by Sophia James
The frown on Rutherford’s face was more than disquieting. ‘Every subject gives away a little of themselves in the process of a portrait, my lord, it is a known fact. A literal likeness or a flattering representation with nothing else to it would, in my mind, be a failure.’
‘I have not followed art much, Mr Rutherford. For years I was a soldier.’
‘Is that where you got the scar on your neck?’
He felt his hand lift his collar before he could stop it, the raised flesh under his fingers near the corded veins of his throat. He knew the myths that had risen around him, the half-baked truths and lies that would seek to explain what people could see of such a mark.
‘No.’ He left it there and moved to stand at the window.
‘Should I face you straight on?’
‘I was thinking to do this more in profile against the light.’
Turning, he made sure it was his good side towards Rutherford. A small vanity. A useless conceit.
‘Like this?’
‘Not quite.’ He could hear something in the words that was sorrowful and gritted his teeth. Pity was the last thing he needed this morning and as the youth came towards him he tensed.
‘If you place your fingers on the back of this chair, Lord Winterton...’ When Rutherford’s hand lifted from his and their eyes met, a white heat of contact travelled down through his body.
He felt like he was in a dream with thickened air and no way out, a netherworld, the taste of memory sharp upon his tongue.
And the artist simply stood there, too, gazing at him, his own reflection shimmering in the thick-glassed dirty spectacles.
Two smears across the right-hand side, of paint perhaps. Red like blood. The accident. The carriage ride. The girl Florentia Hale-Burton bound beneath him in the aftermath of betrayal.
He had heard her screams and felt her pull at him, trying to stay close, to help, to staunch the wound that was driving life from his body.
The smell of gunsmoke, roses, hay, sweat and vomit. The sound mute and distant, the moon small and faint in a dark, dark sky. Her tears mixing with his blood, a gold cross on the end of the fragile chain that she wore around her neck.
God, please give me strength, he found himself imploring. Was he going mad? Why the hell should Florentia Hale-Burton be coming so forcibly to mind here in his London salon with the daylight outside?
Pulling away, he walked from the window, afraid to turn as the brittle silence bound them both. It was happening again just as it had yesterday, a mix of want and horror and shock.
* * *
Florentia knew he had felt something, too, when she had touched him, an echo perhaps of what had been or of what was to come.
She was playing with fire and violence and fear and fury. She could feel the vibrations in the air above the thick pretence of manners, barely concealed, naked, raw and ragged.
Winterton was all the colours of the rainbow. He was the darks and the lights and the quiet and the vivid. He was the rush of blood and the hush of shadow, the pure strength of a man whose history was drawn on his flesh with brutal and eternal strokes.
The paintbrush was in her hand before she knew it, running across the canvas free and wild. She drew him from radiance and energy, from the bleak and from the empty. She found lines she had never placed in any painting before, soul lines, memory lines.
She drew him in red and gold and shades of brown. Scarlet was there, too, and a dark raw green. She did not stop even as she felt him watching her, she, who was always so private with her art and so very discreet.
She poured her heart into the painting and felt the shadows there lighten, felt the shifting of blame and vengeance and the welcoming luminosity of forgiveness. It was cathartic and redeeming, a liberation and a pardon, a way of moving forward and onwards. The repeal of guilt. Finally.
* * *
And after another two hours she laid her brush down and collected her satchel, leaving the painting where she had balanced it on the ledge against the window, the refracted light of the sun streaming in across the colour, burnishing it with a beauty that broke her heart.
It was over. The portrait was his. With only the briefest of goodbyes she tipped her head and left.
* * *
The painting was nothing at all as he had imagined Rutherford might draw him. It was not his outward appearance he had caught but the inner significance, his glance turned towards the sky and watching something that was out of view, stillness pervading strength.
He’d drawn him as a soldier, a uniform of scarlet and black adorning him, the mark on his neck vivid and unhidden, a human vulnerability against the anonymous and harsh force of the military.
For a moment he simply stared. For a moment the war came back into him with a force that left him gasping, the battles, the pain, the loneliness. The lies.
On his finger there was an enormous ruby, a field of blood dripping from the intricate golden ring. Outside hanging from a branch sat a gilded cage with a sombre bird inside, its head lifted in agony. He felt that song in his heart, the melody pulling at all he tried to conceal. The hurt. The shame. The utter fury that he had lived with for so very, very long.
It was a masterpiece. Even he with only a limited understanding of art could tell that it was. It was the demons inside him translated into paint and howling to a world that would never understand.
Would Rutherford be back? Was it finished? He’d formed no plans to return tomorrow and had left no bill of purchase or payment.
He had not signed the painting either, not made it his.
‘God, please help me.’ The words fell into the emptiness of the room as he sat and tried to find a reason for everything that had happened.
* * *
Twenty minutes later he left the canvas exactly where it was and collected his hat and coat.
Outside he found the driver of his conveyance in a tither, the carriage still sitting in front of the town house.
‘You did not take Mr Rutherford home?’ He looked about to see if he could see the man, but he was nowhere in sight at all and he’d promised Warrenden he’d send Rutherford back to Grosvenor Square safely after each sitting.
‘The Heron carriage collected him, my lord. Mr Rutherford got into it on the arm of a young lady though he did not look too happy about it at all.’
‘Did you hear where they were bound?’
‘To the Heron town house, I think, sir.’
‘Take me there now.’
Inside the moving carriage James laid his head back against the cushion and closed his eyes. Wild conjectures ran in circles around his head, but he dismissed every one of them and resolved to see what the truth was when he asked Rutherford to explain. The youth did not look like someone who would be good at lying.
His own connection with Heron also swirled in his head unchecked. Why the hell had the carriage been outside his house in the first place and why would Frederick Rutherford get inside on a whim?
* * *
Florentia was dread-stricken to find herself inside the Heron conveyance.
She had tried her very best to escape, but Miss Julia was both stronger and taller than she was and short of making a scene that would attract more attention to herself she was forced to sit down on the seat opposite and make the best of things.
‘Thank you so much for agreeing to come, Mr Rutherford.’ The young woman smiled though the lady’s maid next to her did not look happy at all. ‘Papa has been trying to find you for days and days in order to persuade you to draw our portraits, but you are most elusive. He will be so very pleased with today’s visit.’
‘I am leaving London tomorrow. There will be no time for more commissions—’
The girl shook her head and broke across her words. ‘Papa is most persuasive and the m
oney he will offer will be substantial.’ There was now a note of desperation in her voice so Flora said nothing. ‘Besides, my sisters are not without charm.’ She tittered. ‘At least we have been told such by our many and most ardent admirers. Winterton must have also made a lovely subject, Mr Rutherford?’
When Flora failed to reply she went on heedless. ‘Did he tell you of the Abbey he is purchasing in Herefordshire?’
Florentia grated her teeth together and wondered how quickly she could gain her release on arrival. Her heart was beating fast and the thought crossed her mind as to whether she was to be subjected to enforced rides for ever because of the will of another.
‘He is the man all the ladies would like to marry, though of course there is talk of his dangerous past, but that just makes him more...appealing, do you not think?’ The note of gossip was most pronounced in Miss Heron’s speech.
‘Dangerous past?’ Flora meant not to say anything, but the temptation was too great.
‘He was a spy with General Moore in Europe. An occupation he continued on with in the Americas apparently. His father committed suicide last year. There is a fatal flaw in the Waverley heritage, for his grandfather perished from excessive drinking. Many are wondering exactly what his inherited weakness will be. Is that not...thrilling, Mr Rutherford, and romantic?’
‘Perhaps the ladies of the ton should be aiming for other lords who are less...damaged, Miss Heron?’
Laughter was the result of this advice. ‘You do not know women at all, Mr Rutherford, but then your youth is probably a defence on that score. Mr Ward has promised Papa that any work you do for him would climb in value very quickly so I suppose that is why Lord Winterton employed you in the first place. He has the golden touch, it is said, and with his wealth and looks what lady would seek another if such a one should be available to her?’
A short silence ensued after this. Miss Heron seemed momentarily uncertain as to whether she had said too much and the maid near her was craning her head in her haste to be finally at home, her talkative mistress and her unwise antics so obviously frowned upon.
Florentia wondered what would happen when they reached the Heron town house. She had seen the thin and tall Mr Heron at a number of soirées years ago and he hadn’t looked like a man at ease with himself. There was also the worry that the disguise she wore might not measure up to the blatant and telling stares of the fashionable Heron women.
Please do not let me feel breathless, she thought. Please God just let me get through this and then be able to go home. The painting of the portrait had exhausted her. It was always like that when she finished a work and was parted from it. Just another piece of herself left behind and lost. She wondered what Winterton had thought of it.
The carriage drew up to a town house a few moments later and a number of servants came forward. Within a short time they were inside a substantial and beautiful room, the other members of the family gathered around a table, the plates upon it all filled with varying meats, breads and fruit.
‘This is Mr Frederick Rutherford, Papa. I ran into him on the street near the Winterton town house and asked if he might come back here with me in order for you to speak with him.’
At this everyone began to talk and, raising his hand, Mr Heron quelled the excitement.
‘As you can see, Mr Rutherford, my daughters are most struck by the fact that you might fashion their likeness. I had had a conversation with your agent, but he was not very forthcoming and to find you here in our presence and so unexpectedly is indeed very heartening. Fate, I think, Ana...’ he smiled at his wife ‘...and Julia’s quick thinking.’ His daughter looked more than pleased with the compliment. ‘What is meant to be will always find a way. Is that your painting satchel, Mr Rutherford?’
‘Yes, sir.’
He clicked his fingers and a servant came from nowhere.
‘Please keep this piece of luggage safe at the front door, Sanders. Mr Rutherford will collect it when he goes.’
A drink was offered then and the chance to select something to eat from the overburdened table. With her mouth full of fear Flora asked for a cup of tea and was glad when it came to wet her dry lips.
* * *
The doorbell rang half an hour later and to the surprise and shock of everyone Lord Winterton himself stood beside the servant who had showed him in.
If Florentia’s presence had created a furore here the Viscount’s coming was a hundred times more astonishing and the young Herons rose as one from the table to greet him, eyelashes batting and hair and skirts smoothed down. Like a flock of birds preening.
‘We were not expecting you, my lord.’ Julia seemed the first recovered as she said this. ‘Though indeed it is a most pleasant surprise.’
‘I am here to escort Mr Rutherford back to Grosvenor Square, Mr Heron.’
All eyes turned back to Florentia and she blushed most horribly and stood, so relieved to be able to leave the company of people whom she could make no sense of.
‘Mr Rutherford is here to go over the terms and conditions of a portrait I have commissioned him to do, Lord Winterton.’
‘Such matters of business will have to be conducted at another time. The young lad has been in my employ and I have taken it on myself to make sure he arrives home on the hour he stated he would.’
His eyes came across hers for the first time since gaining the room, the shards of green cold and furious. He looked nothing at all like the man she had just drawn, every plane in his face raised into a sharp relief, the lines around his eyes far more noticeable in anger than they had ever been in repose. He looked menacing and intemperate and dark.
A chameleon? The words of the Miss Heron who had brought her here came to mind. A spy in both Europe and the Americas.
She rose, moving across beside him with gratitude. There was an undercurrent here she could not understand, a jeopardy that simmered just below the surface. She saw that Heron’s hands were fisted at his sides, a vein on his forehead pulsating blue amongst the redness of his visage.
They did not like each other, these men. Winterton for all his expertise at masking his emotion was clearly furious and for the first time ever in the company of anyone she wondered if he were armed. He felt different, dangerous. He felt like a stranger whom she had never met before, a man who might do away with the other without a second’s thought.
‘We will see ourselves out.’
When she nodded the Viscount turned, the last vestige of social amiability lost in his retreat.
Then she was following him, on his heels and close. After she took her satchel from the surprised butler, they went through the front door and when they had gained the road she took the first real breath she’d been able to in the last good while.
He glanced at her quickly but he did not speak, not until the door to his conveyance closed behind them and the horses were moving out into the heavy traffic.
‘If you wish to place yourself in the hands of a nest of vipers, Mr Rutherford, perhaps next time you will not do so on my watch.’ Every knuckle on his hand was stretched into whiteness.
‘I declined the commission right from the start, Lord Winterton, for I prefer to pick out my clients rather than allowing it to be the other way around.’
‘The worth of one of your paintings negates the importance of your agreement for Heron, I should imagine. The man has not gained his fortune by way of soft words. You would be advised to stay well away from him.’
‘And you are advising me?’
‘I am, Mr Rutherford. Most strongly.’
‘Why?’
‘I think Heron had something to do with the death of my father.’
* * *
What the hell had made him simply blurt that out? Rutherford’s surprise was about as great as his own for he seldom let another know the truth of his feelin
gs.
‘How?’
When he looked over he saw the lad stare at him across the top of his glasses as though he had forgotten to hide. The blue of quiet seas, he thought, and flushed anew. What the hell was happening to him that he should think this about a man? Moving apart to leave a wider space between them, he swore under his breath. He felt brittle and tired.
‘My father imported contraband to pay for an escalating gambling habit and my guess is that his rivals decided he was making too much money.’ There it was again, this strange trust he felt with Rutherford. Without it he would have stayed silent.
‘Miss Heron told me your father’s death was the result of suicide. She said you held many secrets and that was one of them.’
‘People can say anything that they want, but it does not make it true.’
Rutherford laughed. ‘I agree with you there entirely, Lord Winterton. The things that are said of me...’ He stopped then and turned away, but not before James had seen consternation on his face.
What was said of the artist? He had never heard of anything apart from stories of his brilliance and his reclusiveness. Hardly derogatory or inflammatory. Another question on top of everything. A further puzzlement.
Surprisingly the lad kept on talking.
‘I always thought that one should ignore what was said by the ton, the gossip and the unkindness. But now I am not so sure. Perhaps to rally and fight against lies is a better way of living.’
‘As opposed to what?’
‘Hiding. Disappearing. Forever being misplaced in life.’
‘As you have been?’
‘Yes.’
That word reverberated around the carriage, the truth of it and the loss.
‘Can I help you?’
James thought there were tears welling in the young man’s eyes at his offer, but then he turned away to look out of the window and he was no longer sure.
‘You already have, Lord Winterton.’
That cryptic comment made him frown. ‘The portrait, you mean?’
Rutherford shook his head, the dark hair catching the light. ‘By rescuing me from the Herons.’
