A Sinner without a Saint

by Bliss Bennet

  “To continue to aid you and your noble husband in the canvassing, of course,” Dulcie answered. “I find it strangely satisfying, persuading the voters of another man’s integrity and worth. Much easier than having to do the same for myself.”

  Sibilla sniffed. “What you find satisfying is having all eyes on you. But this morning I’ve need of Miss Atherton’s skills, not yours. She’s the only one who can reconcile these conflicting poll lists. I sent Theo up to find her, but that was nearly half an hour ago. I don’t suppose you’ve seen them?”

  “I believe I might know where the missing lady is to be found. I’ll fetch her for you, shall I?” Dulcie bowed and strolled from the room. Miss Atherton, he knew, usually spent the early hours of the morning with her ill father. And Theo Pennington typically met her in the passageway, waiting for her to leave her father’s bedchamber.

  Bounding up the staircase, Dulcie suppressed a cheerful whistle. Not wise to give warning to those he planned to spy upon.

  He stuck his head around the corner of the family wing, where Mr. Atherton was being nursed. Yes, there they were, Saybrook and Miss Atherton, just outside her father’s door. The two stood far closer than any simple acquaintances should. Was Saybrook morally lax enough to seduce the daughter of his employee? Or, fool that he was, did he have a more lasting alliance in mind?

  The little minx stepped closer to Saybrook and slipped a hand under his cravat. Yes, far more than friends, these two. Had she or her father swindled Saybrook out of his funds? And was she cozening Saybrook now to distract him from their perfidy?

  “Harry, I’m trying to have a care for your reputation. Can you not do the same?” Saybrook asked in a strained voice.

  “Must I?” Miss Atherton’s question hovered in the silent hall as her fingers wandered under Saybrook’s linen.

  “Yes.” But he let out a deep groan of pleasure all the same. Dulcie could not help but imagine his own fingers, wandering across the expanse of another Pennington’s chest, making another Pennington moan with longing.

  Thankfully, Saybrook’s hand tightened around Miss Atherton’s and pulled it free of his garments before Dulcie’s imagination could grow too heated.

  “Yes, you must,” Saybrook chided. “Unless you’re prepared to walk to the rectory and ask Mr. Strickland to read the banns.”

  Dulcie took this as his cue to interrupt. “Read the banns? Who is foolish enough to trade freedom for the dubious pleasures of a leg-shackle?” he asked as he strolled down the passageway towards them, swinging his quizzing glass by its ribbon. His question left them room enough to deny their relationship if they wished.

  Miss Atherton jerked away from Saybrook, her face flushing even redder than Per’s had. Saybrook frowned and stepped in front of her. Playing the chivalrous beau, was he?

  “Why, for two of my tenants,” Saybrook boldly lied. “Have you met Farmer Croft and his Daisy?”

  Miss Atherton choked back a sudden snort of laughter. Some joke to which he was not party, no doubt.

  No need to force the issue. Dulcie had found out enough for his purposes.

  He raised his quizzing glass and turned down his lips into a most disapproving frown. “Your sister sends you up here to bring Miss Atherton down as soon as possible, and instead you dally to discuss the domestic concerns of a shepherdess and her swain? Have you forgotten there is an election to be won? Come, Miss Atherton, leave this lazy fellow to his own business. We have an emergency on our hands, and only you can help.”

  “Whatever is the matter?” she asked.

  Lord Dulcie placed her hand on his arm, a move that made Saybrook grimace. Oh, yes, the fellow was clearly smitten.

  “Sibilla has been asking for you since sunrise, my dear,” he said as he guided her down the staircase, Saybrook trailing in their wake. “It seems during their trip to Gainsborough yesterday she and Per were given a different poll list, one that includes far more electors on it than the one from which they have been working. Quel catastrophe! She needs you immediately, to tell her which men still reside in the county and which control votes in need of courting.”

  “I’ll be happy to help,” Miss Atherton answered. Affable girl.

  When they reached the library, Sibilla pulled a booklet from her pile of papers and waved it in Miss Atherton’s face. “Fifty more names. Fifty! How could that agent’s original polling list have been so wrong? You must tell us, Miss Atherton, which voters still live in the district. I have marked each one missing from our first list with a check mark.”

  The three began to confer over their lists. But all Dulcie’s attention was taken by the other occupant of the room. For Benedict Pennington now sat in the chair Dulcie had abandoned, booted foot tapping the carpet. Odd to see him without a pencil or a stick of charcoal clutched between those long, tapered fingers, or a sketching pad behind which he might shield his face. Even with that heavy lock of hair falling over his eyes, their absence made him look strangely unguarded.

  If he had been any other man, Dulcie would have pounced upon that vulnerability, turning it to his own use. But the thought of manipulating Benedict to find out about his brother’s finances made his throat grow tight.

  In fact, he had the strangest urge to apologize for treating him with such flippant disregard at breakfast. A man shouldn’t need to protect himself from the petty taunting of a thwarted lover, especially in his own home.

  Dulcie turned on his heel and strode towards the stables. This curfuffle over the polling lists would likely prevent their setting out to canvas for some hours, giving him more than enough time for a canter over the Saybrook downs and fields. Yes, a bruising ride would surely rid him of this ridiculous streak of sentimentality that increasingly plagued him at the sight of the bent head and lowered eyes of Benedict Pennington.

  And how does your portrait of Lord Dulcie progress? When I extended an invitation to come to us at Westcombe Abbey, he very prettily declined, explaining you could not complete the picture without his presence, which I do not understand in the least. Is your method so different from that of men who make portraiture their profession? Why, even the great Sir Joshua required only three sittings to take my likeness!

  Far better if you both to come down to Greenwich and put any finishing touches on the work here. Write to me at your earliest convenience and inform me when we should expect you.

  By attending to this letter you, sir, will greatly oblige,

  Julius Adler

  A hot summer breeze lifted the curtains of his bedchamber and ruffled the letter in Benedict’s hand. Of course Dulcie would use Benedict as excuse to fob off Adler. He could not but wonder, though, why Dulcie need evade Adler’s invitation at all. After their painful conversation the night Dulcie had arrived at Saybrook House, he’d expected him to pack up all his belongings and decamp to Adler’s Greenwich estate, or at least go back to town, with the news that no portrait from Benedict Pennington would be forthcoming. Yet for more than a month, now, the viscount had ignored his courtship of Polly Adler, choosing to remain in Lincolnshire instead. To canvass electors on behalf of Sir Peregrine, he claimed. And perhaps to taunt Benedict with all he had lost after he’d turned down the chance to become Dulcie’s temporary lover?

  He’d expected Dulcie to find the repetitive nature of electioneering far too tiresome and abandon it within a week. But to his shock, the viscount had not rushed off to find some more entertaining occupation. Nor a more stimulating companion to share his bed. Not that first week, and not any time during the weeks that had followed.

  And all the while, he had pointedly ignored Benedict. Oh, he was civil enough, asking him every day if he would accompany them on their canvassing expeditions. But all his witty sallies, all his energetic charms, those were gifted to Theo, or Sibilla, or Sir Peregrine. Even Miss Atherton, a lady whom he had just met, came in for her due share of Dulcie’s attentions. But for Benedict, he had nary a smile.

  For which Benedict was, he must keep reminding himself, de
eply grateful.

  But Dulcie’s eyes—why could he not rid himself of the feeling that those eyes turned to him whenever they were in the same room, even though he could never catch the man in the act of staring?

  Benedict glanced at his pocket watch. Yes, enough time had passed that the rest of the company should be well on their way to whatever town they were intent on canvassing this morning. He had letters of his own to write, letters that he preferred to compose in solitude.

  When he pushed open the heavy library door however, his sister and her new husband stood within, whispering over a newspaper.

  “Excuse me. I thought you would have left the house by now.” Should he return to his room, or proceed with his own business?

  Benedict gave Sibilla and Sir Peregrine a brief nod before taking a seat behind the desk and picking up his pen.

  He’d spent far more time in the library over the last month than he ever had before his father’s death, writing letter after letter to men of influence, expounding upon the benefits a national art gallery would bestow upon the country. If he were as silver-tongued as Dulcie, he might have made his way from one summer house party to another, championing his plan to each gentleman directly. But he knew his own strengths and weaknesses far too well to set about such a scheme. No, he was far more persuasive on paper than in person, as the growing letters of support stacked in the drawer of this very desk proved. Perhaps by the time Parliament convened again in the spring, he would have gathered enough support to urge Sir Charles Long or another member of the Commons who believed as strongly as he did that the public should have access to art to put forth a resolution for the establishment of a national picture gallery.

  Still, the pen felt far less comfortable in his hand than a pencil or paintbrush. The sketches he’d been making of the laborers about his brother’s estate had excited him like no other work he’d done since returning to England—with the exception of that one night painting Dulcie’s likeness back in London. But he’d left that unfinished canvas behind, unwilling to tempt himself. All color and frivolity and movement that painting had been, with nothing of the formality or grandeur required of an aristocratic portrait. No beauty at all, at least not in the eyes of one who embraced the classical ideals. His friend Géricault might have liked it, but Dulcie’s cutting assessment reflected the opinion of the most of the rest of the world; no artistic academy in England or on the Continent would have found such a thing worthy of praise. And Adler—Benedict shuddered, imagining the deprecations that would have sprung from that confident man’s lips.

  Yet his hands still longed to pick up a brush and attack it once again, to create on canvas something only he seemed to see. Something in Dulcie that the simplicity of the true style could never hope to convey.

  Theo’s bitter cursing jerked Benedict from his musings. He’d been so lost in his own mind, he hadn’t even heard his brother—or Dulcie and Harry—enter the room. Or the footman, who had obviously just delivered bad news of some sort to his brother.

  “What is it, Theo?” Sibilla asked, her eyes fixed on the letter he held out to her husband. “Per?”

  “I’m afraid we have more to worry about than a few overlooked voters, Sib,” Sir Peregrine said as he handed the letter to Sibilla. “The ever-equivocating Mr. Norton has broken his promise to your brother. For he finds he cannot allow a ‘seditious demagogue’ such as myself to stand unopposed.”

  Benedict grimaced. Henry Norton, the current holder of the Parliament seat for which Per was standing, had never been a man of much intellect, although he had always been loyal to their father. Theo had no such influence over the fellow, although he had persuaded him to step aside for a candidate of the new Lord Saybrook’s choosing. Did he truly think Theo would stand for his writing such inflammatory words about their brother-in-law?

  “Demagogue? I’d be surprised if the fellow even knew what the word means,” he said, rising to stand beside his brother.

  “It’s the seditious part that irks me,” Dulcie concurred, taking up a stance beside the chair Benedict had just abandoned. “Why, I’d be as like to swim the Channel in nothing but my smalls as Per would be to do anything so ill-bred as fomenting rebellion.”

  Sibilla picked up the letter and read aloud. “As your object is to bring into contempt the Sovereign, the Clergy, and all the noble, moral, and worthy part of society, I fear I cannot allow you to stand unopposed. My son, therefore, will contest this election, with my full support.”

  Benedict’s eyes narrowed. Young George Norton, standing for Parliament? That boy who had lounged about Colnaghi’s print shop, espousing his devotion to the arts, and gazing with cow-eyes at Dulcie? And who turned to Lattimer Leverett after Dulcie had begun to pursue Polly Adler?

  Damnation! Had Leverett, a dyed-in-the-wool Tory, played a role in persuading Norton to stand against the more liberal Sir Peregrine?

  “Well, we won’t let a man who spouts such drivel to best us,” his sister proclaimed as she tossed the elder Norton’s letter on the desk. “Now, Per, do you see the wisdom of employing more agents to canvass each town?”

  Her husband ran a hand through his dark hair. “But Sib, the expense—”

  “Hang the expense. I’m not as proficient with accounting as is Miss Atherton, but even I know that my dowry is large enough to pay for what we need.”

  “Your dowry will be kept for our children,” his brother-in-law said, taking his wife by the hands.

  “I had thought,” Dulcie interrupted, staring through his quizzing glass at Theo, “that a man’s patron discharged all debts incurred during an election. At least, that is how my father always conducts the matter.”

  Benedict’s hands fisted. Was Dulcie insulting Theo? Not just to his face, but in front of his siblings, too?

  “I will take responsibility for any additional expenses,” Theo answered. “It was I, after all, who assured Per that the seat would not be contested. Why, I’d never be invited to another dinner if word got about that I forced my brother-in-law into penury. Now go, Sib, and hire all the canvassers and whomever else you require.”

  Sibilla rushed over and embraced him. “You are the best of brothers, Theo, no matter what father may have—” She stepped back, biting her lip. “No matter what anyone might say. The very best, Theo.”

  “Do not let Benedict or Kit hear you say such a blasphemous thing,” Theo said, tossing a small smile at Benedict. But one that distinctly lacked all of Theo’s usual easy good humor. “Now, off with you, before Mr. Norton and his son have a chance to spread disloyalty and disaffection like dung across the fields.”

  “Wait until you see the cards we’re having printed, to leave behind if a voter is not at home!” their sister crowed before pulling her husband from the room.

  Theo left immediately after, but turned in the opposite direction from the one taken by Sibilla. Harry, worry lining her features, quickly followed.

  Leaving Dulcie alone with Benedict.

  “Why did you not remain in town, Dulcie?” Benedict grimaced at the anger in his tone, but he could not seem to banish it. “If you had stayed, you might have prevented this.”

  “Prevented what?”

  Dulcie’s blinking innocence only made Benedict’s frustration rage more fiercely. “Prevented George Norton from entering the race for this Parliament seat.”

  Dulcie’s head jerked back, his eyes widening. “I? What have I to do with young Norton?”

  “Oh, I saw the way he admired you, how he hung upon your every word. Art, not politics, that is where his real interests lie. And you might have encouraged that, counseled him against this mad plan to challenge Saybrook interests.”

  “Perhaps.” Dulcie leaned on the desk and crossed his arms. “But how was I to know his father would insist he enter this contest?”

  “His father? Or Lattimer Leverett? Leverett, who, no matter how much he avows his love for art, loves his own aristocratic privilege more. Can you tell me it wasn’t Leverett, as
much as Norton’s own father, who persuaded him to the Tory side?”

  “Your reasoning, Mr. Pennington, leaves something to be desired. Is it influence over George Norton that you attribute to me? Or some supernatural power to read Mr. Leverett’s mind?”

  Benedict ground his teeth. No, he wasn’t always the most rational person when his emotions ran high. “Over Mr. Norton. Even if you did not want him yourself, you might have warned him away from Leverett.”

  “Are you still speaking of Mr. Norton?” Dulcie asked, his voice full of genial curiosity. “Or are you perhaps speaking of yourself?”

  Benedict jerked backwards, the question as painful as a slap in the face. He should have remembered that attacking never cowed Dulcie. It only incited him to fight back all the more fiercely.

  Trying to catch his breath, Benedict strode over to the windows. But Dulcie only followed, then grabbed his arm, turning him so they stood face to face.

  “You were speaking of yourself. How curious. What, precisely, do you think I should have warned you against? That he was a braggart and a bully? I thought everyone in the entire school knew that.”

  Benedict struggled to find the words. “After you left—when you didn’t come back to school, he told me—”

  Dulcie frowned. “Told you what?”

  “He said you’d given me to him. You’d written to tell him so—”

  “I wrote to ask him to look after all the boys under my care,” Dulcie interrupted. “Not to give them away, as if they were baubles or toys. And I made no specific mention of you.”

  Was that supposed to comfort him? Benedict jerked free of Dulcie’s hand. “How was I to know? You never wrote to me.”

  Dulcie scowled. “My father would not permit it. Not after he read your letter. He even made me show him the note I wrote to Leverett before he franked it, to make sure it contained no covert messages to you.”

  “And you could not figure out a way to circumvent that?” Benedict choked out a laugh he hoped sounded more harsh than heartbroken. “Viscount Dulcie, cock of the school? No, if you’d truly wanted to, you could have sent me word.”