by Bliss Bennet
But Clair had never come.
And now he was married to Polly.
With a snarl of frustration, Benedict yanked opened the door to his studio. But only two steps in, he jerked to a halt. An oversized canvas, one far larger than any he’d ever worked on, perched on an easel in the middle of the room.
Blank? Or already painted? He couldn’t tell; he could see the stretcher bars, but a white sheet concealed its opposite side.
He stepped closer and drew aside the cloth.
Good God. The sheet fell from his suddenly nerveless hand.
Adler’s Carracci! The rich blue of that sky, the deep red of the cloth, those smooth, barely perceptible brushstrokes. Saint John’s golden curls, the reclining torso that had put him so in mind of Clair. What the hell was this invaluable painting doing in his studio?
“A little bird tells me you have some fondness for this particular canvas.”
Benedict whirled to find the man for whom he’d been yearning, leaning with practiced ease against the frame of the studio door. Impeccably turned out, as always, from the top of his pomaded head to the tips of his champagne-shined boots. He held his arms loosely crossed over his chest; his mouth tipped up at one corner in his lazy social smile. Once, Benedict wouldn’t have hesitated to reach out and wind his hands through those perfectly arranged curls, or run a thumb over those mocking lips until they forgot to maintain the pretense of indifference. Devour that mouth until it no longer kept him at a distance, but welcomed him into its warmth.
Not today, the hard knot in his stomach insisted. Perhaps not ever again.
Dulcie pushed off from the doorframe and strolled into the room, hands held loosely behind his back. Was offering a private viewing of his newly-acquired painting meant to be recompense for the cruel words he’d tossed out with such ease at Adler’s party? Benedict’s entire body clenched in protest.
“Your new father-in-law has given you the run of the collection already?” he asked as he turned back to the Carracci. “I’m surprised he would allow you to cart about such a priceless canvas as if it were a mere bale of hay.”
Clair’s footsteps echoed across the wooden floor behind him. “You’ve not heard the latest on dit, I take it?”
Benedict shook his head, but kept his gaze fixed on the painting.
“Adler is not my father-in-law. Nor ever like to be.”
Hope, sharp and swift, battered Ben’s ribs. “You jilted Polly?” he asked, whirling to face Clair.
Clair sniffed. “Would Lord Dulcie ever commit such an incivility? No, it was Miss Adler, the dear child, who failed to come up to the mark. Left me standing in the midst of St. George’s, failing in every attempt to entertain that bore of a bishop Adler persuaded to conduct the ceremony. How such a fellow ever ingratiated himself with enough prelates to win the bishopric of London I’ll never understand.”
Polly had left Clair? “Why?”
“Ah, who can fathom the ways of women?” Clair shrugged with his usual elegance. “Especially ladies of an artistic temperament. Perhaps she did not like the cut of my coat, or the way I styled my hair.”
Benedict grimaced. “Devil it! She must have been embarrassed by the scene we made at your betrothal party. It could not have been pleasant for a rival for your attentions to make such a public display, and in her very own home.” Damn him for a blockhead. He’d been so wrapped up in his own hurts, he’d not given a moment’s consideration to Polly’s.
“It may have had something to do with your painting,” Clair said with an airy wave of the hand. “But do not trouble yourself overmuch. Such a temperamental young lady and I would never have suited.”
“Still, perhaps if I go to her and explain, apologize for making her look a fool—”
“No need, Pen.” Clair grabbed his arm. “She’s left London, fled in a flurry of petticoats and paintbrushes. Gone to stay with an aunt in Surrey, Adler tells me, far from the imprecations of both her disappointed bridegroom and her irate grandfather. May she paint in peace.”
He shrugged free of Clair’s grasp and turned his back on him. His lover showed as little care for Polly’s feelings as he did for Benedict’s.
“And so, I am to play consolation prize, am I? And treated to a private viewing of a famous painting so I’ll forget your careless dismissals of Polly and myself? Just how did you convince Adler to part with it, even for a few hours?”
Clair mirrored his pose in front of the easel, looking not at him but at the painting. “Do you like it? Polly insists the saint and I share a certain resemblance. I can’t say that I see it myself, but I’d be flattered if that were the reason you’ve developed a fondness for it.”
Benedict cursed his propensity to blush. “Damn it to hell, Dulcie. For once in your life would you please answer a question directly, instead of perambulating about it as if you were strolling in a garden of pretty words?”
“Very well.” But he remained silent for a few moments, reaching out a finger to sweep away a few invisible specks of dust from the painting’s frame. “Unbeknownst to me, the marriage contract specified that in the case of either party refusing to execute its terms, certain penalties were to be paid. On my part, a rather hefty sum of money. But on Polly’s, as you see—a painting from Adler’s collection. Three, in fact. Who knew my father could be so wily?”
Benedict recoiled. “Why would you bring your ill-gotten gains here?”
“Because it’s yours, Pen. It, and any other two paintings from Adler’s collection, both of your choosing. Not as many as I initially had hoped, I realize, but—”
“Keep it.”
“Now, Pen. I know that three paintings aren’t enough to start a museum, but in time—”
“I said keep it,” he interrupted again, his voice tight and strained. “I don’t want it. If it’s meant as some kind of feeble apology, then I don’t accept it.”
Clair immediately stiffed. “Apology? For what?”
“For what? Do you not remember what happened at your betrothal party? How you mocked me in front of your friends? In front of Adler? In front of Polly? No, not all the paintings in the world would make up for what you said to me that night.”
Clair jerked on the cuff of his sleeve. “What I said? And what of what you did? After saying you accepted my need to marry Polly, you put that damned painting on display in her house! A work that all but proclaimed you’d swived me like a bitch in heat!”
“I didn’t realize!” Benedict nearly shouted. How did Clair always manage to turn the conversation away from his own faults and on to those of others? “I didn’t think of it as lewd, or lecherous. It’s just how I see you.”
“As a wanton, effeminate slut?”
“No, damn you! As a beautiful, vulnerable man! A man with a soul so much finer than the one he shows to the world. One who not only inspires admiration, but who is worthy of the deepest devotion another human being may offer.”
Clair recoiled, as if he’d been hit with a scattering of shot rather than with the deepest truths of Benedict’s heart.
But perhaps for Clair, one was tantamount to the other.
What a fool he’d been, imagining that his wary lover might defend such a painting in front of the ton. And his dream had not just been about wanting Clair to champion his skills as an artist, had it, no matter what he’d told himself when he’d handed over his outrageous, rather than his merely experimental, portrait to Adler’s footman to put on display. No, he’d wanted to make some public claim to Clair, even one as indirect as through a painting. And he’d wanted Clair to claim him publicly too, even if only in the guise of praising his artistic talents.
Idiot. Imbecile.
“I was jealous,” Benedict whispered. He turned to stare out the window, sickened by the sudden revelation of feelings he thought he’d already understood. “Jealous, knowing that you’d soon be legally bound to another.”
His rational brain had accepted the necessity of Clair’s marriage, had even applauded it.
But something far deeper inside had still rebelled.
How could he have not considered how Clair would feel to be confronted so directly? To be shown himself as Benedict saw him, in the aftermath of their intimacies—open, exposed, shorn of his usual wit and charm? Lord, it must have been his worst nightmare. No wonder fear had driven him like a hound from hell to deny any involvement in the painting’s creation.
“I’m sorry, Clair,” he whispered. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you, or to put your reputation in danger.”
Clair gave a short, stiff nod. “I accept your apology. And we shall say no more of it. Now, come and tell me which of Adler’s other paintings you think I should choose.”
Benedict sank onto the settee, his hands clenching between his knees. Understanding Clair, though, was not the same as forgiving him.
“Before you offer an apology of your own for lying about my work?” he asked.
Clair eyes widened. “You accuse me of lying? You should be thanking me, and Leverett, for redirecting the conversation towards the painting’s artistic merits. Those lies all but saved you from a public pillorying.”
“Saved you, rather. Leverett rode to your rescue, but trampled me into the dust. And you joined him up there on his noble steed, stabbing down at me with your cutting criticisms and stinging insults as if I hadn’t just laid my heart out on canvas for you, as if it had been just any other painting hanging on Adler’s wall.”
Clair shook his head. “Resenting Polly, resenting Leverett—Why, you’re as jealous as a barren wife! What a child, to be in need of such constant reassurance of my regard.”
The sting of Clair’s disdain hit him like a slap, and his first instinct was to hit back. But he paused as understanding washed over him. Clair wanted Benedict to argue, wanted to push him away.
He took a deep breath. “I know you’re afraid, Clair, but do you have to make me so ashamed of my own feelings for you?”
“Afraid? Pah. You may imagine yourself the heroine of some stage melodrama, but pray, don’t cast me in the role of your overwrought swain.”
Benedict jerked to his feet. “Of course not. Charming Lord Dulcie is beyond mere feeling.”
“Just because I don’t wallow in the pits of darkest despair or soar to the heights of unbridled joy doesn’t mean I feel nothing, Pen.”
“No, you are not unfeeling. Pleasure, amusement, a touch of anger, a bit of disdain—all the lighter emotions are more than welcome. But even you must admit you never stand still long enough to allow any deep feeling, any meaningful emotion, to even tap you on the shoulder, never mind stop to ask yourself why it might be haunting you.”
“And you fault me for that? Surely only a foolish man welcomes bad feeling with open arms.”
“Bad feeling? Not all strong emotions are bad!”
“Yes, they are! For whenever a feeling is strong enough to overwhelm one’s better judgment, it makes one forget one’s obligations to others. To one’s family, to one’s good name.”
Benedict took a step back. Surely Clair did not believe such a ridiculous thing. But his lover’s face had taken on a closed, mulish look.
“Are those your words?” he asked. “Or are they your father’s?”
“What does it matter, so long as they are true? You certainly forgot your obligation to me when you showed the world that painting.”
“Obligation? What obligation do I have to you?”
“To keep our relations a secret.”
“By suppressing all I feel for you?”
“When it is called for, yes!”
Benedict crowded Clair towards the wall. “And is it called for now? When we are alone together, as well as when we are in public? Are we to laugh, and tryst, and then go about our separate lives as if nothing we do together, as if nothing we are to each other, matters in the least?”
Clair’s blue eyes frosted. “If that is the only way to keep both the Milne and the Saybrook family names from being smeared with the label sodomite—then yes.”
“So you will pretend to feel nothing for me whenever we are in company together outside this house, disparage me and my finest feelings to my face, and not even give me the honesty of your own feelings when we are alone?” he cried. “You expect me to come begging to you like a dog for the meager scraps of affection you deign to drop from your table?”
“What a to do!” Clair sniffed. “Please, I beg, let’s have no more of such irrational drivel.”
Benedict’s palms slapped the wall beside his lover’s head. “Hell and the devil, Clair! I think you’d prefer it if I didn’t love you. You certainly wish you didn’t love me.”
“Love?” Clair whispered, his face draining of color.
Benedict’s breath caught. Had his declaration finally shocked Clair from his self-protective shell?
But before he could press his advantage, Clair shuddered, then donned most dismissive Lord Dulcie sneer. “Love? What sentimental drivel you do spout, my dear boy. As if I could bring myself to care for anyone besides myself.”
Even though he knew them for a lie, Clair’s careless words stabbed him in the gut. He stared at his lover, eyes burning, waiting for him to hear how ridiculous his words sounded when weighed against all they had shared these past weeks. Waiting for him to admit how wrong he was to be so afraid of his own feelings, and of sharing them with Benedict.
Waiting for him to admit that yes, he, too, knew what it was to love.
Long minutes passed, with neither of them saying a word.
“Mr. Benedict?” The voice of the footman outside the door finally broke them apart.
“Yes, Hill?”
“John Coachman says you must leave within the hour if he is to make Cambridge by nightfall.”
“Very good. Tell him I’ll be down directly.”
With unseeing eyes, Benedict gathered up brushes and charcoals, shoving them indiscriminately into his paint box.
“You are leaving town?” Clair asked, his tone studiedly even.
“Yes. Theo is to be married to Miss Atherton next week. He wishes me to stand up with him.” He shoved in one last tube of dry pigment, then latched the paint box shut.
“But when you return, you will come with me to Adler’s to select two other paintings?” A question, but uttered in a tone that said he had no doubt Benedict would agree.
“I will visit Mr. Adler, yes. But not in your company.” Benedict picked up the paint box and walked to the door. “Someone needs to convince him that his legacy will be better assured by endowing a museum than by tying his granddaughter to some other undeserving scion of the ton.”
“And what am I to do with your Carracci, then?”
“My Carracci? You know it doesn’t belong to me, or to you. It should be returned to Adler. But perhaps you think such an opinion just another example of my sentimental drivel.”
“Self-righteous rather than sentimental, I’d say.”
“Then perhaps you’d do better to hang it amongst your Milne ancestors and crow over your cunning in tricking it away from its rightful owner.”
“Are you leaving me, Pen?”
Benedict paused in the doorway, steeling himself against that hint of vulnerability in Clair’s voice. He couldn’t settle for just a hint. Not any longer.
“If you’re worried about being alone with your regrets, Lord Dulcie, I’m certain Mr. Leverett would be happy to join you.”
He pulled the door of his studio softly closed behind him.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Dulcie, is that you? A word, if you would.”
Dulcie grimaced as his gloved hand grabbed the intricately carved newel at the top of the Milne House’s grand staircase. He was in no mood to listen to his father’s lectures about the importance of the entire family attending Sunday services together, as if he were still a child rather than a man of two and thirty. Not after spending all night staring at the portrait he’d stolen away from Benedict’s studio, Benedict’s self-righteous reproofs echoin
g in his ears. He’d been wrong to accept Adler’s Carracci as payment for his public embarrassment. Wrong to hide his true response to Benedict’s inflammatory portrait, even to keep their affair safe from prying eyes. Wrong to demand the least bit of discretion from his ridiculously idealistic lover.
Wrong to keep his own feelings for Benedict—liking, or admiration, or whatever the hell they might be—decently to himself.
How could the same man be so angry with him, yet paint him as if he were the most beloved being in his universe?
“Dulcie! Come and explain yourself, immediately!” His father, face ruddy, cravat rumpled, glared at him from the top of the landing.
Devil take it. No slipping out the back door today, no matter how badly he might need a bracingly restorative gallop through Hyde Park.
Dulcie walked slowly back up the stairs.
His father met him at the top of the landing, pointing an unsteady finger in the direction of Dulcie’s chamber. “Sinclair Milne, what in the heaven’s name is that, that—monstrosity doing in your rooms?”
Dulcie suppressed a sharp retort. He had no wish to discuss Benedict’s portrait with his father, but he needn’t antagonize the man, either.
“You deigned to visit my rooms, father? But did you not vow never to speak to me again after Miss Adler failed to keep her appointment with me at St. George’s?”
“After you drove her away, more like!” Lord Milne huffed.
“Does the cause matter? The result was the same. I am still unwed. And I distinctly recall you promising never to utter another word to me until I managed to walk out of a church securely tied to some appropriate chit.”
His father cleared his throat. “Yes, well. Your mother begged me to reconsider. Yet already I begin to regret my capitulation. If I’d only sent a footman to tell you to attend me at Mr. Adler’s this afternoon, I wouldn’t have had to look at that indecent excuse for a painting again.”
