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“I was mistaken.” His voice was deep and carrying.

“What?” Syme exclaimed.

“I shouldn’t have attributed the pictures to Jack Reeve.” Alan looked back at Syme. “Terribly shortsighted of me. I’ll let Sir Cunliffe-Owen know I’ve seen the light.” His gaze flicked again to Nina. His smile was richly satisfied. He gave one more rap with his cane. “I think that’s all, then.”

You could have heard a hog bristle drop from a brush.

No one moved.

“Adieu,” said Alan brightly. Voices erupted. Nina might have stayed rooted in place, but Alan took her hand in front of all assembled and led her from the room. Tugged her, in truth. She was too dazed to keep pace with him, her laggard mind trying to catch up to the implications, her feet faltering.

He’d called it off, the hunt for Jack, the excruciating public conversation about pictures that she had painted. He’d put her feelings before his reputation.

At the top of the stairs, he turned and crowded her into the wall, kissing her until she was dazed and senseless.

“Make haste.” He interspersed the words with licks to her neck. “Our carriage awaits.”

That helped. She hastened.

He must have given the coachman the opposite instructions.

The drive back to Chelsea took an exquisitely long time.

—

Nina slept stunningly late and woke all at once.

“It isn’t noon?” She opened her eyes and gasped, sitting bolt upright.

“It’s one.” Alan was lounging beside her, wide awake but seemingly disinclined to bestir himself. He gave her a lazy smile.

“You must have somewhere to be.” She pushed her hair back from her flustered face. “Or do you feel too humbled to show your face?” She bit her lip. Saying he was wrong in front of dozens of artists and critics, not to mention his nemesis—did he regret it already?

“Humbled?” Alan lifted a brow. “No man would feel humble after such a night.”

Nina’s blush started behind her navel.

“Perhaps you’ve forgotten the things you said?” He rolled over and trapped her between his arms. “Does this sound familiar?” His lips were at her ear, the murmurs breathy and hot.

“I never said that,” she gasped.

“No?” He maneuvered his lower body, braced himself above her. “Maybe I got ahead of myself.”

She melted beneath him, opening to bring him deep inside. His tongue, his cock. They moved together, and she kept silent at first, smiling her challenge against his mouth, her eyes wide so she could see the wicked glint in his. He gripped her knee, angling it up. His next thrust made her groan. She clung to him as he took her and took her. She didn’t know what she said, what she did, only that the pleasure made something clench right in the very pit of her being, and that when it exploded, she’d scream. His hand wedged between them, his thumb rubbing there, as he pumped his hips. She screamed, and his smile pressed into her neck. The words he muttered as he jerked in her arms made the most obscenely gratifying music she’d ever heard.

—

An hour after breakfast, they lazed into the drawing room for tea. As Alan flipped through the newspapers, Nina nibbled a biscuit and gazed out the window at the garden.

“No articles yet.” Alan discarded his paper. “That look—you’re thinking of your brother.”

“He’s in France.” She put the half-eaten biscuit on the rim of her saucer. Jack didn’t know of his imminent exoneration. He’d find out at some point. She supposed he’d return. What kind of contact would they have then, if any?

She gave her head a shake. “I hadn’t been thinking of Jack, actually. I was thinking of Kate Holroyd’s picture. The one we saw in the smoking room at the Olgilvie Gallery.”

He smiled. “The Dreamers.”

“They’re both women.” She smiled back at him. “I hadn’t realized.”