A Sinner without a Saint

by Bliss Bennet

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Dulcie pulled out his pocket watch and flicked open its case, then frowned. Had the blue steel minute hand truly only advanced a few scant minutes since he the last time he’d checked? Perhaps his valet forgotten to wind it this morning. He gave it a shake, then held it to his ear. No, the damned thing still tick tick-ed away at an annoyingly steady clip.

  Perhaps it was losing time. He’d send it in to be repaired, just as soon as he’d finished explaining to Benedict just why he had agreed to marry Polly Adler.

  If Benedict ever returned to Pennington House to hear his explanation . . .

  With a scowl, Dulcie jerked open the door of the bed chamber and called out into the empty passageway. “Hill? Hill, can you tell me the time?”

  Quick footsteps tapped against the marble staircase before Hill, the tall, light-haired footman, reached the landing. “My lord? The clock in the hallway says ten minutes past two.”

  Just as did his own watch. He clicked its case shut and shoved it back into his waistcoat pocket. “And Mr. Pennington has still not returned?”

  “No, my lord. As you instructed, I will tell him you wish speak with him as soon as he arrives.”

  “Yes. Very good.”

  The footman frowned. “Is there anything else I might do for you, my lord?”

  “No, I thank you.” He nodded in dismissal, then turned on his heel and stalked back down the passageway. Polly Adler had solemnly promised to send Benedict back home as soon as she had explained their plan to rescue her grandfather’s paintings. But hours must have passed since then. Damnation! He’d known Benedict wouldn’t take it well.

  Instead of returning his own room, he opened the door to his lover’s. Dulcie had been given his own chamber at Pennington House, but over the past fortnight, they’d spent more and more nights—at least the ones when Benedict did not stay up until the wee hours painting—here, together, in Benedict’s room. He often teased his lover over his refusal to employ a valet, and the subsequent disorder of his personal belongings, but today, he was glad of it. He could burn off some of this restless energy by picking up the coats and waistcoats Benedict had stuffed into his wardrobe, folding them neatly, gently placing the smaller items inside their proper drawers, the larger on their appropriate hooks.

  As he tutted over a paint stain on a dark brown waistcoat—where did the fellow purchase his clothing? Dulcie truly needed to introduce him to his own tailor—the door to the chamber behind him slammed shut. With a start, he dropped the garment and whirled round.

  “Oomph!” A large, warm body pinned him against the wardrobe door. Before he could even catch his breath, hands jerked at his neckcloth, then slid down and quickly slipped open the buttons of his waistcoat. And then his shirt was yanked from his breeches, and warm, nimble fingers stroked up his flanks with seductive intent.

  “Benedict! What in the world—”

  Hot, searching lips swallowed his words. A fevered tongue pushed into his mouth, then shifted to lick a lascivious strip up the cord of his neck.

  Dulcie shuddered, almost unbearably aroused at the intensity of Benedict’s ardor. In all their previous trysting, Dulcie had been the one who’d most often acted as seducer, most often directed their subsequent love play. And even though that astonishing bit of mouth-play last week had been at Benedict’s urging, Dulcie had been the active one, the one to push his prick into his lover’s body, the one to spend in his lover’s mouth.

  But to be almost attacked by a lover! No, by this lover. Pinned, undressed, worshipped by Benedict Pennington, the boy who had once looked up to him as hero. Now with arms strong enough to capture his hands and force them above his head, hips powerful enough to pin his own tight to the wardrobe—Dulcie nearly moaned at the heady rush of pleasure his own helplessness engendered.

  With whom else besides Benedict would he have felt safe enough to allow himself to play eromenos, the beloved, the passive partner, rather than erastes, the active one? His body grew heavy, languid, his head tipping back to allow Benedict better access.

  But when sharp teeth nipped at the lobe of his ear, his head banged on the wardrobe with a painful thunk that shook him free of the thick haze of pleasure.

  Grabbing his lover’s head, he pushed it up and away until he could see Benedict’s face.

  The sight that greeted him made him shudder. He’d expected disappointment, bitterness, even recrimination. But instead he saw only desire, fierce enough to singe.

  “You spoke with Miss Adler this morning?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re not angry with me?”

  “I was, yes.” Benedict bit the side of Dulcie’s neck, then grabbed the tail of his shirt and yanked it over his head. “I assumed the worst of you, until Polly explained your plan.”

  “That I’d betrayed you?”

  “Not betrayed, exactly. Disappointed me, perhaps. By not living up the promise of your best self. I thought temptation had proven too great.” His hands moved to the placket of Dulcie’s trousers.

  “And now?” Dulcie asked, grabbing Benedict’s hands in his own. He needed to see his lover’s eyes, to make sure that he truly understood what Dulcie was asking of him, and what he was willing to give him in return.

  “Do you pledge to give the artwork from Polly’s dowry to the country to endow a national gallery?”

  “I do.”

  “And you will treat Polly with kindness, and never give her cause to regret her choice?”

  “I will.”

  “And you will give yourself to me as well? And take no other lovers, for as long as we both shall live?”

  Dulcie blinked against the tear that foolishly threatened to fall from his lashes at Benedict’s echoing of the marriage ceremony. “I will.”

  Benedict’s laughter echoed as he ducked and swooped Dulcie up into his arms. “Then prepare to be worshiped as you’ve never been worshipped before, my dearly beloved viscount. For I feel a great urge to expiate my guilt on the altar of your body.”

  And so Benedict did.

  “And so I invite you all to join me as I offer a toast to the happy couple. Lord Dulcie, Polyhymnia, we wish you every joy!”

  Even the denizens of the paintings on the walls of Julius Adler’s picture gallery seemed to hold their breath in astonishment as the banker raised his glass to salute his granddaughter and the least marriage-minded bachelor in all the ton. But after Dulcie raised his own glass in confirmation, the hundred or so guests Adler had invited to celebrate their betrothal began to chatter and cheer, and then to throng about the couple, eager to offer their surprised congratulations before hieing off to gossip about the shocking development.

  Dulcie’s entire body fairly hummed, satisfaction effervescent in his veins. Tonight, all the players in his elaborate plans were falling neatly into place. His mother, her eyes sparking with tears as she pulled a surprised Polly into her arms to welcome her to the family. His father, smiling at Dulcie as he accepted the congratulations of the older gentlemen in the room, especially those with sons and daughters of their own still to marry off. And Julius Adler himself, puffed up with as much pride as any Punchinello at having snared the son of an earl for his wayward granddaughter, clapping an arm about Dulcie’s back and even condescending to refill his glass himself.

  Dulcie took particular pleasure in the sight of Lattimer Leverett, sulking over by Adler’s Rubens like a spoilt child. Ridiculous, to take on so over losing a silly wager. But then Leverett never had liked to lose.

  The only player not dancing to Dulcie’s tune tonight was Benedict. He might at least have come over and offered his congratulations along with the other gentlemen in the artistic set. But instead he stood aloof, a delectably surly scowl warding off all attempts to engage him in conversation. Why could not he get into the spirit of the thing? A gentleman who cared for another man would never be able to openly declare it in public, as he himself very well knew. So why not take pleasure in the thrill of the s
ecrecy itself, rather than chafe like a horse against an over-tight girth?

  Lord Milne clapped his own hand to Dulcie’s back, his color high with well-wishing and wine. “Well done, my boy, well done indeed. Knew you couldn’t hold out forever. Done the family proud today.”

  “Tam arte quad marte,” Dulcie said with ironic tilt of his glass. But his father’s brow only furrowed in confusion.

  “Come, father, don’t tell me you’ve forgotten your schoolboy Latin? For I won’t believe a man so proud of his lineage as you has forgotten his family’s motto. As much by art as strength?”

  “Don’t know what strength or art has to do with a betrothal,” his father said with a frown.

  His mother’s aunt, the Dowager Lady Davenport, who was a bit hard of hearing, squeezed between Dulcie and his father before Dulcie could answer. She took his hand and pressed it between her small, gnarled fingers. “Always said you’d come up to snuff someday. No fool, this son of yours, Milne. He’ll not allow the earldom to revert to the crown, no matter his own peculiar tastes. Can always have a bit of something on the side, what?”

  “Indeed, Aunt.” Dulcie squeezed her hands, cutting her off before his father turned an even more alarming shade of red. No need to remind him that a bit of something on the side was far more to his son’s tastes than any bride-to-be.

  But his father’s attention had been caught by a loud burst of laughter from the horde stationed in front of Adler’s most highly regarded painting, Piombo’s Christ Raising Lazarus from the Dead. They called themselves connoisseurs, Leverett, Carrington, Selsey, and the rest of the usual coterie of young British Institution members gathered about them? Philistines, each and every one, to stand about gossiping when they could be examining the glittering color and luminosity of that glorious altarpiece, or any one of the other masterpieces hanging on the walls of Adler’s gallery. He’d be sure to tease Benedict later, telling him such disregard by the public was almost enough to make him change his mind about donating all the paintings from Polly’s dowry to the new museum.

  Where was Benedict? Dulcie gazed about the room, but his lover seemed to have disappeared.

  “Have you been introduced to my betrothed, Miss Adler?” Dulcie asked, abruptly pulling his bride-to-be into their circle. “Polly, Lady Davenport has just returned from Bath, and would be happy to tell you all about the restorative powers of the waters there. And father, you’ve been as well, haven’t you? If you will excuse me, I see Lord Carrington is eager to offer his congratulations.”

  Dulcie ducked away before his great aunt’s old-fashioned manners could land him in any hotter water. At least Polly’s promise that he’d not need to dance attendance on her all evening was proving true. Having the girl hanging on him like Venus on Adonis in that Titian on the wall opposite would prove most annoying. But if she’d be willing to distract his pesky relatives when he had bigger fish to fry, he’d be well content.

  Now, where had Benedict hidden himself?

  “Dulcie, at last brought up to scratch!” he heard as he approached the gossips milling by the Piombo. “I can hardly believe my ears.”

  “Yes, but only because parson’s mousetrap was baited with a van Dyck, two Claudes, and a Titian,” another offered.

  “Only two Claudes? Doesn’t Adler own four?”

  “Our wily viscount must be losing his touch!”

  Dulcie’s nostrils flared as chuckles more appropriate to a pub than to a picture gallery split the air. Heavens knew he enjoyed a good gossip as well as the next man, but it was hardly good ton to speak so about a fellow at his own betrothal celebration. At least Benedict had not joined the tittle-tattling group. He’d no desire to break up a round of fisticuffs amidst Adler’s priceless paintings.

  “Adler has no other heirs besides that plain-faced granddaughter, you know,” he heard another wag assert as he nudged Carrington to make space in the circle. “Dulcie won’t have to wait too much longer for the rest.”

  “Just until the first great-grandchild comes along.”

  Leverett gave a particularly nasty chuckle. “If the first great-grandchild comes along. I’ve heard—”

  “Gentlemen,” Dulcie interrupted, his smile completely at odds with the unexpected churning in his stomach. Why had he ever confided his sexual antipathy towards women to a creature as heartless as Leverett? “So pleased you could join us on this auspicious occasion. It is not every day that one can gaze at length upon the genius of Piombo.”

  “Indeed,” George Norton said, eyes fixed on the painting. “I did not expect to see such varied reactions amongst the observers of Lazarus’s resurrection.”

  “I admire and honor the artist’s choice,” Dulcie said. “By showing us so many different people responding in so many different ways to such a strange and shocking event, Piombo doesn’t tell the viewer how he should feel. He invites him to choose for himself.”

  “Even poor Lazarus doesn’t know quite what to make of it all,” Lattimer Leverett agreed, gesturing towards the reclining figure with a lazy hand. “His head turns towards the Christ, but his body twists back towards the cold stone tomb. Does he regret it, do you think, being so shockingly yanked from his heavenly reward? What is Mr. Pennington’s opinion of the matter, Dulcie?”

  Leverett’s tight smile told him they were no longer speaking only of a painting. “I’m sure I don’t know. Perhaps you should ask him yourself?”

  “I would if he were in attendance tonight. But perhaps now that you are betrothed, the two of you will no longer be living in each other’s pockets?”

  “I saw him earlier,” Norton piped up, then colored as both Dulcie and Leverett focused on him. “Examining the Paradise Lost paintings? The ones hanging in the far room?”

  “Shockingly bad taste on Adler’s part, to hang Fuseli’s modern travesties anywhere near these Old Masters,” Leverett opined, wiping a handkerchief against his quizzing glass. “I’ve rarely laid eyes on anything so lurid.”

  “Lurid? Perhaps to the uninformed critic,” Dulcie taunted. “But it takes a certain refinement of temper to recognize true sublimity.”

  Leverett’s eyes narrowed. “Is that Pennington’s influence I hear? Perhaps he was the one to advise Adler to purchase such monstrosities.”

  “Quite perspicacious of him if he had, considering Adler added them to his collection in 1799.” Dulcie couldn’t help but smile as he caught sight of Benedict out of the corner of his eye, taking up a position near, but not part of, the gossiping group. “Pennington would have been all of four years old at the time.”

  Leverett’s hand flew to his chest. “Lord Dulcie, tender-hearted enough to recall the date of birth of someone besides himself? How womanly of him!”

  Benedict’s face colored. Damn Leverett for his persistent public insinuations.

  “Yes, my memory is not my strongest point.” Dulcie shook his head in mock regret. “Carrington, here, I believe you entered the world in ’79? And Baron Selsey—in ’87? And Mr. Norton, completely a child of this modern century, born in the year five. But for the life of me, my dear Leverett, I simply cannot recall when you first graced the world with your presence.”

  Leverett’s face turned a remarkably satisfying shade of purple.

  “Do you intend to marry in London, my lord?” Norton asked as Leverett sputtered. “Or will you and your lady travel into the country?”

  “At St. George’s,” Julius Adler’s self-satisfied voice answered from over Dulcie’s shoulder. “Sinclair, my boy, you must introduce me to your friends. But first, I believe we have a portrait to unveil?”

  A portrait? Had Polly found out about his portrait, and persuaded Benedict to display it?

  “A portrait?” Leverett’s eyes narrowed. “Of Lord Dulcie?”

  Adler nodded. “Mr. Benedict Pennington was kind enough to paint a betrothal portrait of my future son-in-law. But they’ve kept it all quite a secret between them, these two. Lord Milne, I know, is almost as eager to see the finished wor
k as I am.”

  “Yes, your mother is eager to cede it the pride of place at Milne House,” his father said as he joined the group. “Only fitting, what? Settling down at last, siring an heir in due course. High time to take your rightful place amongst your progenitors. High time.”

  Of course his father would think of a portrait not as a work of art, but as a sign of status and lineage. Nothing more than a practical, dignified sign of a nobleman worthy of public responsibility, the typical aristocratic portrait. How surprised his father would be when Dulcie revealed the decidedly unconventional painting.

  Dulcie’s eyes darted to Benedict’s, anticipation coursing through his frame. But his lover’s face held none of the eagerness he’d expected. In fact, he looked rather ill at ease. Poor boy, was he truly worried about the reception the portrait would receive?

  “Come, everyone,” Adler boomed over the chatter of the crowd. “We’ve another surprise for you tonight! Out here, in the entryway. Lord Milne, stand here beside me, and your lady, too.”

  What he wouldn’t give to take his lover’s hand and squeeze it. He’d no idea Benedict felt so insecure about his own talents.

  “Courage, sir,” he had to content himself with whispering. “A raging success, I guarantee it.”

  But Benedict did not seem at all reassured. “How can you be certain? You haven’t even seen it yet.”

  “Haven’t seen it? But of course I have. And rewarded you for it quite handsomely, too,” he said, raising his eyebrows suggestively.

  Benedict grabbed his sleeve. “But I’ve painted more than one,” he whispered.

  “More than one? And you never showed me?” Dulcie tried hard not to preen. “Well, it will serve you right if Adler’s got hold of something not quite polished enough to display.”

  “Dulcie, no, you don’t understand—”

  But Julius Adler’s booming voice drowned out Benedict’s words. “My dear guests. During our travels on the Continent last year, my granddaughter Polyhymnia and I were blessed to meet one of England’s most promising young painters, a man who extended the hand of friendship to two lonely strangers, and generously shared his knowledge and wisdom as we toured the wonders of Europe’s finest collections of art. And today, we are blessed again, to have this talented artist deign to set his brush to canvas to capture a likeness of my granddaughter’s betrothed. Lord Dulcie, would you do the honors?”