The Second Seduction of a Lady (12 page)

Caro defied the sinking of her stomach. “You must think me naïve. Gaming debts are not legally enforceable.”

“Quite right. That is why I declined to accept his vowels. He signed a loan.”

Even without close examination, Caro could see that the document he held was horribly official-looking. She’d seen enough loan instruments to recognize the tax stamp at a glance. “You lent my husband a large sum of money, then proceeded to win it from him at hazard?”

“That was his choice. I didn’t force him to cast the devil’s bones with me.” No one ever had to force Robert to lose money. He had a veritable genius for it.

She switched tactics. “Sir Bernard,” she said in the wheedling tone she’d practiced on importunate tradesmen for years. “I’m afraid I do not have a thousand pounds to give you. I live now under very modest circumstances.”

“Don’t forget the interest. The total is now closer to eleven hundred.” He bared his teeth, probably intending—and failing—to look sympathetic. She knew what was coming. The rumor had spread through the neighborhood like fire. She’d already had three merchants trying to collect the full amount owed them, based on garbled repetition of Oliver’s indiscretion.

“I hear you own a very valuable picture,” Horner said. “I would be prepared to take the
Farnese Venus
in full settlement of the debt.”

“How many times must I tell people,” she said, “that my husband sold the Venus before he died.” She groped for her handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes. “If you heard I possessed such a painting, the report doubtless referred to that one.” She pointed to the canvas hanging on the far wall of the drawing room, cast in shadow by the angle of the late-afternoon light. “It’s the work of Mr. Oliver Bream, my tenant at the carriage house. Anyone with the most cursory knowledge of art will tell you it was painted recently, not two hundred years ago.”

Her unwelcome visitor’s lascivious gaze settled on the almost naked woman, reclining on a satin-draped divan most excellently rendered from the painter’s imagination, Oliver not being in a position to afford such a costly prop.

“Posed for it yourself, did you?”

“Certainly not! How dare you suggest it?”

Horner’s skepticism was patent. “It looks like you.”

She wondered if that was how she appeared to others, looking straight at the viewer with a distinctly come-hither expression. But the goddess’s lush curves and full rose-nippled breasts were most definitely not hers. And even if they were, Horner was in no position to judge. She trusted she’d never be desperate enough to give him the opportunity to see her unclothed.

“It’s just the hair,” she said. “My husband originally bought the Titian because she had red hair like mine.”

“Why did he sell it then?”

Caro wiped her eyes again and gave a pitiful little sniff. “You need hardly ask. You are aware of his financial difficulties.”

“Mighty fishy how the most valuable painting he owned disappeared just before his death.”

“I don’t know for certain, but I think he lost it, or sold it, to his good friend Marcus Lithgow.”

“Who promptly left the country. Convenient that.”

“Naturally, the loss of the painting that meant so much to me caused me great pain. I asked Mr. Bream to try and reproduce it, and he made the hair as short as mine is now.”

“So it was done lately?”

Some of it very lately indeed. If her visitor’s nose hovered closer to the canvas, he’d notice the tacky paint on the face and hair, hurriedly applied that morning.

“In the last year,” Caro said. This morning was certainly in the last year.

“Strange that you can afford to buy a big picture like that yet can’t find ten pounds to pay your coal bill.”

“You seem remarkably well informed about my affairs, Sir Bernard.”

“Just taking care of my interests, dear lady.” He turned from the wall and fixed his eyes on Caro’s bosom with a distinct gleam. This was an occasion on which she regretted her adoption of the scanty muslin fashions from France. “We may be able to come to a different arrangement, Mrs. Townsend. A fine woman like you must get lonely…at night.”

Caro would have liked to slap the unctuous rascal. Or kick him somewhere painful. But she had to keep him on the right side of friendly, or he could cause her trouble. Caro owed a frightening amount of money to dozens of creditors, holders of the staggering bills run up by the Townsends during Robert’s lifetime. Her late husband had been meticulous in paying his gambling debts but never paid a merchant if he could avoid it. When he died, it turned out the former had consumed most of his once-handsome fortune while the tradesmen’s bills lingered on to bedevil his widow.

She once more had recourse to her handkerchief, dabbing delicately at the corner of one eye.

“I couldn’t even consider such a notion, Sir Bernard, with poor, poor Robert dead little more than a year. But I am sure there are many ladies who would be flattered to have a fine gentleman like yourself pay your addresses.”

She hoped her regard conveyed enough admiration to flatter the villain, combined with a shocked grief at his presumption. In fact, he looked disconcerted. Caro strongly suspected the existence of a Lady Horner and thus the impossibility of the horrid creature paying any addresses of an honest kind.

“Allow me to show you out.”

He stayed her progress to the door with a hand on her shoulder. “The information I have is that there’s a Titian in this house. Not just a painting of a naked woman.”

For the first time since Horner had appeared at the front door and talked his way past her manservant, Caro produced a genuine smile.

“Of course there is,” she said, shaking off his touch. “Allow me to introduce him. Sir Bernard, meet Titian, known to his friends as Tish.” She pointed at the striped ginger cat sprawled on the sofa.

“Your cat?” he said in disbelief?

Tish opened one golden eye and looked lazily at the visitor.

“My cat. And now you know that the rumors about the Titian are nonsense, I beg you will leave me in peace with my grief.”

Though far from satisfied and not entirely convinced, there was nothing Horner could do but depart, not without an unnecessary kiss on her hand and a promise to call on her again soon.

Caro collapsed onto the sofa and sighed. Horner wasn’t the first dun she’d had to repel that week, merely the most terrifying. The tradesmen she currently patronized for her household needs were more polite but no more inclined to issue her credit. Keeping herself and her small staff of servants fed, clothed, and warm was a constant struggle. She now had a houseguest too.

“What am I to do, Tish?” He rolled onto his back and started to purr as she rubbed his tummy. “What shall I sell next? It may have to be you, especially if you don’t eat less.”

Around the modest but well-proportioned salon hung Robert’s principal legacy: the oil paintings, watercolors, and drawings he’d collected since he had been an Oxford undergraduate. Those of substantial value had been sold, but many remained: the works of young, unknown, or unpopular artists. Along with the house and her meager income, she’d been permitted to keep them, but only because none of them would make so much as a pinhole in the remaining mountain of debt.

Except the Titian. The only one she truly cared for.

Robert’s former guardian had negotiated payment arrangements which she found hard to meet while continuing to live within her slender means. She still owed large sums and now this new and enormous obligation. If she didn’t pacify Horner, he could summon the debt collectors again. Possibly more efficient ones than had previously searched the house.

She tore upstairs to her bedroom and found the secret catch. A section of painted paneling opened, the door to a closet visible only to one who knew about it.

Her irrationally pounding heart calmed. It was still there.

Caro stepped into the tiny octagonal room, cunningly fit into the junction of three second-floor rooms. Even the servants were ignorant of its existence. As soon as he’d seen the secret closet, Robert had wanted the house, though small for their needs and on an unfashionable street. The notion of a private cabinet, such as had been possessed by many royal collectors, tickled his fancy. He’d kept some of his more
outré
works of art there, and since his death, it had been home to the
Farnese Venus,
one of Titian’s most appealing works.

She lay, all creamy flesh and sensuous curves, on a bed of crimson velvet, her son, the infant Cupid, playing at her feet. They’d bought it together, from a French émigré count, to celebrate their marriage. Even in the days of the 1790s, when fleeing French aristocrats let priceless treasures go for a song, the Titian had commanded a princely price. Robert said the goddess looked like her, with her red-gold locks and creamy skin tones. She didn’t, of course. Caro was a diminutive redhead, pretty but no true beauty. Still, the Venus remained special to the Townsends, a souvenir of rapturous honeymoon days.

When she first saw it, the pose was what caught her attention. She would imitate the goddess for Robert, dressing her red hair in the same way and arranging her undressed figure for his delectation and seduction. The child god had been a charming irrelevancy. Now she avoided looking at him for a different reason. He was a bittersweet reminder that she’d lost her own son as well as his father.

She’d lied and cheated her creditors by holding on to the Titian, even when its sale would clear many of her debts. Caro couldn’t let go of the tangible proof that she had once meant something to her husband, before he’d been consumed by his passion for the dice. Before his short life had come to an inglorious end of a fever caught gaming for forty-eight hours straight in a low hell in Seven Dials. It was foolish, perhaps, but with Robert gone and no child, she felt if she lost the Venus, her whole life would lose its meaning.

She bid the Venus a silent farewell. Hearing her name called, she looked over the banister and saw a mop of fair curls at the foot of the stairs.

“I saw him leave,” Oliver said.

“I fobbed him off. For now.”

“Well done! What did he think of my Venus?”

“Artists! Do you honestly care what a man like Horner thinks? All he cares about is money.”

“He’s the first man to see it. Was he overcome by her beauty?”

“He was struck by her resemblance to me. How could you, Oliver? First you blab all over town that I own a picture that was supposed to have been sold ages ago. Now he’ll no doubt start a rumor that I posed naked for you.” In fact, Oliver had taken an unfinished canvas, abandoned when he could no longer afford to pay the model, and adapted it.

His boyish feature wore nothing but wounded innocence. “The whole point was that the hair is like yours.”

“You didn’t have to make it short! When Robert said the Titian reminded him of me, my hair was long.”

“I’m sorry. I never thought of that.”

As they talked they’d returned to the drawing room and now stood before the nude. Caro shook her head in despair. “I do trust that isn’t my expression. She looks as though she is ready to welcome all comers. Horner had quite the wrong idea.”

“No, not you. I was inspired by someone else.”

“Oliver! Surely you don’t mean Anne! I swear, she’s never worn an expression like that in her life.”

Oliver wore the fatuous grin provoked by Caro’s cousin and current houseguest, Anne Brotherton, the latest unattainable object of his desire. “In my dreams, she does. One day, I know, she’ll look at me like that.”

Poor Oliver. He suffered hopeless passions, never with the slightest hint of reciprocation from their objects. His adoration of Cynthia, Lady Windermere, had lasted only a few days, but there was no point saying he’d be over Anne within the month. While in the throes of his fickle infatuations, he was convinced his love would last forever and eventually melt the lady-du-jour’s obdurate heart. Caro reminded herself that she was not feeling sympathetic toward Oliver’s absurdities today.

“I’m still very angry at you.” Her voice broke with frustration. “How could you be so indiscreet, Oliver? I told you the Titian was a secret.”

“I’m sorry I told Johnson. I’ve told him it was all nonsense. He won’t say anything else, I promise. You know what happens when I get foxed.”

Caro always found it hard to stay annoyed at Oliver. “I was at fault too. I drank too much wine that night.”

“I’m glad you still have her. She’s such an amazing work. How did Titian manage those skin tones?” He rocked back on his heels and squinted at his own work. “Mind you, I think
my
Venus is a damned good painting.”

“It is,” Caro assured him. “The flesh is beautifully painted.”

“She is my masterpiece. I’m glad she’ll be displayed in your drawing room. Someone may see her and want to buy her.”

The painting was supposed to make up for the fact that Oliver owed her quite a large sum of money, amassed through small loans, a few pounds here and there to buy paints, canvas, or food. At present, he actually lived in the room over the carriage house as well as working there, having been ejected from his lodgings for nonpayment of rent. He didn’t pay her rent, either. It was some time since he’d sold a picture. Caro was too softhearted to remind him that his Venus belonged, by rights, to her. Lord knows she’d never sell it, so if he found a buyer he might as well reap the reward.

Now that she knew of his inspiration, Caro could see some resemblance to Anne, despite her cousin’s dark hair.

“I’m sure Annabella won’t notice, but I wonder if Cynthia will see the likeness when she dines with me this evening.”

“Let me dine with you too,” he begged.

“You told me you were meeting Bartie St. James and the Longleys.”

“We could all dine with you. Please? It’ll be fun! Besides, none of us can afford to eat anywhere decent. Neither Bartie nor Adam Longley has sold a picture in weeks.”

And I can’t afford to feed every starving artist in London.

But she didn’t say it. She never did. She loved her friends, and the Battens would come up with something. Robert’s former valet and his wife, who combined the work of housekeeper and cook, had stayed with her despite the sometimes chaotic and often impecunious nature of her household. However short of money she might be, it was nothing to the poverty of Oliver and his friends. Besides, she and Robert had always kept an open house, and to do otherwise insulted his memory.