Are you accusing me of something, Herr Doerger?”

“Accusing? Hardly. That might perhaps imply criminal behavior. I was simply attempting to solve a puzzle.”

He turned away as if the matter were settled. Hands clasped at the base of his back, he slowly walked back toward her newest copy, Jan van Goyen’s
North Dune Landscape at Dusk.
Her attempt at his famous skies was a pallid one, but the overall composition produced a certain easy grace. She considered it her finest attempt yet.

But her attention was drawn to Doerger’s long legs. The military-style boots and close-fitting buff trousers added a greater impression of power to those strong, lean limbs. Greta knew enough about human anatomy to understand the remarkable beauty of his body, enough to imagine the privilege of sketching such an impressive male figure in the nude.

She inhaled softly, startled. Her thoughts had little to do with being caught out by Oliver. Instead her mind had dragged her toward far more carnal considerations, toward the mysteries that works of art could not solve.

But he remained a threat. For the sake of her family and her future, she could not be revealed as the artist. Not now. Perhaps not ever. If she expected to marry well, she needed to remain perfectly respectable. Painting was bad enough. Being associated with her uncle’s scheme to sell the forgeries as originals could prove ruinous. Greta’s future, as well as the futures of her cousins, depended on success in this secret venture.

“Will you tell anyone?” she asked to his proud back.

He turned his head until it was perfectly in profile. His nose was too sharp. His brow was too severe. And almost all his arrogance resided in the defiant tilt of his chin. “Why should I not, I wonder?”

“For chivalry’s sake?”

He huffed a jeering laugh, one that would have been a strong rival to any her uncle produced. “Chivalry? I’ve already done quite well by you on that score.”

Fresh visions of knife blades and red velvet stage curtains hastened her heartbeat. She threaded her fingers together at her waist and squeezed, grounding herself in the tight pinch of fabric at each knuckle. A heavy swallow reminded her of the pearls she wore and the slice she’d endured. “Yes,” she said softly. “Yes, you did.”

“And all without a thanks.”

He was facing her once more, his expression stripped of teasing and impertinence. He merely seemed…disappointed. Greta chafed at the idea of him thinking her ungrateful—or worse yet, unmannerly. Although why she cared about the opinion of a servant was beyond her.

Because he saved my life.

“You make it difficult to want to extend myself once again,” he said. “Even a man in my position has his limits.”

A man in his position. A servant. Why was that so difficult to remember? Perhaps because he held himself with more confidence than anyone she had ever known, no matter his station or occupation. Only at her uncle’s dining room table had he seemed divested of that singular certainty. Maybe that was why she had believed herself momentarily immune to his appeal. There, it had been easier to put him in his proper place.

“Do you want my thanks?” she asked.

“Not so much that I’ll ask.”

“No, you’ll simply dance around the topic until I feel guilty enough to indulge you.”

“Do you feel guilty?”

“Of course not.”

His expression slid toward a polite sneer. “Of course not,” he echoed. “Why would you?”

Greta swallowed again. “So I suppose that answers the question as to whether or not you’ll keep my secret.”

“We’ll see.”

He shrugged, hands still clasped behind his back. The pose accentuated the thrust of his chest. The tapering lines from his wide shoulders to his waist formed a strong V. Greta found herself memorizing those lines as if to sketch him later.

She shook her head to banish the reflex, but details crowded into her brain—the contrast between his full lower lip and facial bones as rigid as wrought iron, the spiky softness of his dark gold hair, the unnerving way his eyes bored into hers while the man behind them maintained a cool distance.

No, she would never be able to capture all of that.

“What do you mean ‘we’ll see’?”

“No sense in revealing a secret when there’s nothing to gain by it.”

“Typical,” she said with a twitching exhale. “Servants gathering tidbits to use later.”

“So you’ve noticed that, have you? Even on those human beings you try so hard to ignore—eyes and ears. Imagine that.”

“You’re mocking me.”

“Completely.”

Voices reverberated from the far end of the corridor, the opposite direction from the rooms where Uncle Thaddeus and his guests gathered. Members of the household staff, then. She should abandon the scene and retreat to her rooms. To endure further conversation at the hands of this stranger was asking for ridicule.

But he knew her secret—the secret that had been gnawing at her insides for years. That alone was a thrill. As her technique improved, she grew ever bolder with slipping her initials into the swirls and brushstrokes. It was irrational and even dangerous, she knew. Yet Greta had wanted more than forgeries, more than being an invisible means to an end.

She wanted to be seen. And Oliver Doerger saw her.

“Quickly,” she said, motioning with her hand. “Come with me.”

Without waiting to see if she was followed, Greta hurried toward the north end of the corridor, which opened onto a terrace. Her slippers made no sound on the polished marble, but perhaps she simply could not hear her hasty steps over the rush of blood in her ears.

He was a chivalrous man. He had demonstrated as much. All she needed to do was thank him in a way that convinced him of her sincerity. Maybe then he might consider their tally even—enough to beg him to keep her secret safe.

When she reached the terrace, Greta slipped outdoors and sucked in a fast breath. The July evening had turned brisk, almost chilly. A slight breeze lifted the fine hairs at her nape and pushed others across her brow. Her upper arms sprouted a hearty crop of goose bumps.

Doerger peeked his head through double doors comprised of eight panes of leaded glass. Her earliest memories of summer months spent here at Leinz Manor had been of those doors, sitting on the terrace and watching the play of color as the sun moved.

Now her gentle childhood memories would be forever altered.

Doerger’s lean body eased through the portal and into the quiet evening. No candles gilded his handsome features. Instead the silver moonlight stripped his skin of pigment and softness, emphasizing each hollow. Even his hair conspired to keep her attention. Neatly trimmed, it was the perfect frame to accentuate the symmetry of his handsome features.

He grinned and closed the door. Greta retreated a step.

No matter his good deed and educated speech, he was still a stranger she had invited onto a moonlit terrace without a chaperone. If her uncle or her cousins thought to check in on her before they retired to bed…

But she needed to do this. She had to convince him to keep her secret.

“What do you want?”

Doerger glanced back toward the doors, then put a finger to his lips. “Shh.”

“Why? You have no reputation to lose.”

“No, but I do have a considerable position within Lord Venner’s household. Would you have me risk that?”

He smiled when she frowned. Yes, he had won the point, but she did not relish handing him his victory so easily, no matter how small. But he thoroughly confused her. A gentleman on a terrace with a young woman risked nothing other than developing a reputation for rakishness. The woman alone faced debilitating scandal.

A servant, however, risked dismissal, a loss of status and the possibility of never finding suitable employment again—even criminal charges.

Greta shivered. “Then why did you follow me? I could cry out for my uncle this instant and see you carted away.”

“That would assume you’re a better liar to him than you are to me.” He leaned against the manor’s outer wall, arms crossed. The finely tailored coat strained to accommodate his lounging frame. Greta wondered how a servant had acquired such a luscious suit. “I doubt that somehow.”

“That doesn’t explain why you chose to follow me.”

“I’m curious what you’ll do.”

“Do?”

“To secure my secrecy.” He skewered her with his maddening gaze, the one that promised to read her as easily as crisp broadsheet. “That is why we’re here, yes? You’ll beg—no, probably not. You’ll cajole and wheedle. That sort of conduct, I’d wager, is more in keeping with your pride. But you’re not the sort of girl who practices such things.”

“No?”

“No.” He stepped away from the wall.

Greta averted her eyes, looking out over the measured exactitude of the formal gardens. Hedges of exacting heights. Statues at pleasing intervals. The arrangement suited her sense of order but none of her interest. These arrangements were for show. She wondered what the head gardener might produce had he not been held to her uncle’s fashionable expectations.

But none of her habitual observations belied the hurried rhythm of her heart or the parched burn in the back of her throat. She feared this man—not as she had her attacker at the opera, but as she feared her own deeply buried disposition. Dangerous. Selfish. Restless.

“No,” he continued softly, so near now. Every lash cast a long shadow across the crests of his cheekbones. “You spend too much time in your studio, don’t you? You leave the cajoling and wheedling to your cousins.”

“How would you know?”

“Eyes and ears, remember?”

She shook her head sharply. That had not been her meaning. Servant or not, nobleman or not, few thought to look upon anything but her womanly figure, let alone with such intensity. Could he really assess so much about her…and so quickly? He was as intriguing as he was frightening. “So if verbal persuasion will prove ineffective even before I begin, what remains? Do you need money?”

Doerger grinned as if indulging a poor joke. “Probably less than you do.”

“You are impertinent.”

“Not to those of my acquaintance who hold sway over my quality of life.”

Greta flinched at the implication that she meant nothing to him, when he and his daring rescue had come to dominate her thoughts. Did he peer into everyone as deeply? Imagining that sharp, intimate gaze turned on another woman was enough to rouse her reckless impulses. She wanted to stand out, to make him remember her as clearly as his memory would revisit her.

“What will it take?” she whispered.

His smile became more subdued. That keen silvery gaze fastened on her mouth. “What damsel wouldn’t reward her protector with a kiss?”

Oliver could have been handed a hundred years—a millennium, even. No matter. Understanding his actions would never come clear. He was practically backing a
Pfalzgraf’
s niece against the wall of a terrace. The dance pulsed between them so naturally, as old as man and woman and time. She retreated. He pursued.

A bright, snapping energy had been building between them, maybe since he had held her trembling body, her tears wetting his neck. That moment had been soaked with fear and relief. This was deeper, more pleasurable. More risky.

Christoph would forgive him a great deal, but just how far did their clandestine family bond extend? Probably no further than Oliver’s conscience would permit. At the moment, however, he could depend on no such honor.

Lush summer scents lent those suspended seconds a dreamlike beauty. Too much. Too perfect. Oliver took a step, then another, easing nearer.