by Liz Tyner
But the moment her hand touched his shirt, he stilled again and she touched the buttons at his collar, undoing each tiny white orb, amazed that any man’s fingers could ever manoeuvre the fastenings.
When her hand trailed to pull his shirt free from his trousers, she became aware of the thinness of the garment. More thin than any chemise, yet such firmness beneath.
When she ran her hand along the fabric, she felt the same as if she stoked a fire inside herself. She rubbed the cloth of his shirt, fanning her desire, unable to stop.
After she pulled the garment loose and over his head, she put both palms flat against him, reassuring herself this was Andrew, not a portrait. She shut her eyes and let her cheek rest against his shoulder while she let her fingers savour him, feeling the ridge of a small scar. Women would be giving their men hammer and boards if the tools alone created such masculine form.
She moved her fingers up, feeling the chiselled curve of his chest, the wall of man, the pebbled nipples, and then kept her eyes shut and let the expanse of his shoulders treat her sense of touch, wondering if she might take up sculpting next.
He came alive when she touched his lips. She let her body flutter against his.
His hands grasped her shoulders and he pulled her into an embrace, locked her into his arms and melded her against him, his mouth taking hers.
The moist kiss tasted of Andrew more than anything else. No brandy, wine or essence of anything but the man. He was tenderness and strength all in one.
He pulled her into him, grasping her bottom, reminding her he was flesh and blood, but then she looked at him and decided he wasn’t.
She forced herself back, backhanded her paintings from the chair and gave him a nudge on to the now-empty seat.
Her eyes registered the placket of his clothing, the rise behind it, and her fingers made short work of the barrier.
She raised her skirt and sunk on to him, fully clothed. She knew her deepest fantasy was in her arms, her body and her whole being.
To paint the most beautiful being of one’s imagination, and then experience him fully, was almost more than she could bear.
He took control, blossoming their passions, creating a wash of sensations.
She forced her face past his shoulder and brought her fist up to her mouth.
And later she didn’t remember release, his or hers, or completion, she just awoke to the feel of herself draped over his body and his rhythmic breathing.
‘Beatrice?’ he asked softly.
She mumbled her answer against his damp shoulder. ‘I love art.’
Chapter Twenty-One
Beatrice disentangled herself and stood. Andrew helped hold her upright with two hands at her waist. She felt that, if he dropped his hands, she’d slide right to the floor.
‘Beatrice?’ he asked again. ‘Bea?’
Her eyes focused on him and her voice was little more than a whisper. ‘I hate to think what you’d be like with a little more practice.’
He let her go, watching her and making sure she wouldn’t tumble. Then he pulled his trousers in place.
He adjusted his shirt, tucking it back into his waistband, but she interrupted him, wrapping herself around him. He leaned down to put a kiss in her hair, but gently, he moved her back.
‘Andrew, you are my painting come to life.’
‘No. The painting is solely imagination.’
His face. Shuttered. Distance. But this time she could see what he thought. He had taken his mind from her, shut her away and made his decision.
Well, she was no green girl and she had lived with disapproval from all sides. Never again.
True, she had painted the portrait, but it had been stolen. ‘I did not tell the scandal sheets of the painting.’
‘I am aware.’
‘I would never do that.’
‘I know.’
His face. No softer than the walls of a crypt. She turned away and pushed her hair, pulling out a pin so she could secure the knot again. She dropped the clasp, but didn’t move.
His hand touched her waist, and he leaned beside her, picking up the pin from the floor and putting it in her grasp. Their fingers touched, but only for a moment.
She jabbed at her hair, finishing.
The painting. Her imagination had overtaken her again. It had created something of her dreams, but not the truth. She was no different than Riverton. She’d fogged her mind but it had been with the scent of linseed and varnish and the splash of pigments.
When she painted, hours and hours could pass without hunger, or thought. How different was that than the mixtures of Riverton? How different was the thin, flat surface of the canvas than the haze of the smoke? She’d created her own smoke and her own poison.
She had put her heart in the brushes.
But she would not walk into the haze. She wanted to live life in all its real and glorious colours and emotions.
Inside, her thoughts gnashed against each other, swirling in the same way the smoke from Riverton’s pipe had clogged her throat and clung to her skin. The scent of a dying spirit. She moved to the window, but couldn’t see past the panes.
If the painting had been before her, she would have slashed it herself.
* * *
The knowledge of that rubbish out in the world somewhere with his countenance on it evaporated all the feelings of pleasure he’d just experienced.
‘I will find the painting and burn it. It’s too notorious to stay hidden for ever and I’m not above whatever means it will take to retrieve it.’
‘Do what you must.’
‘Are you planning another portrait?’
‘Yes. I’ll always paint. That is what I must do.’ She half-turned to him, the window highlighting her rueful smile. ‘It is the way I breathe. It is my weakness—my strength.’
‘What are you attempting next?’
‘A self-portrait. A true one. Not an imagined warrior for which I use my face merely as a guide. I am going to do a true likeness. I am going to paint myself and see what my brush creates. I wish to know.’
‘Clothed?’
She nodded.
He looked back to the window, anger buried so deep he could not feel it. He spoke to himself, but the words carried into the room. ‘You stabbed me, Bea. With your paintbrush. More deeply than you did Riverton. I want children and a quiet life for them. I want my home to be a haven for them. You gave me a past I can never erase.’
He thought back to the day he had walked in on his father crying. His father slowly read aloud from the letter he’d received, grasping for each word because he could hardly speak for the tears. His mistress had taken the little boy. She’d sailed for the Americas with her husband. It was too late to stop her. She was gone.
His father had leaned over the letter, both elbows on the table, his face buried in his hands, shoulders shaking.
Andrew’s mother had walked by the door, looked in, did not speak, did not flicker so much as an eyebrow and continued on.
That night, Andrew had started the plans for the home he would some day live in. The world he would create for his children and a peaceful place their grandparents could visit and shut the rest of the world away.
He was almost finished with the house, but his father had passed shortly after the letter, and would never see the home.
‘I am living my life as I should,’ Beatrice’s words interrupted his thoughts. ‘I cannot lock myself away. I must feel and experience and paint. I do want to be in the scandal sheets now. I want people to see my paintings. I want to stir their spirits.’
Her eyes lowered, but her voice rang true. ‘All would have been fine if Tilly hadn’t returned.’
He let the silence stand between them for a moment, then he spoke. ‘I’m not even sure of that. Things will always happen around you, Beatrice.’
He saw the reflection of his words in her eyes. Her life would never be quiet or calm.
Sunlight haloed her hair and he walked to her. ‘Yo
u have a speck of paint.’
Softly, he touched the hair where a dot of paint had dried on one of the locks.
He worked it loose and looked at it in the light, rubbing it between his thumb and forefinger.
Vermilion.
He let the flecks fall to the floor and enfolded her close to his heart for one last time, taking in the scents of Beatrice and the studio around her. Her world.
He pulled back, adjusting the sleeves of his coat and pulling his white cravat into place as he left.
* * *
Andrew opened the door of his house, closing it in time to see Fawsett on the upper level rush to the top of the stairs, grabbing the banister to stop himself, and almost being carried forward by his momentum.
‘I am so pleased you are home.’ He stopped and then composed himself, chin high, voice carrying a reverence. ‘Welcome back, my lord knight. I am your vassal.’
It was as if a carpenter’s saw wove to and fro against the grain, inside the bones of his skull, and he just wanted to find some relief. ‘I assume you have had some time to read the scandal sheets.’
Fawsett nodded, briefly rocking to his toes. ‘The engraving in the newsprint did you no justice. No justice at all. You are a valiant knight in truth.’
‘No references to the...sword.’ He met Fawsett’s face, his own commanding.
Fawsett stood taller. ‘I cannot help it. I am so proud to have this post. It is worth every hammer, every bent nail, every starched cravat.’ He paused. ‘I am honoured.’
Andrew felt mollified. For all his faults, Fawsett truly was on his side. He didn’t want to see his employer ridiculed either.
‘The shoulders. Much too narrow in the print. Much too narrow.’ Fawsett stood back as Andrew moved up the stairs.
Andrew wasn’t sure that in Fawsett he hadn’t hired a replica of his cousin Foxworthy. Andrew ground his teeth.
Fawsett waited until Andrew walked past. ‘Indeed an honour,’ Fawsett said.
This prattle by Fawsett would have to stop. Andrew could not be reminded of the scandal sheets in his own home. This was his haven, but the day’s events had caused such an ache in his head. He just wanted the mess to die away.
As Andrew paused, planning to direct the valet on that topic, Fawsett darted around and opened the door, chin proud, shoulders stiff, face pressed into a perfect servant’s gaze. Andrew could not bring himself to admonish the valet.
When Andrew walked into the room. He stopped. Sniffed. Lacquer? Linseed oil?
There, on the wall, replacing his precious landscape painting by Richard Wilson, was something else. In all its glory, he saw the Nude.
The blow to his stomach knocked him back a half-step.
He stood. His mouth opened, but the rest of his body couldn’t move.
‘It arrived this morning,’ Fawsett said, moving beside Andrew. The valet clasped his own hands in front of him and looked up as if he were staring at all the great artworks combined into one. ‘The original—and I must say, the shoulders are correct in it. And, I disagree with your having her leave off the scar, but I will concede you your vanity. And the rest—I suppose she did well enough on. Except the hands. I would say she did not quite capture those. Had her mind elsewhere, I’m sure.’
‘Get. It. Down.’
‘But...’
‘Now.’
‘But, sir. It’s famous. You’re famous. And you have the original.’ Fawsett fairly hopped on both feet now.
Andrew whirled to Fawsett. ‘How did it get here?’
‘Came wrapped. A man, claimed to be a solicitor, brought it to the trade entrance. Said an older woman paid him to deliver it here on your birthday. But we all knew it wasn’t your birthday. We all thought it some error. So it was unwrapped, by who we cannot recall. An innocent error, I’m sure.’
Most certainly innocent, Andrew knew, what with it reeking of the scent of oils. And the whole of London knowing of the caricature and suspecting the original existed. ‘Every servant in this house is sacked. Without reference.’
Fawsett stepped backwards as if a flintlock ball had entered his chest.
He turned to Fawsett. ‘Do you still have the wrapping?’
Fawsett nodded, his bottom lip poking too far forward. His voice was quiet. ‘But we all care for you so much, sir.’
‘Fine.’ He gritted his teeth. ‘Then you may all remain.’ He took a breath so he could speak normally again. He pointed to the painting. ‘Wrap the monstrosity up and bundle it up to the attic. Tell no one it is here.’
‘All the staff admired it,’ Fawsett whispered, leaning in to Andrew. ‘The woman who opened it shrieked and then the ones who ran to see what was the matter called out, and, well, one cannot stem a tide.’
Andrew reacted much in the same way as when he’d hit his thumb with a hammer. ‘All?’ Andrew heard his voice and didn’t recognise it.
‘Yes. I thought the cook might have an apoplexy, but her smile was genuine, and I had to spirit it upstairs or the women would not complete any work. I would say, sir, the staff is all quite proud. We are famous.’
Fawsett rubbed his hands together, his eyes alight. ‘And we have had quite the number of enquiries from young women concerning the possibility of employment here. I suppose the news, whispered by a maid to the rag-and-bone collector must have traversed quite quickly.’
‘Attic.’ Andrew pointed over his head. ‘Lock it and make sure no one knows where it is.’
‘If you insist.’ Fawsett took small steps towards it, straightened it first, stepped back, then reached forward and lifted it from the hanger to take it from the wall. ‘Although, it is quite—’ he smiled at Andrew ‘—invigorating to the maids to view it.’ He whispered, ‘We could charge coin for people to observe it.’
Andrew’s jaw clicked. He glared.
‘Just a thought, sir,’ Fawsett said, striding sideways, managing the bulky load, but not taking his eyes from his master.
Andrew shook his head. ‘I cannot believe the staff has seen it.’
‘Of course, your mother has not,’ Fawsett reassured him, letting the painting rest on the floor.
Andrew paused, his body tensing. ‘She’s here?’
Fawsett squinted and bit his bottom lip before answering. ‘Not at this very second, but she will possibly return. She doesn’t quite seem to understand the honour done you. I considered showing the painting, with a loincloth of sorts, draped over it. But I don’t feel she’s ready to admire it. Mothers can be so motherish. They never realise their little boys become men. Your mother took the carriage to her sister’s after she arrived here, but she was able to calm the duke.’ He frowned. ‘His Grace is not well. I fear he is destined for an early grave if he doesn’t watch himself. Your mother, ah, I am not sure, as it was behind closed doors, but she may have had to box his ears or some such.’
‘Attic.’ Andrew slammed out the word and pointed overhead. ‘Now.’
* * *
When Fawsett left, Andrew sat at the edge of the bed and looked at the blank spot on the wall for how long he didn’t know.
He had the painting, but he didn’t have Beatrice.
A soft rap at his door interrupted his reverie. ‘Open,’ he called.
Fawsett tipped his head around. ‘Your mother’s carriage has returned. It is in front of the house now. I saw it from the window.’
Andrew stood. ‘You should have been a spy, Fawsett.’
‘And miss working for The Naked Knight—I think not.’
Andrew did not change his tone. ‘You are sacked. Again. And this time I mean it.’
‘I pledge my fealty.’ He crossed his fisted arm over his chest. ‘Even if you bodily throw me out, I will crawl back across burning coals to work for you.’ He spoke, hardly moving his lips. ‘You would not believe how many women have asked for details about you.’ His lips puffed. ‘My imagination does you proud and I do not mind consoling the women that they cannot be yours.’
‘You know the truths
of me.’
‘I only thought I knew. I was deceptively misled. You even had me convinced.’ He pursed his lips before narrowing his eyes. ‘I should have known when I saw the scar.’
‘It is nothing.’
‘Ooh. You are much more adventurous than I thought, to believe that nothing. I bow to you.’ And he did, then left.
Andrew went to the sitting room and met his mother at the staircase.
In one hand she had a crumpled handkerchief in her grasp and a folded newspaper clutched in her other.
‘Mother. I would have done everything to prevent this from happening. To prevent you from knowing.’
Her face was white and her mouth thin.
‘Well... I could not have ever wished for this to happen. Never. I saw my sister and she is quite aghast. Quite. She said you have set the family name back a century, totally ignoring all her son Foxworthy has done. I was deeply hurt.’ She sighed, and if one could put a caustic edge into such a simple sound she did. ‘But I was gracious enough to stay for tea—while she told me how my perfect son had finally erred.’
She waved a hand. ‘One little indiscretion by my son and she is quite superior.’ She turned her head and made a tsking noise, before she met his gaze. ‘But I stayed for tea.’
He saw a look in his mother’s eyes—one he’d never seen before. One with hard glitter and which might have been better suited to Beatrice. ‘While I was listening to the woe she poured out, Agatha Crump dropped by for a morning call and to tell us about Foxworthy’s latest conquest. I think he did not take well to you being in the scandal sheets without him. Agatha brought a copy—’ she raised her hand ‘—of this tawdry little tale.’
She thrust the paper towards Andrew and took a step into the room.
‘It says Foxworthy proposed marriage to Lady Wilmont, on bended knee, at the Lamshire soirée at the end of a waltz and right in front of the violinist.’ She handed the paper to Andrew and leaned to peer at the caricature. ‘He looks quite earnest in the engraving—even though he was probably sotted. But do not believe everything you see. Agatha was there and said Lady Wilmont’s husband wasn’t really restrained by two men, apparently it took three.’ She looked up, face placid. ‘I suppose they had to omit the third man because they didn’t want to devote much space to it. And I think Foxworthy’s size looks quite diminished in the drawing. For you, they devoted a whole page.’
