Chapter 60
Sixty
“You wrote it?” she repeated in disbelief. The lines that had burrowed under her skin like a splinter, an insistent, painful hope that somewhere out there, was a man who would see her for herself. As something more than a woman to be wedded, bedded, or bred.
And here he was. Marcus Aurelius David George Tyndale, Viscount Radcliffe. She wanted to laugh. She wanted to cry. But the best she could manage was a choked out, “Why?”
He ran a hand through his hair. “I was drinking. I drank a lot back then. And because I’m cursed with the ability to recall perfectly the things I see, that bit in the De Arte Graphica about the artist having the power to ‘correct and amend the common Nature, and to represent it as it was first created without fault,’ got stuck in my head.
Made me furious every time I thought about it.
Scribbling that wretched bit of nonsense was my attempt at an exorcism. ”
“It wasn’t nonsense,” she said softly.
He studied her as if she was a foreign language he was struggling to translate, then said, “It didn’t work, of course. So, I told myself a woman like you didn’t exist. That it was time to stop dreaming.” He smiled ruefully. “My first step in that campaign was to sell the book.”
“Which I bought.”
He shook his head, “I never imagined anyone would see it.”
“I know the feeling. I seem to remember saying almost that exact thing.”
“That damned cartoon.” He shook his head again.
“I know I owe you a proper apology. It was just…seeing your work, then seeing you in that courtroom, surrounded by those jeering monsters. All I wanted to do was sweep you up and carry you out of there.” He folded his arms behind his back, as if still resisting the urge.
The movement placed his lantern behind him, making the circle of light between them smaller. Encircled by darkness, Marguerite could imagine that the world above them had ceased to exist.
“When Fouquier-Tinville held up your drawing, I knew it was a death sentence. That it would be so much more difficult to free you. I overreacted. Forgive me.” He sighed ruefully. “If it had been a battlefield, I’d have known what to do.”
“Like Rouen?” As much as she didn’t want to ask, she had to know.
“Rouen?”
“What happened there?” Because the world, after all, did exist and they’d soon be returning to it.
He sighed. “We were a few miles from the coast, on our way to the rendezvous with the sloop that was to carry your father to England. We were stopped by a company of national guardsmen. They’d been informed about our activities.
They had a description of two of our company.
They attempted to arrest them. I couldn’t… ”
“Leave them behind,” she finished for him.
“I wouldn’t.” His eyes were fixed on her face. “I’ll always fight for the people in my care. The people I love.”
Marguerite stepped closer to him. “Do you love her?”
“Who?” His brows knit in confusion, he added uncertainly, “Lady Elizabeth?”
“Lady Elizabeth?” It was Marguerite’s turn to look confused. “Is she the viper?”
“Lady Elizabeth is a vixen,” he chuckled.
“Not a viper. That’s her gown you have half on, by the way.
She’d have still been in the nursery, no doubt driving her governesses to Bedlam, when I wrote that verse.
But since you ask, no, I don’t love the viper.
Thinking back on it, I think I was mostly in love with the idea of her. ”
Marguerite was close enough to see the rapid rise and fall of his chest, close enough to stretch out an arm and touch the tensed muscles beneath the linen of his shirt. “How can I be sure you aren’t falling in love with an idea of me?”
“The verse might have been rubbish, but I do believe that art—good art, reveals the true nature of the artist. I may have seen your determination, your wit, and your passion in your art first, but I’ve also seen it in the way you’ve faced the horrors you’ve been through. The way you’re facing me now.”
Before I tell you of my heart. She pressed on, “I’ve seen your forgeries and the amount my father has offered you in your sketchbook. How can I be sure what you’re saying now is true?”
“And you’ve seen my sketches, so you know I speak the truth when I say I’m no artist. As for what your father wrote in my book, I made no effort to hide it.”
“It’s a tempting sum.”
“It is indeed.” One corner of his mouth curved up. “And I’ve got a studio that’s in desperate need of renovations. But despite the draft and uneven floorboards, I didn’t ask for it and I’ve no intention of taking it.”
“Why not?”
“I was right about the determination I saw in your art.” He shook his head ruefully. “I’ve told you I’m not a good man, but it’s not for lack of trying. Taking money would cheapen whatever good I have managed to accomplish.”
“Why did you tell me you were a mercenary?”
“I didn’t have much time to convince you to let me help you. We still don’t have much time. Given everything you’d been through, I calculated you’d be more likely to believe me if I said I was rescuing you for money than if I attempted to make some noble speech.”
“Can you make noble speeches?”
“I probably would have made a hash of it,” he admitted. Voice softening, he said, “I suspect I might be making a hash of it now.”
“You’re not,” she said, feeling as if her heart had become the bubble of light in that dark place. “I want to be with you. I want you.”
In the stillness of the quarry, it was impossible to miss his sharp intake of breath. He swayed forward.
Even though Marguerite knew he would not break his vow to keep his distance, she held up a hand to stop him. “There will be a price for touching me.”
“Name it. No. Don’t. I don’t care.”
“Before you say that, you should know it’s not my price. And it’s likely to be high.” Marguerite squared her shoulders. “My father didn’t leave me. I chose to stay in France. Those three paintings you saved are my submissions to the Louvre Salon show next month.”
“I know,” He paused, adding semi-apologetically. “There were a lot of papers scattered around your apartment.”
“Which you read.”
“As any good intelligencer would. And I’m very good.” He shrugged. “I needed to find out where you’d gone. Given the disarray I found in your apartment, I suspected you’d been taken, but I couldn’t be sure. Asking your neighbors seemed an unwise choice.”
Particularly if he’d asked Victorine. “If my father had still been in Paris, or my husband had still been alive, I would have been forbidden to show my work. They’d have called such a public display ‘vain and vulgar.’”
“They’d have been dead wrong.” He said with disgust. “Your work deserves to be seen. You need to keep creating.”
“And I will create again.” Saying the words aloud felt like a vow. “I will paint again, draw again, sketch again.”
“Sketch again?” He frowned, repeating the words with a particular emphasis on the word sketch. “Like the work in the gray portfolio?”
“Ah.” The nudes of her fantasy lover. Of him.
“You saw those?” Of course he had. He’d searched her apartments, read her correspondence with the Royal Academy, had even noticed the verse in the margin of her art book.
There was no way he hadn’t gone through her portfolios.
She lifted her chin, bracing herself for his contempt. “What did you think of them?”
“What did I think of them?” He repeated slowly and carefully. Then composing himself with an effort she could almost feel, he replied, “That I’d like to rip the half-dressed fellow limb from limb. Is he your lover?”
“My…” She stopped, stunned. She’d been expecting a tirade about how women had no business looking at, much less drawing naked men. “My what?”
“Lover.”
Laughter burbled from her like a spring. Marcus was jealous. Of himself. “He…is. Now.”
“I see,” he said, in a voice so distant and formal Marguerite almost expected him to click his heels and bow.
“I don’t think you see at all.” Setting her lantern down, she rose and ran a finger down his nose to the shadowed line of his severe lips. “Those drawings were only what I imagined you looked like.” She caught a lock of his hair between her fingers.
“I dreamed about you before I met you. Often.” She let the silken strand slide between her fingers, then placed her hand on his chest. He hadn’t had time to lace his shirt, or to put on a waistcoat; she felt the rapid rise and fall of his breathing, the warmth of his skin, the ridge of scar beneath the linen.
“I think I did a fair job of capturing your lovely body. Although, I never imagined the scars.”
She felt his muscles tense; heard his breath catch as understanding dawned.
“It was quite a shock to see you standing in the courtroom.”
“Ah.” The single consonant escaped his lips.
“Given everything that was going on, I thought I might be losing my mind.” In English, she said, “Do you disapprove of my drawing viscounts en déshabillé, m’lord?”
He leaned close to her, so close she could feel his breath on her lips when he spoke, but, impossibly, not touching her. “While I’d never wish to rein in your artistic freedom, in future, I do hope you will limit your studies of naked viscounts to one. Me.”
“In future?” The suggestion of a naked Marcus Tyndale made everything from her navel downwards, meltingly hot.
“Now, if you like,” he said huskily.
She very much would. She placed her other hand on his chest. Fighting the urge to slide both arms around his neck, she said. “I’m not sure why my father wants me back.”
“I know why I want you…”
She wanted to press herself closer, to feel his skin against hers, but she needed to tell him about her suspicions. “After my divorce, my husband placed the bulk of our money in my name. Gerard thought there’d be less chance of the government seizing it. It’s in an account in Geneva.”
“I’m not interested in your father’s money, or yours. It’s you I want, Marguerite. In case I haven’t made that clear?” His eyes took on a wicked gleam. “I promise I’ll never make you want for paint, pastels, canvases…or anything else you might desire.”
His emphasis on the word, desire, sent hot rivulets of it coursing through her veins. But she needed to warn him. “I don’t think it’s me my father wants. I think it’s my money.”
“Given the amount he offered for your rescue, he seems well enough off without it.”
“The state seized our ancestral lands and rents. He has no source of income. Given how lavishly he’s always lived, I doubt he escaped France with much more than the rags you sketched him in.
If he intends to make good on the note he scrawled in your book—and there’s a good chance, he doesn’t—he most likely plans on using the money he transferred under my name to prevent the government from seizing it, too. ”
“So, he lied about having money in England?”
She nodded.
“How dishonorable.” Marcus showed no trace of disappointment.
“My father believes that being born an aristocrat makes anything he chooses to do honorable.”
“Since, as I’ve been taking pains to explain, I’ve no intention of laying claim to any of it, what does it matter?”
“That sketch you showed me, of my father pleading with the man and the woman on the blanket. Was it accurate?”
“I may not be an artist, but I’m a draftsman with a perfect memory,” he said reprovingly.
“He pleaded with you. Offered you money. Did he threaten you as well?”
Marcus frowned as if recalling an unpleasant memory. “He was rather insistent that I swear to return you to his care.”
“He’ll try to hold you to your oath.”
“Then I shall have no trouble being equally dishonorable. I am, after all, an aristocrat, as well.”
“No.”
“No? Are you saying I shouldn’t behave dishonorably? Or that I should return you to him?”
“I’m not explaining this well. I just…I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“Are you saying you’ll leave me?” He stiffened.
“No, no, that’s not it at all. I’m trying to warn you about the kind of person my father is. What may happen if you cross him.”
He reached for her. Then, remembering his promise, dropped his hands at his sides. His fists clenched. “Just…don’t leave me, Marguerite.”
“My father may not have money, but I’ve no doubt he still has power.
Why else would your government be so intent on bringing him to England?
And whatever they want him for, that gives him more power, too.
Power he’ll use to try and force you to turn me over to him.
And if you refuse? He’ll destroy whatever you hold most dear. ”
His body tensed like a rope being drawn to the point of breaking. “He can do whatever he likes to me. But if he dares harm so much as a hair on your head? There’s an oath I’ll gladly swear. I’ll kill him.”