A Lady's Dream Come True - Grace Burrowes Page 0,63
cherries in a ceramic bowl on a wooden table.
“You can paint anywhere,” she said, “but if you go to London, I can’t tell you the things I tell no one else. Nobody reassures me that I can stay here. Nobody else has ever said this is my home. I don’t want you to go, and Step-mama and Alexander have been happier since you came here. You should stay.”
She gathered up her effects and would have left Oak sitting at the table, reeling from her broadside, but he had the presence of mind to hand her the sketch of Jeremy Forester.
“Catherine, if Jeremy ever missteps with you, you must promise to tell your step-mother. Not Miss Diggory, not your aunt, not Bracken. Tell your step-mother.”
“I’d rather tell you.”
“I won’t be here.” Though he admitted that he wanted to bide at Merlin Hall. He wanted to stand by, fists at the ready, should Forester overstep with a fourteen-year-old girl. Oak wanted to drop in on the schoolroom and assure himself that Forester was instructing his little charge more than he was intimidating him. Oak wanted very much to be Vera’s lady’s maid for the rest of her days and her lover for the rest of her nights.
Foolishness, all of it. He was at the Hall to restore a few old paintings. Anything else was… Oak didn’t know what it was. An unlooked-for boon. A harmless frolic. Temporary madness.
Catherine gave him an unnervingly adult perusal. “Right. You’ll be in Lon-don, but will you be happy in stinky old London, far from the fresh air you adore and from people who like you? I’m not sure I could be.”
She left, her sketching pencil tucked behind her ear, her sketch pad in hand.
“The work is good,” Richard Longacre said, pulling back draperies to let afternoon sunlight strike Endymion de Beauharnais’s latest creation. “Almost too good to be one of old Shackleton’s portraits.”
De Beauharnais remained silent, very likely seething at the near insult. He excelled at seething, but thank heavens he was even more adept at mimicking other painters’ styles.
“Let’s have a drink to celebrate another success,” Richard said, changing the angle of the portrait’s easel, the better to illuminate the brushwork. “You never disappoint, de Beauharnais. That has become a rare quality among today’s younger talents.”
Richard poured two glasses of excellent brandy and passed one over to his guest. De Beauharnais accepted the drink, probably because he was unable to afford such fine libation at his own quarters.
“To your talent,” Richard said, lifting his glass. And to your ambition.
“And is my talent sufficient to gain me admittance to the Academy, Longacre?”
Richard sipped his drink, needing the moment to marshal his strategy. De Beauharnais was useful only to the extent his objective could be withheld from him, though that objective must appear to dangle ever closer to his grasp.
Richard offered a genial smile. “Your ability is quite the talk of the Exhibition Committee. They are unanimous in their willingness to invite you to contribute to next year’s showing.”
De Beauharnais tossed back half his drink at once, an abomination against the cult of Dionysus, if not against basic manners.
“I exhibited this year, Longacre, and last year and the year before.”
“And you shall exhibit next year. I promised you admittance to the Academy, my friend. I also cautioned you that such a promise cannot be quickly kept. Every flatulent, wheezing pensioner who ever sketched a royal princess’s lapdog thinks he should be the next academician, and his cousin, nephew, or brother-in-law has announced the same conclusion to all of polite society. One must proceed delicately.”
In fact, one usually had to proceed for decades, producing the right art for the right people, in the right style, before Academy membership was a possibility. Young men with no connections, no wealth, and questionable personal habits stood little chance of admission, no matter their talent.
Life was so unfair.
“You are using me.” De Beauharnais offered not an accusation, but a sadly amused conclusion. “You will never allow me to become even an associate, no matter that I paint better than three-quarters of the current members, including you.”
“You are discouraged,” Longacre replied, adding more brandy to de Beauharnais’s glass. “Rheumatism has left me intimately acquainted with discouragement, but with your abilities, you must persevere. Nobody lives forever, particularly not a lot of profligate old painters and sculptors. Your talent is enormous. We simply need to keep you in coin until the right moment comes along, and you can take your proper place in the