Like all those bits and fragments of memories that kept bubbling up, bits of old conversations, sensory impressions. Sometimes it made her wonder if being alone out here was making her lose her grip on reality.
“It’s not just the same woman; I’d lay money on it that it’s the same painter,” said Nick, prowling back and forth between the two paintings. There was an air of suppressed excitement about him, like an electric current. “There are certain similarities in style. If you compare your Imogen portrait to the other portraits in the room…”
“Yes?” prompted Julia.
Lost in mid-sentence, Nick was staring at the portrait of the man with the ginger whiskers. Looking slowly from the portrait to the painting, he let out a low whistle. “Now, isn’t that interesting.”
Julia was beginning to feel like she was losing the plot. “Isn’t what interesting?” she asked impatiently.
Nick snapped out of whatever trance he’d fallen into. “Your Imogen Grantham isn’t the only person in the room in that painting.” He pointed to the portrait of the ginger-haired gentleman on the far side of the room. “Look closely. That portrait’s not great, and Thorne’s shaved his whiskers and given him a beard, but if you can look past that…”
Nick was right. Take off the whiskers, add a beard, and there he was, the ginger-haired man, front and center, smack in the middle of the banqueting scene, a gold circlet around his brow, his eyes narrowed as he looked out over the trysting lovers.
“Oh,” said Julia. How in the hell had she not seen that before?
“‘Oh,’ indeed.” Nick folded his arms across his chest, looking more than a little bit smug. “There’s your King Mark.”
Julia felt a strange chill down her spine as though someone had just breathed down the back of her neck. A goose walking over her grave, the old saying went. She wasn’t quite sure, but …
“You mean Imogen Grantham’s husband.”
Nick’s eyes met hers. “If that’s her husband, then who’s Tristan?”
FIFTEEN
Herne Hill, 1849
“Go on,” said Imogen, dropping down onto a convenient fallen log. She’d learned to recognize the expression on Gavin’s face that meant he’d spotted a particularly intriguing bug on a branch or quirk of the light. “I don’t mind sitting while you sketch—so long as you don’t sketch me.”
Gavin squinted at the sky. “Nah, it’s passed,” he said, and folded himself down next to her, nudging her to make room. He slid an arm around her waist and she leaned comfortably into him, the contours of his body already a familiar landscape. His fingers traced a pattern along the curve of her waist. “Why do you so dislike being drawn?”
Imogen gave a little shrug, leaning her head against his shoulder. At her feet, the grass was already beginning to turn from green to brown. It felt so natural and easy being together that it was a constant effort to remind herself that their time was finite, that it would be foolish to let herself feel too much.
“You see so much of me,” she said, at last. “It is not always comfortable.”
Gavin rested his cheek against the top of her head. “But all of it beautiful,” he said quietly.
The simple words made Imogen’s heart ache. “You find water bugs beautiful, too,” she said determinedly. “And frogs.”
“It’s not quite the same thing,” said Gavin drily. Pulling back, he flicked a finger against her cheek. “Your gills aren’t nearly so green.”
“Honeyed words,” said Imogen mockingly.
She made as if to rise, but he caught her hand and tugged her back down. “Shall I tell you it’s your spirit I find lovely, then, and not your skin? As charming as that is,” he added, with a hint of a grin.
It made her uneasy when he spoke so, uneasy because part of her so wanted to hear it.
Imogen wrinkled her nose at him. “There’s no need to try to seduce me. You already have. Come,” she said, imperiously holding out a hand. “Shall we sit or shall we walk?”
Since the portrait session had ended, Imogen had developed a habit of long walks, an eccentricity entirely in line with her character. Jane attributed it to Imogen’s ridiculous rural upbringing; Arthur made no comment at all, except to remark that it was nice to see some color in her cheeks again.
Two, sometimes three times a week, Gavin would fall into step with her just past the orchard gate and together they would roam the still rural reaches down along the dale of the Effra, a million miles away from the world. Here there were no prying eyes, no sniping tongues. Arthur’s set, when they left the hill, departed by carriage, taking only the well-traveled roads. They would never have thought to climb over stiles or risk their shoes in the mud of the damp ground by the tributaries of the river. Sometimes a heron would be startled into flight by her and Gavin’s passage; other times their progress would be regarded by the liquid eyes of grazing cows. Otherwise, they might have been the first man and the first woman, alone in their innocence.
Not that their walks together were always innocent.
There were days when just the touch of his gloved hand against hers was enough to set her skin burning, when a picnic blanket might become an impromptu bed, more luxuriant than the softest goose down swathed in linen.
There were other days when it was enough just to be together, walking easily side by side, the ground sucking and sinking beneath their shoes, the smells of autumn all around them in the rich loam of the earth, the first tinge of coal smoke in the air.
“‘Season of mist and mellow fruitfulness!’” quoted Imogen, lifting her face to the late-afternoon sun.
Tucking her hand under his arm, Gavin said with mock seriousness, “‘Think not of the songs of spring.’”
“I believe you mean, ‘Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? / Think not of them,’” said Imogen loftily, although she knew that Gavin knew the poem better than she.
It was Gavin who had introduced her to Keats, quoting verse after verse, each line an offering, a gift from him to her. For a man with little formal education he had a store of poetry and stories, and something about the way he savored them, the way he rolled them on his tongue, reminded Imogen that such tales were originally meant to be spoken aloud, to be shared, not confined and hoarded between the leather covers of a book.
He found beauty everywhere and, finding it, showed it to her, even in the bruised side of a fallen apple, or a path trodden by dusty feet. When she was with him, colors were brighter, scents sharper; she felt as though she had awakened after a long sleep into a world she was learning again, piece by piece.
There was no one to interfere with Imogen’s outings. Arthur was always away from home, and Evie had struck up a friendship with one of the Misses Cranbourne, which kept her busy with teas and picnics.
“I thought you couldn’t stand Eliza Cranbourne,” said Imogen idly, picking up her embroidery frame as she joined Evie in the drawing room before dinner one evening.
“People change,” said Evie enigmatically. She was, noticed Imogen, looking particularly pretty, her cheeks pink and her hair arranged in a new style. It made her look, thought Imogen with a pang, practically grown-up. “We were such children then!”
“Elderly at seventeen,” Imogen teased, but she wasn’t moved to inquire further. Even Jane had nothing to say about the Cranbournes, other than that they seemed to be quiet, well-bred girls and it was a pity they hadn’t an older brother rather than a sickly little six-year-old one.
Fotheringay-Vaughn hadn’t called again, and Imogen allowed herself to hope that he had been called to greener pastures or greater heiresses.
On a day when he knew Fotheringay-Vaughn would be out, Gavin took Imogen to his studio.
“At last!” she said. “The Bluebeard chamber.”
Gavin slanted a sideways glance as he let her in through a narrow entryway, up a steep flight of narrow stairs. “You know I’d have shown you sooner, but for Augustus.”
“A convenient excuse,” Imogen tease
d. “I expect a scene of the utmost decadence.”
“Mess, perhaps,” said Gavin, opening a door at the top of the stairs, “but hardly decadence.”
“Orgies of dust?” Imogen poked her head around the door. “Goodness.”
There seemed to be bits of paper everywhere. Sketches, scattered wantonly along a long table, curling at the edges, spilling over onto the floor. Gavin hadn’t been joking about the dust; she could see the dust motes dancing in the light from the uncurtained windows. A strong smell of charcoal and paint scented the air.
One corner of the room had been roped off into a makeshift dressing room by the simple expedient of hanging a piece of cloth from a string. Imogen had known, intellectually, that he and his friends believed in painting only from specific examples, but it was one thing to hear it said and quite another to see the pile of theatrical doublets and pasteboard swords, glass gems, and pieces of fabric of every type and color imaginable.
“You never told me that it was Aladdin’s cave,” Imogen said. Imogen lifted up a sapphire blue gown, a needle still stuck through a corner of the sleeve. The seams were all sewn in the simplest of basting stitches, the trim tacked on with more of the same. “Is this your handiwork?”
Gavin held out his hands in acknowledgment. “I can’t afford a seamstress to make my costumes.”
“It’s beautiful.” The fabric was cheap, the trim tawdry, but Imogen could see it as it would appear, transmuted in paint, the sleazy blue silk something rich and rare, the ha’penny trimmings trappings for a queen.
“It’s for the Tristan and Iseult painting. Your painting,” Gavin added. He insisted on crediting her with the inspiration for it. His lips quirked as he saw the way she was looking at the gown. “Put it on. I designed it with you in mind.”
“It won’t hurt it?” Imogen found she wanted to put it on, very much.
“My stitches aren’t pretty, but they generally hold.” Gavin bundled the fabric into her hands and pushed her lightly towards the screen. “Go on.”
Behind the curtain she found a straight chair and a washstand with basin, both currently empty of water. Her own dress wasn’t difficult to shed. The basque buttoned down the front, as did her corset. Her petticoat, stiffened with horsehair, would have to go, of course—Iseult’s gown wasn’t designed for such things—but Imogen hesitated over her pantalets and chemise.
In for a penny, in for a pound. She felt as though she were sloughing off a second skin. Petticoat, pantalets, shift, stays, all piled on the ground, leaving her feeling light and free as she slid Iseult’s gown over her head, feeling the whisper of the silk against her naked skin, following the curves of her body, flaring gently from waist to hip.
Her shoes and stockings joined the pile of underclothes. Modern and practical, they would never do for a Cornish queen.
On an impulse, Imogen reached up and pulled first one pin from her hair, then another. When she raised her arms, the silky fabric of the bodice brushed across her breasts, a strangely erotic sensation. The last pin gave way and her hair fell heavily around her shoulders, fanning out along her back, tickling her bared shoulders.
“Don’t laugh,” Imogen warned.
Tentatively, she stepped out from behind the screen, her bare toes curling against the wooden boards. The skirt was just a little too long; she held it in both hands, the silk fabric sliding sensuously around her legs as she moved. She stopped, self-consciously, in the center of the room, shaking back her hair, so strangely loose and free.
Gavin was standing by his easel. At the sight of her, he stopped what he was doing, stopped and looked her up and down, from her unbound hair to her bare toes and all the curves and contours in between.
But he said nothing.
“Well?” Imogen demanded. She resisted the urge to cover one bare foot with the other. “Aren’t you going to say anything?”
“I’m past words.” His voice was husky. Something in it brought the color to Imogen’s cheeks. He looked at her with frank admiration. “If Iseult had looked anything like that, there’d be no need for a potion.”
Imogen smoothed her hands along the dropped waist of the gown, following it as it flared out over her hips. “Some say that the potion only lasted for three years. And then the effects wore off and they found themselves intimate strangers, with a kingdom at war for nothing.”
Gavin closed the distance between them, gently smoothing the hair back from her face. “I prefer the other version,” he said. “The one in which they love one another well and truly for the rest of their lives, risking all and forsaking all others.”
His words felt like an incantation. The rest of their lives …
Imogen felt her throat tighten. They didn’t have that kind of time. Only today and possibly tomorrow.
She tilted her head up to him, her heart in her eyes. “Even if it was all an enchantment?”
Gavin’s thumbs traced the curves of her cheeks. “Enchantment or chance, does it matter how two souls come together, so long as they do?” Quietly he added, “Love is love, however you come by it.”
The air in the studio felt suddenly charged and fraught, as though the very dust motes had paused in their dance to wait and listen.
Love. They didn’t speak of love; it was an unspoken rule.
There was no future for them; they both knew that. This was borrowed time, stolen time, as much of a fantasy as the dress she was wearing or the props piled in the corner, none of them made to withstand the test of time.
If only it were otherwise. If only she could slither out of her old life as she had from her stays and stand with Gavin in the sunshine, and tell him, truly, I love you, and know that it was a pledge and not a curse. For a wild moment, in her borrowed gown, Imogen grasped at the idea. They could flee over the hills and far away—and ruin Gavin’s career and Arthur’s reputation and Evie’s chances of a good marriage.
The words I love you felt like ashes in Imogen’s throat. Her love ought to be the one thing she was free to give, but it wasn’t, not really, not when it came with promises and expectations and all they had was this moment, this one, suspended, moment.
She had made grand declarations of love before, and look how that had all turned out. It was a nasty, slippery thing, love, and she didn’t trust it. Or maybe it was that she didn’t trust herself.
So Imogen reached up and drew Gavin’s head down to hers and kissed him instead, kissed him hungrily, passionately, her fingers tugging at his shirt, expressing in action what she couldn’t say in words. They made love on the dusty floor, amid the paint drops and the charcoal shavings, breathless and frantic. But there was an urgency to it that sapped the sweetness from it, a chill that wouldn’t go away, no matter how Imogen burrowed against the warmth of Gavin’s body after, as they lay there, sweaty and sated, on the dusty floor.
Whatever it was they felt for each other, however powerfully it possessed her, their time together was limited; Imogen could feel it fragmenting like sand between her fingers, with no idea how to hold on.
How long until someone saw them? How long until Arthur found out?
Herne Hill, 2009
Julia and Nick argued all the way up to the attic.
“There’s no reason to assume that the lives of the real people mirror those of the characters in the painting.” Julia led the way down the second-floor corridor, to the narrow door at the back that led to the attic stairs. There was another way, from the basement straight up to the attic, but it was just a little too Nancy Drew: narrow and dark and ill lit. “You said yourself that the Pre-Raphs tended to co-opt anyone within reach as a model.”
The bulb on the attic stairs was one of the sort with a dangling string. Nick obligingly reached over Julia’s head and tugged it for her. “Yes, their friends and relatives. What relation does Thorne have to the Granthams?”
“Poor relation?” suggested Julia, wrinkling her nose at the strong scent of dust. She started up the stairs. “Cousin? Nephew? Illegitimate son? For
all we know, Thorne might have been here for tea on alternate Tuesdays or living in a shed in the yard.”
“The other makes a better story, though, doesn’t it?” From behind her, Julia could hear the note of amusement in Nick’s voice. “Art replicates life; the repressed Victorian housewife finds passion in the arms of an artist right beneath the nose of her stodgy husband. Not to mention,” Nick added practically, “that it might bring the price of the painting up.”
Julia stumbled slightly on an uneven step, closing her mouth over an instinctive denial. Of course, the logical thing would be to sell. And, given his efforts, it would be equally logical for Nick to assume she intended him to take on the task for her. And the commission.
The thought gave her a nasty sensation in the pit of her stomach. What did you expect? she demanded of herself. That Nick was doing all this for the sheer joy of discovery? Or for the promise of her inconsiderable charms? He was an antiques dealer. She had a promising antique. That was all.
Pausing on the landing, Julia said rather shortly, “I doubt you’ll find Imogen Grantham’s diary up here. And even if you did, she’d hardly detail her illicit affair for posterity and leave it lying around the family home.”
If Nick noticed the change in her tone, he didn’t comment on it. He said mildly, “Of course not. But there might be letters, account books. Anything that places Gavin Thorne in or near this house would be useful. What’s in here?”
Julia looked back over her shoulder. “That’s the old nursery, from the days when children were meant to be neither seen nor heard. There’s nothing there. The rooms we want are around here—old servant rooms, I think.”
Instead of following her, Nick opened the nursery door wider. “Someone’s used this as a studio.”
Reluctantly, Julia tagged along after him. “Not Gavin Thorne. I don’t think you’ll find anything that old in here.”
“Those tiles are,” said Nick, crouching down to inspect the story tiles around the hearth. “Or nearly. I’d put them somewhere between 1860 and 1880.”