‘Do come in and get warm by the fire. Aunt has just made some tea and we are toasting muffins.’
Thankfully Tallie dropped bonnet and pelisse on the hall chair and followed her in, pulling off her gloves as she did so. All the residents of the household, with the exception of Mrs Porter the cook and little Annie the maid of all work, were gathered round the fireplace.
Suddenly Tallie’s vision swam and she found she could not find her way to her chair. Her sight was so blurred she had to grip the edge of the table to steady herself.
‘Tallie dear, what is the matter? Are you ill?’ Zenobia Scott, the other lodger, leapt to her feet and guided Tallie to her seat. ‘You are frozen! Please, Mrs Blackstock, may I ask Cook to bring a hot brick for her feet?’
‘I’ll go.’ Millie was already on her way and Tallie found herself a short while later wrapped snugly in a blanket with the blissful heat of one of the bricks that Cook always kept on the back of the range in the winter glowing by her feet.
She curled her fingers tightly around the teacup and smiled gratefully at her friends, thankful as always for having found this cheerful feminine sanctuary.
‘Have you walked all the way home, Talitha?’ Mrs Blackstock asked. ‘I do wish you would not; it is so cold out there, and dark now. What occurred to upset you so? Has some man offered you an insult?’
‘No, not exactly.’ Tallie made herself think. She could hardly pretend now that nothing had happened—and in any case she badly wanted to talk about it—but although the other women knew she sat for Mr Harland, they had no idea it was in a scandalous state of undress. They knew how she had begun to sit for the portraitist and had unthinkingly assumed that the supply of Society ladies who required someone else to model their less-than-perfect or pregnant figures was constant. But Tallie had failed to tell them that after the first commission, undertaken at the behest of one of her millinery customers wanting a portrait to remind her husband of her pre-childbirth slenderness, she had succumbed to the temptation of far more lucrative modelling.
‘I was at the studio,’ she began, ‘and a party of gentlemen arrived unexpectedly and insisted on coming up. They guessed Mr Harland had a female sitter and began the most dreadful hue and cry, looking for me.’
‘How dreadful!’ Mrs Blackstock and her niece said in one voice. Millie, a ravishingly pretty blonde with a lovely figure and a charming, though light, singing voice, was employed as a dancer at the Opera House. Despite all popular prejudice about her profession, she maintained both her virtue and an endearing innocence, whatever lures gentlemen threw out to ‘Amelie LeNoir'.
‘Did they discover you?’ Mrs Blackstock added anxiously. She kept a concerned eye on her three young ladies, although hard experience since she had been widowed had taught her that no lady of limited means could afford to be over-nice about her employment.
‘No, fortunately the ones who were making such a hunt of it were diverted and all was well. But it was frightening and I was so very cold …’
Mrs Blackstock clucked. ‘Make sure you have a good dinner tonight, Talitha dear, and go to bed early.
My goodness, just look at the time! Millie, if we are to take out those curl papers and dress your hair for this evening’s performance, we must bustle!’
She swept her niece out of the room, pausing to pat Tallie’s shoulder as she went.
Zenobia shifted her position to regard her friend closely. Three years older than Tallie, she was a governess who chose to live independently and to go out to households daily. She had a small but appreciative clientele amongst those rare families who took the education of girls seriously and who wished to have their children’s regular learning with their own governesses supplemented by Miss Scott’s tuition in Italian, German and, in two radical households, Latin.
‘Well?’ Zenobia demanded abruptly. Years of dealing with children had given her a sure sense for prevarication and careful half-truths. ‘Who was he?’
‘He? Who?’
Zenobia rolled her brown eyes ceilingwards. ‘The man, of course. The one who was not hunting you.’
‘How did you … I mean, what makes you think …?’
‘Your choice of words was odd, that is all. And I know you very well. There is something about you, some little suppressed excitement. Come on, tell Zenna.’
‘But I did not even see him, Zenna,’ Tallie protested. ‘Only his shadow on the floor. You see, they all came trooping up and I ran and hid in the closet, but the key fell out, and my draperies, er …’
‘Tallie,’ Zenna said, her face a picture of appalled realisation, ‘you do not mean to tell me you were posing unclad?’
‘Um … yes. But you see, Mr Harland is utterly immune to any interest in the female form. Why, I am as safe with him as I am with you; no one will ever see or buy his classical canvases, for they are never finished and, besides, they are vast in size.’
‘Well, one group of men appears to have seen all too much,’ Zenna retorted grimly. ‘Just how many of them were there?’
‘Four. But even if they saw me again, they would never recognise me from the picture, for the pose was from the back.’
A little whimper escaped Zenna’s lips. ‘But what about this closet you hid in? Did none of them find you there?’
‘Well, yes, one of them opened the door. But he did not see my face and he was a perfect gentleman. He gave me my drape back and the key, and told the others that the door was locked so they went away.’
The whimper became a moan. ‘You were in a closet, with no clothes on and this man came in?’ Tallie nodded. ‘And he did not say anything, or touch you or …?’
‘He caught his breath,’ Tallie admitted, a frisson running down her spine again at the recollection of that soft sound.
‘As well he might,’ Zenna said grimly. ‘By some miracle you appear to have encountered the only safe man in London.’
‘Well, he saved me,’ Tallie admitted, ‘but he did not make me feel safe.’ Zenna’s rather thick brows rose interrogatively. ‘His voice was so … so cool and sardonic, as though he did not care what anyone else thought. And he is … powerful somehow.’
‘How on earth can you tell?’ Zenna demanded, attempting to pour some cold water over what she felt were becoming dangerously heated imaginings. ‘You did not see him, did you?’
‘No, he just emanated this feeling. I can’t describe it, but I suppose power is the best word. And Mr Harland wanted to ask him to pose as Alexander the Great.’
‘Goodness. Well, if he looks anything like the representations of Alexander that I have seen, he is an impressive man indeed. What a fortunate thing you did not see him,’ she added slyly, ‘or you would be imagining yourself in love with him.’
‘Oh, nonsense.’ Tallie laughed and tossed a cushion at her teasing friend. She was suddenly feeling better. Alexander the Great indeed!
The next morning, refreshed by a good night’s sleep, undisturbed by dreams of hallooing gentlemen and Carthaginian generals, Tallie woke to a
