His at Night (31 page)

“At least he’s happily married now. His wife seems to find him nothing short of miraculous.”

“That does make me happy. I like the way she looks at him: There is so much that’s good and admirable in Penny.”

Angelica slid her finger along the edge of her leather-bound diary. “But?” she prompted him.

He smiled. She knew him too well. “I’ll admit I am a little envious. I used to think that if I ended up an old bachelor, at least I’d have Penny for company.”

“You can always have my company,” she said. “It would be like being children all over again, except with fewer teeth.”

He suddenly recalled an instance of fewer teeth. “Do you remember the time I accidentally broke my father’s favorite pair of spectacles?”

“Was that the time when I stole my mother’s specs to replace them and we were hoping he wouldn’t find out?”

“Yes, that was it. My mother and Penny were both away somewhere and I was scared out of my wits. And you suggested that we pull your loose teeth to keep my mind off the specs.”

“Really?” She chuckled. “I don’t remember that part at all.”

“Your new teeth had come out already. And your old teeth were so loose they were flapping about like a line of washing in the wind. Everyone was after you to get rid of the old teeth, but you were adamant that no one come near them.”

“My goodness. Now I remember a little. I used to sleep with a scarf over my mouth, so that my governess couldn’t have at them.”

“I was so surprised that you’d let
me
, I forgot all about the specs. We pulled out four of your teeth that afternoon.”

She bent over laughing.

“Listen, it gets better: My father dropped your mother’s specs and stepped on them before he could put them on and realize they were the wrong ones. It had to be one of the few times when my clumsiness didn’t get
someone
into trouble. The relief, my God.”

“Well, one thing is certain: I will not let you pull out any of my teeth when I’m a crone.”

He raised his coffee cup to her in salute. “Understood. All the same, I’d be thrilled to have your company when I’m a dotard.”

She returned his salute, her eyes sparkling, and he suddenly realized, for the very first time, how privileged he was to have known her his entire life. Sometimes one took the best things in one’s life for granted. He never fully understood how much he had wholeheartedly depended on Penny before Penny’s accident changed everything. And he’d never considered the central role Angelica’s friendship had played in his life, especially in those difficult, vulnerable years under his father—until now, when he was full of feelings that threatened to imperil that very friendship.

“Now, where were we?” She set down her coffee cup and found her place in the diary. “Here we go. ‘The old dear, evidently delighted with the discussion, invited all of us to the vicarage for tea.’”

“We were at Lyndhurst Hall, weren’t we?” he asked, beginning to have some recollection himself. “For the duchess’s Easter house party?”

“Precisely. Now listen to this: ‘The tea was very nice, as was Mrs. Vicar, but what caught my attention was the painting in the parlor of the vicarage. A beautiful angel, taking up most of the canvas, hovered above a man who was clearly in a state of worshipful ecstasy. The name of the painting was
The Adoration of the Angel.
I asked Mrs. Vicar the name of the artist—he had signed only his initials, G. C. Mrs. Vicar did not know, but she said that they had
bought the painting from the London art dealer Cipriani.’”

“Cipriani? The one who never forgets anything that passes through his hands?”

“That’s the one,” she said, closing her diary with much satisfaction. “He’s retired now. But I wrote to him this morning. Who knows? He might welcome us to call on him.”

“You are a marvel,” he said, meaning every word.

“Of course I am,” said Angelica, her black skirts rustling as she rose. “So you see, I’ve been upholding my end of the bargain. Now it’s your turn.”

His hands perspired. He dreaded seeing her naked again, even as he couldn’t wait to walk into the studio and have her beautiful form spread like a feast before him—a feast for a man who must fast.

He had been working on the painting, his head overrun with carnal thoughts even as he analyzed color, texture, and composition. His dreams, full of erotic interludes ever since she’d broached the subject of the portrait, had by now taken on a disturbing vividness.

He cleared his throat rather ineffectually—and cleared his throat again. “I suppose you want to go up to the studio then?”

Freddie had set the studio ablaze with light—too much light, in Angelica’s opinion. Her skin would gleam unbearably bright under such lighting, and she always preferred the flesh tones in her paintings to look more natural.

There was a camera—not Freddie’s No. 4 Kodak, which she had seen before, but a much more elaborate studio camera on a wooden tripod, with bellows for focusing and a black cloth draped behind. There was also a flashlamp, a screen of cheesecloth, and several white screens set at various angles.

“What is the camera for?” she asked, once he’d reentered the studio, after she’d disrobed and lain down.

“It must be a chore for you to pose for so long—and I’m not a fast painter. But once I have the photographs, I can work from them and you won’t need to shiver in the cold.”

“It’s not cold.” A fire had been laid in the grate and he’d supplied several braziers. He must be warm.

“Still.”

“But photographs do not convey color!”

“Perhaps not, but they do convey shading and contrast, and I already know the exact hue of your skin,” he said, disappearing behind the black cloth.

Disappointment gripped her. The nude portrait was her gambit for him to see her as a woman, and not just a friend. And she’d thought it more or less successful—he had looked at her strangely in the darkroom, as if he were on the verge of kissing her. But once he had the photographs, not only would he not need her naked, he wouldn’t even need her in the studio anymore.

“What if the photographs are underexposed or overexposed?”

“Pardon?” The sound of his voice was muffled by the black cloth.

“What if the photographs don’t come out well?”

He reemerged from behind the camera. “I’ve half a dozen plates. One of them is bound to turn out well.”

He pulled the trigger on the flashlamp. It took a moment for the cartridge of magnesium powder to ignite, and for the controlled explosion to produce a burst of brilliant white light. He ducked again under the black cloth.

This time, when he came out, he raised the height of the flashlamp, moved the cheesecloth screen forward by a foot, and adjusted the angle of a white silk screen on the far side of the bed.

The screen was only two feet from the edge of the bed. As he lifted his head, he looked directly down at her, from what seemed a great height.

She licked her lips in nervousness. His hand tightened on the screen. And then he was walking away, back to the camera.

“I’m going to draw the slide,” he said. “Make sure you are in the pose you want.”

Her heart hammered, agitated by both his nearness and his refusal to succumb to her seduction. Her lips parted, her breaths shallow, she turned her head until she looked directly into the lens of his camera.

It was late in the afternoon before Elissande noticed the oddity of Aunt Rachel’s reaction.

In the morning she had been too joyful, too overwhelmed herself to mark Aunt Rachel’s speechlessness as anything other than blissful stupefaction. She had jumped up and down like a monkey—though her landings had sounded more like those of a rhinoceros—and wept until she was a few pounds lighter.

She had thought nothing of her aunt’s request for a bit of laudanum. Aunt Rachel was frail. The day’s news was shocking. Of course she needed time and rest before she could properly cope with it.

When Aunt Rachel had fallen asleep, Elissande had sat next to her bed for some time, holding her hand, smoothing her hair, full of gratitude that Aunt Rachel had lived to see this day, and that she still had years ahead of her to be enjoyed, free of fear and shadows.

Then she’d gone to look for her husband, for no reason other than that she wanted to see him—he was the closest thing she had to an ally. And on this wonderful, triumphant day, who better to celebrate with than him?

But he had gone out already. So she contented herself with having his coachman drive her around town, and took pleasure in London for the first time since her arrival. She watched young people on bicycles in the park, walked every floor of Harrods, and then spent so long in Hatchards that her gloves were completely soiled with book dust.

She also visited Needham again and asked to be recommended a physician who was an expert on opiate addiction. As it turned out, Needham
considered himself sufficiently versed in the matter to help her.

“He says it need not involve any suffering at all,” she told Aunt Rachel when she reached home. “Each day you will take the same amount of a special tonic. But the amount of laudanum in each subsequent bottle of tonic will gradually be reduced. Your body will easily adjust to the new dosage until you no longer need any laudanum at all.

“And to think, all the torment my uncle put you through, when he could have—” She waved a hand in the air. “Never mind him. We need not think of him ever again.”

Aunt Rachel didn’t say anything. She shivered, as if she were cold. Elissande immediately draped another blanket on her, but Aunt Rachel only shivered again.

Elissande sat down at the edge of the bed. “What’s the matter, my love?”

“I…I feel terrible for the man he murdered, Mr. Delaney. I wonder how many others there are in all.”

“My goodness!” Elissande exclaimed. “Isn’t one murder horrific enough?”

Aunt Rachel plucked at the top of her blanket. For no discernible reason, Elissande’s hitherto bottomless ebullience suddenly reached a bottom.

“Is there something I should know?” she asked, hoping there wasn’t.

“No, of course not,” said Aunt Rachel. “You were telling me about the doctor, weren’t you, the one who is going to treat me? Do go on.”

Elissande looked at her aunt another moment, then smiled brightly. “Well, he’s coming to see you tomorrow, and he seems a very kindly man.”

Whatever it was Aunt Rachel was not telling her, Elissande did not want to know.

O
ne of the first things Vere did when he came of age was to break entail on the marquessate’s country seat. He had caused a minor scandal when he’d put the manor up for sale. But the world was changing. A grand house in the country, with land more and more ineffectual as a generator of wealth, had become an albatross around the necks of too many.

It was not the life he wanted, his destiny and choices chained to a pile of stones, however glorious and historical. Nor was it the life he wanted for Freddie and Freddie’s heirs, since there was a good chance Vere would remain unwed and the title someday pass to Freddie.

But he did have a house in the country. Most of his long walks had been along the coast of the Bristol Channel. In the spring of ’ninety-four, however, he had hiked for two weeks around Lyme Bay. On the last day of his excursion, coming back from an inland jaunt to visit the ruins of the Berry Pomeroy Castle, he
had stumbled upon the modest house and its immodestly gorgeous rose garden.