Julia made a note to check out volume 1, The Formative Years. If there was any mention of Thorne, it would be in that collection, before Thorne had disappeared to New South Wales or parts unknown, leaving behind his painting of Tristan and Iseult, wrapped in brown paper in a wardrobe in Herne Hill.
Her dinner with her father wasn’t until seven. The V&A library closed at 6:30. Julia set into town a few hours early and found her way through the crowds of tourists thronging the front hall of the V&A, along the side, and up the marble staircase that led to the art library.
It looked the way a library ought to look, with tall, arched windows flanked by bookshelves, and a ceiling that stretched up into infinity. A gallery ran around the length of the room, banded by a wrought-iron balcony, with row upon row of books above, encased in bookcases of richly polished wood.
The room smelled of leather bindings and old paper and just a little bit of feet. At the long, communal tables, more than one scholar had surreptitiously pushed off his shoes.
Julia presented herself at the reference desk and registered for her reader’s ticket, which appeared to consist of nothing more than proving that she was a human with an address and promising not to scribble in, set fire to, or otherwise deface the books. Then she presented her call slip to the librarian.
The librarian took one look at the slip and shook her head. “Oh, dear.”
Julia squinted upside down at her slip. “Is there something wrong?”
The little stub of pencil they had given her to write with didn’t exactly make for the clearest lettering.
The librarian handed back her slip. “I’m afraid these are already checked out,” she said apologetically. She peered around Julia, then pointed at the far corner of one of the tables. “To that gentleman over there.”
The late-afternoon sunlight streamed through the long windows, highlighting the man’s fair hair. There was a large folio open in front of him and a cardboard box beside him. His head was bent diligently over his book, but Julia didn’t need to see his face to know him.
Nick had beaten her to it.
Herne Hill, 1849
Gavin waited at the orchard gate the next day, but Imogen never came.
He was back the day after that and the day after that, but there was no one to greet him but a curious squirrel and the wind among the bare branches of the almond trees. Gavin went so far as to scout around the side of the house, but he saw no sign of Imogen, only Miss Cooper climbing into the carriage, presumably to pay her afternoon calls. Frustrated, Gavin retreated.
Fantastical speculations plagued him. Grantham had seen them, was holding Imogen prisoner. He had the right; no one would say him nay if he kept her confined to her room or clapped her in an institution, although Gavin had a difficult time imagining the genial man he had met pursuing a plan so hard and cold. Although seemingly reasonable men had been driven to far worse when they felt their honor slighted.
What did he really know about the other man? Gavin conducted some inquiries at the house where Imogen had spotted Grantham. The information he received cast the man in a whole new light, and not a very pleasant one. The house was a brothel that catered to men with a taste for young girls, girls in their early teens.
Should he tell Imogen? That would be petty. And, besides, he couldn’t find her to tell her.
Having a blazing row with Augustus didn’t do much to relieve Gavin’s feelings, although it did mean that the studio was now his, to work in in lonely isolation, day blending into night and night into day. During the long, sleepless nights, Gavin finished his Tristan and Iseult, painting in Imogen’s face for Iseult, his own for Tristan, and, in a final spurt of anger, Arthur Grantham in the role of King Mark. It was a foolish indulgence, he knew. He would have to scrape the faces out and repaint them before he could present the painting to the Academy in April, but his frustration had guided his brush.
The following week, Gavin received a note. It said only:
Domestic concerns keep me close to home. I fear I must cancel our appointment. With the warmest expressions of esteem, I.G.
It was in Imogen’s hand, that much he knew, but apart from that, the communication left Gavin baffled and increasingly alarmed. He couldn’t imagine Imogen breaking with him in such a detached and distant way. She would have met with him, at least.
Unless she was being watched. Or her hand had been forced.
Driven to the end of his wits, Gavin called at the house on the pretense of ensuring that Mr. Grantham was quite satisfied with the portrait. It was Miss Cooper who received him, telling him coolly that Mr. Grantham was not at home. Mr. Grantham came in, just at that moment, ruddy cheeked from the cold, and received Gavin with every appearance of cordiality, offering him a glass of whiskey to warm his insides before he went off again for the long walk back into town. Grantham would have invited him to supper, but his wife’s health wasn’t what it should be.
Grantham didn’t look like a man confronting his wife’s lover. In fact, he seemed just as he had been before, friendly, talkative, eager to discuss art and antiquities, full of praise for the quality of the portrait and curious to know what it was Gavin planned to display at the next Exhibition.
Trying not to display too much alarm, Gavin said that he trusted Mrs. Grantham wasn’t seriously ill.
No, no, Grantham assured him. Nothing but a temporary indisposition. Was he sure he wouldn’t like something to drink before he went on his way?
Confusedly Gavin assured Grantham that he had other business in the area, that it was no bother at all, and excused himself without lingering.
He remembered Imogen as he had last seen her, pale and trembling. He would have laid money that Grantham was still in ignorance of their affair—although he had thought he saw Miss Evie’s ruffled flounces whisk out of the way as he came through the hall—but now the even more disturbing specter of illness haunted him. It took so little to extinguish a life. He had seen sore throats turn putrid, an upset stomach that turned out to be a tumor, mysterious wasting illnesses with no cause or cure.
How to communicate with Imogen? There was no one in the household he could trust, not the compliant maid of popular fiction, not an errand boy he might suborn with a few coins. Imogen had no lady’s maid and Gavin had no reason to trust the housemaid. He couldn’t hang about outside the house; he would be noticed. There was no good excuse for him to be in the area.
He went again, nevertheless, lurking on the far side of the fence, and had the limited satisfaction of seeing Imogen, heavily bundled, in the garden. She was too far away to make out her features. Before he could speak her to her, someone called to her from the house and she turned and went back inside. He thought of slipping back under cover of darkness and leaving a note for her in the summerhouse, but what if it were discovered by the wrong person? The summerhouse had always been Imogen’s personal province, but there was no guarantee that she was well enough to venture that far out down the garden path. Images of Imogen lying wan in her bed, her hair damp with sweat, her eyes wild with fever, haunted Gavin.
He began to wonder if he was going a little bit mad.
It was Rossetti who mentioned the reception on Denmark Hill.
“You can’t say no to John Ruskin, or, at least, you ought not,” said Gabriel practically. “He can make or break you with a twist of his pen. Besides, don’t you want to see his art? He’s said to have a grand collection.”
“I’m busy,” Gavin informed him brusquely. Tristan and Iseult sat propped against the wall, chastely shrouded in brown paper.
It was quite the best thing he had ever done and he couldn’t bear to look at it. Every time he did, he remembered Imogen as she had been as she stepped from behind that screen in Iseult’s blue gown.
“Busy,” Gabriel mocked, craning his head to get a look at Gavin’s latest sketches. Gavin pointedly turned the easel. “Too busy to show an old friend your work. You’ve turned into a worse hermit than Hunt!”
“We’re
not all such exhibitionists as you,” said Gavin brusquely, but even as he said it, it occurred to him that Denmark Hill wasn’t so very far from Herne Hill. The Granthams moved in the same circles as the Ruskins. Someone might have heard of Imogen, have some news of her.… It was a feeble hope, but a hope all the same.
So Gavin shaved off a fortnight’s growth of beard and unearthed a fresh shirt from among the musty piles of dirty linen on the floor and made his way with Gabriel back across the bridge, out of the city, to the Ruskins’ home on Denmark Hill.
The last thing he expected was to see Imogen.
At first, he thought he must have been mistaken, that the woman across the room, in conversation with the elder Mr. Ruskin, must be someone else entirely. That it must be a trick of the uncertain light or the crowded room. But then she turned slightly, her face coming more entirely under the light of the chandelier, and there was no denying it was she.
She wore a rich blue gown, well off the shoulder. There was gold at her throat and ears and wrists, and in the dark waves of her hair.
She looked … well. No, better than well. She was blooming, her cheeks flushed with the heat of the room, her body fuller than when he had last seen her, her bosom spilling over the discreet lace edging of her bodice.
The first rush of relief at seeing her not at death’s door after all was rapidly subsumed by a poisonous brew of confusion and anger. If she was well, well enough to chat of this and that with the elder Mr. Ruskin, surely she was well enough to have contrived some way of contacting him? All this while, as he had been half-mad with fear for her, she had been dining and dancing, snapping gold bracelets around her wrists and enameled combs in her hair.
She made her excuses to Mr. Ruskin and turned—looking for her husband? Gavin seized his chance.
Presenting himself before her, he bowed curtly. “Mrs. Grantham.”
“Mr. Thorne!” Alarm flickered briefly across her face before she unfurled her fan. “What a pleasant surprise.”
Could she really stand here and speak to him like this, as though he had meant nothing to her? Perhaps he had, at that, although he still couldn’t believe it of her, couldn’t make himself believe it.
And yet here she stood, looking at him not with joy but almost with fear.
“Is it?” he asked bluntly. Looking her up and down, he said, “I was told you were ill.”
She looked a warning at him. “I was. But, as you see, I am better now.” Quietly, she added, “It is all for the best.”
The best for whom?
Gavin’s temper rose. “I wouldn’t have thought you would be so quick to forget old friends.”
“Never forgotten,” she said soberly, her polished social smile fading. She looked at him, and for a moment he saw the raw longing in her eyes. “But circumstances change.” Before he could pursue that, she asked quickly, “How is the painting coming along?”
Gavin looked at her narrowly, trying to make her out. He would have questioned her right out, but the room was teeming with people, a dozen gossiping matrons who might overhear. “I have finished my Tristan and Iseult. Our Tristan and Iseult.”
Her eyes slanted swiftly upward. “Have you—have you a new work?”
There was a vein of vulnerability beneath her question that suggested it wasn’t entirely about the painting she was asking. Gavin looked at her, at that familiar, beloved face, at her pink cheeks and shadowed eyes. What in the devil had happened over the past month? What wasn’t she telling him?
“I had thought, perhaps, Lancelot Denied the Grail.” Unobtrusively, he set a path towards the quieter side of the room, away from potential listeners. “I find myself thinking a great deal on the agony of seeing what one most desires and yet not being permitted to grasp it.”
“It—it sounds like a very powerful composition,” said Imogen. “There are many, I believe, who would understand the sentiment.”
Gavin looked down at her. “I should have preferred to paint something happier.”
“Perhaps. But not every tale has a happy ending.” They came to a stop before one of Ruskin’s beloved Turner paintings. Imogen made a pretense of studying the canvas. “Speaking of happy tales, have you heard that my—that Miss Grantham is to be married to Ned Sturgis?” She looked away, her voice subdued. “She decided it was time she had a household of her own.”
Gavin remembered that last day by the bridge, Imogen staring out into the water. She won’t speak to me. She looks through me. In other words, Miss Evangeline had gone and gotten herself betrothed in a huff.
Pity stirred in him, undermining his indignation. He didn’t want to pity Imogen; he wanted to wallow in being wronged.
“He is a very nice young man,” said Imogen, and the forced cheer in her voice cut straight to Gavin’s heart. “They are to leave for Lisbon as soon as they are wed. Mr. Sturgis is to take charge of his father’s business interests in that part of the world.”
“I have heard that it is a charming city.” Gavin couldn’t bear it any longer, this dancing around the true matter. Dropping his voice, he said urgently, “Why wouldn’t you meet me? Surely, you owed me that much.”
“There is so much to do before a wedding.” In an undertone she added, for his ears alone, “I should not wish to do anything to mar Evie’s happiness.”
Miss Evie, in Gavin’s opinion, was well capable of looking out for herself.
“Is that what this is about?” he asked in a low, intense voice. “Sacrificing your own happiness on the altar of hers? Did you never stop to think that it was not only your happiness, but also mine, that was at stake?”
She looked at him with wide, pleading eyes. “It is not that simple—”
Simple? Keeping a social smile on his face, he said in a rapid undertone, “I have been half-mad with worry. I thought you were sick, dying. Or that Grantham had locked you up. And then to find you here, like this—”
Imogen’s hand reached out, as though she might touch his sleeve, and just as quickly fell away. “Please. Not—not here.”
“Then where?” He turned his back to the room, blocking her from view with his body. “Day after day, and all I hear is that you are detained by domestic concerns.” He had the satisfaction of seeing her wince. “I had not thought your affections that lightly given—or rescinded.”
Imogen stared into Turner’s orange sunset. “They are not.” Her voice was barely audible. “Do you not think I—” She broke off, biting her lip, and said very quietly, “I have missed you more than I can say. Is not that enough?”
“Easy enough to say.” It maddened him that he must speak only to her profile, must keep up the pretense of polite chatter when his very soul was on the rack.
“No. It hasn’t been easy at all.” She shook her head in frustration. “Please believe me, if I have been cruel, it is for your benefit, not mine,”
“And why should I believe you?” he asked, his frustration rising to match hers. “You speak in riddles.”
Imogen squared her shoulders. The nape of her neck looked very bare and vulnerable, the gold chain of her necklace trailing down behind. “Then let me speak plainly. There must be nothing to tie you to me, nothing to incriminate you—when the scandal breaks.”
Something about the way she said it made the hairs on the backs of Gavin’s hands stand up. “What scandal?”
“Have you not seen Mr. Ruskin’s del Verrocchio?” said Imogen in a loud, clear voice, and Gavin was reminded, jarringly, that they weren’t alone, that there was a roomful of people around them. “It is one of the prizes of his collection. It dates from the fifteenth century and is really quite the loveliest I have seen of its kind. I believe it will interest you.”
Mastering his impatience, Gavin followed Imogen into the relative privacy of the alcove. The painting was a Madonna and child, a miracle of color and line, the Madonna resplendent in her blue robe, her head bowed, the child kicking his chubby legs on the ground in front of her. Ordinarily, Gavin would have been rapt.
But now his attention was all for Imogen.
“What scandal?” he demanded. “If Grantham doesn’t know of us—”
Imogen drew in a long, shaky breath. “He will.” In the shadows of the alcove, her face looked tired and drawn. “It will soon become all too obvious to Arthur that I—that I betrayed him with someone. I would prefer, if I can, to spare you.”
Gavin opened his mouth to ask why, but the answer struck him before the words could make their way from his throat to his lips.
Dry-mouthed, dizzy, he looked first to the Madonna and Child, the little baby on his pallet on the ground. Did she—were they—
Imogen’s lips twisted in a sad little smile. “Yes,” she said. “I am with child.”
TWENTY-ONE
Herne Hill, 1849
“Mine,” he said.
It wasn’t a question.
There was no point in denying it. “Yours.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Gavin’s voice was hoarse. He looked at her with something almost like horror. “Were you not going to tell me?”
Imogen pressed her eyes together, striving for control. “I—wanted to tell you.”
How she had wanted to! Her body had rebelled against her; she had been ill, weak, fretful. All she had wanted was Gavin. She wanted to burrow deep into his arms, her head pillowed in that particular kink between neck and shoulder, breathing in the comfortable, familiar scent of him, of paint and charcoal and laundry soap.
A dozen times she had nearly trumped up some pretext to go to town. Each time, on the verge of ordering the carriage, she had balked, thinking of Arthur, standing across from them on that fetid street, of Gavin and his career, of all the children who had never come to term.
“But you didn’t,” said Gavin. He looked as though someone had struck him in the stomach, hard.