The Stepsister's Triumph (15 page)

My Dear Lord Benedict,

I have, against considerable odds, managed to find a buyer for your rendering of Lake Geneva. There is only one caveat. She wants to meet you at my gallery to discuss the possibility of a commission. Something involving a house, I believe.

I have made no promise beyond you being at the gallery, at five o'clock sharp. Tomorrow. I feel that after my efforts on your behalf at the Academy exhibition, you will not disappoint.

Yrs.

Raphael Haggerty

“And here he is at last, Mrs. Darington!” Raphael led Benedict into the comfortable sitting room at the rear of his gallery that served as his office. “I told you Lord Benedict would not fail us.”

The woman who stood to greet him when Benedict entered Raphael's office was tall and dark and statuesque. She had dressed with a modesty that could almost have been described as aggressive; a plain gray dress trimmed with satin ribbons and matching gloves. There was not a speck of color on her anywhere. Benedict found himself wondering if she could be a Quaker. But Quakers were not known for their attachment to art and artists, especially modern ones.

Benedict bowed, and Mrs. Darington curtsied. She also peeked at him from under her lowered lids. Benedict felt a shiver of recognition in that look, and a warning. This woman was not a Quaker. Neither was she entirely genuine.

What is going on here?

Whatever it was, Haggerty did not seem aware of it. As soon as the formal greetings had been exchanged, he waved Benedict to the room's empty chair. “Please do sit down, my lord,” Haggerty said as he busied himself with pouring out some small glasses of sherry wine, which he handed to each of them. “Now, as it is a trifle late, perhaps we shall get straight to business. Lord Benedict, Mrs. Darington is interested in a painting of her country house. A simple landscape, no live figures, is that not what you said, Mrs. Darington?”

Mrs. Darington sipped her sherry without answering.

Perhaps she was bashful. Benedict put on an encouraging smile, which was as much for Haggerty as for Mrs. Darington. “What sort of house is it, Mrs. Darington?”

Mrs. Darington set her sherry down and blinked several times.

Here it comes
, thought Benedict, although he was not entirely sure why.

“Lord Benedict, Mister Haggerty,” Mrs. Darington said softly. “I owe you both an apology.”

Benedict's gaze slid sideways. Haggerty pulled a handkerchief out, either to blot at his upper lip or to hide the fact that he was cursing silently. Possibly both.

“I did not come here to purchase a painting,” she went on. “Please forgive me, but I needed to speak with you, Lord Benedict, and there wasn't any other way, not without becoming indelicate.”

“And what, Madame, was so urgent that you could not communicate in, for example, a letter?” Benedict set his own glass down. He also shook his head slightly at Haggerty. Whatever this was, it was clearly not the broker's fault.

“Letters fall into the wrong hands,” she said. “And I did not wish my friend to be compromised, any further.”

Benedict frowned. “What friend?”

“Madelene Valmeyer.”

The world seemed to come to an immediate halt. Except for Raphael, who shot to his feet. “You will excuse me?” he said, and without any excuse or explanation, he left the office, closing the door sharply behind himself.

Benedict barely noticed. All his attention was focused on Mrs. Darington. “I don't understand,” he said, in a careful tone that would indicate to any listener that he did not care for this subject. “Why would you speak with me about Miss Valmeyer?”

“Her mother was one of my dearest friends,” she said. “One of her last requests was that I be a friend to her poor, orphaned daughter and do my best to watch over her.”

Benedict let his gaze rake the woman from head to foot. Her dress was very new, he noticed, and her earlobes, which were revealed by her severe hairstyle, had been pierced, but she had not chosen to wear jewels in them. His eyes flicked toward the row of pegs by the office door. A veiled bonnet hung next to the slate blue evening cloak.

The thought hit him that Mrs. Darington was in disguise, or in costume.

“I'm afraid I don't know Miss Valmeyer's friends.” Which wasn't strictly true, but Benedict did not feel the need to qualify this statement.

“Largely I expect because she seldom talks about herself. But her mother and I were so close when we were girls, and I've watched her grow up into such a sweet and lovely creature . . . now to see her with those harridans, and so very changed . . .”

“I don't understand you,” he snapped. “Miss Valmeyer is a client of mine, it is true . . .”

“Please, Lord Benedict, may I speak freely?”

He nodded. “I think you'd better.”

Mrs. Darington did not begin immediately. She wrung her hands several times and took a series of deep breaths, emphasizing, incidentally, that the bodice of her plain gray dress was too tight for her generous form.

“Madelene has always been terribly shy and terribly lonely, so when any offer of friendship comes along, she seizes on it instantly. And since she goes out so little, she's still extremely naive, and she trusts far more than she ought.” Mrs. Darington paused. “And I'm very much afraid that Miss Sewell and Lady Helene are leading her down quite the wrong path.”

“How do you mean?”

“They . . . they've made a pet of her. They're dressing her up and teaching her to dance and drink champagne. They're treating it quite as a game and laughing at her behind her back. They've even been heard picking out a man for her first . . . her first seduction.”

Benedict felt the blood drain from his heart.

“I've tried to warn her. But she's so dazzled by these new friends of hers that she will not listen to me. I know that you and she . . . that she cherishes some feeling for you, and I thought, perhaps, you might be able to convince her to be careful where I could not.”

Benedict stood. He turned toward the hearth and pressed both hands against the mantelpiece. He had to calm himself. He had to think clearly. Something was wrong here. Something was wrong with this woman. He did not, he could not, believe she'd really been a friend of Madelene's mother.

And yet, if she wasn't a friend of Madelene's, how did she know about the intimate connection between Madelene and Benedict? They'd been as careful as it was possible to be.

“I'm so sorry if I've offended, Lord Benedict . . .” Mrs. Darington said. Benedict waved this away. “Perhaps you would prefer that I go?”

Yes, I would.

Mrs. Darington correctly interpreted his silence as affirmation, collected her coat and bonnet, and made her exit. Benedict did not look up from the fire.

It was impossible. Whatever the truth of Mrs. Darington's connection with Madelene, Madelene was not being . . . corrupted by her friends. That was patently false. Benedict knew Lady Adele, at least slightly. She would never consider spoiling another's character as a mild amusement. Lady Adele's sister, Lady Patience, might stoop that low, but not Adele. And yes, Madelene had said something about how Lady Helene was helping her get over her bashfulness, and yes, she'd been dressing differently these past few weeks, but it was not possible in this world or any other that Miss Sewell would deliberately lead a young girl into dissipation. It was not in her nature.

That meant only one thing. Benedict lifted his head. This story of Mrs. Darington's was an attack on Madelene, and on him. Someone among the glittering crowd wanted to do Madelene's reputation an injury. Benedict might have isolated himself from society, but he remembered how it functioned. He all but had the scars to prove it.

He needed to find Madelene and warn her. Now. At once. Benedict grabbed his coat from the peg by the door and bolted out the door.

*   *   *

“I think in retrospect,” Helene whispered in Madelene's ear, “we could have declined this invitation!”

Madelene nodded vigorously, because she wasn't sure she had the breath to make herself heard.

Lady Fredrick's ball supplied new meaning to the term “crush.” All the windows had been thrown open, but the ballroom was so full, the air had nowhere to circulate. The sound of so many voices all talking at once was drowning out the musicians, who were still doing their absolute best to keep time for those couples that could manage to forge a path to the dance floor.

Adele was among them. Not that Madelene could see her. All she could see was a shifting wall of backs and shoulders. The smell of warm bodies and too much perfume was as overwhelming as the heat and the noise. She might not be feeling her old fears tonight, but she was in very real danger of becoming ill from it all.

Helene of course noticed that.

“We've already stayed the requisite half hour,” she cried. “Do you think you can get to the windows? I'll go find Adele and Miss Sewell and meet you there!”

Madelene squeezed her hand to indicate her agreement. Helene nodded once, and with her jaw set and elbows pointed outward in a most unladylike fashion, she plunged into the crowd.

There were few times when being as small as she was proved to be any kind of advantage to Madelene. This, however, was one of them. The crowd was trying to push itself forward, so all Madelene had to do was back in the opposite direction and let the natural current flow around her. In remarkably short order, she found herself right in front of one of the grand floor-length windows that were the pride and joy of Lady Fredrick's new ballroom.

The chilly night breeze wrapped around Madelene, making her shiver where it touched her scalp and throat and bare arms. Madelene did not care. It felt too wonderful just to be able to breathe. She turned to face the open window, inhaling deeply to try to settle her nausea and clear her head.

The blow hit square between her shoulder blades. Madelene cried out as she teetered forward. Arms snaked around from behind and wrapped around her waist, and a man cried, “Got you!”

Before she could catch her breath, Madelene was swung violently around to face a young gentleman, a stranger to her, who was wide-eyed and laughing with shock.

“Oh, I am sorry!” he cried, putting his hands on her shoulders in far too familiar a fashion. “My fault entirely! Are you all right?”

“'Course she ain't all right, you clod!” bawled the man behind her, who still had not taken his arm from around her waist. They had to let go. This was indecent. She had to catch her breath, had to tell them.

“Here, now, drink this!” The man in front reached over her shoulder and plucked a glass of champagne from somewhere. He pressed it against her mouth. “That's it!” he cried. “All the way! Hold her steady, Pursewell!” he laughed. “Can't nearly drop her out the window and then choke her!”

Madelene tried to tell them both to let go, but as soon as she opened her mouth, she had no choice but to gulp down a huge swallow of wine. At last, she managed to gain enough control of her flailing hands to shove the glass and the man in front of her away.

He laughed and stumbled backward. The man behind her—Octavius Pursewell!—was laughing as well. Shame and outrage burned through Madelene, and she tore herself free, only to almost overbalance again and have to grab hold of the arm that reached out to keep once more from falling out the window.

That was when the room steadied. That was when vision and thought cleared.

Because that was when Madelene saw that it was no longer a stranger or a cad she clung to.

It was Benedict.

*   *   *

This wasn't happening. He was not seeing it. This was a terrible dream, a nightmare left over from his life with Gabriella somehow come back to haunt him.

Because it could not possibly be Madelene, his Madelene, reeling from the arms of two very drunken men to cling to him. He could not have seen her drinking from their champagne glasses, so befuddled she'd nearly stumbled straight out the window while the crowd around them stared and laughed at the joke.

She could not be looking up at him now, dazed, bewildered.

Drunk.

It was a nightmare. It was also true. His eyes did not deceive him, however much he wished they had.

He lifted Madelene's hand off his sleeve, dashed it aside, and turned away.

He had to get out of here. Let her new friends protect her. He should never have come.

Madelene had several times imagined stealing into Benedict's studio at night, but not like this. Not with cold fear and anger clenching her throat shut around her breath as she caught up her hems and hurried up the stairs.

He'd turned from her. He'd run away from her. By the time she realized what was happening, she'd lost him in the crowd. She'd had to find Miss Sewell and beg for the carriage to go after him. Her chaperone wanted to come along but relented reluctantly in the face of Madelene's pleading. She said she would wait a half hour before she told Helene and Adele what had happened.

Helene might never forgive either of them for their conduct. Madelene would deal with that when she had to. Right now all that mattered was finding Benedict and finding some way to explain.

The studio door was open, just a crack.

“Benedict?” Madelene pushed it far enough so that she could slip inside.

The room was entirely dark except for the glow of the moon that streamed in through the windows. Darkness robbed the furnishings, the tables, and the canvases of the familiar shapes and made them all blurred and strange. The only thing she recognized was Benedict himself.

He stood facing the painting of Selene in her chariot. The moonlight washed out the subtle details that Benedict had labored so diligently over, changing it into a canvas filled with ghosts.

“I'm surprised your friends let you come,” he said without turning around. “Surely they want you to stay with your new beaus.”

“Benedict, please look at me. That was nothing. You saw how crowded that room was. They bumped me by accident. I think they were drunk. I . . .”

But then he did turn, and she saw the twisted anger in his face.

“How could you let them do this to you, Madelene!”

“Who are you talking about?” she demanded. “What do you think has been done?”

“Lady Helene! Lady Adele!” He stabbed a finger toward the door. “And may God forgive me, Miss Sewell! I thought she was trustworthy, but now I see I was wrong! They've taken you and turned you into one of them.”

“Benedict, you are talking nonsense. No one has turned me into anything.”

“And yet there you were, drinking champagne from another man's glass and laughing about it.”

“I was not laughing! I fell! And I didn't want the drink. I . . .” Madelene stopped. She sounded ridiculous. She shouldn't have to be explaining this to him. He should trust her. He did trust her, as she trusted him.

But if he trusted her, where had this shattered look on his face come from?

“I never should have let you go,” Benedict whispered. “I should have kept you here.”

“I beg your pardon?” she cried.
No
, said the terrified voice in the back of her mind.
No, no, this is not happening. Benedict is not . . . he cannot be . . .

“I could tell where this season was leading you,” he said, and his voice was flat and dead. “Or I would have been able to tell if I'd been willing to look. The new clothes, the new ways of acting and talking . . .”

“I was getting over my bashfulness! You should be pleased!”

“I should be murdering Lady Helene for taking the sweetest, most perfect girl, the girl I loved, and turning her into a lightskirt!”

The words and the insult rang through the air. Madelene took one step back, stumbling against her train. Benedict made no move to come to her. He just stood where he was, his arms dangling loose at his sides.

His words played themselves over in her mind. They rearranged and they reformed until their meaning became clear and the slow horror of understanding seeped into her veins.

“You only loved Madelene the mouse,” she said. “You want to keep me that little shy creature.”

Now Benedict did move. He was across the room in three long strides to seize her wrists. The severity of his grip pressed the chain of her bracelet into her glove and her skin underneath.

“I want you to be who you are, Madelene! Kind and thoughtful and natural! A true beauty, not this!” He pulled her arms wide, showing her to herself and to him. “Not paint and bangles and artifice!”

It was too much. It was not to be endured. Madelene wrenched her hands free of him. How could he say these things? After all their time together, after all they had done and shared, how could he have heard and understood so little?

“And what if this is what I want?” she demanded, drawing herself up. “What if I want artifice?”

“You don't, Madelene.” He was trying to change his tone. He was trying to be gentle. A wave of revulsion swept her. “You've just been told that you do, that's all.”

As if I was a child with no understanding!
“How do you know?”

“I know you!”

“Do you?” she shot back. “This is your deep artist's sensitivity divining the true nature of Madelene Valmeyer? Did you ever once consider
asking
me what I want?”

He closed his mouth.

“No, you didn't,” she sneered. “Because you are just like all the rest!”

“I only want to protect you!”

“Yes, protect me! Protect me so that I'm what you want, not what I want! Everyone wants me to be this . . . this vision they see in their heads of a daughter, a sister, a debutante a . . . a . . . lover. But none of them ever bother to ask me what I want to be! As if because I'm shy I can't possibly know!”

“But you don't know,” he insisted. “You're too sheltered. I've seen what society does, Madelene. It changes people, women especially. You can't mean to let yourself be changed like that . . .”

Madelene was shaking. He was reaching out, opening his arms, waiting for her to run to him. To say he was right, that she was wrong.

The worst part was, she wanted to. She looked at him and she saw the man she loved and she wanted to give into him. She wanted desperately to be his Madelene, the girl he loved. She wanted to do anything and everything so that he would hold her and look at her with love and desire in his eyes. So he would shield her, and hide her.

But she could not. She would not.

“I am not letting anyone change me!” she shouted. “I am changing myself so I don't have to be scared of my own shadow anymore! I'd have told you all about what I was doing
if you'd asked!
But you didn't. You just wanted to put me on a windowsill like . . . like . . . like your pot of primroses! Keep me indoors and make sure I had just enough sun and just enough water and just enough . . . just enough . . .”

She couldn't finish. She turned and she ran, stumbling down the stairs like she was drunk or blind. She couldn't think. She could barely breathe. All she could think to do was get away. To hide.

*   *   *

Madelene.

Benedict stared as she turned and stumbled down the stairs. He knew in some distant part of himself he should go after her. Something had gone horribly wrong. He'd been so sure of what he'd seen, of what he knew. It had all been exactly as Mrs. Darington had described to him.

But now . . . now . . .

Madelene was running away from him, out into the street, and all he could do was stand and stare at the chalk she'd scuffed and blurred with her careless slippers.

And, it seemed, very slowly, crumple to his knees.