‘You were alone?’
Marcus sighed. ‘No. Mistress Waterman’s always been there.’
‘Oh, really? She didn’t tell me that.’
‘No. She doesn’t tell you much, does she? You should try listening.’
So it was with that in mind that he sought Felice out in one of the small downstairs offices in the New House where she and Mr Peale, the house steward, sat before a pile of lists, ledgers and accounts.
‘Ah…’ Felice looked up from her list ‘…here’s Sir Leon come to tell us that we cannot have this room because he wants it. Good day to you, sir. We were just moving out. Come, Henry.’
Still smarting from Marcus’s rebuke, Sir Leon bit back his retort and spoke to the steward first. ‘Henry, the men have just brought up the eel traps from the dam. If Mr Dawson wants a basket or two, get him to send his lads over to my kitchen and say I sent them. But be quick.’
‘Yes, sir. Indeed I will. Thank you. Please excuse me, my lady.’
‘Certainly, Henry. And where may I send one of your men, Sir Leon?’
‘Felice,’ he said, closing the door.
‘Oh, dear, now what have I done?’
‘It’s not that which brings me here.’
‘All right, what haven’t I done? I can’t wait to hear.’ She gathered her papers as she spoke, convinced that she was being moved on.
‘No, don’t go. I shall be using the offices on the other side. Stay here, if you wish.’
‘I probably won’t, but thank you. Now, my sins of omission. What are they this time?’
He leaned against the door and folded his arms, conscious of her bristling hostility and not knowing how to dispel it. She was wild, like a fearful creature, mistrustful, vulnerable and full of resentments. And too beautiful for words. ‘No sins,’ he said. ‘I wondered what Marcus has been up to, that’s all.’
Her eyes searched his for some meaning. ‘How should I know? He lives in the guesthouse with you, doesn’t he?’
‘You’ve not been sitting for him for four days. He believes you’re avoiding him.’
‘Then you should be well satisfied. It was you who repeatedly told me not to get too friendly. You’ve been careful not to offer me a sensible alternative but, as you see, I’m taking your advice until something mutually acceptable appears.’
‘Felice,’ he said, again.
‘Yes?’
She was not making it easy. Why should she? ‘Felice, has Marcus been misbehaving?’
‘With me? No. Is that all?’
‘Not with you, then with whom?’
She looked away. ‘Ask him. It’s none of my business.’
‘With Lydia? Elizabeth?’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake! Of course not. Don’t let’s go through all the possibilities, please. The dairy-maid and the laundrymaid haven’t complained, either.’
‘There’s something wrong and I need to know what it is.’
‘Why?’ she flared. ‘You’ve spent plenty of time telling me how not to do this and that, who not to make a friend of, who not to think of, who I should forget. Now you think there’s something amiss when I stop doing what you’ve been telling me not to do in the first place. Make lists, you said…’ she waved an arm at the pile of papers ‘…I’m making them. Look…look! Are they wrong, too?’ By now her voice had become raw with anger, and tears had begun to flood her eyes. ‘Tell me,’ she croaked. ‘Put me in my place again. I can take it.’
He wanted to take her in his arms, but knew that she would fight him off. ‘No, it’s nothing to do with any of that. You’ve done well. But if there’s something happened between you and Marcus…’
‘All right!’ she spat. ‘If it will make you go away any faster I’ll tell you why I’m not sitting for him. It’s because he’s an unscrupulous lecher who carries on seducing women even after the mother of his child has died in childbirth. A man who can do that is too ungodly even for my company. There now, does that satisfy your needs?’
Sir Leon’s arms slowly unfolded. ‘What?’ he said, frowning. ‘Marcus? Nay, you cannot mean…Marcus?’ He swept a hand round his jaw, holding it together. ‘How do you know all this?’
‘I know it!’
‘Yes, but how? You can’t make that kind of accusation without evidence. Proof. Do you have proof?’
‘Well, of course I do, sir. You’ve seen his portrait of the Vytterys’ daughter that he painted in London at the Paynefleetes. Well, it was after that that she was sent off to Winchester to have a child, and it was there she died last year while he went on painting and trying it on with every available female. You said it yourself, plain or pretty, it makes no difference. He’s responsible for two deaths, Sir Leon, and he has the gall to behave as if nothing has happened. It’s indecent. What more proof do you need than that?’
‘But Felice, none of that is proof. It’s not even evidence, it’s more like supposition. Because a woman has her portrait painted a few months before she has a child, you can’t pin the blame on the painter, just like that. Think of all…’
‘How do you know it was only a few months? Did he tell you that?’
‘Well, no, but I know when he was at the Paynefleetes’ London home and I happen to know when the Vytterys’ daughter died because Dame Celia told us, didn’t she? I admit that the dates are close, but that doesn’t mean he must be responsible. He’s not the only man in London to know the Paynefleetes’ household.’
‘You’re protecting him. After all you’ve said to warn me, and now suddenly when your warnings take shape you’ll not believe it. I might have known.’
‘Felice, will you stop to think. Think!’ he said, firmly but gently, instantly reminding her of that same instruction delivered under such different circumstances.
She covered her face, unable to look at him or be seen.
‘I’m sorry. Listen a while. Are you listening?’
She nodded into her hands.
‘Do you really think that Marcus would have the effrontery, and the insensitivity, to return to Wheatley if he’d been guilty of what you say? Do you really think the Vytterys and the Aycombes would remain his friends if they believed that he could have been the one involved with Frances Vyttery? And the Paynefleetes: do you think they’d allow him anywhere near if he’d betrayed their trust in that way? Of course they’d not. Marcus may be a womaniser, but he’s not stupid enough to put his profession in jeopardy to that extent. You’ve no doubt deduced that he’s here to lie low for a while, but not for anything like the Frances Vyttery tragedy. That’s not Marcus’s way of doing things.’
Felice sat on her stool and stared woodenly out of the window where men had begun to clear the cloister of debris and weeds. ‘I’d better apologise to him,’ she whispered.
‘Have you accused him, then?’
‘No, not personally.’
‘Then there’s nothing to apologise for, is there? Leave it to me.’
‘No…no! You cannot tell him.’ She turned to him in alarm. ‘You must not.’
‘I won’t. I’ll say you’ve been busy trying to please me. Isn’t that what you were doing these last four days?’
‘No, sir. He knows I’m not stupid enough to attempt the impossible.’
‘Has it been as bad as that, lass?’
She declined to answer that. ‘So, if it was not Marcus, who was it?’
He trod the ground carefully, picking his way through the facts he knew and those he was not able to reveal, aware that she sat like a hawk ready to pounce on any mistake. ‘Well, that’s not something that need concern us, is it? I don’t know how much the Vytterys and the Paynefleetes know, but I believe it’s best if we put it to the back of our minds. She was obviously a foolish woman, wasn’t she?’
Despite all his care, his painstaking route led him straight into the trap, and now she reacted to his heedless censure with all the instincts of a she-wolf with her litter. Her eyes blazed angrily. ‘Oh, yes, indeed, sir, she was, wasn’t she? But
I believe she might have been as confused as I am about who to trust and who not to. It’s an affliction we foolish women are prone to, didn’t you know that? We’re sent here and there to do this and that, and we’re forced to obey and accept anyone who sets himself up as a protector without knowing whether they’re wolves in sheep’s clothing or sheep disguised as wolves. It’s all very confusing. And then, to cap it all, we have bairns and die. Now that’s really foolish!’
She turned her back on him, attempting to hide her pain as well as her fury. But he had seen both. He had been told to listen, and now he heard a mixture of anguish and confusion, insecurity and bitterness, and a personal experience that she had so far done all she could to hide. And while he suspected what form this had taken, there was still no way of telling how deeply she had been involved, whether the priest’s real passion had been for the mother of his child or for the lovely young woman who came after. Perhaps he would never know.
He broke the heavy uncomfortable silence of the little room as gently as he was able. ‘No, not foolish, my lady. Forgive me. It was the wrong word to use. Men can be so clumsy with words. She paid a heavy price. Too heavy. But men become confused every bit as readily as women, remember, when they read women’s signals they’re not meant to see. That’s what I warned you about with Marcus; the more experienced the man the more signals he picks up, and then the woman had better not send any she prefers to keep to herself.’
‘Sometimes she cannot help it, sir,’ she said, in a small voice.
‘As you say, sometimes she cannot help it.’
‘And then what’s she supposed to do? What else can she do but pretend that these private longings don’t exist?’
‘Why so? Would it not be better for her to talk about them?’
‘No, sir, I think not. She would have to be very sure of her confidante before she could trust him to share her thoughts. Men in particular are so clumsy, as you’ve just pointed out.’ She kept her back to him, her fingers toying abstractedly with the ivory needlecase at the end of her girdle-chain, impressing her fingertips with its sharply carved roses.
Sir Leon could see that she was shaking. ‘Felice,’ he said.
‘Please…leave me. Go, sir.’
‘I’ll speak to Marcus.’
‘Yes, thank you,’ she whispered.
It was some time before she stopped shaking and before the words between them had settled, still tangled with double meanings that both of them had recognised and understood. But not until now had she known that he could be lost for words.
As the brilliance of the sun slanted through the windows, Felice stood motionless in the upper room of the Abbot’s House contemplating the tiny half-finished portrait of herself on Marcus’s miniature easel. It fitted into the lid of his travelling paintbox and had been covered over by a fine silk cloth to keep any dust off its surface, as was also the array of paints and brushes, oyster-shell palettes and packets of dried pigments. The limner even wore silk shirts so that no fibres escaped on to the ultra-smooth vellum surface of the painting. His hair was always newly washed, his nails immaculate.
The portrait already showed a miniature Felice, a steady gaze into the distance and the fine outline of the three-quarter view that limners favoured, the shadowless and peach-toned skin. But Felice could not see the likeness to the Vytterys’ daughter that Dame Celia had mentioned, perhaps for politeness’ sake, except in the dark hair and eyes. Yet in how many other ways had they been alike?
‘Like it?’ A voice spoke from the doorway.
‘Marcus! Oh, I didn’t hear you come up. Er…yes, it’s looking good. It’ll soon be finished now, I suppose?’
He strolled forward and replaced its silken shroud. ‘Not for a while, I fear. Another time, perhaps.’ His long delicate fingers roamed deftly over his tools, collecting them and placing them one by one in the box. ‘I must pack them, my lady.’ He smiled at her, gravely.
‘Marcus, stop! What d’ye mean? You’re not going, are you?’
He stopped, still holding a squirrel-hair brush. He took her chin in one hand to hold her face still, dragging the brush’s sensuous furriness around her oval face from ear to ear and smiling at her startled blink. ‘Going? Yes, my lady, I must go. Say you’ll miss me. Say you’ll die of a broken heart.’ He touched her lips with the tip of the brush. ‘Say it, even if you don’t mean it.’ His smile was of pure blue-eyed mischief.
‘I shall miss you, Marcus. Truly. I cannot promise the broken heart, nor do I understand why you’re going. Has Sir Leon told you you must?’
‘Not exactly.’ Marcus’s squirrel brush was now following the line of each fine dark eyebrow. ‘Keep still.’
‘Then what?’
‘Let’s say it was a mutual decision. We both think it best if I were not here. He believes I may be a distraction, I think. No, don’t open your mouth, I’m painting it.’
Impatiently, she held the brush aside. ‘Marcus, that’s ridiculous. I need someone to distract me from these endless lists. You can have a bed up here if he wants you out of the guesthouse.’
‘He’s about to move out of there himself tomorrow into some of the ground-floor rooms at the back of the New House but, no. That’s not the real reason I’m going. I must get another commission, you see. I cannot afford to be without work for too long.’
‘Yes, I see. But I wish you were not leaving me here.’
He touched the tip of her nose impertinently. ‘Then come with me, lady.’
‘To London?’
‘Why not? My horses are in your stables. Let’s use them.’
It would not do, nor did she believe him to be too serious about the idea. She could not live with Marcus, nor did she have contacts in London, but the idea was too good to dismiss without some further thought. ‘Must it be London?’ she said.
He shrugged. ‘Personally, I’d rather not, but it’s where I live and where I know the work to be.’
‘Then why not go to Sonning instead and paint my mother?’
‘Sonning? Isn’t that in wildest Berkshire, somewhere?’
She went to take his arm, threading hers through a crust of pale grey-embroidered satin and surprising him by her sudden affection. ‘Wildest? Hardly. It’s near Reading, and that’s nearer to London than Wheatley is.’
Catching the drift of her mind, he looked down at her in amusement. ‘I see. And the road to Sonning passes through Winchester. Is that it?’
‘And I need to reach Winchester with my lists.’
‘And you need an escort.’
‘I need an escort and a horse or two, sir.’
‘How convenient. And where do you stay in Winchester?’
‘With my mother’s friend, Lady Mary West. We stayed there overnight on our way down here: she’ll be pleased to see me again so soon.’
‘And what about permission to leave Wheatley, my lady? Am I correct in thinking that you intend to forgo that?’
‘You are correct. All I need is for a certain person to be too occupied by a house-move to notice what I’m doing. It shouldn’t be difficult.’
‘And what of your mother? Will Lady Deventer want to have her portrait painted?’
‘She will if I send her a letter for you to carry. At the same time you’ll be able to tell Lord Deventer how things progress here at the abbey and what a fine job I’m making of things.’
‘And how well you get on with your guardian?’
‘Er…no, Marcus. It’s best if you say nothing of that. It’s not his concern, but you may tell him I’ll be ordering goods for the New House in his name from merchants in Winchester. He’d better know of that.’
‘Right. So I’ll go and make myself agreeable to your lady mother. Is she as lovely as her daughter, by any chance?’
‘She’s very pretty. She’s also seven months’ pregnant.’
Not for a moment did Felice think that her mother’s pregnancy would make any difference to Marcus’s interest in her as a sitter, not with a hefty fee
to be had. After all, he had painted the Vytterys’ daughter in the same, though probably less advanced condition, though Sir Leon had been right to suggest that they should now put that subject out of mind, especially since she had mistaken Marcus so unjustly.
However, this was not the only subject she must try to forget during the day-long ride to Winchester over rough tracks bordered with white hawthorn and alive with cheeky hedge-sparrows. Spontaneous plans, Marcus had told her, were often the best, this one being perfectly timed to remove herself from the one who nowadays dominated her thoughts. It also gave her the chance to be truly independent of him.
She must, she told herself, get to the merchants to order more beds and linen, mattresses and pillows, more tableware and silver, kitchenware and food supplies. The lists were extensive, yet the prospect of all this in the days ahead could barely compensate for the ache in her breast and the knowledge that any annoyance she had inflicted upon Sir Leon by her escape was nothing to the gnawing emptiness she had inflicted upon herself. It did little good to compare it with that which she had felt over Timon, for now she had to contend with the whereabouts of Sir Leon’s affections as well as her own.
She had no doubt that he would wait until her return, berate her soundly, then carry on from where they’d left off, but this diversion would help to show that, if Marcus was a distraction, that was exactly what she needed.
They had left Elizabeth behind because, Felice had told the weeping girl, Mr Donne had only enough spare horses for herself, for Lydia to ride pillion behind Mr Peale whose help she must have, and for a packhorse. Even this had taken some rearranging, their so-called furtive escape eventually becoming so difficult to conceal that it was a wonder the whole of Wheatley had not heard what was going on, even through the clamour of cock-crow and church-bells.
But the drizzling rain that followed them towards Winchester soon cleared, drying their cloaks with a gusting wind and scattering them with a confetti of white petals. It was late afternoon when they passed through the great West Gate into the High Street still seething with traders and last-minute buyers, porters and journeymen, tinkers, pedlars, beggars and drunks who reeled tipsily out of noisy inns.
A Most Unseemly Summer Page 12
