Chloe’s eyes widened. Peter was holding what appeared to be five or six bunches of violets, fresh with dew. They looked as if they had been picked no more than ten minutes before. Peter paced around the breakfast table while Chloe waited impatiently. He bowed again, at her chair, and she finally snatched them from his hands.
Peter left the room, his eyes searching the ceiling for an answer to why he was working for a wealthy cit instead of a great lord. Because they pay more, he thought practically.
Chloe plucked the card from among the violets, her fingers trembling a little. Then she half laughed in surprise. They weren’t from Will—or Lord Holland, she hastily corrected herself. Instead she was holding an elegantly printed card that read Charlotte Daicheston across the bottom. Written in handwriting that looked almost male was a note: I am very much looking forward to our appointment. Do let me know if another time would be more convenient. And it was signed Charlotte, in a sprawling, confident hand.
“Who is it from?” barked her father from his end of the table. “That jackanapes who ate here last evening?” He had missed all the implications of Lord Holland’s brief attendance of Lady Charlotte at the theater, but he thought he knew the smell of a fortune hunter when he saw one. Although he had to admit that the baron was a good deal more bearable than most of the dissolute, useless aristocrats he saw wandering down the Strand. He seemed to know something of commerce, for example, which is more than one could say of the majority of Tulips his daughter met.
“No, Papa,” Chloe said, her eyes dancing. “It is a note from Lady Charlotte Daicheston.”
“Humph,” her father said. “That woman’s got herself into the papers again.”
“Oh? May I see, Papa? That is, if you are quite finished.”
“Finished? I don’t read the gossip pages, miss!” His family tactfully ignored the issue of how he knew about Charlotte Daicheston’s presence in the papers as Chloe scanned the gossip pages.
“Oh, Mama,” she gasped. “Apparently Charlotte and her friends arranged to have fireworks set off for a poor sick man last night, after we left Vauxhall.” Chloe didn’t even notice her use of Charlotte’s first name, in her excitement. She read aloud the entire article, which was agreeably detailed about exactly which fireworks had been shot off and the reactions of all concerned, particularly the driver of a phaeton whose horses had been startled by the sudden blooming of a large rearing horse in the sky. The driver’s tart commentary was, however, treated as sour grapes by the journalist, who finished by remarking how few people these days bother making kind gestures toward the sick and invalid. Mrs. van Stork smiled hugely. She herself spent most of her time making up clothing for London’s poor population; Lady Charlotte promptly moved into an honored place in the galaxy of those people she knew—or knew of—in London. Even Mr. van Stork grunted approvingly after Chloe finished reading the article.
Just before leaving, Chloe pinned some of the violets to her white dress. She was going to Charlotte’s house … and perhaps, who knows? She might even see Will there. Unlike her father, she had no illusions about what Charlotte’s beckoning nod to Lord Holland had meant the night before. Perhaps, she thought, gasping at her own temerity, they are lovers! Chloe’s common sense intervened. It was unlikely. Charlotte was simply so beautiful that no man could resist her summons. Well, Chloe thought, she would just have to hope that Charlotte turned her eyes away from Will. It sounded from the gossip column as if Charlotte might marry the “Ineligible Earl,” whoever that was. Her mother’s lips had folded tight as a steel box when Chloe asked who he might be and why he was ineligible.
She arrived at Calverstill House jittery with excitement. Perhaps Charlotte had changed her mind? Why on earth would she want to paint Chloe anyway? Her large eyes grew larger as she was ushered into the entranceway of the Calverstill town house. She had visited houses of the aristocracy, of course. Her friend Sissy Commonweal had invited her home for several vacation breaks from school. But this house was different. The floor of the hallway seemed to be made of four or five different colors of green marble, and the ceiling arched over her head in a wild profusion of cupids and reclining gods. She was so overcome when the butler ushered her into an elegant salon that she fixed her glance rigidly on the floor. Surely there must be some kind of mistake! People who lived in houses like this didn’t paint portraits.
But then she heard slippers running lightly down the stairs and Charlotte Daicheston entered the room.
“I’m so glad you are here!” she said.
Chloe looked at her the way a drowning man looks at a lifeboat. She was incredibly beautiful, but more than that, she was so warm. Chloe rose to meet her, stumbling a bit.
“Are you certain—”
“Of course I’m certain! I’ve been working for an hour or so already, getting everything set up. Let me introduce you to my mama first.”
Chloe paled. She hadn’t thought about meeting grand personages such as a real duchess. But Charlotte led her nimbly up the grand flight of stairs and off to the left.
“This is the morning room.” Charlotte threw open a pair of delicate, tall doors. Chloe found herself on the threshold of a pale gold chamber, hung with chintz curtains that swayed in the light breeze. Sunshine was pouring in and the furniture was comfortable rather than elegant. Six or seven women, some clearly servants, were seated around a large table, sewing. Charlotte’s mother rose and moved toward them. She was a surprisingly tall woman with a very sweet smile, who took Chloe’s hand and asked about her parents. Then she begged them to excuse her.
“We are trying to finish a score of boys’ shirts that are desperately needed at Bellview Orphanage,” she said apologetically. “Otherwise I would accompany you up to Charlotte’s studio. But I am sure you will be fine.” She gave Chloe a distracted smile.
Chloe smiled back. “I left my mama finishing a set of shirts—for adults, not children.”
“It is endless,” Charlotte’s mother said rather helplessly. “I feel as if we sew and sew, and everywhere I see people wearing only rags.”
Charlotte and Chloe curtsied and they continued up the stairs. The stairs got suddenly smaller and steeper, going up to the next floor.
“This is really the nursery floor,” Charlotte said over her shoulder. “But there aren’t any children now, obviously, and so my parents turned the nursery into my studio.”
They paused in the door of a large room, painted white. All around the walls were candelabra, large ones, small gilt fragile-looking ones, a pair covered with sea-shells. Chloe’s mouth fell open. There was a hideous, large candelabra designed to look like tree branches, and even one that must have been in the original nursery because it depicted Noah’s Ark with candles sprouting from several of the animals’ heads.
“Oh,” Charlotte laughed. “I completely forgot how odd this room must look. You see, I need light more than anything else. So we put up all the extra candelabra we had in the attic, and then we sent one of the footmen down to the Strand with instructions to buy anything he could find. And this was the result.”
Chloe looked around slowly. The lights had been affixed to the walls every foot or so, and each one had stark white candles in its holders.
“The footmen put in new candles every morning,” Charlotte continued. “I get hideously irritable when they burn down, because if one goes out it changes the light, and finally Mrs. Simpkin—our housekeeper—decided that the candles burn first here. They are changed every morning and then they go into other rooms, like the bedchambers. London is so dark with coal dust that I can work only until around eleven o’clock in the morning with natural light, and often not even then.”
Chloe nodded. She had never seen so many wax candles in one room. Her mother was no nip-cheese, as she said, but even so they used wax sparingly and tallow dips in all the bedrooms. She walked slowly into the room. Posed before a large set of windows was an easel. When she walked around and stood in front of it she was transfixed. The picture wa
s a laughing version of the young woman, Lady Sophie York, whom she had met the night before at the theater. Sophie was so alive, as if she might dash off the canvas. She didn’t look at all dreamy or posed, like the portraits exhibited in the Royal Portrait Gallery each year.
“I brought it out,” Charlotte said, “so you could see my work. Ah, do you like it?” Chloe’s little face was like a barometer, Charlotte thought. You could see each expression register clearly. At the moment she looked appalled, hopefully not because of the painting.
Chloe turned her head quickly. Charlotte actually sounded a bit anxious! “It’s splendid,” she said stumblingly. “But … why would you want to paint me? She’s so dazzling, and I am quite ordinary.”
“That’s nonsense, of course,” Charlotte replied. “You are very lovely, as you probably know. But that doesn’t matter. If you hadn’t agreed, I was thinking of painting Campion, our butler. What I want is a look, not a face. See—if you look at Sophie here, what I tried to do was catch Sophie herself, not just a beautiful set of features.”
Chloe looked hard at the painting. “Oh,” she finally said. “She’s very, um, alluring, isn’t she?”
Charlotte beamed. “Yes. And that’s Sophie too, in person.”
Chloe thought about the hungry eyes of the men surrounding Sophie York the night before. “Yes,” she said. “But there’s something more….”
“It’s a joke to her,” Charlotte said. “She is provocative, but not really seductive. What I mean is, she’s untouched, herself.” Charlotte strongly wondered if she should be so explicit with a young, chaste girl. But Chloe was only the third person to see the painting, not counting Sophie, and the first who had bothered to ask her anything about it.
“I see,” Chloe said slowly. “It’s around the mouth, isn’t it? She looks—well, like the goddess Diana. Not that I know what Diana looks like,” she added in some confusion. “But as a goddess, she’s supposed to be incredibly beautiful, but rejected all men, isn’t that right?”
“I never thought,” Charlotte replied with interest. “I’m not sure I’d agree … I thought of the picture more as someone who plays with fire she doesn’t understand—yet.”
“Ah,” Chloe said. Now she understood perfectly. Only two days ago she would have unhesitatingly classed herself with Sophie, except she didn’t even play at being seductive. But last night an emotion she didn’t know she had blazed into life when Will Holland kissed her.
She turned back to Charlotte without saying anything, but Charlotte instantly realized that Chloe was no demure, unawakened maiden. Chloe said so little that one was in danger of classifying her as naive. Charlotte was growing more interested in this portrait every moment.
“What would you like me to do?” Chloe asked politely.
Charlotte led her over to a comfortable divan. “I should like you simply to sit. There is no need to fix your head in one position, or not move. I am going to spend the next couple of hours making a whole series of sketches of your head in profile and from the front. Then, as I told you last night, I will work on it myself for a while, and hatch a plan. And then I will ask you to come back for another sitting, probably next week.”
Chloe sat down, feeling self-conscious. Charlotte quickly pulled a huge chef’s apron over her head and sat down with a large pad of paper in her lap. She started sketching, the quick, sure movements of her wrist the only thing Chloe could see. At first Charlotte asked her a few questions, but Chloe could see that she didn’t really want to talk. So Chloe fell easily into silence and started thinking about Will. Will last night … in the corridor … in the carriage, in front of her house.
Charlotte’s hand trembled. What in God’s name was happening to Chloe? The self-contained, earnest little girl she’d met the night before had transformed into a passionate woman, glowing at every pore with sexual interest. Could it be that she, Charlotte, was the naive one? She simply didn’t see the world as it was until Alex came along and … Charlotte scowled violently. She wasn’t sure she liked this new world, full of roving husbands and maidens feverish with desire. But—perhaps it was Charlotte who was feverish and she was writing the emotion onto the face of a sedate little Dutch maiden? Charlotte looked down at the sketch in her lap, and at the sheafs that had fallen like snow around her chair. No. Her pencil didn’t lie. It never had. The thought steadied her and she began sketching faster, trying to capture Chloe’s restraint, the quality of extreme self-control that was so fascinatingly balanced by glowing sensuality.
Charlotte had fallen into a rhythm by an hour or so later. And she was getting somewhere. Bits of certain sketches had something she wanted. She’d caught a look in Chloe’s eyes, for example, somewhere in a page on the floor. And she had a beautiful, calm chin and throat tossed off in coal, not pencil, also drifting about the floor. The portrait was beginning to tumble itself together in her head, when there was a sudden interruption. A sharp knock sounded on the door of the studio.
“What the devil!” Charlotte said in a completely unladylike manner, jumping to her feet.
Chloe’s mouth fell open for the second time since she entered the studio. She had never heard a lady swear like that.
Charlotte was furious. Chloe had relaxed only about ten minutes ago. Her shoulders had been strained and unnatural for forty minutes. Everyone knew not to enter this room during working hours.
A large dark hand gripped the door and swung it open. As soon as Charlotte heard a voice telling Campion that no, he wouldn’t wait and be damned with him, her heart flip-flopped. It was Alex, genially dismissing Campion’s protests. He must have followed the butler right up the stairs, because normally Campion would never have permitted an unchaperoned man to enter the upper floors of the house.
Charlotte straightened her back, her mouth tight, as Alex entered the room. She was ready to give him the lecture of his life when she realized he wasn’t alone. In front of him trotted Pippa, her plump legs moving her surely toward the lovely heaps of paper she spied in front of her.
“Stop her!” Charlotte shrieked. Alex managed to catch the big, starched bow on the back of Pippa’s dress as she was about to dive into a pile of paper. Charlotte ran about, gathering papers while Alex held back his howling daughter.
Chloe rose from the couch. “How do you do, my lord?” she said in her quiet way. “You met me last night; I am Chloe van Stork.”
“I remember,” Alex said, smiling warmly. “Are you having your portrait painted?” He had instantly grasped the connotations of the candelabra and the easel.
“Well, not yet,” Chloe replied. “Lady Charlotte is still making sketches.”
“Oh, please!” Charlotte said. “Do call me Charlotte.” She was still picking up paper, watching Pippa out of the corner of her eye. She wouldn’t put it past Alex to let go of his daughter. She finally managed to gather all the sketches together and place them securely on the mantelpiece, weighed down by a candlestick. Meanwhile Alex, carrying Pippa, who was squealing, although a bit more quietly, walked around to see Charlotte’s easel. Charlotte couldn’t help watching him out of the corner of her eye.
He stood absolutely still. His only movement was to drop Pippa gently to the ground. She immediately scooted off and started trying to climb a chair. Still he stood. Charlotte was feeling more and more peevish. Perhaps he couldn’t even think of a pleasant compliment. Finally he raised his head and looked straight into her eyes.
“Why bluebells?”
“Why … what do you mean?” Charlotte responded confusedly.
“Why bluebells—why not rabbits?” His mouth quirked. He walked over to her. “You are going to keep that picture until Sophie marries, aren’t you? I can’t see it joining the stodgy members of the Brandenburg portrait gallery, somehow. So rabbits—fertility.”
“Rabbits, fertility,” Charlotte repeated stupidly.
Chloe cleared her throat gently. “It’s an Italian custom, isn’t it, my lord? In the Renaissance, Italian brides were given
pictures of themselves with rabbits playing in the background.”
Charlotte smiled involuntarily. He got it! Her portrait was precisely a bride picture: a woman on the cusp of learning something. Alex’s huge hands grasped her shoulders.
“Your portrait is quite splendid. You know that, don’t you?”
She looked up at him without responding.
I wonder why he’s called ineligible, Chloe thought to herself, watching the lithe, beautiful couple. They were standing very close to each other, and from what she could see of Alex’s face, he was within a hairsbreadth of pulling Charlotte into his arms. Chloe felt suddenly embarrassed. The naked passion on Alex’s face made her own face feel hot. She turned away.
“We have to go to Italy,” Alex said without pausing. “We’ll go to Florence and see the Leonardo portraits … and Rome, the Michelangelos—”
Chloe wouldn’t have been so embarrassed if she could have seen Charlotte’s face. Even as Alex listed the places Charlotte most wanted to visit in the whole world, her irritation grew. She woke up cross this morning, aching inside for something unknown. And with Charlotte’s annoyance grew the conviction that she would not marry Alex. What she felt for him was raw sexual desire; obviously that was not an emotion that a lady cultivated, let alone married someone for. In fact, she had thought with satisfaction of the moment when Alex would ask her to marry him again, and she would politely, but coolly, refuse him. And now he was simply assuming that she would marry him! The gross arrogance of it galled her to the quick. Her face darkened even more.
Alex was no fool. He broke off his list of Italian cities and stared at her.
Charlotte opened her mouth and then closed it again. She could not tell him exactly what she thought of him and his assumptions in front of Chloe and Pippa. Besides, she had been aware for some time that Pippa was precariously perched on the settee, trying to throw her fat little leg over the back. From there she would certainly fall down and hurt herself. So she simply turned about and swept Pippa off the settee.