The Stepsister's Triumph (9 page)

There it was. The truth. He did see. He did know, and he'd laid it bare in his blunt fashion. It was a terrible and wonderful thing to have someone—no, not just someone, this man she looked at and desired—understand this thing she had not been able to express to anyone.

“Yes,” she whispered. “I do want the world to see the real me. Can you show them?”

She thought he'd brush her words away. It was ridiculous. Despite this, she did not retract the question or try to cover it up. But Benedict turned swiftly away from the easel and from her. He strode to the windows, and for a moment she thought he was going to fling them open wide. But he just stood there, arms folded tight against his chest.

“Lord Benedict?”

“No,” he said. He turned, and when he did, his face was grim and closed. “I cannot show them anything about you.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don't want to!” he shouted. “I don't want you, and I don't want anything about you! I want to paint the picture I'm commissioned to paint and let that be an end to it!”

His anger shoved hard against her, but for once in her life, Madelene did not recoil.

“Now you're lying,” she snapped. In the next heartbeat, Madelene pressed her hand across her mouth.

Slowly, Lord Benedict turned. His eyes blazed with a dark fire, and when he spoke again, his voice was low and harsh.

“You're calling me a liar?”

What do I do? What do I say?
Her first instinct was to apologize. But he was being unjust, and somehow, this once, because this was Lord Benedict, her need to challenge that injustice was greater than her need to run from it.

Madelene lowered her hand and instead knotted her fingers into her skirt. “If you just wanted to finish the painting, you wouldn't be this angry,” she said, even though her voice shook. “You wouldn't be trying not to care about . . . me, about what's going on inside me.”

“Have I given you any indication that I care one bit about you?”

“Yes, because you're trying to hide it. I may not know about artists and their ways, but I know all there is to know about hiding oneself.” She lifted her chin, she met the fury in his eyes, and all her trembling ceased. “If you only wanted to complete your commission, you wouldn't look at me like you do.”

“I look at you like an artist looks at his subject. If you're implying anything else, Miss Valmeyer . . .”

“You look at me like you see through me, down into my heart and bones. You look at me like you want to pull me apart and put me back together into somebody different.”

“You are mistaken.”

“No, I'm not.” She had to end this. One way or the other. She couldn't stand lurching back and forth between believing this man might actually share her attraction and being sure he could not. She had to know which thing was true. If all her wicked hope must end in anger, very well. She had borne plenty of anger in her life. “I've been painted before, with my mother, when I was little. I remember how the artist looked at us, at her.”

“You were a child.” He slashed his hand through the air between them. “You wouldn't understand.”

“I understand enough to see that you are looking for something beyond the shape of my face and the color of my hair!”

His face flushed scarlet. He walked forward, slowly, but somehow Madelene found the strength to hold her ground. He towered over her, his eyes black with emotion. With need.

There is was. She saw it now, past all possibility of denial. He did feel it—the sympathy between them, the need she had, the need
he
had. He felt all these things as keenly as she did. She saw the truth in the depths of his dark eyes and the tremor in his hands. She also saw how very badly he wished he did not feel as he did.

“I think we're finished for today,” he said coldly.

“Again,” she murmured. Understanding and anger made her reckless. This ending made her reckless. “Yes. Yes. I should go.” She looked around desperately for her reticule. “I've said too much. I don't know what got me talking like that. I don't . . . I can't . . .”

But even as she stammered out her nonsense, Madelene made the mistake of looking up at Benedict again. His dark eyes had clouded over. The brightness of his need was dimmed by secrets as dense and heavy as storm clouds. Those stood between him and her as surely as all her own fears did.

How do I know?
Madelene asked herself.
How can I possibly know?

It didn't matter. She did know it, just as surely as she knew he regretted his anger, and that he did not truly want to hurt her. It was another contradiction, and it was tearing at him as fiercely as all her own turmoil tore at her.

“I wish I knew how to help you,” she whispered.

“I wish . . .” But Benedict stopped and turned away again, his hands curling into fists. “I wish you would understand, Miss Valmeyer, I do not need help from a girl such as yourself. If you persist in this irrational and romantic behavior toward me, you must go.”

“Yes. You've said we are finished, and I've agreed,” she reminded him, but gently. “But I'd rather hear what you were going to say before you decided it was easier to insult me.”

Benedict turned, looking over his shoulder at her. He was tired, exhausted by the weight of all those secrets she'd glimpsed in him.

Oh, I understand
, Madelene thought toward him.
I do.

He let his mouth curl into a sneer. He was planning to be cruel, in order to drive her away. Madelene braced herself.

“You're not afraid to hear me?” he asked blandly.

“I am afraid,” she admitted. “But then I remembered you won't give me away.”

“Won't I?” he snapped. “I'm an
artist.
My job is to give people away. I put them forward, to light them up for the whole world to see.” He flung his arms wide. “No matter who they are, no matter what it does! What does real life matter? What's important is the
art
! I expose people's flaws and fancies and vanities, and I do it for the
fame
, the
money
 . . .”

So. This was the problem. He doubted himself. She'd asked him to show the world the real Madelene Valmeyer, and he was afraid his skill would fail him. And her.

Madelene's heart skipped a beat.

“No,” she said. “Whatever else you'll do, you won't hurt me like that. You could have already, but you didn't.”

“I don't know what you mean.”

“You do know. At the Windfords' house party, when you were working in the ballroom, you knew I was watching you from the musicians' gallery. You could have told someone. James Beauclaire came in to talk with you on New Year's Eve, and he saw my skirt showing from the edge of the curtain. You could have told him all about me. But you never did. You let me watch you. And when you first painted my likeness, knowing how shy I was, you didn't mock me or embellish me or belittle me. You took my fear, and in its reflection you gave me beauty and courage.”

Benedict turned, shaking. She met his eyes, this time without hesitation, and what she saw in their depths seared her to her core.

“I gave you nothing,” he whispered. “I only showed what was there. I took you and put you on display to gratify my own vanity and need.”

“You saw me,” Madelene corrected him. “No one else had ever seen me in that way. That's why I came here in the first place,” she told him. “And that's why I came back today. That's the entire point of what my friends are doing right now. We are—I am—going to show the world someone different from Madelene the mouse.” She'd been able to hold firm a moment before, but that moment was ended. Like Benedict, Madelene had begun to shake, violently. In another minute she wouldn't be able to stand at all. “I need . . . No. I
want
your help to do that, Benedict. That's the truth, and I know it's the truth, no matter what I might say tomorrow or next week or even five minutes from now.”

Benedict moved toward her. Slowly, gracefully. He was lean and tall and strong. His presence threatened to overwhelm her, and yet Madelene did not move. Slowly, he lifted his trembling hand. He passed his fingertips over her hair, barely stirring her loose curls. He moved his hand down her cheek, not quite touching, just leaving a trail of his warmth against her skin where his fingers passed.

“Help me, Benedict,” she murmured. “You wanted to know what I would say if no one could hear. There it is.” Oh, she was lost. She had fallen, and she could not stop herself. “Please, help me be seen.”

“It cannot be,” he said, but the words were choking him. Was he speaking to her, or to the turmoil inside himself? “I've only just returned, almost from the grave. People are
watching
me. People will watch you, and they will be cruel to you, they will compare you to . . . to others and tear you down with that comparison. I
cannot
be responsible for that.”

There was anguish in his eyes and his face. Madelene's heart went out to him, instantly and without hesitation. All the more because she could tell that in this moment, that anguish he felt was genuinely for her.

“People may be watching you, Benedict, but they don't see you any more than they see me. They see the story they've built up in their heads, and it's that story that's driving you to hide. But you want what I want. You want someone to see the real you.”

Someone was knocking on the door. The door was opening. The moment was broken. Benedict's hand dropped to his side.

“Oh.” Adele said. “Oh, Madelene. I'm sorry, I didn't . . .”

“That's all right,” Madelene said, not taking her eyes from Benedict. “We were finished for today.”

Here he stood again, staring at his closed door, fully and painfully aware that he'd behaved like a complete fool in front of Madelene Valmeyer.

Benedict ran both hands through his hair. He'd resolved he would be his best and most professional self. He couldn't refuse to complete the commission, he reasoned, but he could put a distance between himself and Madelene. The idea of art as truth was overrated. It didn't matter what he'd told Madelene about art showing up flaws and vanities. He'd painted plenty of portraits that were mere flattery. He'd made women younger and men thinner and taller than they really were. He'd made bony horses into thoroughbreds and plain children into cherubs. In fact, for him, flattery in portraiture had been the rule, except perhaps with Gabriella and those cruel and dangerous renderings. Even then, though, he hadn't known his own mind as he created the pictures. He'd thought he was flattering her. She'd certainly taken them that way.

Benedict barked out a harsh laugh. He hadn't known his own mind then, and it seemed he didn't know it now. The moment Madelene came into his studio, all his resolution had flown out the window. No facade he could muster would stand before her lightest glance.

And so he'd shown her his real self, and she had shown him hers. The problem was, her real self was graceful and strong, while his was simply idiotic. He'd positively ranted at her, spouting disjointed nonsense about contradictions and destruction and the danger of being seen through an artist's eyes . . . He must have sounded like a madman.

Except, somehow, against every possible rational expectation, Madelene had understood him. He saw it in her beautiful, complex, deep blue eyes when she looked up at him. She heard something beyond his harsh, confused words. She looked at him and saw something more than the cliché of the mad artist.

She'd seen him—his true self—and that simple thing had shaken him to his soul.

You want what I want
, she'd said. Her hesitation was gone, and the fear in her eyes had cleared away.
You want someone to see the real you.

Someone does. I do.

Benedict ran his hand through his hair. Contradictions again. So many contradictions. The need he felt was the need he feared. The desire to be seen could not compete with the desire to remain hidden. The desperate, terrible, killing wish for love was drowned by the fear of love, because love could destroy the person who counted on it for salvation.

How did he navigate these contradictions? How did he bring Madelene safely through them? Especially when he didn't understand any of them himself.

And then there was another problem—the painting. Selene in her chariot. He'd taken his initial sketches of Madelene and had begun incorporating them into charcoal studies for the larger work, and he'd made a discovery that sent chills down his spine.

The picture was going to be good. No, not merely good, it was going to be great. Benedict could feel it. His hands told him. His artist's eye told him. He was champing at the bit to take up his brushes and breathe life into the crude outlines. He would have to grind new colors, a whole palate of golds and silvers and creams and soft blues. He'd make the canvas glow, like moonlight glowed, like Madelene glowed.

The energy of that artistic desire terrified him as surely as the physical desire he'd felt when he'd touched her today.

What was she doing to him? And
why
? He'd known beauty before. He'd had it at his command. Artists attracted women, all kinds and all classes. He'd had his pick and his fill of them as he traveled across Europe. He'd been a young man then, full of enthusiasm for his art and the excitement of being an Englishman abroad in the teeth of the danger that was Napoleon's reign. He'd decided to take full advantage of every chance he was offered, and he did.

When he'd met and married Gabriella, it was as if he'd laid claim to a thunderstorm. Nothing could be greater or more intense than their love for each other. And their hatred.

But even that had been nothing compared to this—this tiny girl who was so afraid she could barely walk into a ballroom without fainting. At the same time, when she stood in front of him here, she laid waste to the fortress he'd made of his heart with a heated glance and a few short words, and she'd left him standing in its ruins.

He'd barely even touched her.

What in God's name do I do now?

“Nothing,” he said, to himself, to his drawing, to God and the whole of the world that waited and watched for his return, that would wait and watch to see how this girl fared under the attentions of Lord Benedict Pelham, who had killed one woman already.

He raised his trembling hand. He took the latest page of sketches by the edge. He'd tear it apart. Burn them all in the stove. Destroy every bit of work he'd done so far. Make it as if it had never been. Go back to Switzerland. Paint mountains and lakes, or simply throw his brushes
into
the lake and never disturb another living soul, not even his own.

He clenched the edge of the page in his fingers. Madelene's gentle face looked up at him from the white sheet.

No one else had ever seen me in that way
, said her voice in his memory.
That's why I came here in the first place, and that's why I came back today.

I trust you.

She had not said that last part, not directly, but that was what lay under all the other words she did say. Not
I love you
, which too many women had said. Not
I want you
, although that was as clear as the sunlight reflected in her blue eyes. Madelene had expressed that she trusted him, and Benedict understood how difficult, how profound that was for her.

“Why?” he asked himself for the hundredth time. “And why would you give that trust to me?”

No one else had ever seen me in that way.

No one had looked
, he answered his own memory.

You took my fear, and in its reflection you gave me beauty and courage.

“I gave you nothing,” he whispered to the drawing, as he had to the living woman. “But you have offered me everything, and I cannot accept.” He touched the corner of her eye on the paper, as if he thought to wipe away a tear. “It would be too great a risk for us both. Do you understand? I would hurt you. I would break you.”

No. Whatever else you'll do, you won't hurt me like that. You could have already, but you didn't.

He turned away, shaking. It was nonsense. It was his imagination. Worse. It was the fevered wish of a broken heart. It was dangerous. It was madness. It had to be. It could not be anything else.

But what if it could? Benedict lifted his head. What if he accepted the trust she gave him? It would be a terrible thing. It would be a glorious thing.

What if he did?

What if he could? Could he at least try?

You want what I want. You want someone to see the real you.

But that cannot happen. Don't you understand?
Benedict drew his fingers down the page, caressing the drawing as if it had been her cheek.
The world will only stare at us. They'll measure us and judge us by all that we have been.
By all that I have been. The truth of you will be buried.