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As if the sound of her fellow revelers broke the spell that had been cast over her, Ophelia shook her head and backed away from him. Pity. He already missed her. Hell, he even missed the sole of her boot on his toes.

Gamely, he perched the hat on his head before securing the dressing gown with a belt. Then he rose to his full height, stretching. After being frozen in the same position for two hours, his muscles needed to loosen.

“Are you ready to judge the portraits?” Theodora asked, arching her brow.

He’d almost forgotten her presence entirely; he’d been so entranced in Ophelia. And the works of art he was meant to examine had already flown from his mind as well.

“I reckon I am as ready as I shall ever be,” he announced to the lady artists who were all watching him with enthralled gazes. “Whose portrait shall I view first?”

A chorus rose up at once.

“Me!”

“Come and have a look at mine, sir.”

“This way!”

Well, that plan had rather spectacularly failed. He decided to begin with the lady nearest him, an ample-breasted brunette who had been unabashedly leering at him whilst she had painted.

“I think that for the sake of efficiency, I shall begin with you, madam,” he said politely.

She preened and turned her portrait to face him with a flourish. “Here you are, sir. I fear that I couldn’t possibly do justice to such a fine form. Indeed, it is rare to be treated to the delight of a man who is so generously…muscled.”

Somewhere behind him, Apollo swore he heard Ophelia let out an indelicate snort.

He bit back a grin and studied the portrait. It was fair enough, though his legs were far too thin in his opinion, and the angles of his knees made him appear rather more frog than man. However, it was passable.

“Very good,” he praised her, moving on to the blonde at her side. “Next?”

And thus, he went, viewing the portraits, some of which were quite skilled, and others of which were unimaginative and dreadful. In one, he possessed an aquiline nose; in another, his ears were too large. And in yet one more, his feet resembled snowshoes more than aught else. In some, he was brilliantly masculine and tall and handsome. In others, he was brooding and weary.

Finally, he reached the last two, Theodora’s efforts and Ophelia’s. He directed Theodora to display hers first, wanting to save Ophelia’s for last.

Theodora turned her portrait to him with a knowing smile. At once, he understood the source of her smug countenance. She was exceedingly skilled. The portrait she had rendered of him in a mere two hours was finer than the one his mother had commissioned of him several years earlier. True, he had been fully clothed in that portrait, but there was no denying Theodora’s skill.

“A very talented likeness, madam,” he praised, meaning those words.

He could only hope that Ophelia possessed the skill of Michelangelo.

Theodora preened. “Thank you.”

Apollo turned to Ophelia last. Her eyes were already on him, and when their gazes connected, a visceral jolt passed through his body, as if he had touched a live electric wire. The attraction between them was hotter than any flame, and he knew she felt it every bit as surely as he did.

He had never been one to indulge in fanciful thoughts, but in this moment, he rather wished he could cast some manner of spell that would make all the occupants of the chamber disappear. How he wished he had her alone. Each time they were together, he chipped a bit more at the walls she had erected around herself.

Soon enough, he would breach her defenses and storm the portcullis.

“Last but most certainly not least, my lady,” he said softly.

Her lips tightened ever so slightly, almost as if she intended to protest. But then she surprised him by reaching for her canvas and turning it swiftly about.

A laugh burst from him at once.

The sight that greeted him was quite unexpected. Instead of painting his portrait as every other woman in the library had done, Ophelia had taken artistic liberty and had given him large devil horns sprouting from his head and a long tail trailing down the stool. His face was fiendishly frightening, and the rest of his body had been represented as something between man and beast, none of it very flattering.

“Oh, how dreadful,” one of the other ladies murmured.

Ophelia beamed at him. “I’m afraid you must choose another’s portrait over mine. As you can see, I’m not very adept at painting men.”