“Ah, no, my lord, that was not my meaning.”
“Did you have your palm read, Mr. Harvey?”
“I did. All the woman said was `timely assistance.’ Timely assistance! If anyone can make heads or tails of that”
Mrs. Harvey chirped in, “She told me I shall have a magnificent new hat, my lord!”
“That I must believe, ma’am,” Sidley said with a nod to her, “as the bonnet and its bearer must always suit.”
Mrs. Harvey actually blushed with pleasure.
“You will appreciate my reading, Sidley,” Lord Benjamin volunteered. “She told me I would make a fortunate investment.”
“A `fortunate investment,’ Benny, might mean gaining hundreds of pounds or merely one.”
“All the more reason to wager hundreds!”
“But remark, my friend. She referred only to an investment, not all. She did not indicate which. I fear your probabilities have not altered in the slightest.”
“Possibly not! But it certainly makes me feel lucky!”
Sidley shook his head and looked to Edgar. “Lord Formsby, did you submit?”
“I did, Sidley. I was told I shall come into a fine property. But since I already have a fine property, I don’t very well know what that might mean.”
“I should think marriage,” Sir Philip remarked. “‘Tis the accepted way, for one of your age. No guessing there, I imagine!”
“I hadn’t really thought,” Edgar said. But his gaze traveled to Becca Harvey, causing Marian to trade looks with Edith across the table.
“You are to be congratulated,” Lord Sidley told Edgar, “but this is not enough to qualify as soothsaying. At your age, as Sir Philip mentioned, a young man might be presumed to be contemplating matrimony.”
“Even men a bit older might contemplate it,” Lady Adeline observed equably.
“Indeed, Aunt. Sir Philip, was such a proposition put to you?”
Sir Philip laughed. “An end to my widowed status was not discussed, my lord. Quite the contrary. I was told that my grandchildren would adore me.”
“Papa, she didn’t!” his daughter protested.
“She did, m’dear,” he assured Delia with a wink.
“Might we make an assumption regarding your own future then, Miss TinckneyDwight?” Sidley paired the question with such a warm smile that Marian feared a proposal was imminent.
“I was promised a contented household, my lord. Children spoiled by my father might not further such contentment.”
The comment drew laughter from the entire table.
Really, Marian thought in some despair, Delia is quite perfect for him. Perhaps they will announce before the visit ends. And beneath the table her hands tightened into fists.
“Clara Poole,” Sidley tasked her, “what did our old friend have to tell you?”
“I fear she was most general, most vague, Lee. She told me I shall be loved.”
“That is not the future, Clara. That is the present”
She acknowledged the comment with a shy smile.
“Our `old friend,’ as you term her, Sidley,” Dicky said, “is clearly tired of me. She tells me the same every year-that I shall marry a `good’ woman and become fat. I cannot determine if I am to marry a cook or be so pestered for my sins, I turn to sweets for solace!”
In the midst of the subsequent laughter, Sidley made sport of sighing loudly. “I perceive the trend. Our palmist always speaks the same. She is predictable as the sunrise, possibly because she is two hundred years old. Certainly her tattered cloak looks as though a cavalier gifted it to her.”
“Sidley!” his aunt protested. “The woman was a girl when I was.”
“Was she, Auntie? My deepest apologies. But we must still conclude that the young woman foretells love, wealth, and happiness with reliable consistency. No one has been delivered of a sad or even an uncertain fate”
“Oh, but Marian was,” Katie promptly supplied. “She was told she will be `crossed in love.”’
As Marian felt all eyes on her, she looked to Katie in some exasperation.
But once again Sidley drew her attention. “Is that so?” he asked.
She thought his hooded gaze calculating.
“I can only believe that would be the case, Miss Ware, if you were to give your heart to the undeserving.”
No, Marian denied silently, looking at him. Not undeserving. But perhaps, in this instance, unfeeling.
“Lieutenant Reeves is most deserving, my lord,” Edith said.
“Then perhaps we’ve discovered a fault in our forecaster’s record. Did she say nothing else, Miss Ware?”
Marian knew he would have all from her-at any cost.
“Her precise words, my lord,” she relayed distinctly, “were: `This lady will be crossed in love but will find much favor.”’
“Ah! Then she sugared her reading with something positive. Perhaps you will find that your love was rather a fragile thing, to be `crossed’ at all.”
“Sidley!” his aunt objected once more. “Miss Ware’s affections could only ever be sincere.”
“My apologies, Miss Ware.” He condescended to nod to Marian. “You mustn’t take my words amiss. Naturally, if one is to be `crossed in love,’ ‘tis the other party’s sincerity that should be questioned.”
“Sidley!” Lady Adeline repeated.
This time the rest of the table was silent for some rather painful seconds, a silence broken by Lord Vaughn. He grinned at Marian, who sat across from him. “I believe I must rob you of the award for the worst fortune, Miss Ware. I was informed I would find `peace in purpose’-as enigmatic a prospect as Sidley might hope for. I deduce that unless I am meant to purchase colors once more, I must take other `orders’ and enter the church.”
“Nonsense!” Lord Benjamin cried over the light, nervous laughter of some at the table. “I suspect instead you are intended to tell old `Gruff’un’ Knox-”
“Benny,” Sidley interrupted sharply, “I recall you promised to partner Miss Harvey at cards tonight, did you not? As it is already late, I suggest we remove ourselves to that pleasure. I sense that Miss Harvey grows impatient.”
“Not at all, Lord Sidley,” Becca said, though she rose from her seat at almost the same instant as Lady Adeline rose from hers. “And you have not told us why you never seek your own fortune.”
“Because I prefer not to know any of it, Miss Harvey. Blindness to one’s fate lends a man a decided advantage. Had I known what was to befall me the past dozen years, I might not have weathered them half as well”
At this his friends teased him, but Marian was led to reflect. Her cousin Edith, perhaps judging incorrectly that Marian was troubled by her projected fate, squeezed her arm solicitously as they removed to the drawing room. But it was Lord Sidley’s future that troubled Marian, not her own.
He had hired a quartet of musicians, which now serenaded them at cards. The extravagance of bringing such a group from town amazed Marian; no doubt they were originally intended to play for Aldersham’s guests at dancing, as Sidley had hinted the previous evening.
Marian glanced over at his table, where he partnered Delia against the Harveys. He was at ease and smiling; the lantern light made his jet hair shine. He looked as though he hadn’t a care in the world. Yet someone, and Marian suspected Lord Sidley himself, had placed Marian at cards with Lord Benjamin, Edgar, and Becca Harvey. The jealously competitive undercurrents among such a threesome ensured that Marian’s usual dislike for card games was even more pronounced. She had to wonder why she alone drew such dedicated, discomfiting attention from their congenial host.
When Rebecca Harvey, claiming a headache, begged off extending the evening, Marian happily followed the girl’s lead in seeking dismissal. She had been awake early, and the afternoon had been a long one. And she knew she must once again paint Sidley in the morninga prospect that she could not entirely welcome.
Had Sidley not proposed the project in portraiture himself, he’d have li
kened it to some form of torture. Certainly its novelty had faded by the close of the previous day’s session. This morning’s sitting would necessarily be shorter, since he’d promised to take much of the party on a tour of the park, with an extended stop for a picnic. He accepted the sitting’s curtailment with considerable relief, knowing that he could not be trusted with Miss Ware. His comments the previous evening had been proof enough of that. His own unreasoned behavior had appalled him.
His aunt had not yet spoken to him, but her looks had served. He anticipated her disapproving presence in the library this morning.
Grimly, he donned the blue coat that Marian Ware had preferred. He knew his vanity, his despicable vanity, had led him to seek what he should not have sought from the girl, to test a commitment that had clearly been tested enough during the two-year absence of her fiance.
Vaughn, charging that Sidley was “not acting as he ought,” no longer spoke to him, and Dicky Poole had sent him too many questioning looks. Soon his genteel neighbors, the Pooles, would comprehend just how inanely their old friend Sidley was behaving.
Yet she was here, in his home, and he could picture no other woman in it as long as she remained.
“Deuce take it,” he muttered as his valet straightened the coat and brushed a small sprinkling of powder from one sleeve. Sidley was wearing less powder; he was determined to “recover” in rapid time. But he could not simply stroll into breakfast one morning with a brilliant complexion. The transition had to be accomplished with a modicum of finesse. By the time he returned to town, within the next week or ten days, all would know that Lord Sidley had gained a reprieve.
He picked up the small wooden toy he had purchased the previous afternoon. The trinket had caught his eye as he made his way to the hiring halls; he’d convinced himself Miss Ware deserved it as a token of appreciation. He suspected he would have difficulty enough in settling a reasonable payment on the girl. She was likely to balk at even the most trivial of sums. Miss Ware needed a deputy; she needed someone more responsible than Formsby to forward her affairs. He doubted a newly decommissioned naval lieutenant, one who wished to retire to the country, would answer.
Impatiently he made his way to the library, to discover she was not yet down. He ordered tea instead of chocolate. Yesterday’s offering had been intended to seduce, but it had seemed to work its spell solely upon himself. This morning he wished only to get on with the business.
“Oh!”
He heard her behind him. Turning from consideration of the front garden, he confronted her startled expression.
“I-I believed I was early and would precede you, my lord.”
“We are all scheduled for a picnic today, Miss Ware” He knew he sounded chilly, decidedly unlike a host happily contemplating a picnic. All the more chilly, perhaps, because he thought she looked rather adorable, somehow particularly so, enveloped as she was in her serviceable painting smock.
“‘Tis an energetic enterprise, my lord. You are feeling well enough … ?”
“I know my own strength, Miss Ware.”
“Certainly.” She moved quickly toward her easel. “We shall start at once. If you would kindly-” She broke off as she noticed the toy. “The cat.” She took it up and, as though she could not help herself, pressed the button for its operation. Then she turned to him. “Miss Poole must have told you?”
“Clara? Told me what, Miss Ware?”
“Of my interest in the toy. That I admired it.”
“Did you admire it? I had no notion. When I saw it, I thought only that you might admire it. Clara did not betray your confidences”
“I see” She placed it carefully upon a side table, as though she never intended to take it up again.
“It is a gift, Miss Ware,” he said. “In partial payment for this portrait.” She was looking as serious as he felt; the atmosphere needed lightening. He forced a smile. “I am gratified to have chosen something you liked.”
“Indeed yes. I-thank you, my lord.”
He took a seat as the tea arrived. He earnestly set about posing once more.
“Did you-did you review the start of the painting, my lord?”
“No, Miss Ware” He had quite pointedly not done so. He was already reasonably tired of himself. “I needn’t see it at all until it satisfies you.”
She frowned at that. “I merely wished you to know that I have no preference for concealment while it progresses, as some artists do. You must feel free to comment.”
“I trust you, Miss Ware” He turned his gaze briefly to the garden. “The light is not as good this morning.”
“It does not matter,” she said. He could tell her mind was already engaged with the problem presented. “I remember.”
“Perhaps you do not need me at all, then”
“I remember the light, my lord, not your nose.”
“How chastening.”
“Unless you wish to be painted so, you must not grin.”
He corrected his expression. “My aunt threatens to visit us this morning,” he said. “I hope you do not mind?”
“Far from it. I enjoy her company. She told us last night at dinner of some of her travels on the Continent when she was younger. She was able to tour for the greater part of a year. How thrilling to see the Alps, Vesuvius, and the Bay of Naples-Rome, Venice, and Athens! I should love it above all things.”
“Above all things?” he quizzed. “Assuredly only if Lieutenant Reeves were to accompany you?”
She did not respond, but worked in silence.
“It was a different age, Miss Ware,” he commented. “But now, perhaps, likely to return, in some form, with Bonaparte’s absence. Europe will once again be open to the pursuit of something other than war. An artist such as yourself should not be deprived of the Grand Tour.”
“I am most unlikely to take the Grand Tour, but a tour might be possible-someday.” Again she worked in silence.
“You have an advantage over the rest of us, an advantage of which I suspect you are scarcely aware. You might make your own tour whenever you wish-paint summer in winter, winter in summer. I think you do not recognize your own power.”
“Anyone of imagination has such power.”
“Most of us do not summon it with facility, Miss Ware. And I confess to having met with a notable lack of imagination in many fields. Thus we must enliven our walls with the result of your imagination, when we have none of our own.”
“You do not strike me as unimaginative, my lord.”
“Thank you.”
“And as for portraiture, I believe it is perhaps better that I not apply my imagination, lest I fail to produce something recognizable.”
He laughed. “I see we return to the same topic.” He was amazed that she was managing to paint anything at all, recognizable or not. He was exquisitely conscious of her gaze. He found it strangely mesmerizing, as a contented cat must experience a caress. Yet he sensed that her appraisal was elusively impersonal. She was not as affected as he.
“I did not ask-if you have studied portraiture?” He thought his own voice sounded hoarse.
“‘Tis a bit late to ask me that! You did press me into service.” When he smiled, she added, “I have studied and practiced portraits, my lord. Enough to know ‘tis quite accepted to include something of particular meaning to the sitter, some item of personal significance, in such a study. Should you like your cane, perhaps, or a book or object you admire?”
He shook his head. “‘Tis significant enough that I sit in Aldersham’s library. But if you wish, you must devise something, Miss Ware, so that a century hence viewers might say `There it is! Ware’s little joke on Sidley.”’ Her smile pleased him so much that he added generously, “As long as you are not cruel, I leave you to it.”
“It is a bit late now, my lord. I am locked into this composition. But I shall see” Again she painted silently for some minutes. “Your aunt is a very handsome woman.”
“She will be flattered to hear it.”<
br />
“She must have heard it before”
“One can never hear it enough, Miss Ware. Though it is curious-one rarely terms a woman `handsome’ in her hearing. Women prefer to be called pretty, charming, elegant, attractive, or a host of other adjectives.”
“Yet handsome is strong and lasting. Enduring. Lady Adeline will still draw attention twenty years from now.”
“She certainly commands attention,” he admitted wryly. “But handsome does not charm.”
“I would debate you, my lord. Its charm is simply more mature. Yes, handsome does command. It implies a certain … power. Physical, mental, even spiritual.” She was at ease, speaking as she painted. He could not take his gaze from the sweeps of her brush behind the canvas. “I’ve never heard young children described as handsome,” she mused aloud, “though a family might be. As a grouping, a family holds strength.”
“I confess”-he cleared his throat-“I’ve never reflected on the term so completely, Miss Ware. But you have persuaded me. I concede that my aunt is handsome.”
Again they were silent.
“Miss TinckneyDwight is certainly very handsome,” she said.
“She is. I presume you have considered each member of our little party as potential subject matter.”
“I am not so coldly assessing, my lord,” she objected, refusing to look at him.
“Then why should you single out Miss Delia for your consideration?”
“I do not `single her out.’ I merely believe her to be an excellent example of handsome.”
“More so than your own cousin?”
“Katie is widely acknowledged to be beautiful, my lord. But I have never heard her described as handsome.”
“It is a function of age.”
“I have just explained why I think it is not.”
“And why does the difference concern you at all, Miss Ware, as-by your own admission-you are only ever interested in your art?”
“I have never made such an assertion!” She glared at him from the side of the canvas. “And I have many other interests.”
“But you do not pursue them.”
“Perhaps not routinely. Perhaps not as thoroughly-”
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