The young soldier in his red jacket, sword at his hip, became more flushed as the hours went by. The attic wasn’t particularly warm, but the uniform was. Adam pitied him, but he also respected him for refusing to pose amid furs, silks, famous family paintings and an overall vulgar display at his mother’s excessive house.
Captain Lord Summerfield was young for his military rank but no doubt significant strings had been pulled. His rise to the top was likely to be extraordinary. A second son, he was following the arrangements made for him with grace.
“Would you like some water?” Adam asked. “This is really coming along well. Your mother will be pleased.” He was pleased he’d used heavy black silk on the stool. “Not that a handsome subject is difficult to reproduce.”
“Mother wants a painting of me in all this paraphernalia to add to her gallery. She’s in a hurry because she’s afraid I’ll get killed before the job can be finished.”
“You are harsh on your parent, My Lord,” Adam remarked, but couldn’t help smiling.
Halibut had chosen to curl into the silk beside the boot Summerfield rested on the floor. His other knee was raised with the heel of the boot hooked against the silk and over a rung of the stool. The young man had endeared himself to Adam by insisting the cat be included in the portrait, and there on the canvas was a pleased-looking Halibut.
Arrangements for the cat’s care would not be made until the last moment when, as Adam and Desirée had decided, they would ask Lady Hester to take him in. Apart from Anne and Verbeux, she would be the only one with knowledge of their plans. Adam knew she would be pleased.
Tonight they would leave. With the warnings he had received about how he was to behave toward Desirée, he should feel little excitement, yet he felt he might boil over with joy. Whatever the circumstances, he and Desirée would be together, at least for a while, and it was more than he had ever allowed himself to dream about. An arrangement made for the sake of expediency might not be the stuff of a great romance, but he wanted whatever he could have with Desirée.
Tonight. Yesterday, last night and this morning had been a nightmare of waiting.
“You become lost in your painting, Mr. Chillworth. You work in a fever,” Lord Summerfield said.
Adam raised his brush from the canvas and said, “Passion causes a kind of fever in most of us, don’t you think?”
Summerfield was still considering his answer when Old Coot opened the door without knocking and shuffled forward to present Adam with a card, which, at first, Adam couldn’t seem to read.
Coot puffed quite alarmingly. “Can’t ever find Evans, or anyone else useful, when they’re needed. You can see why I had to come myself and at once. She would not take a seat in the sitting room and keeps saying she should probably leave since you must be working.”
Adam’s fingertips felt numb. He read his mother’s name several times before the blood rushed back to his head.
“I say,” Summerfield said and hopped down off the stool. “Sounds like my cue to get lost. I’ll admit I’m a bit over warm, and I’d like to be outside. All right with you if we stop?”
Adam admired him for his impeccable manners and easygoing personality. “Not at all. I leave London tonight but will return in a few days. Shall we say Friday morning of next week?” This was the message he’d intended to give the man anyway.
“Perfect.” Summerfield gave Adam a mock salute and nodded at Coot when he passed him.
Coot waited until the soldier’s boots made a distant thump on the stairs and said, “They don’t make fighting men the way they used to.” He didn’t continue and Adam didn’t press him for an explanation.
“You can’t leave a lady—”
“No,” Adam said. “The lady is my mother.”
“Thought she might be. You look like her. Visiting from the country, is she? I’ve heard about your brother, but not your mother. Thought she must have died, like your father.”
The blatant digging for information was obvious to Adam but he knew the best way to close this unfortunate subject. “My father, Mr. Gilbert Chillworth, is very much alive and farms up north. I think it would be better if my mother came up here. Would you ask her to do so, please?”
Coot’s incoherent mumblings accompanied the man on his mission.
Adam kept on his smock and left the paint on his hands. His family didn’t want to accept what he was, but he had no intention of pretending to be something different.
What did his mother want? He hadn’t seen her for several years but now he would meet her for the second time in days. Of course, by the time Coot finally reached the lobby, the lady might well have changed her mind and left.
The papers his father had given him to read were well hidden—his mother must never see them. He straightened the drape on the stool, then spied the carpet he’d left on the bed since Desirée put it there. He didn’t know exactly why except that he was probably trying to become accustomed to the new situation that lay ahead.
Leaving the rolled up carpet on the bed—his mother could think what she wanted to think—he pounded on sofa cushions and straightened the table in front. He was grateful to have made such progress in turning his cramped space into what Desirée considered cozy.
He looked for somewhere to put away his bucket filled with soaking dirty dishes bound for the scullery, but when he heard light steps approaching, dishes didn’t seem to matter.
His mother had left her family more than half his lifetime ago. Why would she seek him out now, and why would he feel the same raw mix of love and betrayal as he had when a teenager? At least he now had some insight into why his parents had fought when he was a child. In his account, Gilbert wrote that his wife had tricked him into having another child. He had never wanted Adam but, nevertheless, it was disappointment in their younger son that drove the couple apart. Adam blamed his father, but his mother should not have left her children.
She was standing outside his door. Even if logic didn’t tell him she’d reached the top of his stairs, he would feel her there.
She knocked. A single, uncertain knock.
Adam went at once to open the door and stand back, spreading an arm to welcome her into his home. The lady was about to suffer another shock about her daubing younger son.
“Good day to you, Mother. You’ve surprised me.” He wanted to tell her how young she looked and how beautiful in a carriage dress of lavender gros de Naples and a pelisse with a short cape of India muslin. When he’d been a child he had found it impossible to look away from this ethereal woman, and today she cast a similar spell. Her Lyonese hat of plum-colored crepe with lavender and pink stripes under the brim delighted him, as did the pink gauze and roses on its crown. Her curly hair was as black as ever.
She stood before him, studying him, a faint but unmistakable quirk at the corners of her lovely mouth. Then she gave a small, unconvincing laugh. “I thought you might tell the butler to turn me away.”
“You are the one who chose to do all the turning away.”
“Perhaps.”
Tears welled in her violet eyes and she averted her face. “This is a comfortable place and so like you,” she said. “When you were little you always found a private nook for yourself where you could feel closed in and able to explore your thoughts alone. And read, of course. You have always been almost frighteningly intelligent.”
Once he’d accepted that she knew his habits so well. Now he wondered if she ever did or if she was merely adept at summing up a given situation and saying the right words.
“Too intelligent to waste my mind on painting?” He didn’t like himself for his meanness.
Mama frowned in puzzlement. “Oh, no. It would not be possible to get the very essence of a subject onto a canvas if you weren’t intelligent. And I have been told that you do exactly that.”
He felt bemused. Why would she say such things now? “What brings you here?” He should want to become close to her again, but he wasn’t sure that’s what she wanted and wouldn’t risk being hurt and embarrassed again. And she’d already let him know how unimportant he was to her by leaving him and never making contact.
“I have two reasons to be here,” she said. “You, and Lucas.”
She walked around him and studied the painting of the young soldier. It was far from finished but he was having a day when he thought the piece quite good.
“It’s the man who passed me downstairs,” she said. “You are so talented. Little wonder you are sought out all over London.”
He looked at his hands and tried to collect himself. These didn’t sound like words from the woman who considered his occupation degrading enough to leave her family and pretend he never existed.
“This has to be the younger Summerfield boy. I didn’t study him downstairs but he is very much like his mother. A handsome woman. I saw the slightest sign of recognition when he looked at me but he was probably fifteen when last we met.”
“He’s a natural subject. Very straightforward. It always shows.”
“You’re right,” she said, standing a little closer. “My favorites are the small studies you did of all the Blum-midge grandchildren. So sweet. Is it true that you painted Lady Conygham—” she smiled behind a hand “—in nothing but her jewels?”
Her girlish curiosity amused him. “Not exactly.”
Mama looked disappointed. “Well you should have heard that old Dowager Duchess of Franchot crowing about the portraits of her family.
“And I was amazed to learn that poor woman who married Lord Byron allowed their daughter to sit for you.”
“Aye.” He neither encouraged nor discouraged the line of conversation. “One feels a deep intelligence in that one. She may be destined for greatness.”
“Isn’t it true that Wellington had you copy a painting of Harriet Wilson and make her look a lot younger?”
“How do you know all these things, Mama?” He had an unsettled sensation that his well-connected mother and grandmother might have had something to do with helping his career to its current considerable success. The thought distressed him. After his father had threatened to throw him out if he didn’t give up painting—because it had destroyed his parents’ marriage—he left at once, asking nothing of his family and dreaming of showing them he didn’t need their help.
Lady Elspeth pretended she hadn’t heard Adam’s question. “How sweet to have a cat in the picture of Summerfield,” she said.
There had been the “chance” encounter outside Apsley House. Chance or design?
“That is Princess Desirée’s cat.” What point could there be in avoiding mention of Desirée. He wished she were with him now—so violently did he wish it that sweat broke out on his brow. He prayed this rare girl would be happy, no matter what came their way, but he prayed even harder that the hours would slip fast away until he was able to put his arms around her again. Verbeux had taken away any shred of doubt about the elopement but seemed determined that Adam understand Desirée would be his wife in name only, and not for longer than necessary. Perhaps he would comply…
He realized his mother was watching him. “That girl you were so eager to protect when we all met in the street. Princess Desirée. An odd alliance, wouldn’t you say—between the two of you? I understand she’s illegitimate.”
Adam crossed his arms and shook his head. “How stories do get twisted. Why do you care about Desirée and her situation?”
His mother turned solemn eyes on his face. “Because you care about her. I found her delightful. She would have been within her rights to throw my silly coins at me.”
“Desirée would never do such a thing. She has a rare gift, she sees a situation from all angles.”
Halibut chose that moment to wind himself in Mama’s skirts.
“He likes it here,” Adam said. “Spends time with me when the Princess has other duties.”
“He likes you,” she said and laughed. “You always did have a way with children and animals.”
He looked up quickly to judge whether she was referring to Desirée as a child but concluded he was being too touchy.
His mother straightened up rapidly and took a backward step. Her cry was muffled and Adam looked closely at Halibut. A torn apart, stringy and partially eaten chicken leg held his mouth in a wide smile. Dratted cat.
“He’s offering you some of his treat to show how much he likes you.”
Clearly unimpressed, Mama’s smile didn’t convince him one bit. “Adam, do you have time to talk with me. I have a great deal on my mind.”
For years he’d rehearsed how, if he were ever face-to-face with this woman again, he would pretend he didn’t as much as know her. But he had grown up.
“Of course I have time. Please sit down. Should you like tea, or a sherry perhaps.”
“Nothing, thank you,” she said and passed up the comfortable couch in favor of a straight-back cane chair. “I will do my best to be brief. Before I start, I want to make it understood that I do not expect you to agree to my request, but I have nowhere else to go and must at least try.”
Buying time, Adam took off his smock and hung it on a hook. He took up an oily rag and removed the worst of the paint from his hands before washing them. And all the time his tension rose.
He sat on the couch and stretched out his legs.
“You aren’t going to help me, are you?” Lady Elspeth said. “But why should you? First I want to tell you that I love you with my heart and soul, that I always have, and that my suffering at being separated from you has been beyond all.”
He felt he couldn’t breathe.
“I know you cannot possibly understand what happened. I just ask you to try to find a little affection for me.
“Now, to Lucas. I understand the two of you are becoming good friends. Lucas has mentioned it and his happiness shows. For the first time in a year or more, I see lightheartedness in his eyes and I thank you for giving him that. He did not treat you well when you were younger.”
“Boyish stuff,” Adam said, at last able to make his voice work. “Happens all the time.”
“I suppose. Adam, I’m in a pretty fix and I don’t know a way out of it. I cannot turn to my mother again. Already she has spent too much on me.”
“Surely you still get your allowance from Father.”
Her mouth trembled and she tried to hold her lips tight together.
“Mama?”
“I have the allowance my father arranged for me. If it weren’t for that I should have been unable to do even as much as I have for Lucas. And he lives at Manthy House, which helps him greatly. He is good to his grandmother, who enjoys the attention.”
“What has happened to Lucas?” Adam stopped himself from checking his watch. Soon Verbeux would bring Desirée.
“He isn’t a bad man,” she said. “Rolly used to be a terrible influence, but that has changed and now he is a source of wisdom for your brother.”
Adam couldn’t bring himself to agree. He still could not like Rolly. “Father provides for Lucas.”
She produced a handkerchief and twisted it. The tears had disappeared. “Lucas has squandered considerable sums. He has tried to live far above his station, gambling in high stakes games, engaging in wild and wildly expensive parties. And then—Adam, you won’t repeat this to anyone?”
“Not a word.”
“He involved himself with a woman who became pregnant and said the child was his. She expected him to marry her. He refused, wouldn’t even acknowledge there had ever been anything between them—even though they were known to have been together. She killed herself.”
Adam pressed his fingers into his temples. “Where was his honor? Regardless of how he felt, if there was any chance the child was his he should at least have offered financial—”
“I know. When the girl’s father realized there was nothing to be had from Lucas, he went to Gilbert and threatened to expose the whole thing. Gilbert paid but he treats Lucas appallingly and has cut off his allowance until he decides Lucas has reformed. Lucas is supposed to live very simply and stay away from any occasion of evil.”
“Father is unrealistic,” Adam said. “Nevertheless, Lucas should be horsewhipped.”
“He’s being punished every hour of every day. Now he thinks your father favors you rather than him—”
“And how dreadful that would be,” Adam said before he could stop himself. “Why shouldn’t father be nice to me rather than Lucas when it’s always been the other way around? Oh, forgive me, I am petty. I wish Lucas no harm.”
“Are you attempting to get your father to change his will and leave the bulk of his fortune to you—because he’s angry with Lucas?”
Adam’s mind became blank.
“I know this isn’t the case,” Mama said, “but your brother believes it’s so and I want to help Lucas see the truth.”
“My father came to see me,” he said. “He wanted to reiterate all the things he blames me for, and to tell me that he’s cutting me out of the small inheritance he was leaving me and stopping my allowance. I knew nothing of Father’s situation with Lucas. None of this matters because I support myself very well.” The thought of a woman killing herself because she had no hope outraged him. “Did the child die with his mother?”
Lady Elspeth shook her head. “I don’t know. I was never even allowed to hear the girl’s name.” Lady Elspeth put her head in her hands and sobbed. Her shoulders heaved. She must have heard Adam move to go to her because she waved him away. “All my fault,” she said. “One foolish mistake and I paid a great price, but I could have been stronger afterward. I thought you boys would do well with your father. I was wrong, of course. You needed me, too.”
He had so many questions but didn’t want to risk her pulling back and never finishing her story at all.
“Adam,” she said, “you have a generous income from my dear father. I’ve been so glad he did that, particularly in light of your father’s favoritism toward your brother. I don’t know the details but I believe the sums are substantial. What I want to ask of you is that if it will not cause you difficulty, could you help Lucas get out of financial trouble—in the form of a loan, of course—and arrange your repayment with him? I don’t like to suggest that you threaten him, but if you said that if he started gambling again you’d stop lending him money, he’d have to behave himself.”
Her misery overwhelmed him but she’d shown him she didn’t want him to get too close. “I have not accepted grandfather’s trust.”
Her head snapped up. “What are you saying? Of course you have.”
“No, mother. I declined. Of course the trust was set up so that the solicitor and I would be the only ones with any knowledge of the money involved or what I chose to do with it.”
Lady Elspeth, her face stark, had shifted to the edge of her chair. “Adam, surely you can access the money whenever you please.”
At the moment he wished that were the case. “My wishes are reviewed every six months. I have recently reiterated my decision.
“I do have money of my own. Not a huge estate, but becoming quite satisfactory. I will have that talk with Lucas and arrange to pay him a small amount on a regular basis.”
Mama leaped to her feet. “I am proud to be your mother, your undeserving mother, but please say nothing to Lucas. And don’t concern yourself with me because I know what to do now. You are too straightforward to imagine the sums I’m talking about so put them out of your mind.
“I do ask you to continue to build a friendship with your brother because I think it will help him find some peace and security.”
“I want to do that,” Adam said, still wondering how he could help raise the money Lucas needed, even as he questioned if Lucas could possibly give him an excuse for his behavior toward a pregnant girl. “Please have faith that we shall do what must be done.”
She tugged at her hat strings and took the thing off. She had changed so little. “I believe I will have that sherry now. Just a small one.”
Adam went to the marble-topped cupboard where he kept his liquor and poured sherry into a finely cut crystal glass. He was placing it in his mother’s hands when a bellowing voice was heard. A loud man, probably still in the foyer, was demanding, but what he demanded was indecipherable.
Lady Elspeth got out of her chair once more and went to stand behind it.
“Mama,” Adam said, “are you all right?”
She nodded, but put down her sherry and replaced her hat. She located her gloves in her reticule and pulled them on. “I’m going to leave you to your work. Adam—” she looked at him in appeal “—your grandmother speaks of you every day. And every day she asks what I know of you and says how much she wants to see you. I don’t ask you to make your mind up at once, but will you at least consider it?”
“Desirée says I will be a disgrace if I don’t go.”
“The girl has spirit. I like that. Let me know what you decide.”
“Tell Grandmama I will be visiting her and soon. Tell her I love her.”
Once more tears filmed his mother’s eyes and she dabbed at them with her handkerchief. “Thank you, Adam,” she mumbled.
The bellowing grew closer, then stopped abruptly, but the owner of the big voice wasn’t far away.
“Could you see me out, please?” Lady Elspeth asked in soft tones.
But she was too late to make her escape without encountering whoever had been shouting and backed as far as she could into a corner. A thumping sounded and the voice announced, “I’m coming in, Adam,” before its owner threw open the door, marched into the room, and closed them all in. “Have you been keeping things from me? Things I have a right to know? Because if you have, by God you shall suffer for it. You’re already above yourself, but if you’ve still got a notion to marry a daft Princess just to make Lucas look bad, you can forget it.”
“What the hell do you mean?” Adam swallowed with difficulty and hoped this didn’t mean Gilbert had found out the truth.
“Don’t raise your voice to me, my boy. Rolly Spade-Filbert came to me on another matter. He mentioned how you are inseparable from this girl.”
“So there we are,” Adam said. “Rolly has already spoken for me.”
“Well…” Gilbert rocked to his heels and curled his lip. “Rolly has been concerned for Lucas. Apparently he feels a bit low. Seeing your success, then getting some ideas about you and the Princess may have made him more depressed.”
Why would my brother begrudge me happiness? At least his father had not found out about the elopement, but Adam still intended to find out if Lucas knew Rolly had made his troublemaking little visit.
A slight movement from Elspeth grabbed Gilbert’s attention. “Good Lord,” he said in a completely changed tone. “Elspeth, dear one, I didn’t see you there. Look at you. It is as if not a day has passed since I first saw you.”
Abruptly he remembered Adam’s presence. “Get out, you. I’ll deal with you later. Can’t you see your mother and I need to be alone?”
Adam watched his mother’s face, saw the fear in her eyes, fear tinged with dislike. “Should you like me to go, Mother?”
“No man has the right to order another out of his home,” she said. “I shall leave at once.”
Gilbert paled to the lips. “Absolutely not, I have learned what I came to learn.”
“You have learned nothing,” she said. “You heard a rumor about Adam and, as always, rather than take his part, you came roaring to accuse him. I suggest you look at your son’s work. It humbles me, as it should you.”
Gilbert glanced at Summerfield’s portrait and moved a little closer. “Never understood these things myself but I suppose it’s clever. Pay well, does it?”
“Well enough, thank you, Father.”
“Aye, well, that’s good then. You’ll need it.” The man turned to his estranged wife and the hunger Adam saw in his eyes rocked him. “How are you, Elspeth?” he asked in a low voice Adam didn’t think he’d ever heard before.
“Well, thank you.”
Gilbert looked into her eyes and Adam saw him swallow repeatedly. “And your mother?”
Elspeth actually smiled a little. “Her attitude toward life remains positive. She sees everything as possible and that keeps her mind and body healthy.”
“I’m delighted,” Gilbert said, never breaking his concentration on Lady Elspeth. “Your father was a good man but you inherited your spirit from your mother.”
Adam began to feel like a voyeur.
His parents fell silent but it was as if they touched each other, embraced each other passionately without needing to move.
At last Mama said, “And you, Gilbert? How have you been?”
Gilbert raised his arms and let them fall to his sides. Such a handsome, vital man, with such lines of unhappiness around his eyes and mouth. “Good. Thank you very much for asking.”
Lady Elspeth smiled again and nodded. “Good. You look vigorous and you haven’t changed at all since we last met.”
Didn’t they say something about love being blind? The thought shook Adam. His parents were older and the years had left marks even if they were marks that only served to make them more handsome in a different way, but he was certain they didn’t lie when they said they saw no change, one in the other. They were still in love.
Sadness, sudden and overwhelming, enveloped him.
“I must go down and find my cloak,” Mama said. “It’s still so cold. The snow is lovely but I’m grateful it isn’t falling today.”
“I’ll come down and help you with your cloak,” Gilbert said and Adam felt how desperate he was to prolong the meeting.
“That’s not necessary, thank you. The old butler might think we considered him frail and I shouldn’t like to shame him.”
“No, no, of course not. Why didn’t I think of that?”
Because you never would have thought of such things, Father. You have always been too angry.
“Your boots,” Gilbert continued, looking down at Mama’s feet. “They are lovely but surely not sturdy enough for such weather. The cold will strike at you through such thin soles.”
Mama didn’t lower her gaze quite quickly enough to hide the glimmer of tears on her lashes. “I don’t have far to walk. But thank you for your concern.”
“My carriage is outside,” Gilbert said. “Allow me to escort you to Manthy House. I shall carry you over the snow.”
Adam thought Mama might lose her composure entirely, but she straightened her back and managed a polite but remote smile. “You’re too kind. But I have my own coach.” She tied her hat ribbons a little tighter, slipped her reticule strings up to her elbow and walked toward the door.
Gilbert make a subtle move toward her. Adam doubted his father knew he’d done so.
Mama hesitated as she passed the man who was still her husband. So quickly a blink might have stolen the moment, she touched Gilbert’s arm and bobbed to her toes to place the lightest of kisses on his cheek.
“Be happy,” she said. Then she left.
With his fingertips on his face, Father stood where he was. He looked into a distance Adam could not see. “I am a fool,” he murmured.
Adam felt sorry—for his parents, for Lucas and for himself. Two people who had loved one another had sacrificed that love for some disagreement—and he had been made the excuse. And those two people still loved each other, only they had dug such a wide ditch between them he doubted they could ever get across it.
Father seemed frozen in place.
“Why do you hate me?” Adam asked and couldn’t believe he’d revealed himself so.
Gilbert looked at him, turned to stand in front of him. He studied his son and Adam saw no sign of bitterness. “Hate you?” he said. “What I’ve done was all for nothing, but I cannot change the past.”