Diamonds and Deceit (At Somerton)

by Rasheed, Leila

  She laughed in confusion, startled by his sudden, almost drunken happiness.

  “You’ve no idea what a breath of fresh air you are.” His gaze traveled over her. “I have never met a woman like you before.”

  Rose smiled, and felt her face warm. To hide her confusion she looked out at the streets. They were leaving the houses behind as fields unfolded like green banners, the hedges dazzling her eyes with the sunlight gleaming from their green leaves.

  “But where are we really going?”

  “Cornwall.”

  “Cornwall?”

  “Mont Pleasance. It’s as close to the wilderness as we can get in a day. We spent every winter there, when the cold of the Highlands became too much to bear. The second duke built it for his bride.” He added, with the irony she had come to associate with him, “So there has been at least one happy marriage in my family, it seems.”

  Rose was sure she should ask more questions. Cornwall seemed a long way away, a place she had only heard of in legends of King Arthur and the Holy Grail. Surely she should be protesting, she should be afraid, conscious of the danger to her reputation. But somehow she did not want to. She didn’t feel afraid, she realized to her surprise. She didn’t feel anxious. Being here, with Alexander, now, felt right. More right than anything had in a long time.

  She relaxed into the leather seat. The countryside blurred past, sun and golden fields mingled with the constant roar of the engine. A weight of worry seemed to melt away like an iceberg vanishing. The sound of the engine was lulling her, and Alexander’s presence was warm and reassuring by her side. She slipped into a dream, a dream in which she was at the prow of a boat, rushing forward through a dark sea, onward to an unknown destination. But she did not feel afraid, because Alexander was right beside her.

  The silence woke her. She gasped in sudden fright. “Where are we?”

  “It’s all right.” Alexander’s voice steadied her. “We’ve arrived.”

  Rose struggled to sit up. The wind had half destroyed her hat, and her hair was tangled beneath it.

  “Oh dear,” she murmured as she tried to rescue her hat. Then she saw where they were, and all thoughts of her appearance vanished.

  They were on a rocky rise above woodland, and below her she could see the stark, rugged shape of a castle. It perched upon the rock like a sea eagle. A winding path led down to it. And behind it, glittering, moving, constantly dancing…

  “Is that the sea?” she asked.

  He looked at her in surprise. “You’ve never seen the sea before?”

  “No. Somerton is not near the coast.” It was enormous, she thought, huger than she had ever dreamed. The pictures at Somerton did not do it justice.

  “I suppose not. Well, what do you think of it?”

  “I think it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” She added, “And listen—listen to it!” She smiled in wonder and delight as she realized the constant rushing and roaring was the sound of all the waves breaking upon the beach. As if that sound had opened her ears to others, she realized that she could hear through it the gentle rustle of grass, the sweet and shrill birdsong. Above the sea, gulls circled, crying like children. And behind it all, like the white canvas of a painting, was silence.

  “What a beautiful place,” she exclaimed. “And oh—what is the castle?”

  “That’s Mont Pleasance,” Alexander said. “We can only reach it by foot from here. It was built to be secluded—apart from the world.”

  Rose gazed at it. The castle was beautiful, as beautiful as Somerton, but utterly different. There was nothing elegant about it, nothing tame. It had the beauty of an uncut diamond.

  “I forget that there is so much for you to discover,” he said. He smiled down at her. “I’m glad that you first saw the sea with me.”

  “Because of you,” she replied. “It’s a beautiful gift. Thank you.” His eyes glittered as he gazed back at her. “You are so lucky to have this as your home.”

  A shadow seemed to cross his face. “Let’s go,” he said. He climbed out of the motorcar and came round to help her down.

  She glanced at him as they walked down the winding path toward the castle. Alexander had not sounded proud of his home. He gave no sign of pleasure in being there as they walked under the stone arch, into the embrace of the courtyard.

  Closer up, Rose could see that the castle was falling into decay. The clustered turrets were entwined with ivy. She could hear the crashing of the waves below. Espaliered fruit trees that had once grown against the sunny walls had been allowed to run wild and she caught the smell of apples crushed into the grass. “Is there no one else here? No servants?” The castle felt so far away from everywhere else. It was almost as if the outside world had vanished.

  Before Alexander could answer, a man came out of the front door. Rose just had time to see he was bearded and dressed in a smock-like garment splashed with an eye-watering combination of paints, before he waved and shouted in a French accent. “Alex! At last. You must tell me if this orange is too clean.”

  “Your colors are never clean,” Alexander retorted with a grin. He took Rose’s hand and led her across the courtyard. Feeling both terrified and elated, Rose followed Alexander and the Frenchman inside. She gasped and stood still, gazing around her in amazement.

  A great wooden staircase swept up in two flights to a landing above, and on the walls hung vivid, powerful abstract canvases. The heads of boar and stag hung crazily among them in a strange clash of ancient and modern. On the walls hung swords arrayed in fan shapes, and classical statues lined the hallway, intermingled with extraordinary metal objects that seemed ripped from the heart of a steamship or an aeroplane. With the sunlight coming through the stained-glass window above the stairs and glowing from the wooden banister, it all combined to make the most original impression that Rose had ever seen. It was like looking into a different universe. And then one of the statues, dressed in a Grecian tunic, turned and stepped down from her pedestal.

  “Are you no longer painting me, darling?” she asked the Frenchman. “I must have a cigarette then.” She did not even glance at Rose. Neither she nor the artist took the slightest notice of Rose, and to Rose’s surprise this did not annoy her. In fact, it was welcome. No one was staring, no one was listening. Rose was simply accepted, as natural a presence as the light. The French artist and his model wandered away, chatting and sharing a cigarette. Alexander led Rose up the stairs. She glanced into room after room. In some, she saw easels set up. A gray-haired, bespectacled woman in canary-yellow stockings sat at a window and typed furiously without looking up. Rose heard an opera singer’s voice floating down like strands of gold from an upstairs window.

  “I don’t understand.” Rose was breathless, both from the astonishing sights all around her and from trying to keep up with Alexander’s fast pace. “Who are those people? Do they live here?”

  “They do, for as long as they wish to. They’re like me—they just want to paint, or sculpt, or write. And in Paris, they starve and live in hovels. I brought them all here, let them live as they want, work freely. I want the place to be somewhere that people can do something worth doing.”

  Rose looked at him in disbelief. It was impossible to imagine Somerton thrown open in the same way. “But this is your home. You are very generous to open it up like this.”

  “No, no,” he said wearily. “I have to let in the light somehow.”

  She wanted to ask him what he meant, but he forestalled her, pushing open the great doors to a long gallery. It was still decorated in the heavy Victorian style, but the windows had been thrown open to the view of the sunlit sea. He led her down the room, past portrait after portrait.

  “Are those the ancestors?” She looked up at the grim faces, from the days of armor, wigs, and ermine. The great swords that hung on the walls like guillotine blades seemed soft next to them.

  “Yes. Cheerful lot, aren’t they?”

  Rose followed Alexander down the echoi
ng stone hall. The last portrait had been taken down and a bare space on the wall showed where it had hung. Rose looked curiously after him, but he didn’t pause, only strode on.

  Room after room was filled with canvases, electric and powerful, propped here and there as if they had been done in a great hurry and forgotten about as soon as painted.

  “It’s wonderful, it’s so wonderful,” Rose could do nothing but repeat the words. “I didn’t think a place like this existed.”

  “I knew it didn’t. That’s why I created it.” He looked around him. “It’s the place I wanted it to be when I was growing up here. People like Vincent, and Marlene… They can work here.”

  “It’s the most wonderful idea. I’ve never seen anything so perfect.” She realized how much she would love to live here, far away from London society, free as the seagulls.

  Alexander turned a warm smile to her. “I’m glad you like it. I would want my wife to help me in this work.”

  And he walked away. Rose stood, stunned. Was that a proposal? she asked herself. Unable to think of a response, she followed him.

  I should challenge him, she thought, a little angry. But she hadn’t the courage to. She was afraid of breaking the fragile spell that seemed to allow them to be together. If she stopped and thought, she would remember how impossible it was for her to be here, what dreadful trouble she would be in if she was found out. She didn’t want to think of that. I have till midnight, she thought, and I am going to dance my heart out.

  “Come, let’s look at the sea. It’s the best view in Cornwall.”

  He caught her hand and ran with her along the hall, threw open a door, and they stepped out onto the battlements. The wind ruffled his curls as he turned to the sea. Rose, watching him, had a strange thrill of thinking that he might have been his ancestor from a hundred years before.

  It was beautiful, the rocks and coves, the light glinting from the sea, the white sails of yachts on the horizon. Seagulls keening as they balanced on the wind. And the rocky maze of a garden, leading down to the sea. She breathed in the fresh, wild air. Still she rolled Alexander’s strange words over in her mind. A proposal? Or just a careless comment? Perhaps I simply imagined it, she thought. Or misheard. She groped for words, anything to break the silence.

  “There must be so many happy memories here for you—”

  “I hate the place,” he said quietly.

  “But why?”

  “My father. He hated everything I loved, it seemed. He forbade me to study art, drove my mother to madness, and drank himself to death. Everything here reminds me of him.” Alexander waved his hand toward the castle behind them. “I think if I bring my life here, my art, my passions…I think I will one day be able to paint over the memories of him.”

  “I am so sorry,” Rose murmured, remembering the last, missing portrait. It must have belonged to the last duke, the father Alexander was doing all he could to erase.

  “He forbade me to study art. We quarreled again and again. It was only by running away, giving up everything to go to Paris, that I could learn to paint.”

  “But he must have loved you.” She drew closer, wanting to comfort him and not knowing what to say. “He left you all this.”

  He laughed, a harsh bark. “There was only one thing he loved more than himself, and that was the Huntleigh line, the Huntleigh name. He would never have left the estates to anyone but me. As bad as he thought me—and he thought me very bad—I could at least produce an heir. You see? I didn’t matter at all. His only interest in me was that I should marry a suitable heiress and produce more Huntleighs.”

  Rose hardly knew what to say. It felt as if he had drawn a curtain aside, to show her a life of such shadow and sadness that it broke her heart to think of it.

  “Then why did you come back?” she said. “Why return for the season?”

  He hesitated. “You may have heard gossip about my conduct the season before I left.…”

  She wanted to know the truth so badly, and he had already told her so much. “What happened at Gravelley Park?” she interrupted, hardly believing her own daring.

  He shot her a keen glance. “I’m not proud of it. I don’t want you to think badly of me.”

  “I don’t want to think badly of you either,” she said.

  He sighed, running his hands through his curls. “Laurence invited us to Gravelley Park for a Saturday to Monday. I was—well, I was not at my best, shall we say. My father and I had just had another falling out. I had brought several bottles of Highland whisky as a gift for Laurence. Needless to say, I drank the whole of them. I hardly remember that weekend, but from what I understand, my behavior was reprehensible. I first led Laurence’s sister to believe I had serious intentions toward her, only to throw her off for Charlotte Templeton. Another lady toward whom I had no serious intentions. I was a rake, and there’s no denying it. I am only now trying to make amends for my behavior toward Miss Templeton, though understandably Emily Maddox wants nothing to do with me.”

  Rose’s mouth opened in shock. “But…is this why you’ve paid Charlotte such attentions? Your previous conduct?” It was as if an invisible weight had lifted from her chest.

  “Yes.” He smiled down at her. “Though now that I’ve truly gotten to know her, it’s clear that she is simply using me to make Laurence jealous. I feel a bit of a fool, of course, but at least now we are even.” He laughed. His dark mood had vanished as quickly as it had come. “Come, let’s go back inside. There’s one more thing I want to show you.”

  “We ought to go back,” Rose protested halfheartedly, but Alexander was ahead of her and did not seem to hear. He led her along the corridors and threw open a door. Rose saw a room hung with tapestries and shrouded in shadow. The tall windows were open to let in the sea breeze that stirred the curtains. In the center of the room, its polished wood shining so deeply that it seemed almost to glow, stood a grand piano.

  Rose gasped. She turned to him, an unspoken question in her eyes. He met it with a smile.

  “Yes, I was thinking of this when I asked you here.” He hesitated, then added, “I wasn’t telling the whole truth when I said I had no happy memories here. My mother sometimes used to play this piano. I’d like to hear it again.”

  Rose didn’t need to be asked twice. She walked over to the stool and sat down. She ran a hand lovingly over the wood, and opened the lid. For a moment she was frightened that she would not be able to play, that just as in London, she would be lost. But the instant her hands touched the keyboard she knew she had nothing to fear.

  All the new sounds she had heard since she came to London—and the cries of the seagulls outside, the steady rush and roar of the sea—mingled together in her mind and her fingers sought them out on the keyboard. She was so engrossed that she was startled when she looked up and saw Alexander close by, watching her. His eyes shone as brightly as the sunlight on the wood.

  Her hands danced across the keys, and music spilled out. All the new sights she had seen—the sunlight on the sea, rippling and shimmering as if it were liquid metal; Alexander’s words, We are changing and we can’t stop ourselves—all came together in her mind like strands woven into a tapestry. That was what her music would be, she knew now. It would be change itself. It would never repeat a pattern, but always be transforming, always be weaving something new. Lost to all sense of time, she did not notice as outside the light faded from the sky, and the stars came out one by one over the dark sea.

  Cornwall

  Rose woke to perfect peace. The sea’s gentle sighs and the cries of the seagulls mingled with the salty breeze that blew in through the open window. She realized she was no longer at the piano, but lying on the sofa, covered in a blanket. And wrapped in Alexander Ross’s arms.

  Her eyes fluttered open, and she remembered the night before in a rush of fierce joy. They had talked and laughed late into the night. He had told her about Paris, until she could almost see the brash, bold lights and smell the cigar smoke mingled wit
h the fumes of oil paint and turpentine.

  “I’ll take you there,” he had told her. “We’ll walk along the Seine, I’ll show you the Eiffel Tower. It’s monstrous but beautiful, just as the future should be.”

  She allowed herself to snuggle deeper into his arms, feeling warmer and safer than she ever had in her life. She noticed a sketchbook under his arm, one corner jutting out. Moving softly so as not to wake him, she tried to see what he had been drawing. She managed to extricate the sketchbook and looked at the drawing. The figure was a blur of movement, of light, somehow, though the light was caught in dark lines of charcoal.

  She looked up to find him smiling at her, his eyes open. “I’m sorry—I was prying,” she said, but couldn’t help smiling back at him.

  “No, don’t be,” he said, taking her hand. “It will be yours anyway, when it’s finished.” He picked up the sketchbook, looking at it thoughtfully.

  “I wonder if it looks anything like the music sounded.” He began stroking her fingers with his thumb. Her hand fit so perfectly in his. “I was fascinated by the way you put sounds together. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything like it before.”

  “I’m not trained, of course,” Rose stammered. Her heart sped up with each brush of his skin against hers.

  “But that’s exactly why it’s so fascinating. Your music is original. Your ideas are like you—unique.”

  His gaze was soft but so intense that she blushed. She was aware of the warmth of his body next to hers, the closeness of his lips to her own. She looked away in confusion, but she could still feel him looking at her, and it felt more intimate than anything she had ever experienced before.

  I shouldn’t be doing this, she thought. This is dangerous. This is…

  She looked up, directly into his eyes. Gently he kissed her on the mouth. Rose melted into the dizzy, glorious feeling. Although everything she knew told her that she was behaving dreadfully, dangerously, she could not stop kissing him. It simply felt right, she thought, shocked at how easy it was to behave in ways one would not have dreamed possible.