by Bliss Bennet
“Can’t keep your eyes off him, can you? How amusing, when it was he who could not stop staring at you when we were all at school.”
Dulcie quelled the urge to jerk his eyes away in embarrassment. Leverett’s annoying taunt deserved no such response. Instead, he allowed his gaze to linger for just the barest moment before moving it slowly, carelessly about the room. Leverett, privileged grandson of a duke, would not appreciate being made to wait.
But the fellow would keep trying to challenge his position as leader of the connoisseur set, despite Dulcie’s obviously superior knowledge and taste. Hadn’t he dragged Dulcie to the print shop today in an attempt to embarrass him in front of the most influential members of the British Institution, and prove his aesthetic judgment the more acute? But if Leverett thought an indiscreetly whispered innuendo about a childhood calf-love would put him off his game, he only demonstrated that he was as bad at evaluating people as he was at judging fine art.
No, Leverett would have to try a little harder before he could discompose Sinclair Milne.
Dulcie gestured with his quizzing glass towards the easel upon which a proof, covered by a drape, rested. “An engraving commissioned more than a decade ago finally makes its appearance—is it any wonder that I stare, Leverett? In truth, I’m almost afraid to blink for fear the thing will prove the most ephemeral of mirages. Will it actually be revealed after this cover is removed?”
Chuckles, and a few outright laughs, burst from the men around them, bringing a frown to Leverett’s face. Yes, that would confuse him, Dulcie making fun of the work by the very man he’d been championing all these years.
For they had come to the print shop today to pronounce judgment upon the long-awaited proof of the engraving of Christ Healing the Sick. To entice gentlemen to join the British Institution, each new subscriber to the fledgling organization had been promised a print of Benjamin West’s renowned painting. But what engraver could be entrusted to transform the masterpiece to print?
Dulcie had supported West’s controversial choice of a young, relatively unknown engraver. Leverett had disagreed, loudly and often. And he’d teased Dulcie unmercifully in the ensuing eleven years, as the engraver offered one excuse after another for his failure to complete the task.
But in spite of all Leverett’s taunts and gibes, Dulcie had never wavered, as certain then as he was today that the man would soon be regarded as one of the finest engravers of their age. Now, his faith in the artist, as well as his own status as the better aesthetic judge, would be confirmed beyond doubt. He, not Leverett, deserved to be appointed to the Institution’s board.
If he could just push Benedict Pennington from his mind long enough to concentrate on the task at hand.
Signore Colnaghi, the shop’s proprietor, bustled out from behind the counter. “Such a one for the jokes you are, my lord. But I tell you, I have seen this engraving with my own eyes, both the plate and the proof. It is no fleeting cloud, to pass away at the merest gust of wind.”
“But what of the quality?” interrupted George Norton, a recent, and eager, subscriber to the British Institution. “Is the result worth the wait?”
Other members of the Institution echoed Norton’s query, buzzing about Dulcie and Leverett like drones around two queens poised to fight for control of the hive.
Dulcie crossed his arms and smiled. “Yes, Leverett, what of the quality? We await with bated breath the judgment of a true connoisseur.”
Leverett’s lips thinned. “Uncover the proof, Signore.”
Colnaghi pulled the drape with a dramatic flourish. The crowd pushed forward, each struggling to catch a glimpse over Leverett and Dulcie’s shoulders.
Raising his quizzing glass, Dulcie examined the engraving with minute attention. Yes, the engraver demonstrated a decided superiority in drawing the human figure. He’d cut the copper plate with firmness and precision, using fine lines to convey details that in the original had been portrayed with color. Religious subjects were not Leverett’s specialty, but even he must concede that the engraver had captured both the substance and the feeling of West’s painting with remarkable skill.
And that intense, well-muscled Roman warrior in the corner—did he not have something of the air of the adult Benedict Pennington?
“So, what say you, Leverett?” he asked, raising his eyes to his companion rather than allowing them to drift over the crowd in search of a far more interesting face. “A miserable failure, as you have long predicted? Or a work worthy of being hung in your own ancestral halls?”
Leverett scowled, clearly aware he’d been bested yet again. “It is tolerable,” he finally acknowledged.
“Tolerable? If I am not mistaken, and these good gentlemen about us know how rarely I am, Mr. Heath has given the world a print of unrivaled excellence.” Dulcie threw his arm wide. “A triumph, a clear triumph. Do you not agree, gentlemen?”
“Oh, yes, my lord. A triumph indeed!” Mr. Norton exclaimed.
To Dulcie’s satisfaction, the coterie around them, which included several current members of the British Institution’s governing board, hummed in agreement. Even the stately Marquess of Stafford, the group’s current president, gave him an agreeable nod.
If he met with Stafford’s approval, an invitation to sit on the Board would be nearly assured.
Dulcie allowed himself one last glance at the engraving, then stepped aside to allow the Marquess to take a closer look.
George Norton followed Dulcie.
It gave him no little satisfaction to see the young man’s eyes shining up at him, rather than at Leverett. Earlier in the season, Dulcie had noticed his rival’s interest in the boy, and had thought to pluck him out from under Leverett’s wing, cultivating his taste in art, and, perhaps, if he were correct about Norton’s predilections, in other, less intellectual pleasures. Lord knows he’d learn far more from Dulcie than he’d ever gain from a fellow as self-serving as Leverett. Yet something about the pup’s overeager manner, or perhaps his too-artfully styled hair—did he set it in papers each night, to make it curl just so?—had given Dulcie pause.
Still, using the boy to tease Leverett offered its own rewards.
“Do you have a framer you frequent, Norton?” he asked, placing a companionable arm about the young man’s shoulders. “If not, I would be happy to recommend one. A print of such excellence deserves a frame of equal quality.”
“I say, Pennington, what is your opinion of the print?” Leverett interrupted, inviting the man Dulcie least wished to acknowledge into their conversation. “Although if memory serves, you were wont to agree with Dulcie’s every opinion with slavish devotion when we were boys together at school.”
Benedict Pennington jerked his eyes from the rack of prints he had been examining. All dark eyes, tousled hair, and stern, unsmiling mouth, he gave the engraving a cursory glance. “When one has not had the opportunity to view the original, it is impossible to form an opinion,” he offered.
“Have you not visited the British Institution, Mr. Pennington, where the original painting hangs?” Norton exclaimed. “For a nominal fee, any gentleman interested in the arts may become a subscriber.”
“And join a group of collectors who come together primarily to keep the prices of Old Master paintings high? Thank you, but I’d rather not.”
Dulcie suppressed a bark of laughter. Such a frank assessment of the motives of many of his fellow British Institution members has often crossed his own mind, although he’d never be so impolitic as to say so in public. But Pennington, it would seem, had no such scruples. When had the shy boy he remembered learned to give voice to his passionately held principles?
“Mr. Pennington?” A tall young woman with a surprisingly deep voice laid a hand on Pennington’s arm. “Come, there is something I wish to show you.”
“If you will excuse me, gentleman?” Pennington bowed, then walked off towards the back of the shop with his companion.
“Well, Dulcie, Pennington certainly shows you
little regard. How fleeting are the tendres of our youth. He and Dulcie were as thick as thieves when we were all at Harrow, you know, Norton.”
Dulcie narrowed his eyes, but Leverett did not heed the warning. “I could understand it then, for young Pennington was quite pretty as a child. But why you continue to hold him in fascination, Dulcie, I cannot begin to fathom. Plagued by sentiment, are you?”
“You mistake the matter, Leverett,” he said, his arm falling from Norton’s shoulders. “Caution, not sentimentality, leads me to keep an eye on Pennington. He is, after all, brother of the lady I’m courting.”
Married himself, Leverett thought nothing of a man taking on a wife while satisfying his carnal urges with younger members of his own sex. But Dulcie’s courtship of Sibilla Pennington had been nothing but a ruse, designed not only to distract his father from his infernal matchmaking, but also to drive his friend Peregrine Sayre wild with jealousy. It would all come to an end before long, as soon as Sayre could be pushed into declaring his true feelings for the chit.
But if Dulcie’s courtship of Sibilla Pennington had the additional benefit of making another Pennington jealous before it ended, why then, Dulcie would be the last to call attention to the fact.
Out of the corner of his eye, Dulcie spied Benedict Pennington, his careful attention fixed on the lady by his side. Merely the son and brother of a viscount, not a viscount with an earldom in the wings, as was Dulcie, yet he held his tall, classically-proportioned frame with all the confidence of an ancient Spartan warrior. Where was the diffident boy who had so quietly but fervently admired him at Harrow? Dulcie could find little sign of him in the hard, unyielding man across the room. And yet he still found himself drawn to the sight, even in the face of Leverett’s petty provocations.
George Norton, wisely refusing to entangle himself in the arguments of his elders, cut his eyes towards the couple. “Do you know the lady, my lord? I’ve not seen her before.”
Dulcie did not recognize her, either. And he decidedly did not care for the proprietary air with which she grasped Mr. Pennington’s arm, pulling him to a rack of prints at the opposite end of the shop.
Leverett laughed. “Better to ask who her grandfather is. And what glorious paintings she will inherit from him, and Pennington from her, when the old fellow goes the way of all flesh.”
“A relation of Pennington’s?” Dulcie asked, his brow furrowing. He could not recall Benedict ever mentioning a relative who collected art.
“Not yet. But rumor suggests he may soon be, if Adler has anything to say about it.”
Dulcie’s posture stiffened. Benedict Pennington intended to marry?
“Adler? Do you mean Julius Adler?” Norton exclaimed. “Why, it’s said he owns the largest collection of Old Masters in all England. How could I not know he has an unmarried granddaughter? Especially a granddaughter who is one of his heirs?”
“His only heir. And you know nothing of her because she’s been secreted away on the Continent for years. But now that she’s of marriageable age, he’s brought her to London, dangling the prospect of his paintings as dowry. Tempting, wouldn’t you say, Dulcie?”
Norton frowned, squinting at the lady in question. “She’s not so very ill-favored, though she is rather tall for a female. And if one were to get a Rubens and a Raphael along with her—”
“Indeed. But alas, I believe Adler is on the lookout for an earl at the very least. If I were you, Dulcie, I’d give over Pennington’s sister and attach yourself to this one.”
“But did you not just say that Benedict Pennington is courting her?” Dulcie brushed at an imaginary piece of lint on his sleeve.
“Would you allow a little thing like that to stop you? What, do you fear to hurt poor Pennington’s feelings?”
Leverett’s waspish tone had begun to draw the attention of their fellow British Institution members. Sensing a fight, or at least fodder for some gossip, they drifted, singly and in pairs, away from the engraving and towards their trio.
“When has hurting anyone’s feelings ever prevented me from pursuing what I wish?” Dulcie struggled to keep the annoyance from his voice.
“Then why do you hesitate? Surely a man who aspires to be the finest art connoisseur of his age would not scruple to pursue such an opportunity,” Leverett goaded. “Davenport, would you marry Julius Adler’s granddaughter, if her dowry included a Titian and a Correggio?”
“In a trice,” answered Davenport.
“And you, Meheux?” Leverett asked, turning to another man in the crowd. “A leg-shackle in exchange for a Michelangelo and a Poussin? Even if you had to steal the lady from under the nose of another suitor?”
“Do I get the Titian and Correggio, too?” Meheux waggled an eyebrow.
“Greedy bastard,” Leverett said. “Yes, yes, all of them, and more.”
“Bien entendu,” Meheux answered with a shrug. “Only an imbécile would allow such an opportunity to slip through his fingers.”
“And yet our Lord Dulcie here hesitates.”
Davenport, Meheux, and the other British Institution members looked at him askance. How far would Leverett take this?
“I am courting Miss Pennington,” Dulcie said in as even a tone as he could muster.
“But I’ve heard no banns read, no engagement formally announced,” Leverett answered. “Surely a man with as glib a tongue as yours could extricate himself from an unofficial courtship if he truly wished it. So I am left to wonder—why should Dulcie pass up such an opportunity? The only answer that makes any sense at all is that he has a— well, a womanish care for the man courting Miss Adler before him. Benedict Pennington.”
The crowd about them stirred with unease. More than a few among them shared Leverett and Dulcie’s predilection for male bed partners, but none were fool enough to wish such preferences bandied about in the street. Or in the midst of Colnaghi’s print shop.
Dulcie took out a handkerchief and rubbed it over his quizzing glass. “Why, Leverett, you’ve always accused me of having a care for no one but myself.”
“Indeed. But perhaps you’ve only been pining away for a long-lost boyhood . . . friend? One whose place young Norton here hopes to fill for you?”
The crowd about them buzzed just a little louder after each of Leverett’s increasingly pointed hints. Even Norton took a careful step away from the pair, his eyes flickering with alarm. Damnation, they’d turn on Dulcie in a trice, no matter what they got up to in the privacy of their homes or the back rooms of public houses. On Norton, too, if Lattimer publicly tarred them with the brush of sexual impropriety.
The ghost of another young boy flickered in the back of his mind, a boy whom his impetuosity had also once put into danger. One to whom he’d never been able to make proper amends.
“Come, Leverett, you know how little I hold all humankind in regard,” Dulcie drawled. “I’d pine away over a Rembrandt or Rubens, perhaps, but never over a mere human.”
“Then prove it,” Leverett pressed, obviously unwilling to give up this unexpectedly fruitful line of attack. “I’ll wager five hundred guineas that sentiment will keep you from courting and stealing Miss Adler, and her considerable dowry of Old Masters paintings, away from poor Benedict Pennington.”
A gasp rose from the knot of men crowding about them, then a torrent of whispers. Each knew Dulcie’s reputation for embracing almost any wager, no matter how outrageous. If he refused this one, he’d not only be the laughingstock of the season, he’d confirm each and every man’s belief in Leverett’s ridiculous claims.
Dulcie’s eyes flicked to George Norton. The poor boy stood resolute, but his face had paled to an alarming degree. Just up from university, he was, and far more interested in art than in the political career his father wished him to pursue. But if the miasma of salacious rumor polluted his reputation during his first weeks in town, neither the political nor artistic set would welcome him. And Norton senior would send the boy scurrying back home in disgrace.
; He clenched his hands. Damn him for a coward if he allowed it to happen again. Norton did not deserve to become entangled in Leverett’s net, any more than young Benedict Pennington had.
No, he had to put an end to this idle chatter before more than his own reputation was impugned.
Dulcie stepped forward and held out his hand. “Sir, I accept your wager.”
As the men about them cheered and teased, Dulcie kept a smile pasted on his face, his back resolutely turned away from Benedict Pennington. No need to inform Leverett that merely accepting a wager did not mean one was intent on winning it. Perhaps, as he had done with his friend Peregrine Sayre, he might decide to help advance Pennington’s courtship by feigning an interest in the object of the fellow’s admiration. That is, if Adler’s collection did not pose too much of a temptation.
Perhaps, if his better angels won this round in the constant battle for his tattered soul, he might even lay the ghost of that long-betrayed boy to rest.
“No, not there. A little to the left. No, no, not so far! Bring it back to the right a bit more. Now, just a touch higher . . .”
Benedict Pennington suppressed a grunt of frustration. He’d come here today to talk to Julius Adler about donating his paintings for the good of the nation, not to fuss about where to hang them in the merchant’s London house. Besides, the frame Adler had chosen for this latest addition to his collection dug heavily into his hip, and his fingers were growing numb as he struggled to support its weight while keeping his grip against the prickly intricacies of its carving. This job really required more than two men, but Adler would not suffer anyone but himself and Benedict to touch his newly acquired Carracci.
But it wasn’t Adler who was the current cause of his troubles. No, it was his granddaughter, Polly, who darted about the picture gallery, her face tight with concentration, examining the position of the painting from as many different angles as possible. Silly to be jealous of the girl just for having the chance to gaze so intently at the draped figure of Saint John in the wilderness. Especially as her stare was motivated by pure aesthetic appreciation, not tinged with lust, as his would be.
