Chapter Nineteen
The incessant knocking, Calliope thought dreamily as she dabbed a dollop of midnight black onto the canvas before her, would eventually become irritating. But not yet.
‘Calliope, you open this door!’
In fact, one could almost completely drown it out if one concentrated on one’s paints, Calliope thought, more firmly as she tried to ignore the increasing volume of the knocking at her bedchamber door.
‘Calliope, open it this minute!’
Almost.
Forcing herself to focus, Calliope dabbed her paintbrush back into the splodge of midnight black—she would have to congratulate Mr Haversham, it truly was a wonderful shade—and added a little more to the scene she was depicting on the canvas.
She stood back to take it all in.
‘Calliope Oliver!’
Yes, it was coming together, Calliope thought sternly, as she forced her ears not to work. The piece would truly be perfect if she could find some gold leaf, but where was one to find such a thing in Brighton?
‘I didn’t come all the way from Weymouth to stand outside this door!’
Perhaps even Mr Haversham would not have it in his stores, mused the artiste. But he would hopefully know where to source—what was that?
Weymouth?
‘And I’ll have you know I was in the middle of a rather delightful portrait,’ came her mother’s voice through the guest bedchamber door. ‘And it will be quite ruined if I am not able to return there on the stagecoach tomorrow, so open this door! I have a deadline!’
Calliope sighed and dropped her paintbrush into the water jar. She had told her aunt, upon her initial arrival to Brighton, there was no need to give her the key to her guest bedchamber while she was staying with her. She would never need to lock out anyone.
How wrong she had been.
Stepping lightly across the small bedchamber nestling in the eaves of her aunt’s townhouse, Calliope leaned against the door and said, as cheerfully as she could muster, ‘I’m quite well thank you, Mama. You can go back to Weymouth.’
There was a pause. For just a moment, she almost thought her mother had bought it.
Then the knocking started up again. ‘You think I don’t know that tone? I raised you, girl, and you sound just like your father when you’re trying to be cheerful. Let me in!’
Calliope rolled her eyes. It was most provoking, having a mother who was always away, always enjoying herself elsewhere, always saying she would return and then never doing so…
But as she was swiftly discovering, perhaps there was something just as irritating having a mother who suddenly turned up and showed an interest in one’s life.
‘Calliope!’
‘Fine! Fine,’ Calliope muttered, reaching out and turning the key in the lock.
It was a good thing she had been leaning against the wall to the left of the door as she did this, for the moment the door was unlocked, it burst open.
‘Where is he, then?’ demanded her mother in a loud, challenging voice. ‘Where is the blighter?’
Calliope hardly knew whether to laugh or cry, which appeared to be a common feature of her life at the moment. At least, it had been the last few days.
Her mother stood there, resplendent in a long gown that, even Calliope could see, was smattered in paint here and there.
Her hair was pinned up inexpertly, as though she had done it herself in the stagecoach—which her daughter would hardly put past her.
Her eyes were bright with unshed tears and her fists were unclenched, as though she truly planned to assault the man who had so injured her child.
It was such a wholesome image of her mother that Calliope was brought once again to tears.
Her mother. And she had come back, just when she had needed her.
‘Where is he?’ repeated Mrs Oliver darkly. ‘Oh, when I get my hands on him—’
‘I’ve not been hiding him in Aunt Louise’s guest bedchamber, Mama,’ Calliope said, flushing slightly at the mere thought. ‘He at his own house.’
The house that had, for just a few days, been her own home.
Oh, it was cruel of fate to permit her even a few days of happiness before wrenching it away. Cruel indeed for the muses, if they were in any way interested in an artist like herself, to give her the greatest inspiration of the world…then take it from her.
Perhaps, Calliope thought darkly, this was all to the good. All great artists had to suffer, did they not? Perhaps the loss of her father and struggling through penury for years had been insufficient.
Maybe her art would even now improve.
Mrs Oliver’s stern and angry visage softened as she took in her daughter. ‘Oh, my darling. I should have been here.’
Calliope forced down the instinct to point out that yes, she should have been. Instead she attempted a shrug. ‘I do not see how that would have made any difference.’
Montague—the Marquess of Laidley, she corrected fiercely, would still have attempted to marry her as a means to an end.
He would have still concocted the most ridiculous ideas about her apparent secret identity.
He would still have desired an heir and chosen her as a fool who would eagerly accept his false advances.
‘I would have been here,’ her mother said darkly. ‘I am certain I would have seen the wretch for what he was—a rogue!’
‘He is indeed a rogue,’ Calliope exhaled slowly, gesturing to the armchair in the corner by the bed as she sank herself onto the piece of furniture. ‘He is indeed.’
And that had been one of the things she had so liked about him, wasn’t it? That Montague was not like the stiff and pompous gentlemen in her small London acquaintance. He was different. Bold. Argumentative. Irritating beyond belief.
Charming.
Her mother dropped into the armchair and a pencil fell out of her hair. ‘And what will you do now? You are married, truly married, I mean? There isn’t, erm, any chance of an annulment?’
The flush searing Calliope’s face was the hottest one she had ever experienced. This could not be happening! Her mother could not be asking her…well, that!
‘Yes, right, I see,’ Mrs Oliver said hastily. ‘Well, I don’t suppose there is much to be done. Will he give you an allowance, if you live apart from him?’
It was most unlike her mother to be so practical, so much so that Calliope’s astonishment must have shown on her expression.
Her mother sniffed. ‘I can think about these things, you know. I just don’t, most of the time. One must know one’s worth.’
‘I don’t think he will give me anything,’ Calliope said quietly. ‘He had some rather strange ideas about who I was. Who I really was.’
Glenarm? The mysterious artist? Where on earth had he got an idea like that—had they not discussed the strange identity of the artist who no one had ever seen? Why had he not just asked her, outright?
Because, a dark voice in her mind reminded her, he was looking for a broodmare. Not a companion, not a lover, not a true equal. Just someone to push out babies.
What did it matter who she actually was?
‘And was he wrong?’ her mother asked quietly.
Calliope inhaled slowly and said, ‘Yes. Very.’
Mrs Oliver nodded sagely, before affixing a perceptive gaze on her unsuspecting daughter. ‘And were you wrong about him?’
Montague looked blearily at the brandy bottle before him.
Not because he had drunk any. In fact, he rather wished he had. That would at least explain the headache, the tension in his temples, and why he wanted to simultaneously cry and howl at the wind.
Not sleeping properly for three days will do that. Stronger than brandy, a complete lack of proper sleep.
‘Lost her,’ Montague said to the empty kitchen.
The place was almost pitch black. There hadn’t seemed like much point in lighting a candle when he knew his way with his eyes shut.
Creeping down to the kitchen to steal food had been something he’d started doing as a child, when his uncle had prevented him from eating with the rest of the family, but Montague hadn’t felt the need to do it in a long time.
Until now, that was.
He looked down at his plate on the kitchen table. A hunk of bread slathered in butter, a chicken leg and an apple.
He didn’t want it. He wasn’t even hungry, but his mind had not permitted him to sleep and he could no longer lie there, staring up at the ceiling, in the bed where he and Calliope had—
‘Are you ready?’
‘Take me—take me now.’
Montague sighed heavily in the silence of the kitchen.
This was ridiculous. He was a grown man and a husband.
It was ridiculous that his wife was not speaking to him.
Ridiculous he had gone over to Mrs Gower with pleading and apologies and explanations, and not only had Calliope refused to come outside to talk to him, but Mrs Gower and her stern looking maid had prevented him from entering.
‘You cannot keep my wife from me!’ Montague had yelled, causing more than a little consternation in the crowds milling around to watch the spectacle.
And Mrs Gower had grimaced, folded her arms and said quietly, ‘Watch me.’
Montague picked up the chicken leg, took a bite, then placed it back on his plate disconsolately.
How it all managed to go so spectacularly wrong? Would he ever be able to forget the woman who had not only captured his heart, but appeared to have taken his very soul with her?
A clatter—a noise. The kitchen cat?
Montague blinked through the darkness and saw to his surprise it was not a cat, but a small child who was frozen by the door having knocked over a pewter jug in their seeming haste.
A child he recognised, even in the darkness.
‘John?’
‘I’m s-sorry,’ stammered the child, his head lowered and his hands clasped together before him. ‘I—I’m sorry, I—I didn’t mean—I know I’m not s-supposed to be here!’
His last word ended on a high note of terror.
Lest he forget, there were two boys in this household who had suffered under the hands of a Trefusis. His own memories might have faded, but for the boy…well, they were all too recent.
‘Come on in, John,’ he said gruffly.
The child did not move. ‘M-My…my father forbade me from going into the kitchens. Even when I was hungry.’