by Sophia James
‘You already have been.’
‘Then I am glad for it.’
* * *
Florentia met James Waverley unexpectedly as she walked from the chapel near Grosvenor Square later that afternoon. He was alone and dressed in clothes that were nothing at all like those of a well-born lord.
‘Mr Rutherford? You are a religious man?’ His glance took in the church behind her.
‘I enjoy observing the paintings, sir, and the stained-glass windows.’
‘A belief, then, in the finer aspects of the church?’
She laughed at that and forgot to disguise the sound. Caught unawares, she found her charade harder to effect, thrown out in timing for the careful preparation of forming the persona of another. The expression in his eyes also signalled danger.
Out in the open in the street he seemed taller and bigger and much more menacing than he had inside his town house in St James’s. Out here the man he had become in the Americas, the powerful and compelling overlord, was so much more visible. The adornment necessary to exist in society detracted from his menace. Here the plainness of dress and the lack of any frippery left him intimidating and threatening and more beautiful than she had ever seen him.
That thought made her blush and she knew he had seen such a shyness for he looked away as if to give her time to recover. The colour of his eyes today was almost see through, the pale green translucent.
‘You are a puzzle, Mr Rutherford,’ he said finally. ‘A man who might be everything or nothing?’
This was said as a question, the intonation lifting as he looked straight at her, the broken truths between them filled with hate and blame and betrayal.
She thought he might see it, all that was hidden underneath as he held her glance, the barrier of her spectacles counting for little.
‘You are familiar to me, Mr Rutherford. Have we met before?’
* * *
Hell. This afternoon under a darker sky Rutherford seemed changed somehow, the lines of the lad’s face softer, the colour of his eyes magnified.
Beautiful.
That word stung him with a shock.
For so long in his life he had stayed out of reach of others, giving little, expecting less. But here he felt a connection. He wanted to protect the boy, keep him safe from harm or hurt or sadness. He needed to understand the distance he wore like a cloak, that prickly layer of reserve so known because he had it, too, a fierce aloneness that drove everything he did.
‘Do you have many friends here in London, Mr Rutherford? Do you go out much?’
‘I don’t, sir. By choice, that is. I am...busy.’
‘With the paintings?’
‘They take a while to finish properly, my lord. Often a long while.’
‘Do you have a favourite?’
James could see that Rutherford did. It was written across his face in sudden shock, though he stayed silent.
‘Where did you learn? To draw, I mean. Who was your tutor?’
‘Books, sir. In my father’s library. I was an ardent copyist before I tried anything at all on my own.’
‘And your father is...?’
‘Oh, you would not know of him, my lord. He is a simple country gentleman and seldom visits the town.’
‘Because he is ill?’
‘Pardon?’ Fright now could be plainly seen.
‘You told me he was a sickly man who has taken to his bed.’
At this the other breathed out, the sound shaking with a vulnerability that tugged at Winter’s heartstrings. He felt every one of his twenty-nine years even as the artist began to speak again.
‘I am ordinary, my lord, just as my father is and if it were not for the paintings the London ton would have tired of me years ago.’
‘But that is exactly the point, Mr Rutherford. You were nowhere to be seen even a year ago. Nobody has heard of you in Kent and any lineage you may lay claim to here is indeed a mystery.’
The boy lifted his face to the sky and licked dry lips, the sensuality of the movement making James reel, a hot shaft of desire snaking through him. It was the smell of lavender, he decided later, and the slender pale shaft of his throat. It was the supplication of his hands, too, bent and small, paint on the edge of the thumbnail that held the scar across it.
He could discern a tang of incense from the church on his clothes and today a button on his shirt was undone, the cloth of some undergarment beneath fine.
There was danger here. The thought came with a violent swiftness, the same nausea he had felt in his recuperation after the skirmish in the northern inn, the same dislocation, too. If he had followed his desires he might have reached out there in the busy public street and brought the youth in against him, to try to understand just who and what he was. A pull of lust so fierce it almost undid him.
Instead he moved back and tipped his hat, pleased for the growing distance between them and the poorness of the light.
‘Goodbye, Mr Rutherford.’ He did not wait for an answer as he left.
Chapter Six
After such a disconcerting encounter James had spent the evening at the docks in the darkness with the smell of the sea close and the knowledge that a thousand yards of Haitian mahogany was stacked in the hull of the White Swan clipper moored a hundred yards offshore. It was waiting for the tide to turn and the river to swell and the morning light to break across the dull silence of the Thames.
Those he had come to meet would arrive soon, he was sure of it, for the man he had waylaid last night near the Red Fox had been most emphatic his boss would meet him, doused as he was in badly cut liquor, the stench of it on his breath. The gold coins had probably helped as had the promise of more. James had always found that generosity was a far greater persuasive factor than any force in cajoling men of a dubious morality to do as he wanted them to.
Fifteen minutes later they arrived and he pocketed his silver whisky flask and stood away from the wall. If he thought this meeting too dangerous, he could simply escape by jumping into the river. He was a strong swimmer and the current here would take him across to the opposite bank.
The tall sandy-haired man he presumed to be Perkins spoke first.
‘I had word that you wished to talk to me.’
Without hesitation James gave back an answer. ‘My father was William Waverley and I’ve reason to believe he was drinking at the inn you own on the night of his death?’
‘I beg to differ. The constabulary maintained he was not in my inn at all. The Viscount’s death by all accounts was from misadventure further up the river.’
‘His brandy flask and hat were found in a room at your establishment.’
‘Says whom?’
‘The man whom I bought them from a short while ago. He would be willing to go to the law with his information, but I hoped it would not have to come to that. I thought you might see the sense in establishing your own innocence in the matter before it went further, so to speak.’
‘You are here to threaten me, then?’
‘No, indeed I am not. All I am after is the truth of my father’s demise.’
‘Many say the old Viscount killed himself. A suicide?’
‘I don’t believe that to be true.’
‘Sometimes what is hoped for and what is are not the same thing.’
‘My father converted to Catholicism the year after my mother died. A penance, he thought.’
‘A religion in which killing oneself is a dreaded mortal sin?’
James nodded. ‘The preservation of life for the salvation of soul. He was not an angel, but he had a marked belief in the sacredness of the Fifth Commandment.’
For a moment there was a silence between them, the sound of the river close.
‘It takes a brave man to come askin
g his questions here in the slums of the river and amongst men who would stick a knife in your back in an instant on a single wrong word.’
‘I was a soldier, sir, and I promise at least some of you would die should you try to take me.’
The man opposite smiled, but he also relaxed, his fingers slipping from their place above his belt. He’d held a knife there no doubt and there was also the outline of a firearm under the right side of his coat. Left handed. So many clues to be gained by a careful observation.
‘Did you know your father had a side business of transporting illegal brandy from the Continent? A way to try and makes ends meet, he told me once.’
James nodded. It was something he had only recently discovered.
‘Two gentlemen came to visit him in his room, a room he often rented to be sure, and he left with them. Too quickly, I always thought, for the bottle of the best brandy in the house still sat on his bedside table barely touched. An unusual happening with the Viscount to waste any liquor of some worth...or of none.’
‘You bought the contraband from him?’
‘For a sum that was often more than I wanted to pay. But, yes, because he was honest in his promises and he always delivered. I recognised one of the men who came to see your father on the last night he was alive.’
‘Who?’
‘Mr Benjamin Heron.’
‘You would swear on this?’
‘To you I would.’
‘Why would you give this name to me?’
‘I liked your father. The drink blurred his lines, but under it all he was a good man and I think you are probably the same. The information I give you is in all confidence and I leave you to do with it as you will, but I shan’t be involved further and there is nothing else I can tell you.’
Then he was gone, disappeared into the gloom of a night that held the promise of rain. James knew he would not see him again.
Heron. The name turned on his tongue. What had the connection been between his father and the man? Was Heron augmenting his own fortune by his involvement with an illicit trade in contraband brandy? The man’s wealth was legendary, but he had never heard a whisper of anything untoward.
He would need to confront Heron in a way that did not send him into hiding. He’d need to become a confidant. His heart sank. The only way he could see of doing that was to make some sort of effort with his daughters.
The blonde giggliness of Julia Heron came to mind. A woman who would worry and fuss. The prophesy of the old gypsy Bella had given his name to also rankled.
The one you will marry has already come into your life. The ton and its rules had a way of tripping a man up and sending even those hell-bent on avoiding marriage straight into its arms and he did not wish to be the next Winterton driven to drink too much because of an unsuitable wife.
Chapter Seven
James watched from the upstairs window the next morning as his carriage drew up in front of the town house and Frederick Rutherford alighted. He had almost cancelled the appointment after their meeting yesterday and his own unease of it, but he hadn’t because a delay would only increase his anxiety.
The fellow came down the steps carefully, his hand clutching the side of the carriage door as though he might fall. The slightness of his figure caught the first morning sun, a thin light today as if spring was still wrestling with the oncoming summer and had not quite let go its chill.
Rutherford looked uncertain as he turned to collect his canvas and leather satchel, the former still draped with thick fabric, and Winter wondered why the footman did not help him with it. Perhaps he had asked already and been refused. There was something about the young artist that was prickly and isolated, a reclusive spirit caught in a commission he so obviously did not want.
Why had he suggested it in the first place when the labour of being in another’s company was so clearly trying?
The boots he wore took James’s attention because he noticed the soles were thickened in a way favoured by the London fops. Was Rutherford vain enough to want the extra height? His walk was mincing this morning though he lengthened his stride to avoid any cracks on the pavement or on the steps leading up to the house.
For luck? For superstition? To meet with a Fate he’d rallied against two days ago? An inescapable future?
As the lad passed the small tubs of miniature bay trees on each side of the front doorway he reached out and picked a handful of leaves, bringing the greenery to his nose and inhaling deeply, standing there completely still in the moment. His footman, a man of considerable gruffness and age, smiled at the action as he waited, the sheer enjoyment of the young man placing a spell over all who watched.
James stiffened. What must it be like to be so lost in all of the senses? A creative mind needed such inspiration, he supposed. He himself had passed those trees many times since coming to England and he had never thought once to lean down and smell the aroma. There was a certain honesty in such an act. When Rutherford opened his hands to let the leaves go he was careful to scatter them out of the harm of being trodden on.
A few moments later his man knocked on his chamber door. He had not moved from the window because all of a sudden he felt immeasurably tired, by Rutherford’s mystery and innocence, by Perkin’s revelations and by the Heron girls who seemed to be using each waking hour to try to find ways to inveigle him into their company. The shock of their father being named as one who might have killed his own parent was also a part of his fatigue, but although Benjamin Heron was a man of wealth he did not quite strike James as a murderer for he was too weak and nervous of life.
Then there was his reaction to the artist outside the church yesterday. That above all else was what kept him here unmoving and unsure, a feeling so unfamiliar he could not quite decipher what his next step should be.
‘Mr Rutherford is come. He is in the library, my lord.’
‘Offer him a drink, then, and I shall be down in a moment.’
He turned to the mirror as the servant left and observed himself. The bruise under his eye had lightened considerably and he could barely make out the wound on his lip. The shadow of uncertainty in his visage however was worrying for the lad made him nervous somehow. Rutherford’s intellect had been surprising, his wit sharp and his opinions eloquently put.
He smelt good, too.
That thought had James frowning because it was such a personal observation, a notice one might give to a lover or a wife.
‘Hell,’ he swore out loud as the truth of such scrutiny settled. He hadn’t been truly interested in a woman in years and here he was fighting off an attraction to a damned slip of a boy.
He should simply tell his man to send the artist home and pay the whole exorbitant sum of the portrait as a forfeiture. The cost would be nothing against the worry of his attraction.
And yet...?
He wanted to see how he might be perceived. He wanted to understand who Rutherford thought him to be, the real man and not the hidden one. He wanted to watch those slim fingers run along the shaft of the charcoal as he brought the stick up against his eyes and found the proportions, the small well-shaped nails, the heavy scar across his thumb.
Swearing again, he helped himself to a drink, hoping it would calm him down.
A further rap on the door had him turning.
‘The young man downstairs asked me to give you a book, my lord. He said he would appreciate it returned after you have read it.’
James looked down. The volume of Waverley was in his hands. He had heard of this work, of course, but he had not yet purchased it. His interest was caught.
* * *
Five moments later he walked into his library to find the large canvas was not set upon the easel. Mr Rutherford himself was gazing out of the window, his timepiece in hand. Checking his client’s tardiness, James thought, and
tried not to smile.
‘Thank you for the book, Mr Rutherford.’ He met his eyes only briefly and the dark head opposite tipped in a tense acknowledgement.
Turning the cover over, James looked at the first page. ‘Did you enjoy it?’
‘I did, my lord. It is a tale of tolerance, I think, and of the belief that all people are basically decent.’
‘It is set in Scotland, if I remember rightly, around the Jacobite Rebellion? Does the author portray the massacre with a sense of fairness?’
‘All art is imagination, my lord. To stretch the mind to describe the events leading up to such a point of breakage is illuminating.’
Rutherford’s particular scent could be smelt from here, a quiet evocative note on the edge of furniture polish and the fresh bunch of white roses on the mantel. The bay laurels were there, too, a pungent heaviness almost like cinnamon. An undernote of sensuality.
Layers. Of truth and lies. He could feel it in the air around him and knew a quick moment of panic before he had it under control.
His eyes took in the canvas still wrapped in its shroud and he walked over to the same chair he had been in on both previous days and sat down.
‘I think I might prefer you standing today, my lord, by the window with the light behind you, only this time I will begin in paint rather than charcoal. A freer style will serve my message better.’
‘Your message?’ he could not help but ask.
‘The exposure of emotion is what I do best, Lord Winterton.’ He coughed after saying this, a weak forced sound.
‘I’m not sure if I should be pleased to hear that, Mr Rutherford.’ Winter was tired of being placed on edge and tired of feeling off balance.
‘Because you don’t usually show your feelings?’
‘To the world? No.’
‘If you do not like the portrait, no one else ever needs to see it.’
‘Apart from you and me?’