That Summer: A Novel (41 page)

Imogen returned to the studio, where the landlady was jangling her keys.

“Do you know when he left?” Imogen asked. Her hands felt very cold inside her leather gloves.

The landlady shrugged. “Last time I saw him was four—no, five days past.”

Imogen felt as though there were a fist slowly squeezing inside her chest, pressing tighter and tighter. Five days ago, Gavin had packed his things, just as they’d planned, and come to meet her. Come to meet her and never arrived.

“And if I’d known the trick he meant to play me then—” The landlady broke off. “But, no. There was someone moving around up here two nights ago. So he can’t ’ave left till then.”

“Two nights ago?” Imogen looked at her in surprise. “Are you quite sure?”

“Clomping around proper, he was,” said the landlady, with righteous indignation. “Makes it hard for a body to sleep.”

Imogen pressed a hand against the wall to steady herself, her mind reeling. “Are you sure it was Gav—Mr. Thorne in the studio?”

“’Oo else would it be?” the woman said. “’Ooever it was ’ad the key.”

TWENTY-FIVE

Herne Hill, 1850

Imogen felt the baby stirring inside her as she left the studio.

She paused on the steps, her hands against her stomach. Before, she had thought she felt a fluttering, but this was something firmer. She could feel the child pushing against her, struggling for space.

“You’re not coming over ill, are you?” said the landlady suspiciously.

“No,” said Imogen hastily, and continued her descent, holding carefully to the rail, feeling the child in her womb move restlessly, as if it could feel her distress. No, she wasn’t ill. She was terrified, not for herself or for her child, but for Gavin.

If he had left, as he said he would, on the Saturday night, where was he? Nothing short of foul play would have stopped him coming to her; she was sure of that.

Someone moving around in the studio, the landlady had said. Someone with a key.

A memory of Augustus Fotheringay-Vaughn as she had last seen him in the orchard flickered before Imogen’s eyes, his elegant manners abandoned, his lips drawn back with anger. There had been something feral about him, something brutal.

Despite the warmth of her pelisse, Imogen found herself shivering, shivering with a cold that came from within.

Augustus Fotheringay-Vaughn had a key to the studio. There would be no benefit to his hurting Gavin, not now that Evie was safely married to Ned Sturgis, but Imogen wasn’t sure that mattered. Kingdoms had toppled and wars had been fought, all in the name of revenge. She had shamed Fotheringay-Vaughn in front of Evie, had ruined his plans. The means with which she had done so had come straight from Gavin.

Yes. Imogen imagined Fotheringay-Vaughn would be willing to kill to protect the fantasy he had built around himself. There mustn’t be that many people in London who knew about his true past. And now that Gavin was gone …

The word hit her like a blow. “Gone.” She hadn’t let herself believe it until now. He had only been delayed. Misplaced. She had harbored romantic visions of finding him in his studio, wracked with fever, of bathing his burning brow and kissing his sweat-damp hand.

Cleared out,
the landlady had said.
Run off.

Somehow, Imogen got herself into a hack and gave the driver directions, fighting with herself, trying to come up with other theories, other solutions: Gavin had fallen ill on his way to her; he was in hospital somewhere, too weak to remember his own name. Or he had found it expedient to remove to an inn before making another attempt at departure; there was a note that had gone astray, a communication to her that would arrive tattered and belated.

Perhaps he had seen Arthur’s light in her room and decided to wait for another night. That would explain the sound of someone moving around in the studio. He might have gone back and stayed the night. He might …

As the carriage rocked on the uneven ground, Imogen’s optimism faltered. It had been four days. One day she could imagine, or two, but by now Gavin would have made sure to bring her word. Somehow.

The image of the empty easel in the center of the studio haunted her. Gavin had said nothing about bringing it with him. But it would make a piece of Fotheringay-Vaughn’s revenge, if that was his object. Dispose of Gavin and ruin her. He would sow their fields with salt and triumph over their destruction.

Wild plans fomented in Imogen’s brain. She would call on Fotheringay-Vaughn, confront him—but to what end? She remembered that smooth, sneering face. He would deny it all and silently laugh at her behind it.

She had no recourse.

Imogen paid the driver, slowly mounting the steps to the front door of the house she had hoped never to see again, the house that felt less like a home and more like a gaol. The weather was much as it had been when she had arrived as a bride all those years before, gray and dripping. She felt that she would never see the sun again.

But this was absurd! Imogen rallied herself, fighting against the dragging sense of despair that threatened to envelop her. She owed it to their child, if nothing else. Gavin’s friends, his fellow artists, one of them might know something, might have heard something. She could quiz them discreetly, pretend she was interested in a change in her portrait.

Anna opened the door to her, breathless from running up the stairs. Imogen handed her pelisse, gloves, and bonnet to Anna, scraping her feet on the drugget that had been placed over the floor to protect it from winter mud.

Arthur’s face appeared in the hall. “Ah, there you are! If I might have a word with you in my book room?”

“Yes, certainly.” Imogen maintained her composure, hoping any redness about her eyes would be ascribed solely to the wind. Her skirts dragged heavily around her legs as she followed Arthur down the hall.

“You wished to speak to me?” she said as the study door closed behind her. Her face felt like a mask. She wanted nothing more than to seek the privacy of her own room, to think and pace and plan. Under her petticoat, the baby kicked and kicked again.

Unexpectedly, Arthur took both of her hands in his. She was too surprised to draw them away. “Isn’t it time that these jaunts to London ended?” he said gently. Imogen looked at him dumbly. “Jane has told me about your”—he gave a little cough—“interesting condition.”

Imogen’s mind was whirling. “Jane takes a great deal on herself,” she said tartly.

Arthur led her to a puffed and tufted settee, seating her with the care he would have employed on an elderly duchess. “She means well.” He flipped back his coattails and seated himself beside her. “And she did well to tell me.”

Through the fire screen Imogen could feel the warmth of the fire scorching her face. She turned in her seat, trying to find the right words. “Arthur, I—”

“Hush.” Arthur raised a hand to stop her words. “No more. It was, I confess, lowering to hear such joyous news from Jane’s mouth instead of yours, but the result is the same no matter the messenger. When are we to expect the happy event?”

“May, I think,” said Imogen automatically. “Or June. But, Arthur—”

“I should quite like another little girl,” said Arthur musingly. “Not that one could ever replace Evie, but it would be very nice to hear childish laughter in the house again, don’t you agree, my love?”

Imogen looked at him full in the face, at the fine lines around his blue eyes, at the sagging jowls beneath his carefully cultivated whiskers, at the face she know so well and had never really known at all. A collector, a patron of the arts, a doting father, a distant husband. She had lived with him for a decade, and in this moment she wondered if she knew even less of him now than she had when she was sixteen. He was a cipher to her.

Surely Arthur must realize that this child, this happy event, was no part of him. If he did, this was a generosity beyond her comprehension of him.

Generosity? Or self-preservation? a nasty, suspicious part of her mind whispered. Better to claim the child than acknowledge himself a cuckold, with a wanton wife.

Imogen found herself missing Gavin with a sudden soul-deep sense of loss. She wanted him with her so very badly, his arms around her, his cheek against her hair, not this awkward interview with Arthur in a study that was stuffy from the heat of the fire and the water dripping around an ill-fitted window.

This was all wrong.

But she was here and it must be got through. Imogen knotted her hands together. “Arthur,” she said steadily, “there is something we must address.”

The expression with which he regarded her was kind and—was it her imagination?—just a little bit pitying.

“Must we?” He covered her hand with his, such a very different hand from Gavin’s, the fingers soft and well manicured, the veins on the back beginning to knot with age. “My dear. If this is about that other business, let us hear no more of that.”

Imogen looked up at him in surprise.

Arthur smiled at her gently. “After all, that is all done with now, is it not?” Bracing his hands against his knees, he rose from the settee, looking down at her, still smiling that same smile, a smile that made the skin on the back of Imogen’s neck prickle. “There is nothing to stop us from being as we were.”

Imogen sat frozen, caught by a horrible surmise. It was unthinkable. And yet—

Arthur made a clucking noise deep in his throat. “You look chilled to the bone.” He moved towards the door. “You stay right where you are. I shall have Anna bring you some hot tea. And biscuits. I imagine you would like a biscuit.”

Imogen couldn’t answer. Her tongue felt gummed to the back of her mouth. Arthur shook his head over her, the image of husbandly solicitude.

Arthur paused, his hand on the knob of the door. “After all,” he said, smiling at her beatifically. “We must take better care of you now, mustn’t we?”

London, 2009

The bells jangled as Julia pushed open the door to Nick’s shop.

Her opening gambit, carefully refined and rehearsed, again and again, on the Tube ride over, died on her lips as she saw that there was someone else occupying the desk at the back of the room, a woman with hair in a pencil bun and painfully trendy glasses.

She hadn’t considered what she might do if Nick wasn’t here.

She could always pretend to be just another browser, she supposed, make a perfunctory round of the collection, smile stiltedly at the woman at the desk, and back out into the street again. Or she could put her big-girl panties on and leave a message at the desk.

The woman at the desk was already occupied. There was a customer with her, a middle-aged woman whose carefully groomed hair and matched accessories screamed interior decorator. At least, that was, if Helen and Julia’s father’s interior decorator was anything to go by.

Julia sidled a little closer, pretending interest in an eighteenth-century escritoire, waiting to see if the other woman would leave.

She was preparing to make her move when the door to the office in the back opened and Nick came out.

“Mrs. Mottram, I have the—” He caught sight of Julia and his face hardened. He only missed a beat before turning smoothly back to the customer. “I have the clock you wanted to see. It’s in the back. Tamsin?”

The woman at the desk looked up.

Nick didn’t look at Julia. “Would you show Mrs. Mottram the Thomas Tompion clock?”

“Certainly.” For a moment, she looked like she might question him, but something in Nick’s expression must have quelled discussion, because, instead, she smiled at the customer and said, “Just this way, Mrs. Mottram. We’ve kept it hidden away so you can have the first look.”

The door to the office opened and closed again and Julia was alone in the shop with Nick. Bach played faintly in the background, something complex and fiddly.

Julia cleared her throat. “Hi,” she said originally.

Nick’s face might have been carved out of the same stone as the marble bust on the pedestal next to him. “Can I help you?” he said, as though he had never seen her before.

“Um, yes.” Julia did her best to make a joke out of it, although she had never felt less like laughing. But that was what she did, deflected emotion with smart comments and wisecracks. It might not precisely have worked for her in the past, but it was all she knew. “Do you have anything with which I might flagellate myself? Something nice and scourge-like?”

Nick folded his arms uncompromisingly across his chest. “We don’t carry anything of that sort, but there’s a shop a few streets down that should be able to oblige.”

Julia tried to smile, but it came out unevenly. “Would that even the score?”

Nick wasn’t playing. In a low, flat tone he said, “What do you want, Julia?”

You.

The word popped into her head unbidden, and she realized it was true. She wanted him to smile at her the way he had before; she wanted his easy banter, his camaraderie, that excitement that lit his eyes when he had looked up at her over his books in the V&A.

Before she had killed it dead and made his eyes go hard and flat, as they were now.

Julia took a deep breath, her fingers locked in a death grip on the strap of her bag. “I came to apologize.” She searched his face for some reaction, but his expression remained stony. “I had no right to speak to you as I did the other day. I—jumped to the wrong sort of conclusions.”

“You wouldn’t be the first.” His face revealed nothing. He simply stood there. Cold. Impassive.

It would be easier if he were blazingly angry; then, at least, she could fight with him. She forced herself to go on, saying, all in a rush, “It’s not your problem; it’s mine. If it hadn’t been Natalie and the Dietrich Bank thing, it would have been something else.” She was floundering, losing ground. As simply and directly as she could, she said, “I lashed out because I hated that you’d seen me at my weakest. And that wasn’t fair. Not when you’d been nothing but kind.”

That wasn’t the whole of it, but at least it was a start.

“You needn’t start the application for my canonization,” Nick said briefly. In the muted light of the shop his eyes were more green than blue. She’d been wrong, Julia realized. His studied calm was just a façade. Underneath he was angry, angrier than she’d imagined. “My actions weren’t altogether altruistic.”