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turned her face from his scrutiny, before beating a hasty path toward the door.
    “Think of the girls,” he called behind her. “How are you going to prepare them for their marital duties without my assistance?”
    She paused. Logic slowed her retreat. The headmistress was to observe her class in the morning.
    “Do you have so many resources that you can abandon the one readily available to you?” His voice wove through her thoughts like rhyme through a stanza.
    Indeed, that very lack of resources had inspired her visit in the first place. If she couldn’t turn to him for answers, where could she go? She kept her back to him but listened to his calm, insistent plea.
    “How can you mislead those young, trusting girls at this crucial juncture?”
    She ignored his light mockery. He may not believe her dedication to her students, but then he wasn’t familiar with the events that had brought her to this wilderness. Now that she was here, she could never go back. First, however, she must prove to the Higgins sisters that she had knowledge of a carnal nature . . .
    “You would answer all my questions about intimacy?” she asked over her shoulder, hesitant to be reminded of his handsome visage. “No matter how difficult, and with complete honesty?”
    “The difficulty, I suspect, will be yours in framing the questions.” His voice moved closer, the exposed skin on the back of her neck prickled in response. She imagined he was an arm’s span away. “Yes, I will answer all your questions,” he said, “completely and truthfully.”
    She turned to face him, surprised to find him even closer than she had approximated, uncomfortably close. She studied him anew, mentally assessing her adversary. The London popinjays had always underestimated her intelligence. Although it pained her to place him in that category, she suspected he would do the same.
    “If you will answer my questions first”—she hesitated to emphasis her sacrifice—“I will pose for you.”
    “You must think me daft.” A smile tilted his mustache. He raised one brow and shook his head. “After I fulfill your needs, what assurances do I have that you will fill mine?”
    “You have the word of a lady,” she said decisively, although in truth she suspected she could avoid meeting his demands.
    “No, I don’t think so.” His eyes narrowed. He tapped an idle rhythm with his prop on the wooden floor.
    She bit her lip, suddenly wondering if she had been the one to underestimate him. She studied him anew.
    “Let us strike a bargain,” he said, overlapping his hands on the top of the silver-knobbed cane. “My needs are for a model to pose in the Grecian fashion. You, on the other hand, require answers to questions of a personal nature.”
    He stepped closer, engulfing her in a subtle atmosphere of forbidden magnetism. She could almost taste his determination in the shared air between them, but she refused to give ground.
    “I propose that I will answer one of your questions”—his raised finger almost touched her nose—“for every item of clothing you remove as my model.”
    Her knees threatened to buckle. Surely, he could not desire her, by her uncle’s estimation a scrawny scarecrow devoid of a woman’s charms, as a model. She was no beauty. To suggest otherwise was cruel.
    “I will pose,” she said, pushing her spectacles farther up her nose, “but only fully dressed.”
    “I cannot paint what I cannot see.” A dimple flashed in his smile. Sheer willpower kept her from smiling in response.
    Chambers’s intense gaze raked her form as if fact belied his words. Never had a man regarded her with such intent, certainly not one as handsome and refined as this. His voice, soft and seductive, surrounded her with the rich scent of warmed brandy and his own unique essence. He lured her much like the famed mythological sirens. Lord help her, she could happily drown in this assault.
    “I need to see how light and shadow caress a woman’s