" An irregular birthmark stood out on the crest of her hip, like a splash of wine on snow.
He touched a finger to it, and she stirred.
“Don’t look at that,” she mumbled, rubbing sleep from her eyes. “I know it’s horrid.”
“Horrid?” Despite the pained expression on her face, he had to laugh. “Sweetheart, I can honestly say that there is nothing about you that’s horrid in the least.”
“My painting master would not agree.”
The bitter taste of envy filled his mouth. “Do you know, that Frenchman of yours had better hope I never meet with him.
“Oh, no,” she said quickly. “Not Gervais. Never Gervais. My painting master was an old, balding prig called Mr. Turklethwaite.”
Gray’s bafflement must have been obvious.
She went on, “There was never any Gervais. I mean, you know that I’d never taken a man to my bed, but you must understand…I’ve never allowed another man into my heart, either.” She kissed his brow, then his lips. “I love you, only you.”
God. How brave she was. Tossing those words about as though they were feathers. Could she possibly suspect how they landed in his chest like cannonballs, detonating deep in his heart?
Struggling for equanimity, he asked casually, “So when did this other painting master have occasion to see your birthmark?”
She laughed. “He didn’t. But I painted something like it once, on a portrait of Venus. I told him I thought it lent her an air of reality. Oh, how he scolded me. A lady who paints, he said-“ She gave Gray a teasing look. “He would not apply the term “artist” to a female, you see.”
“I see.”
“A lady who paints, he said, should approach the art as she would any other genteel accomplishment. Her purpose is to please; her goal is to create an example of refinement. A true lady would not paint an imperfection, he said, any more than she would strike a false note in a sonata. Beauty is not real, and reality is not beautiful.”
Gray shook his head. “Remarkable. I believe I despise your real painting master even more than I hated the fictional one. I wouldn’t have thought it possible. "

― Tessa Dare , Surrender of a Siren (The Wanton Dairymaid Trilogy, #2)