Meet the Earl at Midnight

by Gina Conkle

  “About my mother, I’ll see what I can do,” he murmured, slipping around to face the square canvas.

  She may have said something, in fact, he was sure she did. He’d become an expert over the years at tuning out the female voice, of listening but not really hearing; however, this was not a matter of escaping a verbose female. This was altogether different.

  Edward lost himself in the image before him. The painting, a tree of sorts, or… No, he stepped back, then moved closer for better focus. An up-close view of his Chinese pear tree. Dense foliage with an open, inviting space in the middle of all those leaves.

  Yet the golden orb, the fruit suspended in the middle of that space looked suspiciously like…

  Did his eyes deceive him?

  Edward blinked again, lost in the Chinese-pear image. The aroma of newly mixed oils floated from behind. The pleasant mix of scents: paint, oils, and what was distinctly Lydia, drew his attention away from the mysterious impression. He pointed at the painting.

  “When did you do this?”

  “These past few nights after dinner…late.” Her lips curved in a secret smile. She dipped her brush into a shade of onyx and then a vibrant green, mixing the colors. Her brush moved in a tight circle on the palette.

  “And you’re not tired?”

  “Painting makes me…” Lydia dabbed brush tip to canvas, and her voice glowed with reverence. “It makes me feel alive.”

  Soft candlelight flooded the room. She painted with fervor, engrossed in her work. Her lips parted with soft breaths at each dip of the brush. Lydia Montgomery was a study of something rare. He couldn’t put his finger on what he saw as she moved in close to ascertain details, then stepped back for fuller effect, but he liked the way her body moved, vibrating with energy from each tiny stroke. Brush and paint swooshed and dabbed canvas. Light framed Lydia’s hair, a glossy halo on her dark crown. Color smeared and dotted the old, gray smock she wore over her dress.

  He looked again at the painting, his stare catching on the tempting, pale gold fruit.

  “Lydia,” he called to her softly, “you’re painting the Chinese pear tree.”

  “Very good, my lord.” Her short-bristled brush finished dabbing another leaf into existence, shaping the curving ovate tip.

  Warmth spread over him as her skirt twitched and rubbed his knees and calves. He pointed to the golden orb hanging in the midst of foliage: pale fruit, a nude-gold shade, nicely curved with a slight cleft down the center.

  “The fruit bears a strong resemblance to a woman’s bare bottom.”

  Or am I so randy for you I can’t see straight?

  She flicked a side glance at him, and her brush slowed. “Does it now?”

  Her question floated between them, pure invitation. Not so much sensual invitation as something else.

  Well, yes, there was something sensual, no denying that.

  But what else? This facet of her was all like a new and complex puzzle laid out before him. He crossed his arms, perplexed at the inability to put his finger on the exact nature of her invitation, and his utterly male inability to grasp what needed to be said. The painting, both excellent and elemental, spoke volumes, and he was on primer reading level when it came to art, woefully out of his depth.

  “Is this almost finished?” He winced at his own ineptness. University educated, and that was the best he could do?

  “Almost.” She nodded and didn’t bother to look his way.

  That was close to a dismissal. A chill of distance spaced itself between them, even though neither had moved. Tenacity gripped him. He inched closer to her and the canvas as if proximity could capture what eluded him.

  “But this is the Chinese pear tree, yet it’s not an exact rendering.” He pointed to fruit hanging in the background. “These pears are indistinct…they’re…” His words trailed off.

  When was he ever at a loss of words to explain or define? His whole life was dissection and discovery, especially flora in all its intrinsic properties. Everything had a place and a definition, a role and a purpose.

  Lydia dabbed her brush on the platter. “They’re what, Edward?” she prompted him with a quiet air and kept her attention on the canvas.

  His patient tutor’s dark eyebrows raised a notch as she gave a slight nod. The teacher would not give up on her unskilled student; instead, she’d coax him into deeper comprehension.

  “This close, the piece looks unfinished.” He cocked his head this way and that, pointing at one of the leaves. “Yet, stepping back, I would call the work complete.”

  “What do you see?” Lydia concentrated on one corner of the canvas.

  “A tree, of course.”

  Her shoulders dropped.

  “I’m disappointed. You, who daily capture the tiniest details in your work, with plants no less, have failed to notice what’s right in front of you.” Her head tipped sideways, and Lydia made a satisfied moue with the spot she completed. “For someone so intelligent, you’re really quite dull.”

  Edward snorted in good humor. “Dull?”

  “Yes. I recommend rereading your Aristotle. Find out what he says about art.” Her lips twitched, then softened when her brush touched canvas again. “Truly enlightening.”

  Her mild condescension didn’t bother him; he welcomed the energy that vibrated between them. Glimpses of his exemplary education, years of private tutors, discussions with some of the best minds, from physicists to philosophers, flew through his mind—a carousel of vivid scenes from youth to maturation.

  And all he could come up with was that snort and to repeat the word dull used to describe him.

  Miss Lydia Montgomery had out-nuanced him today, and that interesting facet both stimulated and pleased. His pretty tutor gave him a patient sigh and finally faced him. Her suspended brush, heavy with scarlet paint, pointed at him.

  “You demonstrate a deplorable capacity to miss what’s right in front of you.” Her serene smile held mysteries that made the set down worthwhile.

  “So that’s it. I’m to receive low marks today.” He grinned wide, thrilled to the core at this woman.

  There was something else in her smile, a touch of knowing that he hadn’t quite grasped. Something beyond art. She wasn’t being smug, though she enjoyed this moment of superiority with him: Lydia exuded depth. The paintbrush twirled in the air, pointing at the artwork.

  “Try this. Look again. Study the piece in a different light or a different time. In the same way you’d study your plants.” Her whole visage warmed from the topic. “Of course, not with your magnification glass.” Her voice softened. “I mean really look at it. Accept whatever you see, whatever you feel. There’s a difference between looking and seeing in the same way there’s a difference between studying and learning.”

  His gaze swung from her to the painting and back again to her. She laughed, a light sound like a soft feather to his skin.

  “Oh, Edward, such consternation. You really are befuddled, aren’t you?” Lydia tapped the red-tipped bristles on her palette. “To think there exists a subject the great Earl of Greenwich hasn’t mastered.”

  What could he say to that? She was right. And she’d called him by his Christian name, a few times, in fact, the sound of it vibrating over every inch of his flesh. Did he let her name slip as well? He was tired of being “my lord” to her and hoped to breach formality with the “Miss” salutation.

  Lydia lowered her lashes, pondering the hue she’d just created on the palette. “Art isn’t purely academic: step one, step two, categorize, dissect, and define. There is discipline yes, but there’s also an element of emotion involved, quite a lot. Creative pursuits, like life, are not an exact science.”

  She held her brush over the palette as she pondered the right pigment from the messy globs.

  “Ah, this will do.” The corners of her mouth tilted upward. “More than satisfactory.” Lydia turned to the work in progress and dabbed the canvas. “The best advice I can give is ask yourself what you fe
el when you’re considering a work of art. In time, the answer may come, or it may not.” She shrugged off this last acknowledgment.

  Her face transformed into a subtle, translucent quality before his eyes. Her eyes went wide then narrow, her lips opened slightly, as if she breathed life into her work. Fascinating.

  Following her movements, he broached the personal. “I like that you called me Edward.”

  “Did I?” That jerked her out of the painting. Her dark lashes ringed wide-open eyes.

  “Yes, and I called you Lydia.”

  He noticed a dab of red-hued paint on her cheek now that she fully faced him. He smiled at the attractive mess she made: loosely pinned hair, an old gray smock dabbled with color, and fresh-faced, even with that smear. She was more attractive than any of the Society women peacocked in all their finery. The pad of his thumb swiped away the pigment on her cheek, and his hand lingered close to her silken skin.

  “I’d like very much that we address each other by our given names…forgo formality.”

  Her head tipped, as if drawn to the warmth of his hand.

  “I’d like that very much too—”

  “Edward!” The countess’s shrill call into the ballroom jolted them apart. Her rapid heel-toe strides sounded like a volley of bullets fired across the room.

  Edward pivoted to his mother and tipped his head in greeting. “Mother. You fare well?”

  He hadn’t seen her since yesterday, but the light line of artful kohl around her eyes failed to hide the swollenness. She gave him a scathing glare.

  “You know I don’t fare well at all. Not until you give up this nonsense of yours.”

  He studied her for a second, unsure if she meant his voyage or his pending marriage. Perhaps both. But he’d let the matter rest and tried for a less contentious approach.

  “I see our conversations of the past few days availed nothing in the realm of understanding.” He clasped his hands behind his back. “But I’m glad you’re up and about.”

  Tourmaline-blue eyes, the whites of which were bloodshot, swept from him to Lydia and back to him, catching on his feet.

  “And where are your shoes?” Her fine-arched eyebrows knit together, but she held up a soft pink-white palm and rolled her eyes. “Never mind. I came to alert you to a domestic imbroglio that demands your attention.”

  “Speak in plain English, if you will.”

  “Very well. Since you lack a butler, and with your housekeeper’s sudden departure, there’s a deplorable void of authority in your home.” His mother clasped her hands together at waist height. “Your staff’s in an uproar. That Colonial friend of yours took Miss Lumley to the village to attend a family emergency. The kitchen’s in mild chaos without clear direction, thus, at the moment, dinner’s not even a glimmer of a thought. To keep everyone in line, you need to announce the new housekeeper, and I’ll not do it, since you’ve told me under no uncertain terms that Greenwich Park is your domain. How’s that for plain English?”

  “Excellent.” Edward chuckled and looked at Lydia. “If we’re to eat, I can see I’d better attend to the matter.”

  He tipped his head to both women and walked away.

  “Edward, your shoes,” his mother called to him with exasperated sharpness.

  He pivoted around, walking backward in his exit. Of course, he gave a smile of pure cheek, the kind that drove his mother mad.

  “I can give orders with or without my boots.” He touched his head in a mischievous salute and kept up the backwards walk another nimble step or two, all for the chance to watch his coconspirator’s green eyes smiling back at him over the canvas.

  He turned to walk into the light, certain of one thing. Art—mysterious, beautiful, and challenging—was growing on him.

  ***

  “Such dishabille,” the countess said, watching Edward disappear. She faced Lydia and shook her head. “My son and his Philistine ways.”

  Lydia dropped her attention back to the canvas filled with color. Those Philistine ways allowed her the first glimpse of Edward’s bare torso and another excellent view of his muscled calves, but that pleasant picture faded under her ladyship’s gimlet eye. Lydia swiped the brush on a rag, dipping it in a small cleaning jar at her feet, and touched the tip to a new blob of green. Perhaps the countess would leave her in peace.

  They couldn’t possibly have any more to say after today’s disastrous meeting in the blue drawing room.

  The countess, her fingers linked loosely together, stepped closer to the easel, angling her powdered blond head for a better look. Oh, but she wanted the woman gone. Silk skirts and underskirts rustled in the silence. Lady Elizabeth’s presence hung like an unwelcome specter peering over Lydia’s shoulder, but this was one area in which the noblewoman could find no fault, though she might try. The ballroom, a vacuous amphitheater, magnified every little sound, and the countess’s breathing came in abrupt huffs behind Lydia.

  Tension began to form a burning knot near the middle of her back. She was sure the countess was studying her as much as the painting. Lydia stretched minutely under her smock, trying to lessen the tightness building, while her fine, tufted brush swept this way and that. Lydia increased the speed of her strokes until she snapped.

  “Is there something you’d like to say, my lady?” Lydia spoke over her shoulder.

  “Yes. Many things,” was her unbothered, cryptic response. Silk skirts rustled, and she moved closer. “You know, I did a bit of painting some years ago. Perhaps you noticed the cupids on the armoire in my old rooms?”

  Lydia chewed her lower lip and squinted at the leaf she painted. “Hmmm…yes, I noticed.” Positive commentary was likely expected. Empty praise, however, would not be forthcoming. Those cupids were hideous. “But somehow I can’t imagine you’ve stayed in here to discuss art.”

  A heavy sigh sounded over Lydia’s shoulders, and the countess cleared her throat.

  “Very well. My attempts at social niceties aside, let me speak in plain English, since that’s the mode of the day.” Lady Elizabeth stepped such that she was very near the painting, her elegant features in peripheral view. “We both know you’re not good enough to be the next Countess of Greenwich. You’re not worthy of the position.”

  Lydia canted her head sideways toward the countess. “I don’t think it’s all that bad.”

  After tea, when her ladyship had spewed so much poisonous criticism, any unkind words at the moment only added to the numbing effect. She doubted the countess could do more harm, but Lady Elizabeth moved, and her arm banged a corner of the canvas, causing Lydia to make the smallest smudge. The damage was minimal, quickly fixed with a dab of her pinkie finger, but righteous anger began to build.

  “Now see here, milady, I stay because Edward decrees it, and we’re in full agreement about our arrangement,” she said, swiping her paint-smeared fingertip on her smock’s sleeve. Lydia knelt to drop her paintbrush in the jar at her feet. The green just wasn’t the right shade, and she was ready to explode under such stinging commentary.

  Her ladyship’s eyes turned into narrow, glittering blue slits when Lydia used Edward’s Christian name. Lydia swirled the brush globbed with paint and guessed that was another failure on her part. Solvent within the jar darkened to a murky hue. When did men and women of nobility, who intended to wed each other, for goodness sake, break past walls of formality? Certainly they didn’t “my lord” and “my lady” one another during conjugal relations, did they?

  The silly coldness of that picture made her grimace as paint thinned with each swirl of her brush. If she weren’t so upset, she’d laugh at that mental picture. She was so out of touch as to what made good marital relations, both in and out of bed, and knew no wise matron’s advice would come from the countess. Her ladyship was concerned only about the outward appearance of things. An impatient huff above her head pulled Lydia out of that musing.

  “If you’re quite through fiddling with that, I have important things to discuss. You dally overlong.�
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  “I think you came only to pile more insults on my person,” she said, looking up. Lydia stirred the brush in the jar all the while, wrestling with the perverse wish to spill that dirty liquid on the lady’s fine, unblemished silk shoes. Were there diamonds on her buckles? “This is my time to spend as I see fit.”

  Lydia took a deep, calming breath, let that shoe-ruining impulse go, and rose to full height with palette and clean brush in hand. Lady Elizabeth’s slender, straight nose tipped high, as she did her level best to look down at Lydia, though they were of similar height. It was almost comical.

  “Do you really think you can stand by Edward’s side when he eventually returns to Society? And he will someday.” Pale blue eyes blazed. “He corresponds with the king, for goodness sake. You’ll never be his equal.”

  What could she say to that truth heaped on her head? That she liked being in the same room as Edward and guessed he felt the same? Lydia turned away, needing another calming second. A mild tremor shook her body as she gripped the paintbrush and palette for steadying anchorage. She wasn’t so immune to the older woman’s needling after all. She went to the table that housed her supplies and set the palette down; the desire to paint ebbed. Her palms flattened on the work surface, grounding her.

  “I support whatever Edward wants,” she said over her shoulder, and slowly removed the smock. Yet her voice sounded feeble to her own ears.

  “Do you?”

  Lydia folded the smock in half and curled the material once more before setting it on a chair. The countess, every hair in place, stood statue-still by the easel in all her finery, a watered silk gown, glimmering in shades of rose and champagne. Lydia could never imagine owning such a dress. Edward had mentioned at dinner the previous night that when his mother was “well enough,” she would take Lydia shopping in London for all the appropriate accoutrement a future countess would need.

  More like leave me there.