Portrait of a Scotsman by Evie Dunmore

Chapter 7

“I’m terribly tempted to obey my father and attend the gallery tour,” Hattie told Catriona a few days later in her drawing room at the Randolph.

It earned her a wry glance over a gilded teacup rim. “Are you tempted by the tour or by another scandalous encounter?”

“Ha ha,” Hattie murmured. “Would you be shocked if I told you I wish to support his charitable efforts for the arts, too?”

“Whose charity?”

“Mr. Blackstone’s.”

Catriona put cup and saucer down on the low-legged table between them. “Would that be wise?”

With a sigh, Hattie abandoned her dramatic sprawl across her fainting couch to select a cream-filled éclair from the pastry platter.

“Probably not,” she conceded. “But the truth is, normally when I receive a request for my work or my patronage, I can never shake the suspicion that I’m asked because of who my father is.”

“Why?” Catriona looked puzzled. “Your work is fine in its own right.”

“Do you remember the grand birds-and-flowers exhibition sponsored by the Royal Horticultural Society?”

“I don’t, no.”

“Well, my painting was the only one that had not a single bird in it.”

“Oh.”

“Now, Mr. Blackstone’s invitation can’t be an attempt to curry favor with the Greenfields, since my father was the one repeatedly approaching him.”

“Then the question is, what is his motivation?” Catriona muttered.

It was a justified question. She doubted it was Mr. Blackstone’s admiration for her talent since the only example of her work he had seen thus far was The Gourd …. But it was such a pretty idea, to be chosen for herself …. She wished their usual quartet of friends was complete, so she could have opinions other than just Catriona’s mercilessly rational ones to consider. But Annabelle and her duke had retreated to their castle in Brittany last week, and Lucie’s usual place on the yellow settee was empty, too, as she was en route to Italy. She herself was expected in London tonight, since the term had concluded and the additional week her parents had granted her in Oxford was over.

She nibbled on her pastry with little enthusiasm. “I should like to join both the gallery tour and Mr. Blackstone’s charity, because I shall be dreadfully bored a fortnight from now. I don’t care for summer in London and I already miss you.”

Catriona’s brows rose with surprise. “You’re staying in London?” Catriona would be on her way to a windswept glen in Applecross soon, fleeing London’s sooty summer heat like a regular person.

“My father requires fast access to Frankfurt and Paris because of the Spain crisis,” Hattie explained. “Mama is staying to give Sir Bradleigh and Mina some more time to court in public.”

Repetitive weeks in town stretched before her, muggy and treacherous like a narrow path across a swampland under her mother’s scrutinizing eye. Meanwhile, Mina would enjoy outings with her knight. She couldn’t even make herself useful by helping Lucie with suffrage work, since her parents had no knowledge of her political activism. She’d have to occupy herself in other ways. Drawing sketches of hands and feet. Envisioning provocative ballgowns she’d never be allowed to wear. Accompanying Mother to her respectable charitable activities, which consisted mainly of drinking tea.

“Let’s hope Sir Bradleigh’s proposal is imminent,” she said. “It would at least focus all my mother’s attentions on planning a wedding.”

A shudder ran down Catriona’s back. “Aren’t you worried she will then turn her marriage designs on you? You’re older than Mina, after all.”

“I’m not worried,” said Hattie. “In fact, it’s time someone offered for me, because Mina will shamelessly lord her elevated position over me at every opportunity.” This had been troubling her more than she cared to admit.

“Are you certain this is what you want?” Catriona looked skeptical.

“It’s hardly a secret that I look forward to finding my knight in shining armor.”

“No, but I hadn’t realized you were in a hurry,” Catriona said, “and you had two risky adventures recently, which, if exposed, would have made the marriage mart look quite grim for you.”

Laid out like this, her behavior was indeed contradictory. She shifted on the upholstery, discomfited. “I intended no self-sabotage, not knowingly,” she said. “I even decided on a suitable candidate last week.”

“That’s … news?”

“It’s Lord Skeffington.”

Catriona’s brows arched high. “Lord Clotworthy Skeffington?”

“Yes. He’s titled, young, mild-mannered, handsome, and he’s an artist,” she enumerated. “He would understand my need to paint.”

Catriona was shaking her head, slowly, as if dazed. “He would own the rights to your work. He could forbid you to paint. His name is Clotworthy.”

“Annabelle is married,” Hattie said. “She still studies at Oxford.”

“Annabelle agreed to the match after the duke had publicly declared his support for women’s suffrage,” Catriona pointed out. “Do you know Skeffington’s politics?”

“He’s a peer,” Hattie said, avoiding her eyes, “so he’s a Tory.”

Catriona was quiet, in the way her whole body went quiet when she had opinions. Annoyingly, it gave her point more gravity than had she been lecturing out loud. There was no need for words in any case—Hattie could recite their suffrage chapter’s litany on the matter of marriage in her sleep: marrying was risky business. Coverture, an English common-law doctrine, demanded that a wife was subsumed in her husband’s legal persona. On paper, she ceased to exist as a person. Save for a few narrowly defined exceptions, she lost her right to own property, too. As a result, the right to vote, which was tied to property and rent qualifications, would elude a married woman unless the toothless Married Women’s Property Act was properly amended. Amend the Married Women’s Property Act had long been their battle cry, and she was currently contemplating treason.

She finished her éclair and washed it down with tepid tea. Sometimes, there were disadvantages to counting only suffragists and hermity scholars among her closest friends. Sometimes, she missed having a confidante who unreservedly shared her excitement for fabrics and fashion and art and who enjoyed chattering about attractive eligible bachelors. She used to have such friends, but they lived in London and Europe and were married now, and they found her a bit odd.

She glanced at her brooding friend, who sat wrapped in a tartan shawl despite summery temperatures. “Did I ever tell you that one of my first conscious memories is watching a cousin say her wedding vows in St. Paul’s?”

Catriona shook her head. “You didn’t.”

“Now I have forgotten which cousin, but I still remember the gown.” She closed her eyes. “A diamond-sprinkled ethereal cloud of lace and white taffeta silk,” she said. “It was otherworldly: the gown, the choral singing, the sky-high rib vaults of the old cathedral. And there was the victorious elation radiating from my mother and my aunts because the bride ‘had made a grand match.’ I was perhaps six years old, but I recall reveling in the women’s levity. It was as though their muscles had been tensed for years, and now they were finally at ease. This was the true beginning of my cousin’s life, and the time before was merely diligent, hopeful preparation. Oh, don’t look so alarmed—I was a girl, a young child. I know better now; I attend the same suffrage meetings as you, don’t I? I read the same letters from maltreated, unhappy wives; I understand the curse of coverture.”

Catriona raised a soothing hand. “All right.”

“It just occurs to me that my notions about marriage have been nurtured over a dozen years, and undoing such beliefs with factual evidence is impressively ineffective.”

Worse, the things one had learned early often felt instinctual, as unquestionable as the act of breathing, and the familiarity of them mattered rather than whether they were good or harmful.

“Most of the leaders of our movement are married,” she tried. “And I like the idea of being a wife, and of doing wifely things, such as embroidering his socks and braces. I wish to spend my life with a best friend. I can’t explain my feelings; I can only ask you to not think me feebleminded.”

Catriona looked taken aback. “I would never think you feeble-minded. But a husband could stop my research—the expectations are that I serve him how he sees fit.”

“Expectations are also that he protect you with his life,” Hattie said with a frivolous little wave. “At least there’s no grand expectation that you die for him if required.”

“Death is but an instant,” Catriona said softly. “You, however, would be asked to live your one life for him.”

“Well, drat,” Hattie said. “And here I thought a little silliness would lighten the mood.”

“Oh. Of course.” Catriona’s cheeks flushed—sometimes sarcasm eluded her. It was probably why her own words rarely had a double meaning. This is where we differ greatly, Hattie thought. I blurt out words and half the time I still don’t mean them. Her medium for truth was supposed to be paint. Her words, they came from a place desiring to please or appease, to appear normal or silly, which were usually considered the same in a girl. It was a malaise afflicting most women in Britain, this compulsion to say one thing while thinking another, to agree to things one disliked, to laugh about jokes that were dull—most women, but not Catriona. When Catriona wished to conceal her thoughts, she was silent. Quite sensible, actually, but when all suffered the same ill, the healthy ones appeared abnormal.

Hattie slumped back into the pillows. “Never mind, my dear. I cannot fault your reasoning. But what life have I now? Look at me. Under my parents’ roof, I can’t even choose my gown or the style of my hair in the morning, nor how much I eat at dinner or whose company I keep. Why do you think I so often try to dress vicariously through you with fashion advice? As a wife, I would at least reign over my own household.”

Catriona nodded. “But do you wish for independence from your parents, or for marriage?”

“Is there a difference, for a woman in my position?” she snipped. “I’m not in possession of a trust fund like Lucie. I don’t have a father like yours, who is content to remain a bachelor and to employ you as his assistant. I do know that I’m not suited for living as a spinster.”

“I shouldn’t have brought my own worries to this conversation,” Catriona murmured, already shrinking back into her shawl quite as though she had only now become aware how far she had ventured from her shell.

A pang of remorse went through Hattie like an electric jolt. “I adore our conversations,” she said quickly. “And I will miss them badly. It’s why I’m irritable today. What are you worrying about, will you tell me?”

Catriona smoothed her shawl with ink-stained fingers. “It’s nothing.”

“I’m chatty,” Hattie said, “but I can keep secrets.”

“I know,” Catriona replied, smiling now. “Why don’t you tell me the first thing you should do if you ruled your own household?”

Clearly, Catriona wished to keep her own counsel, so she said, “First I’d give my entire wardrobe to charity. Then I shall live my dream: I shall travel across France with only my watercolors and my dearest friends—you must come. Paris has the best bars and the most scandalous literary salons, and in the South, you can look across a sapphire-blue sea.”

“Have you ever been to a bar?” Catriona asked curiously.

“No. But I hear the best ones are in Paris, and all of them are frequented by renowned artists.”

“I should join you,” Catriona agreed, “but wouldn’t you want to travel alone?”

“Alone?” Hattie made a face. “What would I do on the Montmartre or in Marseille by myself? I would feel lonely and then I would get myself into trouble when accepting unsuitable company. Also, I loathe being in charge of the logistics. Loathe it.”

“Well, we are taking Lucie along,” Catriona said. “She excels at logistics.”

Their sisterly conversation ended when Aunty emerged from her chambers, well rested after a nap and adamant that it was time to oversee the packing for London.

Hattie put her cheek next to Catriona’s during the good-bye. “Would there be any harm in joining the gallery tour, you think?” she whispered.

“Not if you stay by your mother’s side,” Catriona whispered back.

“Why am I not surprised?” her mother muttered when they spotted Mrs. Hewitt-Cook at the center of the small crowd that had gathered in Mr. Blackstone’s entrance hall. “However, I had not expected to see Oaksey here.”

Lord Oaksey was the only aristocrat in attendance, but the group was comprised of several members of the middle upper class: wives and sons of wealthy industrialists. Glaringly absent, however, were other single young women of her station.

“Oaksey owns one of the largest private collections of Renaissance paintings in England,” Hattie said softly. “He must have been very curious.” Curious enough to risk the potential etiquette breach of acknowledging Mr. Blackstone. Her own nerves were dancing and her mouth was dry, back here at the scene of her latest transgression.

“Mr. Greenfield and his business politics,” her mother said in a low, disapproving voice. “Sometimes I wonder whether age is already addling his brain.”

Silently, Hattie agreed. It seemed Julien Greenfield, too, had tired of his current position and was hungry for more, but when a man had already reached the pinnacle of essentially everything, his idea of more veered toward the eccentric, such as racing to monopolize a beastly investor as a point of principle.

While they exchanged greetings with the other attendees, Mr. Richard Matthews fluttered toward them, and Hattie’s stomach dropped. But Mr. Blackstone’s assistant, dressed in a highly fashionable burgundy jacket, gave no indication of recognizing her during his introductions; his eyes were darting over her impersonally, then he announced that the group should please follow him to the refreshments in the reception room.

Hattie’s pace slowed when relief gave way to a treacherous disappointment. There was a distinct possibility that Mr. Blackstone wouldn’t show. She had been well prepared to face him for once, in her favorite dress of pale lilac damask with three rows of white tassels across the skirt. Are you tempted by the exhibition or by another scandalous encounter? It seemed it was the latter. The truth was, despite hot mortification, she had enjoyed debating Mr. Blackstone by the buffet a week ago. She had spouted words unthinking, like a fountain, under his steady gaze, as she did when she was nervous, but the colors of the lunchroom had burned brighter, the scent of the food had been spicier. Her whole being had felt … keen. Exhilarated. Alive. The sensation after escaping Mr. Graves magnified tenfold. She wanted to feel it again.

Ahead of her in the corridor, the group slowed when passing an open door. Her mother was right up at the front, having unwittingly abandoned her while engaging Lord Oaksey in conversation. “Look, a Degas,” came Lord Oaksey’s voice. “Freshly imported from Montmartre, I reckon.”

Impulsively, Hattie took a step back against the wall, into the shadow of a statue. When the group had vanished around the corner at the end of the corridor and their chatter faded, she hurried to the door on light feet. As suspected: it was the side entrance to the gallery. The room stretched deep and wide under a vaulted glass ceiling like an inner courtyard. It was noon, with the sun high in the sky and the vast space filled with bright white light. The odor of beeswax polish lingered in the air.

She advanced on tiptoes. The main entrance was to the right. On the left wall and ahead, paintings hung evenly spaced. Lord Oaksey was correct: there was a Degas, the motif of ballerinas in white dance costumes unmistakable. Her own reflection was creeping along in the square-shaped mirrors set into the right-hand wall; presumably they helped illuminate the room on cloudy days by reflecting the natural light. Mr. Blackstone should have the roof covered—while gas lamps weren’t ideal, the sun would damage the artifacts over time. Then again, it was the perfect light for keeping the white oil colors from yellowing too quickly …

She found the Ophelia at the center of the left-hand row, and her mind went quiet. The young woman was floating beneath the arching branches of a weeping willow, half-shrouded in the billowing fabric of a gown embroidered with stars. For a breath, Hattie was there by the riverbank, inhaling cool, damp air and the earthy smell of decay. Subtle shades of green surrounded her, dotted with the deep blues and reds of wildflowers. Ophelia’s face was bathed in a dreamy glow that placed her right in the liminal space between the living and the dead.

She knew Millais had painted the landscape part at Hogsmill River, near Surrey, rather than take a sketch and then finish the painting in his studio. His model for Ophelia, then Miss Siddal, a paintress in her own right, had caught a terrible cold while lying in an unheated bathtub. Yet none of the factual knowledge diminished the magic emanating from the scene before her. She knew other interpretations, by Alexandre Cabanel, for example, and they were jarring and barely hid the usual moralizing lesson that mad, beautiful women inevitably faced demise. But Millais, he had given Ophelia serenity. Her pale hands lay quietly on the surface of the stream, the palms open toward a sky outside the frame. Her half-lidded gaze was calm, her lips slightly parted. There was a suggestion of bliss in her surrender.

Mr. Blackstone had accused her of finding tragedy enchanting. But perhaps every woman had known a moment when she felt as though she were drowning, and the only comfort was that there could be some beauty, some dignity, in that, too.

How had Millais captured such sentiments? He was a man, and older now, but his brush clearly transcended such limitations, had dipped right into the essential experiences shared by humanity. Oh, to bridge that obscure gap that forever separated an artist’s intentions from such flawless execution …. Her neck tingled, pulling her from entrancement.

Mr. Blackstone. Standing quietly on the threshold of the side entrance.

She wasn’t half as shocked as she should have been. Her heart still began a wild drumroll against her ribs. His face revealed no clear emotion when their eyes met; he must have expected her. She turned her attention back to the Ophelia. Blackstone’s approaching footsteps echoed in the emptiness of the room, and her mouth was dry as dust. By the time he stood by her side, her mind was a blank.

“Is it what you expected it to be?” he asked.

She gave a small shake. “She is better.”

His voice always sounded as though he rarely used it. It would go well with work-hardened hands, which some would find appealing. The awareness that she must not converse with him, alone, in a room where their voices echoed, pressed acutely on her mind.

“Must be interesting,” Blackstone said, “to see something other than just flecks of paint.”

She glanced at him. “Is that truly all you see?”

“That, and what it could be worth twenty years from now.”

He wore black, save the muted gray of his waistcoat. He had again brushed back his hair, perhaps in anticipation of respectable visitors, and again his dark locks curled at his nape. Like the whorls on a mallard’s tail. The touch of vulnerability emboldened her, as did the possibility that he should care enough to try to provoke her.

“I believe that flecks of paint, when arranged by an artist like Millais, are proof that your thesis is wrong,” she said.

Now he faced her, and her breath hitched. “My thesis?” he said.

“Yes,” she managed. “That people are primarily guided by convenience, vanity, or greed.”

He inclined his head. “You remembered.”

She remembered their kiss, too; it was a memory she carried in her body and it surged hotly through her veins and other, nameless places when she looked into his eyes. It couldn’t be attraction. The most severe judgment was reserved for society women who blushed over lower-born men—they were considered deranged and, if caught, were sometimes sent to special clinics.

She cleared her throat. “People travel dozens of miles to look at the Pre-Raphaelites for the sole reason that they are beautiful,” she said. “Where is the vanity and greed when enjoying a painting?”

“Touché, Miss Greenfield.”

A series of tiny sidesteps had melted the space between them. Definitely deranged, because she discreetly tried to smell him rather than flee.

“It’ll be over soon enough,” he said, “realistic painting, that is. Even blurry styles such as this. Impressionism was the beginning of the end.”

She frowned. “How so?”

“Because one can capture realistic images more effectively these days. You won’t have artists trying to replicate what a machine can do better and faster for much longer.”

“What can you mean?”

He cut her look that implied she should know. “Photography.”

She recoiled. “I disagree.”

“Why?”

“No camera can capture emotion in the same manner as a brush.”

He shrugged. “If done right, who knows, eh?”

The interchangeably stolid, lifeless expressions of portrait photographs chased past her mind’s eye. Of course he would think it would do—he was a self-made man who had ascended to his position based not on bravery in battle, or on the organic yields of an estate, but on iron tracks and factory smoke.

“A camera has no soul,” she said, a bit too loudly. “It’s a piece of technology.”

“So is a brush,” he said, “just a much more primitive one.” The supercilious look in his gray eyes said: Parry that! He had angled his body toward hers and stood too close, and her breathing had turned shallow. None of this was amusing to her.

“I gather you place your trust in machines,” she said. “I, however, trust in humans.”

His mouth softened. “I don’t trust in anything, Miss Greenfield,” he murmured. “But if I did, I’d put my faith in the future, not the past.”

Was that what she was doing, then—looking backward? Replicating long-gone glories? Deep down, she had suspected it. She was never the avant-garde. Her thoughts were swimming. The sun was painting reddish streaks into his black hair.

“Rossetti and Millais show that romantic beauty isn’t mutually exclusive with grave truths,” she said hoarsely. “Why does the world insist that substance worthy of acclaim always comes in the shape of machinery or old men?”

“In other words,” Blackstone said, “why is no one taking you seriously?”

His words went through her like a knife through butter and sliced open a sensitive place inside her chest. He either had a much, much more astute eye than expected, or she was hopelessly transparent. She felt gauche and exposed, that a man like him should tell her things about herself or that she had underestimated him. She resented him, him and the thick tension pulsing between them and his intent gaze and how his body heat was seeping through lilac damask into her skin like the glow of a fire. She noticed her breasts were near touching his waistcoat. She noticed his gaze dropping to her lips.

It was going to happen again.

The kiss was already hovering mere inches away. Her heartbeat came in hard, erratic thuds. But Blackstone stood quietly, dark and solid amid the white haze burning up the rest of the world.

She leaned in.

His face was close, then mouth brushed against mouth, light like a breath. She soared and swayed at the delicate contact, and his arm slid around her waist in support. When her lashes lifted, her left hand was flat against the lapel of his jacket. She stared at it, amazed at how small it looked there and that she was touching him.

This was how they stood when the main entrance door to the gallery opened and revealed her mother, frozen into a column. And Lord Oaksey. And Mrs. Hewitt-Cook. The whole group, a wall of wide eyes and hands clasped over mouths. She registered that Mr. Blackstone released her and turned to face them, his movement slow and controlled.

A creative mind had the ability to spiral deep into dark places, and sometimes she had tried to picture the moment when a great catastrophe befell her. What it would be like when she first knew her world had been upended. She had never envisioned that it would be a deathly silence, powerful enough to suffocate a whole gallery.

Two hours after the incident in his house in Chelsea, Lucian called on Julien Greenfield to begin the haggling over the daughter. A butler who greeted him with cold hostility led him directly to the patriarch’s study. Greenfield sat behind his desk, and he had company: his heir stood next to him and regarded Lucian with murder in his eyes.

“I should have you taken out the back and shot,” the banker greeted him. “Give me one reason why not.”

“How about thirty?” said Lucian. “My percentage of shares in Plasencia-Astorga. I understand you would need them to consolidate your railway portfolio in Spain.”

Greenfield leaned back in his chair. His gaze betrayed his rapid weighing of options: a deal to soften the scandal. A substantial peace offering after having had his hand forced. Worthy reasons for which to barter one of several daughters. “If you think I’ll pay a penny for them,” he then said, “you are deluded.”

“I was thinking half price,” Lucian replied.

Greenfield’s teeth ground into the tense silence. “Sit.” He gestured at the chair in front of his desk.

Zachary Greenfield made a sound of angry surprise. Greenfield turned to the young man. “Leave us, son.”

Father and son were staring at each other, locked in a wordless battle. Lucian found he was respecting the son’s righteous but futile outrage more than the father’s rational calculation. When his own stepfather had sold him for a pittance years ago, he would’ve appreciated some support in his corner.

Young Greenfield left, his shoulders stiff with suppressed emotions. Lucian took his seat and brushed an invisible fleck of smut off his sleeve, and Julien Greenfield’s gaze sharpened on him. “Not a penny,” he repeated.

Odd, how this ruddy, hard-nosed man with questionable taste in facial hair had sired a bonnie lass like Harriet. As he countered Greenfield’s propositions, Lucian’s thoughts kept straying to the young woman. She had given him one of the greatest surprises of his life when she had leaned in; it had been barely half an inch, an upward tilt of her head with her full lips slightly parted. But that moment, her face had been the only thing in existence and he had registered nothing but the petal-soft brush of her kiss. There were other upper-class daughters who would serve his plans, but he found he wanted this one. This wasn’t as much a conscious thought as the bewildering feeling that he’d give Greenfield whatever he demanded if it came to it. Though should Harriet ever find out about the details preceding their betrothal, he suspected she wouldn’t like it, not at all.