“As well as could be expected, I suppose. Although I suspect I’ve been a true bulwark to them in this awful time. But there’s nothing any of us can do, so we might as well talk about happier things.”
He looked about the studio, his gaze landing, to Angelica’s dismay, on the covered canvas. “Did you just say you’ve been spending a lot of time in the studio, Freddie? Is it for the commission you accepted right around the time of my wedding?”
“Yes, but I’m not quite finished yet.”
“Is that it?” Penny walked toward the draped painting.
“Penny!” she cried, remembering that Penny was one of the few people Freddie allowed to see his works in progress.
He turned around. “Yes, Angelica?”
“Freddie and I were just about to leave to call on the art dealer Signor Cipriani,” she said. “You want to come along?”
“That’s right, Penny. Come along with us,” Freddie echoed fervently.
“Why are you calling on him?”
“You remember the painting at Highgate Court, the one of which I took photographs?” Freddie rushed, his words stumbling over themselves. “Angelica has been helping me track down the painting’s provenance. We think a painting by the same artist passed through Cipriani’s hands—and Cipriani never forgets anything.”
Penny looked briefly astonished. “There was a painting at Highgate Court? But sure, I will come. I love meeting interesting people.”
They ushered Penny out. Angelica placed her hand over her heart in relief: She would have never been able to look at herself in the mirror again if Penny had seen her the way Freddie had.
Penny descended the stairs first. Freddie pulled her into a blind corner and quickly kissed her once more.
“Come back to my house later?” she murmured. Her servants had the afternoon off.
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
* * *
Douglas had not talked while awaiting trial—set for five days hence—but progress had nevertheless been made on the case.
Based on information they had uncovered from the coded dossier, Lady Kingsley had tracked down a safety-deposit box in London that contained a thick stack of letters addressed to a Mr. Frampton. The letters were from the diamond dealers, each agreeing to look at Frampton’s artificial diamonds.
“You see,” Lady Kingsley had said excitedly at their meeting in the morning, “that’s how he got the diamond dealers to cough up the money. I think in the beginning he might not have been thinking about extortion, but merely wanted to see if the synthesized diamonds were truly indistinguishable from the real thing. And then, once the synthesis process proved a failure, he looked at the few replies he’d received, and some of them were sloppily written and could be interpreted to mean the diamond dealer was willing to deal in artificial diamonds. Our man, ever the criminal mind, decided to contact even more diamond dealers. The letters were separated into two groups, and the ones who were not careful about how they responded became his targets.”
For Vere, however, the most crucial piece of the puzzle still remained missing: the true identity of the man now known as Edmund Douglas. Until Freddie and Angelica mentioned their own investigation, he’d never thought to pursue that particular line of inquiry. Now he could have slapped himself for overlooking such obvious and important clues.
Sometimes it was better to be lucky than to be good.
Cipriani was about seventy-five years of age and lived in a large flat in Kensington. Vere had expected a place overflowing with art, but Cipriani was a ruthless curator of his own collection. The parlor where he received them had a Greuze and a Brueghel and nothing else.
Angelica described the painting she and Freddie had seen in the vicarage at Lyndhurst Hall—Vere had not paid any attention to it, apparently. Cipriani listened with his hands tented together.
“I do remember. I bought it from a young man in the spring of ’seventy.”
Twenty-seven years ago.
“Was he the artist?” asked Angelica.
“He claimed that it had been a gift. But judging by his nervousness while I assessed his painting, I would say he was the artist. Of course, there was also the coincidence that the artist’s initials were the same as his.”
Vere hoped his best vapid expression was enough to hide his excitement. He further hoped either Freddie or Angelica would inquire after the young man’s name.
“What was his name?” Freddie asked.
“George Carruthers.”
George Carruthers. It might be a pseudonym, but at least it was a place to start.
“Have you ever come across him or his works again?” asked Angelica.
Cipriani shook his head. “I do not believe so. A shame, rather, as he had more than a modicum of talent. With proper instruction and dedication, he could have made some interesting art.”
The subject of George Carruthers exhausted, Angelica and Freddie talked with the old man on the latest developments in art. Vere did not fail to notice the way they glanced at each other—he could only hope that he hadn’t interrupted their very first instance of lovemaking.
He smiled inwardly. He had always wished fervently for Freddie’s happiness: not only for Freddie’s sake, but for his own, so that he could one day live vicariously through Freddie’s domestic bliss.
Presupposing that he himself must always be on the outside looking in. That his own life would remain barren of the kind of contentment he so easily imagined for Freddie.
He remembered the way his wife had looked at him the day before, above the banks of the River Dourt: as if he were full of possibilities. As if they were full of possibilities.
But his mind was already made up. It was time she understood.
When they rose to bid Cipriani good-bye, Vere suddenly remembered that there was something more he wished to know, a question that no one else had asked.
So he did the asking himself. “Mr. Carruthers, did he say why he was selling his painting?”
“Yes, he did,” replied Cipriani. “He mentioned he was raising funds for a venture to South Africa.”
Chapter Seventeen
Her bed was crimson Italian silk. Against this sumptuous backdrop, Angelica stretched, immodestly, deliciously. Part of Freddie still felt he should avert his eyes. The rest of him not only could not look away, but reached out a hand to caress the underside of her breast.
“Hmm, that was splendid,” she said.
His cheeks grew warm. He leaned in to kiss her again. “The pleasure was all mine.”
And how.
“Can I make a confession?” he asked.
“Hmm, you never have confessions to make. This I must hear.”
He cleared his throat, embarrassed now that he was about to volunteer the information. “I was not that interested in the provenance of the angel painting.”
Her jaw went slack. “You weren’t?”
“Your oldest friend asks you to paint her in the altogether. You are terribly tempted but not sure how to say yes. Wouldn’t you find a seemingly legitimate inquiry so that you may exchange favors?”
She sat up straight, a rich cascade of crimson silk held to her breasts. “Freddie! I never guessed you to be so sneaky.”
He flushed. “I’m not—not usually, in any case. I just wanted to be a little less transparent.”
She hit him lightly on the arm. “Oh, you were opaque enough for me. I had quite despaired of how I would ever make myself understood.”
“You could have just told me.”
“If I could, I would have done it ten years ago.” She kissed him where she’d hit him. “It was probably best I didn’t: You viewed me as completely lacking in feminine attributes.”
“That is not true. It was more the case that I never thought about your feminine attributes. I mean, you were—and are—my oldest friend. You didn’t need breasts and buttocks to matter to me.”
“That is a sweet thing to say, although my breasts and buttocks
might dissent.”
He smiled.
She snuggled closer to him. “Did you ever think that I was too critical? Or had too many ideas about how you should do things?”
“No, never. My father was too critical: He put me down because he enjoyed it, and because I didn’t quite know how to fight back like Penny did. Your suggestions were always rooted in a sincere interest in me. And it was never a condition of our friendship that I must do as you said: You gave your advice and I was free to take it or not.”
“Good,” she said.
He hesitated.
She peered at him. “There is something else you want to say, isn’t there? Go ahead; I’d like to hear it.”
He kept forgetting how well she knew him. “I was thinking that there was a time when I felt you were too ambitious for me. You were constantly telling me that I needed to paint faster, and exhibit, and establish a large body of work.”
“Ah, that. That was when I was unbearably jealous of Lady Tremaine. I was trying to make you see that she didn’t know rose madder from crimson lake, while I was an expert in both art and the art world.”
He truly had been blind. It never occurred to him that her seemingly frantic drive to propel him toward artistic prominence had anything to do with hidden desires of the heart. He lifted a strand of her hair. It would seem he had not done it justice in his painting: There were shades of auburn too.
“Before Lady Tremaine left for America, she’d hoped I would find solace in your arms. But when you came to comfort me, I all but chased you away.”
“I don’t blame you. I was very rude about it.”
“When you married Canaletto out of the blue, I couldn’t help but worry that my conduct that day had something to do with it. Just know I’ve always regretted my abruptness.”
She shook her head. “My inability to handle my disappointment without doing something stupid was not your fault, but my own shortcoming. In fact, this time, I was determined that should you turn me down, I was absolutely not going to do anything foolish—like sleeping with Penny, for instance—to soothe my bruised vanity.”
“Penny would be traumatized. He still thinks of you as a sister.”
She chuckled. “I would be traumatized, too.”
She lifted her arm and set her hand down atop a small framed picture on her nightstand. Absently she twisted the frame this way and that, and he saw that the frame contained a pencil drawing of her face he had sketched many years ago and given her as a gift. The art critic in her should have found too many defects in the sketch, which lacked both technique and composition, and seemed to have only a great earnestness to recommend itself.
He’d always loved and cared about her, but now his heart was filled with tenderness, so much that it was almost painful. “I’m glad you came back,” he said, tracing his hand across her cheekbone.
“So am I,” she said, her gaze direct and clear. “So am I.”
* * *
It was very late at night, but her husband still had not returned from London.
Elissande lay awake in an unrelieved darkness, staring at a ceiling she could not see, thinking of the first time she laid eyes on him. She remembered every detail: the homburg he’d worn, the glimpse of blue waistcoat beneath his fawn jacket, the spark of sunlight on his cuff links, but most of all, the joyful buoyancy she’d experienced when he’d smiled at his brother.
If only they’d met a week later, when she no longer needed to entrap anyone. How different things would have been.
But she had entrapped him. And he was not happy with her. And if he would not talk to her—or make love to her—how would they ever be anything but strangers in this marriage?
Her door creaked slightly as it swung open. He was home. He had opened her door. He was on her threshold and had but to take one more step to enter her room.
Excitement shot through her, an excitement that was almost panic. Her heart pumped madly, like a steam-driven piston. She bit her lower lip to not breathe too heavily.
She must hold very quiet, and give the firm impression of being sound asleep. Then he might be more encouraged to approach her. To touch her. And from there, to forgive her, some day.
She willed him to come to her, to seek solace in her arms for his loneliness, his weariness.
But the door closed again and he sought his own bed instead.
* * *
The longcase clock gonged the hour, three brassy chimes that quavered in the dark, still air.
It was always three o’clock.
He ran. The pitch-black corridor would not end. Something slammed into his calf. He cried out in pain, stumbling. But he must keep running. He must reach his mother and warn her of the mortal danger.
There, the hall. At the distant end of its Olympic length, the staircase that would be her undoing. He’d almost made it. He would save her; he would not let her fall.
He stumbled again, pain lancing deep into his knees.
He hobbled on.
But she was already there when he at last reached the foot of the staircase. Blood pooled under her head, blood the same black-red as her gown and the rubies glittering on her chest.
He screamed. Why could he not save her? Why was he never in time to save her?
Someone called his name. Someone shook his shoulder. It must be the person responsible for his mother’s death. He threw the person down.
“Penny, are you all right?” she squeaked.
No, he was not all right. He would never be all right again.
“Penny, stop. Stop. You’ll hurt me.”
He very much wanted to hurt somebody.
“Penny, please!”
His eyes flew open. He was gasping, as if he’d been running from the hounds of hell. The room was pitch-dark, just like in his dream. He made a sound at the back of his throat, not yet free from the terror of the nightmare.
“It’s all right,” murmured the person in bed with him, someone warm and soft who smelled of honey and roses. “It was just a bad dream.”
She caressed his face and his hair. “It was just a bad dream,” she repeated. “Don’t be afraid.”
Ridiculous. He wasn’t afraid of anything.
She kissed him on his jaw. “I’m here. It’s all right. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
He was big, strong, and clever. He needed no one to protect him from something as flimsy as dreams.
She pulled him into her arms. “I have bad dreams too. Sometimes I dream I’m Prometheus, chained to the rock forever and ever. And then, of course, I can’t go back to sleep afterward, so I think of Capri, beautiful, faraway Capri.”
She had an exquisite voice. He’d never noticed before. But there in the dark, as she spoke, the sound of her words was as lovely as the sound of water to a desert tribe.
“I imagine that I have a boat of my own,” she whispered. “When it’s warm and breezy, I sail it into the open waters, sleep under the sun, and turn as brown as the fishermen. And when it’s stormy, I stand atop the cliffs and watch the sea rage, knowing that an angry sea keeps me isolated—and keeps me safe.”
His breaths no longer came in quite such huge gulps. He understood what she was doing. After the abrupt loss of their mother, he’d done the same for Freddie, his arm around Freddie’s shoulders, talking about netting trout and catching fireflies until Freddie fell asleep again.
But he’d never let anyone do it for him.
“It was unlikely, of course,” she continued. “I always knew that it was most unlikely. If ever I managed to get away from my uncle, I would need to work for a living, and nobody pays a woman much for anything. I’d have to scrimp to save for a rainy day, and count myself fortunate if I could someday spare the coin for a train ticket to Brighton.” Her fingers traced his cheekbone. “But Capri made it possible to go on. It was my flame in the dark, my escape when there was no escape.”
He tightened his arm about her—he hadn’t even realized he had his arm about her.
“I know everything there is to know about Capri. Or at least everything people thought worth writing down in travelogues: its history, its topography, the etymology of its name. I know what grows in its interior and what swims in its waters. I know the winds that come with each season.”
Her hand rubbed his back as she spoke. Her words were quiet, almost hypnotic. She might have successfully lulled him back to sleep were it not for the fact that her body was directly pressed into his.
“So tell me,” he said.
She must have felt it, the physiological change on his part. But she did not pull away. If anything, she fitted herself more snugly to him.
“It is probably quite overrun these days. One book mentioned that there is a colony of writers and artists from England, France, and Germany.”
He could not stop himself anymore. He kissed her throat, his fingers unhooking her nightdress. Her skin, the smoothness of it, made his heart lose its beat.
“Of course,” she went on, her voice increasingly unsteady, “I ignore their presence entirely so I may preserve my illusion of a sparsely populated paradise, empty except for the sea and the sky and me.”
“Of course,” he said.
He peeled her nightdress from her, pulled his own nightshirt over his head, and turned them so that she was on top of him.
“What do you think about when you wake up from nightmares?” she asked, her words barely audible.
He tugged off the ribbon at the end of her plait and loosened her hair. It fell, like a cloud, about his face and shoulders.
“This,” he said. “This is what I think about.”
Not the sexual act per se, but the presence of another. A closeness that would cocoon and shield him.
He had thought of her the last time he had the nightmare, at Highgate Court. As she ignored the presence of foreigners crowding the rugged shores of Capri, he had selectively forgotten her antagonism toward him—and his resentment toward her—and remembered only her sweetest smiles.
One did what one must to get through the night.
But now she was pliant and willing above him. Now she not only permitted, but conspired for him to penetrate deep inside her. Now she whimpered and sighed with pleasure, her lips against his ear, her breaths invoking waves of almost violent desire.
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