23. Chapter 23
Simon
The theater crowd thins out after the performance, guests streaming down the aisle, yet one lone figure remains, tall and slender with a plumed hat to match her gown. She leans on a parasol, and she’s leveled an arresting gaze upon Simon.
He lifts the background piece he painted onto his shoulders, but stops—takes a second glance.
He knows that face. Knows it well, as someone who’s sketched it.
He squints into the dim recesses of the Theatre Royale until recognition solidifies.
“Your Grace.” He discards the backdrop and jumps down from the stage to bow before the woman in dark blue. “How might I be of service?”
The Duchess of Ashbourne, now steady and pink-cheeked, makes her way up the aisle. “How did you know about Edward?” Her voice echoes in the empty auditorium.
Simon releases a breath. “You found your son.”
A flicker of a smile. “In the South of France, but you already knew that.”
Simon had taken a risk, sketching the small clue into her portrait. The duke, a bulldog of a business man, wouldn’t pause to notice details. Yet his wife—his heartbroken, clever wife—spotted the painstakingly small words, C?te Vermeille, on the little sign beside the figure on the beach.
Simon shrugs. “I vowed not to tell his father when I spoke to him. Yet a mother should never have to bear the loss of her only son.” Simon drops his gaze the moment the words are out, shoulders tight, overly aware of who he is to her.
The duchess draws near and places one gloved hand on his shoulder, a queen knighting a soldier. “Bless you, Mr. Balfour. You have done a truly great thing.”
He exhales the worry he’d bottled up. He made the right decision.
Edward, the duke’s true heir, found Simon in Exeter two years ago by chasing down an old theater playbill and asking around.
He was sharp and articulate… and enraged by his father’s indiscretions, which he had lately discovered.
One by one he tracked down the duke’s other children, making amends where he could.
Two had died already, but the others he pursued.
Edward had offered Simon a generous sum when he’d discovered him living beneath the Old Exe Bridge, and connections to boot. Simon had refused, his insides curdling at the thought of taking money that belonged to the duke.
Edward had pressed his address into Simon’s hand, making him vow to send word, should Simon change his mind. That address, his family’s forgotten holiday home in the South of France, had sprung into Simon’s mind without provocation as he sketched the duchess’ portrait.
His art always told the truth.
“He’s a fine lad, Your Grace, and he does you honor.”
A slight nod acknowledges this compliment. “Mr. Balfour, might I trouble you for a few moments of time? I’ve something further to say to you.”
They meet in a nearly empty tea shop just south of High Street, and he marvels again at the difference in the duchess since that fateful Twelfth Night.
“You seem well, Mr. Balfour.” A smile. “And very much not dead.”
He drops his head with a smile. “And your husband, the duke? I assume he is—”
“As proud as he ever was? Yes.” A tiny smile flickers.
“Though he’s restless now. Whatever you said to him punctured his facade and he is no longer able to lie to himself.
And he has taken an interest in me that resembles…
wonder.” She fidgets with the strings of her reticule.
“All because of this.” She extracts Simon’s sketch from her bag, unfolds it and smooths the creases.
The pastels, he notes, have been sealed with a clear film to preserve them.
“He wishes to see me? Is that why you’ve come?”
“He has been shaken, but I’m afraid his heart remains the same toward you. He suspected you were killed in that fire—we all did for a time—yet he’s beginning to doubt.”
“I see.”
She takes a breath. “Rumors have sprung up since the party. People are speculating on the connection between you, and looking for you to confirm suspicions. Which, of course, would ruin everything for him. I’ve come here in part to warn you. Should he come across your name in the theater...”
He sighs deeply. “I’m sorry,” he says, shoving his tea about. “Sorry for your lot in life.” Why does he feel responsible for her? As if she is his mother, in some distant way?
“What is that to me?” Then her finger drifts over the beach in his sketch, over the tiny figure of a man. “You have restored my son to me.” Tears glitter in her eyes. “And now I’ve come to repay you. I’d like to—”
“Nothing, Your Grace. Please.” Simon holds up his hands. “I want nothing. I merely set one small matter to rights, just as your son wished to do with me.”
“It isn’t a handout, but a commission. I’d like to see your sketches in galleries.”
“They’re not worth that, ma’am.”
Her shining eyes study him across the table.
“I’m not certain what to make of you, Mr. Balfour.
You float along in society as if you belong.
But you act upon the stage, you live among vagrants, and…
you create the most marvelous interpretations of reality I’ve ever seen. All without a shred of arrogance.”
He stiffens, shifting awkwardly.
“You must sketch the people who live under the bridge.”
He gapes at her. “Your Grace?”
“The vagrants. The poor. Sketch them, and I shall pay you and see that your art is circulated among important people. Strategic galleries.”
He shakes his head, neck tensing. “I couldn’t possibly. I’ve never painted for commission, outside of stage sets.”
She tilts her head a fraction. “How was it you came to be at a holiday house party in Cornwall? Were you not commissioned by the Dunns?”
“That was something of an accident.” Crossing his arms over his chest, he leans back and tells her exactly where Rosalyn Snow found him, and how she convinced him with her unexplainable charm to return with her to St. Ives.
The more he speaks of her, the more his chest expands with an indescribable lightness.
A release. The more he realizes exactly how much that short time in her presence altered him.
Oh, how dark the world seems without her.
“You’ve become something of a business partner to her, it seems.”
His arms tighten. There isn’t a label for such things. Physically they are separated—yet it’s more a stretching of two united beings who eventually must snap back together. Even if it’s many years from now. “We’ve not spoken since the fire.”
Her expression softens. “And how often do you think of her, Mr. Balfour? This Rosalyn Snow?”
His gaze darts to the window.
“I thought as much.” She sips her tea. “And does she return your affection?”
His jaw flinches as he recalls their exquisite kiss in the dim stairwell.
“She isn’t like most ladies, is she? That’s the reason you are conflicted—because you realize her place in society, the disparity between your classes. And yet you also know how little that matters to her.”
“It’s done now.”
“So you’ve given up on her?”
He’s quiet a moment, then he shrugs. “I haven’t decided against anything, I suppose.”
“Indecision is a decision.” She turns her teacup to signal she is finished. “One that will get you nowhere you wish to be.”
“I’ll think on it.”
“I will repay you, Mr. Balfour. Not with pound notes, if you’re too proud to accept them, but with a word of advice, from a patron of the arts to a fine artist.” She straightens slowly.
“Your ability to glimpse the depths of a soul is magnificent, and must not be wasted—I challenge you to sketch the homeless, the vagrants, the people crowded into those wretched rookeries in Cheapside. Let the world see them.” She softens.
“And secondly, I challenge you to turn that inscrutable sight of yours on Rosalyn Snow. For all the judgment you accuse the world of casting upon your lot, you’ve done quite the same to her.
” She touches his hand for a moment. “You are a splendid force of nature overlooked by the world. And by coincidence… so is she.”
Those words ring in his ears for days, until at last, he sits down to write a letter.
My Dear Miss Snow,
I hope this finds you settled and well-adjusted after the upheaval of the holidays.
His pen floats above the cheap paper, splattering a drop of ink as his thoughts churn, and his heart begins drafting what he could never write.
How dull life is without you. How ordinary and bleak and useless.
But he cannot tell her that. Please come back to me.
Come near with that glowing light of yours, and remind my soul how to live again.
Take on the world with me, and let’s bring light to every corner.
He blows out a breath and writes a few simple lines instead.
I never should have traded that coat. I want you to know that.
I believed I was acting charitably, giving him a fine velvet show coat with brass buttons in exchange for his older one.
I never expected it to go the way it did, or what the consequences could possibly be…