The Truth About Love (3 page)

“Nothing for it,” Barnaby declared. “I shall have to flee the capital.”

Gerrard grinned. “It can’t be that bad.”

“Yes it can. I tell you, Lady Oglethorpe isn’t looking to me just for escort duties. She has a gleam in her eye I mistrust, and if that wasn’t bad enough, the dreadful Melissa clasped her hands to her bosom—not a bad bosom, but the rest is hopeless—and fervently stated that yours truly was her ideal, and that no gentleman in the ton could hold a candle to my magnificence.” Barnaby grimaced horrendously. “Coming it a great deal too strong, as the pater would say—made me feel quite ill. And it’s
June
—don’t they know the hunting season’s over?”

Gerrard regarded his friend thoughtfully. Barnaby was the third son of an earl, and had inherited a substantial estate from a maternal aunt; like Gerrard, he was a prime target for matrons with daughters to establish. While Gerrard could and did use his painting as an excuse to avoid the worst of the invitations, Barnaby’s hobby of studying crime was a far less acceptable diversion.

“I suppose,” Barnaby mused, “I could go to m’sister’s, but I’m no longer sure she’s not dangerous, too.” His eyes narrowed. “If she invited the Oglethorpes to visit over summer…” He shuddered.

Gerrard leaned back and reached for his coffee cup. “If you’re set on escaping the dreadful Melissa, you could come with me to Cornwall.”

“Cornwall?” Barnaby blinked his blue eyes wide. “What’s in Cornwall?”

Gerrard told him.

Barnaby perked up.

“Mind you,” Gerrard warned, “there’ll be at least one unmarried young lady present, and where there’s one—”

“There’s usually a pack.” Barnaby nodded. “Nevertheless, I’ve handled all comers to now—it’s just Melissa, her mother, and the family connection that have so demoralized me.”

Said demoralization had clearly been transient; Barnaby fell to demolishing the last sausage, then he looked at Gerrard. “So, when do we leave?”

Gerrard met his eyes. Patience had been right, not that he’d ever tell her. “I’ll write to Tregonning’s agent today. I’ll need to get in extra supplies, and make sure all else is in order here…shall we say the end of next week?”

“Excellent!” Barnaby raised his cup in a toast, drained it, then reached for the coffeepot. “I’m sure I can lie low until then.”

T
welve days later, Gerrard tooled his curricle between a pair of worn stone gateposts bearing plaques proclaiming them the entrance to Hellebore Hall.

“It’s certainly a long way from London.” Relaxed on the seat beside him, Barnaby looked around, curious and mildly intrigued.

They’d set out from the capital four mornings before, and spelled Gerrard’s matched grays over the distance, stopping at inns that caught their fancy each lunchtime and each evening.

The driveway, a continuation of the lane they’d taken off the road to St. Just and St. Mawes, was lined with old, large-boled, thickly canopied trees. The fields on either side were screened by dense hedgerows. A sense of being enclosed in a living corridor, a shifting collage of browns and greens, was pervasive. Between the tops of the hedges and the overhanging branches, they caught tantalizing glimpses of the sea, sparkling silver under a cerulean sky. Ahead and to the right, the strip of sea was bounded by distant headlands, a medley of olive, purple and smoky gray in the early afternoon light.

Gerrard squinted against the glare. “By my reckoning, that stretch of water must be Carrick Roads. Falmouth ought to lie directly ahead.”

Barnaby looked. “It’s too far to make out the town, but there are certainly plenty of sails out there.”

The land dipped; the lane followed, curving slowly south and west. They lost sight of Carrick Roads as the spur leading to St. Mawes intervened on their right, then the tree sentinels that had lined the lane abruptly ended. The curricle rattled on, into the sunshine.

They both caught their breath.

Before them lay one of the irregular inlets where an ancient valley had been drowned by the sea. To their right lay the St. Mawes arm of the Roseland peninsula, solid protection from any cold north wind; to their left, the rougher heathland of the southern arm rose, cutting off any buffets from the south. The horses trotted on and the view shifted, a new vista opening as they descended yet further.

The lane led them down through sloping fields, then steeply pitched and gabled roofs appeared ahead, between them and the blue-green waters of the inlet. Swinging in a wide, descending arc, the lane went past the house that majestically rose into view, then curved back to end in a wide sweep of gravel before the front door.

Rounding the final curve, Gerrard slowed his horses; neither he nor Barnaby uttered a word as they descended the last stretch. The house was…eccentric, fabulous—
wonderful
. There were turrets too numerous to count, multiple balconies laced with wrought iron, odd-shaped buttresses aplenty, windows of all descriptions, and segments of rooms forming fanciful angles in the gray stone walls.

“You didn’t say anything about the house,” Barnaby said as the horses neared the forecourt and they were forced to stop staring.

“I didn’t
know
about the house,” Gerrard replied. “I’d only heard about the gardens.”

Arms of those gardens, the famous gardens of Hellebore Hall, reached out of the valley above which the house sat and embraced the fantastical creation, but the major part of the gardens lay hidden behind. Poised sentrylike at the upper end of the valley that ran down to the inlet’s rocky shore, the house blocked all view of the valley itself and the gardens it contained.

Gerrard let out the breath he hadn’t been aware he’d been holding. “No wonder no one ever succeeded in slipping in to paint undetected.”

Barnaby shot him an amused look, straightening as Gerrard tightened the reins, and they entered the shaded forecourt of Hellebore Hall.

S
eated in the drawing room of Hellebore Hall, Jacqueline Tregonning caught the sound she’d been waiting for—the clop of hooves, the soft scrunch of gravel under a carriage’s wheels.

None of the others scattered about the large room heard; they were too busy speculating on aspects of the nature of the visitors who’d just arrived.

Jacqueline preferred not to speculate, not when she could view with her own eyes, and make up her own mind.

Smoothly, quietly, she rose from the armchair beside the chaise on which sat her closest friend, Eleanor Fritham, and Eleanor’s mother, Lady Fritham of neighboring Tresdale Manor. Both were engaged in a spirited discussion with Mrs. Elcott, the vicar’s wife, over the descriptions of the two gentlemen shortly expected that Mrs. Elcott’s and Lady Fritham’s correspondents in the capital had provided.

“Bound to be arrogant, the pair of them, my cousin said.” Mrs. Elcott grimaced disparagingly. “I daresay they’ll think themselves a cut above us.”

“I don’t see why they should,” Eleanor returned. “Lady Humphries wrote that while both were from excellent families, very much the haut ton, they were perfectly personable and amenable to being entertained.” Eleanor appealed to her mother. “Why would they turn their noses up at us? Aside from all else, we’re all the society there is around here—they’ll lead very quiet lives if they cut us.”

“True,” Lady Fritham agreed. “But if they’re half as well bred as her ladyship makes out, they won’t be high in the instep. Mark my words”—Lady Fritham nodded portentously, setting her multiple chins and the ribbons in her cap bobbing—“the mark of a true gentleman shows in the ease with which he comports himself in any company.”

Unobtrusively slipping away, gliding silently up the long room to the window that gave the best view of the front portico, Jacqueline cynically noted the others present; aside from her father’s sister, Millicent, who after her mother’s death had come to live with them, none had any real reason to be there.

Not unless one deemed rampant curiosity sufficient reason.

Jordan Fritham, Eleanor’s brother, stood chatting with Mrs. Myles and her daughters, Clara and Rosa, both as yet unwed. Millicent stood with them, Mitchel Cunningham by her side. The group was engrossed in discussing portraiture, and the singular success of Mitchel and her father in persuading society’s foremost artistic lion to grace Hellebore Hall and favor her with his talents.

Calmly, Jacqueline approached the window. Regardless of her father’s, Mitchel’s, or the artistic lion’s belief,
she
would be the one bestowing the favor. She hadn’t yet decided whether she would sit for him, and wouldn’t, not until she’d evaluated the man, his talents, and, most importantly, his integrity.

She knew why her father had been so insistent this man, and only he, could paint the portrait her father required. Millicent had been nothing short of brilliant in planting the right seeds in her father’s mind, and nurturing them to fruition. As the one most intimately involved on all counts, Jacqueline was aware that the man himself would be pivotal; without him, his talents, and his vaunted integrity regarding his work, their plans would come to naught.

And there was no other way to turn.

Halting two paces from the window, she looked out at the occupants of the curricle that had just rocked to a stop before the portico; in the circumstances she felt no compunction in spying on Gerrard Debbington.

First, she had to identify which of the two men he was. The one who wasn’t driving? That tawny-haired gentleman stepped lithely down, then paused to throw a laughing comment to the other man, who remained on the box seat, the reins held loosely in his long-fingered hands.

The grays between the curricle’s shafts were prime horseflesh, and had been well spelled; Jacqueline registered that in the briefest of glances. The man holding the reins was dark-haired, with strong, chiseled features; the tawny-haired one was prettier, the darker the more handsome.

In the second it took her to blink, she realized how odd it was for her to notice; male beauty rarely impinged on her mind. Then she looked again at the pair in the forecourt, and inwardly admitted that their physical attributes were hard to ignore.

The man on the box seat moved; a groom appeared and he descended from the carriage, handing over the reins.

And she had her answer;
he
was the painter. He was Gerrard Debbington.

A dozen little things confirmed it, from the strength apparent in those very long fingers as he surrendered the ribbons, to the austere perfection of his clothes, and the reined intensity that hung about him, every bit as real as his fashionable coat.

That intensity came as a shock. She’d steeled herself to deal with some fashionable fribble or vain popinjay, but this man was something quite different.

She watched as he answered his friend with a quiet word; the line of his thin lips didn’t so much curve as ease—the veriest hint of a smile. Controlled power, intensity harnessed, ruthless determination—those were the impressions that sprang to her mind as he turned.

And looked straight at her.

Her breath caught, suspended, but she didn’t move; she was standing too far from the pane for him to see her. Then she heard skirts rustling, footsteps pattering at the far end of the room; glancing sideways, she saw Eleanor, both Myles girls, and their mothers crowding around the far window that was angled to the forecourt. Jordan peered over their heads.

Unlike her, they’d crowded close to the glass.

Looking back at Gerrard Debbington, she saw him studying them, and inwardly smiled. If he sensed someone watching him, he’d think it was them.

Gerrard regarded the cluster of faces blatantly staring from the wide windows facing the forecourt. Raising a supercilious brow, he turned away; avoiding the gaze of the single woman standing back from the window closest to the portico, he looked at Barnaby. “It seems we’re expected.”

Barnaby could see the goggling crowd, too, but the angle of the nearer window hid the lone woman from him. He gestured to the door. “Shall we make our entrance?”

Gerrard nodded. “Ring the bell.”

Strolling to an iron handle dangling by the door, Barnaby gave it a tug.

Turning his head, Gerrard looked once more at the woman. Her stillness confirmed she thought he couldn’t see her. Light spilled into the room from windows behind her, diagonally across from where she stood; courtesy of that she was, indeed, primarily a silhouette, barely illuminated. She was intelligent enough, then, to have realized that.

But she’d forgotten, or hadn’t known of, the effect of painted woodwork. Gerrard would take an oath the frame surrounding the window was at least eight inches wide, and painted white. It threw back enough light, diffused and soft, true, but light nevertheless, to let him see her face.

Just her face.

He’d already glimpsed three youthful female faces, every bit as uninspiring as he’d expected, in the other group. Doubtless his subject was one of them; God knew how he’d manage.

This lady, however…he could paint her. He knew it in an instant; just a glance, that’s all it took. Even though her features weren’t that clear to him, there was a quality—one of stillness, of depth, of a complexity behind the pale oval of her face—that commanded his attention.