“Tell Berthold that, why don’t you? He’ll surely retaliate with some cutting remark about how you sketch Smith’s ears. Shall we order another bottle?”
Dermot was two months behind paying the club’s monthly balance, but the next quarter’s allowance was only a few weeks off. Besides, spotting Smith at Lambeth was worth another glass or two of port. What the devil, as it were, could Smith have been doing at Lambeth?
“I’ve had enough wine for the present,” Belchamp said. “A question for you, my lord. If you’re dabbling in art only to appease your aunt’s ambitions for you, and you don’t go in for the sporting life, and you apparently eschew the usual recreational wagers… What do you intend to do with yourself?”
What the hell sort of question was that? “I’m a gentleman, Belchamp. We famously do not turn our energies to brute labor and are instead a credit to our gender and the guardians of our families’ dignity. If we’re of a mind to, we take an interest in politics or the Church. We might in a weak moment stand for Parliament. We also treat the less fortunate to the occasional steak dinner and put upstarts and mushrooms in their places.”
Belchamp should have been offended by that speech, but he merely grinned. “You’ll marry the goddaughter of your auntie’s choosing, dutifully get little ladies and gentlemen on her, and live off the quarterly interest payments from her settlements?”
“Now you insult me.” Dermot added a smile to that observation, though Belchamp had blundered well past presumption with that comment. Another man might have called him out for it. “Take yourself off to the Coventry, why don’t you? You have a commission to celebrate.”
Belchamp pushed his chair back. “You’re sure you won’t come with me?”
“When I’m already squandering my coin on pity suppers for starving artists, I refuse to waste more funds wagering for the amusement of the Coventry’s pretty dealers. Go lose what little means you have and convince yourself the free champagne justifies the loss.”
Belchamp studied him across the table while Dermot signaled the waiter for another bottle of wine he didn’t want.
“Here’s what I think,” Belchamp said. “I think you fear failing as an artist, so you don’t try. You play at it, and what gifts you have languish when they should be blooming. The dilettante is praised for efforts a professional wouldn’t bother to sign, so you remain a dilettante. You could be good, but you’d rather be safe in your snobbery.”
Belchamp rose, which was prudent of him, if he must be so annoying.
“You think,” Dermot drawled. “I am delighted to know the higher functions have not been entirely denied to you. You both think and pursue portraiture. What an abundance of good fortune you claim. Think your way to the Coventry, Belchamp, and my thanks for sharing a pleasant meal.”
Dermot tilted the wine bottle over his glass and too late realized that he was serving himself the very dregs. Belchamp did not appear to notice that faux pas. He hailed Fairborne’s son, and the two of them left together.
“Mushrooms everywhere,” Dermot muttered as the waiter brought the next bottle. “Take it back,” Dermot said, rising. “My companion has abandoned me, and I’m for the cardroom. I don’t suppose you could arrange for paper and pencil to be sent to me there? Foolscap will do.”
“Of course, my lord.”
Dermot took a leaf from Henderson’s sketch pad, sat in a shadowed corner of the cardroom, and idly drew caricatures of what he saw. Strutting peacocks, dandies, fortune hunters—gentlemen all, and no credit to anybody save their tailors. What a gloomy mood Belchamp’s impertinence had caused.
Dermot grew restless after an hour or so and considered his sketches. Not bad, though Aunt Esme detested caricatures and satires. She was frequently quite articulate on that point.
Dermot’s little scribblings were not profound, like those blasted, big-eyed flower girls, but they were… amusing. Sly, thoughtful in their own humorous way. The flower girls had a quality beyond accuracy, though, an emotional weight that eluded Dermot’s attempts to analyze it.
Those flower girls offered reproach in their hesitant smiles and delicate posies. Reproach, hope, dignity… All very moralizing, somehow, and also aesthetically proficient.
He crumpled his sketches into a ball and tossed them onto the flames of the nearest hearth. Belchamp was an idiot, and there’d be no more steak dinners for him. Let him swill free champagne at the Coventry and paint sweet, vapid portraits of some cit’s brats.
If that was artistic success, Dermot wanted no part of it. He was in such a foul mood that he even eschewed the company of his current opera dancer of choice and instead took himself in the direction of his rooms.
He was passing the turn onto Circle Lane when Belchamp’s words about Smith came back to him: He moves with a certain élan, a subtle grace and purpose… Six yards ahead, Smith himself was moving with a certain élan and a definite sense of purpose into the alley that ran parallel to Circle Lane. Alleys were generally to be avoided, and yet, Smith all but marched along, confident of his destination.
The fellow had a propensity for showing up in unexpected places, apparently.
The neighborhood was decent and the hour not that late. Dermot turned into the alley and kept to the abundant shadows until his quarry let himself through a garden gate and into a modest town house by means of its locked and shadowed back door.
The Yorkshire Dales had an astonishing ability to change seasons overnight. A pretty autumn day ended. The next morning, the hills were covered in a forbidding mantle of white, and the fresh breeze had become a bitter wind.
As Michael walked London’s dark, frigid streets, he recalled that so too could spring appear in Yorkshire without overt warning. One day, the Dales brooded beneath a leaden, wintry sky, then a sullen rain came through. The next day, the hills were clad in the richest, most vibrant green under heavens of soul-reviving blue. Daffodils bobbed genially beside rivulets that the day before had trickled beneath a crust of ice.
Birds flitted from budding branches that a week previously had appeared all but dead.
The seasons, of course, did not change that quickly. The farmers had known what signs to watch. Snowdrops peeked forth from the southern side of a particular boulder. A certain venerable ewe dropped her lamb. The plow horses began to shed more quickly.
Then, on some glorious, anointed day, the signs would converge in a spectacular display of nature’s benevolence, and spring would arrive.
Michael paused at the back door of the house on Circle Lane and fished in his breast pocket for the key.
Kissing Psyche Fremont was like… like spring arriving to Michael’s heart. He and she had remained on the sofa, talking, touching, kissing, and simply resting in each other’s embrace for the remainder of the evening. Psyche hadn’t invited him to spend the night, and he would have declined in any case. She hadn’t even bothered to push the coach on him.
He was too happy to merely sit, snug and toasty, in a vehicle while his mind whirled with joy. He’d left Psyche frowning at her canvas, a pencil in hand as she’d sketched the rest of the image she’d soon render in oils.
He could have remained with her, could have dozed off in a cozy corner, but this new intimacy was too rich to be rushed, too precious to be consumed all at once.