Chapter Four
Montague hadn’t actually gone looking for her. Not as such.
No, absolutely not. When he had awoken that morning, full of the rage of being so publicly dismissed by a young lady who would not dance with him, Montague had not thought he would go out of his way in search of the woman who had been so eloquent in her rejections of him.
Invite her into the hansom cab, offer his services—fine, his naked services—as a model, ask her to dance… There was no pleasing this woman!
And so, Montague allowed his valet to dress him before he stomped down the wide sweeping staircase in a huff.
He had fully intended to not think about Miss Oliver for the whole morning. But this good intention was swiftly interrupted by the sight of a small boy, sitting on the bottom step, curled up into as small a ball as possible.
Montague almost missed a step.
Ah. Yes. The boy.
His name was John, if he remembered correctly, though he had attempted to ignore most of what had happened to him yesterday. John, his cousin’s son. The new Earl of Trefusis.
There was a strange sort of sorrow in seeing a child that age with a title. Montague knew it well. He had seen it whenever he had beheld himself in a looking-glass from the age of thirteen.
And now there was a very physical and tangible reminder of the childhood Montague had hated, and the cousin who had made it so miserable, living in his own house.
His new ward.
‘You simply have to take him,’ his solicitor had said yesterday moments before departing.
Montague had gaped at the solicitor, who had not even bothered to stay the night. ‘Take him— You mean for ever?’
Precisely why this realisation had not dawned on him from the arrival of the man’s letter, he did not know; but it was only now he was starting to realise that John’s arrival did not just mean a short visit.
Stay here…his ward, for ever.
His solicitor had frowned. ‘You are his only family, my lord. Your cousin is dead—’ Montague winced.
He was gone, then. And without any word, save that letter.
‘—and as you well know, it is only yourself and your sister who remain. The boy’s mother died years ago and she was an orphan herself. There is no one else.’
No one else.
Montague swallowed as he hesitated, one foot stretched out over the next step, as he stared down at the child.
No one else.
That was what they had said when his parents had died. His sister had been older, she had been at finishing school and received an offer by a family friend to bring her out into Society. It was only Montague who was left.
Well, blast it, he couldn’t remain here on his staircase.
Montague tried a brief smile as he reached the bottom step and turned to look at the boy. ‘Good morning.’
In an instant, his whole body cringed.
Good morning? Was that what one said to a child who was grieving?
It was so long ago, Montague could barely remember what people had said to him. It had all been nonsense, of course, he could recall that. All pleasantries or platitudes, nothing real.
Right. Real.
‘Do you want some breakfast?’
The boy—John, he must remember his name—unfurled, looking up at him with a mop of curls and eyes just like his father’s.
Montague forced down the instinct to dislike. The child was not his father, he reminded himself sternly. His cousin was gone. He was not the boy.
‘Breakfast?’ the child said quietly.
Montague nodded. ‘Kippers and sardines and toast and eggs and bacon and things.’
‘I like bacon.’
Well, they were getting somewhere at least.
‘Excellent, so do I. Come on then.’
The two walked into the breakfast room, Montague not sure whether he should allow the child in first or not. What was the etiquette about such things?
‘I suppose you’ll be sending me away,’ said the boy—John, Montague corrected hastily in the privacy of his own mind as the child clambered onto a chair.
Montague’s stomach lurched. Memories were not supposed to be that painful.
He had worked hard to ignore that part of his life, to squash it down, to cover it with the relief and joyful abandon of his university days. Where he had found peers, friends, people who sought not to crush but to converse.
And now it was all rushing back.
‘I don’t think so,’ he said honestly, without much thought.
Well, the boy—damn it, John—was too young to be sent away to school, surely. He was just a snippet of a thing. What sort of person would send a child that age to school?
‘My father said you would,’ said John, answering the unspoken question. ‘He said it was high time I went away. To school, I mean.’
Montague forced down the most unpleasant, and unreservedly true, things he could say about the child’s father, and tried to smile. ‘Well, I think that would be a little…hasty. Let’s just see how we get on and what you need and… I suppose I’ll get you a tutor or a governess or…something.’
How precisely did one care for a child, anyway?
Annabelle was so much older than him, Montague could barely recall a time when they had been children together.
And children, they were complicated, far more complicated than Montague had ever predicted.
John was eating bacon happily as though he hadn’t a care in the world.
‘And you are…fine?’ Montague asked, not really certain of what he was expecting to hear.
John looked up from his plate of bacon. ‘I like bacon.’
‘Good,’ Montague said faintly. ‘Good.’
He liked bacon too and so after a few pieces of it, along with some eggs and kipper, which Cook had assured Draveham was so fresh it could almost swim off the plate—not something Montague wanted to hear—breakfast was over.
He stared at the child opposite him. And…now what?
‘I… I suppose you brought with you some books and…some toys,’ Montague said lamely.
What did children of this age even play with?
John nodded and replied, ‘Yes, thank you.’
All Montague had felt himself able to do was point the boy in the direction of the spare bedchamber—well there wasn’t a nursery here, was there?—and ask Mrs Draveham to keep an eye on him.
‘And precisely where are you going?’ she called after her master in a most direct manner.
Montague hardly knew. He wanted to see Miss Oliver, though he could not call upon Mrs Gower to do so. That would be a most scandalous thing.
They were introduced, yes…but surely half of Brighton had seen the way he had stormed away last night.
No, he would take in the sea air and hope it would breathe some sense into him. That was what was lacking, sense.
Sense was the last thing on his mind when he lost his head completely upon seeing a figure by an easel in a long, flowing gown that was being blown about by the blustering wind.
Miss Oliver.
Now this—this was more like it.
A gentle breeze brushed past Calliope but she paid it little heed. Her entire concentration was focused on the end of her brush.
Up, a swoop with a twist of the handle and the paint obeyed as it always did.
A thrill of joy rushed through Calliope as her vision for the painting came to reality on the canvas.
A twist—there. And a tab of cerulean blue, right where the sky was so brilliantly cerulean.
Thank goodness she had thought to bring all her paints with her to Brighton.
And Thalia had said she wouldn’t have room!
Calliope hummed happily to herself as she dabbed her paintbrush in the water she had brought with her for such a purpose.
‘Water?’ Her aunt had stared at her, bewildered, not two hours ago. ‘You’re taking water to the seaside? To the ocean?’
Freshwater, Calliope had tried to explain to her aunt. Seawater, well, it simply would not do. The salt within it would crust upon the brush in the sunshine and utterly change the way one’s paint would react with the canvas.
Surely everyone knew that.
Calliope dipped her newly cleaned brush into a different coloured paint—a dark red, this time, to account for the shipping boat she could just make out on the horizon.
Its brilliantly red sail had caught her eye the moment she had walked onto the beach, easel under one arm, canvas under the other, her aunt’s lady’s maid stumbling over the stony beach in an effort to both keep up and carry her paints.
The maid had been eventually bribed—and with a great deal of Calliope’s pin money—to depart and return in three hours. That would be, Calliope was certain, enough time to get at least a passable attempt onto her canvas.
The first hour had been very pleasant. There were fewer people out today, the suddenly colder temperatures undoubtedly keeping everyone indoors. Calliope had relished the chance to pull a shawl around her. After such heat, it was almost a pleasure to be a little chilly.
The second hour, however, had not advanced much at all. No matter how she attempted to mix the colours, she could not get the blue green brown of the ocean quite right.
It was galling.
Colours, Calliope had always thought, were there to be captured by the paintbrush. It was most irritating that they would not allow her to capture them today.
There was something else, or rather someone else, irritating her too. But Calliope had told herself she was not going to think about him, and so she had only done so four times since arriving on the beach.
The first thought of him came when she had espied a figure of a gentleman in the distance and felt a spark of joy at the idea that it could be the Marquess of Laidley—a thought she had immediately quelled and an emotion she had almost instantly felt guilty about.
The second thought came as she tried to find the perfect brown match for the hull of the boat and discovered, much to her horror, that it was not entirely dissimilar to the colour of the Marquess’ teasing eyes.