A Lady of Talent (9 page)

Sebastian chuckled. “Of course, it is the merest guess on my part with hardly a shred of evidence to support my theory, other than the most casual observation, but I imagine that the two of you often find yourselves at loggerheads.”

Cecilia nodded ruefully. “Yes, I am a great trial to Neville, for try as I might, I simply cannot find it in myself to cultivate the interests that every properly brought-up young lady does her best to cultivate. I fear that making a splash in society is not a sufficiently compelling reason for devoting my entire day to embellishing my appearance. You see”—an impish twinkle sparkled in her eyes—”I am really no different from those people of whom you spoke so slightingly just now, for I do not discommode myself either, nor expose myself to the discomfort or difficulty of spending hours in front of the looking glass deciding on just the right coiffeur or poring over the illustrations in
La Belle Assemblée so
that I can then endure torturous hours of fittings with the dressmaker. I enjoy my comfort just as much as anyone else.”

The minute the words were out of her mouth, Cecilia regretted uttering them. A man accustomed to escorting the always fashionable Miss Wyatt was bound to compare the carelessly put together Lady Cecilia Manners most unfavorable to his exquisitely turned-out fiancée.

But that did not appear to be the case. Far from being horrified, Sebastian appeared to be highly amused. He chuckled softly. “On the contrary. Lady Cecilia, you are artist enough to know that your person needs no embellishment, that simplicity becomes you and is always more elegant than whatever absurdity happens to be the latest kick of fashion. Furthermore, you have the courage to be who you are rather than ape the latest fashion plates in the hopes that your finery will serve to define you to the rest of the world.”

“Why ... why, thank you.” Not for the first time, Cecilia wondered how a man possessing the unique sensibilities the Earl of Charrington appeared to possess was affianced to the eternally à la mode Miss Wyatt. “But as you so rightly guessed, my brother would disagree with you, though he is kind enough not to fault me entirely for being such a dowd. Much of the blame he lays at Papa’s door.”

“Oh?”

“Neville says it is all on account of my irregular upbringing, and that I might have turned out quite properly if I had been raised in a normal way.”

“I am afraid that I must disagree with Neville, for it appears to me that you have turned out quite properly indeed. However, I will admit that it is most unusual for me to enjoy anyone’s company as much as I enjoy yours, so it is therefore safe to assume that yours was an unusual upbringing.”

“I suppose it was. Mama died when I was very young so I have no recollection of her. Papa could not bear to remain in a place that was filled with so many memories, and he was never interested in running the estate or taking his seat in Parliament. In addition to that, he always admired the work of his friend Sir William Hamilton so we moved to Naples very soon after Mama died, when I was still very young. Of course, I always had various nurses of sorts, but no proper governesses. Papa always insisted that the conversations of his friends were far more enlightening and edifying than anything he had ever heard uttered by a governess, and that I would do better to model myself after them than try to learn any of the standard female accomplishments that any governess worth her salt would insist on instilling in me.”

Cecilia paused for a moment, staring ruminatively at a small picture of the Bay of Naples. It was a night view illuminated by a full moon, with the ominous glow of Vesuvius in the background. “I suppose that, in many ways, what Papa was doing was raising a friend for himself. His acquaintances were so many and so varied that they could teach me more than any governess, and a surprising number of them were women. One was a protégée of the famous anatomist Signora Manzolini, who gave me a far greater understanding of that subject than most men possess—a subject that is of critical importance to any painter, and one in which most female painters are woefully ignorant. But there were others too—scientists and philosophers from Bologna, where women of talent and intellect are not so looked down upon as they are here. I will admit, however, that I preferred my lessons in drawing and watercolors to anything else.”

“You were most fortunate in your father; it sounds a most fascinating upbringing to me.”

Sebastian’s wistful tone and his obvious envy made her smile. That this wealthy and undoubtedly powerful man should envy a young woman who was barely able to support herself and her brother by painting portraits was more than a little absurd. “It might seem that way to you, perhaps, but Neville loathed it. He longed to be at a proper school with his proper peers. I, on the other hand, reveled in the freedom of learning anything and everything that interested me, with no one telling me it was time to stop with one sort of lesson and take up another. However, Neville is correct in being critical to a certain degree, for I am woefully ignorant in areas that do not interest me. A true governess would never have allowed that to happen.”

“But you are exceptionally skilled in others. A true governess might not have allowed that to happen either.” Sebastian leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, chin in his hands—the very picture of informality that Neville would have found utterly appalling. ‘Tell me about how you came to be interested in painting.”

Cecilia shook her head slowly. “I do not actually recall a time when I was not interested in it. From the earliest moments I can remember, I was drawing. And Papa always encouraged me.” She smiled reminiscently. “Of course, he did not allow me just to scribble away according to my fancy. As soon as he saw that I had some facility for it, he sought the advice of friends. He was an artist of some natural ability himself, but no training, which he always regretted. So from an early age I was set to copying the styles of the masters, sketching the antique vases in Sir William’s collection, and reproducing friezes and paintings from the ruins at Pompeii and Herculaneum. I was extremely fortunate in my surroundings. One could hardly help becoming an artist when surrounded by so much beauty, both natural and man-made.”

It was the faintest of sighs, quickly stifled, but he heard it. “And you miss it.”

Cecilia looked up, her eyes stinging with unshed tears. “Desperately.”

Sebastian’s heart turned over at the sadness in her voice and the unabashed honesty of her answer. More than anything, he wanted to give back to her what he imagined to be the camaraderie and easy pleasure and enjoyment of those sun-filled days. “And what happened?” He prompted gently.

“Napoleon.” Somewhat ashamed of revealing so much of herself to a man who was little better than a stranger, Cecilia grimaced ruefully, striving for a lighter touch.

He chuckled. “The man who can be credited for laying waste to any number of idyllic situations. So you wrapped up your paintings, along with a number of them that you were saving from the greedy clutches of the Corsican monster, and fled.”

“Yes. And we came to London because Papa still could not bear to return to Shelburne Hall.”

“I imagine that Neville, at least, was pleased to be home.”

“Ecstatic. But Papa was miserable. He found society here to be intolerably dull and confining after the free and easy interchange that was the norm in Naples. He used to complain that everyone looked and sounded the same, with their long, pale, disapproving faces and no variety, no laughter, ho true gaiety whatsoever. Slowly he lost his gaiety as well, and simply wasted away. Well,” her innate honesty forced her to add, “I should say that he wasted everything away.”

Something in his eyes, a flash of sympathy and comprehension, compelled her to continue. “He was dreadfully bored, but rather than deadening his senses with drink as so many do, he sought to stimulate them by gambling. At first it worked. He seemed more alive, told me that at least he was using his wits again. But then it too began to bore him. He became careless and, well...” She smiled bitterly. “You can guess the rest. He began to lose, so he spent even more time at the gaming tables trying to win it back. Soon he was neglecting to eat or sleep. He grew thinner and more frail, so that when he contracted an inflammation of the lungs after walking home in the rain one night, it was only a matter of days before he succumbed.”

Sebastian’s eyes were fixed intently on her face as her narrative drew to an end—on the hazel eyes glittering with tears, the brows that frowned so fiercely in an effort to keep those tears from spilling down her cheeks, the straight nose with its sprinkling of freckles and the delicately sculpted lips that quivered in spite of her best efforts to still them. And as he stared at her, he slowly began to see another face—an older face whose lines of laughter had turned to lines of cynicism and despair, whose eyes had lost their spark and were haunted by desolation, a face tanned by the Italian sun. The Marquess of Shelburne, her father, the man Sebastian had helped to ruin.

His insides twisted painfully as recognition dawned. How could he have been such a fool? Of course the jaded and desperate gambler had been Cecilia’s father. It was just that for so long he had thought of her as C. A. Manners, and then Lady Cecilia Manners, that he had remained oblivious to the connection. Naturally, Neville was now the Marquess of Shelburne, but Sebastian had so quickly dismissed Neville as such a monstrously shallow piece of fashionable inconsequence that he had hardly paid attention to his name or his title.

A cold wave of something midway between guilt and disgust washed over Sebastian, leaving him weak with apprehension. What had he done? And what was he going to do now? He could not avoid telling her. After all, it had been her innate honesty that had drawn him to her in the first place—her determination to live her life the way she wanted to, to look at life in the face and choose her path according to her interests and not society’s expectations, regardless of the consequences. And admiring her for being true to herself, how could he now choose the path of deceit?

On the other hand, how could he bear to tell her the truth? How could he admit to being a party to that slow wasting away she had so eloquently described? And the worst of it was that he could not plead ignorance. No, Sebastian had been fully, vitally, intensely aware of what he had been doing. He had been punishing a man for giving up on everything, giving up on his family and his responsibilities, ignoring everything in order to pursue the hypnotic lure of the gaming table just the way his own father had.

Never mind that Sebastian had put all the money he had won from the Marquess of Shelburne into a fund for destitute widows and their children; he now knew that he had destroyed the one person it seemed that Cecilia loved beyond all others—the man who was not only her father, but her teacher, her mentor, and her friend. How was he ever going to make it up to her?

By doing nothing,
a cowardly little voice inside him insisted. At least not for now. He would wait. He would become her friend, her patron, her champion. And over time, he would study how to make it up to her, and in time he would. He swore himself to it with all the fervor he had sworn to recover his own father’s lost fortunes. But in the meantime, he needed to learn as much about her as he could so that in return he could give her everything that she had ever wanted.

“I am so sorry.”

Cecilia shrugged dismissively. “Now you see why I knew so well how it was with your own father, only I turned to art rather than to mathematics to sustain me. And I turned to my work in order to make me forget.”

The sympathy in her voice was a knife to his heart. Her acknowledgment of their shared sorrow making it twist until the pain was almost more than he could bear.

“And to give you a growing reputation among the connoisseurs of fine portraiture,” he added. The lightness of his tone seemed miserably contrived, but he could think of no other way to extricate himself from a sea of emotions that threatened the very core of rational aloofness with which he had protected himself all these years since his father’s death.

“Yes.” She grimaced. “I suppose so.”

“And you do not find that gratifying?”

Cecilia raised her chin ever so slightly, a tamer imitation of the defiant glare she had given him during their first meeting when he had made the unfavorable comparison between her male and her female portraits. “To the extent that I find it gratifying to be considered a skilled craftsman.” She sniffed disdainfully. “But where is the artistry in that? I would be a poor creature indeed if I did not aspire to anything more than that.”

Sebastian grinned in spite of himself. Never before in his life had he encountered someone as driven as he was. It was like discovering some long-lost kin—a brother, a sister ... or perhaps his ideal companion. “Then am I to take it that history painting is your true calling?”

Cecilia looked at him with considerable respect. It was a rare person indeed, even among artistic circles, who could appreciate the difference. “I hope it is. But I have not tried it enough to know.”

The mixture of legitimate pride in her skills coupled with her innate modesty was as disarming as it was enchanting. Sebastian could not help himself. He wanted to know more and more about her. He wanted to listen endlessly, to watch the expressions follow one another across her mobile face, to see her eyes sparkle with amusement and darken with intensity, the lips go from soft smiles to firm determination, the dark brows quirk up with irony or knit with intensity. “And why have you not tried it?”

“I cannot earn a living at it, and I must earn a living.”

It was a simple enough statement, uttered without shame or complaint, and Sebastian could not think of anyone he knew or knew of—man or woman—who would have admitted to such a thing with such natural dignity. Most people in the Upper Ten Thousand did their best never to mention money at all. It was simply not good
ton
to acknowledge its existence, much less a need for it. “I see. And portraits allow you to earn a living?”

“Yes, they do. It is not that I dislike portrait painting precisely.” Cecilia hastened to add. “But if one is really going to make a name for oneself as an artist, it must be as a history painter. And I intend to make a name for myself as an artist.”