I’d done it!

I’d escaped ambush, gotten over hurdles, avoided pitfalls, and arrived victorious, babies swapped, both mothers happy, and me wealthy. The hero of the day.

No one else could have done it, Clara. I swear there’s not a woman out there who could have made it through the way I did, always keeping calm, using my quick thinking. The rest of my well-earned money will be with me within the week, and I will be on my way to you, Clara, to begin our new life together.

Edwina

CHILBURY MANOR,

CHILBURY,

KENT.

Friday, 3rd May, 1940

Dear Angela,

You owe me cocktails at the Ritz, my dear, as I have won our little bet! Mr. Slater, who I now call darling Alastair, has joined the throng of admirers who worship the ground I walk on. I knew I could do it, given some time, although I have to confess that this one was quite resistant. It took some of my more sophisticated moves to prompt action, but now he’s mine.

And what a man he is! I never dreamed he’d be so fascinating. He’s transformed his living room into a studio—he has the house next to Hattie’s on Church Row—and it’s crammed with canvases and oils and piles of paintings. Every evening he lights candles and paints while we listen to the wireless. One night they played “All of Me,” and we danced around like we were in a tiny ballroom of our very own, spinning through a haze of flickering lights as if in a different world.

But listen, this gets scandalous! I’ve been such a naughty girl, even by your standards! Having seduced him in the stable last weekend, all raw and naked in the hay just as I had planned, I slipped out of work early yesterday and surprised him at his studio. Luckily he wasn’t busy, just trying to mend some typewriter contraption, so I began flipping through his pictures. I didn’t know what to expect, but my eyes almost popped out of my head: weird shapes plastered with clashing colors, blacks and grays and yellows, violins sliced in half and deranged, figures made monstrous with mutations and distortions.

“What’s this supposed to be?” I asked him, wondering if he hadn’t finished it properly.

“It’s modern art, darling,” he said, chuckling. “It’s all the rage in the continent, and London, too.”

Then I came across a smaller sketched image, a single nude, an almost transient figure blurred with charcoal as she flew wisplike across the page. “I say,” I said nonchalantly. “Who’s she?”

He pondered for a moment. “A girl I knew in London.”

She was well formed, agile, but there was an urgency about her, her head glancing back over her shoulder as if she were being pursued. He was staring at her, as if remembering something. Who was this girl?

You know me, Angie. I can’t bear a man to prefer someone else. So I hastily put the picture back in the collection and gave him a saucy smile. “Why don’t you paint me like that?”

The room had become stifling with warmth, sunshine bursting in through the little windows, sparkles of dust spinning endlessly through the air. “I want you to paint me, so you can always remember how I look right now, before I’m old. Come on.” I twirled in front of him.

He laughed. “Venetia, I really don’t think—it’s not what girls like you do. You’re the Brigadier’s daughter, after all.”

“Stuff that! If I say it’s all right, then that’s that.” I went to the mirror above the fireplace and let down my hair. “That girl did it. Why can’t I?”

“That girl was—” He paused, searching for the right word. “She wasn’t at all like you, Venetia.”

“You mean she wasn’t respectable?” I glanced over my shoulder at him, shaking down my hair.

“I mean she was different. She was a bohemian, mixed in different circles. She was older than you.”

“I’m eighteen, you know?”

“I know.”

“We don’t need to tell anyone, or show anyone,” I said. “It’ll be our little secret.”

“There’s a wild gleam in your eye, Venetia,” he said, coming and toying with a strand of hair on my neck.

“There always is.” I smirked. “It’s one of my greatest charms.”

You know how I get when I have my mind set, and there was something about his refusal that was goading me on, making me do and say things. I had to show him that I was just as daring, just as sophisticated as his city girls. And to be so incredibly naughty, posing nude is far more risqué than sex, don’t you think? Just imagine what my father would have to say!

I began slowly removing my clothes, first one shoulder and then the other, and before long my dress was flung to the floor. Then I began slipping off my petticoat and peeling down my stockings. I knew it was having an effect as he folded up his collection and watched me with a smile.

“All right, my little minx. You shall have your nude.” He attached a clean canvas onto his easel and began selecting the paints.

I draped myself on the thick crimson rug in front of the fireplace, lying on my side, my legs tucked slightly, somewhat modest and yet magnificently naked. It was such a freedom, lying there without a jot on, his eyes flickering over me every few moments, focusing on my body in a way that I’ve never encountered. Parts of my body normally clothed felt the softness of the rug, the freshness of the breeze from the window, the exposure. It was Heaven.