How To Distract a Duchess (33 page)

“Perhaps one is speaking out of turn,” Cuthbert said.

“Pray continue. I’m embarking on a journey to India on the
Tiberius.
We make sail with the tide, so there’s no need to concern yourself about the tale spreading further. What did you almost say?”

“Just that for your sake, Her Grace didn’t hesitate to shatter the Beddington statue. It was utterly destroyed and all she could think of was your welfare.”

So the Beddington statue that started the whole tangled affair was gone. Artemisia had sacrificed it for him. He hadn’t even thought to ask how she’d removed the key from her prized artwork.

“What an ass I’ve been.” He studied the paint spatters on the hardwood between his feet.

Cuthbert refrained from comment.

“At least the world will not be deprived of the future works your mistress will create.” Trevelyn looked at the Mars canvas once more. “She truly is brilliant, isn’t she, Cuthbert?”

“Indeed, sir, she is that.”

“There’s so much I wanted to tell her,” he said softly. “And yet only one thing really.” He shoved his hands into his pockets and trudged toward the doorway.

“Is there a message you wish to leave, sir?” Cuthbert asked as he swept before Trevelyn to hold the door for him.

“Tell her . . .”

Where to begin? That he was sorry. That he could barely breathe for wanting to hold her. That contemplating the long march of days ahead without her made him go numb inside.

That he’d love her until he was dust.

None of it was a message he could leave with Cuthbert.
  

“Tell her I like the painting.”
  

“He likes the painting,” Artemisia repeated. “You specifically asked if he had a message for me and all he said was he likes the painting?”

“Those were his precise words, madam.”

“You and he spoke together for some time. I was watching through a crack in the dressing room door, but I couldn’t hear well enough to make anything out. He must have said something else.”

Cuthbert’s eyes darted up and to the right, obviously searching his memory. “I believe he did say you were brilliant.”

“Brilliant.” The word fell flat as a paving stone on her tongue. “For pity’s sake, Cuthbert, men say cricket players are brilliant.”

“If it gives Your Grace any consolation, Mr. Deveridge took solace from viewing the painting. There was something about it which seemed to indicate that you’d granted him absolution for some offense.”

“He noticed I lengthened his willy, no doubt,” Artemisia said irritably. She ran a hand through her hair, heedless of the cerulean streaks her fingers left in their wake. “Do all men believe the sun rises and sets in their own groin?”

Cuthbert blinked at her owlishly.

“Never mind. The question was purely rhetorical,” she said. “Honestly, there must have been something else.”

Cuthbert’s lips formed a cut across his face like a spade mark on an old potato. “Well, Mr. Deveridge did mention that he’s due to sail to India with the tide.”

“Today?” Artemisia’s heart dropped to her ankles. It was one thing to stubbornly refuse to see him while part of her heart secretly hoped he’d try again. It was quite another to realize he was giving up on her entirely and fleeing to a far corner of the world. She’d not see Trevelyn again in this life.

Her knees gave way and she collapsed onto the settee.

“Madam, are you quite well?” Cuthbert hovered about her anxious as a bee over a drooping flower.

She realized that she’d stopped breathing. Artemisia forced herself to inhale. “No, I may never be well again.”

It will not end like this
, she told herself. The daughter of Angus Dalrymple didn’t let a little setback like a passage to India get in the way of her future happiness. She rose to her feet and tore out of her paint smock. She wished there was time to change into something grander than her simple day dress, but there was no help for it.

“On what ship does he sail?” she asked.

Cuthbert tapped his temple with his knuckles for a moment. “The
Tiberius
.”

Artemisia surprised the stiff-backed gentleman by giving him a quick hug. “You are a treasure, Cuthbert. Bring the barouche around and quickly now. Mr. Deveridge only thinks he’s gotten away easily. He and I are not finished with our disagreement yet.”

One corner of Cuthbert’s mouth lifted in a knowing half-smile. “Indeed, Your Grace, one suspects there may be enough points of conflict to keep the pair of you fully engaged for at least the next fifty years or so.”

“Let us hope,” she agreed. “But time is of the essence.”

“Very good, Your Grace.” Her butler dispensed with his customary bow and nearly sprinted out of the studio.

Her noble intentions of sacrificing her happiness on the altar of her art evaporated like morning mist. Much as she loved for her work, she realized she lived for Trev. The two- dimensional men she created were a poor substitute for the real one. Artemisia was determined not to let him go without a fight. She took a last look at the Mars canvas.

“And if in the end, I have to give up painting . . . so be it.”

* * *

The London wharf was an anthill of industry. Sweat-slick men rolled barrels and pushed handcarts along the docks to the accompaniment of piped commands and profuse swearing. This noisy, malodorous place was the commercial hub of the Empire. Goods from a thousand ports intersected and changed hands several times, often even before being off-loaded. It was chaos in motion.

And a deucedly difficult place to find one specific ship in a hurry.

Finally Artemisia gave up trying to read the faded ships’ names as the barouche fought its way down the crowded street. She ordered a halt.

“You there, boy,” she called to a scruffy-looking lad. Cast off or run-away, London’s many street urchins either found a way to survive on the lowest rung of the ladder or they perished anonymously as they lived.

The boy turned his thin face up to her.

“I’ll give you a guinea if can you tell me where the
Tiberius
is berthed,” she promised.

The lad shrugged. “Coin first, milady.”

“Cuthbert, pay the lad and quickly.”

Her butler fished out the appropriate mintage and tossed it to the boy.

A sly grin split the youth’s face. “The
Tiberius
already slipped ‘er cables, guv. If you ‘urry, you can just see ‘er sails rounding the bend in the river.” The boy took to his heels lest he be forced to surrender the guinea.

The coin was the furthest thing from Artemisia’s mind. She didn’t wait for Cuthbert to open the barouche’s door. She clamored down unaided and ran as fast as her legs would carry her to the end of the nearest pier.

Canvas flying in the distance, the heavy-laden merchantman was making its way down the Thames and out to the Channel with the receding tide. A dozen punts bobbed in its wake. Artemisia’s first thought was to hail a small craft to overtake the
Tiberius,
but after seeing the way the larger vessel pulled away from the river boats, that hope sank like an anchor.

Her breath caught in her throat. Perhaps she could arrange passage on the next ship bound for Bombay and overtake him at one of the ports of call.

Compose yourself,
she ordered fiercely.
There’s no need to chase a man who obviously doesn’t want to be caught.

Tears pressed behind her eyes, but she tried to hold them back. If he was content to leave her forever, she must accept the idea. In time, she might even come to bless him for it. A dedicated operative in Her Majesty’s intelligence service had no need of a wife to encumber him. And hadn’t she only grudgingly accepted the idea of placing herself under the thumb of a husband once again?

Surely, it was for the best.

Then why did her chest feel as if a lodestone had replaced her beating heart?

She covered her face with both hands and wept. What a fool she’d been. She’d demanded more of Trevelyn than he was able to give. Unlike the gods on her canvases, he wasn’t made for her to mold into the image that most suited her. If he couldn’t abide for her to continue painting nudes, she should have accepted him for who he was. Her damnable pursuit of perfection had driven away the one man who might at least have given her slices of the ideal.

She felt a warm masculine hand rest on her shuddering shoulder.
Dear Cuthbert
. Heaven only knew what it cost that most reticent of men to demonstrate his sympathy with the simple gesture.

“Oh, Cuthbert, he’s gone,” she sobbed. “And I have only myself to blame.”

The floodgates opened afresh, and her tears flowed unabated. A handkerchief dangled before her and grasped it like a drowning woman latches on to a lifeline.

“I should have . . .” Words failed to form in the back of her closed throat. A lifetime of quiet despair rose before her eyes and she dissolved into incoherent sobs. Finally, she managed to stammer, “Now what am I to do?”

Long arms came around her and drew her into a surprising embrace. Shock stopped her tears.

“Really, Cuthbert, I appreciate the sentiment, but this display is wholly inappropriate.”

“Madam, if I were Cuthbert, I’d totally agree with you.”

She whirled in his arms. “Trevelyn! What—”

He stopped her with a kiss that warmed her to her toes. Finally he released her mouth, but still held her tightly against him. She wouldn’t have left his embrace willingly for worlds.

“I couldn’t go without you,” he said simply. “I was late in coming round to it, but now I know I haven’t the right to demand that you give up something so important to you. Conditional love is no love at all. And I do love you, Larla. Slap as many nude men on your canvases as it takes to make you happy. I don’t care so long as I’m the only one you slap in your bed.”

She tapped his cheek with her fingertips. “Careful, sir, or you may find yourself slapped in my bed posthaste.”

“Promises, promises,” he said with a sinful smile. Then his expression turned sober. “Seriously now. For my past behavior, I own myself an ass. But I mean to make amends.”

“And how long do you think that will take?” she asked.

“The rest of our lives, I expect,” he said with a laugh. ”I want to be your husband, but I wonder if you have the patience for it.”

“I greatly fear you’ll be the one who needs patience,” she admitted. “But yes, Trev, of course, I’ll be your wife. I love you more than my next breath. The very thought of living without you knocked all the fight out of me.”

“Well, if that’s all it takes . . .”

She swatted his shoulder.

He covered her with kisses.

“Hold there, mate,” one of the passing sailors called to them. “That’s like pouring out water before a parched man. Don’t be making love to the lady on the wharf. Not when there’s rooms to let over at The Tipsy Dutchman.”

Artemisia’s chuckle stopped his kisses. Trevelyn let her come up for air. Then he scooped her up and swung her in a dizzying circle.

“I can hardly believe you’ve consented,” he said breathlessly. “You’ve made me the happiest man in Britain.”

“Only Britain? I think we can do better than that,” she said with a smile full of promise. “Let’s go see about a room at the Tipsy Dutchman.”

From The Tattler

Nuptials among the Beau Monde

By Clarence Wigglesworth, Esq.

All the crème de la crème of London Society was present at the grand wedding of Miss Delia Dalrymple and Lord Shrewsbury the younger on Saturday last. In pomp and spectacle, it was easily the most lavishly garish event of the Season and almost makes up for the not-quite-hushed-up scandal of the bride’s sister’s elopement to Gretna Green with a mere stable hand.

But only a select few were present at the private ceremony uniting the Duchess of Southwycke with the Honorable Mr. Trevelyn Deveridge. Held in a tiny chapel in Wiltshire, the marriage service was simplicity itself. The bride’s sister Florinda (she of the Gretna Green debacle) was matron of honor while the brother of the groom, Theobald Deveridge, the future Earl of Warre, served as best man. The duchess’s parents, her stepson Felix Pelham-Smythe, His Grace the Duke of Southwycke (upright, sober and sorely missed at various gaming hells of late) and an unlikely collection of servants (notably Her Grace’s butler and an East Indian couple in full barbaric dress) were the only other guests.

Conspicuous by his absence was the groom’s father, Lord Warre. However, as the happy couple left the chapel, the earl made a tardy appearance. He approached the newlyweds and, after a few moments conversation, kissed the bride’s cheek and shook the groom’s hand. Upon this evidence of noble approval, the bride’s mother had an attack of the vapors and swooned. The earl and the bride’s father attempted to carry the lady back into the chapel, but she revived suddenly and began shrieking to be put down. Pandemonium ensued and the bridal couple escaped in the confusion.