скачать книгу бесплатно
Outside, the garden sparkled with candles. Cameo sank down on to one of the wrought-iron chairs laid out on the terrace.
Warley leaned over her, so close that she shrank back against the cold iron of the chair. On his breath was the faint whiff of claret.
‘Can I fetch you refreshment?’
‘I am thirsty. Thank you.’
Enjoying the momentary respite, she breathed in the scent of jasmine and roses. There was no one else on the terrace, though perhaps George and Maud were somewhere in the garden. Why, he might even be proposing at that very moment. How lucky they were, while she was here with Lord Warley. Under her skirts she stretched out her painful toes. He didn’t seem to have done any permanent damage.
Something near to despair filled her. These evenings were supposed to be enjoyable, but they exhausted her more than sitting for Benedict Cole. Modelling was hard work. But being forced to play a society role was hard work, too. Not the kind of work to complain about. How could she complain about having to go to a ball? It sounded spoilt. Never complain, never explain. That was what her mama advised.
Too soon Lord Warley returned with two glasses of iced punch.
‘Thank you.’ Cameo took a sip.
He sat down on the chair opposite and hoisted one leg over the other. ‘My pleasure.’
Silence fell. It wasn’t the same kind of silence as when Benedict Cole painted her; that silence didn’t bother her at all.
‘I’d love to try to capture those roses,’ she said at last, studying the white tea roses that were tumbling down the trellis closest to them.
‘Capture them?’
‘Paint them, I mean. What do you think of the latest style of painting? The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the other new painters?’
‘Ridiculous.’ He shocked her with his vehemence. ‘They make far too much of themselves, like all artists. They should get decent occupations.’
‘Art’s a passion!’ Cameo protested.
‘Art’s a fuss about nothing. Who can’t slap a bit of paint on to some canvas, I ask you? Of course I go to the opening of the Royal Academy of Art at the start of the Season, one’s got to. And we’ve got some fine Old Masters in our long gallery at Warley Park. Not that I care for them that much. It’s all a waste of time.’
‘How can you say that?’ She sipped her punch to quench her anger. It didn’t help.
‘That’s right—you enjoy that kind of thing, don’t you?’ He emptied his punch glass. ‘You do a few watercolours, I seem to recall. I’m surprised your father allows it. Well, good for you young ladies to have something to do, isn’t it?’
Cameo drank more punch. ‘It’s more than just something to do for me.’
‘Perhaps when you come to Warley Park you’ll allow me to show you the Old Masters in our gallery. You haven’t forgotten you and your parents are coming to stay at my estate, have you?’
She had forgotten. She’d forced the engagement from her mind. A dance with Lord Warley was penance. A long visit would be intolerable. Yet there was no chance of talking her parents out of it and she had to be polite. ‘I’m sure it will be most pleasant.’
‘Your presence will make it so, Lady Catherine Mary.’
She didn’t remind him that all her friends and family called her Cameo. She’d never invited him to, yet she gave the pet name to Benedict Cole without thinking.
Lord Warley smiled. It was his smile that made her uneasy, she reflected. It never reached his eyes. In contrast, Benedict Cole’s eyes had searched her soul.
Would Benedict Cole ever leave her mind?
Lord Warley pulled off his gloves, revealing each of his fingers in turn. Without warning, he leant forward and imprisoned her hands. ‘How pleased I am to have this moment alone with you.’
‘Lord Warley!’ Desperately she tried to extract her fingers, but his grip was too tight.
He squeezed them tighter. ‘You must allow me to make my addresses. I’m sure your parents will not object.’
Cameo wrenched her hands away.
‘Your addresses?’ Her stomach sank. His intentions were more serious than she’d feared.
‘Indeed.’ Putting his fingers together in a steeple, he said, ‘Our families are well connected. You will recall, of course, that your father was good friends with my own, God rest his soul.’
The late Lord Warley, the current earl’s father, had died while she was still in the schoolroom, studying under a governess with Maud. He’d been dark-haired like his son. But his eyes had been different—kind, although sad. Cameo remembered that.
‘My father thought most highly of yours,’ she vouchsafed. If it wasn’t for the family friendship she wouldn’t be forced to associate so closely with him against all her instincts. It made it all very difficult.
‘When I inherited Warley Park—you must know that it’s one of the greatest houses in England—I took on a great responsibility. I shall enjoy showing you the estate on your visit. You will be an ornament to it.’ Once more he glanced towards her bare décolletage.
Cameo wished yet again for a shawl to cover her upper body. She didn’t want to be an ornament to anything, even Warley Park, that great country estate in Sussex. It was even larger than the one belonging to her family in Derbyshire, which George was to eventually inherit.
‘It will be wonderful to see the Old Masters at Warley Hall.’ That was true at least. ‘I’m sure I’ll like them. But you may not find you like me. For a start, I’m most attached to painting.’
His smile became supercilious. ‘You’ll soon outgrow your childish hobbies.’
‘I assure you I’ll never outgrow painting,’ she said through gritted teeth. Why was it that women’s passions were considered so insignificant, as though they could easily be put aside for polite society? Did no one understand the passion that drove her?
Benedict Cole’s face flashed again into her mind.
He was a man who understood painting.
And passion.
Down deep her stomach rippled.
‘You’re young.’ Lord Warley licked his lips. ‘There’s nothing you could be sure about at your age.’
He had only been a few years ahead of George at school. ‘I might be young, but I do know my own mind.’
‘I appreciate spirit in a girl.’
Before Cameo moved he was on his feet. Looming over her, he pressed her backwards, hard, into the wrought-iron chair, banging her head against the trellis.
No! He meant to kiss her. She couldn’t bear it. Not with the memory of Benedict’s lips still burned on to hers. In a surge of strength she pushed him away.
Leaping to her feet, she seized her necklace as if it were a talisman. ‘I’d like to go into the ballroom.’
‘Yes, of course. The moonlight, your beauty...forgive me.’
As he took her arm, his eyes did not meet hers. Sickened, Cameo realised he wasn’t sorry at all.
She’d been right to avoid being alone with him. All her suspicions about him had been right all along.
Backed up against the trellis, Lord Warley had trapped her like a bird in a cage. Right where he liked a woman to be.
Chapter Six (#ulink_7d46a8f1-c390-52ff-b44d-022fc0e2bbac)
‘She look’d: but all
Suffused with blushes—neither self-possess’d
Nor startled, but betwixt this mood and that.’
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson:
‘The Gardener’s Daughter’
‘What have you been doing, Miss Ashe?’
Cameo jumped. From her place by the window she’d been surveying Benedict Cole at work. He’d positioned her in a different pose today, half-reclining, but he hadn’t touched her once, just barked sharp commands at her to get the angle right.
He was behaving as if he had never kissed her. Two could play at that game. If he was going to use his artistic discipline, then she would use hers, too.
‘What do you mean, Mr Cole?’ she asked coolly.
He laid down his pencil. ‘It seems to me you have barely slept.’
‘How did you...?’
‘You’re pale and you have the slightest shadows beneath your eyes. They were not there before. What have you been doing all night?’
Did Benedict Cole miss anything? She could hardly tell him she had attended Lady Russell’s ball, then stayed up late drawing, desperate to make up for lost time, and when she had at last laid her head on the pillow, memories of their kiss kept her tossing and turning until dawn.
‘I was... I was...sewing.’ She must think of something. ‘I...I do mending for extra money. Luckily Mrs Cotton, the woman who kindly took me in, if you remember, taught me her excellent skills with the needle. It’s come in most useful.’
‘I had almost forgotten the estimable Mrs Cotton,’ Benedict said in a dry voice. ‘So she taught you needlecraft, how fortunate. I shall have to take up your services.’
‘My...services?’
‘Alas. As I am a bachelor, I find many of my shirts require attention I cannot give them.’
In a few long strides Benedict left his easel and went to a chest of drawers near his bed. It seemed bigger than ever today, with its great carved wooden headboard. All too clearly she pictured him in that bed. Her neck and cheeks flushed hot again.
From a drawer he retrieved a white shirt, similar to the one he wore beneath his dark red waistcoat. He came across the room and passed her the shirt, brushing her skin. At his touch, Cameo gave a jolt he surely couldn’t mistake.
If he, too, felt the current that flared between them he revealed no sign. ‘There’s a seam gone, there. Can you fix it?’
Holding the shirt up to the light of the window, she saw a seam had indeed torn across the shoulder, given way in what must have been a powerful stretch.
As she lifted the shirt closer the powerful masculine scent coming from the garment made her giddy. She suppressed her unexpected primitive urge to bury her face in the linen.
‘Well?’
Her head bent, she examined the rip with what she hoped appeared a professional air. ‘This is quite easy to mend. I’ve repaired similar garments.’
‘Have you indeed? Is that your trade?’
‘My trade?’ She was echoing him once more, unable to string a sentence together.
‘Yes, your trade. You mentioned Mrs Cotton brought you up. But what do you do now to earn your keep?’
‘Oh. My keep.’ For a moment her mind went as empty as a blank canvas. ‘Well, I, well, I’m a...governess.’
‘You don’t sound too sure.’
‘Oh, well, what I mean is, I’m usually a governess, but the family, the children, they’re away at the moment. In the country. Derbyshire. Yes, Derbyshire,’ she babbled. ‘That’s why I can come here and model for you.’
His expression remained dubious.
Cameo coughed. ‘And while they’re away I take in sewing, too. For extra money. I can certainly fix this. Would you like me to do it now?’
‘No, I’m not expecting you to mend it instantly,’ he said, with an impression of amusement. Relief flooded her. If he insisted, he would soon witness her poor performance at plain sewing. Her fancy embroidery stitches would look most out of place on his shirt.
‘Perhaps you can add it to your mending basket in your lonely nursery, with your young charges away. But I must ask you to promise not to do any more sewing too late into the night. If I’m to complete this painting I must have you fresh-faced.’
As if pulling on her cloak, she assumed the meek manner of Miss Ashe. ‘I’m sorry.’
His sharp glance made her realise he suspected her meekness as much as her mending.
Benedict returned to his easel. Yet another story she’d told him. Part of her was pleased she’d come up with something so quickly; part of her felt sick at having to tell more lies. It was beginning to be hard to keep track of them all. She’d told her mama she was taking extra riding lessons. That explained her absence at home. But all the lies troubled her.
It soothed her mind to watch Benedict at work. He’d moved on from drawing to painting now, using a fine brush tipped with black paint. He painted more slowly than he sketched, more deliberately. His strong fist clasping the paintbrush moved powerfully yet lightly across the canvas. His hands... She recalled the firm yet gentle way Benedict had held her, when his lips had met hers, so different from Lord Warley’s attempted grab at Lady Russell’s ball. The way he’d trapped her...nausea rose in her stomach. If only their fathers hadn’t been such good friends.
Benedict’s irate voice shot across the room. ‘Now you’re making a face. Your mouth is all puckered up as if you’ve tasted a lemon.’
Cameo tried to resume her previous expression and put the interlude at the ball from her mind.
‘You don’t need to pose any more just now, Miss Ashe.’ He sent her a fleeting but intense glance. ‘Sit down by the fire for a moment.’
‘Don’t you need me?’
Reaching for his brush, he dipped it into the black paint pooled on the palette. ‘I just want to get this right.’
Eager to watch his technique from another angle, she crossed the room and hovered behind him.
‘I can’t paint with you at my elbow,’ he snapped without turning his head.
The man was infuriating. Cameo sat down with a thump on the armchair by the fire and cast her eyes around. A book lay on the table among all the papers. The red leather binding appeared new. The Stones of Venice, its gilt lettering spelt out, by John Ruskin. She knew the author’s name, of course, for Ruskin was the famous champion of the Pre-Raphaelite movement who was able to make or break a painter’s reputation with a single review. She flicked the book open and found herself immediately held by the magnificent illustrations. She began to read.
‘I didn’t realise you were a reader, Miss Ashe.’ Like a prowling cat, Benedict had silently moved beside her. ‘But as you are a governess, I suppose it makes sense.’
