Chapter Seventeen #2
Soon, her sisters would have another dancing lesson. And Mr. Vane was expecting her to ride with him again. What if he also demanded an answer? With Cassandra showing alarming signs of considering Harbury, she felt she must accept.
She had agreed to walk with Redver yesterday so she might ask him about that Pennington, hoping to gain ammunition against Harbury, but then she’d been distracted by the sudden appearance of a blackbird.
And then, by Redver’s offering his coat.
How good it had felt to be ensconced in his warmth and surrounded by his scent. How awful she’d felt when she was obliged to return the garment.
The slow, creaking turn made by Harbury’s enormous carriage interrupted Eliza’s thoughts. As before, Cassie claimed the seat next to Harbury. Emily and Lady Redver already occupied the second, leaving Eliza to sit next to the marquess.
Again.
Harbury and Redver could have sat together, but they hadn’t. Why? Had Redver wanted to share her seat?
He said little beyond expressing his wish for Lady Asquith’s recovery. However, Eliza was acutely aware of her thigh pressing against his.
At the Academy, Emily’s favorite artist received them—a man renowned for his use of light in landscape and the Academy’s appointed Professor of Perspective.
As breathtaking as his landscapes were, Eliza found the man’s manner grating, and was content to allow Harbury, Cassandra, Lady Redver, and Emily to carry on the conversation.
As the group moved on from the artist’s private domain to the public collections, Eliza noticed that Redver was no longer with them.
She thought back. Last time she’d seen him, he’d been gazing at one of the artist’s more recent creations, not yet on display…
a painting titled The Battle of Waterloo.
The large, dark painting had evoked a heavy, desperate, and hopeless feeling in Eliza—appropriate, one might argue, to its subject matter. She’d no desire to see the piece again, but discreetly, she broke away and went in search of Redver.
She found him where they’d left him—staring at the depiction of war.
“You’re rather taken with the work, aren’t you?” she asked.
He turned his head at the sound of her voice, but his eyes remained unfocused.
She wet her lips. Still, he didn’t seem to see her.
“Most paintings depict determined soldiers on the brink of battle, or the heroism of the battle itself, not the aftermath,” she continued in a softer tone. “The woman with the child appears to be searching among the dead…”
His hand hovered in front of the woman, then dropped.
“It’s real,” he said finally. “It’s… honest.”
“Yes,” she replied. “Yes, it is. The viewer is not meant to be comfortable.”
He nodded. “Battle is anything but comfortable. Art should tell the truth.” He took a deep breath. “Standing here, I can smell the dead. Hear the dying. Mourn with the living.” He raised his brows. “Not that such images are ever far,” he added.
“You were there.”
“Yes.” He continued to stare almost blankly at the disturbing masterpiece.
“And you are still pained by the memory.” Also, not a question. “Lord Redver—”
“Adrian.” He looked surprised, as if he’d spoken on impulse. His cheeks darkened with endearing embarrassment. “At least when we’re alone.”
Did he mean for them to be alone more often? Hope caused a jolt of excitement…and fear.
“Adrian,” she repeated, drawing closer to him. “You care, don’t you?”
“I’m not sure I understand…”
“You care for things. For people. You care deeply.” Too deeply? “You hold yourself apart.” She hesitated. “May I ask you a question?”
Uncertainly, he nodded.
“Why don’t you dance?”
“The night before the battle…” His voice faded.
She’d a terrible feeling—a weight in her heart, a heaviness in her limbs. In her mind’s eye, she saw a glittering ballroom full of hundreds of soldiers and ladies in their best. Hundreds of soldiers. Many of them doomed.
“Did you attend the Duchess of Richmond’s ball?
He was quiet so long she thought she though he’d never answer.
His chest rose and fell. A million emotions flitted across his features. He held up his hand a few inches from the canvas, as if sensing for heat. Finally, he closed his eyes. A moment later, he hung his head.
Was the pain she felt his or her own? Usually, she felt only Cassandra’s sadness.
“I apologize,” she hesitated, “friend.”
He glanced up. “What do you have to be sorry for?”
“I sympathize, then.”
Briefly, he closed his eyes. He gave her a slanted, endearing smile. “When I asked you to be friends, I didn’t know you would be so insightful.”
“Intrusive, you mean?”
“I’m not in the habit of having my sentiments read.”
“I understand.” She inhaled sharply. “I will refrain—”
“No!” he interrupted. “If we are to be friends, you should feel free to speak your mind with me.” He lifted his brows. “Harbury always does.”
She chuckled half-heartedly. “I imagine he does.”
“I like your smile, Miss Wainwright…Eliza.”
Her name on his lips made her warm. “You like my smile…and you like me.”
“Have done, from the moment I first saw you.” A look of pleasure passed over his features. “You gave Harbury a very deliberate cut.”
That hadn’t been their first meeting. She had to remind herself not to correct him. “He ignored me.”
“Not ignored, precisely. He didn’t even see the cut. Too wrapped up in his own troubles. But I saw you. And I admired your pluck.”
If her cut had sparked his admiration, perhaps they’d more in common than she’d suspected.
“Thank you,” he said, “for coming back to rouse me from my reverie.” He held out his arm. “Shall we rejoin the others?”
She could get used to this. Walking by his side. Basking in his admiration.
Together, they entered the first gallery. Rows and rows of paintings, horizontally and vertically, were illuminated by light streaming in from the windows just beneath the ceiling. Taken together with the emotions he’d stirred in her heart, the effect was overwhelming.
They came to stand in front of another one of Turner’s paintings. This one, a landscape depicting a sheer cliff beside a river.
The perspective stole her breath. She felt as small as the tiny slashes of paint depicting the tiny, faceless people looking up from the riverbank. The subject of the painting was neither the rock, nor the river, not the boat, nor the people, but the awe-inspiring quality of nature.
“You are right,” she said. “Artists tell the truth.”
“The truth here…we are but wisps, with little power to meet the world around us.”
She had preferred thinking him arrogant and aloof. If he were not…
Well, then, she’d set out, that first night, to hurt someone already in pain. And she’d done so primarily because she’d been hurting, too. Hurt people hurt people.
“Cassandra has warned me that some secrets are better left untouched.”
“And have you heeded her warning?”
She smiled ruefully. “I’m afraid my nature will not allow me to do so. You may shut your mind to any truth, but what you do not know can still hurt you.”
“Wise of you.”
She didn’t feel wise. In fact, as they made their way into the next room, she was feeling increasingly reckless.
When they stopped by a particularly large sculpture in the shadow of Diana, the huntress, and she caught him gazing, not at the sculpture, but at her, her wild rashness only increased.
“Several times of late,” he said slowly, “I’ve concluded we share a similar nature.”
“I was just thinking something similar,” she replied.
Perhaps that recognition was why he’d sparked such an intense feeling inside of her from the very first time she’d seen him. An intense feeling she’d misread as hatred.
She took a step closer to him, so that they were both concealed in shadow. The air around them grew oppressively heavy.
His jaw flexed. “I would like to kiss you.”
Her gaze dropped to his lips. “I-I think I want to be kissed.”
“By me?” His mouth quirked. “Or just in general?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake.”
She brought her hands behind his neck, lifted herself to her toes, and then pressed her lips against his own.
Kissing Miss Wainwright—Eliza—had not been a part of any plan.
Then again, although Adrian had suggested the kiss, Eliza had been the one to step forward. The one to take him into her arms.
Just as the Blackbird had grabbed him by the shirt.
He roundly castigated himself for yet another comparison.
He’d been struck by the Blackbird’s fearless, passionate curiosity, drawn to her in a moment of artless surrender.
But Eliza was now in his arms, and Eliza was, beyond the shadow of a doubt, a lady.
A lady not out to teach him a lesson, but open and willing.
A lady who has seen through his facade and touched his wounded soul.
A lady possessed of strength, kindness, and insight.
He angled his head, placed his hands on her hips and savored the softness of her untrained lips. There could be no similarity between the kisses he’d shared with the Blackbird and this. This was not kiss of passion, but of comfort. Of shared experience. Of care and concern.
And it was the sweetest kiss he’d ever known.
She drew apart, dropping her hands from his shoulders. A small frown appeared between her brows.
She was thinking. He didn’t want her to think.
He didn’t want to think.
“I haven’t your gift for prescience. What are you feeling”—he touched his hand to her heart—“here?”
“A flutter. Like that little bird in the tree. I’m excited…but wondering whether it would be best to take immediate flight.”
He smiled as he checked his own response.
He’d no flutter in his chest, just the steady thump of his heart.
His whole body, however, was attuned—receptive of her signals, aware of her every breath. Without deep deliberation, he knew he’d made a momentous decision.
He wanted this—he wanted her—to stay with him.
And not just now, but every day.
He wanted her softness when he was ruffled. Her kindness when he was hurt.
But was that fair? Especially when she’d told him she was considering another man’s offer?
“Have you decided what answer to give the man who proposed?” He wet his lips before rephrasing his question. “Eliza, does your heart truly belong to another?”
“No,” she sighed. “Not yet.”
“Then may I—”
She put her hand against his lips.
He’d thought she’d meant to prevent him from declaring himself. Her wide eyes, however, weren’t fixed on him, but on the entry. Finally, he heard the sound that had made her expression taut. Voices from the other room.
Voices drawing closer.
He stepped back into the light, and drew her to his side, looping his arm firmly through hers. She followed his gaze up, as if they had been, all this while, studying a small sculpture set into an arched niche.
A couple, guided by another professor, walked straight through to the far end of the room. None of the three people in the party appeared to have noticed them.
She sighed. He, on the other hand, was not so relieved.
He’d recognized the couple.
“If you don’t wish your sister to be exposed to a scene, we should find her—and Harbury—straight away.”
“Why?”
“Because,” he said darkly, “the couple who just passed through this gallery were Lord and Lady Pennington.”
“Pennington,” she repeated. “You mean that Pennington?”
“Yes,” he replied, snatching up her hand.
“That Pennington. Though I’m not in the habit of gossip, especially where a good friend is concerned,” he explained as he led her from the room to room in an increasingly desperate search, “it is in your sister’s best interest to know Harbury is prone to theatrical demonstrations where Lady Pennington is concerned. ”
“Do you mean to tell me Harbury is in love with Lady Pennington?”
“No,” Adrian glanced over his shoulder. “But he’ll argue the contrary, if given the chance.”
She halted abruptly. “She was there—Lady Pennington—that night at Almack’s.”
“Yes. As he told me later, he required a distraction.”
“He dragged my sister into scandal just to pique Lady Pennington?”
“No.” Adrian winced. “He used your sister to keep himself from having to experience the full force of his jealousy, more like.” He inhaled sharply. “Self-indulgence at its worst. Or so I’ve recently been reminded.”
“Oh,” she said softly. Her expression changed. “Oh, no! I have reason to believe Cassie is becoming…fond of the duke.”
“Heaven help her,” he said under his breath.
“We must find them!” She took the lead.
We. He liked the sound of that word.