Valour and Vanity (11 page)

They turned on to a bridge over the canal. Vincent tightened his grip on her hand. “So were you.”

Jane’s breath caught. There was no doubt about the “injury” that he referred to. The miscarriage. Jane held her jaw clenched against tears. She cast her gaze down to the water and followed the path of a gondola. Its dark shape made a void in the water, rippling the stars in its wake. “Two years ago.”

“I … I do not think you allowed yourself time to … We came back to England, and as soon as your body allowed, you threw yourself back into your work. Our work. I should own that I did the same.” Vincent stopped her at the summit of the bridge. “I do not think we allowed ourselves time to grieve.”

“Do I have the right?”

“You lost a
child,
Jane.”

“One that I did not want.” She still watched the gondola, but she could hear Vincent suck his breath in.

“I wish you would stop blaming yourself.”

“Who else should I blame? Napoleon? Lieutenant Segal? The horse that ran off the road? My mother, for the weakness of my womb?”

“Me?”

Jane’s head snapped back around of its own accord. In the reflected glow of the city, Vincent’s face was soft, his brows upturned with vulnerability. “How can you—no. You cannot blame yourself for being captured.”

“I can blame myself for not leaving when you urged me to, when all reason told us that war was coming. That is not what I meant, though it would be reason enough.” He shook his head, biting his lip. With something like a laugh mixed with a sob, Vincent tilted his head back and addressed his words to the sky. “But before that … because you resented me for wanting a child.”

He had been so happy when he learned she had conceived, but they had never spoken of their plans or even raised the question of children before then. Jane lifted her hand and brushed it across his cheek. “I do
not
blame you for wanting a child. Or for getting me with one. I participate in
that
willingly enough.”

Vincent smiled and lowered his gaze to her. “You do.”

In silent accord, Jane and Vincent turned to begin their stroll again. Even in the dark, even speaking in English with no one to overhear them, it was difficult to talk of this subject, but Jane pressed on. If she waited, the words would close up inside her again. “When I was little, I always played at having a family with my dolls. I used to beg for a baby sister. Then Melody arrived, and Mama became so ill. I did not understand at the time, or more probably was not told, that the birth had nearly killed her. She has … she has been truly ill, and I think she was not always so nervous. I was her third confinement.”

“I did not know.”

“It is why, I think, that she frets so over us. I … I suspect there were times that I was unintentionally cruel in begging for a sister.”

Jane felt more than heard Vincent’s sigh through the places where they were touching.

“We had a nurse, but I had played at babies so long, and was so in love with the idea of having one of my own, that I treated Melody as though she were mine. I carried her everywhere my parents would let me, and Mama was inclined to be indulgent. In many ways, as much as Melody was my sister, she was also a daughter to me.”

“That would, I imagine, be enough to cure any desire to be a mother again.”

“I never resented it—or rarely.” Jane shook her head and leaned it against him for a moment. “The resentment grew as Melody got prettier and I did not. By the time you met me, I had resigned myself to the life of a spinster.”

“Which still confounds me.”

“You are very sweet. But … but even you were first drawn to Melody, were you not?”

Vincent’s voice was low. “That is not fair, Muse.”

“I am sorry.” She tilted her head up to kiss his cheek. “The point being, I had given up. I had shut away thoughts of being a mother, and then, when I met you—when I
married
you—those thoughts did not return, because we had the work. And I thought…” She had told him this before, during the months that they had been in recovery in Brussels before returning to England, but it was still hard to admit. “I thought you loved me because of what talent with glamour I have.”

“But you know that is not it. I love you because of your passion, your curiosity and wit, and because you inspire me every day, every moment I am with you. And I do think you are beautiful. Not fashionable, not handsome, not insipidly pretty, but full of beauty. You find the beauty around you and reflect it for me to see. You are yourself and”—his voice broke—“you are my Muse.”

They had stopped walking at some point in his declaration, and Jane rose onto her toes to meet him. Standing by the bank of the canal, they kissed. The space where one began and the other ended folded together like two strands of glamour weaving a single image. Jane felt nothing but the warmth of her husband, his fingers in her hair, and the tender shape of his lips against hers.

A gasp sounded in the canal behind them. “Are those men kissing?”

Jane and Vincent released their hold on each other. For a moment, Jane looked down at the passing gondola before recalling her attire. She had forgotten her bonnet and cape when they left the glass factory.

“I am wearing trousers.” They had been so
present
when she first put them on that she was stunned by how quickly she had grown accustomed to them again.

“And I find them very becoming. But perhaps we should walk apart. For propriety’s sake.” Vincent raised an eyebrow and glanced down at her trousers with a slow smile. “If you would walk in front of me, I shall follow from behind.”

Jane swatted him on the arm. “Rogue.”

“Muse.”

Heedless of the gondola in the canal, Jane resumed her hold on her husband’s arm as they walked. He cleared his throat. “Do you want children?”

“I do not know if that is a question about which we have much choice.”

“Well … there are—um … measures.” Vincent cleared his throat and tugged at his cravat. “To prevent conception, I mean.”

Of course he would know about such things. She bent her head to watch the cobblestones as they walked. It was not, she feared, a matter of preventing conception. “I meant … It has been two years. We have not been shy in our affections.”

“Ah.” That single, voiced exhalation was filled with the weight of his understanding. Her first—and her only—pregnancy had been within four months of their marriage. Then the miscarriage, and since then … nothing.

“I do not know if there was some damage, or if it is the glamour.” Jane lowered her voice, even though they were alone. To speak of this so directly was embarrassing, but the fact was that most doctors agreed that the exertion required to work glamour could harm an unborn child in the same way that running might. In Jane’s memory, she ran through a field of rye and felt a stitch in her side. She rubbed at the remembered ache. Had it been then? She shook her head to clear the memories. “My time has always been somewhat irregular, but when we are working heavily on a extensive project, it stops altogether.”

“I did not know that.” His voice was hoarse with suppressed emotion. “We could stop working for a time. If you wanted to try.”

She did not miss the fact that Vincent had said
we
. His art was his life. “I do not know if I want to give up our art.”

“It would not be forever.”

“How long would you be willing to stop? A few months? A year? Two?” Beside her, his pace slowed. She could feel him turning the thought over. “Let us say that there is nothing wrong with me that a cessation of glamour will not cure. Then we have a child. What then?”

“We can leave them with a nanny.”

She raised an eyebrow at his use of the plural and its suggestion of multiple children, but did not comment on it. The larger issue still lay before her. “But is that right? To have a child and then ignore him?”

“Most of my childhood was spent with nurses or tutors.”

“We had tutors and nurses, too, but my parents were always there and involved in raising us. I cannot imagine having a child and travelling as much as we do. It would have made me sad, as a child.”

“You had parents who loved you.”

“Yes.” Jane shuddered, recalling again the relief she had felt upon her miscarriage. “My parents wanted children very much. My fear … my fear is that I do not want to cause a child to suffer the isolation that you did.”

“I think there is little chance of that.”

“No?”

He laughed. “No. Melody did not feel abandoned, did she?”

“I was not a professional glamourist, then.”

“Should I offer to remain home during the child’s early years and let you go out to earn our living?”

“Be serious, Vincent.”

“I will be, in a moment. My point is that there is no reason that you cannot continue to work. Mrs. Kauffman was one of the founders of the Royal Academy of Arts, and her marriage did nothing to stop her from working. I had the privilege of taking a review of portraiture with her during her last visit to London, the year before her death.”

“Did she have children?”

He hesitated and shook his head.

In some ways, the trousers made it easier to discuss feminine matters with him, as though they were something unconnected to her. Still, her voice hitched as she pressed on. “I would have to stop working glamour for nine months. Perhaps more, to conceive again.”

“We have done very little work on this trip. After we finish here, we will be travelling for some months more. We could go to visit Herr Scholes and discuss theory. Show him the glamour in glass … But I am putting pressure on you. I am sorry.”

“No … no, this is helping. I do not want to give up our art, nor do I want to be an absent mother.”

He drew breath as though to speak, but paused instead, giving Jane time to work through her thoughts. Did she want a child? If it were possible to have both a family and her art, would she want that? With her first pregnancy, she had thought she would have to give up glamour and possibly Vincent … Jane’s stomach hurt with the memory. It had not been the child that she resented but everything she thought she would lose. And if she could have both? “I do not know what I want.”

“You do not need to know now.”

“I am thirty-one. We cannot wait too long to decide.”

“I am very clear about what
I
want.” Vincent raised her fingers to his lips and kissed them. “I want you to be happy.”

They had turned on to Calle Dietro Gli Orti. Ca’ Sanuto lay at the end. Jane traced his lips with her fingers. “Then take me back to the glass factory.”

Seven

Canals and Monkeys

Their work at the glass factory went more smoothly after they returned. To the best of their knowledge, they appeared to have laid the strands accurately for several
Verre Obscurci
, though it was impossible to tell if any of them worked until they cooled first. More significantly, Jane and Vincent had worked well together. She still thought of their time in Binché, but not with the same fear.

For the moment, they must wait to know if they had succeeded. Working at night as they were, it was impossible to know if the glamour in glass were working since it required full sunlight to make anything invisible. Until the glass cooled in a tempering chamber, they could not take one out into the sun to be certain. Depending on the temperature, it could take two to three days to cool enough to be moved without risk of cracking. Jane well remembered the frustration of waiting for that in Belgium.

Exhausted, but cautiously pleased, they returned to Ca’ Sanuto deep into the night. Letizia had left out a cold supper in their room, which Jane was almost too tired to appreciate.

The following day, they had no work planned at Querini’s. What had seemed an imposition was now something for which Jane found herself grateful. She and Vincent spent the morning refamiliarizing themselves with each other, emerging only when it became necessary to find something with which to break their fast.

Their second visit to the glass maker’s factory went more smoothly, but the glass from the first visit was still too warm to take home. Jane had to restrain herself from expressing her frustration. The weather was cool, so it was naturally taking longer than she wished.

Over the next days, they settled into a routine of sleeping late into the day to conserve their energy for the time in the glass factory. Signor Querini, for all his bluster at the beginning, worked steadily and without complaint.

His apprentice, Biasio, turned out to be a glamourist whose skills seemed chiefly employed in creating draughts to stoke the fire. Rather than grumbling, though, the young man seemed utterly captivated by their work.

One evening during a pause, he brought Jane a glass of water.

She sat on a chair outside the glass factory enjoying what little breeze came down the alley. Her fingers ached from the tight, delicate work they had been doing, and she wanted the energy to stir the air more. Smiling at him, she took the glass gratefully. “Thank you.” It was exquisitely crafted of
cristallo,
with the stem in the shape of an aventurine-laced dolphin. “What a lovely glass.”

He blushed. “I made it.”

“Did you?” She took a sip of the water. Her shirt clung to her back with sweat.

Vincent lay on the ground beside her, heedless of the dirt, with his arm flung over his face. His breath had slowed from the ragged pace of the end of their session. He might almost be asleep. They were planning on attempting an interwoven glamour next, to see if the glass could reproduce more than one effect.

“May I ask a question, Lady Vincent?” The young man’s toe dug into the dirt.

“Of course.”

“The glass … is it—are you making a record of the glamour inside the glass?”

Vincent stirred and lowered his arm, looking up at the boy.

“That is … I was watching your folds, but they are so slight that I couldn’t see what you were weaving.”

Jane lowered her glass. “Did you look at the spheres?”

He nodded. “They have faults in them. But … but I don’t see that they do anything.”