Chapter Twenty
‘If you stay one more day inside, you’re going to crumble to dust!’ Calliope’s mother declared.
Calliope tried not to smile. ‘I think that’s vampires, Mama. And the other way around. They can’t go outside.’
‘Oh.’ Her mother’s shoulders slumped, but they did not remain so for long. ‘You’ll get cobwebs growing in your hair, and roses and thorns will grow around your bedchamber, and…’
‘That’s a completely different fairy tale, Mama, and I do not think I need to worry about the entirety of Brighton falling asleep for a hundred years,’ Calliope said wearily, helping her aunt affix her bonnet. ‘The two of you will have a wonderful time. I’m quite happy to stay here.’
‘And yet I say you must come!’ Mrs Oliver looked sternly at her sister. ‘Do you not insist she come with us?’
Calliope looked at her aunt beseechingly, trying to communicate with her eyes alone that she had absolutely no desire to go out into the world, where Montague could be hiding behind any corner.
Aunt Louise pursed her lips. ‘I do not insist, no.’
Relief washed over Calliope. There, she would not have to—
‘But I would ask her, politely, if she would treat us to her presence,’ her aunt continued, a knowing smile on her lips. ‘After all, I have hosted her for several weeks now and I do not think I have asked for much in return.’
The two older women turned expectantly to Calliope.
Calliope gritted her teeth. That was the trouble with her mother, she was always able to twist people around her little finger.
Traipse off to Brighton for months on end, hightail it to Weymouth whenever her fancy pleased her.
All her actions were for herself and herself alone, and what did the rest of her family do?
Allow it!
‘Fine,’ she said grumpily, grabbing a parasol that had been propped up by the door and scowling at her mother. ‘One art gallery and then straight home.’
‘Excellent,’ said her mother, beaming. ‘I knew you’d see it my way.’
It was, in truth, rather pleasant to get outdoors again after five days holed up indoors, Calliope thought quietly as the three women stepped outside. Not that she was about to admit that.
Pushing up her parasol, Calliope hid herself beneath it as best she could.
There. Now even if they had the great misfortune to walk past Montague then he would not necessarily even know it was her underneath all these frills and layers of lace.
That was, as long as he pretended he could not actually see her aunt. It would be too much to hope he would not spot her mother.
Feet dragging, entirely ignoring the cheerful chatter of her mother and aunt, Calliope did not pay much attention to precisely where they were going. What did it matter? She was out, that was what they had demanded. What more could they possibly want from her?
As it turned out, the impossible.
‘Absolutely not,’ Calliope said sternly, coming to a complete stop outside the Royal Art Gallery. ‘No.’
How could they think to bring her here?
Was it not painful enough that she had broken with the man who had purported to love her? Did they wish to cause her even greater injury by bringing her to the very place where he had proposed to her—unsuccessfully, as it happened—and put into motion the absolute disaster which had occurred?
Though now Calliope came to think about it, there were very few places in Brighton she could go without being assaulted by memories of the man she still, despite herself, loved.
The art shop of Mr Haversham.
The beach.
The cliffs.
The lanes.
The art galleries.
The Assembly Rooms.
The man had ruined everything. And now her aunt and mother wanted her to go inside the very art gallery where their competition had culminated?
‘Oh, Calliope,’ her aunt said bracingly. ‘You’ve got to come in here sometime.’
‘No I don’t,’ Calliope said stiffly, trying to shake off her mother who had grabbed a hold of her arm. ‘Let me go. No, I don’t want to go inside—’
‘You’ll enjoy it once you’re in there,’ said her mother optimistically.
‘Mama, let go of—’ Panic was rushing through Calliope, her chest tight, her legs wooden and yet she was being inexorably pulled inside.
No, no, no—
What in the world?
Calliope stopped struggling. Her mind was too busy attempting to understand what it was seeing to compete any more with her mother for the decision on motion.
It was…her art.
She blinked. It was still there. Which was impossible. Her sketches, her half-finished drawings, some of them collected on the wall in a trio so one could see how she attempted a nose and eventually succeeded.
There was the portrait of John, yes, but just to its left was a small landscape she had painted of the special place Montague had shown her. Her stomach flipped over as she saw the flecks of red and blue for the poppies and cornflowers.
And there, a sketch of a squirrel. There, a charcoal of a seagull on the wing. There, three small canvases of paintings she had created while standing on the beach.
All her work…here. On the walls of the Royal Art Gallery.
What on earth?
‘I…’ Calliope swallowed and tried to remind her mouth what words were. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘It’s your art,’ her aunt said, a tad unnecessarily.
Calliope attempted to take a step forward but her legs were being just as inarticulate as her mouth and she almost stumbled. Only her mother’s swift grab of her elbow prevented her from toppling. ‘But it can’t be.’
It couldn’t be, it just couldn’t. What was it doing here? And what were all these people doing here?
Her heart skipped a beat. In the horror and shock of seeing all her private drawings and paintings up on the walls of one of the most popular art galleries in Brighton, she had almost missed the fact there were people meandering from piece to piece.
Terror gripped her. ‘Mama, you must take them down. Take it all down. None of it was intended for others to see!’
Who could have done this to her, who would have been so cruel as to expose her for the amateur she clearly was?
Calliope whirled upon her aunt, who took a hasty step back. ‘You! You did this!’
‘Now, Calliope,’ Aunt Louise said speedily, raising up both her hands in apparent surrender. ‘What happened was—’
‘I don’t want to know what happened, I want it all taken down!’ Calliope hissed.
She had to hiss because she did not want anyone to hear her words—but apparently no one else in the art gallery had the same foibles.
‘Quite beautiful,’ a woman on the other side of the room was saying. ‘You see the strokes? Breathtaking.’
It was breathtaking. At least, her words had the effect of entirely removing Calliope’s breath from her body.
Had that woman just praised her art?
‘A real find, this Miss Oliver,’ a gentleman was saying in the next room, his voice so loud it carried right to them. ‘I hope she is accepting commissions. This portrait truly is wonderful.’
‘Oh no, it’s the landscapes where Miss Oliver truly shines,’ said his companion, a taller gentleman with a truly dazzling moustache. ‘Look at her use of shade here, under the clifftop. Beautiful.’
Beautiful. Wonderful. Shining.
Calliope could hardly understand it. These people did not know her. They had no reason to be here at all, let alone say anything nice about her artwork. And yet they were doing so.
With great abandon.
‘I do declare, if I cannot have that squirrel sketch for my little girl’s bedchamber, I do not know what I shall do,’ said a woman Calliope could not quite see. ‘Is it not precious?’
‘You see?’ said a voice Calliope knew far too well. A voice that was low and gentle, and yet there was a teasing air that was most unpleasant…and all too welcome. ‘You are a true artist, Miss Oliver. You are a success.’
Montague tried not to look as though he were terrified Calliope was about to march away without even looking.
The very least she could do was turn around, then march away.
But Calliope did not. She did not whirl around and immediately start castigating him about betrayal, which he half expected.
She did not yell at him about being a broodmare, which was certainly not an accusation he wanted bandied about in public.
She did not burst into tears, which he had half feared.
No. Calliope slowly, inch by inch, turned around on the spot. When she was facing him, her face was completely impassive, as though she felt nothing at all.
Montague’s heart had broken at least twice a day in the past week without the woman he loved, but this was perhaps the very worst.
How could Calliope look at him like that? As though he was nothing. As though she cared nothing for him and worse, had never cared anything for him?
As though it was easy for her to stand there and look at him and remain apart, this distance between them unimaginable?
Montague cleared his throat.
Calliope narrowed her eyes.
Ah. Well, delayed shock, that was bound to happen.
‘How dare you,’ she said quietly.
At some point her mother and aunt had faded away into the rest of the art gallery. Montague would have been delighted by that, if it had not left him exposed to the totality of Calliope’s wrath without anyone else to help calm it.
‘Ah,’ he said aloud helplessly. ‘I—uh, appear to have miscalculated.’
It never occurred to him that Calliope would be angry at what he had done. It had taken a great deal of work, after all. The convincing of her mother, which had taken no time at all, and the convincing of her aunt, which had been a monumental task even Hercules himself would not have achieved it.
There was the seeking out of her drawings, sketches and paintings, removing them from Mrs Gower’s home without Calliope’s knowledge, agreeing a price for the exhibition with the owner of Royal Art Gallery, which was frankly extortionate—
All while trying to keep his own spirits high and the boy’s expectations low.
Montague was exhausted.
But he wasn’t finished yet.
‘Miscalculated?’ Calliope raised an eyebrow as she narrowed her eyes. ‘I do not understand, I cannot understand, why you have done this.’