Her smile was sad as she squeezed his fingers. ‘I know exactly what you mean. I confused passion with love and I blame my inexperience for that. Rayne and I were never truly compatible. Had I spent a little more time talking to him and less time kissing him, I would have realised that from the outset. Whenever I see him now at society events and watch him fawning over the powerful and ignoring the servants, I see how shallow he is as plain as day and kick myself that I did not see it then. Isn’t it ironic we both confused lust with love?’
‘I console myself that millions of others must have fallen into the same trap over the centuries. History and literature are peppered with stark warnings which are all ignored until it’s too late to heed them.’ Piers rested his head on the back of the bench while he waited for the bitter taste of bile in his mouth to subside. ‘Love comforteth like sunshine after rain, But Lust’s effect is tempest after sun; Love’s gentle spring doth always fresh remain, Lust’s winter comes ere summer half be done; Love surfeits not, Lust like a glutton dies; Love is all truth, Lust full of forged lies.’ He turned to her and sighed, the sight of her calming his stomach more effectively than the deep breaths he usually relied upon. ‘Shakespeare—even he apparently learned the hard way. I suppose that is why courtship was invented. To save us from ourselves.’
‘The snake and I never even went out for a walk. Everything was so fast. So clandestine.’
‘But clandestine is thrilling isn’t it? Dangerous but intoxicating.’
‘You sound as if you are speaking from experience.’
Piers smiled wryly, dreading kicking the hornet’s nest but feeling strangely inclined to suddenly do so. ‘Constança’s father owned several large and successful quintas deep in the valley miles from Porto. Once a year, she travelled with him and the new harvest of wine to the city where he sold it. He was too strict and she was chomping at the bit to escape and eager to better her station in life, while I was a stranger in a new land desperately struggling to find my feet. We met by chance at one of the wine caves and discovered we also happened to be staying at the same inn. So every night for two weeks we met in secret after her father and her maid went to sleep. The day before she was due to leave, in a rare moment of impulsive madness because she was so upset, I found a clergyman at the British barracks who was willing to marry us for a guinea and considered myself the luckiest man alive.’ Those triumphant feelings did not last long. ‘It was probably the first and last time I have ever acted entirely on impulse without weighing up all of the pros and the cons.’
‘Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast.’ She curved her other hand through his arm as she also leaned her head on the back of the bench next to his. ‘You are not the only one who can quote Shakespeare, Piers.’
‘I wish I had read more of his wise words before I slipped that ring on her finger, because I soon discovered my new wife was everything I am not—unique, reckless, bold, fiery and vibrant.’ Exactly like the woman beside him, whose hand fitted perfectly in his and made him want again despite all his sensible reservations. ‘Constança was both breathtakingly beautiful and thoroughly charming to her core. She was a shining light in the centre of any room while I’m one for blending into the panelling. She might have been brought up in the countryside, but her father also brought her up like a princess, catering to her every whim, and she had been trained since birth to one day be a rich aristocrat’s wife.’ Traits which he might have noticed sooner if they had not married in such haste.
‘I suppose she assumed that because I would one day inherit an earldom, then I would share her delight in the spoiled idleness which she had always enjoyed. She craved a life of balls and parties and frivolous entertainments which were denied her in the countryside. She wanted the sort of high society friends who I always thought lacked substance, whereas I prefer work and purpose, as I was brought up to do, and would rather boil my head in a vat of oil than socialise with a room full of popinjays. She loved to argue and I am…’
‘An infuriating born diplomat?’
‘Yes—as well as being too mundane and boring to hold her attention and too staid and dull to ever hope to change that. Some are born to be unique, Faith, like you, and some of us are doomed for ever to be anything but.’ Piers huffed out a sigh of resignation as he shrugged. ‘Needless to say, we inevitably grew to loathe one another very quickly once we had realised our grave mistake. Then, when my work took me to Lisbon for a few months liaising with the Royal Court while our Ambassador was on leave, she begged me to take her. That proved to be the final nail in our coffin.’ And he experienced the three most miserable months of his life.
‘She embraced every aspect of court life, in fact she took to it like a duck to water, and seemed happier for a while. But while I buried myself in my work, I soon discovered that the real reason for her happiness was a certain duke who shared her perspective on life. And because he was a duke and I was never going to be, she decided to make their arrangement more permanent than her usual transient affairs. Then the Foreign Office called me back to London and she was adamant she would not return with me, it was almost a relief to admit defeat and finally bring the fetid war that was our marriage to a close.’
‘But it has left scars, I can tell.’
It had. Big, deep, gaping ones which he feared would never heal. ‘Like you, with your vile Viscount, Constança has left me very jaded. I find it near impossible to trust anyone and always expect the worst of them.’ Even though he had loathed Constança by the time they went to Lisbon, her affairs, especially the one with the Duke, had left him boiling with uncontrollable jealousy. Not that he was ever jealous of the lover or his cheating wife, it was more that he was jealous he wasn’t like them.
All the traits in himself which Constança had abhorred had suddenly frustrated him so much he loathed himself for all of them and hated himself for allowing her callous treatment of him to rob him of all self-esteem. But because he was reserved and staid and instinctively avoided conflict, he buried it all inside behind a mask of indifference. But inside…all that bitterness festered, upset his stomach and caused a knot of nerves so tight in his throat he had frequently feared it would choke him.
Whenever she was mentioned, even now, it seemed to spontaneously flare again, crawling from the dark pit in which it clearly still festered. Then suffocating him in self-loathing and swamping him in shame for being so stupid in the first place. That poison wasn’t something which he was prepared drag into another marriage. Not when it ate him from the inside and turned him into a version of himself he not only hated, but did not recognise.
‘I know that feeling, Piers—only too well. I am wary of the motives of all men nowadays because I am as jaded as it is possible to be. After my poor judgement with him, I do not trust myself to ever fall in love again.’
‘Me either.’
‘But you wouldn’t settle for less than that either, would you?’ It was as if she could see into his soul, through all his defences, to all those futile hopes and dreams which stubbornly refused to die no matter what was thrown at them. He still wanted what his parents had, even though he held out no hope that he would get it.
‘Any more than I suspect you would.’
‘Then perhaps we will both find true happiness one day?’ She sighed wistfully as she stared at the street rushing by. ‘That special soulmate who stops us from loathing ourselves and allows us to trust again.’
That truly would be a miracle. To wake up in the morning and look in the mirror and to not be disappointed with what he saw. ‘It would have to be after a ridiculously long courtship of course—just to be certain history wasn’t repeating itself.’
‘Of course.’
‘That’s if the wariness even allowed either of us to proceed to the courtship stage.’
‘Depressing isn’t it? To refuse to settle for anything but the deepest and most abiding love but to be too cynical to ever a
llow it.’ She laughed without humour, then, as if noticing their joined hands properly for the first time she gently extricated hers and sat upright again.
‘What an odd pair we make, Piers. Both wronged by hedonistic, vain, ambitious and selfish idiots who didn’t appreciate us. Both hiding behind a thin veneer of stubborn pride, both completely misjudged by the world and both made complete fools of by love. And I never expected to have anything in common with you, yet here I am, worryingly predisposed to like you even though, on the surface at least, you are a pompous viscount just like him. In fact, I tried very hard to take an instant dislike to you.’
He couldn’t help but laugh at her stark honesty. ‘I know that feeling too. The first moment I saw you, saw the vibrant clothes, heard your bold outspokenness, saw the way you lit up a room, you instantly reminded me of her too.’
‘That must have been very annoying. No wonder you took instant umbrage with me too. But as we seem now to share so many unexpected similarities, I fear we are now unbelievably doomed to be friends.’
‘I fear we are.’ And more unbelievably that felt wonderful.
The carriage slowed as they turned back towards Covent Garden and the driver knocked on the roof. ‘Another lap, sir?’
Piers looked to Faith who reluctantly shook her head. ‘As tempting as it is to ride up and down the Strand with you for ever, I only went to fetch some water, so my sister has likely already sent out a search party.’ Her hands went to her riotous hair. ‘Do I look a complete fright?’
He couldn’t resist adjusting the flower she had haphazardly pinned in it as the hackney came to a halt at the same place it had collected them, simply for the excuse to touch her again before he had to let her go. ‘You look beautiful, Faith.’ Only now, he realised that beauty wasn’t merely skin-deep. ‘As you always do.’
‘The consummate diplomat to the bitter end, for that was exactly the right thing to say.’ She beamed at him, looking a little vulnerable still but no longer broken, and something odd happened to his heart. ‘Thank you for saving me tonight. And for…well…everything else.’
‘It was no bother. After all, that is what friends do.’
He held out his hand to help her alight from the carriage, with every intention of doing only that. But something strange came over him as she stepped towards him, staring deeply into his eyes and without thinking he dipped his head, and instead gave in to the overwhelming, uncharacteristically reckless and foolish impulse to taste her lips.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Mrs Roberta Brookes made a triumphant return to Covent Garden last night, leaving several theatregoers clinking champagne glasses in celebration at the beauty of her performance. However, clearly Lord R. imbibed a little too much, because a little bird told me he tripped on the stairs and fell, with such force, he managed to break his nose…
Whispers from Behind the Fan
March 1814
They had both hastily agreed to blame the heat of the moment.
A perfectly reasonable explanation after their short but emotionally charged carriage ride, when they had both been a little too honest with one another and were likely both still staggered that they had been so.
After Piers had apologised profusely for overstepping the mark, which he really hadn’t done at all as far as she recalled, they had both also reasoned it was also more a friendly kiss than a meaningful one. More platonic than passionate, more relief at unburdening themselves than a declaration of anything more, even though they both knew that was stretching the convenient lie they were desperately telling themselves a bit too far. It might well have been the heat of the moment, even though Faith had grave and lingering doubts believing that unsatisfactory explanation, and it might well have been brief and relatively chaste all things considered, but there had been absolutely nothing platonic about that kiss.
That short but profoundly intimate moment between them had altered things and burned like a furnace.
* * *
So intensely Faith was reeling from it still. Close to two whole days since she had willingly stepped into his arms, pressed her mouth against his and lost herself in it, her body still hummed with awareness and scandalously tingled with need. And as much as she might want to deny it, that kiss had also meant something. Although she wasn’t anywhere brave enough to admit exactly what it had meant even now, it had felt both profound and somehow inevitable—right even—though that had to be inconceivable.
Surely?
She sighed and smothered her brush in some French green then dipped the tip in some burnt umber to mix on the canvas rather than on her palette, to add some texture and shadow to the ground on this first layer before she added the finer details of the grass and wildflowers on top. It was a technique which wasn’t the least bit traditional, but it worked for her. Landscapes were never made of one solid colour in real life, even the smallest lawn contained a wide spectrum of varying shades, so she found this method was the best way to achieve similar results in her paintings.
She used the fat brush to blend the colour in to what was already there, thankful that this first stage of the picture did not require much concentration because she wasn’t capable of that this afternoon. Her mind was too cluttered with her changing feelings towards Piers and that kiss.
The truth was, she still didn’t know quite what to make of it or how she felt about it beyond curious, flustered and off-kilter, and until she could neatly package it in her mind as something entirely transient and not the least bit momentous, a slip that meant nothing beyond the fact she hadn’t been herself, she was supremely grateful that she hadn’t had to face him yet.
Her father insisted they never worked Sundays to please her mother, so she had been spared the awkwardness yesterday, and Isobel had lamented he had left for Whitehall so early she hadn’t seen him at all so far today either. Now that the last vestiges of the daylight were rapidly disappearing, Faith was hopeful she would have at least another full day’s reprieve before they collided, because she still had no earthly idea what to say or how to behave around him.
Hopefully longer.
Because, heaven help her, she had sighed contentedly against his mouth. Pressed her body wantonly against his. Greedily run her fingers through his hair, anchoring him in place so their tongues could better tangle and been left thoroughly and obviously breathless once the kiss was done.
All nowhere near friendly gestures no matter how one dressed them up, and he would know that too.
‘Faith—I’ve been thinking about the light.’ Her father’s sudden appearance in the ballroom made her jump. ‘I still want it coming from the left of the picture to illuminate the family on the path, but I don’t want it to be too bright. More a three o’clock in the afternoon sort of sunlight than the midday sort. A tad dappled rather than blazing. I want shadows.’
They had been over this repeatedly and it irritated her that he still did not trust her to carry out his wishes, even though she disagreed with them. He had overruled her idea of capturing the family in the middle of one of their summer picnics oblivious of being painted. He did not like the idea of the children laughing and flying kites, of the ladies lounging on the ground soaking up the sun. That, he had decreed, was too informal for an important family like the Writtles. Instead, he envisioned them posed among nature in their finery, sat facing the viewer on artful tree stumps or fanciful ruins which they could lean against. The nine figures dominating the foreground of the huge canvas with the scenery reduced to a pretty backdrop.
‘I do understand, Papa.’ Even though she had no excitement for the composition he was meticulously planning. It was too contrived for Faith, who always preferred the real and the candid. She gestured to the sea of green she had already begun layering. ‘As you can see, I’ve purposely kept the left side of the landscape lighter, the base tones brighter where the sun’s rays hit it. We can obviously add more highlights once you p
aint in the figures.’ If he ever decided on the final positions he wanted the family to be so formally and traditionally arranged in, which did not promise to be any time soon. He had made the poor things sit through four variations so far and still wasn’t happy.
‘I know you understand the ground level composition well enough, Faith, but it’s the clouds I need to discuss with you.’
‘I thought we had agreed on the clouds.’ Faith’s talent might not surpass her father’s in much, but her clouds were infinitely better and he had frequently said so. ‘You agreed to trust my judgement.’ Because clouds were fluid and ethereal wisps which formed on the breeze, not rigidly planned structures.
‘And I do.’ He grabbed one of the big folding ladders they used to support the scaffold and dragged it noisily towards her. ‘I shan’t interfere with the shape or the position or even the structure of the clouds, but you are going to need to know exactly where I envisage the sunlight to fall to get the shadows in them exactly right.’
‘I understand completely where you want it.’ He was already killing all her joy for the foreground, if he murdered the background this was going to be the dullest picture she had ever worked on. ‘There really is no need for you to labour the point.’ But he had that stubborn glint in his eyes as he unfolded the ladder while staring up at the delicate blue hue she had spent most of last week meticulously applying to resemble a perfect summer sky.
‘It wouldn’t hurt to mark it on the canvas.’ He grabbed some charcoal from her box and began to climb the ladder. ‘If I don’t, I shan’t rest tonight. I shall toss and turn…’ The ladder shook.
‘Papa! At least put the ladders up properly. Let me get the other so we can lay a board between them for stability.’ She dropped her palette and brush on her work table and went to fetch the other but he didn’t stop climbing.
‘This will take but a moment, Faith, so do stop faffing.’ Because he hadn’t placed the ladder quite close enough, he began to lean precariously towards the canvas. ‘Now I see it just here…’
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