A Sinner without a Saint

by Bliss Bennet

  “Yes, just so,” Benedict said, a slight smile turning up the corners of his full lips. “Now hold still so I may put it down on paper.”

  “But may I—”

  “And keep silent. I cannot capture your expression if you insist on jabbering away like a sailor’s parrot.”

  Dulcie tried, he really did. Head erect. Back straight. Lips lightly joined, one arm bent at the elbow. Eyes fixed on the wall opposite, and not on the man crouched on the floor in front of him. But even the lowering clouds and rocky shoreline of the unfashionable Constable landscape he had purchased against all advice and hung in his bedchamber could not hold his attention for long. Not with this strange restlessness that seemed abuzz inside him, as if he had swallowed a swarm of bees. Having all eyes upon him was not usually an unfamiliar, nor an unwelcome, experience. But somehow when those eyes belonged to Benedict Pennington, it was a different matter altogether.

  But damn him, the fellow rebuffed every attempt he made to engage him in conversation, no matter how witty. And only spoke to him to demand he shift into yet another traditional portrait stance, each one stiffer than the last.

  Attempting to stave off ennui, Dulcie began to tease, quirking an eyebrow here, wrinkling a nose there, even whistling a bawdy tune he’d heard the comely Miss Noel, she of the sly wicked eyes, sing last night at Vauxhall Gardens. But instead of laughing at Dulcie’s antics, Benedict only scowled more fiercely, ripping each study he completed off his sketching pad and balling it up before tossing it to the floor.

  After each “Stand still, damn you!” from Benedict’s lips, Dulcie would try to stop fidgeting. But his good intentions would only last for so long. Finally, after what seemed like hours of posing, Dulcie could stand it no longer. With a groan, he bent from the waist and sent his arms flying, like a jack just sprung from its box. He let his torso bounce once, twice, a third time before finally allowing it to come to a floppy stop.

  When Benedict remained silent, he peeked up from under the ringlets falling over his forehead, greeting him with his most insouciant smile.

  Benedict’s nostrils flared, a bull on the verge of rampage. Why should the thought excite him so?

  “Stand up, will you?” Benedict bit out. “I agreed to paint a portrait of a gentleman, not a clown.”

  Dulcie’s body followed the sharp command, even as his tongue resisted it. “Cannot a gentleman be amusing?”

  “Certainly. But is that how you wish to present yourself to your future wife, and to the world? As a jester, a mere joke?” He wiped a hand across his brow, leaving a smudge of charcoal by his eye.

  “Not to a wife, perhaps. But to the world? Perhaps it is unwise of me, but I could wish for something more memorable to leave to posterity than yet another depiction of genteel male deportment.”

  Benedict huffed. “But each person should have that expression which men of his rank generally exhibit. The joy or the grief of a character of dignity is not to be expressed in the same manner as a similar passion in a vulgar face.”

  “How disappointing,” Dulcie tutted. “Are you a parrot, then, repeating the tired dictums of another? Sir Joshua Reynolds’s words, are they not? From his fourth Discourse, if I am not mistaken.”

  “You disagree with Sir Joshua? A portrait of a man of dignity and power is not memorable enough for you?”

  Dulcie laughed without humor. “Is that all you see in me now? A man of dignity and power? It seems your travels have blinded, rather than opened, your eyes.”

  Benedict tossed his charcoal and sketch-book on a chair. “If all you show to the world is your polished surface, is it any wonder if that surface is all that others see? All they think to reflect back to you?”

  “What, first you abuse me for not embodying the proper dignity of my station, and now you take me to task for not displaying my depths as carelessly as a drunkard spews his guts on the pavement? You might wish to make up your mind about what you want from me before you berate me for not giving it to you.”

  Benedict stepped closer, crowding him back against the bedpost. “What I want? What I want is what I’ve always wanted.”

  Dulcie’s breath caught as Benedict reached out and touched him. Long, tapered fingers skimmed over the bones of his face, his brows, his ears. Almost as if Benedict could capture his features through touch rather than through sight.

  His throat tightened as a thumb, rough, calloused, traced the bow of his lip.

  Even through closed eyes, he could feel Benedict’s tousled head lower to his, curls and breath whispering in his ear. “I want to see you. You, Clair, not the charmingly frivolous Viscount Dulcie you parade before the rest of the world. It’s been so long—”

  A staccato rap on the door sent Dulcie jerking to the other side of the bedchamber before he had the chance to shape his lips into any coherent response to Benedict’s provocative words.

  “Miss Adler has arrived, my lord,” the ill-timed footman announced. “She awaits in the drawing room.”

  Dulcie pulled at his cuffs and pasted on his easy social smile, willing the tension in his muscles to ease. It was not like him to become so flustered by a simple touch, a few tempting words.

  “Polly, my dear girl,” he said as he entered the drawing room and held out his hands in welcome. “You arrive just in time to save me from the tyranny of this cruel martinet you call friend. Can you imagine, he’s had me standing at attention for more than an hour and has refused to converse with me the entire time?”

  “I am so sorry, my lord!” Polly said with an apologetic frown. “I know how difficult it is to remain still for so long, especially for an active gentleman such as yourself. And have you been playing with Mr. Pennington’s charcoal pencil? You’ve a smudge on your cheek—here, take my handkerchief—there, right below your left eye.”

  Dulcie’s gaze jerked back to Benedict, who had followed him into the drawing room. But all his frowning attention was fixed on the handkerchief in his hand, scrubbing away at his own telltale smudges.

  “Now, do you have a book you’d like me to read to you while Mr. Pennington makes his sketches? Or shall I tell you about my frustrations with the chairmen of the Society of Arts’ committee on Polite Arts? They utterly refused to explain why no premiums were given for original oil paintings of historical subjects this year, even though others besides myself submitted such works.”

  “Because history painting is at the pinnacle of the Academic hierarchy, and thus they believe only men of rank should be allowed to paint historical subjects,” Benedict said with a scowl.

  “Is that why you were late? Bearding the lions in their dens, were you?” Dulcie asked.

  “In grandfather’s, rather. But all to no purpose. I might have been a child for all the consideration they gave me. Lord, how I wish I’d been born a man!” Polly murmured.

  Dulcie gave her shoulder a comforting squeeze, but she just shrugged him aside.

  “Confessions of an Opium Eater?” she asked, reading the title of the book her restless hands plucked from a nearby table. “That does not sound very entertaining.”

  “Oh, just a little moral tract of my sister’s,” Dulcie said, pulling that scandalous volume from her hands and setting it down again out of her reach. What else could he use to distract her? “I believe this month’s Ackermann’s Repository is about here somewhere. You shall read to me about the other exhibitions in town, and we can decide which we should visit next.”

  “No need to keep Dulcie entertained, Polly.” Benedict shoved his handkerchief into a pocket. “I’ve done enough here today.”

  Oh, hardly enough. Not after offering such a tantalizing invitation. Not that Dulcie would be so foolish to give any man, especially one as perceptive as Benedict Pennington, unfettered access to the inmost parts of his being.

  But if he might persuade him to settle for a few tiny glimpses—well, such a trade might be entirely worth the risk.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The clanking of silver against plate,
the cheery prognostications for the future happiness of the newly wedded couple, the sheer inanity of the chatter of a dining room filled with well-fed members of the English nobility—Benedict could only stand the celebratory bustle of his sister’s wedding feast for so long. Nor the unexpected longing that overtook him each time Sibilla smiled with surprised delight upon her bridegroom, each time Sir Peregrine patted his wife’s hand or clasped hers in his. Even if Benedict ever found himself in love, found a person to whom he wished to pledge his troth, a man of his inclinations would never have the chance to stand up and declare his vows in front of his friends and family as his sister just had.

  With this Ring I thee wed, with my Body I thee worship, and with all my worldly Goods I thee endow: In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

  He rubbed the tight muscles in his jaw. He’d never be allowed to express his joy in joining with the mate of his soul, not with the openness and freedom Sibilla and her new husband took entirely for granted. Not in church, nor in the midst of Pennington House’s ballroom.

  Benedict’s head jerked as an amused laugh pealed out from across the room. No such unfulfillable longings seemed to plague Lord Dulcie, who had stood beside Sir Peregrine during the long wedding ceremony with nary a wistful sigh. And here, amongst company, he was in his element, drawing the attention of everyone within earshot with his amusing stories and scandalous gossip. Was it a blessing or a curse, to take such pleasure in the way things were, rather than rail and regret over what they should be?

  But perhaps Dulcie did not long for anything different. Whenever Benedict saw him, he was always surrounded by a coterie of young men, rather than one special companion. Rumor among a certain set had it that each season, Dulcie made a particular friend of one or another young fellow new to town each year, but the same rumors also insisted that his attentions were as fleeting as a rainbow amongst the clouds. Was young George Norton, the son of the gentleman whom Benedict’s father had supported for a seat in Parliament, currently vying for the right to spend a few brief hours basking in Dulcie’s reflected glory? He certainly hung on the viscount’s every word.

  Not that Benedict gave a tinker’s curse for whom Dulcie deigned to bestow his favors.

  “A toast! A toast! Every married man shall toast his wife!” Theo, Lord Saybrook, thrust his nearly empty wineglass towards his new brother-in-law. He’d declared to anyone who would listen that he was celebrating finally having the responsibility for their troublesome younger sister taken off his hands. More likely, though, he was drowning his guilt at being talked into declaring that their youngest brother, Kit, who had just wed an entirely unsuitable Irishwoman, not be invited to this morning’s festivities. Damn Uncle Christopher for his stupid, pointless prejudices.

  Benedict wrapped a piece of the wedding cake in a napkin—he’d promised to take one to Kit and his Fianna—then slipped it, and himself, out of the noisy ballroom. Uncle Christopher could be the one to make sure that Theo did not make too great a fool of himself today.

  His footsteps took him not up to his studio—too many reminders of his creative frustrations awaited there—but to the small drawing room at the back of the townhouse, the chamber that had once been his mother’s favorite retreat. In it her own paintings, the landscapes of familiar views from the Saybrook estate and the exquisitely detailed watercolors of humble Lincolnshire flora, were kept in bound folios, not deemed grand enough for public display.

  He picked up a volume and flipped through its pages, trying to shake off this damned melancholy.

  With what patience and skill his mother had taught him to hold a black-lead pencil, to shape perfectly straight lines and full, rounded curves. To take his time and to erase his mistakes with his Indian rubber when his ambitions outran his ability. How he’d burst with pride when she’d declared his watercolor of the cathedral in Lincoln, the last painting he’d completed before being sent away to school, worthy of being framed and hung, when she would not even frame her own far more accomplished works. To look again at her paintings, to remember her soft, kind voice, the stroke of her gentle hand over his brow whenever he’d toss his brush down in frustration—it soothed him, even on a day like today, when restlessness and impatience pricked at him like a burr under a horse’s saddle.

  “Your sister’s work? How did I not know she painted, as well as yourself?”

  Benedict closed his eyes, willing away the awareness the soft-spoken words uttered behind him sent skittering down his spine. Why should he be surprised that Dulcie had followed him, after he’d given him such an ill-advised glimpse of his own longing during their last sketching session?

  But should he really throw all the blame on Dulcie? Had not his own instincts, betraying good sense, urged him to leave the festivities, hoping that Dulcie—no, that Clair—might follow?

  “They are not Sibilla’s,” he said, his voice low. “These were done by my mother.”

  Dulcie sat on the sofa beside him and tugged on the folio so that it sat half on Benedict’s lap, half on his own. Benedict’s breath caught at the closeness of Dulcie’s thigh, the brush of his arm against his side as he turned each page. But the viscount’s attention remained focused not on Benedict, but on the contents of the folio, examining each of the paintings with the eyes not of a loving child, but of an intelligent, opinionated critic.

  Would Mother’s heart have beaten as quickly under the appraisal as Benedict’s did?

  She had liked him, that golden, laughing boy he’d described in the letters he’d written to her from school, and encouraged her shy son to pursue a friendship with him. If she had still been alive, would she have helped him find that boy again, draw him out from where he hid, safe behind the varnish of his social smile? Or would she have counseled Benedict to forget him? Assured him that boy no longer existed?

  “Quite accomplished she was, your mother,” Dulcie said when he had finished examining the final painting—Benedict’s favorite, a scene of a flower-strewn meadow on the Saybrook estate. “Such a dreamy, almost ethereal quality to them, as if she were painting her own visions rather than actual topological views. Did she ever submit her work to the Royal Academy exhibition?”

  Benedict ran his fingers round the tinted border surrounding the painting. How lovely it would look, mounted in a simple gold frame. “I believe several of her friends urged her to do so. But she never valued her own talents highly enough to accept their praise. And my father thought it ill-suited of a viscountess to subject herself to such public display.”

  “Did you believe so, too?”

  “I hardly think the opinion of a mere boy would have changed his mind.”

  Dulcie turned back to studying the picture. “Ah, yes, you had the misfortune to lose your mother at a young age, I believe?”

  “When I was but fourteen.” Two years after he’d lost Clair. Each time, he’d thought he’d lose himself as well, his grief had been so potent, so overwhelming.

  “A pity. She had a talent that many a professional would envy.”

  Benedict closed the folio and slid it from Dulcie’s lap, careful not to allow his fingers to touch the other man’s thighs. “She would have been even better if she’d had the chance to see the works of Poussin, or Claude, or any of the old Dutch masters of landscape.”

  Dulcie shifted to face Benedict. “But as the wife of a peer, surely she had the chance to visit many a private collection?”

  “A few, yes. But during a social visit, one is hardly allowed the chance to contemplate one painting before being rushed on to the next.”

  “Especially if its owner is prouder of himself for purchasing it than of the merits of the art itself,” Dulcie said with a grin.

  “Yes! If you wish to understand on an instinctual level a painting’s composition, its use of line and shadow, the play of light and color, you must spend time with it, examine it in detail. Which you could do, if the country’s best paintings were not all held in private collections. Gat
her them in one place, a place open to any who wish to view them, and watch how England’s art would flower.”

  Dulcie waved a careless hand. “There are other museums, on the Continent.”

  “But my mother never had the opportunity to travel abroad, to study the great works of the past. How many other talented young artists are lost to the world, or never reach their full potential, for lack of the opportunities enjoyed by the wealthy, or the privileges granted the male sex?”

  “How impassioned you become when you speak of your museum scheme!” Dulcie gave a lazy smile, one that belied the sudden tension in the air between them. “Eyes frowning, brows lowering, that teasing sulkiness about your full lips—why, it’s almost as if you were speaking of a lover, rather than a plan to make the world a better place.”

  Benedict jerked to his feet. “Is that why you followed me? In search of a lover?”

  “Bold words, Mr. Pennington. And if I answer with equal boldness, and say that I am?” Dulcie rose with far more grace from the settee than Benedict was sure he had.

  “Is not Mr. George Norton already filling that role?”

  “Not yet, although I have considered him. Teaching untutored youths in the ways of the flesh is a particularly piquant pleasure. But the more I see of you, the more I find myself unaccountably curious to know what it would be like to play with a more experienced man.”

  “You take a risk, revealing such things to me.”

  “No more of a risk than you once took. Sending that impassioned letter to me when you were a mere schoolboy.”

  “My letter.” The blood rushed to Benedict’s face. “You did receive it, then. I was never certain.”

  “Well, in a manner of speaking. My father opened it, then read certain parts to me aloud.”