A Sinner without a Saint

by Bliss Bennet

  “But perhaps you would enjoy seeing a painting by the master himself, rather than one of his followers? My new Carracci has just been hung in our gallery.”

  “Such an invitation does me honor. And if Miss Adler would agree to serve as guide . . .” Dulcie bowed in Polly’s direction, a ray of sun from the skylight above dancing chiaroscuro over his golden head.

  “It would give me the greatest pleasure,” Polly said with a reproving glance in Benedict’s direction.

  A plague upon him for the veriest fool. He’d meant to protect Polly from being taken in by Dulcie’s winning ways, but his own boorish behavior had led to precisely the opposite result.

  “That older gentleman standing by the door is the Marquess of Stafford, one of the two current presidents of the British Institution, and a devoted collector,” Dulcie whispered to Polly as they made their way towards the exit. “Have you visited his gallery at Cleveland House? He welcomes the public on Wednesday afternoons, but I’m certain he’ll grant me a private viewing. Shall I introduce you?”

  His blue eyes flicked to Benedict, a small, but decidedly satisfied smile playing about his lips.

  Yes, Dulcie had certainly won this first battle in the chess match for Polly’s dowry. But he would never win the war. Selfishness would never win out over the higher good. Benedict would stake his life on it.

  “Viscount Dulcie to see you, miss.”

  A bracing whiff of pine, tinged with just a hint of licorice, assaulted Dulcie’s nose as he crossed the threshold of the small room to which Adler’s footman had led him. Turpentine? The lady had said something about dabbling in oils rather than the more usual feminine medium of watercolor. And the room certainly looked to be the studio of a serious artist, with its haphazard pile of stretched canvases leaning against the far wall, its bench littered with pencils and charcoal, bottles of oils and animal bladders of paints, and its two large easels propped opposite one another by the north-facing windows, poised to catch the best of the morning light.

  But it was not an artist, but an heiress, who was the object of his quest today. And there, turning away from the easel closest to the door, she was: one Polyhymnia Adler, the key to perhaps the most highly regarded collection of Old Masters paintings in all of England.

  “My lord, how kind of you to call,” the lady said as she gave him a perfunctory curtsy and the slightest of frowns. “Is today the day we set for you to visit with grandfather’s paintings?”

  He bowed. “Say rather to visit with one who can teach me to appreciate those paintings as well as she does herself.”

  He topped his compliment with the most winsome of smiles, drawing not only an answering smile but also a blush from his quarry. Easily charmed, or just embarrassed to be caught in such a state of dishabille? That drab smock covering her from neck to toe did little to enhance her tall, ungainly figure, nor did the messy streaks of paint smeared across its bodice add anything to the decidedly modest charms that lay beneath it. Odd, that the footman hadn’t asked him to wait while he informed his mistress of a gentleman’s arrival and allowed her time to repair her appearance. Dulcie would certainly never hire a servant who would place him in such an embarrassing predicament. Pennington must care more for Mr. Adler’s paintings than any of his granddaughter’s sartorial skills.

  And speak of the devil. There he stood by the second easel, Miss Adler’s reputed swain, just as Dulcie had predicted. But the man was proving a lax guardian, too caught in his own work to pay any heed to the entrance of a potential rival. Heavens, between Adler’s clear desire to snare a lordling for son-in-law, the lady’s seemingly sororal, rather than amorous, feelings for the fellow, and Pennington’s own natural diffidence and reserve, manipulating Miss Adler and Mr. Pennington into wedded bliss would certainly present a challenge. If, in fact, Dulcie chose to pursue that course . . .

  “My grandfather, or Mr. Pennington, would be a far better guide than I could ever be,” Miss Adler said as she swirled her brush in a jar of turpentine. “Mr. Pennington, we have a visitor.”

  The sound of her raised voice brought Pennington’s dark head up with a start. He gazed about him in confusion, as if he needed a moment to recollect just where he was, and with whom.

  “A caller, Miss Adler? I’m sorry, I must have forgotten. . .”

  So different, that voice was, from the soft, piping tones of the twelve-year-old schoolboy of his memories. Yet at the same time it sounded so familiar, that air of distracted surprise, as if the speaker had just been jolted awake from the most absorbing of reveries. He’d always been such a one for daydreams, young Pennington had. Was he still now, even at what—seven or eight and twenty?

  Dulcie took a step farther into the room, so that Pennington might see him more clearly. As Benedict’s eyes shifted from his own canvas to Dulcie’s face, his charmingly absent-minded smile transformed into a frown, then an outright glower. Good, the pup had grown teeth. Dulcie did not find the idea at all unappealing.

  Last week, at the British Institution, he’d suspected his potential rival might have caught word of the wager between himself and Leverett. But now, watching his blue eyes narrow, distrust playing across those wonderfully mobile features, Dulcie was certain of it. No one forgot Sinclair Milne, not even a man so prone to becoming lost in the wanderings of his own mind as Benedict Pennington. He was here for a reason, and that reason was to keep Dulcie away from Miss Adler, even if he was not yet confident enough to declare his own intentions to the lady.

  Which would present the greater challenge—to help the incipient courtship to its logical conclusion? Or to steal the lady out from underneath her own watchdog’s nose?

  “Have I come at an inconvenient time, Miss Adler?” he asked. “Your grandfather assured me that you would be free any morning I cared to call.”

  “Not at all, my lord,” Miss Adler said, even as she cast a longing gaze back towards her easel. “Mr. Pennington, would you mind terribly if we postponed our lesson until this afternoon?”

  “Pennington is your teacher? And what is the lesson for today? Perspective? How to transfer a drawing to the canvas? Which brush to use to achieve the effect you desire?” Dulcie strolled over to the paired easels, careful to keep his coat from brushing against wet canvas. Fulsome, if unspecific, praise poised on the tip of his tongue; he could find something flattering to say about any work of art, no matter how unaccomplished.

  Yet when he caught sight of the picture taking form on her canvas, the glib words caught in his throat. She’d chosen to paint a half-length portrait of her instructor. But it was a portrait unlike any he’d ever seen. The chit was not attempting to portray Pennington in dignified repose, or positioned in echo of a classical sculpture or Old Master painting, as a more accomplished portraitist surely would have done. Nor had she constrained herself to the idealized flattery common to the commissioned portraits of the titled and wealthy. No, mere physical attractiveness did not take the place of personal characterization here. Pennington’s flaws—his overly-full lips, the minor lack of symmetry in the curves of his cheeks, the small scar on his chin from when he’d tripped on the playing fields at Harrow and cut himself on a sharp stone—drew the viewer’s attention far more than any finer points. No, Miss Adler’s portrait would never be featured in a collection devoted to ideal male beauty.

  And yet there was something compelling, something vital in her depiction, in spite of the many flaws she portrayed in her sitter, not to mention the obvious flaws in her technique. Something about the dreamy intensity of the eyes, the conviction in the set of those lips, reminded him of what had first drawn him to Pennington as a boy, something that he’d seen little of in the grown man he’d encountered over the past few months. Yet it had been there, had it not, in the aggression and anger he had let burst forth that day at Saybrook’s? Had someone as unpromising as Miss Adler been able to draw him out from the aloof air he now commonly draped about him? Perhaps nudging their courtship along would not prove quite as dif
ficult as he’d initially thought.

  “Why Miss Adler! I had no idea such recklessness hid behind that quiet exterior of yours. Whatever led you to paint such an unconventional thing?” Dulcie could readily imagine the sneers of condemnation that Leverett and other British Institute connoisseurs would heap upon such an unpolished work. But there was something so right, so quintessentially Benedict about it that he could not help but be impressed.

  “My lesson for today is one I often practice—tell the truth in your work.” Miss Adler gave a quiet smile. “I wonder who has made a better job of it, Mr. Pennington or myself?”

  “Ah, a competition, is it? And I am to be judge. Come, Pennington, let us see what you’ve done.”

  Pennington’s scowl turned from Dulcie to the canvas in front of him. “We needn’t waste Lord Dulcie’s time on such frivolities. It was only meant to be an exercise.”

  “Exercise or no, the lady has issued a challenge. Have you not yet learned that denying a gentlewoman her fondest wish is no way to win her favor?”

  “Mr. Pennington has no need to win my favor,” Miss Adler said as she laid a hand on the man’s arm. “The kindnesses he has done me stand in the hundreds, if not the thousands.”

  “Ah, but now you make me quite desperate to catch him up.” And to wish that it was his own hand, rather than hers, upon Pennington’s sleeve. Had that once-scrawny boy grown into the promise of his frame?

  “And you think to curry her favor by feigning a preference for her work?” Pennington’s waspish tones interrupted his reverie. “I assure you, my lord, dissembling will not impress.”

  “I’m sure his lordship intends no such thing,” Miss Adler said, brow furrowing at Pennington’s rudeness.

  “Indeed,” Dulcie agreed, laying his palm flat across his heart. “I promise to be the very soul of honesty. Not a word of false flattery will fall from these lips.”

  Pennington’s dark eyes narrowed. “An unusual course for you, I believe.”

  “Benedict!” Miss Adler chastised. “Lord Dulcie is reputed to be one of the finest judges of artistic skill in all the city.”

  Dulcie swept out a casual hand. “But if Mr. Pennington fears having his own work judged against your own . . .”

  Miss Adler shot a questioning look at Pennington, who threw up his hands in reply. “Oh, let the damned fellow see. He’s not likely to give us any peace until he does.”

  With one last scowl at his canvas, Pennington gave ground. Dulcie quickly moved to take his place in front of the second easel. Heaven help him if it turned out to be a naked Sally Goodman. He’d already seen enough of those charms to last a lifetime.

  Pennington, too, had brushed in a quick portrait, not of Sal, nor of a gentleman, but of a lady. Unsurprising, that the teacher’s portrait showed far more technical expertise than that of his student. “A confident line, a minute attention to coloration and tone. And a clear understanding of the conventions of deportment and expression,” Dulcie opined as he raised his quizzing glass to inspect the painting more closely. “But true to nature? I could not say, without knowing the model upon which it is based.”

  Beside him, Miss Adler laughed. “I told you, didn’t I, Benedict? No one will see me behind all those foolish props and draperies.”

  “Ah, it is Miss Adler embodying her namesake, complete with scroll and lyre? How charming a muse you make.” Dulcie blinked at an unexpected feeling of disappointment. Somehow, despite its technical proficiency, something about Pennington’ work struck him as decidedly lacking.

  “Charming! Why, you didn’t even realize it was meant to be Polly,” Pennington scoffed.

  Dulcie bowed his head in acknowledgment. It was true; if one did not know her full given name, one might take the painting for any tall, handsome brown-haired young lady rigged up as the classical muse of poetry and dance. Pennington had captured little of the warmth or sensitivity, and none of the unconventionality, that characterized the Polly Adler he was coming to know. If truth were the goal of this aesthetic exercise, Miss Adler undoubtedly took the laurels.

  “But is it not the portraitist’s task to present his subject in the most complimentary light possible?” he offered instead of the false praise the man would surely see right through.

  “Complimentary? Insipid is closer to the mark,” Pennington crossed his arms with a groan.

  “Miss Adler, insipid? Really, Pennington, to insult a lady so. And to her very face!”

  The lady laughed. “Benedict referred to his painting, my lord, not to me, as well you know.”

  But Pennington did not share in the joke. He only shut his eyes and tapped his head back against the wall. “Nothing I’ve done since returning to England is worth the least damn, Polly. And you know it.”

  “Because you’ve stopped taking risks.” Miss Adler gave his arm a squeeze. “You’re thinking too much about the rules, about the shoulds instead of the what ifs. Paint what inspires you, Benedict, not what you think, or how you think, you should.”

  Ah, she was allowed to call him Benedict. Just as he had, once.

  Dulcie shook his head at the memory. No, this was a promising moment of intimacy between potential mates. Should he leave them alone?

  A knock on the studio door made choosing irrelevant.

  “Miss Adler, your grandfather invites you and your visitor downstairs for tea,” announced the footman who had led him up the stairs a few moments before.

  The lady glanced back at her easel once again, then gave a great sigh. “Of course he does. Well, we’d best get on with it. Grandfather does not like to be kept waiting.”

  Pennington straightened from his slouch with a grimace. “Perhaps I should take my leave, then, Polly.”

  “No, please. Keep grandfather from quizzing Lord Dulcie too impertinently while I change into something more suitable for receiving company. You know how cross he’ll be if I bring the scent of turpentine into the room.”

  Ah, good to know that the elder gentleman was not entirely happy with his granddaughter’s artistic pursuits. Might that lack of enthusiasm also extend to Pennington as a suitor?

  “Yes, my good sir, do stay. I’m quite curious to hear your thoughts on Mr. Adler’s collection.”

  Pennington gave wary nod. “As you wish.”

  “Miss Adler, we will await your return with bated breath. Come along, Pennington.” He ushered the lady from the room, then followed the servant without looking back to see if Benedict would follow. He hadn’t felt that prickling at the back of his neck since his schooldays, the one that rose whenever young Pennington had dogged his footsteps. But he felt it now, a frisson of sparks that began at his nape and then nipped down his spine, settling with unexpected heat in his groin.

  Dulcie grinned. Who knew what might happen if he brought his considerable charms to bear not only on Polly Adler, but on Benedict Pennington, too?

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Benedict scrambled to follow Dulcie and his perfectly groomed curls down the steep staircase of the Pall Mall townhouse. Dreams of those curls, and the smile that had so often lit the face below them, had gotten Benedict through many a homesick hour during those long, lonely first weeks at school. The adolescent viscount had seemed the epitome of a proper young gentleman to Benedict’s dazzled eyes, lithe and fleet-footed on the playing field, personable and capable and confident in the classroom, as easy with his fellow students as with his teachers, no matter the fellow’s interests or temper. How he had admired that young man, longed to be him, longed to be liked by him.

  And then, one day, Dulcie caught him staring, and with a knowing smile, asked him his name . . .

  Benedict shook his head. If one only required a physical model of the well-bred gentleman, the thirty-three-year-old viscount still might serve. That broad but elegant back, the slender, tensile frame, the crop of gilt curls that called to Benedict almost as powerfully as did his paintbrush, urging him to twine his fingers through their luxurious twists and turns.

  Bu
t the lofty ideals he’d once assumed Dulcie had shared, nay, had exemplified, no, those were there no longer.

  Perhaps they never had been. Perhaps, foolish child, Benedict had simply imagined them, made them up out of whole cloth.

  Every morning this week, he’d drawn out his work with Polly, disappointment vying with relief when the time for morning calls passed with no sign of Lord Dulcie. He should have been glad that the fellow had finally made good on his promise to call, and that he’d been here to stand watch over Polly. But he’d hardly expected to have his own work paraded in front of the damned fellow. Frustrating enough to be faced with his own artistic shortcomings; even worse to have them thrust in front of a true connoisseur. Especially a man whose opinions he had once taken so much to heart.

  And still did, if the painful tightness in his throat at Dulcie’s tepid commentary on his work was any indication. He shouldn’t care, especially if, as rumor had it, the viscount was not only interested in winning Adler’s collection by wooing Polly, but had had the presumption to agree to a wager about it with that bastard Leverett. But he’d never been one to hide from his own feelings, no matter how illogical or inconvenient they might prove, even if he was slow to share them with others. Something deep within him still respected Dulcie’s aesthetic judgment, even if he could no longer admire his morals.

  “My Lord Dulcie! Come to see the pictures, have you?” Adler strode across the drawing room to give his guest a formal bow. “And Pennington, too. But where is Polly?”

  “We were in the midst of a lesson when the viscount arrived,” he explained as the older man ushered them into the drawing room. “I’m certain she’ll be down momentarily.”