“There. That’s all. I’ve said more than I intended—more than I ought. I’ll be off now before I can embarrass you further.” Mr. Thorne’s voice was bleak. “I trust you will forget I said any of this and remember me—remember me kindly.”
He was turning, leaving, his hands jammed in his pockets, his head bowed.
Beside Imogen, the plate of cakes still sat untouched on the bench. It felt like hours, days, but it had only been minutes, minutes for the world to turn upside down and everything to change. It seemed obscene that the birds should go on chirping, the sun shining, when they all ought to be frozen in their course, as frozen, as confused, as she.
No. He couldn’t leave. To leave now—after what he had said, after what he hadn’t said—it was unthinkable, as unthinkable of the prospect of never again seeing him walk whistling down the slope, his easel over his shoulder.
She didn’t stop to think what it meant if he stayed; all she knew was that she couldn’t let him go.
The words burst out of her. “Don’t go.”
FOURTEEN
Herne Hill, 1849
Imogen’s words stopped Gavin in his tracks, clenching around his heart like a fist.
Her voice behind him was unsteady, shaking. “How can you simply turn and walk away after that?”
Gavin knew he shouldn’t turn around. Leaving and leaving quickly was the only option open to him. But he turned anyway.
“After that,” he said, his voice low, “how could I stay?”
Imogen’s face was very pale, but for two patches of color high on her cheeks. “So you’ll just take the coward’s way out? Speak and run and leave me here behind?”
Frustration crackled through him. “And if I were to stay, what then? Tea cakes and polite conversation?”
Imogen made an impatient gesture. “I thought you liked the tea cakes!”
“I do!” Good Lord, were they really arguing about tea cakes? They stood facing each other, panting as if they’d just gone a round in the ring. Or a bout in bed. Gavin pressed the heels of his hands against his temples. “It’s not the bloody tea cakes.”
He saw her eyes widen. Had no one sworn before her before? Good. Let her see what he really was and be warned. He wasn’t one of her polished gentlemen; he’d come from a place where people grabbed and scrabbled.
“For the love of God, Imogen—” He hadn’t meant to call her by her name. It just slipped out. Gavin ground determinedly on. “I don’t see any other way. To sit here and be near you and see you smile and yet not be able to touch you— It’s more than flesh can bear. It’s more than I can bear.”
He didn’t know how else to say it, how to make her understand. His feelings for her weren’t honorable and courtly. They were messy and raw and very, very carnal.
“I don’t trust myself with you,” he said. “You shouldn’t trust me with you.”
Instead of moving away, Imogen took a step towards him, the wide skirts of her gown brushing against the toes of his boots. Her face was pale and set, her eyes dark and wide.
“I do not want to lose you,” she said.
Gavin pressed his eyes shut, hating himself for hurting her, hating himself all the more for not being able to simply walk away. He had thought to spare them both pain, but this only made it worse.
“You will forget me,” he said in a constricted voice. “The portrait will hang on your wall and become dingy with soot and you will forget all about the man who wielded the brush.”
Even as he said it, he knew he lied. He didn’t want her to forget him. He wasn’t noble enough for that. He wanted her to long for him as he longed for her, to dream of him at night, restless and unsatisfied.
“Can you really believe that?” Imogen’s skirts swished against her legs as she moved in agitated circles around the summerhouse. “You cannot know, you cannot imagine, how much these past months have meant to me, to know, every Monday, that you would be here. To speak together, to really speak together, as if you care what I have to say—”
“I do care.” Gavin knew he shouldn’t say it, but he couldn’t lie. “I have shared with you things I have shared with no one else.”
Imogen looked up at him, her teeth digging deep into her lower lip, hard enough to draw blood. “The thought of your leaving—that you might never return—is like a little death.”
Gavin told himself that she couldn’t know the slang meaning of that term, couldn’t know what it implied. But he did, and the image left him shaking with desire and shame.
“Death if I leave,” he said, through white lips, “but dishonor if I stay.”
“Honor,” Imogen repeated bitterly. “‘I could not love thee, dear, so much, / Loved I not honor more.’ Men always call it honor when they would rather be somewhere else.”
Gavin had gone two strides forward, her hands clenched in his before he realized what he was doing. His hands were on her wrists, her forearms, her shoulders. He gave her a slight shake. “Do you really believe that there is anywhere else I would rather be?”
She was tall for a woman, nearly as tall as he. She barely had to tilt her head back to look him in the eye.
“Gavin,” she said breathlessly, and the sound of her name on his lips undid him. “Gavin.”
They stared at each other like drowning men sighting land, drinking in the sight of each other, her skirts enveloping her legs, the buttons on her basque pressing into his chest, her breath warm on his lips.
Gavin wasn’t sure who moved, but Imogen’s arms were around his neck and his around her waist, pulling her close, pressing her to him as though he could make her part of his flesh, her skirts billowing around his legs, as they kissed deeply, hungrily, all the frustrated desire of the last months taking shape in that burning, endless kiss, his blood singing wildly in his ears, every nerve of his body alive, alive to Imogen, Imogen …
Gavin pulled back, breathing heavily. He felt as though he’d just pounded back a pint of gin, his wits gone, his lungs burning. Imogen’s lips were rosy, her hair mussed. He’d never seen anything more lovely or more desirable.
Lovely and desirable and quite definitely married. Married to the man who had hired him to paint her portrait. In her husband’s garden by her husband’s house.
“Your reputation—” Gavin managed, the words coming out in pants. “Your husband—”
Imogen’s hair had come loose from its pins. She shook it back, her color high and her eyes bright. “Why would he miss what he does not want?”
“You can’t mean—”
She didn’t shy from the question but met him eye to eye, a wealth of bitterness in her voice. “It has been years since he has touched me so.”
A wave of possessiveness washed over Gavin, tenderness mixed with a fierce anger against Grantham, for having Imogen and not appreciating her.
“The man’s a fool,” Gavin said roughly. “Or incapable. There’s no other reason for it.” He struggled to put his feelings into words. “It’s not just the way you look—it’s the way you move, the way your expression changes as you speak, the way your lips curve when you smile.”
There was so much passion in her, all buttoned and locked away, and he wanted to be the one to free it, to feel the force of it all directed at him. He’d avoided entanglements all these years, concentrating on his art. But when he was with Imogen—it didn’t seem like a choice of one or the other.
“I want you so much that it scares me,” he said baldly. “And if you have any sense, you’ll take the portrait and send me packing.”
With a deliberate movement, Imogen slid the palms of her hands up his chest to his shoulders.
“Stay,” she said, her voice thick with emotion. “Stay.”
And that was all.
Her lips blotted out reason. Thought was replaced by sensation as they slid slowly to the ground together, shielded by the walls of the summerhouse and the rosebushes that twined around and encircled them.
Herne Hill, 2009
Nick show
ed up eight o’clock sharp on Friday night, takeout in hand.
Julia came to the door in jeans, flip-flops, and a button-down shirt. She’d meant the flip-flops as a sign that this was just a casual evening at home, not anything special, but she’d underestimated the height differential.
Nick looked at the spot where he’d expected to find her, then down. “You’ve shrunk.”
Julia waggled a foot. “No heels.” She cocked a brow. “Unless it’s just your extreme loftiness. Why didn’t you tell me I’m supposed to curtsy when I see you?”
For a moment, Nick looked blank. Then he mustered a heartfelt groan. “Oh, Lord. Caroline.”
Julia closed and locked the front door behind him. “She hasn’t quite set up a shrine to your family name, but she’s getting there.” Julia decided not to tell him that he was also apparently betrothed to her cousin Natalie. That might sound like she was fishing. “I was informed in no uncertain terms that your lineage be both old and venerable.”
“It’s not nearly as illustrious as she thinks it is.” Nick held up two paper bags. Orange liquid was beginning to stain the bottom of one. “Where shall I put these?”
“Kitchen. This way. Cousin Caroline would probably have a heart attack if she knew I was using you as my takeout delivery boy.” Julia waved Nick forward, down the twisting corridors that had become so familiar during her month in residence. They passed the formal dining room, an afterthought of a breakfast room, and a butler’s pantry lined with glass-fronted cabinets, with all the latest in 1930s mod cons. “Have you ever seen that old show Keeping Up Appearances?”
“Hyacinth Bucket?” Nick choked on a laugh. “God, you’re right. They’re sisters under the skin.”
“I could tell she was itching to plump the pillows the second I sat down on them. I’m pretty sure she thinks I have cooties.” Julia flicked on the kitchen light, a bulbous 1960s fixture with stylized metal leaves and large glass balls. It was a cozy room, obviously a later add-on to the house, with mustard yellow appliances and cheerful pine cabinets. “The afternoon wasn’t a total loss, though. I did find out who our mystery woman is.”
“Who?” Nick set the bags down on the kitchen table as Julia went to fetch plates from the cupboard. They were Aunt Regina’s old dishes, once brightly patterned with gaudy yellow flowers, now faded to a comfortable pastel. Julia suspected that Aunt Regina had ceased investing in housewares around the same time bell-bottoms were just coming into style.
Julia doled out two plates, two sets of forks and knives. “Her name was Imogen Grantham and she was married to the son of the guy who first bought this house. The dates don’t work, though.”
“How so?” Nick began uncrating the food, entirely at home in Aunt Regina’s old kitchen. He was wearing another button-down shirt, this time with jeans. The casual outfit suited him. He didn’t look like a viscount; he looked like a J.Crew ad.
Julia realized he was waiting for her to speak. She dumped a pile of soupspoons in the center of the table. “According to the genealogy, Imogen married Arthur Grantham in 1839, which makes it way too early for her to have posed for Thorne before she married Grantham.”
Nick opened the rice and offered it to her first. “You wouldn’t expect to see a respectable bourgeois matron posing for an artist.” In male fashion, he bypassed the spoon and dumped lamb vindaloo on his plate by the simple expedient of upending the container. “Do you think the date’s off? On the genealogy.”
“Possible,” said Julia, judiciously spooning chicken tikka over her rice. “Cousin Caroline claims that Aunt Regina had documentation—”
“The marriage license?”
“—but I haven’t come across anything that early. All the papers in Aunt Regina’s desk seem to be recent stuff.”
Nick leaned his elbows on the table, nudging the rice container out of the way. “Any chance there are earlier papers elsewhere?”
Julia traced patterns in her rice. “The attic,” she said. “It looks like later generations just shoved everything they weren’t using up there willy-nilly.” She looked up at him. “It’s a huge project. There are metric tons of boxes.”
Nick grinned at her and ripped off another piece of naan. “I don’t have anything else to do tonight, have you?”
Julia tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “What, no snooker match tonight?”
Nick leaned forward. His tone was low and intimate. “I’ll let you in on a secret. I only watch snooker when I’m legless.”
When he turned on the charm, even in jest, it packed a potent punch. Julia speared a chunk of chicken, trying to maintain a respectable air of sangfroid. “Does that really improve it?”
The corners of Nick’s mouth twitched. “You’d be surprised.”
“Yes, yes, I would be,” said Julia, and felt foolishly pleased when Nick laughed. “Wait, so how did you come to own an antique store? Instead of becoming a professional snooker watcher.”
For a moment, she thought he might fob her off, but then his shoulders relaxed into a shrug. “Accident, really.” He tore off a large piece of naan. “I’d been several years at Dietrich Bank, mostly in M and A. That is—”
“I know,” said Julia. “I’m an equity research analyst. Was an equity research analyst. Anyway. You were all on track to be extremely boring and very wealthy—”
“When my great-aunt died and left me her flat.” He indicated the appropriate irony of this with a raised brow. “She was the most tremendous pack rat. When the family gave the house to the National Trust— I’m sure Caroline mentioned the house.”
“Lovingly,” Julia assured him.
“The family had been told they could take what they liked of their favorite personal effects. Aunt Edith interpreted that very broadly.”
His expression was so droll that Julia couldn’t help laughing.
Nick held up a hand. “Don’t laugh! She must have hired a couple of thugs and gone in with a lorry. It wasn’t just paintings and whatnots. There was an eighteenth-century pianoforte and a rather baronial bed and a massive seventeenth-century bust of Charles the Second. Charles’s nose, I am sorry to say, had been chipped in transit and Aunt Edith appeared to have made an attempt to mend it with sticking plaster.”
Julia set down her cup with a shaky hand. “Please,” she said. “You’re going to make me get soda up my nose.”
‘You think you’re shocked? Imagine my feelings when I walked into the place! It was a five-room flat and every inch of it was crammed with Aunt Edith’s loot.” He looked thoughtful. “I shouldn’t wonder if she would have taken more if she’d only had an extra room.”
Julia was laughing hopelessly. “I can just see it. So you took her loot…”
“And opened a shop,” Nick finished for her. “The proceeds from selling the flat paid for the lease on the shop.”
“Do you ever regret it?”
“On the days when I meet with my accountant? Yes. Otherwise? No.” For a moment, he let the glib façade drop. “All of these objects, they have stories to them, histories. You never know what you might find shoved at the back of a drawer or in the space between a canvas and a frame. And,” he added lightly, “the hours are much better.”
Julia wondered if he’d gotten any flack from his family, if his parents had minded his throwing in a promising job in finance to run an antiques shop in Notting Hill. Or was that just the American reaction? She hadn’t had the guts at twenty-one to tell her father that what she really wanted to do was look at paintings for a living; she couldn’t imagine how he would have reacted to her opening a shop.
Of course, her father thought anything that wasn’t medicine was one step away from pole dancing, so he was his own special case.
Nick set his fork down on his plate and dropped his napkin next to it. “You promised me paintings?”
Sharing time was clearly over.
Julia took a final sip of her soda and pushed back her chair. “‘Promise’ is such a strong word … but since you brou
ght the curry, yes.”
Nick glanced back at her over his shoulder as he carried his plate to the sink. So cute, thought Julia, and apparently house-trained, too. “What would I get if I brought dessert?”
“Indigestion?” Julia quipped, and led a quietly chuckling Nick back down the corridor, her flip-flops an anachronism against the old hardwood floor.
She had to remind herself that he was here for professional purposes. It would be far too easy to let the false intimacy of dinner delude her into reading more into the evening than she should.
“I brought the Thorne painting down to the drawing room,” she said, flipping on the drawing room lights, “so you can look at both together.”
The drawing room looked even more dingily pink than usual. Nick squinted up at the fixture. “You’d probably get more light if you cleaned those globes,” he said. “That looks like a few decades of grime.”
Julia switched on a table lamp. It helped a bit, but not much. “I get the feeling that Aunt Regina didn’t use this room much. Anyway, that’s the portrait of Imogen Grantham over there.” She gestured to the lady over the mantelpiece.
Nick moved to stand in front of it, locking his hands behind his back. “I see what you meant,” he said soberly, “about her expression. She looks…”
“Lost?” offered Julia.
“Something like that. It’s an amazing portrait. Much better than that one.” Nick nodded towards the gentleman with ginger whiskers. “That one’s flat, conventional, the background muddy. This one … The detail is incredible.” He turned abruptly. “Where did you say the Thorne painting was?”
“Here.” Julia had cleared the top of a table of its clutter of vases and knickknacks, propping the painting up against the wall.
She waited as he examined both, prowling back and forth from one to the other before saying finally, “You’re right. It’s the same woman.”
“Don’t sound so surprised,” said Julia lightly. “It doesn’t take a PhD to spot a face. Although it is nice to have confirmation. I was beginning to wonder if I was imagining things.”