A Sinner without a Saint

by Bliss Bennet

  Dulcie bowed, then strode to the easel. Playing to the crowd, he slowly reached for the cloth covering it, then drew it aside with a dramatic flourish.

  Another silence, this one longer than the one that had followed Adler’s original announcement, drummed in Dulcie’s ears. Then, a gasp, and another. Twitters quickly covered by a restraining hand. And then, a loud guffaw. What in heaven’s name?

  Dulcie swung around, his eyes pulled wide. No bland, superficial rendering of his appearance and aristocratic appendages stood on the easel, as if he’d been painted by a more traditional portraitist. But nor did the muscular, dynamic portrait of masculinity that Benedict had revealed to him with such pride earlier in the week. No, the canvas unveiled in the midst of his fiancée’s townhouse depicted an entirely naked male body lying on its side in a leafy bower, one arm flung wide in wanton slumber. Or no, not slumber, not with such exaggerated elongated lines, not with those sensuous curves of the back and the buttocks and the thighs. Rather, in the moment just before slumber, in the susurrating calm after the exultation of sexual climax.

  Dulcie could barely believe the lasciviousness on the canvas on front of him. Lord, Pen had painted him as if he were an object of desire, not just inviting but demanding the viewer’s touch. Open. Languid. Vulnerable.

  As if he were a woman.

  Damnation!

  It must be some mistake. Pen would never have agreed to show such a revealing painting in public. Especially not without asking him first.

  But when his eyes flicked to Benedict, his lover only scowled, defiant.

  He had shown it on purpose? But why?

  The question became irrelevant as his father stepped between them.

  His father. Oh God, his face. The confusion. The hurt. The cringing distaste. Just as it had been after Copeland’s uncle accused Dulcie of debauching his innocent nephew.

  His eyes jerked back to the painting, blood pounding in his ears. He had to deny it. Had to deny it was him, had to deny he’d had anything to do with such a shameful creation. Only the back of the figure’s head appeared on the canvas, but with those guinea-gold curls, everyone would assume—

  “How very singular,” Lattimer Leverett proclaimed, stepping up to the easel, quizzing glass in hand. “The artist seems to have entirely disregarded anatomical possibility. No one who had actually drawn from life would have put so many vertebrae in a man’s back.”

  Dulcie reached for Leverett’s lifeline with both hands.

  “I do believe you are right,” he said, taking up a stance beside his fellow critic. “Nor would a competent artist have depicted the pelvis rotated to such an impossible angle. Not if he had been drawing from a model. Exercising the imagination a bit too freely, I fear.”

  “And in exercising his imagination too freely, the painter also exceeds the bounds of good taste,” Leverett added as he dropped his quizzing glass to his side. “An impatient style, not at all diligent or persuasive.”

  “This is not the portrait,” Benedict said, shouldering aside Leverett to gather the sheet that had once covered the painting from where Dulcie had tossed it on the floor. “Only an experiment, something not ready to be shown in public.”

  “An experiment indeed. Too much poetry, and not enough painting,” Dulcie said, pushing the cruel words out over the sudden lump in his throat. He would not look at Benedict. He would not.

  Whispers rippled through the enthralled crowd as the other members of the British Institution set crowded round to offer their opinions of Benedict’s painting.

  “Excessive virtuosity,” Carrington said.

  “Artistic excess is never in good order,” Dulcie agreed.

  Leverett sniffed. “Almost vulgar, is it not?”

  “Well, I think it sublime,” George Norton said, his voice belligerent in disagreement.

  Carrington turned to him, forehead wrinkling. “Sublime? Without a single feature of heroism or grandeur?”

  “A style that proclaims sublime genius, rather than proves it,” Leverett declared.

  “Indeed. There is nothing here of the sublime, or of the genius about it in the least,” Selsey agreed.

  Dulcie shot a glance at his father. His lip still curled in disgust.

  “Certainly nothing conducive to virtue or happiness,” Dulcie added, his voice heavy with false regret. A small, disappointed shake of the head topped off the performance. There, that should appease his father.

  “No, indeed. Nothing virtuous in that weak, effeminate thing,” Leverett proclaimed. A sly, triumphant expression flashing across his face before it was replaced by a frown of moral repugnance.

  “Far more likely to inspire vice than virtue,” Carrington agreed.

  “Best have a care, Norton,” Leverett cautioned, his eyes fixing not on the younger man, but on Benedict. “It’s never wise to publicly praise a work more suited to the libertine than to the gentleman.”

  Dulcie could barely maintain his studied composure in the face of Benedict’s pained disbelief. His eyes pleaded with Dulcie, silently begging him to come to the defense of his painting.

  After he’d just unmasked him in front of the entire company? He must be mad.

  After a long, painful moment, Benedict’s eyes dropped from Dulcie’s. He flung the cloth over his painting and yanked it from the easel, then clutched it to his chest, as if it were a shield that might protect him from the scorn of his lover and his fellow connoisseurs.

  With one last searing stare at Dulcie, his lover turned his back on the jeering crowd and stalked from the room.

  “Come, come, ladies and gentlemen. Far better offerings in the picture gallery.” Julius Adler, having finally found his voice, began ushering his guests away from site of the scandal. “Come away, Polly, immediately. Dulcie, you as well.”

  Adler rushed to follow his guests, assuming his orders would be obeyed. But Dulcie could not move. Should he follow Benedict and upbraid him? Or remain at the party and ignore him?

  Before he could shake free of his paralyzing indecision, Leverett caught at his sleeve. “How amusing! You have won our little wager, but yet you give me the prize in spite of it.”

  “Prize? I won’t pay you sixpence for this night’s work,” Dulcie snapped.

  “A kinder man would offer far more than a few pennies to the fellow who singlehandedly saved his reputation from the heedlessness of a careless swain,” Leverett said, patting Dulcie’s shoulder in mock friendship. “But I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for you, dear Sinclair. Your public set-down of Pennington’s ridiculous artistic pretensions will be payment enough for me.”

  With a laugh, Leverett left Dulcie to stare at the door through which Benedict had fled.

  Good God. What have I done?

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “A lovely day for a wedding, is it not, my lord? But then, I suspect any day which joins two people in the bond of holy matrimony must be a happy day to a clergyman.”

  The Bishop of London, who stood, long-faced and bewigged, beside Dulcie at the altar rails of St. George’s, Hanover Square, gave a curt nod. “Indeed, my lord.”

  Dulcie sighed. For a bishop, the fellow was singularly lacking in conversation.

  He fingered the gold ring in his waistcoat pocket, the ring that would soon bind him to Polyhymnia Adler. But the only hand he longed to bestow it on was far larger than Polly’s. Rough with callouses from clutching paint brushes, a touch dry from the walnut oil he used to clean off the daubs of paint.

  A hand that hadn’t touched him in over a fortnight.

  As the organist paused between songs, Dulcie heard the folds of the bishop’s cassock rustle. Slim fingers pressed a latch on the enameled pocket watch, springing open its cover.

  “Is not your eldest daughter to make her come-out next season?” Dulcie asked, pulling the man’s attention back to him. Away from the time, and from the fashionably dressed, but increasingly restless crowd whose heads bobbed above the high-backed the pews. Many had come
to town from their country estates specifically for this wedding, and were clearly growing tired of waiting. Polly Adler and her father were woefully late.

  He tried once again to engage the bishop. “Your daughter is called Mary Anne, if my memory serves. You will surely enjoy presiding over that wedding when the time arrives.”

  “Yes, I will.”

  Ugh. Cold as a dead man’s nose, the Right Reverend and Right Honourable the Lord Bishop of London. So different from Pen’s reserved passion—

  “Are you certain Mr. Adler knows the service was to begin at ten of the clock?” the bishop asked, his frown so deep the wrinkles on his forehead nearly set his white wig askew. “I’ve another appointment at Fulham Palace at eleven.”

  “Oh, you know how the ladies are, always primping up until the last minute. I’m certain they’ll be here shortly.”

  Truly, Dulcie had no idea. Since the debacle of the engagement party, he’d spent very little time with his future wife, allowing his parents and her grandfather to organize the entirety of today’s spectacle. Instead, he’d spent the last fortnight carousing with his friends, fencing and boxing and riding by day, laughing and gaming and drinking long into the night. “Hell-bent on imbibing the last of a bachelor’s pleasures to the lees,” Leverett had joked, “before bending a docile head to the stifling yoke of matrimony.”

  Only Dulcie knew what his hectic revelry had truly been about. At first, to keep his roiling anger at Benedict from exploding like a shell from a mortar and decimating all in its range. And then, as his wrath cooled to a simmer, to keep himself from rushing to Benedict’s side and demanding an apology for his rash, impulsive gesture, a gesture clearly meant to stake a claim on Dulcie even though he’d told Dulcie over and over that he had no objection to the marriage with Polly. And finally, as self-righteousness gave way to regret, to keep him from throwing himself at his lover’s feet in abject apology. Because in the end, what truly haunted Dulcie was not his father’s disappointment, or his own embarrassment or shame, but the shock and pain on Benedict’s face as he and Leverett and the others heaped aspersion after insult on that horrifically revealing painting. If Benedict had betrayed him by displaying his longing and love in public, had not Dulcie betrayed him in his turn?

  Yes, he had to stay away. To keep the world from guessing what he felt for Pen, when he could not even understand it himself.

  He certainly didn’t need Benedict Pennington. He didn’t need anybody but himself.

  Why, then, should he feel so restless, at such loose ends, after spending only a fortnight without him?

  He scanned the pews, searching in vain for his tall head of dark, tousled curls. Foolish, to think Pen would come. After the wedding, perhaps, then it might be safe for them to meet—

  The bishop cleared his throat. “I can only wait so long, my lord. You must realize that a man of my station has many responsibilities—”

  The older man broke as the door at the end of the spacious nave opened. Dulcie’s stomach quivered. Silks and satins rustled as guests turned in their seats to catch the first sight of the bride on the arm of her proud grandfather.

  But only one Adler strode down the wide carpeted aisle.

  Julius Adler, sallow and drawn despite the finest tailoring London could offer, looked as if he’d aged a decade since Dulcie had last seen him. With a shaking hand, he pulled a thin letter from his pocket.

  “There will be no wedding today,” he whispered, handing the folded paper to Dulcie. Then he turned and said, this time in a carrying voice, to the guests assembled in the pews. “There will be no wedding today. My deepest apologies. If you will excuse me?”

  Whispers and titters rose from the nave as Dulcie stared at the note in his hand. Polly wasn’t coming?

  His eyes fixed on the painting hanging behind the altar in an ornate wooden reredos. A depiction of the Last Supper, in the style of Poussin. Who had painted it? He could just make out Judas, in the dark left-hand corner of the canvas, scurrying from the room.

  “Dulcie. Dulcie! Come away, before you make another spectacle of yourself.” Lord Milne, his face as pasty as blancmange, pulled on Dulcie’s sleeve.

  “Don’t, Father, you’ll wrinkle it,” Dulcie said, the words coming by rote. Had he truly been left at the altar? And by a young woman as unprepossessing as Polly Adler?

  “I’ll see to him, my lord. You attend to your wife and daughter.”

  A hand on his back guided him from the chancel to the vestry. Not the hand of the bishop, who seemed to have left, thank heavens, for his other pressing appointment. No, it was the hand of Lattimer Leverett.

  “She left me at the altar,” he said, shaking his head.

  “What a fool. Doesn’t she realize her reputation will be in ruins after such a slight?” Leverett moved to pull the note from Dulcie’s fingers. “Would you like me to read it to you?”

  Dulcie jerked his hand back. “No. No thank you. In fact, I would prefer some privacy, if you please.”

  Leverett nodded. “I’ll wait for you in the vestibule.”

  Slipping his thumb under the seal, Dulcie broke the wax then unfolded the single sheet of paper.

  22 September, 1822

  My Lord Dulcie,

  When we first discussed the possibility of a marriage between us, we agreed we would each allow the other the freedom to pursue his, or her, own particular interests without interference after we wed. But I find now that the time has come, I am not at all certain that I can rely upon your assurances on this point. Your treatment of our mutual friend, Mr. Benedict Pennington, suggests a certain willingness to put your own well-being above that of others, even others for whom you have a care. I cannot think it wise to risk my financial, nor my emotional, well-being on one who would act in such a manner.

  If you had deigned to visit me since our betrothal party, I would have informed you of my decision in person. But perhaps it is better this way; you now have no opportunity to use your persuasive manners and abundant charm to sway me from my decision. And I do so hate to argue.

  I remind you that the marriage settlement specifies that you receive three paintings of your own choosing from my grandfather’s collection if I am the cause of our failure to wed. I wish you joy of them.

  Yrs. Sincerely,

  Polyhymnia Adler

  P.S. Mr. Pennington favors the Carracci

  Dulcie looked up from the note, his eyes fixing on the white vestments hanging like dull ghosts in an open wardrobe by the wall. Pen favored the Carracci? Why should Polly tell him such a thing?

  Because she thought Pen just might give him a second chance, if only he offered the proper incentive?

  He crumpled the note in a shaking hand. Lord, he felt almost giddy, as if Polly had tossed over each and every sandbag weighing down the hot air balloon of his soul. Who would have thought a man could be bubbling with hope, so soon after being jilted?

  What a gift Polly had given him!

  His chuckle must have sounded a bit mad, because Leverett leaned around the doorframe, eyes narrowed in concern. “Dulcie? Care to share the joke?”

  “No time, Leverett,” he said, shoving the note into his pocket and catching up his cane and his hat. “No time. I’ve a man—no, two men—to see about a painting.”

  Benedict closed the portmanteau and buckled its straps, pulling each one tight against the leather case. Satisfying, how many garments one could fit inside. Everything he needed to stand up beside Theo at his wedding, all in one small bag.

  If only one might pack away pain as easily as one did clothing.

  A discreet cough interrupted his melancholy. “Shall I bring your bag down to the carriage, Mr. Benedict?”

  Benedict nodded to the footman. “Tell the driver I’ll be down shortly, after I collect a few last things from the studio.”

  “Yes, sir.” Hill hoisted the bag and slid its strap over his shoulder, then paused in the doorway. “Will you offer the best wishes of all the staff to Lord Saybrook
and his new bride? It will be a true pleasure to have a lady gracing this house once more.”

  He nodded again, though he shared little of Hill’s enthusiasm for his brother’s impending nuptials. Oh, he was pleased for Theo’s sake, of course. His brother seemed quite enamored of Harriot Atherton, and she, a kindly, practical young woman, would certainly make a fitting wife for avoidance-prone Theo. But the idea of any woman taking over his mother’s rightful title inclined him to pensiveness, if not outright dejection.

  And to stand and watch as yet another of his siblings took a spouse, knowing all the while that he never would—

  “And don’t forget to sleep with a slice of the groom’s cake under your pillow, sir,” Hill added over his shoulder as Benedict followed him down the passageway. “Dream of your future wife, you will.”

  “That old superstition? I thought it only applied to unmarried girls.”

  Hill paused at the top of the staircase and gave a cheeky grin. “Sure and it can’t hurt. Besides, if you get to hungering in the middle of the night, then you’ve a bit of something right to hand, haven’t you?”

  Benedict mustered a smile, but doubted it looked very convincing. In the darkest hours of the night, it wasn’t cake for which his body hungered. No, it longed for a certain angel-faced viscount, a man so charming on the surface, but so very afraid underneath.

  Benedict had stayed in London up until the last possible moment before Theo’s wedding, imagining hundreds of ways Clair might apologize. Arriving with a bouquet of autumn flowers in hand. Beating his breast while he declared mea culpa, meal culpa, mea maxima culpa on Benedict’s doorstep. Scribbling “I’m sorry” in charcoals over every blank canvas in Benedict’s studio. Anything to let him know that that he’d only said those disparaging things about Benedict’s painting to protect him, Benedict, and not just himself. That he hadn’t meant to laugh at him, or to repudiate him in front of his family and friends.