The Beauty Within

The Beauty Within
Marguerite Kaye

BEAUTY IS IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDERConsidered the plain, clever one in her family, Lady Cressida Armstrong knows her father has given up on her ever marrying. But who needs a husband when science is the only thing to set Cressie’s pulse racing? Disillusioned artist Giovanni di Matteo is setting the ton abuzz with his expertly executed portraits.Once his art was inspired; now it’s only technique. Until he meets Cressie… Challenging, intelligent and yet insecure, Cressie is the one whose face and body he dreams of capturing on canvas. In the enclosed, intimate world of his studio, Giovanni rediscovers his passion as he awakens her own.

‘Whether you accept it or not you are a woman, not a man, and I wish to paint you as one. Something else you are hiding under those terrible dresses you favour,’ he said, tracing the line of her throat with his fingers, brushing lightly over her breasts.

She caught her breath as he touched her. Without being conscious of it she stepped towards him, wanting his hand to cup her, yearning in the purest, most thoughtless of ways for him to satisfy the craving she had been feeling for days. It was nothing to do with aesthetics. She knew that. It was elemental—purely carnal.

‘You have the most delightful curves. Did you know that this is what your English painter Hogarth called “the line of beauty”?’ His fingers slid down, brushing the underside of her breast, to the indent of her waist and round, to rest on the curve of her bottom and pull her suddenly hard up against him. ‘You, Cressie, have the most beautiful line.’

His eyes were dark. She was trembling and in absolutely no doubt that this time he would kiss her. Nor in any doubt at all about what she wanted.

About the Author

Born and educated in Scotland, MARGUERITE KAYE originally qualified as a lawyer but chose not to practise. Instead, she carved out a career in IT and studied history part-time, gaining a first-class honours and a master’s degree. A few decades after winning a children’s national poetry competition she decided to pursue her lifelong ambition to write, and submitted her first historical romance to Mills & Boon

. They accepted it, and she’s been writing ever since.

You can contact Marguerite through her website at: www.margueritekaye.com

Previous novels by the same author:

THE WICKED LORD RASENBY

THE RAKE AND THE HEIRESS

INNOCENT IN THE SHEIKH’S HAREM† (#ulink_59f692d8-1f02-5857-98cd-f90a72b9825f) (part of Summer Sheikhs anthology) THE GOVERNESS AND THE SHEIKH† (#ulink_59f692d8-1f02-5857-98cd-f90a72b9825f) THE HIGHLANDER’S REDEMPTION* (#ulink_a0dbcc80-4148-55a7-9b3e-0b6c032ac5d8) THE HIGHLANDER’S RETURN* (#ulink_a0dbcc80-4148-55a7-9b3e-0b6c032ac5d8) RAKE WITH A FROZEN HEART OUTRAGEOUS CONFESSIONS OF LADY DEBORAH DUCHESS BY CHRISTMAS (part of Gift-Wrapped Governesses anthology) * (#ulink_a0dbcc80-4148-55a7-9b3e-0b6c032ac5d8)Highland Brides

and in Mills & Boon

Historical Undone! eBooks:

THE CAPTAIN’S WICKED WAGER

THE HIGHLANDER AND THE SEA SIREN

BITTEN BY DESIRE

TEMPTATION IS THE NIGHT

CLAIMED BY THE WOLF PRINCE** (#ulink_59f692d8-1f02-5857-98cd-f90a72b9825f) BOUND TO THE WOLF PRINCE** (#ulink_59f692d8-1f02-5857-98cd-f90a72b9825f) THE HIGHLANDER AND THE WOLF PRINCESS** (#ulink_59f692d8-1f02-5857-98cd-f90a72b9825f) THE SHEIKH’S IMPETUOUS LOVE-SLAVE† (#ulink_59f692d8-1f02-5857-98cd-f90a72b9825f) SPELLBOUND & SEDUCED BEHIND THE COURTESAN’S MASK FLIRTING WITH RUIN AN INVITATION TO PLEASURE

** (#ulink_3bce1d24-c54f-5c0c-8320-3aad01b9fb72)Legend of the Faol† (#ulink_a0dbcc80-4148-55a7-9b3e-0b6c032ac5d8)linked by character

and in M&B Castonbury Park Regency mini-series THE LADY WHO BROKE THE RULES

and in M&B eBooks: TITANIC: A DATE WITH DESTINY

Did you know that some of these novels are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

AUTHOR NOTE

When I wrote my Princes of the Desert historical mini-series a couple of years ago, it was published with the strapline ‘Where English Roses meet Desert Sheikhs.’ The English Roses referred to were sisters, Lady Celia and Lady Cassandra, the eldest daughters of Lord Armstrong, a distinguished British diplomat. There were five Armstrong sisters in all, and it was always my intention to tell each of their stories eventually.

I had always envisaged Cressie as the bookish, intense sister (being the eldest of four sisters myself, I know how readily labels such as this are applied!). In an age where such bluestocking traits were not only discouraged but frowned upon, especially in young women of marriageable age, Cressie is an intellectual with a serious hang-up about her looks. Giovanni is a brooding and fatally attractive Italian artist, touched by genius, with a sordid and shameful past. Hardly the most obvious of matches, but definitely one which will generate a lot of sparks.

Cressie and Giovanni’s story touches on a number of seemingly conflicting concepts—truth versus beauty, science versus art, logic versus instinct, duty versus freedom—but it’s not about any of that. It’s about two people from different worlds who have an irresistible connection and who, in attempting to find themselves, find each other. What could be more romantic than that?

I fully intend to complete the Armstrong sisters cycle by writing Caro and Cordelia’s stories some time in the near future. But for the time being I hope you enjoy Cressie’s tale.

The Beauty Within

Marguerite Kaye

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

For Arianna,

who helped me enormously with all things Italian,

though any mistakes are all mine.

Grazie mille!

Prologue

‘Absolutely marvellous. A triumph.’ Sir Romney Kirn rubbed his meaty hands together enthusiastically, his fingers like plump sausages, as he gazed at the canvas which had just been unveiled to him. ‘Quite, quite splendid. I’d say he’s done me justice, would not you, my love?’

‘Indeed, my dear,’ his good lady agreed. ‘One would even go so far as to say he has made you more handsome and distinguished than you are in the flesh, if that were possible.’

Sir Romney Kirn was not a man short of flesh, nor much given to modesty. The glow which suffused his already ruddy and bloated face was therefore most likely attributable to a surfeit of port the previous evening. Lady Kirn turned, her corsets creaking disconcertingly, towards the artist responsible for her husband’s portrait. ‘Your reputation as a genius is well deserved, signor,’ she said with a simpering little laugh, her eyelashes fluttering alarmingly.

She was clearly smitten, and in front of her husband to boot. Had she no shame? Giovanni di Matteo sighed. Why did women of a certain age insist on flirting with him? In fact, why did women of all ages feel it necessary to throw themselves at him? He gave the merest hint of a bow, anxious to be gone. ‘I am only as good as my subject, my lady.’

It worried him that the lies flowed with such practised ease. The baronet, a bluff man whose interests began and ended with hop farming had, over the course of several sittings, imparted his encyclopaedic knowledge of the crop while he posed, a copy of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations in his hands—a volume which he admitted bluffly had not previously been opened, let alone read. The library which formed the backdrop to the portrait had been purchased as a job lot and had, Giovanni would have been willing to wager, remained entirely unvisited since its installation in the stately home—also recently acquired, following Sir Romney’s elevation to the peerage.

Giovanni eyed the glossy canvas with the critical eye his clients sorely lacked. Technically, it was a highly accomplished portrait: the light; the angles; the precise placing of the subject within the composition, Sir Romney being posed in such a way as to minimise his substantial girth and make the most of his weak profile; all were perfect. An excellent likeness, his clients said. They always did, and indeed it was, in as much as it portrayed the baronet exactly as he wished to be seen.

It was Giovanni’s business to create the illusion of authority or wealth, sensuality or innocence, charm or intelligence, whichever combination his sitter desired. Beauty—of a kind. This polished, idealistic portrayal was what his clients sought in a di Matteo. It was what he was famed for, why he was sought after, and yet, at the peak of his success, ten years since arriving in England, the country he had made his home, Giovanni stared with distaste at the canvas and felt like a failure.

It had not always been like this. There had been a time when a blank canvas filled him with excitement. A time when a finished work made him elated, not desolate and drained. Art and sex. He had celebrated one with the other back in those days. Illusions both, like the ones he now painted for a living. Art and sex. For him, they used to be inextricably linked. He had given up the latter. Nowadays, the former left him feeling cold and empty.

‘Now then, signor, here is the—er—necessary.’ Sir Romney handed Giovanni a leather pouch rather in the manner of a criminal bribing a witness.

‘Grazie.’ He put the fee into the pocket of his coat. It amused him, the way so many of his clients found the act of paying for their portrait distasteful, unwilling to make the connection between the painting and commerce, for beauty ought surely to be priceless.

Refusing the dainty glass of Madeira which Lady Kirn eagerly offered, Giovanni shook hands with Sir Romney and bade the couple farewell. He had an appointment in London tomorrow. Another portrait to paint. Another blank canvas waiting to be filled. Another ego waiting to be massaged. And another pile of gold to add to his coffers, he reminded himself, which was the whole point, after all.

Never again, no matter if he lived to a hundred, would Giovanni have cause to rely on anyone other than himself. Never again would he have to bow to the wishes of another, to shape himself into the form another expected. He would not be his father’s heir. He would not be any woman’s plaything. Or man’s for that matter—for there were many men of a certain type, wealthy and debauched, who liked to call themselves patrons but who were more interested in an artist’s body than his body of work. His answer to those proposals had always been succinct—a dagger held threateningly to the throat—and always had the desired effect.