by Erica Ridley
Mr. Grenville forced his gaze from Nora with obvious effort. “Not yet, but it shan’t take long. The despicable villain will be unmasked in no time.”
Nora choked at the word “despicable.” So much for her brief experience with romantic banter. Already she missed the warmth of his gaze. She far preferred Mr. Grenville to think of her as precious and soft than a villain to be reviled.
“Are the drawings so terrible?” she asked timidly.
Lady Roundtree sighed. “You haven’t seen them for a reason, child. I would never pass around such filthy gossip.”
Nora refrained from mentioning that almost all of the drawings were moments she had heard about secondhand from the baroness’s lips.
Mr. Grenville turned to face her, his tone earnest, but his eyes hard. “All people have a basic right to privacy. No one should broadcast their neighbor’s faults or profit from exploiting others’ peccadillos.”
Nora did not think it would help her case to point out that not only did her captions fail to reveal anything High Society didn’t already know, they also did not in any way alter her subjects’ pre-existing reputations.
She simply bowed her head in silence and took the chair beside the baroness. They waited for the footmen to arrange the settee for transfer. Nora sent a nervous glance toward the door.
Mr. Grenville was positively the worst person for her to be anywhere near if she intended to keep her secret. Yet she could not flee; Lady Roundtree had insisted on her companion’s company.
Nora straightened her shoulders and affected a blank stare. She would simply have to act perfectly normal. Subservient. Disinterested. Unremarkable.
As the footmen prepared to move the baroness from her chair to the settee, Mr. Grenville stepped forward and held up a hand to halt them.
“Before you install yourself in this parlor on my account, I have news to share.” His eyes shone. “The Dulwich Picture Gallery is open to the public at last. Would you care to accompany me, madam? You cannot stay cooped up all day. There is a special exhibition on display.”
Nora tried not to feel slighted that only the baroness was invited. One did not invite one’s peers’ servants on outings. She knew that.
But from the first moment she’d heard about the Dulwich Picture Gallery, she had been consumed with the desire to attend.
There were no special exhibitions back home. No gallant gentleman to escort her. No money to pay for tickets.
She would simply have to hope that, just like on every other occasion, the baroness returned eager to share with Nora every single moment of what had transpired.
Nora fervently hoped the baroness had a picture-perfect memory.
“And your companion, of course,” Mr. Grenville added before Lady Roundtree could respond. “I am certain you would not wish to be without her.”
“A picture gallery,” the baroness said, as if tasting the idea. “Miss Winfield positively adores pictures. Why, just the other day we dressed Captain Pugboat as a lion and—”
“Thank you,” Nora said quickly, interrupting her patroness in as polite a manner as she could devise. This was not the ideal audience for extolling one’s talent with a sketchbook, even if the drawing styles were completely different from the caricatures. “I would be honored to accompany the two of you to such a prestigious event.”
“Well, of course you’d be honored. You’re from the country.” Amused, Lady Roundtree turned to Mr. Grenville. “Miss Winfield has probably never been to a gallery in her life.”
Nora smiled tightly.
If her patroness painted her as a country bumpkin to Mr. Grenville, well, it was only for the best. Better a lord like him think of her as the outsider she was.
“Shall we take my coach, or do you prefer your own?” he asked the baroness.
“We must take yours,” the baroness replied at once. “I want everyone to see me in the company of one of London’s most eligible bachelors.”
“One of the many? You wound me, madam.” Mr. Grenville clutched his heart as if grievously injured. “Very well, my coach it shall be.”
As a footman pushed the baroness’s wheeled chair toward the front door, Mr. Grenville fell into step beside Nora.
She tried not to trip over her own feet out of sheer proximity. She was neither a rose nor a ruby, but a complete zany.
His eyes twinkled. “If I had likened you to a strawberry, tart and sweet, would you still have been able to find fault with my analogy?”
Her cheeks heated.
Tart and sweet, precious and beautiful, soft and delicate. There was no possible way a handsome ton gentleman could ever truly be interested in her as anything more than a momentary diversion. Yet she could not help her traitorous heart from wanting to believe.
“What if I said strawberries give me a rash?” she asked, deliberately more tart than sweet.
“Then I would be in awe of your commitment to a theme,” he said without missing a beat. “Rose-colored hair, rose-colored gown, rose-colored rash…”
She giggled despite herself. Of course he would have the perfect answer.
But she could not allow herself to thaw. Not when his motives were so unclear. Was he suspicious of her and trying to win her confidence? Or could the heir to an aristocratic title truly be a man this marvelous?
Nora’s pulse pounded. She wanted to believe in him so much that having it all be a game would be devastating.
But if he was sincere… he was even more dangerous.
When they stepped out the front door, her eyes were dazzled first by the sun and then by Mr. Grenville’s carriage.
“What a dashing coach-and-four,” Lady Roundtree exclaimed. “I like it even better than your landau.”
Nora could not believe she was about to be helped inside such a grand vehicle. Mr. Grenville had not yet inherited his barony, but from the look of it he might as well be a fairy prince.
When Lady Roundtree and Nora were both arranged in the forward-facing seat, Mr. Grenville climbed inside to join them.
In order to allow the most room for the baroness’s splinted leg, he did not seat himself across from her, but rather opposite Nora. Their knees did not touch, but the tips of his boots flanked the tips of hers.
Nora was suddenly conscious of every inch of her body. She shivered. Two pairs of boots nestled against each other should not feel so shockingly intimate.
She would have to get used to the sensation.
For as long as she remained Lady Roundtree’s companion, the baroness would require extra space to protect her broken leg. And because the baroness traveled in the same circles as Mr. Grenville, they had already been bumping into each other at every turn. Now that he was paying personal calls, unexpected moments of forced proximity could become all the more common.
Nora’s heart raced. The idea both thrilled and terrified her.
Slowly she became aware of Mr. Grenville drumming his fingers on the edge of the squab as if tapping out the keys to a chord. No, not drumming his fingers—pianoforte-ing them.
A smile curved her lips. She wanted to point out the chords, to tell him she had witnessed his family’s musicale and found all three of them devastatingly talented.
But from the sound of Lady Roundtree’s friends, the aftermath had been far from positive. The last thing Nora wanted was to call attention to the matter and make him feel uncomfortable.
“Have you been to a gallery before?” Mr. Grenville asked quietly.
“No,” she admitted. “But I’m very much looking forward to it.”
He frowned. “I thought you said you liked art.”
She nodded. “I do.”
“Where have you seen any?” He leaned forward with interest.
“I’m from the country, not the moon.” Nora gave him a crooked smile. “Other people have paintings, and the church back home is full of pictures and stained glass. Since I’ve come to London, scarcely a day goes by without some exposure to the arts. The places we visit are well-de
corated, and Lady Roundtree’s home boasts a hall of portraits.”
“Four-and-twenty portraits, to be exact,” the baroness put in proudly. “And a few tasteful sculptures strategically placed in locations throughout the town house.”
Mr. Grenville leaned back, a satisfied smile curving his lips. “You’re going to love the gallery.”
“Of course I will,” said Lady Roundtree.
Mr. Grenville wasn’t looking at her.
Nora’s cheeks heated involuntarily. She prayed she would not spend the next hour with her face flushed scarlet.
When they arrived at the gallery, a row of carriages just as fancy as the one they were in stretched down the street.
Panic inched along Nora’s spine. She would not be viewing works of art with Lady Roundtree and Mr. Grenville. She would be swept along in a current surrounded by much better, much bigger, much prettier fish.
Mr. Grenville and the footmen helped the baroness into her wheeled chair.
Nora stepped from the carriage and tried to project an air of serenity.
Before she knew it, she would be back home where everyone not only knew her name but came to her for advice, and invited her whole family to their functions. Invisibility in London was hardly a curse; a few months from now, she wouldn’t see any of these high-in-the-instep aristocrats ever again.
She slid her gaze to Mr. Grenville. No. She would not miss him, she told herself firmly. How could she miss something she’d never truly had?
As they made their way into the gallery, Lady Roundtree and Mr. Grenville were bombarded on all sides by well-wishers.
The baroness lamented her splint to anyone who would listen, and Mr. Grenville charmed the rest with little compliments or inquiries about their hobbies and loved ones.
The worst were the debutantes. He couldn’t go three feet without one of them fairly swooning into his path with flirtatious comments and a flutter of her eyelashes.
That was the sort of young lady he would choose. Moneyed, beautiful, secure in her superiority over the rest.
The debutantes fell over themselves to tell Mr. Grenville they had read about the picture gallery in this lady’s magazine or that newspaper. They knew a thousand little details that Nora would find fascinating if she weren’t so jealous over her inability to have read such articles for herself.
How she wished she could have done so! Instead of blushing her way through the carriage ride, she could have regaled Mr. Grenville with topical insights and trivia relevant to their outing.
Instead, she had said nothing because girls like her had nothing to say.
She looked away. All the money in England wouldn’t make her the intellectual equal of any of these vapid coquettes with the French modistes and personal Latin tutors, because Nora’s brain didn’t work the same way. It never would.
“Did you know that a Swiss painter was one of the first collectors behind this gallery?” one of the debutantes asked Mr. Grenville.
“Of course he knows,” said another. “Didn’t you hear him mention that a dealer of French art had worked in tandem with another collector?”
“Your details are so fascinating,” another said, batting her eyes at him. “I positively adore history when it’s you that tells it.”
Nora tried not to gag.
If Mr. Grenville was bothered by the constant stream of pretty young things vying for his attention, he did not show it. Nor did he express any exasperation at the surprising number of fine ladies and fancy gentlemen sidling up to whisper in his ear about a problem they hoped he could solve, careful not to let anyone overhear.
No one except Nora, because Nora was no one.
She clenched her teeth, annoyed with the universe. Enough. She had got the message the day she arrived. Stark status differences splashed in her face every hour of every day. Just because she had an active imagination did not mean she confused reality with what could someday happen.
The other women were foreground.
She was background.
“This way,” Mr. Grenville murmured, leading Lady Roundtree and her footmen away from the crowd. “These salons seem less crowded.”
Was he ever right. Not only was the next salon far less crowded than the others, there were even a few artists with easels, making sketches or doing watercolor reproduction of the art on display.
Nora’s mouth fell open. How she wished she were one of them! Her heart twisted with longing. The richest spectators in the gallery were not those with the most extravagant gowns, but those who had brought a sketchbook and a bit of graphite to take advantage of the location.
Not for the first time, she wished her brother had never sent her caricatures to a printing house. If she had not been launched along that path, she could be here sketching with the others.
Her stomach twisted. She had cheated herself out of her favorite pastime. Now that the caricatures were famous, she didn’t dare sketch in public lest a witness put two and two together. She might assume she was too invisible for someone to make such a leap of logic, but it was not a risk she was in any position to take.
Still, Nora’s fingers itched for a drawing pencil.
“You two go ahead,” Lady Roundtree waved her hand in Mr. Grenville’s direction. “I see some old friends that I absolutely must catch up with before I lose them in this crowd.”
Nora hurried toward her. “Don’t you want me to come with you?”
“And make it even harder to push our way through?” Lady Roundtree gestured toward her broken leg. “It’s hard enough to navigate about with this bother. Having to worry about you two will only make it worse.”
Before Nora could object further, the baroness turned away and motioned for her footman to push her in the opposite direction.
Nora stared at the retreating baroness, marveling that it was less worrisome to leave her unmarried cousin alone with a gentleman than to have her companion accompany her.
But she and Mr. Grenville weren’t alone, were they? Nor was Nora here as a cousin, but as a servant. Perhaps these class differences afforded her a freedom she hadn’t fully realized. Had Nora come to visit as a cousin, she might not have been permitted to stroll the gallery unattended with a gentleman caller.
Eager to see the art, she allowed Mr. Grenville to lead her deeper into the winding salons.
Some of the visitors around them marched through the gallery, glancing at each picture over their shoulders as if determined to race through every room within a prescribed amount of time.
To her delight, Mr. Grenville’s method mirrored her own preferences. He led her directly in front of the first picture and did not budge until they had both had the opportunity to fully observe it.
Nora ignored the little plaques with the dancing letters beneath each work of art, focusing instead on the artistry involved. The choices in perspective, in color, in light.
As they walked, the works she liked least fascinated her as much as the works she liked best due to the attention to detail on the parts of both the artists and the gallery’s curator. Someone had chosen these works of art. Chosen the order, the grouping into salons. Likely even chosen which works would be shown and which would not.
She could not help but wonder which pictures had not made the cut, and why. Her head was already overflowing with new techniques to try the moment she got back home.
Not home, she reminded herself with a frown. When she returned to Lady Roundtree’s town house, she could devote herself to art. When she returned home, she would have to leave that nonsense behind. Nora’s grandparents would need her. Her brother would need her. The farm would need her. There would be little time for experimenting with light or color or perspective.
“I would have switched the last two,” Mr. Grenville murmured as they reached the end of a corridor. “And the third and fifth.”
Nora glanced at him with interest.
He had been so full of well-read commentary about the styles of art and the probable techniques used tha
t it was hard to believe he was not an artist himself. This was the first time he had spoken critically of the order in which the art had been shown.
“Why?” she asked.
He cast his gaze at the other works in the room. “They sorted them chronologically. Displaying these works by the date painted was a mistake. They’re all the same mountain at different times of the year. They should be grouped by season and time of day to truly appreciate the changing nature of time, as the artist intended.”
In surprise, Nora swept her gaze about the salon anew.
She did not know where this mountain range might be located, but Mr. Grenville was right: it was the same mountain in different seasons, at different times, from different angles. Grouping them as if they represented a single year rather than the artist’s obvious many years of study would have given a far more accurate portrait of the changing nature of seasons.
“You are brilliant.” She stared at him in wonder. “They should have hired you to curate the exhibition.”
Although he did not respond aloud, Mr. Grenville appeared uncommonly pleased by her observation.
In the next salon, he squinted at each of the plaques and read them aloud, along with his best guess about why the artist had chosen this title for that picture.
Nora was as fascinated with Mr. Grenville as the art around them. Every tiny insight into him made him all the more marvelous. Since coming to London, this afternoon was by far her favorite moment.
“What about that one?” he asked, gesturing toward a picture on Nora’s other side.
“The perspective?” She stepped closer to the work he’d indicated.
“No, the title. Is it in the same series as this one?”
He smiled at her expectantly, patiently awaiting her answer.
Nora froze in sudden terror.
She could read some things. She could.
If the letters were big enough and the words were familiar and there wasn’t a witty and intelligent man she was desperately trying to impress standing a few feet from her.
Her fingers shook. She needed to concentrate without looking like she was concentrating.
She could lean forward a little bit perhaps, but not too much. He knew she wasn’t blind. If she could pick out differences in the colors of certain leaves in previous works, obviously she could perform the simple task of reading the picture’s title aloud.