Harlequin Historical November 2015, Box Set 2 of 2 (61 page)

Cameo rubbed a gloved finger along his hard, stubbled chin. ‘Do you need to ask?'

He gave her his unexpectedly boyish smile, the one she loved. ‘I didn't think anyone would be interested in exhibiting them. I just couldn't stop painting you. I felt half-crazed. Trelawney saw them and said they were the best works I'd ever done, an improvement even on
The Gardener's Daughter
. He convinced me to show them here.'

‘Mr Trelawney told me about the exhibition. I ran into him in Hyde Park.'

‘Is that right?' A chuckle.

‘Do you mean he's been in on it, too?'

‘Poor Trelawney's taken so many walks in the park he's declared himself a skeleton, he says he's lost so much weight. Not that there's much chance.'

‘It mystified me why he'd been so insistent until I saw the paintings.'

‘I knew you'd see them, somehow, some day,' Benedict told her huskily. ‘I believed they'd bring you to me. I had a strange faith in that.'

‘Then you've forgiven me?' Her heart pounded. ‘For lying to you?'

‘It's I who should ask for forgiveness.' His mouth was taut. ‘When you didn't come back to the studio after that night we argued, I thought I'd driven you away for ever. I said things that were unforgivable.'

‘Not unforgivable,' Cameo objected. ‘I said harsh things, too.'

‘Only because I wouldn't listen.' He breathed into her ear. ‘I'm right, aren't I? It was your first time, wasn't it?'

‘Yes.' Her confession was a shudder against his chest.

He pulled her closer. ‘I took your maidenhood.'

‘I wanted it to be you. It was all I ever dreamed,' she confessed softly.

‘If I'd known, I wouldn't have, I should never have...'

‘Benedict. Hush.' She laid a finger against his lips. ‘I don't have any regrets. It was perfect.'

As he wrenched her closer her cloak fell from her shoulders to reveal the shimmering satin dress, the pearls and fine embroidery.

‘Is that a wedding gown?' he asked, incredulous.

Cameo might have suspected his artist's eye would miss nothing. Self-consciously, she smoothed her skirts.

‘Are you getting married? Today?'

‘I didn't want to, Benedict. You've got to believe me,' she begged. ‘My parents forced me into it. I had no choice—at least, I thought I didn't. Then, on the way to the church today, I knew I couldn't go through with it. So I leapt from the carriage.'

‘My darling! You might have been hurt.'

‘I'm perfectly all right. The carriage stopped at a corner.'

He chuckled. ‘You never cease to amaze me. So you're a runaway bride.'

‘I suppose I am.'

Benedict cast a quick glance around the busy street. ‘We can't stay here. Come back to the studio, Cameo. We can discuss everything.'

Chapter Twenty-Two

‘We spoke of other things; we coursed about
The subject most at heart, more near and near.'

—Alfred, Lord Tennyson:
‘The Gardener's Daughter'

A
bove Cameo's head the sign for the Lamb
public house creaked as it swung in the breeze.

‘Oh, Benedict.' She'd feared never to see this familiar place again, the crowds of people, the carriages and carts, the bakery with the smell of warm, fresh bread wafting from inside. ‘It's so good to be here again. And there's Becky!'

‘You know Becky?' Benedict asked with a smile.

‘Do you know her, too?'

‘I often give her money and food. She saw you being attacked, that night you came to me, when the thief was after your necklace. She found me and brought me to you.'

‘Did she? Oh, I must thank her!'

Cameo raced ahead to where the match girl sat on the cobbles with her wares laid out beside her.

‘Hello, Becky!'

The match girl's dirty face lit up. ‘Hello, miss. I haven't seen you for such a long time. I thought you'd gone away.'

‘Becky, Mr Cole told me how you helped me that night, when the thief tried to get my necklace. How can I ever thank you?'

‘That's all right, miss.'

Cameo patted Becky's rough hand. A bump underneath her glove caught her attention. Why, it was the diamond ring Lord Warley had given her. Impulsively she slipped off her glove. Sliding off the ring, she dropped it into the girl's palm.

Becky stared down at the jewel in amazement. ‘You can't give me this ring, miss!'

Already Cameo experienced a sense of release. How furious Lord Warley would be if he knew she'd given a diamond ring to a match girl. The thought gave her a certain satisfaction. It was no less than he deserved. ‘Yes, I can. Take it to your mother, Becky. Don't let anyone give you less than it is worth.'

Cameo smiled as Becky grabbed her matches and scampered away.

She turned to see Benedict smiling at her. ‘You gave away a diamond ring.'

‘I don't need a diamond ring.' She shuddered. She could trust Benedict with her life. She could trust his love and talent against Robert's hate and cruelty. ‘All it represented to me was a life sentence at Warley Park.'

His fingers pressed into the flesh of her upper arm. The rage in his eyes terrified her.

‘Warley Park is where I grew up.'

* * *

Benedict pulled Cameo inside the studio and slammed the door.

‘I don't understand.' She cast off her cloak. ‘Tell me. What do you mean?'

‘Just as I said. I grew up at Warley Park.'

‘Do you mean the cottage you told me about, the one your mother made so colourful, was on that estate?'

He gave a brooding nod. Nowhere else had been as dear to him as that cottage at the edge of the woods, under the curling leaves of oak and ash trees.

‘Why, it all makes sense now,' Cameo said wonderingly. ‘Those grounds, the gardens and woods you described—I've seen them.'

‘You've been there.'

‘When you were painting
The Gardener's Daughter
. I had to go away. I went to Warley Park with my parents and I spent an afternoon in the woods. They were so beautiful. And I saw the estate cottages, too. But...if you grew up at Warley Park, then it must have been that family, who...'

He witnessed the horrified knowledge dawn in Cameo's eyes.

‘Were they the aristocrats you hated so much, who mistreated your family and cast your mother out of her home?'

Pain blazed inside him at the recollection. ‘Yes. It was them. Or should I say, Robert Ackland, the current Lord Warley, to be precise.'

‘I can't take it in.'

Cameo collapsed on to the worn armchair by the fireplace and lifted an amazed face to him. ‘Lord Warley tried to force me to wed him. He's in debt from gaming. That's why he sought to marry me—he needed my dowry, my marriage settlement.'

‘I'm not surprised to hear he's so unscrupulous,' Benedict said in disgust, as he scraped out a chair to sit opposite her. ‘It would have broken the late Lord Warley's heart.'

‘You knew him, then?'

‘Oh, yes, I knew him.' He paused for a moment as he struggled inside. For so long he'd kept it to himself. Then he spoke, his voice low. ‘He was my father.'

‘Your father! But I thought your father was Arthur Cole, the gamekeeper.'

‘Arthur Cole did act as a father to me, when I was young.' He recalled the kind, weather-beaten gamekeeper who had taught him wood carving. ‘He was a good man. He showed me care and compassion, as he did my mother. She was already pregnant when Arthur married her.'

‘Pregnant with you,' Cameo confirmed.

‘Yes. That's why my mother stayed at Warley Park. She was from a local family, a country girl. It was hard for her, living in the gamekeeper's cottage. But she did it for me and for my real father. She loved him, but they couldn't be married. He was already married to Robert's mother. Most unhappily, I understand, though they had Robert in the end.'

‘So you were the firstborn. Did you always realise the late Lord Warley was your father?'

‘I only knew him as the lord of the manor, when I was a boy.' Benedict pushed his hair from his brow. ‘I went up to the house at Christmastime with all the other children on the estate. It was then I saw the paintings.' Those paintings. Their gleaming colours in golden frames against the scarlet walls of the gallery came to him, flooding his senses. ‘There's a fine art collection there.'

‘Benedict, I've seen the paintings in the gallery,' she broke in. ‘The Old Masters, they're magnificent.'

‘Many of those paintings were bought by my real father.'

‘I saw the late Lord Warley's portrait in the gallery, too.' She studied his face. ‘You both look like him. Dark-haired, dark eyed. You have the same jaw line, but your half-brother, Robert, doesn't. I can see it now.'

Benedict rubbed his jaw. ‘Do I? I'd like to resemble my real father. He was an art connoisseur. He bought up a number of Venice's artworks at one time and took them to Warley Park.' His mind rolled back. ‘At one of the Christmas parties, I ran away and hid in the house. I was a shy boy. I found myself in the long gallery, looking at Rembrandt, Titian, da Vinci, Raphael, not recognising what an exceptional collection hung in front of me. I only knew I was spellbound. That was the first day I met my real father properly. He found me in the gallery.'

Cameo stayed silent as if urging him to continue.

‘That day, everything changed,' he went on. ‘I think when Lord Warley first came across me looking at the paintings he wondered what I was doing there. But he was kind to me, asked me what I liked about them, and for some reason I wasn't shy with him. He soon realised I'd inherited his love of art, along with an instinct for colour that came from my mother. I spent hours with him in the gallery. He showed me different works he'd collected, too, explained their histories and the different painting techniques. He told me what the symbols in the paintings meant and the stories behind them, talked to me about the other paintings he'd seen abroad, in Venice in particular. He loved Venice.'

She nodded, still silent, her eyes fixed on him.

‘He took more and more interest in me.' In his mind, Benedict slipped backwards in time. ‘He was a painter, an amateur, but a good one. He taught me, encouraged me, believed in me. We went on painting expeditions on the estate. We'd paint in the woods, down by the stream, capture the trees, plants, birds, animals—all we saw. Truth from Nature was his motto, too, long before the Pre-Raphaelites claimed it. He saw my talent, arranged for me to have some lessons, and eventually had me sent to be educated here in London. When I was old enough, he sent me on a Grand Tour. He promised to join me in Venice.'

He halted. It was difficult to go on.

‘What happened?' Cameo stroked his arm. ‘Tell me.'

‘My father died,' Benedict said bleakly. ‘When I returned to Sussex, my mother was alone. Arthur Cole, the gamekeeper, had died a few years before, you see. When I returned from Venice I found my mother weak and ill. She'd been sick for some time, but Robert had insisted she remove herself from the gamekeeper's cottage. He knew how much our father loved her and yet he wouldn't let her stay on the estate. I found her living in squalor in a nearby town, sickened with a cough seeming to rack her whole body. She hadn't written to tell me of her illness. She intended me to have my tour in Europe. She wanted me to have the gift of art my father gave me.'

Rage rose up, like a knife in his stomach. ‘Robert may as well have killed my mother. Her health failed. She didn't live too much longer. It was revenge, I think, for the way our father favoured me. I remember Robert used to complain about me being near the paintings in the gallery. He thought I'd harm them. Harm them! I appreciated those paintings at a young age more than he ever did.'

‘He despises art,' Cameo said fiercely. ‘All he cares about is how much the paintings are worth as an investment.'

‘That lack of appreciation is something I can't understand, to have such riches and to not even value them. He's a philistine. That art collection, those glories in his house, they're no more than wallpaper to him.' Benedict clenched his jaw. ‘But he still desired them.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘That was another thing I discovered when I got back from Venice. Lord Warley's will had been altered or replaced. He'd told me by then, of course, that I was his son. He said he loved my mother from the first moment he saw her, with her colourful, natural beauty, her wild gypsy heart. He told me he was going to leave me the paintings he'd collected himself. They would appreciate in value—it became a way of giving me a legacy. He knew Robert didn't like them, or understand them, and I did. But there was no mention of that legacy in the new will. For many years, I wondered if my father, who I'd believed to be an honourable man, had lied to me. Then I came to believe that perhaps Robert had engineered it when I travelled to Venice and my father was dying, unable to understand what was happening around him. Or that he'd even destroyed my father's will. But I can never know for sure.'

‘Robert cheated you. That is sure. And you're his brother!'

‘Half-brother.' He frowned. ‘I didn't recognise him that day in Hyde Park—I barely caught a glimpse. I was too busy running after you and it's a quite a few years since I've seen him. He was never popular on the estate. He was cruel, even as a child. My mother used to tell me there's always good in people and she was kind to him. Robert's mother was a cold woman, you see. I received more warmth and affection in our cottage from my mother than he did from his, up in the grand main house.'

‘I find it hard to be sorry for Robert,' Cameo interjected.

‘But my mother did care about him, as the son of the man she loved, after all. It wasn't an easy situation. That's what made it worse, when he treated her so badly. She didn't suspect of what he was capable. I did. I came across him once, tormenting a rabbit caught in a trap in the woods.'

Benedict's mouth creased into a wicked smile as the recollection returned. ‘I punched him on the nose. The coward ran away. Of course, I didn't realise we were brothers then and we were both away at school for most of the year.'

He swigged a draught of wine from the glass he'd just poured. ‘When I got back from Venice and found he'd cast my mother out, I demanded an interview with him. I wanted to confront him about what he'd done to her and also about the paintings my father had wanted to leave to me. I won't forget how he called me into our father's study at Warley Park. There he sat, very much the lord of the manor. He ruled Warley Park, and all the people's lives in it, including my mother's. I hated how he'd treated her the minute my back was turned.'

He felt barely in the studio now, as the memory raged back. ‘I couldn't see my mother cast out of our home, no matter how humble it was. I wanted to take on the post of gamekeeper so she could keep the cottage. I offered to give up my career in art, if I had to. But Robert wasn't having that. He wanted to turn us out without a penny and I refused to beg. I had to let it go. I didn't want to create a scandal for my mother. When she died not much later, I left Warley Park and put any connection with it behind me. That's why I avoided any aristocratic circles—it seemed to be the only way. I determined to make my own way in the world. I haven't seen Robert since and I never wanted to see the estate again.'

‘So you've never been home to Warley Park.'

‘Never.' The word came out harshly as he slammed down his wine glass on the table. ‘I still dream of those woods, though, and sometimes I dream of the paintings in the gallery.'

‘They should be yours,' Cameo said with passion. ‘Surely there's a case for them being your birthright?'

‘I want nothing of Robert's—not his lands, not his house, not his paintings. Though perhaps there is something else I do want,' he added, with a quirk of an eyebrow, as he drew her to him. ‘You.'

He pulled back. ‘You do understand, don't you? You brought it all back, the way I'd felt so cheated, so deceived. I was full of rage and distrust towards what you represented, as a member of the aristocracy, who I thought you were, not who you really are. You were a direct reminder of a past I wanted to forget.'

‘I understand that now, but, Benedict, I've just realised something.' Cameo flashed him a teasing look from under her lashes. ‘You're the son of a lord. You're so damning about aristocrats, but you're one yourself.'

‘The wrong side of the blanket.'

‘I prefer your side to Robert's.'

Benedict gave a wry smile.

‘I owe you an apology for some of the things I said when we first met.' His chuckle sounded rueful. ‘You understand now, I hope. I'd become bitter, but I just longed to put it all behind me. The memories were too much for me, so I cut off that part of my past, tried not to think about my real father. It seemed easier to stay out of that world, to not have anything to do with it.'