An Experienced Mistress

by Bryn Donovan

  “Miss Tudbury. Delightful to see you,” Stuart said.

  She smiled, but Will noticed that under the rim of her hat, her eyes were red.

  “Miss Tudbury, are you quite well?” Will asked.

  “Oh, yes. I just...” Her eyes darted to Stuart again. “It’s nothing.”

  “Stuart, Mother’s trying to get your attention,” Will said.

  Stuart darted a glance over to where Mrs. Creighton and Daisy carried flowers by the armload and scattered them on the lawn in front of the church. “No, she isn’t.” Then his face brightened. “Oh, wait—yes, so she is. If you’ll excuse me, Miss Tudbury.”

  Several coaches had pulled up to the church by now, and people milled about, greeting one another before they went it to sit down. In all the bustle, Will hoped people wouldn’t notice that he and Daisy were having a private conversation. With Stuart’s departure, Daisy’s wan smile disappeared as well, and she looked miserable.

  Will asked in a low tone, “Daisy, what is it?”

  “It’s my vicar.”

  “Yes, what about him?” For a wild instant Will imagined that her parents had him murdered.

  “Well...he’s not my vicar anymore.”

  “Oh. That is difficult. So you have decided to break things off with him after all?” He felt terribly sorry for the girl. “I know it’s hard, but you’ve made the right choice. There was just too much difference between your stations...It would never have worked out between you.”

  Daisy stared at him as if he was mad. “I did not break things off with him,” she sputtered, seeming indignant that he could suggest such a thing. “How could I? I love him.”

  “Oh.”

  “He broke things off with me.”

  “You’re joking.” What kind of idiot vicar would leave a wealthy, beautiful woman?

  A dire suspicion entered Will’s mind. He asked in a still lower voice, “Daisy, you are not in trouble, are you?”

  She straightened up so sharply that for a moment he thought she would slap him. Then she forced a laugh. “I cannot imagine what you’re suggesting. But I assure you I am in no trouble whatsoever.” She sniffled. “I am broken-hearted, that is all.”

  “I beg your pardon. But I don’t understand. Why did he break things off?”

  “Because he says I’m too young and too frivolous. I was showing him a gift I made for my friend—I embroidered an eyeglasses-case, and it was ever so pretty—and he said that she hardly needed it, as she was quite wealthy already. I was very vexed because I had worked so hard on it. I told him that was not the point at all, and we had a terrible row.” Daisy sniffled again. “And he told me I was too involved in fripperies to be a real servant of the Lord.”

  “Bloody hell,” Will exclaimed, and then remembered himself. “Sorry. But that’s just nonsense, Daisy.” What a ridiculous fellow this vicar must be. Perhaps he wasn’t especially interested in hearing about Daisy’s embroidery, but that was no reason to insult her character.

  “But it was just a quarrel,” he said. “He was probably out of sorts. No doubt he will apologize to you directly.”

  “It happened last week.” Daisy shook her head. “I have talked to him since. He wasn’t angry anymore and said he was very sorry, but he just didn’t think we would suit.” That did sound final to Will.

  He couldn’t help but wish Coventry had been invited to the wedding. He knew his friend would not be sorry at this turn of events. With Coventry’s tactful attentions, Daisy might have found her pain somewhat lessened even by day’s end. Since Coventry was not there, Will did his best to comfort Daisy.

  “It is for the best. You don’t want to be around the likes of him, anyway. Just forget him, Miss Tudbury, that’s my advice.”

  “I can’t do that. Wherever I go, whatever I do, everything reminds me of him. You can’t imagine what it’s like.”

  “No.” Will grew uneasy.

  “What can I do? I love him.”

  The poor girl. “Well, you will have to stop loving him, then.”

  “Is that the way love works?”

  He had no answer.

  “Daisy!” Their discussion was interrupted by Mrs. Tudbury. “I have been looking all over for you. How do you do, Mr. Creighton? Your family is sitting down inside now. I suppose we had better wander in as well.”

  The bells of the old country church began to peal. Will went inside and found the pew where his parents, brother, and sister all sat in a row.

  Will’s mother had lived up to what she’d said about the flowers. Sprays of blossoms tied with white satin ribbons hung from the end of every pew. More garlands trailed from the altar in the front. Several candles had been lit there because although it was morning, the interior of the church was dim.

  “Mama, why do you have pink roses?” Katy whispered, looking at the fat, full-blown blooms. “There were none at the last wedding.”

  “One picks flowers for their meanings.” Their mother fluttered her lace fan against the warmth of the day. “For instance, orange blossoms stand for eternal love, so of course you have to have them. Queen Victoria had them, you know, when she married.”

  “How romantic.” Katy sighed. “I like Prince Albert. I don’t believe a bit that he’s for the Russians.”

  “Everyone knows by now that that was a lot of nonsense, I think.”

  “So what do pink roses stand for?”

  “They stand for perfect happiness.”

  Perfect happiness. Will thought of the rose-vines that hadn’t yet bloomed in Genevieve’s garden when he’d met her there, that one afternoon. Were they going to be pink roses?

  He thought of the other flowers she had pointed out to him: bleeding hearts, forget-me-nots. No mystery what those stood for.

  The organ-music changed and the congregation stood as the bride, her flower-covered Bible in one arm, came down the aisle on the arm of her father. “Oh, she’s lovely,” Katy murmured. The girl was a slightly blotchy-skinned blonde, but the smile in her eyes and the joyful lightness of her steps made her appear almost stunning.

  Without wishing to, Will imagined how Genevieve might look as a bride, wearing white silks and satins, blossoms intertwined into her flame-colored hair. She would outshine the candles.

  The ache in his chest became a sharp stab of sorrow. Their physical encounters were primal, powerful. Yet the emotional connection they shared seemed as heightened and sacred as the wedding ceremony happening right now in front of his eyes.

  Good God. He forced himself to face the stark question in his mind.

  Did he want to marry Gen?

  But this was absurd. She herself made it clear that she thought such an idea was laughable. He heard her teasing voice in his mind again: Are you going to ask me to marry you?

  And then he felt a sudden weight on his chest. Had she truly been teasing? Perhaps she’d been testing him out, and who could blame her?

  He had asked her if she was in love with him. That was not the way it was done, was it? One declared one’s intentions, and then hoped to find that the lady felt the same. One did not expect her to venture alone to the edge of the precipice.

  He loved her. He had refused to admit it, even to himself, much less to her.

  He’d been convinced that romantic, idealized notions were not to be trusted. They had, after all, led him into war and disaster. They’d led him to remain faithful to one woman who had not done the same.

  For the first time in his life, Will despised himself for a coward. Genevieve had pretended to be something she was not, but he’d done the more thorough job of hiding the truth.

  When she had asked if he meant to propose to her, he should have said, yes.

  But even if she’d entertained a notion like marriage, it was no doubt out of her head by now. She was furious with him.

  The minister had been talking about love for a while now. Or so Will assumed. He might have been discussing the rules of cricket, for all Will had been paying attention. But now the coup
le was about to say their vows.

  “You look sad,” Katy whispered to Will.

  “Weddings always make people emotional, dear,” their mother told her.

  Will listened as the groom repeated his lines: “With this ring, I thee wed...With my body, I thee worship...”

  Ah, God.

  Genevieve.

  Chapter Sixteen

  A pink rosebud, the first from Genevieve’s garden that year, leaned in a tumbler of water on the windowsill. She’d been in the studio for nearly an hour already, but she still hadn’t begun to paint.

  She’d tried to write a letter to Will. She wanted to return the emerald necklace he gave her, and she needed to arrange to retrieve her paintings, which were at his townhouse for safekeeping. How stupid that had been of her. It only made things more awkward now.

  The letter was difficult to write. She tried for breezy lightness, and then, failing that, severe formality. Nothing seemed satisfactory. And whenever she tried to write a line like, “now that our association is dissolved,” she herself dissolved, into tears.

  Genevieve jumped when she heard a knock at the studio door. She wiped at her eyes with her sleeve and gave a good sniffle. “Come in,” she said to Flory, who opened the door but remained standing on the threshold.

  “I’m sorry to bother you, Miss Genny. I wanted to tell you something. If this is a bad time, I—”

  “No, not at all.” She welcomed the distraction from her melancholy. “What is it?”

  Her maid ventured a few steps into the room, then cocked her head. “You haven’t taken cold, have you, ma’am?”

  “I...” Genevieve had to sniffle again. “I believe I have taken a bit of a chill.”

  “Oh, that’s too bad. I will bring you up a nice hot toddy.”

  “No, thank you.” In her present state of mind, if she started drinking Flory’s concoction of tea, whiskey, and honey, she might continue to do so all afternoon. She might even leave out the tea and honey. “What was it you wanted?”

  “I wanted to tell you...” Flory hesitated for a long moment. “I’ve gotten the downstairs rugs beaten out.”

  “Oh. Good. That’s a big job, but they needed it.”

  “Well...” Flory moved as if to leave. “Mr. Babbage and I are in love,” she burst out.

  “Who?”

  It took a moment for this to sink in. Babbage. Will’s butler. “What?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I thought I had better tell you, before you heard it from Mr. Creighton.”

  Genevieve hadn’t yet told Flory that Will probably wasn’t going to visit next Tuesday evening, or likely any Tuesday evening. She hadn’t figured out how to explain it yet.

  “But what do you mean, in love? Surely you hardly know the man?”

  “Oh, Miss Genny, I’ve gotten to know him very well.”

  Genevieve shook her head. “I had no idea this was happening.”

  “Well, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, but I wasn’t sure how things were going to go, you know. But it does seem that Maurice is quite fond of me. And I’m afraid Mr. Creighton found out the other night, so the cat’s out of the bag, isn’t it?”

  Genevieve felt dejected at the mention of his name. So Will knew. “How did he find out?”

  “Oh, Miss Genny, I’m afraid it was very embarrassing for my Mr. Babbage. His master came in while we were kissing in the parlor.”

  “Oh, good heavens.” She could hardly imagine such a thing, especially with the dignified butler. “What did Mr. Creighton do?”

  “Well, he was a bit stern with Mr. Babbage at first, as you can imagine. But Mr. Babbage says that he wound up being quite kind about the whole thing, and he doesn’t object to our seeing each other.”

  Genevieve nodded slowly. Hearing about Will’s kindness was hardly gratifying, since he had been so unkind to her. She supposed now that he’d asked if she were in love with him so he could beat a hasty retreat if she said yes. And even a mere jest about marriage had been enough to make him recoil as though she carried a disease. It was not as though she’d been serious! He was the worst kind of cad...

  She returned her mind to the topic at hand. Perhaps his butler did not share his faults. Heaven knew, servants often outstripped their masters when it came to decency.

  “So you’re sure you’re in love with him?”

  “Oh, yes. He’s got a good heart, Mr. Babbage does. He’s like my Harold was in that way, although they’re not so alike in other ways.” She looked up, gaze hopeful. “So you don’t mind if I see him on my day off?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Well, that is a relief! And it’ll just be on the days off, ma’am. We decided he shouldn’t ever drive Mr. Creighton like he did that one time, when he comes here. It just doesn’t seem right.”

  Genevieve felt her blood beat a little faster in her veins. “He wouldn’t have the opportunity, anyway. I don’t think Mr. Creighton and I are...going to be associating any longer.”

  Flory’s jaw sagged. “My goodness.” Genevieve could tell that the maid itched to hear the details, but that she restrained herself from asking. “I am sorry, ma’am. I know you were very fond of him.”

  Fond? It hardly seemed the right word. “Yes. I suppose I was.” How awful to talk in the past tense this way.

  “Ah, well.” Genevieve tried to rally. “At least my painting is going well. Finally.” She’d told Flory about her big sale, and the maid had been jubilant on her behalf. “And tomorrow I have a meeting with Mr. Valerio’s friend, a Mrs. Boldridge. She saw my Venus painting. I might get a commission.”

  “A commission? Isn’t that lovely!”

  “Well, it’s not for certain. But I’m going to bring along a painting, just in case she wants to see another example of my work.”

  Flory looked dubious. “Which painting? The...the man with the dog?”

  “Yes, the Adonis.”

  “Well, it’s a good picture.” The maid sounded doubtful.

  “It’s a great picture,” Genevieve said, a little tartly.

  She knew that Flory’s hesitation wasn’t because she questioned the picture’s artistic merit. And she was a little irritated because she shared Flory’s hesitation.

  The Adonis was a very private picture. The connection she’d felt with Will at the time she’d painted it made it different from any other canvas. Moreover, she’d nearly promised Will that the painting was only for her private collection.

  Nearly promised, but not quite. And with the allegorical setting, and the changes she’d made to the hair, it was unlikely that anyone would recognize the subject as the suave young gentleman, Will Creighton.

  Not that she owed him so much in the way of loyalty, she supposed. And at the moment, she didn’t have any other paintings to show a prospective client.

  Besides, it was the finest painting she’d ever done.

  In the last few days, she’d kept it tucked away behind the wardrobe, facing the wall. Ironic, given the fact that it was the only painting of hers that she’d ever had framed just for herself, in a simple but handsome gilded wood.

  She found it too upsetting to have Will’s ardent gaze on her, now that she’d come to believe the passion in that look was only an illusion of depth, the way she created an impression of dimension on a flat canvas.

  But the next morning, Genevieve took the painting out from hiding and tucked it away into the leather case that had been a birthday gift, a couple of years ago, from her father. She checked the address again: Grovesnor Square, not far from the Gallery.

  ****

  Be strong, Genevieve told herself as the maid let her into the foyer of the imposing townhouse. These people could afford to pay her a good price, if she asked for it. She would request as much money as she’d ask for if she were a man.

  Mrs. Boldridge was a short, stout blonde woman who wore, for the daytime hours, a great deal of jewelry. “Mr. Valerio says that for a woman you have an astonishing amount of talent,” she told Geneviev
e when they both sat down in the parlor.

  Genevieve considered this for a moment, sizing up the lady, before replying, “I don’t think any amount of talent in a woman is astonishing, do you?”

  Mrs. Boldridge’s barely visible blonde eyebrows rose. “Oh, well, I...”

  She looked around both ways, and then leaned forward. “Not astonishing at all, my dear!”

  Genevieve knew she already won her commission.

  “You saw the Venus I sold to Mr. Valerio.”

  “Yes. I thought it was very good. Of course, I’m no expert like Mr. Valerio. I don’t have his education.”

  “Some people need to be educated in art, perhaps. Whereas others are simply born with an innate understanding. Don’t you agree?”

  “I never thought of it that way, to be sure,” the woman dithered.

  Genevieve made sure that Mrs. Boldridge noticed her long, leisurely glance around the room. “You have excellent—may I say, artistic—tastes, Mrs. Boldridge.”

  “Oh! Why, thank you.”

  Genevieve was surprised at herself. She’d never been good at fooling or flattering others, or presenting herself as anything but what she was: a dreamy woman who loved to paint. Where had this newfound ability to deal with people come from?

  She knew. From her affair with Will. In the first couple of visits, she’d had ample opportunity to practice a cool confidence that she in no way possessed. How strange. Did one become more confident simply by pretending to be?

  And Will’s own confidence and directness had been an example and guide to her. The realization startled her.

  “Mrs. Boldridge,” she said, returning her thoughts to the business at hand. “Perhaps you would like to see a more recent example of my work.”

  “Oh, yes. By all means.” The woman darted not the first expectant look she’d given to the leather case that Genevieve set down on the floor next to the chair. Genevieve unbuttoned the leather flaps and took out the now unframed canvas, then got up to put it in Mrs. Boldridge’s hands.

  “Ohh.” The lady’s eyes widened. “What’s it called?”

  “I beg your pardon?”