Lady Windermere's Lover

by Miranda Neville

  “Tell me about yourself.”

  It would be easier to show her. “May I borrow your pencil?” She handed it over without any comment but a raised brow. “Would you mind standing? You have the only chair.” He posed her at the end of the bed, the cheap worsted curtains providing a swirl of drapery to complement her graceful form. “Look at the window, please, to present a three-quarters profile.”

  “Oliver said you used to paint.”

  “Hm.” He outlined the bedpost, curtain, and the sweep of her skirts in half a dozen deft strokes. “I don’t suppose you have any charcoal.”

  “In the pencil case.”

  He rummaged in the utilitarian wooden box on the floor next to the chair. “I always found I could get a better effect with charcoal. For shading.”

  “Did your mother teach you to draw?” Cynthia asked.

  “I think I told you my sister had no talent. It turned out that I did. I always wished I could be an artist.”

  “But you had to be an earl instead.”

  He shrugged and applied the fragile black stick to the outlined curtain and smudged it with his finger. He hadn’t forgotten the technique, though he badly needed practice. With hands occupied, and half his mind too, he found it easier to talk about the past.

  “My father insisted it was no profession for a nobleman, or any man for that matter. He had no interest in the works of man’s creation, be they literature, music, or visual. He preferred the products of nature, especially when they could be cultivated for profit or killed for sport. He tolerated the habit in my mother, because he loved her. And because she was a woman.” As he sketched the details of Cynthia’s figure he remembered the late earl’s reaction when he drew pictures of horses instead of riding them. “My enjoyment of drawing lessons was a source of strife between my mother and father. But they came to an accommodation. At Amblethorpe, for most of the year, I was my father’s son. But we spent a few months each year at Beaulieu where I was allowed to do as I liked.”

  She turned her head to show eyes glistening with tears. “And after she died?”

  “We didn’t go to Beaulieu anymore.”

  Cynthia held her breath. Beaulieu loomed over his past and their marriage and she wanted to hear more. His dark head bent over his paper and she feared his confidences had come to an end. “Why not?”

  “After Mama and Amelia died, my father couldn’t bear to go there. But she had left it to me and on my twenty-first birthday it was mine. I intended to live there.” His expression was flat again, not closed off so much as bleak.

  “Oh God,” she whispered. “And then you lost it.”

  “Julian told you, did he?”

  “That’s why you married me.”

  “The only reason. I don’t care about the rest of your uncle’s money. All I wanted was to get my mother’s house back.”

  “I’m sorry.” What else could she say?

  “I was too, but not now. I am the one who should apologize. I thought when I had Beaulieu back, I would feel happy again, but it made no difference. I could win back the house, but not the people I loved.” He spoke slowly as though the words were hard to summon. Her eyes prickled and she wondered if he was close to weeping himself. “In my anger I treated you unfairly.” He looked up, and the candor in his expression sent her heart flying. “I hope you’ll give me the chance to make amends. Might you be able to forgive me?” Hearing him own up to some of his past mistakes was a balm to her wounds.

  “There’s one thing I want to make clear,” she said. “I never betrayed you with Julian.”

  “I know that now.”

  “I am not wholly innocent. I encouraged his attentions because I knew they would irk you. And I came near to surrender.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t. I believe I could have forgiven you, but it would have been hard for me to forget.” He sketched away for a minute then looked up with a steely glare. “I won’t let you go to him.”

  Why? Her chest was tight and she couldn’t speak, even if she’d dared voice the question. Tell me it’s more than possessiveness and jealousy. She groped in her pocket, seeking a handkerchief.

  “You moved.”

  She had forgotten she was posing for him. “I beg your pardon.” She hoped he’d say more but he was intent on his drawing. “May I look?”

  “Very well,” he said after a moment’s hesitation. “It’s very rough and I am sorely out of practice. I would only show my work at this stage to a fellow artist.”

  It was rough, but even this unfinished sketch amazed her. “You are good. But you’ve flattered me.”

  “On the contrary. I haven’t begun to do you justice. You are a beautiful woman, Cynthia.”

  The simple statement meant more to her than any of Julian’s clever compliments. “Thank you. Did you stop having lessons after your mother died?”

  “I dismissed my drawing master out of deference to my father, though I resented it bitterly. The following year I went up to Oxford, determined to continue my studies along with Latin and Greek. The teacher I found recommended I copy the statues in the Ashmolean Museum.”

  “That’s how you met Julian.”

  “The museum was located in the basement of the Bodleian Library. He laughed at my tutor’s hidebound method and said I should travel to Europe and learn to paint like the Old Masters. A few months later, after we’d been summarily ejected from Christ Church College and ordered never to darken the precincts of the university again, that’s what I did. We went to Paris.”

  “That must have been fun.” Cynthia sat on the edge of the bed.

  “Oh it was. And it vexed my father greatly. We spent the next four years having the time of our lives, in Italy, Germany, Holland, and above all France. I studied drawing in Amsterdam, oil painting in Rome, and both in Paris. We saw the Bastille fall and breathed the heady oxygen of La Liberté.”

  “Were you a revolutionary sympathizer, Damian? I find it hard to believe.”

  “I was,” he replied stiffly, much more like his usual self. “Until it all went wrong. The revolution turned to cruelty and violence and we came home. The principles that sounded so fine in theory soon created chaos.”

  “What about the others? Julian and your friends. Did they feel the same?”

  “Robert continued to mouth revolutionary platitudes while gambling away his inheritance. Marcus didn’t much care.”

  “And Julian?”

  Damian shrugged. “I thought I knew Julian as well as any living soul, but I can’t tell you exactly what he thinks of the way Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity descended into mass murder. He went back to Paris alone after Robert and I came home for good. Something happened to him there. And then it happened. My towering folly and great disaster.”

  “I don’t understand why you blame Julian. You lost to Robert, and it was he who lost Beaulieu again.”

  “We played all the time and lost to each other. Vast sums. Marcus makes his living from gaming and Robert was mad for cards and dice. It was an obsession with him. I didn’t care for play, except in fun, and Julian, with no money to risk, only ever bet chicken stakes. Throwing the deed to Beaulieu onto the table was stupid. I was among friends and very drunk. Drunker than I realized. I passed out, and this is why I blame Julian. He encouraged me to make the bet and then he took me home, damn him. The next day I went to Robert to redeem the estate but it was too late. He’d never have lost Beaulieu to another gamester if Julian had been there to stop him.”

  “Julian meant it for the best.”

  “Did he? I doubt it. He pretended to apologize. And he had the gall to offer the consolation that I would still eventually inherit Amblethorpe. I hated Amblethorpe and he knew it. Robert at least was genuinely sorry.”

  “Did you speak to either of them again?”

  “I went north to tell my father and decided I had to become an upstanding member of the nobility. I wrote to Robert and Julian and told them I was changing my habits, that I couldn’t continue the
wild life I’d been leading since I was sixteen.” He pulled a rueful face. “I daresay I was a bit pompous.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised, though under the circumstance you could be forgiven.”

  “Apparently not. I had been back in town a couple of weeks when Julian invited me to breakfast. I was actually pleased. I had missed him and thought we might make up our quarrel, even if we no longer did everything together.” Throughout the recitation Damian had been wound up, intent on his tale of the painful past. She had never seen her husband blush but she was fairly sure that underneath his tan his cheekbones turned red. “I shouldn’t tell you this next bit. Not suitable for a lady’s ears.”

  “I believe I will survive.” She couldn’t imagine what he would say that was more shocking than those Persian paintings. Not to mention what they had done together yesterday in this very spot. “I am a married lady, after all.”

  “That’s the trouble. The next bit concerns a female who was neither a lady nor married.”

  “You had a mistress? How shocking! I thought you had resolved to turn respectable.”

  “There’s nothing untoward about a single man having— Never mind. I see you are teasing.”

  “I’ve spent hours in Caro’s company.”

  “The lady in question was a dancer at the opera and not my mistress, though I intended that she would be and was not without hope. Until I called at Julian’s lodging and found him in bed with her.”

  “Oh dear! Did you love . . . her?”

  “I was deeply enamored, though love may be overstating it.”

  “There seems to be a pattern to his revenge. So at this point you were the injured party. I suppose you had to get back at him.” What was it about men, that they couldn’t put wrongs aside and move on? “Something about a collection of pictures.”

  “I’m not proud of myself. Through my father, I had introduced Julian to Lord Maddox. I mentioned the affair to Radcliffe and his fatter purse prevailed. It was petty on my part, but I can’t help thinking Julian deserved it.”

  “What happened to the dancer? What was her name?”

  “I don’t remember. I suppose she stayed with him for a while. Julian never had any difficulty attracting women, even without a fat purse.”

  “Whenever you mention him, there is an edge to your tone that’s just like his when he speaks of you. Neither of you can leave the past alone.”

  “I’ve never had a friend like him, before or since.”

  “You miss him.”

  “I miss what we once had. And I suppose I regret that I can never have it back.” He sighed. “Our friendship was like our youth, never to be recovered.”

  “You poor old man. Do you need me to carry your charcoal?” She offered a hand with mockery he chose to ignore. Instead he followed her invitation and sat next to her on the bed.

  “Now you know about my regrettable past.”

  “Regret is fruitless. Every experience helped make you the man you are.”

  “I daren’t ask if that is a good thing.” he said, looping an arm around her shoulders. “Thank you for listening to my long, dreary tale.”

  “No thanks are needed. I want to hear about your past, your thoughts, your plans for the future. Part of the trouble with our early marriage was that we didn’t talk, or rather you didn’t, except in French. The only place you didn’t speak French was in the bedchamber.” She leaned against his chest, covered only by his shirt. His body warmed her cheek; she felt his breathing and heard the beat of his heart. “You turned things about,” she said, slipping her arms about his torso. She’d never held a man like this before and it was lovely. “Yesterday you spoke French in here.”

  “So I did. I suppose you understood every word.”

  “I confess that I am uncertain of the meaning of the verb foutre.”

  “It’s idiomatic, very hard to translate. In some uses it means ‘to put.’ ”

  “Je veux te foutre.” She remembered the phrase. “ ‘I want to put you’ doesn’t make sense.”

  “I told you it was an idiom. Je veux beaucoup te foutre. I don’t think I can translate it. There’s an English word beginning with the same letter and quite unacceptable in polite society.”

  “You fiend! I would never say that word.”

  “You appear to know it, however. One wonders what they teach at the Birmingham Academy for Young Ladies.” A low chuckle rippled through him.

  “I heard it in London. No one would dare use it in respectable Birmingham.”

  “Sounds deadly dull.”

  “It is.”

  “Since your education in excitement was inadequate, I shall have to take you in hand.”

  “Teach me something else.”

  He whispered, sending warm breath and delicious shivers into her ear. “Je veux descendre à la cave et te baiser là.”

  A hum of sensation shot through her to the area she assumed he meant. “If kissing me in the cellar means what I think it does, you already did that.”

  “I wasn’t sure you remembered. Under the influence of bhang you came quickly and departed into oblivion.”

  “Tell me more.”

  “I’m talking myself into a state unsuitable for the forenoon.”

  “It’s not as though we have anywhere to go.” She rolled her eyes at the window.

  With an exaggerated sigh he pushed her away and returned to the chair. “Stand up, my lady. I have a drawing to finish.”

  Disappointed, Cynthia resumed her pose. Damian worked away at his charcoal with profound concentration. Only the occasional mutter, of satisfaction or disgust, broke a silence rendered complete by the snow, which muffled the usual noise of an inn yard. It was like being on an island.

  “Don’t smile. I’m working on your face now. It’s hard enough without you twitching.”

  “What is it like drawing after so many years?”

  “Like getting back a missing limb.”

  “Goodness. I have always enjoyed sketching, and I like to paint in watercolors, but not like that.”

  “Perhaps because you never lost it.” He raised his head, his absurdly perfect features set and grave, but not closed off. “I realize now I did myself a great disservice by giving it up. I must have been mad.” Then his mouth curved, very slowly, and his cheeks developed dimples. “But it doesn’t mean there aren’t other things I enjoy just as much.”

  “Is it your favorite thing in the world?”

  “No. There is something I love better.”

  Chapter 21

  Making a portrait required intense focus on the subject. Every aspect of Cynthia’s form and features had to be transmitted from the eye to the hand. As never before, Damian studied the nuances of her appearance: the indentation of her neck above the lace ruffle of her modest gown; pearly oval fingernails; faint blue veins showing through the pale skin at the wrist. His palms imagined the contours of shoulders and bosom, the latter lightly heaving when she laughed. And her face. He knew the curve of the brows descending to the shapely nose and the pink rosebud mouth, the smooth cheeks and jawline given character by the assertive little chin. Now he discovered the faintest shadows beneath each wide eye, thick lashes several shades darker than her hair, a little dip below the plump lower lip.

  With every stroke and smudge of charcoal and fingers he felt his rusty skills return. While his work wasn’t as polished as it used to be, he had never applied himself to a portrait with greater fervor. The connection between subject and artist, Cynthia and himself, deepened as he drew. As he traced thin lines to define the quirk at each end of her mouth, she smiled.

  “You moved just as I was drawing your mouth,” he complained.

  “I’m sorry. You smiled and it made me respond.”

  “I didn’t realize I had done so.”

  “I wondered what you were thinking. You’ve been very quiet.”

  “I was thinking that portraiture is like lovemaking.”

  “Oh.” She blushed and bit her lip. �
��How so?”

  “Stop moving your mouth. It is done best with complete concentration and, preferably, great knowledge of the subject.”

  “Do you know me?”

  “I am making it my business to do so better.”

  “Can you not learn more from listening than looking?”

  “Every sense conveys knowledge.”

  “I’m not sure I want to smell anyone.” She wrinkled her nose. “It doesn’t seem very romantic.”

  “What of perfumes? You yourself favor a light rosewater.”

  “I don’t like heavy aromatics.”

  “A good thing. It would be a pity to mask your sweet natural scent. As for taste and touch, I wouldn’t wish to make the acquaintance of everyone through such sensual exploration, but their uses in amorous congress must be evident.”

  Since he’d been staring at her fixedly for more than an hour, he detected the light flush that he suspected descended beneath her garments, the barely perceptible acceleration of her breathing. What a very fine thing it would be if she were to be as aroused by hearing talk of lovemaking as he was by delivering it. She didn’t seem to be unduly shocked. While he finished the drawing, he described out loud each minute detail of her face and the stroke of his fingers that conveyed it to paper. No word was spoken that could not have been uttered in a drawing room full of maiden aunts, but he aimed to spin a seductive web to ensnare the two of them. It wasn’t as though there was anything else to do. With luck they’d be caught in the snow for days.

  “I think that’s finished,” Damian said, dropping the stick of charcoal into the pencil box. “Stop me before I spoil it.”

  Cynthia stretched her arms and rotated her neck. “I’m the opposite. I despair of improving my work and give up in disgust.”

  “Do you wish to see it?”

  Happy to move after holding the pose for half an hour, she stood beside him while he held the sketch pad at arm’s length. Once again, his talent astonished her “The way you have provided texture with the charcoal is marvelous. I can’t seem to get the shadows right, try as I may with crosshatching or by smearing the pencil.”