Chapter 5
She’d run. Eamon braced himself, waiting for her imperious duchessness to slap his face, declare him a menace to decent ladies, and stalk away.
Instead, she fixed him with a perplexed gaze, her eyes unwavering. Beautiful eyes, the gold flecks dancing in candlelight. Eamon wanted to gaze into them for as long as he could, to reach out and cup her face, to discover if the skin of her cheek was as silken as it looked.
“Why?” she asked him breathily.
So I can bathe my senses in you, so I can delight in you. I intend to marry you, after all.
Good Lord, where had that come from?
Maybe because of the stupid wager, which Eamon had brought up at the club to put off Wolfe’s curiosity?
No, hang the wager. His declaration had come from a place deep inside him, far beyond the frivolous charm he used to keep the world at bay.
Eamon wanted his duchess—Caroline, Caro, or however she preferred he address her once they were lovers—to be his simply for the joy of it.
She’d obviously liked her ducal husband, her smile betraying such when she’d described him chatting with the bust of Vespasian. She’d had a comfortable marriage, Eamon decided.
But the duchess deserved devotion, desire, and blatant admiration, not mere companionship. He wanted to show her what depths passion could stir. Eamon would kiss her body, tumble her hair, and bring her joy every day, morning or evening, whichever she preferred. Both, he hoped.
What means they would live on, Eamon had no idea, but he never let practical considerations stand between him and something he wanted. He dove in and then ascertained what needed to be done, as he had that day at Hallbridge when he’d first become friends with Wolfe and McCormick.
The duchess—Caro, she would be to him—waited for his answer, never realizing what wild fantasies whirled through his head.
Eamon seized the first explanation that came to him. “Because you know the collection. Show me what the dukes considered important, in their eyes. Take me to what they treasured most.”
Caro’s dark brows rose, but she did not question him, thank heaven. She turned without hesitation and skimmed down the gallery, her dark green skirt flowing.
The gown she wore today had been fashionable when Eamon had been shooting at Frenchmen on the Peninsula, when skirts had been cut to cling to a lady’s legs.
Caro must have worn this years ago, when she’d been first married, or perhaps before that.
Gentlemen must have fallen over in a heap whenever she passed.
“You have already seen the Rembrandts. Poor things,” Caro was saying, jerking Eamon’s attention from his dreams. She waved a hand dismissively at the two paintings still on their easels as she passed them.
Eamon barely gave them a glance. The false Rembrandts had brought him here, so he was grateful, but he mostly he focused on Caro’s upright back and the wavy dark tendril that had tumbled from her knot of hair.
Caro paused to remove a candle from one of the few sconces that had been lit and cupped her hand around the flame as she led him deeper into the shadows.
Light squares on the wallpaper at this end of the gallery indicated that paintings had been taken away in the past. Sold long ago? Had they been genuine, or forgeries as well?
Caro halted in front of a large square landscape painting. It had been hung so that the sky, clear blue with halos of golden light, seemed to stretch upward, as though the viewer stood in the foreground with the awed figures there.
“I like this one,” she said softly.
The painting was beautiful. Towering trees framed its edges, while a cliff in the far background overlooked a tossing sea beyond. Ancient buildings in the Greek style lined the cliffs, far from the viewer, while a ship flowed toward the vanishing point on the horizon.
Eamon admired the technique, the seamless use of color. The scene was so real, he could feel the breeze in the trees, was certain he could reach out and touch the rocks. They’d be warm and rough under his hand, and cold spray would shower him.
“Why do you like it?” Eamon asked. He knew why he did, but he was thoroughly weary of his own opinions. Caro’s would be more interesting.
“Because I want to go there.” Caro breathed a laugh, her formality fading.
“I know this isn’t a real place—Claude Lorrain painted myths and historic legends, like the Queen of Sheba sailing off wherever she was heading.
But it makes me want to find that clifftop, that sea, that place.
When London becomes dreary and dark, I pretend I am there.
” She waved a hand at the painting. “The Dukes of Aylesmore have a house in Kent, but at this time of year, everything is gray and knee-deep in mud.” Her laughter trailed off, her wistfulness sharp.
This was too difficult. Eamon couldn’t stand next to her, watching her gaze with soft longing at the painting, without wanting to pull her into his arms and promise her the world.
He’d take her anywhere she wanted to go, perhaps to the warm climates of Sicily or a Greek isle, where she could gaze upon old ruins by the seashore as long as she liked.
He hated to go on breaking her heart.
“This painting is in the style of Claude,” Eamon said gently. “Possibly a copy done by someone in his studio or by someone trying to emulate him.”
Caro swung to him in dismay. “You mean it isn’t real, either?”
“If it was, it would be worth even more than the Rembrandts. Landscape wasn’t as appreciated in Claude’s time, but it is today.”
The despair in her eyes cut him. “Are any paintings in this gallery genuine?”
Eamon wanted to reassure her, but he also couldn’t lie. Someone had been stringing her and her family along, and Eamon refused to continue their deception.
“Possibly,” he said. “We have a long way to go. But just because someone who worked for Claude or was his student painted this doesn’t mean you must cease loving it.
The light, the clever use of color, are masterful.
He or she had talent, this painter, even if his name or hers wasn’t Claude Lorrain. ”
Caro drew a shaking breath, as though trying to prevent herself from bursting into tears. “I wonder if the artist was given their due,” she said without much conviction.
Eamon shrugged. “Many an artist aspires to be great, but sometimes they can only manage to borrow another’s genius.
Our own paintings are overlooked, so we console ourselves with being talented copyists.
Many of Bonaparte’s savants who went to Egypt to record what was there were blessed with such talent. ”
Caro switched her assessing gaze to him. “Are you a copyist?”
“I am, for my sins.” Eamon gestured at the false Claude. “I’d be honored if you’d allow me to copy this piece. Not to sell,” he added hastily. “I would pin it to the wall of my dreary lodgings to brighten up the place.”
He’d already copied several paintings, courtesy of Caravaggio and Canaletto, that made his rooms a little more colorful.
“I suppose it would do no harm.”
Caro did not sound at all in transports that she and Eamon could be gazing at the same painting at the same time, even when they were apart.
And when the devil had Eamon become so bloody sentimental?
When he’d gazed into Caro’s green-flecked golden eyes, that was when.
“Continue loving the painting,” Eamon said. “I’m certain the original artist would be thrilled, even if he’s been dead and gone these several hundred years.”
Caro returned her reluctant attention to it. “You are right—the picture is beautiful, no matter who painted it. It would be a shame to toss it away because it isn’t worth the large amount it was supposed to be.”
Eamon wondered who’d managed to sell the thing to whatever Duke of Aylesmore had plunked down his money for it in the first place.
The dukes seem to have been happy to pay for art without being very wise about it.
They’d been the sort of purchasers who liked the look of the thing with no idea as to its true value.
“Did your husband treasure this?” Eamon asked.
Caro softened. “He actually wasn’t one for paintings. He liked some of them, but his true love was books.” She plucked her candle from its holder and continued down the gallery to the far shadowy corners.
A bookcase covered the end walls of the gallery, framing a doorway and climbing to the high ceiling above them. Books lined the shelves, tomes of all sizes bound in leather, cloth, and paper, some with covers cracking, others with the spines falling away from neglect.
A ladder hooked to a runner reposed at the end of the shelf, so the collector could climb to the top and caress the books there.
Eamon gazed at the shelves in dismay. “Quite a lot of them.”
“Leopold could never resist a book if it was dusty and faded,” Caro confessed. “He said that one never knew what was inside if one didn’t take a chance on it.”
Eamon pulled a small volume from a lower shelf, its leather so worn he could not make out the title. The binding gave an alarming creak as he opened the book, and the first two pages curled away from the threads that had fastened them to the spine. “I see he did not resist many.”
The book was nothing very ancient, a twenty-year-old reprint of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. Eamon could have found this in a secondhand bookshop in Covent Garden.
“Leopold adored his books,” Caro said. “I sometimes teased him that he ought to have married them instead of a wife who only had conversation to recommend her, and not much of that. He would smile and say, Nonsense, my dear, then return to his reading.”
Her eyes filled with sudden tears, and she quickly turned away.
She’d loved the old fool, damn him. Eamon’s heart burned.
This was not a lonely young widow eager to succumb to the wiles of the first rogue who came her way. She’d mourn her husband until the end of her days, leaning against his pile of worthless books for comfort.