“Hrmph.” Edward looked skeptical. “You never were much of a bootlicker, were you, Jerry? How did you get so far in the military? All right then, out with it. What is it that really brings you to Yorkshire when the love of your life—not to mention her fiancé—are back in London?”
“Her family,” Jeremy replied succinctly.
“Her family?” Edward looked confused. “What has her family to do with anything?”
“Everything. I mean to reason them out of their ludicrous disapproval of Maggie’s portrait paintings, and get them to approve her marrying me instead of that frog-eater she’s engaged to.” Jeremy stopped pacing, and faced his uncle squarely. “Do you have any objection to that?”
Edward lifted the whisky glass he’d abandoned. “And if I did?” he queried with a grin.
Jeremy smiled, but there was no humor in the gesture. “Then I should have no choice but to strike you, Uncle.”
“In that case,” Edward said with mock gravity, “I haven’t any objections at all.”
Jeremy relaxed his fists, looking surprised. “Really, Uncle Edward? You really haven’t?”
“None,” Edward said with a shrug. “I quite like Maggie Herbert. She doesn’t suffer fools gladly, including her own family, for which one can’t help but admire her. But I do wonder how you’re going to fare against her sister Anne. Your aunt says that since Mrs. Cartwright’s most recent miscarriage, she hasn’t been at all well. I don’t mean in the physical sense, either. She’s apparently developed a notion that women who are of child-bearing age, but aren’t busying themselves having children, are somehow flying in the face of nature. I suppose because Anne is a woman who’d like to have more babies very badly, but hasn’t been able to, it hurts her to see women who can have babies not doing so.”
Jeremy, having no particular love for babies, whom he invariably found sticky-fingered and shrill, nodded to show he understood, even though he didn’t, not really.
Edward went on. “Anne was never very supportive of her parents’ decision to let Maggie go away to school, but I suppose, since it was Maggie, art school seemed the lesser of …” He glanced sternly at Jeremy. “Well. Several evils, anyway.”
Jeremy quirked up an eyebrow at being referred to as an evil, but since his uncle had called him far worse in the past, he said nothing.
“But when Maggie announced she intended to actually be an artist,” Edward continued, “according to Pegeen, Anne went right out of her head. Not only was one of her own sisters defying the natural order of things, but she was ruining the good Herbert name, as well.”
“I see,” Jeremy said. “So that’s what I’m up against, is it?”
“Oh, that’s not all,” Edward assured him cheerfully. “You’re forgetting Sir Arthur. Anne’s got him whipped up into a fine frenzy over Maggie. I’ve never seen him so adamant about anything. He wants her keeping to home and hearth, not gallivanting about London, painting the heads of the rich and idle. He won’t be at all pleased, either by your interference with his family troubles, or your marrying his daughter. He’s got quite firm ideas about both topics, you know.”
“I know,” Jeremy said grimly. “That’s why I brought my pistol along with me.”
Edward raised an eyebrow. “Oh,” he said. “I see. Well, that changes things, doesn’t it?”
It was Jeremy’s turn to smile. “I certainly hope so.”
Chapter 34
Maggie stood in the middle of the Gallery de Veygoux and chewed her lower lip. It was nearly eleven o’clock in the morning, and Augustin still hadn’t appeared. It wasn’t like him to be late. Not like him at all.
Not that Maggie minded. She was not particularly looking forward to seeing him. She knew that today, there could be no more excuses. No throbbing headaches, no unhappy movers, no ham-handed assistants, and, perhaps most importantly of all, no Jeremy.
Today, she was going to break off the engagement.
Fortunately, Augustin’s assistants had been at the gallery in his absence to open the doors for Maggie when she arrived. Thank goodness, or she’d have frozen to death waiting out on Bond Street for him. The weather was typical for London in February—cold and windy, with a fine curtain of sleet coating everything with ice. A lovely day for an exhibition to open, Maggie thought dryly. People would be very foolish indeed to venture out in weather like this merely to come look at a lot of “pretty pitchers,” when they could stay by their fires and be comfortable, instead. Maggie knew perfectly well no one was going to come to the opening day of her exhibition.
Which was just fine by her.
Augustin would be disappointed, of course. But, secretly, Maggie would be relieved. The last thing she felt ready to do, what with the emotional upheaval she’d been through the last few days, was smile and listen to people compliment her work—or criticize it, as the case might very well be. For the first time in her life, she genuinely didn’t care what anybody thought of her paintings. What did a silly bunch of canvases signify, when her heart was breaking? Yes, it really was. She was convinced of it. Her heart was breaking, and deservedly so, since she was the wickedest girl who had ever walked the face of the earth. A girl who made love with one man while engaged to another … why, she not only deserved a broken heart; she deserved terrible, awful reviews of her exhibition in the Sunday paper. That was what Maggie felt she deserved. And she quite hoped The Times would not disappoint her.
Augustin’s assistant—the same one whose ears he’d boxed the day before—seemed a little concerned about her, probably because she was standing stupidly in the center of the gallery, her umbrella dripping onto the shiny wood floor. The young man timidly approached her, bearing a steaming cup of tea. Startled, Maggie accepted the tea, and hardly noticed when the clerk slipped her umbrella out from beneath her arm, and secreted it away somewhere. Then, apologizing for his employer’s lateness, he asked Maggie if she wouldn’t like to take a quick stroll around the gallery, to see if she approved of the way her paintings had been hung.
Maggie couldn’t hide her surprise. She thought the very reason she’d been asked to be at the gallery that morning was in order to supervise the hanging of her works.
The young man flushed guiltily. Yes, he said, that was quite right. Only he and his “mates” had gone ahead and done the hanging themselves the night before. Maggie, reading through his words, saw that the fellow had been so thoroughly mortified by his blunder with the hammer the day before that he’d worked all through the night in order to impress his employer with his dependability and initiative.
And now his employer hadn’t even had the courtesy to show up.
Which wasn’t like Augustin. It wasn’t like Augustin at all.
Maggie, touched by the gallery clerk’s nervous solicitude, and beginning to feel a bit annoyed with her fiancé for his thoughtlessness, replied that she’d very much like a tour, and Mr. German—which was the young man’s name—eagerly began to show her about.
Her paintings had been beautifully framed—in some cases Maggie thought the frames more attractive than the actual works themselves—and hung with obvious care, so that the larger works did not overwhelm those on smaller canvases, and landscapes were carefully interspersed between the portraits, so that the eye was not tired by too much green or blue.
Maggie, sipping her tea as they walked, showered Mr. Corman and his associates with praise, though of course she could hardly keep her mind on the tour. Where, she couldn’t help wondering, was Augustin? He was never late.
Then a hideous thought occurred to her. Supposing Jeremy was right, and it was Augustin who’d tried to kill him outside Twenty-two Park Lane, and then again, outside the Times? Supposing Augustin had followed him to Yorkshire, and even now, was trying to finish off the job?
Oh, Lord! And here she was in London, helpless to do anything to stop him!
But no, that was ridiculous. Augustin would never try to kill anyone. There wasn’t a violent bone in his body. He was late, that was all.
Just late. Jeremy was perfectly safe. He had used and abandoned her, apparently, but he was safe.
It was just as she was thinking this that Mr. Corman steered her round a corner, and there, in a place of honor beneath an oil lamp, hung a great painting of Jeremy himself. Maggie, so surprised she nearly dropped her teacup and saucer, froze, her eyes widening in horror.
“Where,” she managed to rasp out, “did you get that?”
Mr. Corman looked heartily confused at her question, as well he might, considering, as he quickly pointed out, that she had sent the painting herself, along with all the others from her studio.
“Oh, no,” Maggie cried. “Oh, there must be some mistake. I never meant—this painting was never meant to be displayed. The men Aug—I mean, Monsieur de Veygoux—hired must have taken it by mistake. I never meant for it to be shown! Not to … anyone!”
Mr. Corman, his pale face pinched with concern, said, “Oh, but—pardon me for saying so, miss—but this is one of the finest works in your collection. You surely can’t mean you want us to take it down. We’ve made it the focal point of the show.”
At that point, Maggie had to put the teacup down, or let it smash to the floor. Setting it onto a small pedestal, Maggie sank down onto a blue velvet settee that had been placed in front of Jeremy’s portrait, as if in anticipation of the likeness causing women to swoon.
Maggie would not actually have been surprised if some hapless woman did swoon from just looking it at. Painted some years ago, the portrait featured Jeremy looking exactly as he had that night on the terrace, when she’d asked him where he was going, and he’d replied, “To the devil.” He wore the exact same expression, half wry, half angry, one of his dark eyebrows lifted skeptically, his mouth quirked up on one side. Standing with one booted foot on her terrace’s balustrade, Jeremy was pictured half turned toward the viewer. In one hand, he carried his hat. The other hand was empty, the fist clenched and resting across his raised thigh. In the background loomed Rawlings Manor, pictured exactly the way Maggie remembered seeing it, all those years ago. Jeremy was casually garbed in riding clothes that did nothing to hide the muscularity of the male body beneath them. Maggie blushed just to look at it. What could she have been thinking?
Well, it was all too clear what she’d been thinking.
The entire painting had been completed from memory, though to look at it, one would never have guessed. Every line, every detail, was as precise as a daguerreotype. And yet unlike a daguerreotype, the painting captured all of Jeremy, not just his looks, but his essence, his biting humor, his shrewd intelligence … and most of all, his raw sensuality, which was so evident in this painting that Maggie felt he might almost walk off the canvas, step toward her, scoop her up, and start kissing her then and there.
Thank God for the couch. For her knees had gone so weak, there was no possible way she could have remained standing.
She’d done the painting nearly two years earlier, over a course of four days. Four days of feverish painting, during which she’d allowed no one, not even Berangere or Madame Bonheur, to look at what she was doing. It had been just after she’d met Augustin, and Maggie had decided that possibly, if she painted a portrait of Jeremy, it would get him out of her system, and out of her life.
It hadn’t worked. She hadn’t been able to look at the finished painting without feeling an inexplicable tightness in her chest. She had put the painting away, resolving never to look at it again. And she hadn’t.
Until now.
“We’ve got to take it down,” Maggie said, but weakly.
Mr. Corman had apparently worked with enough temperamental artists to know how to handle them, since he said soothingly, “I know you’re nervous about this evening, Miss Herbert, but really, this painting is your best work. It would be downright criminal not to include it in the exhibition. And look how nicely we’ve fit it in with those landscapes on either side of it. You don’t have any similarly sized works to put in its place.”
“You don’t understand, Mr. Corman,” Maggie said. “We’ve got to take it down. This work is part of my, um, personal collection. It isn’t for sale, and it was never meant to be shown. To anyone. Not even the, uh, sitter. Who … well, there’s a slight chance he … might come tonight.”
It was a hope Maggie had hardly dared entertain. She didn’t know why Jeremy had suddenly removed himself to Yorkshire. But she hoped—foolishly, she knew—that he might reappear in London for this most important night of her life … .
For the first time, comprehension dawned on the young man’s face. “Ah,” he said. “I see the difficulty, then. But still, Miss Herbert, you can’t think that the gentleman pictured here would be insulted by this work. Surely you’ve rendered him in a highly complimentary style.” Here his pale eyes flicked toward the painting. “No man could object to being perceived as so very … masculine.”
Maggie, with a groan, dropped her face into her hands. She was still in this position when a new voice, behind them, startled her.
“Marguerethe?”
Maggie’s back straightened as quickly as if someone had pulled a string attached to the top of her head. Horrified, she swung around, to see Augustin hurrying into the gallery, shedding his greatcoat even as he was calling her name.
So. He had not gone to Yorkshire to kill Jeremy. Not at all.
“Oh, dear,” she murmured, with a last glance at the painting. Fortunately, Mr. Corman seemed to understand her distress, since he quickly stepped in front of the portrait, blocking most of it from view.
“Marguerethe?” Augustin called again. There was something in his voice Maggie didn’t quite recognize. For the life of her, she could not pinpoint what it was.
Still, she rose from the settee and managed to cross the gallery with surprising composure for one who’d been so discomposed just moments before. But she’d hardly gotten within three yards of Augustin before she saw that he was far more discomposed than she. In fact, he looked quite terrible. Not his bruises—they appeared to be healing nicely, the purple smudges beneath his eyes fading to a satisfactory yellow, the swelling in his nose nowhere near as bad as it had been. No, there was something else wrong with him. Maggie couldn’t put her finger on what exactly it was, but there was something different, something … odd.
“Oh, Marguerethe,” Augustin said, when he saw her. The smile he gave her was a nervous one. Bending down, he kissed her quickly on either cheek. “I am so sorry I am late, chérie. I do not know what happened. I have never slept so late in my life—”
Maggie frowned up at him. “You overslept?” She found that hard to believe. Augustin, in all the time she’d known him, had always been an early riser. But she saw evidence to the truth of his claim in the corners of his eyes—they were still lightly crusted with sleep. Her frown turned to a smile. “Augustin,” she said, in a chastising tone. “For shame! Did you go out last night, after you left me those beautiful roses?”
He turned away to hand his coat to one of his assistants. “Not at all, not at all,” he said.
He spoke so heartily that Maggie knew he was lying. She wondered what on earth he could be trying to hide.
“I suppose,” he went on, “it is merely a cold that has been coming on.”
“Oh, of course,” Maggie said. “A cold. I hope you have not been neglecting your health.”
“No, no, nothing like that.” Augustin was speaking to her, yet his mind seemed a good distance away. “What’s this?” he asked, his pale gaze darting all about the gallery. “You have done all this, already? You have been busy, chérie! Busy, indeed!”
Maggie eyed him. Something was wrong with Augustin. She was quite certain of it. But what, exactly? She could not put her finger on it. “Not me,” she replied, honestly enough. “Mr. Corman and his associates. They went to the trouble of hanging all the paintings last night, so they’d be quite ready when I got here, and I must say, I’m very pleased with the results.” She bit her lip. Hopefully, Augustin would not notice
the portrait of Jeremy … though how he could miss it, she did not know. The painting seemed to draw gazes to it very much in the manner that the sitter drew gazes, everywhere he went.
As she spoke, she’d noticed Augustin’s employees shifting uneasily, nervous about how their employer would take the news that they had acted on their own initiative. She could tell by their astonished expressions a second later, when Augustin announced how pleased he was at the results of their labor, that praise from their employer was hard won, but worth it, on the rare occasions it was bestowed.
“Superbe,” Augustin declared, as his gaze flicked over the mounted paintings. “I am quite pleased. And you, Marguerethe? You are pleased?”
Maggie agreed that she was quite pleased, and only then did it hit her, that thing about Augustin that had been bothering her. Why, he was not looking her in the eye. That was it! He was not making eye contact with her at all. How odd, Maggie thought. Augustin is acting almost as if he feels guilty about something. How very strange. I’m the one who should be feeling guilty, and yet I am quite capable of meeting his gaze. She wondered what he could possibly have done to engender so much guilt. Was it possible that he had done something to Jeremy, after all? But no, that couldn’t be! If some harm had come to Jeremy, she’d surely have heard about it by now. Wouldn’t she?
Well, wouldn’t she?
But even as she was wondering, Augustin began speaking again, in the same falsely hearty manner, still not looking her in the face.
“Now, chérie, I hope you are prepared for some very great news,” he said, adjusting his cravat. “Very great news, indeed. I did not quite believe it myself when I heard it, but it was confirmed this morning by a note I received from the Lord Chancellor himself. Are you ready, Marguerethe?”
Maggie felt up to anything … except facing that painting of Jeremy again. She said, quite truthfully, “Yes, Augustin. I believe so.”
“His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales himself will be attending your exhibition tonight.” Augustin pronounced this with so much pleasure that Maggie could not help smiling, not at the prospect of beholding the Prince of Wales, but at Augustin’s obvious delight at the news. Truth be told, she was a trifle disappointed. She had hoped he was going to say something quite different … that he had learned that her father was coming, or something along those lines.
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