Madelene had several times imagined stealing into Benedict’s studio at night, but not like this. Not with cold fear and anger clenching her throat shut around her breath as she caught up her hems and hurried up the stairs.
He’d turned from her. He’d run away from her. By the time she realized what was happening, she’d lost him in the crowd. She’d had to find Miss Sewell and beg for the carriage to go after him. Her chaperone wanted to come along but relented reluctantly in the face of Madelene’s pleading. She said she would wait a half hour before she told Helene and Adele what had happened.
Helene might never forgive either of them for their conduct. Madelene would deal with that when she had to. Right now all that mattered was finding Benedict and finding some way to explain.
The studio door was open, just a crack.
“Benedict?” Madelene pushed it far enough so that she could slip inside.
The room was entirely dark except for the glow of the moon that streamed in through the windows. Darkness robbed the furnishings, the tables, and the canvases of the familiar shapes and made them all blurred and strange. The only thing she recognized was Benedict himself.
He stood facing the painting of Selene in her chariot. The moonlight washed out the subtle details that Benedict had labored so diligently over, changing it into a canvas filled with ghosts.
“I’m surprised your friends let you come,” he said without turning around. “Surely they want you to stay with your new beaus.”
“Benedict, please look at me. That was nothing. You saw how crowded that room was. They bumped me by accident. I think they were drunk. I . . .”
But then he did turn, and she saw the twisted anger in his face.
“How could you let them do this to you, Madelene!”
“Who are you talking about?” she demanded. “What do you think has been done?”
“Lady Helene! Lady Adele!” He stabbed a finger toward the door. “And may God forgive me, Miss Sewell! I thought she was trustworthy, but now I see I was wrong! They’ve taken you and turned you into one of them.”
“Benedict, you are talking nonsense. No one has turned me into anything.”
“And yet there you were, drinking champagne from another man’s glass and laughing about it.”
“I was not laughing! I fell! And I didn’t want the drink. I . . .” Madelene stopped. She sounded ridiculous. She shouldn’t have to be explaining this to him. He should trust her. He did trust her, as she trusted him.
But if he trusted her, where had this shattered look on his face come from?
“I never should have let you go,” Benedict whispered. “I should have kept you here.”
“I beg your pardon?” she cried. No, said the terrified voice in the back of her mind. No, no, this is not happening. Benedict is not . . . he cannot be . . .
“I could tell where this season was leading you,” he said, and his voice was flat and dead. “Or I would have been able to tell if I’d been willing to look. The new clothes, the new ways of acting and talking . . .”
“I was getting over my bashfulness! You should be pleased!”
“I should be murdering Lady Helene for taking the sweetest, most perfect girl, the girl I loved, and turning her into a lightskirt!”
The words and the insult rang through the air. Madelene took one step back, stumbling against her train. Benedict made no move to come to her. He just stood where he was, his arms dangling loose at his sides.
His words played themselves over in her mind. They rearranged and they reformed until their meaning became clear and the slow horror of understanding seeped into her veins.
“You only loved Madelene the mouse,” she said. “You want to keep me that little shy creature.”
Now Benedict did move. He was across the room in three long strides to seize her wrists. The severity of his grip pressed the chain of her bracelet into her glove and her skin underneath.
“I want you to be who you are, Madelene! Kind and thoughtful and natural! A true beauty, not this!” He pulled her arms wide, showing her to herself and to him. “Not paint and bangles and artifice!”
It was too much. It was not to be endured. Madelene wrenched her hands free of him. How could he say these things? After all their time together, after all they had done and shared, how could he have heard and understood so little?
“And what if this is what I want?” she demanded, drawing herself up. “What if I want artifice?”
“You don’t, Madelene.” He was trying to change his tone. He was trying to be gentle. A wave of revulsion swept her. “You’ve just been told that you do, that’s all.”
As if I was a child with no understanding! “How do you know?”
“I know you!”
“Do you?” she shot back. “This is your deep artist’s sensitivity divining the true nature of Madelene Valmeyer? Did you ever once consider asking me what I want?”
He closed his mouth.
“No, you didn’t,” she sneered. “Because you are just like all the rest!”
“I only want to protect you!”
“Yes, protect me! Protect me so that I’m what you want, not what I want! Everyone wants me to be this . . . this vision they see in their heads of a daughter, a sister, a debutante a . . . a . . . lover. But none of them ever bother to ask me what I want to be! As if because I’m shy I can’t possibly know!”
“But you don’t know,” he insisted. “You’re too sheltered. I’ve seen what society does, Madelene. It changes people, women especially. You can’t mean to let yourself be changed like that . . .”
Madelene was shaking. He was reaching out, opening his arms, waiting for her to run to him. To say he was right, that she was wrong.
The worst part was, she wanted to. She looked at him and she saw the man she loved and she wanted to give into him. She wanted desperately to be his Madelene, the girl he loved. She wanted to do anything and everything so that he would hold her and look at her with love and desire in his eyes. So he would shield her, and hide her.
But she could not. She would not.
“I am not letting anyone change me!” she shouted. “I am changing myself so I don’t have to be scared of my own shadow anymore! I’d have told you all about what I was doing if you’d asked! But you didn’t. You just wanted to put me on a windowsill like . . . like . . . like your pot of primroses! Keep me indoors and make sure I had just enough sun and just enough water and just enough . . . just enough . . .”
She couldn’t finish. She turned and she ran, stumbling down the stairs like she was drunk or blind. She couldn’t think. She could barely breathe. All she could think to do was get away. To hide.
* * *
Madelene.
Benedict stared as she turned and stumbled down the stairs. He knew in some distant part of himself he should go after her. Something had gone horribly wrong. He’d been so sure of what he’d seen, of what he knew. It had all been exactly as Mrs. Darington had described to him.
But now . . . now . . .
Madelene was running away from him, out into the street, and all he could do was stand and stare at the chalk she’d scuffed and blurred with her careless slippers.
And, it seemed, very slowly, crumple to his knees.