Harlequin Historical November 2015, Box Set 2 of 2

by Lynna Banning

  ‘Now, now, my dear,’ Trelawney scolded, coming over and patting her benignly on the sleeve. ‘You’ll soon get over your nerves. I’m sure many models feel as you do at first. Now come along, Benedict. Don’t miss this chance. If you want this painting to be in the exhibition we’d better get it over there.’

  ‘I’m ready to take it now,’ he said. His attention had moved away from her. He grabbed his coat and scarf.

  ‘Benedict—’

  ‘My dear...’ Trelawney gave her another pat. ‘There’s no point talking to him until the painting has been viewed by the selectors. You won’t get a word of sense from him until then.’

  ‘But, Benedict, there’s something I must tell you —’

  He bent and whispered in her ear. His breath caressed her. ‘We can’t talk now, Cameo. Come back tonight when we’ll be alone. There’s something I need to say to you, too.’

  * * *

  Cameo hurried down the dark alleyway, through the red doorway and up the stairs, her fingers gripping the banister tight.

  The day had been endless. That morning, after she left Benedict, she went home to Mayfair as if in a nightmare. Almost crazed, she’d made up her mind to go to the Royal Academy and find him, stop him. She had put on her bonnet and gloves before she reconsidered. No. Her appearance would only raise more questions. There was a chance, slim at best, that the selectors wouldn’t recognise her in the painting immediately. People in her social circle weren’t going to see it until the exhibition officially opened. Her identity might not be revealed. She had time to ask Benedict to withdraw it, though her heart sank at the thought. She would wait and tell him when they were alone in the studio.

  During the afternoon, to stay calm, she had taken her folding easel and her watercolours out into the grassy square where she used to play with Maud and climb trees with George and tried to paint some pale daffodils clustered inside the wrought-iron railings. The occupation only agitated her more. ‘O, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive...’ her nanny had intoned to her in the nursery. The web was more than tangled. She’d tied herself up in knots.

  Packing up her paints, she had gone back into the house. Later, Briggs had carried a visiting card on a silver tray in to her in the drawing room. She picked it up and dropped it as if it stung her. Lord Warley.

  ‘Please tell Lord Warley I’m not at home.’

  ‘Very good, Lady Catherine Mary,’ Briggs had replied, giving her a worried glance. He knew her well enough to know something was wrong. But she couldn’t confide in anyone, until she’d seen Benedict and told him the truth.

  After dinner with her mama she’d gone upstairs to her bedroom to wait until the coast was clear. There was no sign of George and her father must have been at his club. He hadn’t appeared at dinner. When her mother retired to her bedroom with one of her headaches, she had raced down to the servant hall and begged Bert to take her to Soho. Something in her desperate expression must have convinced him even though he didn’t like taking her to such a place at night. In Soho he parked the carriage right in front of Benedict’s house, instead of around the corner.

  Cameo gulped as she continued to hurry up the stairs to the studio. At the top landing the door was ajar, the studio dark, except for the firelight flickering in the grate. She could only dimly make out Benedict sitting beside it, a glass of whisky in his hand.

  Wordlessly she tiptoed over and stood in front of him. She smelled the whisky fumes as he drained a large swig.

  ‘I was wondering when you would arrive.’ His grip tightened on the glass. ‘Good evening, Miss Ashe. Or should I say, Lady Catherine Mary St Clair?’

  With a smash Benedict hurled the whisky glass into the fire.

  Chapter Sixteen

  ‘Make thine heart ready with thine eyes: the time

  Is come to raise the veil.’

  —Alfred, Lord Tennyson:

  ‘The Gardener’s Daughter’

  The glass glittered in jagged fragments on the stone hearth as the smell of the liquor wafted through the air. Benedict got to his feet and mocked politely, ‘I’m so sorry, Lady Catherine Mary. Please excuse me. Do you care for some whisky?’

  Cameo shook her ringlets, trembling from head to foot. She lowered her head to avoid witnessing the fury in his face and gathered her black velvet cloak protectively around her, clutching its edges so tightly her knuckles whitened. She’d come without gloves. Not that it mattered now. Nothing mattered, except convincing Benedict to listen to her.

  He grabbed the whisky bottle and splashed a large measure into a new, unbroken glass, the amber colour of the liquid flaring in the firelight. ‘No? That’s right. You don’t enjoy whisky much, do you? You’re not used to it. Not refined enough for you, perhaps. But I believe I’ll have another.’ He tossed back the drink, his strong throat contracting sharply as he swallowed.

  She waited for him to speak again, still clutching her cloak. But he said nothing.

  A terrible silence lengthened between them. ‘So you know,’ she said at last, her voice low. ‘I came here to tell you myself.’

  ‘Did you? I’m sure you say that now.’

  ‘I planned to tell you.’ Her voice grew stronger. ‘I’ve come to apologise.’

  ‘Really.’

  She glanced up at him, at the two harsh lines on either side of his mouth. They hadn’t been as deep before, she felt sure of it. Had she done that to him? ‘I shouldn’t have lied to you. You must believe me.’

  He crooked his eyebrow and lifted the whisky glass, his clenched knuckles as white as hers. He took another large swig. ‘You didn’t think deception was a dangerous game? Was it a society joke for you?’

  Tears threatened to gush from her eyes, down her cheeks. She blinked them away. ‘It wasn’t a joke, or a game. I wanted to learn about painting from you. I wanted it desperately.’

  ‘So desperately you were prepared to lie,’ he shot back in disgust. ‘How delightful for you to have an extra diversion for this year’s Season, to stop you from becoming bored, my lady. Perhaps, now—how did you put it in your letter, when you asked for painting lessons? Ah, here it is.’

  To her horror he cast down the glass of whisky and from the table picked up a familiar crested sheet.

  ‘I found this among my papers. There’s an advantage to an untidy studio. Now, what did it say?’

  He read aloud in a voice she hated.

  ‘Dear Mr Cole,

  Please forgive me for this intrusion when we have not been introduced. I am a great admirer of your work. I am a keen painter myself and I wish to enquire if you would be prepared to give me some private lessons. I will, of course, pay any rate you require for your time.’

  He dropped the letter with a sneer. ‘Well, you’ve had your private lessons. Perhaps now we might even consider ourselves introduced.’

  She flinched as if he’d hit her.

  ‘Your story about being a foundling,’ he gritted out. ‘I knew you were lying. Why didn’t you tell me the truth when we first met?’

  ‘I wanted to,’ she whispered.

  ‘My God, I... We... How could you do such a thing?’ He loomed over her, seeming larger, more masculine than ever before. ‘It was all a game, just pretence.’

  ‘No, no,’ she sobbed.

  ‘When you ran away in the park. Did that have something to do with it? Were you afraid to be seen with me?’

  ‘Yes. No. I mean...’

  ‘You’ve been acting a lie.’

  Cameo held out an imploring hand. ‘I was frightened you’d send me away if you discovered who I really am. Everything became such a muddle. I thought you’d make me leave. I wished so much to stay here in the studio.’

  ‘Have you never heard of having faith in someone? Trusting someone?’ She almost tasted the bi
tterness of his words. ‘Perhaps not. Your upper-class world is full of disloyalty and deceit.’

  Anguished, she twisted her fingers in her cloak. ‘I didn’t mean to be deceitful. When I decided to pretend to be Miss Ashe and be your artist’s model, I didn’t realise...’

  She choked. She couldn’t go on.

  ‘Realise what?’

  ‘That I would fall in love with you.’

  The clock ticked into the silence. He stared at her, his expression inscrutable. At last he shook his head and turned away, clenching his fists on the edge of the chimney piece. ‘Love is based on truth. You don’t know what love is.’

  ‘I do! Benedict, you must believe me.’ She gulped through her tears. Laying a tentative touch on his broad shoulders, she felt the heat of him through the cotton of his shirt. ‘I love you.’

  For a moment she thought she had reached him. With a twist of his neck his expression seemed to soften. Then the tenderness fled.

  ‘Love isn’t just saying the words.’ He shook off her touch. ‘Love is what you do. And what have you done? Lied to me from the moment we met. And now, thanks to your father—’

  She fell back, aghast. ‘My father? Does he know about the portrait already? But how? He wouldn’t go to the Academy.’ Not unless he was forced to, she knew. He was no art lover.

  Benedict reached for the poker and stoked the fire with angry jabs before turning on his heel to glare at her. ‘He’s a well-connected man, your father the earl. It wasn’t your father who saw the portrait first, I understand. I’m not sure who it was. I’m not a member of the Academy. Nor will there be any chance of that now,’ he added bitterly.

  It was even worse than she suspected.

  He went on. ‘I was with Trelawney having a drink, waiting to hear how the painting had been received. I understand someone who recognised you went to the Academy and contacted your father immediately. I’m told he’s furious.’

  Her knees threatened to buckle. She held on to the armchair for support. ‘He’ll be more than furious.’

  ‘Your father demanded the painting be taken down,’ Benedict continued, the poker still in his grip. ‘And the Academy agreed to do so. They don’t seek to upset such an influential man. They don’t want adverse talk.’

  ‘Oh, no!’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Benedict mocked. ‘I can’t show it. I’m doubtful I’ll ever exhibit there again. Too controversial. And it was a big step forward for me. It was my second showing there, as you know. There have been many painters who, after exhibiting there more than once, have become members of the Academy and had their careers made.’

  With a clatter he slammed the poker into the bucket by the fire.

  ‘The painting.’ He jerked his head towards the hessian-wrapped canvas on his easel. ‘Do you want to see it, my lady?’

  Seizing a knife from the table, he tore the hessian down the front and ripped it away.

  Cameo gasped.

  Already framed in wood, with carvings of buds, fruit and flowers around its edges, it was beautiful, more beautiful than she had ever imagined. The carvings were ash buds. She recognised them from the buds on the tree outside her bedroom window in Mayfair. He’d told her he made his own frames.

  And the work itself...

  Cameo moved towards it as if magnetised, let the rich colours fill her veins. She hadn’t fully appreciated his talent. With a rare delicacy of touch he’d painted her reclining under the bough of an ash tree, almost as if she were part of it, wildflowers and mossy grass picked out with precision at her feet. The simple dress, thin white cotton so similar to her chemise, appeared sheer and suggestive of her form beneath, yet tenderly evoked, without blatancy. Her hair was depicted tumbling in loose waves over her shoulders, her head tilted, as though she were waiting for something, or someone. And her eyes—she’d never known they could turn that deep amethyst colour. The expression he had caught in them, full of yearning, full of longing, made her head reel. He knew her better than she knew herself. He discerned her very soul.

  She moved closer. The quotation from the Tennyson poem, painted in gold script, curled at its base.

  A more ideal Artist he than all,

  Came, drew your pencil from you, made those eyes

  Darker than darkest pansies, and that hair

  More black than ashbuds in the front of March.

  ‘This is the best work I’ve ever done.’ The bitterness in Benedict’s voice seemed to scorch Cameo’s throat as though she swallowed his words. ‘I thought it would attract attention, as I told you. Were you laughing to yourself about that, Lady Catherine Mary, as I said those words? You knew it would attract all the wrong kind of attention, didn’t you?’

  Cameo bit her lip. No words of praise were adequate now. It was a masterpiece. They both knew it. ‘I tried to stop you sending it to the Academy this morning, but Mr Trelawney was here. I thought I’d have time to explain tonight.’

  ‘You didn’t try hard enough.’ He hurled a sheet over the canvas as if he hated to have it on display. ‘The truth about you would have stopped me submitting the portrait, you can have no doubt. But, no, you kept your identity to yourself. You enjoyed making a fool of me.’

  The edge of her cloak, twisted so hard in her fingers, almost cut her skin. What had she done? ‘I never wanted that.’

  ‘Who knows what you truly wanted? I’ll tell you what has happened as a result of your duplicity.’ He flashed a cynical smile that tore her inside. ‘How simply can I put this? You’ve ruined my artistic career.’

  ‘No! No!’

  ‘Yes. Yes,’ he mimicked, reminding her of the abrupt way he’d treated her when they had first met, before she’d discovered the tenderness inside him. ‘My career is over. All I’ve worked towards for all these years. Gone. At the spoilt whim of a member of the aristocracy. You wanted your art lessons and you wanted them from me. Nothing was going to stop you.’

  Horrified, Cameo stared at him. A sudden wave of nausea overcame her. Benedict was right. Nothing had stopped her. There was an awful grain of truth in what he said. She had considered her determination to have art lessons a virtue to be admired. Now she saw her willingness to lie to him to get what she wanted in a different light. ‘I hadn’t thought of it that way.’ Her voice sounded strange to her ears.

  ‘No. People from your world never do. You stamp your foot until you get what you want. You’re spoilt, Cameo. But what am I saying? That isn’t your real name.’

  ‘It is. I didn’t lie to you about that. My family have always called me Cameo.’

  ‘I thought it suited you. And now I know exactly why.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Benedict said harshly, ‘The Greek meaning of the word. You must appreciate what it is. “Shadow portrait.” How apt. I only knew one side of you, the shadow side. I didn’t know your real self.’

  ‘You did know it!’ She moved closer, pressed his chest. ‘Benedict, please. You did know my real self. It wasn’t a shadow. The Cameo you kissed, the Cameo you painted, that was really me. You’re the only person who has ever really known me, ever really seen who I am.’

  ‘I believed I did know you. How I prided myself as a painter on seeing the truth, the essence of people. But you, I was wrong about you.’

  She clutched at his shirt. ‘You weren’t wrong.’

  Ruthlessly he pulled away. ‘Who knows what you’re capable of? Who knows how far you will go to get what you want?’

  Tormented, Cameo stumbled backwards. ‘I should have told you who I am. I made a mistake about that. But my feelings for you, they aren’t a lie.’

  ‘Aren’t they? Well, that’s immaterial now. I’ve spent the last few weeks painting your face, your beautiful, lying face. That’s enough for me. I never want to see you again.’

  Sheer shaking terror fil
led Cameo at Benedict’s words. ‘You can’t mean that.’

  He drawled cruelly, ‘Oh, but I do.’

  Her heart plummeted. The way he spoke to her, the way he despised her. He hated her! Then, suddenly, a flame of anger torched out of the darkness inside her.

  She lifted her chin. ‘You don’t want to see me? You don’t want me to come here to your studio? Well, that suits me, too, Mr Benedict Cole. Why would I desire the company of a man who is so blind with prejudice?’

  An equally hot fury sparked from his brown eyes. ‘You think I’m prejudiced? What do you mean by that?’

  ‘You’d already made up your mind not to teach me when I sent you that letter and you hadn’t even met me. You were already prejudiced against me because of my background, because of what happened to your mother.’

  ‘I won’t discuss that,’ he flashed back.

  ‘You forced me to lie. I had no choice.’

  He gritted his teeth. ‘You had a choice. You could have told me who you were.’

  ‘What, and have you turn me away? You must admit it. You wouldn’t give me a chance. Why, you preferred to believe me a kept woman than an aristocrat! You wouldn’t have believed I longed to be a painter just as you did. I found the only way I could.’

  ‘Did you?’ Benedict wrenched her into his arms. ‘And when I made love to you, was that all part of the act?’

  Cameo struggled against his chest, his words shocking her to the core. How dare he imply she had pretended her passionate response to him? ‘Of course not!’

  ‘No? You didn’t believe you could take what you wanted as usual, my spoilt Lady Catherine Mary St Clair?’

  Down his lips crashed on hers, harder than before. Her furious mind rebelled, but her body arched towards him, longing for him, needing him. A small groan escaped her lips as she opened them, unable to resist his seeking mouth. His fingers dug into her waist as he wrenched her closer to him, against the telling hardness of his desire.

  She tried to pull herself away. He held her fast.