“If you will excuse me?” Evie’s words were painfully dignified, stilted even, but her voice betrayed her youth. She still curtsied like a schoolgirl, awkwardly, her eyes darting up for approval. “I must see to supper.”
The gentlemen made the appropriate polite noises. Rossetti picked up immediately where he had left off, saying something about throwing off the shackles of artistic constraint. Imogen wasn’t quite listening. Neither was Fotheringay-Vaughn. His eyes followed Evie as she left the room.
The other man, Thorne, was watching Imogen.
She caught him watching her, watching her watching Fotheringay-Vaughn, and there was recognition in Thorne’s eyes, as though he knew exactly what she was about—as though he knew and was watching her as one might a caged beast in a menagerie! His eyes ought to have been black, with that coloring, but instead, they were a pale brown, the color of amber, or of aged sherry, light and bright and far too observant.
Imogen bit back the angry words that rose immediately to her throat. Instead, she adopted her most painfully proper expression, pushing the anger, the indignation, down, down, down, and away, down beneath her stays, compressed into a tiny little ball as shiny and hard as a locket, a locket with a picture in it no one could see.
What right had he to judge her? It was no business of his, no business at all.
“How fascinating,” she said politely to Mr. Rossetti, and turned her face away from the other man’s disturbing amber eyes.
Herne Hill, 1849
The Granthams set a lavish table.
There had been turbots in sauce and lamb cutlets and saddle of mutton and asparagus and fresh peas—asparagus and peas, in February!—and other dainties Gavin didn’t even recognize.
The chair in which he sat was awkwardly shaped and uncomfortable, the seat slippery, the back elaborately carved with knobs and curlicues that dug into his back when he leaned back too far. Bad on him for letting himself slouch; no wonder the ladies of the house had such good posture. Miss Cooper—Miss Grantham’s aunt?—looked as though she had swallowed a ramrod and found it tough going. Her mouth was permanently pursed in an expression of displeasure, but at no time more so than when her gaze happened to land on her guests.
They looked all wrong in this lavish room, with the light of the candles reflecting off mahogany and cherrywood. Gavin knew that. Even Augustus in his expensive cast-offs (oh, yes, they were cast-offs, for all the other man’s airs) looked out of place, too flash, too fast. Only Rossetti looked comfortable, his elbows on the table, his cravat carelessly tied, fingers curled around the stem of his wineglass, but Rossetti was one of those men who were at home anywhere, from a tavern to a palace; his opinion of himself and his own abilities was that high.
Gavin would have been far happier supping on bread and cheese in his own studio. But he didn’t need Augustus to tell him that this was part of how the game was played, Augustus, who had no interest in antiquities and had only come, so he said, in the hopes of wrangling a commission from a rich bourgeois who might be tickled at having his portrait painted by a rising society painter. An artist needed patrons, and Grantham certainly had money enough and connections with those who dabbled in art and criticism.
So Augustus had said, but watching him, Gavin wondered if his object was rather more than that. Augustus was being far too obvious in his pursuit of Grantham’s pretty daughter. A daughter and an only child. Gavin could practically see the visions of guineas dancing in Augustus’s head.
The daughter liked it well enough, but the other ladies of the house didn’t, Gavin could tell. As for Grantham … it was hard to tell what Grantham saw or didn’t see. A cool customer, that one. He gave the impression of vague geniality, but he noticed more than he let on; those blue eyes were shrewd in that carefully bland face.
Or maybe that was just a trick of the light, a trick of good candles reflecting off silver and crystal. No tallow here, but pure beeswax, with wicks carefully trimmed, more of them than Gavin used in a week.
Augustus had been right; a man who could afford those candles could certainly fling a commission to an artist without missing the tin. Gavin hated the idea of bowing and scraping, but there was no denying that canvas and pigments didn’t come cheap and, as much as he would have liked to pretend otherwise, success in the Academy was seldom won by merit alone.
Gavin watched as Augustus played his game. Oh, he did it well, there was no denying it. He was buttering up the girl right proper, just a little bit of butter at a time, but the very richest and the best, full of cream.
Gavin wasn’t the only one who had noticed. More than once, Mrs. Grantham had changed the subject, deftly moved the conversation back to Rossetti and art, diverting the girl’s attention away from Augustus.
“It must be very dull for you,” Augustus was saying to Mrs. Grantham, idly reaching into the bowl of nuts that sat hard by his place, “all this talk of the Middle Ages.”
Gavin didn’t miss the slight waspishness in his colleague’s tone. Augustus didn’t react well to women who didn’t succumb immediately to his charm.
Nor was Mrs. Grantham in Augustus’s style. He liked pink and white society beauties. If Miss Cooper was a Rembrandt sketch of a purse-lipped Dutch housewife and Miss Evangeline Grantham a Dresden shepherdess, all pink and white, and yellow curls, Mrs. Grantham was something else entirely. In the candlelight she was ebony and ivory, the dark waves of her hair accentuating the strong bones of her face.
“Not at all,” Mr. Grantham answered for his wife, casting her an indulgent look across the length of the table. “My wife’s father was a scholar as well. And she has some small interest of her own in the period.”
“I have always found that era particularly engrossing,” said Mrs. Grantham, and there was an echo of something beneath her words that Gavin didn’t quite understand.
“It’s all very romantic, isn’t it?” drawled Augustus, who had, in Gavin’s opinion, drunk too freely of Grantham’s wine. Augustus winked at Grantham’s daughter, who giggled in return. “Chansons de geste, courts of love.…”
“Gallant nights and noble ladies,” Rossetti finished for him. Unlike Augustus, there was no sarcasm in Rossetti’s voice. His eyes were dreamy in the candlelight. Whatever one might say of Gabriel, he believed his own fantasies, and not by halves. “Poetry and pageantry and doomed loves.”
Miss Evangeline shivered at that doomed. “Must they all end unhappily?”
“You have a soft heart, Miss Grantham,” murmured Augustus. “It does you credit.”
“Much as it pains me to disagree, I find very little romantic about the Middle Ages.” Mrs. Grantham’s voice was low and husky. “Yes, Mr. Rossetti, the poetry is beautiful—inspired, even!—but beneath the romance of chivalry one finds plague, poverty, lawlessness, and the depredations of constant warfare.”
Rossetti rose to her words. “Isn’t it in times of strife that one needs beauty all the more? Perhaps times of turmoil provide the impetus for great art.”
“Art from the dung heap?” said Augustus skeptically. He sketched a bow down the table. “With apologies to the ladies.”
“But ought we to shy from a mention of a midden?” The reflection from the wine brought color to Mrs. Grantham’s pale cheeks. “That is just the difficulty! I believe that to live under such conditions required a form of strength that we feeble creatures have long since forgot. Can you imagine any of us riding off to a Crusade like Eleanor of Aquitaine or defending a castle against siege as did the great chatelaines of the fourteenth century? We are weak creatures in comparison with those who came before us.”
“My dear.” Grantham’s voice was gentle, but it acted as a reproof all the same. “You are too harsh on our modern age. I should not wish you to have to defend our home against invaders.”
They all laughed politely at the very idea of it, but, privately, Gavin wasn’t quite so sure. For a moment, he could have imagined the woman across from him wielding a sword, wearing a man’s breastpl
ate and gauntlets.
Mrs. Grantham lifted her glass to her lips but didn’t drink.
“I, for one,” said Miss Cooper, “am grateful that we live in a civilized age, one with comforts and conveniences.” She gestured to the waiting maid to refill the gentlemen’s glasses.
Mrs. Grantham’s eyes were on the maid. “Comforts and conveniences for some, but not for all.”
Miss Cooper made a noise dangerously like a snort. “Not that book again?”
“What book?” asked Rossetti, with interest. Any form of printed matter was irresistible to him. Gavin admired and envied Rossetti that, his easy facility with words, his ability to bounce them about like a master juggler. “Might I have read it?”
All eyes were on Mrs. Grantham. “Mary Barton,” she said. “It is a novel by a Mrs. Gaskell.”
“Mrs. Gaskell, indeed,” said Miss Cooper tartly. “If she were any sort of proper woman, she would be tending to her family, not courting scandal and poking about in matters that don’t concern her.”
Mrs. Grantham lifted her chin. “What does it matter who calls attention to such ills, man or woman, so long as someone does?” She looked pointedly at Miss Cooper. “We live in such plenty here that it seems positively selfish not to pay heed to those who are suffering.”
Mr. Grantham wagged a finger at her, a gentle simulacrum of a scold. “Such accounts are exaggerated for effect, my love. It is a novel, after all.”
“That’s what you get for reading such nonsense,” said Miss Cooper triumphantly. “What have we to do with mill workers in Manchester? I shouldn’t be surprised if most of it were pure invention.”
To his own surprise, Gavin heard himself speaking, his own voice echoing in his ears, filling the large room. “Like a painting, a novel may arrange elements to most effective advantage, while still drawing them from the life.”
They all looked at him, candlelight glinting off eyes and teeth and hair.
Gavin cursed himself for the strange impulse that had driven him to Mrs. Grantham’s defense. What had he thought to accomplish? He’d learned long ago knight-errantry was a luxury too rich for the likes of him. There was no point in alienating a potential patron, not when Gavin needed every honest coin he could earn. He’d learned to keep his mouth shut and his brush moving.
What business had he feeling pity for the likes of Mrs. Grantham? Her dress alone cost more than he earned in a year.
Augustus shifted in his chair, leaning lazily back. He subjected Gavin to a long, assessing look. “You would know all about that, wouldn’t you, Thorne?”
“What does he mean?” asked Miss Cooper, looking back and forth and back again.
“Thorne grew up in Manchester,” said Augustus maliciously. “Didn’t you, Thorne?”
This, Gavin knew, was payback, payback for some half-imagined slight, a painting left uncovered, a return to the studio too soon. Augustus resented Gavin for knowing the real nature of his finances, resented him and needed him. As for Gavin, he only wished to be left alone to paint.
“I left Manchester many years ago.” That much was true. He’d been out like a shot, as soon as he was able. As soon as—well, there was no point in thinking of that now. It was all over now and done. “I am afraid I know far less than Mrs. Gaskell about the current conditions in the city. But I did,” he added, “read her novel with interest.”
With interest and more than a pang of recognition. Mrs. Gaskell had only skimmed the surface. There was more he could have told her about life in the meaner parts of town—but that was a life he had put aside long ago, when he had begged and borrowed his way to London, his entire being directed on winning a place in the Academy. He hadn’t Augustus’s pretensions, but one thing Gavin knew: he’d never live like that again. They’d lived worse than rats, rats in the gutter.
The rich trappings of Grantham’s table, the pearls and gold at Mrs. Grantham’s ears and throat, seemed to mock him.
“You surprise me, Mr. Thorne!” It was young Miss Evangeline, flushed with her own daring at entering the conversation. “I hadn’t thought gentlemen read novels.”
“But of course we do!” Augustus leaned confidingly towards Miss Evangeline, and the attention passed away from Gavin. Mercifully. “Or else what would we find to discuss with you ladies?”
Miss Evangeline Grantham giggled and turned her blushes towards her glass, which contained lemonade rather than wine.
“Miss Grantham does not read such novels,” said Miss Cooper stiffly. “Nor do I see any reason why she ought.”
Gavin didn’t miss the look that passed between Miss Evangeline and her stepmother. “Oh, no, Aunt,” said Miss Evangeline Grantham solemnly. “Only the improving ones.”
Mrs. Grantham was angelically silent. Gavin would wager that the two ladies had very different ideas as to the meaning of “improving.”
* * *
Not that it was any of his lookabout, or so Gavin reminded himself of that on the long, cold walk home, Augustus trudging along beside him, lost in his own thoughts.
Rossetti had gone off, whistling, on an errand of his own. The rain had stopped, but the temperature had dropped. The air was crisp and biting, the ground hard with ice beneath their booted feet.
They chose their footing carefully as they crossed over the Thames at the Waterloo Bridge. The Bridge of Sighs, it was called, for all who had used it to take their plunge off this mortal coil into the icy water below. Below, the watermen still plied their trade and the light of the gaslights danced off the cold waters of the river. Gavin’s feet felt like lumps of ice in his boots. It was a good two hours’ walk from Herne Hill to the studio on Cleveland Street and neither of them had the blunt to hire a hack.
Not that Augustus would ever admit such a thing. No, it was “the air clears the mind after a heavy dinner, don’t you agree, Thorne?”
It was no matter. Gavin was used to it. There had been winters, at home, when there had been no money for coal at all, nothing that could be broken up to use for firewood. They had gleaned twigs where they could, but mostly they had huddled for warmth together beneath a ragged blanket, the five of them, in a basement smaller than Arthur Grantham’s dining room.
Compared to that, Gavin’s own small studio was a luxury and a cold walk home of little matter.
A wealthy patron would mean more coal on the fire, and commissions led to commissions.
Augustus’s voice was half-muffled by the high collar of his coat. “The daughter would do very well. Not society, of course, but she’s certainly easy enough on the eyes.” He spoke as though to himself, his eyes fixed on the reflection of the lights in the water. “She seemed docile enough. And then there’s the inheritance.… Forty thousand pounds. If the old man doesn’t fritter it all away on manuscripts and reliquaries.”
So that was why Augustus had been so eager to come along. He must have made inquiries beforehand.
“It’s no matter to you if he does.” Gavin’s breath inscribed pale circles in the cold air as he said, “Be careful how you go there. Grantham may be all that is affable, but he won’t see his daughter throw herself away on you.”
Augustus bridled, yanking at the edges of his impractical silk scarf, an imitation of the ones worn by grander men at better occasions than these. “Who says it would be throwing herself away?”
Gavin was too tired to stroke his colleague’s ego. “Don’t play games, Alfie.”
Augustus shot him a quick, fierce look. “I told you not to call me that.” Brushing Gavin aside, Augustus returned to his brooding perusal of the river. “Grantham is just a petty bourgeois. He’d be lucky to have a cousin of the Earl of Vaughn for his daughter.”
Gavin held his peace. Augustus had half-convinced himself of his own fictions. Like a sleepwalker, it was dangerous to wake him.
Augustus puffed out his chest. “The daughter likes me well enough. And she is a prime piece. A bit of polish and who know where she mightn’t be invited?”
A prime piece? G
avin couldn’t see it. Miss Evangeline Grantham had been as light and sweet as the lemonade in her glass, entirely charming and by no means out of the ordinary.
Mrs. Grantham, now. She was made of another metal entirely. It wasn’t just the striking lines of her face, her features too strong boned, her coloring too stark, for fashion. No, there was something else there, a reserve, a simmering of strong emotions just barely held in check.
His fingers itched to paint her, to take up a brush and try to plumb her mysteries in the only way he knew, through paint on canvas. His fingers were wiser than he was. They saw and conveyed subtleties that his waking wits weren’t quick enough to catch. What a challenge it would be, to portray the shades of emotion playing across that seemingly serene face.
Not that it would ever happen.
Gavin caught himself up short, before he could fall too deep into reverie. They were across the bridge now. By the streetlamp, two streetwalkers, rouged and dyed, their skin blue beneath their tattered wraps, plied their dubious wares. These were the women who posed for their paintings, not the Mrs. Granthams of the world, not respectable matrons in their ruffled, gilded homes.
And what was he doing, romanticizing the woman? He was as bad as Gabriel. She was just another pampered rich man’s wife, made momentarily interesting by an illusion created by wine and candlelight. She played at sympathy as a parlor game, having never seen true suffering, true poverty.
“Put them from your head,” Gavin told his colleague. “We’ll not be invited to that house again.”
Augustus adjusted his scarf with a satisfied air. “Would you care to wager on it?”
SIX
Herne Hill, 2009
“Why does the house give you the creeps?”
The place Natalie suggested turned out to be a jazz café. The tables were small and round, the lighting low. On a Sunday night, the small stage was dark and quiet and only one of the other tables was occupied, by a middle-aged couple who addressed the one waitress comfortably by name.