The Marquess Who Loved Me - By Sara Ramsey Page 0,26
you, it’s Folkestone House. Ellie may have awful taste in men, but she has an eye for color that rivals anything I’ve ever seen.”
Nick knew Marcus well enough to hear the cheeky insult in his comment, but he let it pass unremarked. As they drove, Nick flicked open a curtain to watch the passing crowds. The pale winter light, too far north and filtered through the smoke from thousands of chimneys, muted the city’s dubious charms.
He had looked forward to returning to London, when he could forget the fact that Ellie waited here. Despite how much he loved the subcontinent, India was a harsh mistress — heat so intense that he boiled alive in his proper British morning suits, followed by months of monsoons with torrential downpours that could drown a man in the street. All the Englishmen had lived in fear of disease, and fevers claimed more men than would ever return to Britain alive.
But for a few months, from October to February, it was just dry enough to stop mouldering and just cool enough to be able to breathe. And no matter how difficult things were, there was color — endless varieties of reds, yellows, oranges, and blues, in every house, in every market, draped in silken sari swathes on every woman.
There wasn’t enough color in Britain. Ellie, though…Ellie was a streak of red in a grim, grey country.
He couldn’t forgive her, but he still wanted her. If she’d influenced the London house as much as she had Folkestone, her touch would be in every room.
And he could look his fill, without her knowing, while trying to remind himself why he had to let her go.
CHAPTER NINE
“You could sell the Canaletto, the Reynolds, and everything by Gainsborough, my lady,” Lucia suggested, examining the catalogue she had unearthed from Ellie’s private salon in Folkestone House. “They would likely bring a tidy sum above what you paid.”
Ellie stood in the very center of Folkestone House’s main drawing room. It had been a dull and uninspired room when she had entered it as a bride, filled with dull and uninspired minor works by failed protégés of the Old Masters. She had turned it into one of the finest private displays of art in London. Every painting was perfectly stretched in gilded frames and hung on the walls with more space between them than was currently en vogue — an effect that made each shine a bit more brightly, without relegating some paintings to the very edges of the ceiling as was common in other drawing rooms.
She turned in a slow circle. “I could sell all of them. But it could take months — especially if no dealer will take my business.”
Merchants were eager to sell to a woman, but not all of them would deal with her. Her anger still burned from her earlier call at her London bank, where she found that the manager would not disburse any funds without Marcus to countersign the order.
But her heart broke at the thought of selling the paintings she had collected so carefully. Some were works so masterful that she had to have them. Others were less showy, but fit perfectly in either color or theme with her decorating scheme for Folkestone House’s many rooms. All, though, had spoken to her — often at times when no one and nothing else had.
“I would rather sell my jewels,” Ellie continued, musing aloud. Lucia didn’t respond. No response was necessary, not after the disastrous interview at Rundell and Bridge. They were entirely solicitous and sympathetic, but they caught the scent of her desperation. They would give her only a fraction of the jewels’ worth. And three thousand pounds was not enough to save her.
It wasn’t losing access to the house that broke Ellie’s heart. She had never loved it. It was that this room, like every other, had been designed with a single purpose — to please Nick, perhaps to win him back. But all the effort, all the soul she had poured into these rooms, was like blood spilled on a distant battleground, in a battle fought before word arrived that a surrender had already occurred. While Ellie had fought, hopelessly, for the day when she might finally atone for her mistake, Nick had plotted to ruin her. And this house, and the money she had spent on it, were the instruments of her defeat.
She straightened her spine. It had been a stupid plan anyway. Nick no longer cared for beauty. He only cared