by Bliss Bennet
“What, Carracci’s St. John? Blasphemous, it is, to call one of the great masterpieces of Western art indecent.” Dulcie gave a mournful shake of his head. “I fear we’ll never make a connoisseur of you, Father.”
“You mistake the matter, sir. It is not the painting of St. John to which I refer.” His father flapped his hand again towards the bedchamber. “It is the other!”
“No, no, do not apologize,” Dulcie said, waving a careless hand of his own. “If it is not to your taste, we may certainly return it to Mr. Adler. Especially as we seem to have an appointment with him this very day.”
“Return it? When you said it was one of the most valuable in the collection? What, do you mean to exchange it for another?”
“No, father. I mean to return it to its rightful owner.”
Lord Milne blinked. “But you are its rightful owner. Not only of that painting, but of two others. And you will come with me today, and select the ones you wish to add to your collection, as per the terms of the marriage contract.”
“I will come with you today, but not to steal away any paintings. I will come to return poor St. John to his rightful place in Adler’s gallery.” The corner of Dulcie’s mouth quirked. “I fear he has been missing his view of Claude’s lovely seaport.”
“What?” His father’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. “Dulcie, have you run mad?”
Dulcie grinned. His declaration had been impetuous, yes. Yet, the longer it hung in the air, the more convinced he became that it was the only honorable choice. Benedict was right. The painting did not belong to him, nor to Dulcie. It belonged to Adler, and perhaps someday to the nation, if Benedict could convince Adler not to use his collection again as a bargaining chip in the marriage mart.
“Unexpectedly high-minded, perhaps, but certainly not mad,” Dulcie said. “Why should poor Adler turn over three of his most prized possessions, just because his granddaughter had the good sense to toss me over?”
“Because those are the terms to which we agreed!”
“I did not agree to that. You never informed me when I signed the contract that such a clause had been included.”
“Oh, do not quibble over trifles. You’ve never had any interest in the finer details of any legal matter. And even if I’d told you of the clause beforehand, I sincerely doubt you would have refused to sign.”
Dulcie frowned. No, he probably wouldn’t have refused, would he? He’d just have laughed at his father’s unexpected cunning, and signed away with an extra flourish. Why now, then, did the thought of absconding with three of Adler’s paintings weigh so uncomfortably on his conscience?
“Besides, the good Lord knows we need some incentive to entice another suitable lady to take you on,” his father added.
“What sensible lady would agree to marry a gentleman jilted by another?”
“Now, now, son, do not worry about that.” Lord Milne gave him a comforting pat on the back. How ready he always was to forgive and forget. “We’ll try again next season, find a young chit just out of the schoolroom, one who didn’t witness the unveiling of that improper portrait. Speaking of which, what is that thing doing in this house?”
What was Benedict’s portrait doing here? How could he explain to his father, when he could not even explain to himself? How every shred of feeling inside him had cried out against allowing it to remain in Benedict’s studio, just another bit of artistic detritus among the partially painted canvases and empty bladders of paint that his lover had left behind.
Just as he’d abandoned Dulcie himself.
Lord Milne shook his head. “Bad enough that painter tricked you into posing for such a thing—”
“He didn’t trick me, Fa—”
“Now, don’t bother to deny you posed for him,” Lord Milne interrupted. “I recognized that scar on your calf from when you fell from the apple tree, and that oddly-shaped birthmark on the back of your shoulder. Misguided, is it not, for a painter to include such blemishes? A proper portrait depicts its sitter in the most flattering light.”
“Not according to Mr. Pennington,” Dulcie said with a wry twist of the mouth.
“Pennington? Oh, merciful heavens!” Lord Milne’s eyes widened in sudden recognition. “Was not Pennington the name of the boy who sent that painfully revealing letter to you, just before you were off to Oxford?”
The devil and his minions! Why did his father have to recall that long ago incident today? Dulcie shook his head. If only one could pray to Saint Anthony to lose a memory, rather than to find something lost.
Lord Milne’s frown deepened. “And here I thought it was you who was in danger of corrupting him! But now I see who was the true serpent in the garden. Did he think to shame you by sending that atrocious portrait here? Or to mock you, after you so roundly denounced it?”
“No! Benedict would never be so cruel.”
“Then how did the appalling thing find its way into this house?”
Dulcie drew a deep breath and met his father’s eyes. “I brought it here.”
“You?”
“Yes. I stole it away from Benedict’s studio after he left town.”
“But why—” Sudden understanding lit Lord Milne’s eyes. “Oh! You mean to have it destroyed. Painted over? Or better yet, burned! Yes, very wise, very wise. Just don’t do it in the house, please. Poisonous, some of the things they use to make those paints, I understand”
Dulcie’s pulse drummed in his ears. Destroy the most evocative painting Benedict had ever created?
He chased his father down the passageway to his own bedchamber. But when they reached the door, Lord Milne waved him back. “Now, now, Dulcie, don’t trouble yourself. I’ll send a footman up to take the noxious thing away, and you’ll never have to look at it again. Thank heavens Pennington’s parents are both dead and in their graves. How appalling, to think they might have witnessed their son so publicly shamed.”
Their son? Or his own? Dulcie rushed after his father, grabbing his arm before he could reach for the bell pull.
“Are you ashamed of it, Father?”
Lord Milne frowned. “What?”
Dulcie gestured towards Benedict’s portrait, which leaned against the wall next to the wardrobe. “Are you ashamed to see me like that? Ashamed for others to see me like that?”
“Of course I’m ashamed! Who wouldn’t be, to see their son posed like a, a—like the lewdest of courtesans? How dare Pennington insult you like that!”
“You keep placing the blame on Benedict, Father. But he didn’t trick me. I posed for him of my own accord.”
“But surely you never posed like that! Only a foul, disordered imagination would depict a future peer of the realm in such a manner. Why, you look as debauched as an odalisque in a sultan’s harem!”
Dulcie stared at the painting. Lewd? Debauched? He’d thought the same, hadn’t he, when Julius Adler had first unveiled it. But now, after staring at it all night, he saw something far different.
Satiety. Peace.
Love.
“He did only imagine it, Dulcie?” His father’s words faltered, less a question than a plea. “Didn’t he?”
Dulcie reached out a finger, slowly tracing the lines and curves of his own body on the canvas. “No, Father. He only painted what he saw.”
Lord Milne backed away, shaking his head. “Still! No decent man would paint the heir to an earldom as an effeminate weakling.”
“Is that what you see when you look at me?” Dulcie asked, his eyes turning to his father’s. “An effeminate weakling?”
“No! You at least have the decency to hide what you are! Unlike that painter, who seems to wish to tell all the world of his unnatural proclivities, the damned fool!”
Dulcie stepped back, his lips pressed tightly together. All these years, all this effort to protect his deepest longings, and still, this was what his father thought of him. Weak. Effeminate. Less than a man.
And yet he would still rather blame someone else, rather th
an his own son, for the weaknesses he deplored.
A bark of shocked laughter spilled from Dulcie’s mouth. Why should he be surprised by his father’s self-deceptions? Hadn’t he himself always done just the same? All those years ago, he’d blamed both Benedict and his father for his being sent away to Oxford. But in truth, his own thoughtless demand that the boy write to him had been the true cause of the trouble. And he’d also blamed Copeland for betraying him, when it had been Dulcie’s heedless behavior that had led to his uncle’s discovery of their clandestine relations, and his subsequent confrontation with the Earl. Perhaps it was a family trait, to blame others for troubles that one caused oneself.
He thought he’d learned his lesson after those two painful incidents: keep his true self entirely hidden. Not only from the world at large, which of course one must do when one lived in a society which denied the validity of one man’s love for another. But also from anyone for whom he came to care.
Just yesterday, he’d blamed Benedict, Benedict and the feelings he’d laid at Dulcie’s feet in that portrait, for pushing them apart. But wasn’t it his own unwillingness to stop hiding, his unwillingness to allow himself to be vulnerable, to love, that had led to their break?
“I think your anger misplaced, Father,” he said as he covered Benedict’s portrait in a protective cloth. “Mr. Pennington is not responsible for my, as you call them, unnatural proclivities. I am.”
“I’ve no need to hear about your private doings, Dulcie.” His father waved a hand, as if shooing away a pesky fly. “Just do your duty to the Milne name, and we’ll say no more of it.”
“But the two are inextricably linked. I cannot do my duty—cannot wed and sire an heir—because of my, as you call them, unnatural proclivities. It grows tedious, continually pretending that I can and will.”
“But you are the only male heir. Surely you’ll not allow the earldom to fall extinct at your death?”
Dulcie’s heart gave a sharp jerk. But he could not allow his guilt and shame to drive him any longer.
“Father. The only way I’ll ever sire an heir is if my mythical future wife cuckolds me. I’d rather not have that pleasure, thank you very much.”
He bowed, then turned on his heel, Benedict’s painting in his arms.
“A bland choice, white.”
Dulcie drew the new Lady Saybrook and her party into the Assembly Rooms and sniffed at the parade of pallid gowns worn by the female attendees of Lincolnshire’s Annual Stuff Ball. Long before his break with Benedict, he’d rashly promised Theo Pennington to attend him and his new bride during their first foray into society as a married couple. Saybrook thought his presence would send a message to his peers that while his new wife might only be the daughter of a steward, she did not lack for friends of influence.
Gossip about the scandalous portrait evidently had not reached the bucolic environs of Lincolnshire, for Saybrook had not written to rescind his invitation. And so now here he was, in company not only with Lord and Lady Saybrook, but also with the man who had turned his back and walked out on him not quite a month earlier.
As always, his eyes kept straying to Benedict, the most striking man in the room. His former lover stood a bit to the side of his sister-in-law’s party, tight-lipped, unsmiling, but too damned handsome all the same. Why had Dulcie not realized how painful it would be to see him again? He’d owe Saint Genesius, patron saint of actors, a boon if he could successfully maintain his mask of disinterested bystander for the rest of this blasted evening. At least the pulse that pounded in his in throat each time he caught sight of Benedict was hidden by his neatly tied cravat.
How he longed to erase that stern, closed look from his lover’s face, to make him smile and laugh. A few jokes at the expense of the ridiculous person who had first come up with the idea for this Stuff Ball—to encourage the consumption of local wool by allowing free entrance to a ball to any lady who came dressed in a frock made from it—would surely do the trick. Not to mention the one with the brilliant notion to name a different patroness for the ball each year, a local notable who would chose the color each and every lady was required to wear.
Dulcie’s breath hitched when Benedict’s brown eyes caught him staring. But his lover only frowned, then turned away.
Dulcie forced his attention back to the new Lady Saybrook. She, not Benedict, after all, was the reason why he was here tonight. Gazing with calf’s-eyes at Benedict would do little to launch her successfully into Lincolnshire society.
At least Harriot had enough color in her face not to fade into insignificance under the dictate for white. Unlike Benedict, whom he could not but notice had grown decidedly pale in the weeks since they had parted. His sister-in-law had been wise enough to ask her dressmaker to trim her gown’s neckline and sleeves with a dark green ribbon, but Benedict had chosen to clothe himself only in the starkest of white and black. And he stood as stiffly as his sister-in-law, as if they were both puppets with sticks up their backs, rather than flesh and blood human beings. If only they would carry themselves with a bit more ease! She’d convince these country gentry to welcome her as the lady of an earl rather than dismiss her as merely the daughter of a steward. And he’d not have the crowd gossiping that his coldness signaled his displeasure with his brother’s choice.
Well, he might not be able to please surly Benedict, but damn him if he couldn’t tug a smile from the man’s anxious sister-in-law.
He gave Harriot’s arm an encouraging squeeze with one hand, then raised his quizzing glass with the other. “White? I do wonder what Lady Sheffield was thinking. Next year, my dear Lady Saybrook, when you are the Patroness, you should select a more flattering color. Cerulean, perhaps? Or hazel, to match your eyes?”
“And what should it matter to you, my lord?” Benedict’s sister-in-law tapped her fan to his arm, making a good show of courage in the face of the crowd. Almost every eye in the room was on her. “The rules restricting gentlemen’s attire have long been abandoned.”
Dulcie stroked a hand down his favorite waistcoat. The gentlemen, praise Paul the Hermit, could wear whatever colors they chose. All they had to do was pay the price of admission to keep from being turned away.
“But when I marry, I must pay for my lady’s new gown, in the appropriate color,” Dulcie said, his eyes flicking again in Benedict’s direction. “Or to purchase yards and yards of this hideous material in lieu of it.”
Benedict stiffened even further at Dulcie’s words. But he stepped closer, almost as if compelled against his will. “By the time you wed, Dulcie, the requirements are likely to have been dropped entirely,” he said, his brown eyes snapping with annoyance. “And if you don’t cease your complaining, I’ll dress you in a lovely white shroud in this portrait you’ve forced me to paint.”
A shroud? Dulcie’s eyes narrowed.
“Lord Dulcie, have you a partner for the opening set?” Lady Saybrook asked, glancing back and forth between him and her brother-in-law. The air between them fairly crackled. “Come, allow me to introduce you to some of our local ladies.”
Dulcie smiled at her attempt to diffuse the tension, all in the guise of a bravura show of confidence. He likely knew more of the local ladies than she did, poor girl.
“But am I not to dance the first with your charming self? We all know how little Lord Saybrook enjoys treading a measure.”
“Oh, no, Dulcie.” Theo Pennington, Lord Saybrook, cut between Dulcie and his new bride. “I may not be a dab hand at dancing, but no one but myself will lead out my lady at her first ball as my wife.”
Dulcie stepped back in surprise. Knowing Saybrook’s antipathy for dancing, he’d assumed he’d be the one to introduce Lady Saybrook to the dance tonight.
“Rejected again, Dulcie?” Benedict asked they watched as the couple moved out into the crowd.
He wouldn’t take offense, despite Benedict’s waspish tone. For as Saybrook took his lady’s hand, the wrinkles marring his wife’s forehead disappeared. And as they wa
ited for the dance to begin, she and Saybrook smiled at one another as if no one else in the room mattered at all.
Good girl. A public display of tender feelings would likely win over the sentimental half of the crowd.
And if he and Benedict could just keep from making a scene . . .
“My dear Sibilla,” he said, turning to Benedict’s sister rather than respond to his former lover’s taunt. “Take pity on a spurned man, and dance the first with me.”
But her husband, too, swooped in to claim his lady, making her eyes shine brighter than the gaslights on Westminster Bridge. Gauche, really, how openly these Penningtons expressed their affection for their spouses.
With such models of tender attachment before him, no wonder Benedict had found Dulcie’s romantic professions wanting.
But before Dulcie could tease Benedict over the outré behavior of his siblings, his former lover turned on his heel and strode away towards the card room.
Dulcie graciously engaged another partner, even while he fumed in silence. Did not Benedict realize how refusing to dance would make things more difficult for his new sister-in-law?
After dancing the second with Lady Saybrook, and the third with Sibilla Pennington, all with no sign of Benedict, Dulcie decided enough was enough. With a gracious nod, he brought Sibilla to her next partner, then left the floor in search of her brother.
He found him not in the card room, but outside, leaning against the back wall. Foolish man, didn’t he realize how dirty the stones of the building were? No, he was too lost in his own thoughts, pensively staring at the gibbous moon.
But Dulcie no longer had the right to ask of what Benedict dreamed. The realization brought a tight, melancholy ache to his chest.
“Pennington,” he whispered, reluctant to pull Benedict from his reverie even in spite of his frustration with him. He placed a hand on his sleeve. “I hate to see you standing about by yourself in this stupid manner. You had much better dance.”