Chapter 6
Thom knew he did any number of things that freezing December, but in memory, he seemed always to be painting Miss Bingley.
Only odd fragments remained of the rest of his life: brilliant glittering frost through the window, Edwards’s laugh as they supped together at the club, going to mix his paints and finding that the jar of linseed oil had cracked, quite unaccountably.
Yet each moment of each sitting seemed engraved on his heart. Miss Bingley was a remarkably wary lady. She used her charm as a kind of mask, to conceal how deeply she felt, and he found himself at once enjoying her charm and wishing to look behind the mask.
He would paint her face last. He had known that almost from the first moments, for each hour he spent with her seemed to deepen his understanding of the expression it ought to have.
Of the thoughts moving beneath the charming smile, as a fish may be seen moving through the water when one looks down into the sea.
Mrs Bingley had soon stopped attending the sittings, after it became apparent that Caroline was at ease with him, and that they were of a nature to be deadly dull for an onlooker.
Subsequently, she only left the door well ajar, so that anyone walking by might look into the room, and noises might readily carry from one part of the house to another.
Thom approved. To work in front of an observer had been a little distracting, and the open door ought to provide more than enough protection against a compromise.
If anyone did look into the room, they would see Caroline on one side of it, posing in the chair where the light might best illuminate her, and himself on the opposite side of the room, neatly contained within the square of canvas he had laid down to protect the floor from his paints, both hands taken up with paint and brushes.
They had gradually begun speaking more and more.
Thom would normally have discouraged a model from speaking, for the distraction it presented and the difficulty of holding a pose, but he could not seem to make himself object.
Her conversation was too fascinating, and the lure of hearing more of the complex mind behind her beautiful face too strong.
In any case, he soon found that his typical objections hardly applied. She was remarkably skilled at speaking while hardly moving her face — a skill, she told him laughingly, but with a little shame behind it, that she had developed over many rounds of gossip at assemblies and balls.
The painting was quickly taking shape. Thom had chosen to paint her exactly as she had appeared during their first sitting — in a white gown of simple luxury, accented with an amethyst necklace to reflect the light.
It was like her, to have selected so ideal a presentation of herself, as though half by an instinct for the fashions of the ton and half a perfect eye for the artistic touch.
The pose, too, had been chosen almost effortlessly.
She sat straight in her chair, with the slightest impression of leaning forward, as though caught by something she had heard.
One hand rested in her lap, while the other gestured, as though challenging the viewer to tell her something really fascinating.
Of her face, Thom had as yet done only studies.
He had not the slightest doubt in his ability to paint the resemblance of it.
It was the expression that would be the most difficult part of the painting, and the most crucial for its success.
The underlayers were already done. He could not delay much longer — not and complete the painting in time.
He was almost on the point of touching his brush to the painted Caroline’s lips when the real woman spoke. “My expression is not quite what it should be, I think.”
He glanced up quickly. She was right. The pose was perfect — after several sessions, she assumed it effortlessly and without instruction — but something in her face was not as it had been. He had been too abstracted to realise.
“You are quite right,” he acknowledged.
“You must help me to recover it,” Caroline continued. “Tell me something interesting, Mr Northville.”
“Gladly, only I hardly know how.”
“Tell me something of yourself.”
That startled a laugh out of him. “If I do that, it certainly will not be interesting. I am a very dull man.”
“Very well, then,” Caroline replied. Suddenly, her smile took on a challenging edge. Thom watched her intently, trying to memorise what the expression looked like on her face. “Tell me of your family, Mr Northville. No matter how interesting or how dull it may be.”
“My father is the Baron of Ramsbury,” Thom said. “My mother was his second wife. I have three older half-brothers.”
Her eyebrows rose. “So many?”
He chuckled, then winced at how bitter it had sounded. “I am thoroughly a younger son, Miss Bingley.”
“So you are,” she agreed. “But there may be some benefits to that. If you were the heir, or even the spare, you could have painted for amusement, but certainly you could not have been taken seriously as a painter.”
“That is not of much benefit, as I do not know that I am taken seriously as a painter now,” Thom replied ruefully.
“You should be,” she said, with a level of certainty that made his heart skip a beat. “You will be.”
He had not done anything to earn such certainty. He certainly did not deserve it, not from her.
“My father does not wish me to paint,” Thom said quietly. It was a strange relief to speak the words aloud. “He might do a great deal to forward my career, if he wished — but he does not.”
“I am sorry to hear it,” she said. “Did he wish you to take up another profession?”
“In a manner of speaking,” Thom said. He hesitated a moment. It was not something to speak of before polite company. Yet he deeply wished for the relief of telling her what he had never told another living soul.
Perhaps sharing his secret shame might even have another use. She would then know better than to consider him truly a gentleman. She would be warned off, surely, and that could only benefit them both.
“My mother…was not a gentlewoman,” he said at last. “She was the daughter of the village butcher. With three heirs, my father felt he could choose a second wife for her beauty, regardless of her lack of fortune and connections.”
“A very romantic story,” Caroline said lightly.
He closed his eyes for a moment, feeling the pain — his mother’s pain, and his own — afresh.
“No. I am afraid it was not. Neither the neighbours, nor my half-brothers, nor even my father himself considered a woman of such low birth worthy to be his baroness. My father purchased my mother with marriage, because there was no other coin she would accept. But he did not treat her as a wife, nor myself as an equal to his older sons. My father has no intention of assisting me in any profession, for he thinks I ought to make a living as my mother did — by using my face to acquire a wealthy spouse.”
For a long moment, there was silence. Thom hastened to apologise, realising how far he had gone beyond what one ought to say to a polite acquaintance, let alone a gently reared lady. “I am very sorry, Miss Bingley.”
“Sorry? For what?”
“It was grossly inappropriate of me to say so much. I ought not to have —”
“Do not apologise,” she told him. “I am honoured by your confidences. And I am sorry for what you have suffered.”
Thom was about to say something, though he could not have said what, when he was startled into silence. Without saying another word, Caroline stood up. She crossed the room, moving rapidly, and laid her hand over his, though it still held a paintbrush.
For a moment, Thom feared he might drop it. He did not. For only an instant, she pressed his hand, in a silent gesture of solidarity and understanding that meant more than any words might have. Then she let go and returned to her pose as silently as she had come.
Thom applied his brush to his canvas, at once deeply shaken and strangely freed. It was as though she had unlocked the old hurt, simply by hearing it, and not turning away. The layers of colour grew under his paintbrush, gradually building up the essence of her.