The Painted Lady (15 page)

Kasey ached to say, “Be mine,” but he could not. He bent to kiss her hurriedly on the lips, then stepped up into his curricle and took the reins. He gave the horses the office to start, and never looked back. What, and let the stable boys see the moisture in his eyes?

As for Lilyanne, the knitted scarf made a perfect handkerchief when she reached her bedchamber. It might even, she thought, be long enough to hold all of her tears.

* * * *

The moment Kasey walked through the door of his Grosvenor Square town house, the assault began. He had not quite crossed the second row of marble squares in the hallway before his cousin Charles came hurrying out of the office in the back.

“There you are, Caswell, and not a minute too soon. We expected you yesterday, dash it. Your leaving without a clue to your errand, only a message that you could be reached through an inn in Maidstone, had us all in a swivet, let me tell you. I didn’t know what to tell the aunts, who were positive you’d been abducted for ransom, or Lady Phillida’s father, who was certain you were carrying on an affair with that Austrian princess you’d danced with at Lady Leydon’s ball. Then there were those chaps from Bow Street and that peculiar old woman. I swear, I was at my wit’s end, trying to fend them all off.”

“I am sure you did an admirable job as always, Charles,” Kasey said as he idly flipped through the latest mail on a tray in the hall. He was positive there would be a much higher pile waiting in his office, with bills, invitations, personal correspondence, and Parliamentary business arranged in neat stacks by his efficient secretary. “That is why I pay you so well. Give yourself a raise, cuz, and take a rest. Everything can wait until tomorrow.”

“But what of the Runners? I said you would send for them as soon as you returned, yesterday.”

“Have we been robbed? Has the pug bitten one too many delivery boys?”

“No. I don’t think it’s about anything like that. They said—”

“Never tell me Junior’s been up to his pranks? He swore he’d hold the line while I was gone.”

“No, no. Jason has been a model of virtue, but—

“Fine. Then it can wait. It can all wait. I’ll see you at dinner.”

* * * *

Before he could go upstairs to bathe and change after his drive back to London, Kasey had to step into the parlor to greet his aunts. And Ticket.

“Thank goodness you are home, dear. Where have you been? We’ve been so worried about you. In case you’d fallen ill, you know, with none of your loved ones nearby to nurse you.”

“Oh, hush, Maeve, the boy is in perfect health. Anyone can see that. And if Caswell were sick, he would have called for his valet, not a flighty old woman.” Aunt Mirabel turned to her nephew. “Which is not to say you should have gone off like that without a by-your-leave to us or your friends. Everyone was speculating as to your whereabouts in the most common manner.”

“Your initials were even mentioned in the on-dits columns, as if K.C. could be anyone else.”

“They were suggesting you left Town because of a woman.”

“I heard it was a duel over a woman, Mirabel.”

“You see, Caswell, you should not have crept off like a thief in the night, especially when all manner of odd persons were calling at Caswell House.”

“Yes, and you should not have missed our rides in the park. We do so enjoy driving out with you on pleasant afternoons.”

Kasey had been in the habit of tooling his aunts around Hyde Park during the fashionable hour every once in a while so that he did not need to offer a seat to the hordes of young females hinting for a ride. He poured himself a glass of wine.

“Ticket missed his romp in the park, too.”

Kasey poured another glass.

“You know we don’t like to trust any of the servants with him.”

“You don’t like to. I think Jem Groom is an excellent dog walker. You don’t care for Jem because he would not let you take the reins that time.”

Oh, lud, Kasey thought, not his horses.

“Well, you like him because of his broad shoulders. Ticky does not care for the man.”

Ticky did not care for the scent of Wolfie on Kasey’s boots, either. Those boots were his, the pug thought. So he marked them as such.

* * * *

Next His Grace had to endure the tight-lipped disapproval of his valet. Whoever heard of a duke going off without his gentleman’s gentleman? Why, just look at the state of those boots. They were fit for nothing but the dust heap now.

Kasey did not mention Pug’s participation in their pathetic state.

* * * *

Bathed and changed, Kasey was looking forward to a decent meal, finally. His expensive chef was a wizard with wine sauces, a maestro with meats, a paragon of pastry chefs. Jacques was also now working for Lord Stenn, across the square. He did not, it seemed, enjoy cooking for two ladies of a certain age and a pug of uncertain temper. Lord Jason was never home, and Mr. Charles Warberry was taking his meals on trays, in his office. The housekeeper was cooking temporarily, until the duke approved a new chef, or an exorbitant raise for the previous one. Mrs. Finch was an adequate cook, Kasey’s valet reported. If you liked boiled beef and potatoes.

They were not dining at home this evening anyway, Kasey was shortly informed by his brother.

“Lud, I am glad to see you, old man. A chap doesn’t have ten minutes to himself filling your social obligations. You never said I had to do the pretty so much when you left, by George. Did you know they won’t let you into Almack’s in pantaloons? Deuced dull place, what? I don’t know why you told Lady Phillida you’d escort her there, anyway. Marriage mart, don’t you know, and if you were already engaged, there’d be no need. The chit expects you at the Haverhills’ do tonight. Well, she expects me, but now that you’re home, I’m toddling off to the Cocoa Tree. Oh, and you said you’d be back yesterday, so I am a day in arrears on that debt I told you about. Dash it, Kasey, m’honor is at stake. You could have sent the check if you were delayed. Dashed irresponsible, if you ask me.”

* * * *

Lord Granleigh was silently reproachful; his daughter was less so. Lady Phillida was as pretty as a china doll tonight in her pink tulle and garnets, until she opened her rosebud lips.

“I was very disappointed, Caswell. You missed the Barkleys’ breakfast and Countess Lieven’s reception for the ambassadors, which you promised to take me to. A callow youth for escort is not what I am used to, I have to tell you.”

Actually, she did not have to tell him. Kasey knew Phillida was used to creating a stir on the arm of the premier bachelor in Town, not a pockets-to-let second son. His social standing was a big part of his attraction for the girl, that and his fortune. He’d never thought anything else, so was not disappointed.

“And having to make your excuses to the hostesses was beyond embarrassing. Everyone was whispering that I had chased you away. Why, I was mortified, I tell you. Positively mortified. And then those rumors
...
”

“You should know better than to listen to rumors, my dear. Why, gossip has it that I will offer for you by the end of the Season.”

“Yes, but that’s no rumor. Is it, Caswell? Papa thought
...
”

He was already gone.

* * * *

Kasey let himself into the Lonsdale Street house with his key. Ayers was not around, but the fires were burning and lamps were lit. Kasey poured himself a cognac, leaned his weary head against the cushioned chair back, and closed his eyes. Thunderation, London was more of a chicken coop than he’d remembered, all scratching and squawking, pecking and preening. He was more worn out after four hours of it, than after a day of hard labor.

Too tired to paint? he asked himself, aching to transfer some of the images of Lilyanne to canvas. No, he could never do her justice tonight, but he could go look at that other painting, the one that had sent him haring off to Maidstone. Lud, what a fool he’d been. Well, tonight he was not drunk, not swaying on his feet with exhaustion, and not sexually depleted either. He might as well go look at the painting, just to prove to himself that it was just that, a picture, and nothing more. No batch of brush strokes was going to scare him away, or keep him from painting. No tuft of tints, tones, and textures was going to talk.

“So you decided to come back at last, eh, bucko? What happened, you run out of yellow paint? Just what did you think I was supposed to do while you were off hiding, you rattle-pate Rubens, holing up like a fox gone to ground with the dogs on his heels? I tell you, a girl gets bored hanging around with no one to talk to. Those painted strumpets you have stacked in the corners? Nothing but mannequins. They haven’t two thoughts to rub together. And they are not fit company for a lady like me, besides. We never did discuss—

“Enough!” Kasey shouted. “Enough!” He turned the painting to the wall.

He’d been scolded by his scrapping aunts, badgered by his below-hatches brother, berated by his would-be bride, and even chided by Charles, his secretary. Now he was being inveighed against by an illustration, lambasted by a likeness, taken to task by a turpentine trollop. It was more than enough. More than a body could take, way more than a mind could endure. If he was not already insane, Kasey knew, he would be soon.

He tried with every ounce of his inner strength to hold on to the peace he’d found in the country, in the gray eyes of Lilyanne Bannister. He could hear her saying that the world was a chaotic place; it was no wonder we were all confused. Well, he was not confused. Not anymore. He knew exactly what he had to do.

His Grace tore off his starched linen neck cloth and threw it across the room. Then he stripped off his Bath superfine, stopping only to inhale the scent of the sachet he’d tucked in the pocket, to his valet’s dismay at the lump in the fit of the jacket. He ripped the fine lawn shirt over his head and tossed it on the pile of discarded clothing. Then he started to mix paints.

Chapter Sixteen

Kasey painted on the largest stretched canvas he had, so large he had to keep raising and lowering the bar on the easel, to reach the top and bottom. Finally he propped the thing against the wall, and painted leaning over. He painted until his eyesight burned and his fingers cramped around the brush handle and his back felt as if a palette knife were stuck in it.

When Ayers came back, the duke growled a curse to get out, and did not acknowledge the man when he brought a pot of hot coffee and a platter of cold meats and cheese and bread. Kasey gulped down a cup of coffee mid
-
stroke, and went on painting. When the oil lamps ran out, he lighted candles. When the candles guttered out, he lighted others, and others after that.

He was not mad. He knew it and Lilyanne knew it. Caswell held to that thought as he painted. Something was wrong, something was so wrong with the world that the essence of being was blurred around the edges, but he was not insane. He could not be. He refused to be. So he painted, to save his sanity.

This was not the picture he wished to depict. Kasey wanted to paint Lilyanne in the flower field, at her spinning wheel, at the fair, so proud in a silly straw bonnet that no London belle would have bought. No, he did not paint Miss Bannister.

He painted a road, the road in front of his house. Not the street in front of his house on Grosvenor Square, but this road, Lonsdale Street, with its few modest homes, and the gates of the Botanical Gardens in the distance. Without bothering to sketch first, to measure proportions and harmonic balances, he painted a carriage in the road in front of the house, a fine crested coach, with driver and groom and two outriders, all in his brown and gold livery.

His Grace was a painter of portraits, of nudes. Recently he had done flowers and scenery, but his forte was the human figure. Tonight, however, he painted horses, dredging his memory and knowledge of the breed to get every detail correct. He painted a team of chestnuts, his own perfectly matched cattle, pulling at the traces. Their breaths were steaming in the air, on the canvas, with their eagerness to be off. The driver’s arms were straining, almost as Kasey’s were.

Inside the coach—no, leaning out—was a woman, waving her handkerchief in farewell. Not Lilyanne, not the sad face he’d seen at their good-bye, no, this was the woman in the painting, the chestnut-haired painted lady who was destroying his life, and she was leaving. Kasey dressed her to the nines, in satin and fur, with diamonds at her throat and wrists, and a smile upon her face. She was happy to be going, by George. Not as happy as the duke was to see her leave, but she was pleased.

“There,” Kasey told the painting, adding a lace edge to the white handkerchief, “let the driver take you anywhere you wish. You are gone from my house, gone from my life. Gone, do you hear? Gone. Gone. Gone.”

He tossed his brushes into a jug of turpentine, not caring for once that they would curl, and staggered out of the attic and down to his bedchamber.

* * * *

The duke awoke at dawn when the light came in through the window. He’d neglected to pull the hangings, and he’d neglected to remove his breeches, too. Ayers must have taken his shoes off and thrown a blanket over him, for Kasey had no recollection of that either. He did remember the painting, and that he’d left Lilyanne’s token up there with it, in a heap of clothes. Thinking that Ayers might come upon it and discard the little sachet as a useless trifle, Kasey dragged himself out of bed. He relieved himself of the coffee and drew a hand through his disordered hair, looking in the pier glass at his red-rimmed eyes and dark-shadowed cheeks with disgust. He could always go back to sleep for a few hours—after he fetched the knitted pouch.

Ayers hadn’t been up to the attic yet, for the clothes were still in a pile, and the brightly colored pouch was where Kasey had left it. The new painting was not. He’d left it leaning against the wall, but now the large canvas was propped on the easel—and the coach-and-four was facing the wrong direction. The carriage was coming, not going.

“No!” he shouted, falling to his knees. “No.” He folded over onto himself, clutching the scented pouch like an amulet, and Kennard Cartland, the Duke of Caswell, wept.