by Bliss Bennet
He would have liked to have stopped and listened in on the snippets of whispered conversation between the students, their heated discussions of line and color and technique, the occasional pointed debate on the merits of one painting over another. But it was a silent young lady over in the corner, her eyes moving between the Dolci Magdalene hanging midway up the wall and the canvas propped on her easel, who fixed his attention. How intently she stared, as if wrapt in her own world of color and light and shadow. If he were rude enough to pause by her side and speak, he doubted she’d take the least bit of notice.
Is that how he’d seemed to Clair these past few days, so caught up in his portrait—the one Clair knew about, as well as the one he’d painted as a surprise—that he lost all track of place and time? Whenever he was close to finishing a painting, especially one where he wasn’t certain his skills could adequately capture the ambitions of his vision, he tended to sink deep into his own brain, for hours, sometimes days, on end. If he seemed as distant, as otherworldly and inaccessible as this young lady did, why, it was no wonder Clair had largely left him to his own devices this past week.
He wished Clair were here now, though, to share the pleasure of this moment. He’d sent a note to Milne House, where Clair had stayed last night, requesting his company. But had been disappointed to receive no reply before he’d had to leave for this unexpected appointment.
When they entered the North Gallery, it was not Lord Dulcie who stood in conversation with Julius Adler and his granddaughter in the otherwise empty gallery. It was his father, Lord Milne.
Was that why Dulcie had begged off from returning to Saybrook House last night? Because his father had unexpectedly returned to town? But why would he not mention such a thing in his note?
“Ah, gentlemen, good-day, good-day!” Lord Milne, pleasant affability where his son was all liquid charm, bowed to their group. “I understand you and Adler here have important things to discuss this morning, so I will take myself off directly. But look for a card from Lady Milne, an invitation to a small party we are arranging for later in the week. Many a toast will ring out when we make that happy announcement, eh, Adler?”
Mr. Adler looked more put upon than pleased by the friendly elbow Lord Milne sent in his direction, although he quickly stifled his frown. “Indeed, my lord. My granddaughter and I look forward to receiving your invitation.”
Benedict stepped over to greet Polly as her grandfather and Lord Milne said their good-byes. Her usual calm seemed to have deserted her, replaced by a strange mixture of excitement and worry. But before he could ask what troubled her, Sir Charles and Agar-Ellis gestured for him to join them around the table in the center of the gallery.
No students painted in this third gallery, although signs of their presence—a lone paintbrush, a paint-smeared cloth—suggested the room had only recently been cleared. Specifically for their private discussion, and at Sir Charles’ direction, no doubt. The Deputy Director of the British Institute had his privileges. . .
Benedict pulled out a chair for Polly, but she shook her head. “This is no meeting for me. But I do wish to have a word with you, after you’ve finished here. I’ll wait for you in the vestibule below,” she whispered, then smiled and stepped from the room.
Sir Charles cleared his throat. “Mr. Adler, may I introduce Mr. Agar-Ellis?”
“Clifden’s son, yes?” Adler said as he shook the younger man’s hand. “A fine man, the viscount. And a fine family. Very fine.”
“My new wife seems to agree with you, for which I praise the heavens each day,” Agar-Ellis said with a smile that somehow managed to be both friendly and dampening. Benedict stifled his own grin. Rumors of Adler’s eagerness to find a noble grandson-in-law must be spreading.
“Thank you for agreeing to meet with me today, sirs,” Adler said as he pulled his own chair up to the table. “Mr. Pennington has acted on my behalf up until this point, but I believe things are now come to a stage where meeting in person must be the proper course.”
“Indeed, Mr. Adler,” Agar-Ellis agreed. “I’ve long admired your many philanthropic contributions to our country, and stand ready to help facilitate any worthy charitable endeavor. I have heard through certain channels”—he nodded in Sir Charles’ and Benedict’s directions—“that you are considering a donation that will enrich the entire nation for generations to come.”
“Yes, Pennington was kind enough to express my interest in the creation of an art museum in London to Sir Charles here. One funded by the government, not by any private group.”
“And open to the public,” Benedict added. “None of this sending for tickets, or asking permission, or shutting it up half the days of the week.”
“And located not in an unfrequented street, nor in a distant quarter of the town,” Agar-Ellis added. “But in the very center of London.”
“And accessible to all ranks and degrees of men,” Benedict reiterated. “No fee required.”
“Visitors must be decently dressed,” Sir Charles insisted.
“Sirs, sirs, you put the cart before the horse!” Mr. Adler folded his hands on the table, waiting until he had the full attention of the other men in the room. “I did at one time think to offer a sizable portion of my collection to the country, for a sum far less than its current worth. And my London house as a site in which it, and other paintings acquired by the museum, might be displayed. But my circumstances have very recently changed, and I find that I am no longer in a position to make such an offer. I felt it only right to inform you of this myself, rather than asking Mr. Pennington to once again act as my intermediary.”
Benedict looked at the other man in disbelief. What circumstances had changed? A financial setback of some sort? But Dulcie, a magnet for every scrap of ton gossip, had not said a word about Adler since they’d returned to London.
And the older man’s calm demeanor did not suggest his changed circumstances related to any ruin or scandal . . .
The memory of the sneer on Lattimer Leverett’s face, taunting Dulcie over his ill-considered wager— And Lord Milne, right here in this very room—
Benedict shifted in his seat to face the man beside him. “Am I to understand congratulations are in order, sir? Miss Adler will soon be wed?” And her grandfather’s best paintings given away as dowry?
Adler smiled and shook his head. “Ah, Mr. Pennington, I will never understand how your mind so frequently jumps to such accurate conclusions. But I beg you, do not tell my granddaughter my too-revealing words gave away her secret. She so wished to inform you of the engagement herself.”
Benedict jerked to his feet, his chair scraping as loud as a cannon against the uncarpeted floor. “She did tell me she wished to speak with me after our meeting. And as my services no longer seem needed here, I will go and find her directly. Excuse me, gentlemen.”
Before Sir Charles or Mr. Agar-Ellis could even rise from their seats, Benedict had rushed through the arched doorway. His heart pounding, his palms sweating, he clattered blindly down the stairs, as if he could outrun the horrible, stabbing hurt.
Clair wouldn’t . . . He couldn’t . . .
But as soon as he saw the smile on Polly’s face fade into a worried frown, he knew how wrong—yet how right—his intuition had been.
Polly’s betrothed was none other than Sinclair Milne, Lord Dulcie.
“Mr. Pennington! Mr. Pennington, you must allow me to explain!”
Benedict paused mid-step. Rude, it was, to dash down the pavement so, leaving Polly Adler to shout after him like a fishwife hawking her wares on the wharf. But he didn’t think he could countenance speaking with anyone right now, especially not the lady responsible for all the conflicting emotions churning through his veins. He needed to be alone, to try and understand how he could have been so utterly wrong about Clair.
He shook his head and kept walking. Bad enough that Adler had abandoned their museum plans. But his idyll with Clair, would it soon be coming to an end as well? He yanked at h
is cravat, scrabbling against the sudden tightness constricting his throat.
Clair couldn’t have been deliberately lying to him all this time about not wanting Adler’s paintings. But perhaps his lover had been lying to himself? Any gentleman with even the smallest pretension to aesthetic taste would be ecstatic to find himself the owner of such a collection. And if he might please his father in the process of winning them, well, was it any surprise that his previous denials might fall by the wayside?
Yes, it was Benedict who was the one at fault, for putting so much faith in a man as unreliable as Clair. Foolish to believe him immune from the lure of Adler’s paintings. Even more foolish to believe him so enthralled by the lure of Benedict Pennington that he’d turn away from a more conventional, socially acceptable life.
Somehow, though, he could not entirely banish the improbable hope that the gentleman currently chortling over his good luck in winning Polly Adler and her dowry was someone other than Sinclair Milne.
“Mr. Pennington!”
Light footsteps sounded behind him. What, was Polly chasing him down Pall Mall? And without a chaperone? Damnation!
“Mr. Pennington! Benedict, please!”
He had come almost to Cleveland Row by the time conscience forced him to a halt. Polly was not to blame here, truly. She could have no idea how the news of her pending betrothal would cut at his very heart. And only a blackguard would allow an unmarried lady to dash about the city unaccompanied.
“Oh, Benedict! I am so sorry,” she said as she finally caught him up, her usually pale face ruddy from the exertion. “I begged grandfather to allow me to tell you. But he is so high-handed, he must have all his own way.”
“It is true, then? You are engaged?”
She nodded.
“And the best paintings in his collection, those that were to be donated to the museum—excuse me for speaking so bluntly—they will now be given to your betrothed?”
“Yes, to Lord Dulcie. Is it not a happy scheme?”
His mind numbed, but his hands tingled with an unfamiliar need to strike out, to dash that easy joy from her face with a stinging slap. What a wretch he was! He fought the cruel urge, his fists tightening for a long moment.
“I see,” he finally bit out, then turned and strode down the passage towards Green Park. Surely he could find somewhere to lose himself in its extensive wilderness, some place to hide away and mourn alone.
“No, I do not believe you do,” she said to his back. Once again footsteps followed him.
When she caught him up this time, she slid a gloved hand inside his elbow, as if her small strength would keep him from fleeing. “How kind of you to join me for a stroll in the park on such a fine summer’s morning, Mr. Pennington.”
“Polly, please. You will not find me good company today.” He tried to shrug free of her hand, but she only tightened her grip.
“Do not worry yourself on my account. I have enough conversation for us both, if you will just stop running away and listen to me!”
Benedict jerked to a halt, taken aback by the vehemence of her words. Her set jaw and furrowed forehead told him she would not take no for an answer. Girding himself against more painful revelations, he gave a curt nod.
She remained silent, though, as they turned onto the gravel of the Queen’s Walk and strolled towards the Basin and Piccadilly. The morning’s fine weather had brought out myriad strollers, couples and groups of all ranks and degrees. A crowd similar to the one he’d imagined visiting a public art museum, gentlemen and shopkeepers, parliamentarians and clerks, all side by side, all drinking in the splendors of the finest works of art. He sighed. It would take months to cultivate another donor with as rich a collection as Adler’s.
The park was still not as crowded as it would be later in the evening, when the well-dressed and the genteel thronged its paths. Thank heavens the daily parade of the guards, accompanied by a full music band, had already taken place. He didn’t think he could tolerate such cacophony, not with the images, real and imagined, clamoring inside his own head. Clair kissing him until they both gasped for breath. Clair in Adler’s gallery, expounding on the merits of Adler’s Titian and Carracci. Clair laughing with Lattimer Leverett over how each could so easily manipulate a still painfully naive Benedict Pennington.
Polly waited until they had passed a group of nursery maids and their young charges before speaking. “I know how upset you must be, Benedict, about this delay to your museum plans. But you must not blame Lord Dulcie. It was my idea, mine entirely.”
“Your idea?” Benedict scoffed. “No doubt he made you think so. He has a gift, to make others believe him sincere. But far too often, all is mere artifice and show.”
“Benedict, no! It was my idea. Indeed, he refused me at first, and for quite some time. Only after I explained how marrying me would allow him to help you could I bring him to even consider the proposal.”
“Help me? In what way can his marrying you, and stealing away your grandfather’s paintings for himself, be of the least help to me?”
Polly jerked him to a standstill and stamped her foot, sending small brown stones kicking up around them. “Benedict Pennington! Stop jumping to conclusions! You may be quick-witted, but you’re not always right, you know.”
He opened then closed his mouth, chastened by her anger.
With an approving nod at his silence, she began walking again. “You know that Grandfather once thought to make a match between the two of us, did you not?”
Benedict nodded.
“But since our return to England, he has become more and more set on my wedding a gentleman of both property and of rank. Not just one with good connections, such as yourself, but a gentleman with a title, or at the very least in line to inherit one.”
“And you could not dissuade him from such a course.”
Polly’s lips twisted. “No. He loves his adopted country so, and wishes for his descendants to be English to the bone. What better way to accomplish this than to wed his granddaughter to a scion of the peerage?”
“But must he also give away the paintings?” Damn, he hated the petulance that crept into his voice.
Polly huffed. “You know no aristocrat would ever offer for a girl of little social standing and even less beauty without proper recompense. But if the dowry that came along with her offered an unprecedented measure of prestige . . .”
“You underestimate yourself, Polly. Any gentleman would—”
“Any gentleman wouldn’t,” she interrupted. “And an aristocrat certainly wouldn’t, not without the incentive of grandfather’s best paintings.”
The intensity of her scowl made him drop that line of protest. “But must it be Dulcie?” he could not help but ask, damning the pain and longing those words revealed.
“Yes, it must! What other man would agree to donate them to your museum project, rather than keep them to himself and his own kind? Do you not see, it is the perfect solution to all of our difficulties!”
Benedict closed his eyes, the sudden rush of hope nearly blinding him. “Dulcie told you he’d donate them? And you believe him?”
“Yes, I do. And I must say your doubt does him great disservice, Benedict. Because I can see where his true feelings lie. He may have agreed to marry me, but it is you whom he loves.”
“Loves?” Clair, love him? Why would she think such a—?
Benedict jerked to a standstill. “It was you! Last week, outside my studio.”
“Well, I did not say your intuition was always wrong,” she said with a chuckle. “I told your footman that I knew my way, and wished to surprise you. But instead it was I who received the surprise. And the solution to all of our problems.”
He shook his head. How could she be taking this all so lightly?
“And still, you would marry him? Even after witnessing us—?” He couldn’t bring him to finish the sentence.
“He has agreed to let me pursue my art as I wish,” she said in a remarkably even tone. “Wh
y should I not grant him the same courtesy to pursue his own interests?”
Benedict stared at her. “His own interests?”
Instead of answering, she began to walk again, tapping her closed parasol against the light iron railing running beside the gravel path. “Have you heard the story of why there are no flower beds here in Green Park?”
He frowned at the sudden change of topic. “Because it was once a burial ground for lepers? Surely you don’t believe such a foolish tale.”
“No, not that one. The story I know is that during one of his daily constitutionals, Charles II picked some flowers here for a lady—a lady decidedly not his wife. Of course, his wife saw him, and in a fit of pique ordered all the blooms removed from her husband’s favorite park. A foolish act, I think, to deprive everyone of the beauties of nature just to spite a philandering husband. And he, no doubt, easily found both another supply of blossoms and another lady upon whom to bestow them.”
She paused, and raised both her eyebrows. “I myself have always regarded jealousy a particularly unbecoming feature in a wife. And in a husband. Just one of the many beliefs Lord Dulcie and I share. Yes, I believe we will rub along together quite well.”
His mouth must have been hanging open in shock, for her gloved hand reached out and gently pushed it closed.
“Benedict. After you take me back to my grandfather, go and have a word with your Lord Dulcie. He cares for you, and you for him. That is a rare thing, such caring. It would be a sin to allow doubt and fear to come between you.”
