Chapter Six #2
He had a small, sensible, shopkeeper feeling that he ought to end the conversation here, now the Comte had said they had no quarrel, but he didn’t want to.
He could quite see why stolid Mr. Thorpe thought the man a rogue, but he was unquestionably entertaining and charming, and so lovely to listen to, and painfully handsome.
And he had helped Titus with Laxton, so it would be dreadfully inhospitable to send him away without ceremony.
He cleared his throat. “Ah, perhaps we could have that glass of wine, if you would care to?”
The Comte’s responsive smile went straight down his spine. It was an astonishing smile: his lips curved and parted slightly, his eyes hooded a little, and he looked quite as though they were sharing a filthy joke. “Monsieur,” he purred, “I should be delighted.”
Titus rang for wine and gave the order, trying to do so with aplomb, or at least without obvious embarrassment. Ringing for anything was still a novelty, as indeed was wine. He was used to fetching himself small beer.
Mr. Thorpe brought the wine, looking stately apart from the bruise coming on his cheek, and set down the tray. He also cast Titus a meaningful look, which he decided to ignore.
The Comte’s story was, to put it politely, implausible.
Stranger things had happened, but so had an awful lot of much more likely ones.
But it was a good tale delivered by a remarkably good-looking man; Titus didn’t actually care about the rights and wrongs of a long-ago scandal; and mostly, the conversation had given him a brief but much-needed respite from his own troubles.
The last few weeks had been dreadful. Between the impending loss of his premises, Miss Whitecross’s shocking death, and the turning of his life on its head, Titus had felt buffeted from all sides.
His new home had been besieged by mendicants, claimants, marriage proposals, fictional bills on the estate, remote acquaintances presenting themselves as his best friends, people he had considered friends making blunt demands for money, and total strangers soliciting his attendance at their houses, parties, events, exhibitions, and plays.
He’d been ridiculed and caricatured in the newspapers.
Laxton had harassed and abused him; Henry had written to him proposing a celebratory dinner, for all the world as though they were still lovers.
He scarcely dared go out. He hadn’t spoken to anyone except the Thorpes and Mr. Carnaby in days.
The Comte had removed Laxton with a kick Titus had felt privileged to witness, and if he intended to touch Titus for money, at least he’d worked for it.
He raised his glass. The Comte tapped it lightly with his own. “You are gracious, monsieur. I understand you were—what is it—a maker of paints?”
“An oil and colourman.”
“How did you come to the work?”
“Fifth son of a parson.” That would suffice as an explanation to any Englishman: everything to the first son, nothing left for the last.
“And will you close your business now?”
Titus wasn’t sure about that. He hadn’t chosen to go into his trade, but he had worked hard, made full use of the talents he’d been given, and been proud of what he’d achieved.
He rather resented that, now he had money, he felt vaguely ashamed of his previous occupation.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I would prefer to keep the business going, but I would have to move it”—he was cursed if he would pay Henry’s extortionate rent increase, even though he could so easily afford it—“and find someone to take it over. It would be absurd to do the work myself any more. Grinding colours is very messy.” He held out his hands in illustration.
Years of working with pigments of all shades had left them with permanent faint stains, patchy and ugly.
His fingernails were limned with dark lines, his fingertips yellowed; the creases of his palms were off-black, the skin blotched with dull red and a corpselike green-grey.
“Hardly a gentlemanly appearance, is it?”
The Comte reached out and took his hands. Titus almost swallowed his tongue.
The Comte’s own hands were manicured, though not to a perfect softness or whiteness: they looked brown, agile, and used.
Not a point of conventional beauty, but they were strong hands, warm and close on his, and the Comte’s thumbs gently brushed Titus’s unresisting palms as he turned them over and back, sending a tingling rush up his nerves.
“Mph. Marked by your labours, yes. But without the makers of paints, we would not have paintings, and one must suffer for beauty, no?”
“No,” Titus managed, hoping his voice hadn’t sounded as high-pitched as it felt. “I mean, yes.”
The Comte turned his hands again, and stroked his thumbs up Titus’s fingers. He couldn’t suppress the shudder of pleasure. The Comte seemed to touch so easily. “Perhaps the paint will fade in time. Perhaps it will not, but tant pis.”
“Absolutely.” Titus had no idea what he was agreeing with. “Absolutely.”
The Comte held his fingers a moment longer, then released them. “The making of paints, what is it that you like about it?”
“Uh, it’s … uh…” Pull yourself together, man.
“Well, it’s practical work. The measurement and the process take a great deal of close attention: one must be accurate, but also respond to the variety in the materials.
And the colours one produces from unpromising beginnings can be extraordinary. It’s like alchemy.”
“But you are not making gold. Or are you?”
“Well, not gold precisely, but—take gamboge, for instance.”
“Quoi?”
“Gamboge. It comes from Camboja, which I believe is in India, or at least I get it from the East India Company. It’s a sort of resin which is supplied in cylinders the colour of—well, frankly, ear wax.
It must be crushed with the most stringent care, because it’s a dreadfully powerful purgative.
” Titus had been sloppy with gamboge once, and feared he had the cholera, the results were so unpleasant.
Now he wore gloves to do it, and wrapped a cloth round his nose and mouth, and even then often had somewhat watery bowels after working with the stuff.
“I make it up into little brown cakes the colour of toffee.”
“Better than ear wax?” the Comte suggested dubiously.
“But when the artist touches it with water, the result is spectacular. It produces a marvellous yellow, bright like the sun. It’s so luminous, it actually glows, and being a resin, it has the most wonderful glossy effect—”
He stopped himself there. He could talk about colours to the point of driving people from the room, and Henry had objected strongly to any mention of his work.
But the Comte didn’t look bored: he was cocking his head, bright-eyed.
“I see. Alchemy, indeed, to create beauty from the sordid products of earth.”
“Exactly!” Titus said, emboldened by the interest and comforted by the subject. “Or look at orpiment.”
The Comte gave him a laughing look. Its effect was dizzying. “Monsieur, you are not fair to a mere foreigner.”
“Another yellow. The Romans called it auripigmentum, golden paint. It is so like gold that some people have attempted to smelt it, to extract the metal.”
“Does that work?”
“Not at all, no. It’s a sulphide of arsenic.”
“Arsenic?”
“Yes. Painters who lick their brushes—”
The Comte recoiled. “No, no, non, stop, quelle horreur. But is it safe to prepare?”
“Perfectly,” Titus reassured him. “As long as one is careful.”
“A paint of arsenic. Zut. But why would one use such a thing?”
“Oh, I use lots of arsenical salts. Orpiment is the closest to gold one can get in oils—the only better material is gold leaf itself—so it’s worth the trouble.
Although I would not recommend it to amateurs,” he added conscientiously, having had conversations on this subject with Miss Whitecross.
“Nothing lead- or copper-based should touch it, and that rules out many reds, whites, and greens. It’s rather inconvenient to use, with the restricted palette. ”
“And the small difficulty of death.”
“It’s dangerous if one is careless, yes: Most paints are. But it does look wonderful.”
The Comte shook his head. “Monsieur, you are yourself an artist.”
“Oh, no. An artisan only.”
“But you have the appreciation, that is evident. I quite see how you would not care to leave your work, with such passion. And yet—”
Titus sighed. “And yet it would be ridiculous to continue, and I should embrace the advantages of my new situation. I know.”
“You say that without enthusiasm,” the Comte observed.
“Honestly, it feels like the last thing I want to do. I should far rather go quietly back to my shop.”
He felt a pang of longing as he said it. Speaking of pigments to an intelligent listener had briefly recalled the comfort and security of his old life, where he knew who he was and what he was for. Immense wealth had signally failed to provide that so far.
He hadn’t even managed to go to a tailor yet: he simply didn’t dare.
He owned two coats, both old, paint-stained, and shabby, and he found himself embarrassed by them to the point that he’d given serious thought to sending out for a ready-made set of clothes to wear when he went to order some better ones.
It was infuriating. He was a successful shopkeeper, a gentleman born, thirty-one years old, incredibly rich, but he was afraid to spend his money because the shopkeepers would all know he was an ignorant jumped-up cit.
He didn’t know which he dreaded more: that he’d be laughed out of the tailor’s shop, or that they would save their mockery for when he left.
The Comte was nodding sympathetically. “A great change in your life. I feel quite sure you will find your feet, but if you would care for a helping hand, pray consider me at your service.”
“That’s very kind,” Titus said. “Er, do you mean it?”