“On the subject of art, yes, I know,” she finished for him dryly. “But what do you feel when you look at it?”
He stared in silence at the canvas.
“Honestly, madam?”
“I wouldn’t have it otherwise.”
“Hopeless,” he finally said.
“Oh, good. I was afraid I was projecting my own sentiments onto the piece. Very well.” She brought the cup to her lips again. “That was the point, after all. Art is about what it makes you feel. It seems I got it right this time.”
Cuthbert tugged his waistcoat down in front and fiddled with the watch fob dangling from his pocket, checking the time with uncharacteristic preoccupation.
“You’re nervous as a cat. What is it?” Artemisia asked.
“Madam, he’s back again.”
“Is he?” Her chest constricted.
“He refuses to take no for an answer. In fact, if I don’t admit him in precisely two minutes, Mr. Deveridge has threatened to break down the studio door.” Cuthbert adjusted his neck stock. “If one may be so bold as to suggest, one thinks, no, one feels Your Grace should see him.”
“Sometimes I think he’s all I do see,” Artemisia murmured. Nothing had changed. She hoped driving herself to finish the painting, emptying herself on the canvas would clear her soul of the desire to continue with her art. Even though she was exhausted, she knew it hadn’t worked. After a brief spell of recuperation, she’d be ready to create again. She’d need to create again.
She loved Trevelyn, but he didn’t love her if he thought to change this most intrinsic part of her. If she saw him, she feared her will would crumple and she’d give in to his demand to stop her work. It might seem like a fair trade now, when she craved him more than sunlight. But what if in the years to come, her love was tainted by resentment for the sacrifice he required? She hadn’t insisted he stop his work, had she? The Great Game was infinitely more dangerous than painting nudes.
She set her cup on the windowsill. “If Mr. Deveridge is coming in whether I will it or no, we haven’t much time to prepare then, have we?”
* * *
“Artemisia, I know you’re in there.” Trev pounded on the English oak till the door threatened to come off its hinges. “Please, I must see you. How can I apologize properly through a closed door?”
He raised his fist to hammer the portal again, but it opened before he could deliver another blow. Cuthbert waved him into her studio.
Evidence of her recent presence was everywhere, from the still wet paintbrushes congealing on the palette to the cooling teacup on the open windowsill. The faint scent of violets still lingered in the air. But Artemisia was nowhere to be seen.
“Where is she?”
Cuthbert gave a discreet shrug and lifted one hand toward the open window.
Trev could see it clearly in his mind. The little minx must have hoisted herself up and over the sill and disappeared into her overgrown garden to avoid him.
“So she ran rather than face me.” Trevelyn leaned on the windowsill and peered out, disappointment sagging his shoulders. If she was that determined not to see him, his case was truly hopeless.
The orange tabby sunning itself on the back of the settee laid its ears flat and hissed at him.
“Thank you very much,” he said to the cat. “Your mistress made her point most eloquently without your help. I’ll not trouble her again.”
Trevelyn turned to go, but stopped when he caught a glimpse of the canvas Artemisia had been working on. MARS IN DEFEAT was emblazoned in gilt lettering across the bottom of the work.
It gave him an odd sense of detachment, viewing his own nude form. His image strained in a prone gesture of despair. His gut clenched in remembrance of the cramps he endured to produce the contorted figure for her.
The canvas seethed with emotion. It was all there, just as they’d discussed—the misery, the needless death and destruction, the ultimate failure of war—etched on the same face he shaved each morning.
He noted that she’d made quite a few changes since he’d seen it last. His gen**als were rendered in careful detail and thankfully in correct proportion this time. A rueful smile curved his lips.
“Well, perhaps she’s forgiven me a few things at least,” he murmured.
“It’s not one’s place to say,” Cuthbert began and went on to say, nevertheless, “but one suspects one’s mistress does not hold you in any but the highest of regard.”
Trev cast him a sideways glance. “Since she refuses to see me, I seriously doubt that.”
“No, it’s true,” Cuthbert said. “She is most particular about her art, as you well know, and yet she—” He stopped himself abruptly.
“What?”
“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.”
Chapter 36
“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.