A Lady of Talent (14 page)

Cecilia would not let herself think of those days because the anger and frustration would have destroyed her or turned her into a bitter woman, old before her time. She preferred instead to bury the unhappy memories and recall only the happier ones of warm, sunny days spent in the villa overlooking the Bay of Naples.

So once again, as she had done so many times before, she put all thoughts of this particular betrayal out of her head and began to work on Barbara’s portrait, so that it would be ready when the subject herself arrived. Barbara was due to come for a final sitting that day and Cecilia wanted the painting to be as complete as possible, so that she could concentrate on the areas that presented the biggest problems.

As always, her work exerted a calming influence on Cecilia, and as she mixed colors, added a touch here, a stroke there, stepping back from time to time in order to assess the effect, her mind emptied itself of all thoughts of her father, until she could think of nothing but the work before her.

She applied a finishing touch and stopped to look at the portrait as a whole, and then a host of questions and thoughts of Grosvenor Square came flooding back with a vengeance.

Where would Barbara’s portrait hang in the mansion? Would it be at the head of the grand staircase, or over the mantel in the drawing room, or even in the ballroom? Would it take the place of her own self-portrait in Sebastian’s mind? Would Barbara now become his ideal woman and his constant companion? She would be his wife in spite of the earl’s admission that he too had never been in love before. Was it just possible that being in constant contact with a beautiful woman day after day, no matter how divergent their interests or how ill-suited they were to one another, might lead to a tenderer regard, and the sort of intimacy that came after years of living together and sharing one another’s lives, no matter how tangentially?

Would he look into Barbara’s eyes the way he had looked into hers, making her feel unique in all the world, as though she were the only woman that existed for him? Surely not. Surely theirs was simply a marriage of convenience. Barbara had admitted as much on her part, but what of Sebastian? He was a man of principles and ideals. He had no need to marry anyone, so why had he chosen Barbara Wyatt? Was it purely out of respect and gratitude to her father, the man who had helped him get his start, or was it something deeper?

Cecilia did not know which answer she wished for. On the one hand, she wanted to believe that Sebastian was a man of honor who would not marry a woman for whom he cared nothing. On the other hand, she very much did not want him to care about Barbara Wyatt. She did know one thing, however; first, if she was going to be working on pictures for the Earl of Charrington’s ballroom day after day, she was going to have to find a way of putting the Earl of Charrington himself out of her mind; and the sooner she was able to do that by finishing both the portrait of Barbara and the paintings for the ballroom, the better.

And the best way to complete her project was to start on it now. Cecilia picked up her sketchbook and began filling in the rough conceptualizations for her drawings of the muses. Once she had completed those, she could take exact measurements for the panels, order the canvas and the stretchers, and begin work in earnest.

Her professional interest eventually reasserted itself, and Cecilia lost all concept of time until Tredlow came to announce, “Miss Wyatt to see you, my lady.”

The beauty looked more ravishing than ever. There was a sparkle in her eye, an animation in her expression and in her voice as she greeted her portrait painter, that Cecilia could not remember ever having seen or heard.

She was about to ascribe it to the near completion of the portrait or the fineness of the day when she heard footsteps in the hall, and saw Neville’s blond head pop around the corner of the doorway.

“Cecy, I was just... oh, Miss Wyatt.” He executed a well-feigned start and sauntered casually into the studio. “How fortunate that I happened in at this particular moment. I wanted to thank you again for standing up with me at Almack’s, and to ask you to promise me another dance next time. You did assure me that I could count on your presence there every Wednesday evening, did you not?”

“But of course, my lord. I would not dream of being anywhere else. But it is
I
who am indebted to
you.
No woman could hope to have a more graceful partner than you, nor one whose taste is so much admired. I must say that I was quite overwhelmed with requests for dances after being led to the floor by you. It is clear that the Marquess of Shelburne is a leader in the
ton,
and that those who aspire to any sort of fashion are quick to follow his lead.”

“Only in the cut of his coats and the tying of his cravat, I am afraid, dear lady.” Neville sighed dramatically, and solemnly laid a hand over his heart. “Until now he has confined his fastidious taste to the commissioning of mere articles of tailoring, and it has been said that he would never find a human being worthy of admiration, his standards being so impossibly high. But at last the utterly exquisite, the incomparable Miss Wyatt appeared on the scene, and he is able to lay his admiring heart at her feet.”

His tone was reverent, but the blue eyes were dancing with amusement, and Barbara broke into a delicious peal of laughter. “You are absurd, my lord, and far too kind. You make me feel like some highly finished work of art that should be placed in a museum. I am not so stiff and formal as all that. I need gaiety surrounding me. I need dancing, and music, and laughter, and throngs of elegant, fashionable people.”

“And so you shall have it. Believe me. Miss Wyatt, dancing at Almack’s is only the beginning. You will soon have the
ton
at your feet, and you will be so sought after that you will be longing for a moment’s peace and solitude. And I, poor fellow, shall have to fight my way through crowds of admirers simply to catch a glimpse of you.  A dance with you will soon be quite beyond the reach of all but the most persistent of mortals, and the print shops will be filled with engravings of your picture, if Cecy will ever finish it.” He cast a teasing glance in his sister’s direction.

“Which she would do if her brother were not distracting her model to such a degree,” Cecilia retorted, a suspicious glint in her eye.

“I beg your pardon. I interrupt serious business, and worse yet, I make Miss Wyatt laugh. One cannot be immortalized for posterity if one is laughing; it is simply not done.” Neville pulled a ludicrously serious face which only had the effect of making Barbara laugh all the harder.

“There. I have done it again,” he declared with great satisfaction. “I have proven that I
am,
as my sister constantly complains, a useless good-for-nothing; therefore I shall spare you my disturbing company and take myself off to Tattersall’s. They say Crompton is selling up, and no one knows a prime bit of blood better than Crompton. There is bound to be something worth seeing. Fortunately, I am in desperate need of a new hack, and nothing is so gratifying as doing a friend a good turn. Do you drive in the park. Miss Wyatt?”

Barbara nodded, her eyes sparkling.

“Good. Then perhaps I shall see you there. I assure you that my taste in horseflesh is as exquisite as my taste in cravats and coats.”

A quick graceful bow and he was gone as unexpectedly as he had come, leaving one of the occupants of the room, at least, with an appreciative smile on her face.

“Is your brother always this amusing. Lady Cecilia?” Barbara asked.

“Sometimes,” Cecilia admitted honestly. Neville was utterly unreliable, a spendthrift who could never be counted upon for anything except landing them in dun territory, but there was no denying the infectiousness of his optimism, or his enthusiasm for a life of pleasure and self-indulgence. “Yes, he can be quite amusing when he wishes to be.”

“You are fortunate indeed.” Barbara sighed. “My papa is never amusing. He and Charrington think of nothing but business and money. I find it insufferably tedious.”

“It certainly is if one does not have them.” Cecilia bit her tongue, but the words were already out of her mouth. What ever had possessed her to speak so sharply? She sounded like a vulgar fishwife.

“I shall just have to see to it that Charrington learns to live more like a gentleman—more like your brother.” Barbara continued as though Cecilia had never spoken. “When I become mistress of Charrington House, I shall have so many routs and balls that he will not have time for anything else.”

A vision of the beautiful ballroom in Grosvenor Square rose before Cecilia’s eyes, and once again she felt the warm touch of Sebastian’s hand and saw the smile in his eyes. Would he smile into Barbara’s eyes the way he had smiled into hers as they whirled around the floor? Or would he glance up at the ceiling to see Terpsichore smiling down at him with Cecilia’s face—the face that he claimed to be that of his ideal woman, his ideal companion?

No,
Cecilia told herself firmly. She was simply a model for his ideal, not the real thing. She would never be the real thing, never experience the unsettling feelings that had threatened to overwhelm her when she was in Sebastian’s arms, the longing and the hunger for she knew not quite what—the excruciating awareness of every sense in her body. No, madness lay with thoughts like that, and she was not that sort of person. Long ago, she had consciously chosen to ignore that part of life—the part between men and women—and dedicate herself instead to her art. One could not be a true professional and give in to such distractions as those.

But,
a tiny voice in her head insisted,
you gave up that part of your life before you even knew what you were giving up. If you had felt then what you felt with him in the ballroom, would you have found it so easy to give up? Would you have traded being in the arms of a man who admires and understands you so easily for brushes and paints if you had been in his arms before you did so?

“... shall have to ask your brother what he considers to be the best taste in frames and settings ...” Barbara’s voice broke into Cecilia’s uncomfortable reverie.

“Ask Neville? Why not ask Char—er, your fiancé?”

“Charrington?” Barbara looked at Cecilia, her eyes wide with astonishment. “Ask Charrington? What could he possibly know about such a thing?”

“He seems to understand a good deal about art. And since the portrait was his idea, I should think him extremely qualified to advise you.”

“Charrington?
My
Charrington? Why, he only knows the price of canal shares; he has not the least idea of taste or fashion,” his fiancée responded, forgetting entirely that it had been
her
Charrington’s visit to the exhibition at the Royal Academy that had been responsible for her introduction to Lady Cecilia in the first place.

My
Charrington.
Cecilia struggled to ignore the unworthy stab of envy these casually uttered words produced, but, try as she would, she could not.
And you had better not ignore it,
she admonished herself.
You had better not forget that for all his kindness to you, he is
her Charrington,
and she is soon to become his countess—a fact that you would do well to remember.

Chapter Sixteen

In fact, Barbara’s Charrington had spent more of his time thinking about art, and one artist in particular, than he had about anything else for several days after Cecilia’s visit to Grosvenor Square. First and foremost, he was concerned with her distress over the discovery of her self-portrait in his possession. How could he have been such an insensitive fool as to spring it on her in that way? But the more he considered it, the more he realized that there had been no good way to tell her that he was in possession of that picture, sold by her father in an effort to pay his gambling debts.

Sebastian’s conscience would not let him keep her in the dark. As a matter of fact, his conscience was being damnably difficult about his own personal role in those gambling debts, but at the moment, he did not have the courage to tell her about that.

Someday he would explain how he had come to play so often against the Marquess of Shelburne—how he had seen his own father in the haunted eyes of the desperate peer, and punished him for succumbing to the grip of the same obsession that had destroyed his father, his mother, and a good deal of his own life as well. But it would require a good deal of explanation, and he was not sure enough of her yet.

Sebastian desperately hoped that Cecilia felt as close to him as he did to her—hoped that she recognized the special affinity that existed between them whenever they fell into conversation—an affinity so intense that words barely had to be uttered for the other one to understand. But he was not sure. As a man of science, he knew the dangers of wishing so strongly for a thing to be true that one unconsciously arranged the evidence to prove it so. He had tried to remain rational and objective, to tell himself that the closeness he felt to her was truly reflected in her eyes and her smile—that it was not just the product of his imagination built up over the years of living with her portrait.

Sebastian glanced over at the portrait now. The hazel eyes still seemed to look straight at him with curious interest. The mouth, with its shy smile, still invited conversation, and the faintly raised eyebrows still promised the ironic, half-skeptical view of life that the real Cecilia espoused so strongly. And where was his portrait going to live now?

He had not really stopped to consider this question. Until he had discovered that C. A. Manners, Lady Cecilia, and the girl in the portrait were one in the same, it had not really much mattered where he hung his picture. He had planned to move it from the library on Curzon Street to the library of the house in Grosvenor Square, where it would keep him company as it always had. Now, however, everything had changed.

He was reasonably certain that Barbara did not give a rap for him as long as he was a peer of ancient lineage who was willing to keep her in the style to which she was accustomed and to give her the entree to the
ton
that she craved. He was also reasonably certain that she would take great exception to having a self-portrait of the woman who had painted her own portrait gracing her husband’s library.