An Experienced Mistress

by Bryn Donovan

  “Given her money for a boarding house?”

  Jack considered this, then shook his head. “That seems pretty unfriendly.”

  Coventry gave a wry look. “So did something like that happen with you and Miss Bell?” he asked Will.

  Will shook his head. “It doesn’t matter now, anyway.”

  Coventry pursed his lips, swirling the last of the whiskey in his glass. “Well, you won’t know about this, then,” he said. “That fellow Wentworth is in an exhibit opening tonight. I was wondering if she intended to be there.”

  “Percy Wentworth? He’s in her painting group. They all go to one another’s openings.”

  Coventry shrugged. “I thought it might be a good chance for me to meet this mistress of yours. But I suppose there is no point now.”

  “Actually, I do want to go,” Will said. “I have some unfinished business to settle with her.” His heart sped up, in fear of how the evening might play out, and again he berated himself as a coward.

  “Did you leave something at her house?” Jack asked. “They don’t always feel like giving it back. Just a warning.”

  The gallery opening would be the perfect chance to talk to Genevieve, to tell her how wrong he’d acted...

  And to ask her, God help him, to be his wife.

  Or to at least think about it.

  He would have to find the chance to talk to her quietly. If the answer was to be no, he didn’t want another soul to hear.

  ****

  “Have they got anything to eat at these places?” Jack grumbled as soon as they entered the gallery. “I swear, Coventry, you’re always dragging me off before I’ve had my dinner.”

  “This is an art exhibition, Jack. It’s a feast for the spirit, not for the body.”

  “Damn it all.” Jack looked around him. “Ooh, come see this!”

  Will and Coventry glanced up to see what he was talking about.

  Jack’s eyes were fixed on a canvas of a Roman-looking nude reclining on what seemed to be a marble bench, although some sort of fur or bearskin was stretched underneath her naked skin. The figure had a more ample bosom than was usually the case in such pictures...or in real life, for that matter, as far as Will knew.

  “Now see, I like that,” Jack said. “Is that one by the Pisser fellow?”

  “Visser,” Coventry said. “And no.”

  “Good. ’Cause I like it. Look at the size of those.” When a woman passing by gave him a disapproving look, he smiled broadly at her. “Impressive painting, isn’t it, ma’am?”

  “Well, look at that,” Coventry murmured. “Your former mistress is over there.”

  Will stared.

  Her back to them, Genevieve was half-obscured by a knot of gallery-goers. But there was no mistaking her: the long, red-gold hair hanging loose down her back, the white loose dress, like an angel’s.

  Will’s heart clenched at the sight of her.

  He felt the very thing he’d experienced when he first laid eyes on her, on a night similar to this one. He desired her.

  She was with that little friend of hers, the one who lived in a garret. He remembered buying a painting from her out of sheer pity, but the piece had grown on him since. He’d instructed Babbage to hang it up in the dining room.

  “If she sees me, she might be out the door before I get a chance to speak to her,” Will said.

  Coventry gave him a keen look. He no doubt wondered how the affair had gone so wrong. “Perhaps she won’t see you right away,” he suggested. “Let’s just make our way over there, and then Jack and I shall conveniently disappear.”

  Will nodded, and they moved on to the next painting, some glorious battle scene which, Will mused, had probably not taken place in real life, or if it had, it hadn’t been glorious. Then there was a picture of a peasant making hay, which Coventry said was not bad, but not very good either. “But this next one’s excellent,” he said, walking a few steps ahead of them.

  Will followed, his gaze still on Genevieve’s distant back. He had little interest in artwork at the moment. Then he glanced up at the gilt-framed picture, and for a moment he stopped breathing.

  It was the picture of him. The Adonis that Genevieve painted.

  That was why she was here. She herself was exhibiting.

  Damn her. She’d told him she would never show it in public! Although he had to admit that she didn’t really owe him any loyalty at this point.

  Still. It was incredibly embarrassing. His jaw tightened as he waited for his friends to realize that he was the subject of the picture.

  But they didn’t. Coventry looked at it a few more moments and said something admiring about the technique before moving on. Jack stared at the two ladies who were walking behind them.

  Will realized that if his friends didn’t recognize him in the painting, perhaps no one else would. That was a relief, but it still stung him that she’d chosen to show it publicly.

  He hazarded another look at it. He still felt the painting was an incredibly flattering and idealized version of himself.

  After the damage the war had done to him, body and soul, it seemed strange that she’d chosen to depict him as this heroic figure, handsome and whole. Had she really seen him this way? The portrait was more an image from her own imagination; her vision of a perfect lover.

  More than ever, he was sorry he hadn’t been that lover for her.

  The two ladies behind him drew up to the canvas. “I’m surprised they hung this in public view, too,” one murmured to the other.

  Even if the resemblance of the figure in the painting to Will wasn’t obvious, if he kept standing right under the picture, sooner or later someone might notice the similarity. He moved away and feigned interest in a bronze displayed in the middle of the room.

  He couldn’t see where Genevieve had gotten to now. He turned to make his way to the back of the gallery, where he’d spotted her last.

  “Well, well, Visser, so this is it, eh?” a jolly voice said.

  An older gentleman stood at the side of Genevieve’s cousin. Visser appeared slightly more respectable than when Will has last seen him. He wore the same, too-long greatcoat, splotched with nameless stains. But his black, curly hair looked less greasy, and his boots fairly new rather than caked with mud.

  “That’s it,” Visser proclaimed, pointing at the Adonis painting. “My masterpiece. I call it The Heroic Hunter.”

  Will sucked in his breath, stunned.

  So Genevieve had taken up her old arrangement with her cousin? Letting him take the credit for her paintings, and splitting the money with him?

  He could hardly believe it. Even if Cage didn’t cheat her and lie to her, as he’d done before, the deal was patently unfair. No one could see that better than she.

  And after the man threatened to steal her paintings, why would she even speak to him again, let alone allow him to profit from her work once more?

  Genevieve herself stormed his way.

  Face red, eyes sharp, she looked infuriated. He supposed that in the time since he’d seen her last, she’d thought of more than a few choice words to say on the topic of his unchivalrous behavior.

  He’d been prepared for this. He braced himself for the inevitable dressing-down.

  She charged right past him.

  As she headed straight for her cousin, he realized she hadn’t even seen him in the crowd.

  “Cage Visser,” she said in a voice loud enough to be heard by half the gallery. “How dare you even show your face in public?”

  Visser’s eyes widened in shock.

  “Here now, ma’am, what’s all this?” the older gentleman with him asked.

  Genevieve didn’t seem to hear the fool. Her lush mouth parted, her breast heaving with indignation.

  Dear God. Had she ever looked so lovely?

  But yes. She always had. She was a goddess.

  “How dare you?” she continued to Visser. “I can’t believe you actually stole my painting!”

  “I do
n’t know what you’re talking about.” Cage turned to his companion, a sneer on his face. “My cousin. She’s not quite right in the head, I’m afraid.”

  Will’s right hand contracted into a fist at the insult. Genevieve’s pointed to the Adonis picture on the wall and addressed the older man with Visser.

  “That is my painting! Mine! Do you understand me?” Beautiful as she was, Will feared that she did, actually, look a little insane. “He stole it from me!”

  A small crowd gathered around them to see what the commotion was. “Pathetic,” someone muttered.

  Coventry and Jack rushed up to Will’s side. “What’s this all about?” Coventry said under his breath.

  “It’s true,” said a clear female voice. Genevieve’s dark-haired friend stepped forward from the crowd. “It’s her picture.”

  Another man, tall and bespectacled, hurried up to them. “My dear woman, you are sadly mistaken,” he informed Genevieve. “I am the gallery owner, and I certainly know whose painting it is. That’s his signature, right at the bottom.”

  Genevieve reached over with one finger to touch the initials, barely visible in the dark foliage at the corner of the painting. The signature had been altered: Genevieve’s initials were gone. She turned pale.

  “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” the gallery owner said. “You’ve created a disturbance.”

  Will couldn’t let this go on.

  He stepped forward. “She’s telling the truth. It’s her picture. This man’s a damned liar.”

  A woman in the crowd gasped at his profanity.

  Genevieve whipped around to stare at him, her eyes wide. “Will,” she whispered.

  “I don’t know who you are, but surely you’re not acquainted with this woman?” the man with Visser said. He looked from Will’s polished appearance to Genevieve’s bohemian garb. “How do you know she painted it?”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Will saw that Coventry and Jack moved forward to hear what he was going to say. Everyone stared at him now.

  “Simple,” Will said. “I posed for it.”

  The throng around him burst into gasps and whispers.

  “That’s right, I’ve seen that before,” Jack exclaimed. He pointed at Genevieve. “You brought it over to my mother’s house, didn’t you?”

  Genevieve peered up at him. Then she nodded. “Yes. I did.”

  Jack let out a loud laugh, waggling his finger at the painting. “I told you he looked familiar.”

  “I can’t believe I didn’t see it before,” Coventry muttered.

  Cage’s confident sneer vanished. His eyes shifted back and forth rapidly. “Now wait a minute. A passing resemblance doesn’t mean anything.”

  “But it’s more than a passing resemblance, isn’t it?” Will deliberately drew closer to the painting. The fascinated crowd looked from the canvas, to him, and back again.

  Good God. A whole group of strangers, all seeing what he looked like with his clothes off. Or what he looked like in a fur loincloth, which was almost worse. He saw the fellow from the Club, and even more horrible, a couple who were friends with his parents.

  It was a nightmare—almost like the one in which one arrives at the ball having somehow forgotten to put on one’s pants.

  But dignity be damned. Genevieve needed his help.

  “Look at the way she painted the hand on the staff,” he pointed out. “It’s curled around so you can only see the tops of the fingers.”

  He held up his wounded left hand, causing a fresh wave of murmurs from the strangers in the crowd. Then he mimicked the pose in the painting, curling the hand around an imaginary staff so that his maimed fingers didn’t show. “You see?”

  Astonished faces stared at him. Will flashed a smile at Genevieve, who stood there aghast. “I like how you did that,” he said to her.

  He pointed to another part of the painting. “And she’s put my initials in it. Here’s the W, for William…” He traced the outline of the mountains in the background. “And here’s the C, for Creighton.” He pointed out the pattern of rocks on the ground near the bottom of the picture.

  Excellent. When this whole scandal was written up in the Society pages, they’d be sure to get his name right.

  The bespectacled gallery owner shook his head. “I admit the resemblance is extraordinary. But I think you’re just being chivalrous. You are obviously a gentleman of quality. Are we to believe that you, sir, posed for her wearing nothing but a bit of fur?”

  The two ladies who’d admired the picture tittered. They cast sideways glances at Will, though not precisely at his face. Let them look.

  “On the contrary,” he answered the gallery owner. “I was wearing nothing at all.”

  Now cries of outrage along with the gasps came from the crowd. “But this is obscene!” someone said.

  “All right, she did paint it,” Cage said loudly, a gleam of inspiration in his eye. “But I was only trying to protect her. I knew if she exhibited it, no one would want a picture from her again!”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Genevieve demanded.

  The gallery owner turned to her with a grave look on his face.

  “I am afraid, ma’am, that this picture goes far beyond anything we would consider proper.”

  “It was proper enough a minute ago!” she retorted.

  “We exhibit morally uplifting art here, not licentious paintings. I’m surprised you weren’t ashamed to call this painting your own.” He shook his head disapprovingly. “A woman painting a nude man? It’s indecent.”

  Horrified, Will saw the crowd turning on Genevieve. “It’s wicked, is what it is,” someone said. “I’ve never heard of such a thing. Scandalous,” someone else declared.

  Damn. This was worse than before. He’d tried to protect her honor; instead, it seemed, he publicly tore it to shreds. People glared at her as though the whore of Babylon had walked into their midst.

  “I’m not the only woman here who’s seen a nude man,” she snapped.

  “If you’re speaking of the situation of married women, I assure you it’s not at all the same,” the gallery owner said.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Will objected.

  He suddenly saw how to save the situation. How, in fact, to save everything.

  Or how to make a complete and utter idiot of himself.

  What the hell. He’d done that already.

  “Actually, it is quite a bit the same,” he said.

  Cage Visser’s friend snorted. “How so?”

  “Because I’m going to marry her.”

  There was a moment of absolute silence.

  “Now, Will, let’s not get carried away,” Jack said, putting a hand on his arm. “Heat of the moment, and all...” Will shrugged him off.

  The gallery owner looked curiously at Genevieve. “Is this true?”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Genevieve shook her head. “No. It’s not true.” He just wanted to get her out of a terrible situation.

  And she appreciated it. But the evening’s ordeals, the crowd of people looking at her as though they might haul her out and stone her if they could find big enough rocks, and the irony of him bluffing about intending to marry her, made her feel small and miserable.

  She would run away, and have a good cry. And then...what? That Mrs. Boldridge wasn’t going to want a painting from her, once her son told her how she’d disgraced herself.

  Will stepped closer to her, took her hand. Ridiculously, she jumped at his touch.

  His dark eyes held her in their gaze, earnest, solicitous. “Gen. Please,” he said in a low voice obviously meant only for her ears.

  Genevieve sagged. “Why are you doing this? After the way you acted before?”

  He nodded, steadily, as though he expected that. “I was a fool. I was on edge because I had been deceived. I thought you didn’t return my feelings...when in fact I’d never declared them.”

  “Exactly! You were a fool.”


  “Well, I have just said so.”

  “How am I supposed to know how you feel, if you don’t tell me?”

  “I am telling you now.” He took a deep breath as if to steady himself. “Right. Let me try this properly.”

  And then, to her shock, with a whole gallery full of people staring, he got down on one knee in front of her.

  This couldn’t be.

  He still held her hand. Oh, God, was he playacting? If he was, she would kill him.

  No. He looked up at her, unguarded, vulnerable. The steady, committed ardor in his face awed her.

  “I love you. More than I have ever loved anyone.” He smiled slightly at his own words. “More, I think, than anyone has ever loved anyone. If I can make you as happy...or even half as happy as you make me, you’ll be a very happy woman. And God knows I’ll try, Gen. My whole life I’ll try.”

  He spoke that intimately, yet in a voice strong enough that anyone who cared to could hear. He was so beautiful, like some chivalrous knight from a tale, pledging his heart and soul.

  She stared as he reached into his waistcoat and drew out a ring. The gold glinted in the gaslights of the hall. Now she knew he wasn’t joking.

  “Miss Genevieve Bell, will you do me the very great honor of becoming my wife?”

  Genevieve started crying. She thought she might fall, so she lowered down to kneel with him, grasping his arm for support.

  He petted her hair away from her face, wiped away a tear with his thumb. His hands cradled either side of her face, and he leaned forward to kiss her, a sweet, devoted kiss that healed her to the depths of her soul.

  “So...yes?” he drew back and whispered.

  She let out a half-laugh, half-sob. “Of course, yes.”

  “Ah, thank God.” He kissed her again. “Gen, I’ve missed you so much. I love you...”

  “I love you. You have no idea how much.”

  She became aware again of everyone staring down at them. “We should get up,” she said with a shaky laugh, wiping at her wet face with her sleeve. “We are making fools of ourselves.”

  “I don’t care,” he murmured, his mouth twisting in a sublime smile.

  “That was beautiful.” A nearby lady sighed. “Just beautiful.”