Twenty-Seven
Ever since Yvette and Edwin had driven away from the town house, she’d struggled to hide her feelings. But it was hard not to keep thinking about the shock on Jeremy’s face when she’d interpreted his painting the way she saw it.
How could he have been so blind to it? Had he been entirely unaware of the stake he kept twisting in his heart? He had to have known it was there.
Well, thanks to her, he couldn’t ignore it now. And she wasn’t sure that pointing it out to him had been a kindness. Sometimes one had to lie to oneself in order to endure pain.
Except that he’d been lying to himself, or hiding from himself, for years and years. Wasn’t it time to put that aside? Or had she been asking too much to expect that? It was fine for her to say he should get past the deaths of his wife and son, but it couldn’t be easy.
“You look upset,” Edwin said.
Lord. She really wasn’t hiding her own pain very well if even Edwin had noticed it.
Although she couldn’t bear the idea of exposing her torn-open heart to Edwin’s critical perusal, she supposed she had to tell him what had happened. “Mr. Keane and I aren’t getting married,” she said, trying to sound nonchalant. “I decided that we wouldn’t suit after all.”
He drew in a heavy breath, his face unreadable. “I see.”
“That’s all you have to say?”
“Yes. Ultimately it’s your choice, isn’t it?”
“It is.”
Except that she could still hear Jeremy’s words in her heart. I don’t want you to go. Please don’t go.
It might be her choice, but she wasn’t sure she’d made the right one. And judging from her brother’s expression, he wondered the same thing. “You think it’s the wrong choice,” she accused him.
“Don’t put words in my mouth,” he said stiffly.
With her confrontation of Jeremy still ringing in her ears, that got her dander up. “You think I’m too particular.”
“Certainly not.”
“Well, then, you think I’m too contentious to find a husband.”
“I think you’re too afraid.”
She froze. “Of what?”
“Of making the wrong choice again. The way you did with Ruston.”
Her heart faltered. Edwin was supposed to be unaware that she’d ever made a choice about the lieutenant. Unless . . .
Oh, Lord, Jeremy had been closeted alone with Edwin for some time yesterday morning, according to the servants. “Jeremy told you about Lieutenant Ruston.”
“No.” He drummed his fingers nervously on his knee. “I knew all along.”
She caught her breath. “About the blackmail? About my garter?”
“All of it. From the beginning.”
The soft words fell into the stillness of the carriage like a stone into a pond, rippling the surface of their relationship in ever-widening waves.
Remembering that Jeremy had suggested something of the sort, she clenched her hands together in her lap. “How?”
He glanced away. “The day it happened, I caught . . . Ruston in town preparing for your elopement.”
She raised an eyebrow. He was lying. She could tell because he was awful at it. Always had been. “I see. And Lieutenant Ruston simply told you all about the blackmail when you encountered him?”
Her brother began to rub the back of his neck. “I . . . um . . . well . . .”
Wait a minute. “Samuel was the one who told you, wasn’t he?” She should have realized Samuel wouldn’t have been able to handle the matter alone. “He told you so you would fix things.”
Edwin’s startled glance sent a chill down her spine. “Right. Exactly. Samuel told me, and I stepped in to fix things.”
Her eyes narrowed. If that were the case, why not tell her about it all those years ago? Why let Samuel get the credit for saving her? For that matter, why make up some nonsense about catching the lieutenant in town?
A pounding began in her temples. “It wasn’t Lieutenant Ruston you encountered, was it? It was Samuel. He was in on the lieutenant’s plan from the beginning.”
Edwin muttered a curse under his breath, and her heart clenched inside her chest. All this time she’d clung to the memory of Samuel as he’d been in his youth—her wild and fun brother—but that brother also didn’t care about anyone but himself. He certainly hadn’t cared about her. Not the way she’d cared about him.
She choked down tears. “Oh, Edwin,” she said sadly. What a fool she’d been to believe Samuel. She should have realized that Edwin had caught Ruston and taken care of the situation. Then hidden it from her. “Why not just tell me?”
His eyes were solemn. “I didn’t want you to know that he would betray you like that. Bad enough that Ruston had broken your heart. I couldn’t stand to let Samuel break it, too.”
Touched to the depths of her soul, she reached across the carriage to clasp his hands. “That is quite possibly the dearest thing you’ve ever said to me. Or done for me.” She fought back her tears, knowing they would only upset him more. “I know it’s long overdue, but thank you. For looking after me, and trying to protect me from being hurt.”
He flushed a deep scarlet. “What are brothers for?”
Clearly not all brothers, but he certainly was. Thinking of Samuel reminded her of where they were headed. “And thank you for stepping in to save little Elias, too. I know you didn’t have to.”
His expression hardened a bit. “You’re damned right I didn’t have to,” he grumbled, but now she knew that his gruff manner was mostly for show.
She should have realized it before. He’d always been a decent sort; she’d just been too busy balancing the chip on her shoulder to notice.
With another squeeze of his hands, she sat back. “Why did you decide to tell me about Samuel’s betrayal today, of all days? Did something happen at Miss Moreton’s?”
“Yes. But that’s not why. Keane has been urging me to do so ever since I told him the truth yesterday.” He fixed her with an earnest gaze. “I don’t want you fearing that Keane is just another Ruston. Because I honestly think he’s not. I believed the rumors at first, but now I don’t think they’re entirely true. He’s a better man than he’s willing to let anyone know.”
“I’m fully aware of that. And that has nothing to do with why I broke with him.”
When he looked expectantly at her, she realized how very much he cared about her. And how little faith she’d put in him heretofore. She’d been as bad with Edwin as Jeremy had been with his family—closing him out, not revealing the doubts of her heart.
Perhaps it was time she told him what she could. If nothing else came of her two-day engagement to Jeremy, at least she could make sure she held on to the one good thing to come out of it: a better relationship with her brother.
With that decision made, she began to explain about Jeremy.
The rest of the day passed in a daze for Yvette. The meeting with Meredith, who’d readily agreed to take Elias. The interminable trip home to Stoke Towers. The lonely dinner with Edwin that reminded her she was supposed to have been celebrating her engagement tonight with Jeremy and his family. All of it felt otherworldly, as if it existed on one plane and she on another.
How would she go on if he couldn’t change? Was it even right of her to ask him to?
Yes. She knew herself too well to believe she could marry a man who still had one foot in his old pain. Who, as his sister had put it, had “been shattered—may always be shattered—by the past.”
But oh, how it hurt. Going to bed was a pointless ritual; it wasn’t as if she could sleep. She still smelled him on her nightdress. Though it wasn’t their lovemaking that she kept dwelling on.
It was the other things—how he’d listened to her tale about the lieutenant without judging, how he’d persisted in wanting to marry her because he’d ruined her . . . how he’d held her and complimented her and confirmed what she’d wanted to believe—that she was a woman worthy of a decent husband. One who genuinely cared about her.
By the time she fell into a fitful sleep, it was nearly dawn. When she awoke, the noonday sun was streaming through her windows.
For a moment, she considered just lying there all day. She couldn’t cry any more; there were no tears left. But she could wallow in her misery, in the pain of having a blade lodged in her heart.
Like the blade in Jeremy’s cursed painting, it held untold torment. She stared sullenly at the ceiling. Perhaps that was why he’d painted the image, as a prediction of how he was plotting to stab her through the heart.
She sighed. A self-pitying bit of nonsense if she’d ever heard one.
What was she doing? Trying to turn herself into Edwin? That would accomplish nothing. Better to keep busy, to do something useful to keep her mind off the pain.
She got up.
Some hours later, she was dutifully putting sewing kits together in the drawing room when her butler entered. “Mr. Keane is here to see you, my lady.”
Just like that, the blade she’d been fighting to ignore sliced deep once again.
Curse him. No doubt he had come to try to convince her that none of it mattered. That they should marry anyway, because she was ruined. She couldn’t go through this again. She would put an end to the agony once and for all.
“Show him in,” she said in her loftiest voice. Rising from her chair, she fought the urge to look in the mirror over the fireplace. She knew what she’d see—a haggard woman in an old gown, whose hair barely looked presentable.
She didn’t even care. Especially once she caught sight of him.
Jeremy looked even worse than she. Although his unruly tumble of blond curls somewhat enhanced his appeal, his bloodshot eyes and drawn face did not. Had he spent the night drinking? He certainly looked it.
She fought a twinge of sympathy until she saw the large box he held in his right hand. Oh no. Not the painting. If he was here to explain away what he’d depicted, she would toss him out on his ear, and his dratted canvas, too.
Better yet, she would tromp on it.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Keane,” she said, hoping she sounded calmer than she felt. “What brings you back to the wilds of Hertfordshire?”
“So formal already, sweetheart? I would have thought you’d take at least a week to revert to calling me Mr. Keane.”
The word sweetheart was all it took to crumble her defenses. “Please, Jeremy, don’t toy with me. I can’t bear it.”
He looked stricken. “I understand. Because I couldn’t bear being away from you, not for one night, even knowing it was necessary.”
Her throat felt tight and raw. “Necessary?”
“You asked me to prove that I had gotten past the deaths of my wife and son. So that’s why I’m here. To offer my proofs.”
All she could do was gape at him.
He laid a sheaf of papers on the table. “Here’s my contract with Amanda, selling her my half of the mills. We practically had to beat the lawyers about the head and shoulders to get them to write it up so quickly, but they managed it.”
She stared at the contract. “That only proves you’ve got out from under the mills at last, which is exactly what you wanted anyway.” She lifted a bewildered gaze to him. “Although Amanda said your mother had some say in it and had refused to sign the papers unless you came back to Montague to settle other affairs.”
“Yes.” He moved closer. “Which is why my mother and sister and I are leaving for Philadelphia in a few months.” His gaze burned into hers. “After you and I wed.”
Her blood began to pound in spite of her caution. “Assuming that we do.”
He flinched. “Yes.”
“And you’re really planning to return to America.”
“For a visit, yes. And I’d like you to go with me.” His voice turned husky. “I want to welcome you to my home. To introduce you to the other members of my family. I want you to see that I truly have put the past behind me.”
Hope had begun to replace the blade in her heart, but she was afraid to embrace it entirely. “Is it safe to assume that you’ve mended the rift with your mother?”
A soft smile crossed his features. “Considering that she ordered me to carry you triumphantly back to London, I think it’s safe to assume that I have.” His eyes turned serious once more. “I have much to tell you, my love, but before I do, I have to show you something.”
She was still reeling from the words my love when he set the box on the table and opened it.
As he lifted it, she began, “Jeremy, I don’t want to . . .”
Then she saw the painting, and her mouth dropped open.
He’d repainted whole parts of it. It had clearly been hastily done, but the changes were still quite obvious. He’d turned the figure of his father back into himself, and instead of holding aloft a knife dripping blood, he gripped the post of a tester bed, which was what he’d turned the banker’s counter into.
The background still worked, with its columns and lush curtains, but he’d altered her clothing to make it a nightdress by adding lace around the edges and changing the top half. And he’d not only painted over the wound but had given her a lower neckline to show a generous portion of bosom.
Heavenly day.
And those weren’t the only changes he’d made to her figure. He’d painted over the arm that shielded her features and had made her face more prominent. This time the woman was clearly her. She looked sensual and erotic. Where before she’d been gazing up at her attacker in fear, now she looked up at him adoringly.
Like a woman in love. With a man who also looked to be in love.
She checked the impulse to leap into his arms with all the joy filling her heart. She had to be sure first. “What does it mean?”
“It means I love you. I probably have for some time. But I was so busy trying not to love you that I couldn’t hear the cry of my heart. Because although you were mostly right about Art Sacrificed to Commerce, you were wrong about one thing.”
His intent gaze speared her. “Perhaps it did start out as a work about my past, about my guilt over Hannah’s final hours. Father’s death had dragged me back into my anger, and that anger needed an outlet. So I felt compelled to paint this. Or rather, this as it was.”
He stared down at it. “After I met you, however, things began to change. No matter how I tried, I could never get your face right. I worked on it and worked on it, and somehow it came out wrong every time.”
Her blood chilled. “Because you were trying to paint Hannah.”
“No.” He smiled. “I considered that, but no. It was always you I wished to paint. But I was trying to fit you into an old paradigm where you didn’t belong. And the more I tried to make you fit, to turn you into the victim necessary for my lofty image of what the work was to be, the less it worked.”
He caught her hands in his. “Because you, my Juno, have never been a victim. You’ve always chosen your own path, even when Ruston threatened blackmail. Hannah let my father and me push her into what we wanted; you would never do that. Hell, you wouldn’t even let me marry you after I ruined you.”
As her heart began to soar, his voice thickened with emotion. “That’s why I couldn’t get your face right. Because somewhere in the depths of my artist’s soul, I realized that you would never fit. That if I ever got your face right, the rest of it wouldn’t fit. Nothing would fit anymore. And I wasn’t ready to face that—ready to have a new purpose.”
He drew her into his arms. “But I’m ready now. Ready to look forward and not back. With a new wife. With my only love. So, are you ready, too?”
If nothing else had convinced her, the heartbreaking sincerity in his face would have done so.
“I’ve been ready for a very long time,” she whispered.
Relief flooded his features. Then he was kissing her with the sweetness of a lover newly born, a man who had finally found his purpose. Found his Juno.
After he’d lightened her heart and curled her toes and done any number of things to the rest of her parts, she pulled back to cast the painting a regretful look. “You can never exhibit it, you know. Edwin would shoot you.”
He flashed her one of those smoldering looks she adored. “I don’t intend to exhibit it. It’s mine. And yours. Our private painting, if you will, depicting our passion. And our love.”
“I like the sound of that. Though it definitely needs a new title. The old one won’t suit.”
“It certainly won’t.”
She viewed it carefully, enraptured by it. Lord only knew where they would hang it. Perhaps in their bedchamber?
Then inspiration struck. “I know what the title should be.”
“Oh?”
She grinned at him. “Lessons in the Art of Sinning.”
He burst into laughter. “Sounds perfect.” He slid his arm about her waist to draw her close. “Because I intend for us to have a great many of those.”