Touch of a Lady by Mia Marlowe Page B

apology when she was the one trespassing in his garden? Her flat accent and brazen self-possession betrayed her as a Yank.
    “American, are you?”
    She flicked her gaze at him and rolled her large brown eyes at his grasp of the obvious. “Born and bred.”
    An Englishwoman would require a formal introduction before starting a conversation with a total stranger. Yanks were incredibly lax about that sort of thing. Devon settled beside her on the bench. It was his garden, after all, and his head still throbbed in time with the blood pounding through it. He ought not to stand on ceremony, especially when the lady didn’t seem to mind informality.
    “It’s not only the accent that gives you away, you know.”
    “Really?” Her attention was riveted back to the page, where she added some crosshatched shading to the god’s musculature. “What else makes you assume I’m an American?”
    English women of his acquaintance tended to have more angular features, even bordering on coltish. The apples of this lady’s cheeks were sweetly rounded, and she had that snub-nosed pertness so often found in those from across the Atlantic. With wide-set eyes, full lips, and a delicate chin, hers was a thoroughly charming, almost pixyish face, but he decided it wouldn’t be politic for him to say so.
    Women were unpredictable when it came to masculine opinions on their appearance. Honestly, why would his sister ask if a particular pattern in the fabric of a frock made her look plump unless she wanted an honest answer?
    Devon decided to settle for something safer.
    “Your choice of subject declares your nationality, for one thing. An English miss would sketch the tea roses, not a nude statue,” Devon explained as he studied her work. If the image was any guide, her knowledge of the male species was detailed and unflinchingly accurate. Perhaps he’d misjudged her on the basis of her severe wardrobe. This American miss might be entirely open to his taking a few liberties.
    She fixed him with a direct gaze, her widening pupils darkening her eyes to the color of rich coffee. The effect was hypnotic.
    A man might lose his way in those Stygian depths.
    “Choosing to draw flowers instead of this magnificent statue speaks volumes about the insipid nature of the English miss,” she said with conviction.
    Devon stifled a chuckle. Even though he agreed with her assessment, someone had to stand up for English womanhood. “And yet tea roses are highly regarded on this little isle.”
    “No doubt, but lovely as it may be, a tea rose does nothing to engage the emotions, has no intensity of feeling. There’s simply no potential for the drama necessary to true art.”
    “No? Suppose the flowers were presented to a lady who refused them and tossed them onto the garden path,” he suggested, not that he put much stock in anything as ephemeral as a feeling. “Wouldn’t that mean someone’s emotions were engaged?”
    “Point taken, but mere flora still can’t compare to the seething possibilities in that statue. I mean, just look at him.” She waved a slim hand toward Dionysus. An ink smudge and a slight callus marked the longest finger of her right hand. Evidently she was as well acquainted with a writing pen as a drawing pencil. “Dionysus is a study in contrasts, sublime and corrupt, physically strong and morally weak.”
    Not to mention that he was completely naked. “His state of undress doesn’t distress you?”
    “I wouldn’t dream of fitting him with a fig leaf,” she said without a trace of heightened color in her cheeks. “The beauties of the human form are not the least prurient.”
    Devon smiled. A woman who wasn’t silly enough to be undone by the sight of a naked man. He’d lay odds she didn’t feel the need to call a piano leg a ‘limb’ either. She was a refreshing oddity. “Ah, but this Dionysus fellow isn’t meant to be human, you know.”
    “No, but the Olympians were simply humanity writ large,” she said,