For days, she waited while Lydia tried to contact the artist. He had left his previous quarters in a less-than-genteel part of London for a more respectable address. When Catherine heard this, she was momentarily terrified that he had already procured a patron on the strength of the portrait, but it turned out that the move had actually been intended to help solve the problem of his miserable finances. Although he had incurred a great deal of debt and expense, he felt his new quarters would allow him to show his paintings in a better light. In the hope of attracting a wealthy patron, he was also throwing extravagant parties that were way beyond his means.
But, as far as Lydia could discern, he had not yet revealed the existence of the portrait. There was no gossip about it – and Lydia had some expertise in ferreting out such information. Catherine watched with considerable sadness as she donned her finery and drenched herself with scent before heading into not-so-genteel London society: an exciting world that, to a neglected young girl with a twisted leg, had once seemed full of mystique and romance. Now it merely seemed sordid and scary.
A week into their stay, Lydia told Catherine that she had finally got hold of LaFrance.
“He knows we are here,” she told Catherine.
“What else does he know?”
Lydia shrugged. She poured them each a cup of tea and carried it over to the table from the buffet. “He is a sneaky creature. I am sure he knows why we are here.”
“You spoke to him?”
“No. But one of his friends relayed his greetings, so he knows we are here and will see us.”
Catherine put her napkin on the table, her appetite suddenly gone. She had slept poorly and, lately, had been able to put very little weight on her bad leg, making walking next to impossible. Now she knew that confrontation was at hand, she had to be strong. She had to procure that portrait, no matter what the price.
“We will call on him today. I would assume he and his set do not make many morning calls, so he will probably be alone.”
Lydia looked dubious. “I do not know if we should attempt to meet him alone at his apartments.”
“What else are we to do, then?” Catherine exclaimed in irritation. She pushed her chair back from the table and held out her hand for assistance. “He knows we are here. He must know my condition. Surely he does not suppose that we are in London merely to make social calls. I will veil myself, and we will take a hackney. No one will see us.”
“Yes, my lady,” Lydia murmured. She wore a little frown, which annoyed Catherine.
“Do not desert me now, Lydia!” she said forcefully. “I have no one who can help me.”
“Perhaps the captain should be the one to speak to him,” Lydia murmured.
Catherine’s knuckles grew white. She felt her nails biting into her palms. “No!” she managed to choke out. “He must never know.”
Lydia slanted a glance at her as she led her to the door of the dining room. “He has his own burdensome past, my lady. Perhaps he will forgive you yours, if you forgive his.”
At this Catherine stopped. “Forgive? There is nothing for me to forgive.” She paused. “You are saying that there is yet something in his past that we do not know about.”
“I am sure of it, my lady.”
“I neither know nor care what he may have done. Surely he must know—”
“And he may be saying just the same about you, my lady.”
Catherine shook her head. “What I have done is unforgivable,” she whispered. “Utterly. But by this evening, I will have made sure no one can ever find out.”
* * *
Jocelyn watched as the admirals filed into the room, their boots clunking heavily against the floor. All was solemnity and pomp. He stood at his place, next to the witness seat in the centre of the room. It was a small chair, barely tall enough to contain his long frame. He assumed it was meant to be uncomfortable to remind those who sat in it that they lived only at the pleasure of the Crown.
He didn’t need the reminder, he reflected. They owned him, and he was glad of it. A daily existence not circumscribed by the navy was painful. I should not be allowed to run my own life, he thought. I am competent only when under someone else’s command.
“Captain Avebury, we regret the need to bring you in for yet more questioning. This is not a formal court martial, of course. We wish merely to understand the unfortunate incident in which you were involved, and the subsequent mysterious death of Lieutenant Bright. We hope to finish with this affair as quickly as possible.” The admiral leant forward. “In fact, we are quite sure that all will become clear today.”
Today! For a second, Jocelyn felt the muscles of his body tense in an involuntary spasm. He felt a cramp in his calf. He suppressed the urge to reach down and rub his leg.
“After you give testimony today, Captain Avebury, we would ask that you remain in town until called to hear the final report.” The admiral looked at him meaningfully. “We will announce at that time whether formal disciplinary action will be taken.”
Formal disciplinary action.
He could hear the roar of the crowd. The squalling of a child, a mere infant, crying.
And Catherine – would she weep? Or would she lift her lovely chin in defiance and don widow’s weeds without batting an eyelid?
She loved him. But, in this life, love would serve her ill – as it served all who dared to depend upon it. Love was not useful. Nerves of steel, ruthlessness – those were truly useful qualities. What was love? Nothing but a cloak for lust. An emotion that was only sanctified by the social convention of marriage.
He wondered again how Sir Lyle could have trapped her so effectively. Did he hold something over her? How could he not fear recriminations for his refusal to marry her?
Jocelyn’s mind spun ever larger stories, devised ever more fanciful theories. A night of passion between two strong-willed people, with love never a possibility. An unintended conception. An abominable refusal to marry the mother or to acknowledge the child. A plausible story woven around a hapless sea captain who would marry a countess for his own desperate purposes.
If she had told him the truth, would he have agreed to marry her?
He was still pondering the question when the admirals asked him, for the third time, to give his version of the missed rendezvous out of Bombay. Exhausted, he began again.
“We left port two hours late—”
* * *
They left far later than she would have liked, but it could not be helped. She had discovered she had nothing appropriate to wear, nor had she a veil that would fully conceal her face and hair. She sent Lydia on a hurried excursion to find something – but not, of course, from Catherine’s usual modiste. All Lydia could find was a voluminous cloak in navy blue and a matching veil, which she spent an hour adjusting so that it would not slip from Catherine’s head. Lydia insisted they take every precaution and, fearing that Catherine would be recognised, she forced her to walk some distance from the boarding house – slow and tedious as the short journey was – in order to hail a hackney.
“This will attract far more attention,” Catherine panted, trying to keep the cloak together in front as she lurched and jerked her way down the street.
“I apologise, my lady. But no one will look at us when we are in a crowd. However, if someone sees us hail a cab – that would be disastrous.”
Catherine did not reply. It was too hard to talk, and the air was so cold that it made her lungs hurt. The weather was bright, the sky cloudless and blue. The gardens at Wansdyke would be empty and forlorn at this time of year and the gardeners occupied with indoor tasks. She wondered whether the grooms were exercising her horse properly. Her head ached, and her back ached.
“Wait,” she gasped, holding her hands to her swollen abdomen.
“Is something wrong?” Lydia asked immediately.
“Just – just a spasm. They come and go.”
“My lady, we should abandon this foolishness. Let me talk to LaFrance. Perhaps—�
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“It will make no difference, Lydia, don’t you see?” Catherine threw her head back and grimaced. “Good God! I do not think I can walk any further.”
“Are you in pain? Shall we go directly to a doctor?”
“No, no. No pain. Just a spasm. They came from time to time at Wansdyke, as well. They are nothing to fear. But my leg … I cannot go further.”
Lydia promptly hailed a passing hackney and, with some difficulty, handed Catherine up into it. She gave the direction to the driver and said to Catherine, “Are you better now?”
“Much, thank you.”
“We will need to get off before LaFrance’s.”
“Oh, no,” Catherine moaned. “Lydia, I cannot.”
“We must, my lady.” Lydia lowered her voice, obviously concerned that the “my lady” would be overheard. “We cannot be seen alighting in front of that place.”
“As you wish, then,” Catherine muttered. “We will not need to do this again. We will be on our way back to Wansdyke tomorrow.”
Lydia leant forward to attract the driver’s attention, while Catherine tried not to groan as the next spasm began. Occasionally, she felt as if an enormous vice threatened to squeeze the breath out of her entire body. It never hurt, but it left her exhausted and momentarily unfocused. She had asked a concerned maidservant who had happened to witness one such spasm at Wansdyke what they might be. The woman had volunteered that they were probably the normal contractions of late pregnancy.
“But you should see the doctor, my lady,” the maid had added. “It seems far too early.”
And then all had been forgotten in the haste to get to London.
The hackney was slowing. Catherine tried to bring her mind back into focus, reminding herself she would need all her faculties to deal with the wily LaFrance. She peered out, trying to get a sense of the neighbourhood. It was pleasant enough: a quiet street, a little too far out to be considered really fashionable, populated by comfortable-looking matrons examining the latest arrival in the window of a milliner and making purchases in a bookshop. Not quite bourgeois, she decided, but appropriate for the men who would keep company with LaFrance: society good enough to look respectable, but not good enough to be noticed.
Lydia descended quickly and paid the driver before turning to assist Catherine, who clung to her heavily. The man watched, his expression impassive.
“Seems it’s all bit too much for the lady,” he offered. Lydia gave him a freezing look. He shrugged and called to his horse to walk on as they turned their backs on him to begin their slow trudge to LaFrance’s door.
Catherine struggled to keep pace with her companion. The cold cut through her gloves and boots and hat, and she could feel frozen strands of hair cling to her cheeks as the moisture from her breath swirled behind the sheer fabric of her veil. Her chest was beginning to feel hot and hollow.
“Lydia, slowly,” she gasped.
“My lady, if we do not hurry, I am afraid we will never get there.”
Catherine conceded the point with a miserable nod. Lydia was right: if they took too long, her strength would fail entirely. She tasted bile in her throat and wished she had eaten breakfast after all. She desperately wanted a cup of tea.
Lydia consulted a scrap of paper that she had withdrawn from her reticule while Catherine clung to her, panting.
“It is that one,” Lydia said, nodding in the direction of a modest-looking terraced house. Catherine followed her glance. Four large stone steps stood before the door.
“Oh, no,” she moaned, but Lydia was already pulling her along, steadily, steadily. So she bit her lip and grunted, the veil clinging stickily to her face. When they reached the steps, Lydia pulled her stoutly up – she had to bear nearly all of Catherine’s weight as her knees had buckled and were almost refusing to move.
Fortunately, a servant had seen their struggle up the steps and he hastened to open the door to admit them. Before he could do more than give them a startled look, Catherine said, gasping, “I am here to call on Monsieur LaFrance.”
She had no wish to reveal her identity, but one look at her dress, and another at Lydia, told the servant she was quality. He admitted her without a word.
Chapter 30
LaFrance was in his studio, and he requested his guest to wait on him there. The impertinence, she thought furiously. How dare he demand she attend him in his workshop! It was as if he were eager to remind her of the youthful foolishness that threatened to ruin her happiness. Never mind, she thought. It will all end here and now. She had Lydia wait in the drawing room; although Lydia had been with her for many years and knew LaFrance well, she had no desire to make the encounter any more public than necessary.
LaFrance’s studio was on the first floor and spread across the full width of the back of the building. When Catherine entered the room, she could immediately see why he had chosen to work in it. The light that glowed was fresh from the icy-blue winter sky. She could do no more than blink at first, trying to see past the shadowy shapes of furniture.
“Lady Catherine. Or perhaps it is now Lady St Clair?”
She started, steadying herself against a large and extremely ornate sideboard. In spite of her determination to remain calm, the sound of his voice sent shivers up her spine.
He was standing at the far end of the room, slightly to her left. He wore only skin-tight breeches and a shirt with an open collar. His sleeves were rolled up exposing well-muscled forearms – a stark contrast to the slender white fingers that held a cup and saucer before him.
Catherine opened her mouth to begin the imperious speech that she had planned, but the words flew out of her mind. LaFrance cocked his head and smiled at her. Good God, he was handsome. He had an athlete’s grace and sculpted body, a finely chiselled face, a shock of golden-brown hair and deep brown eyes. She felt her heart race as his assessing gaze ran up and down her body. Her cheeks warmed, and she looked away, uncomfortable.
“What a pleasure, my lady. I must say that I did not expect you to pay me a visit.” The voice was smooth, mellow, with a slight French accent: a sound she recalled from so many years ago. It startled her to realise that she had never forgotten the caressing feel of his voice.
“You knew I would come,” she said quietly. She raised her head, this time determined not to look away. LaFrance was examining the contents of his cup. Slowly, he walked over to put the cup on a table near a south-facing window. He pulled a shutter across, removing the glare and darkening the room slightly so Catherine could see him a little better.
“I was not sure. I thought perhaps your husband? A friend? Someone else? But you yourself – that I did not expect.” He turned. “But you should not be on your feet. Come, sit with me. Share my breakfast.”
Catherine remained standing. “You know why I have come.”
LaFrance shrugged. “I will sit, even if you do not.” He sank into a chair and looked up at Catherine expectantly. “We are friends, no? Friends of long standing?”
Catherine opened her mouth and then closed it. She shook her head. She had hated him, hated him viciously for intruding upon her happiness. But now that she was here … no, she could not hate him. He had been there when she had no one.
“Friends,” she said reluctantly. “We were friends once. But what you are doing now threatens our friendship.”
LaFrance nodded gravely. “Ah, oui. I am so sorry.”
“Stop it, Michel.”
“I cannot, mon amie. Impossible. I am not a countess. I need to eat.”
Catherine looked about the room. “You are doing quite well,” she said, cynicism creeping into her voice. “Is this new dwelling the result of our … our friendship?”
“This?” LaFrance gestured with his hands. Catherine noted again the long, thin fingers, the fine white palms. “No. In fact, I have only been here for two months. This place belongs to another … friend.”
Catherine started forward. “You have not shown anyone the portrait?”
&nbs
p; LaFrance shook his head slowly. “No one has seen the portrait.” He gestured toward a far corner. “There it is. No one has seen it. But I know not what else to do. I cannot float from house to house, party to party, living on my winnings from gaming and charity. I am an artist, my lady. I live to create.” He was watching her narrowly. Catherine willed herself to remain impassive.
“I am sorry as well. But if you need a patron, I can be of assistance. Despite my … my infirmity, I have the St Clair name, the Claverton name. I can help—”
“Ah, but you do not understand.” Restlessly, LaFrance jumped up from his seat in order to pace between his easel and a desk that stood in one corner of the room. Catherine moved forward, trying to catch a glimpse of the papers on his desk. They appeared to be sketches of a woman in an ostrich feather hat and a dress cut low at the bosom. The subject was twisting her shoulders in a way that served to accentuate the line of her neck and shoulders and the cleft between her breasts.
“You see my sketches, my lady?” LaFrance picked them up. He held them out to her. “This is what I have been working on.”
“They are lovely,” Catherine said. “Who is your model?” She flushed hotly, realising the undercurrent of the question.
“No one.” LaFrance dropped the sheaf on his desk again. His shoulders sagged. “No. I have not used a model in a very long time. I use my imagination.” He raised his eyes to hers. “There was a brilliance in my portrait of you,” he said baldly. “That brilliance – I have tried to capture it once more. And I have failed.”
Catherine felt her palms grow cold with sweat. “That is ridiculous. We were young – you were young. You have a long life ahead of you in which to paint, to capture the … the essence of life as you see it.”
LaFrance’s gaze held hers. “Have you seen it? My masterpiece?” he asked softly.
Catherine felt her chest grow heavy. Another spasm was beginning to tighten about her like a belt. She took a step forward in order to grip the back of a large chair. Wordlessly, she shook her head.
The Portrait Page 18