Sally’s face alive under the helmet. ‘He might have done, but it would have been against his nature.’ Sir George gave Sandman a sly glance. ‘Our Monsieur Corday, Captain, is a sodomite.’ He laughed at Sandman’s expression. ‘They’ll hang you for being one of those, so it don’t make much difference to Charlie whether he’s guilty or innocent of murder, do it? He’s certainly guilty of sodomy so he thoroughly deserves to hang. They all do. Nasty little buggers. I’d hang them all and not by the neck either.’
Sammy, minus his livery coat and wig, brought up a tray on which were some ill-assorted cups, a pot of tea and a bottle of brandy. The boy poured tea for Sir George and Sandman, but only Sir George received a glass of brandy. ‘You’ll get your tea in a minute,’ Sir George told his three models, ‘when I’m ready.’
‘Are you sure?’ Sandman asked him.
‘About them getting their tea? Or about Charlie being a sodomite? Of course I’m bloody sure. You could unpeel Sally and a dozen like her right down to the raw and he wouldn’t bother to look, but he was always trying to get his paws on young Sammy here, wasn’t he, Sammy?’
‘I told him to fake away off,’ Sammy said.
‘Good for you, Samuel!’ Sir George said. He put down his brush and gulped the brandy. ‘And you are wondering, Captain, are you not, why I would allow a filthy sodomite into this temple of art? I shall tell you. Because Charlie was good. Oh, he was good.’ He poured more brandy, drank half of it, then returned to the canvas. ‘He drew beautifully, Captain, drew like the young Raphael. He was a joy to watch. He had the gift, which is more than I can say for this pair of butcher boys.’ He cuffed the second apprentice. ‘No, Charlie was good. He could paint as well as draw, which meant I could trust him with flesh, not just draperies. In another year or two he’d have been off on his own. The picture of the Countess? It’s there if you want to see how good he was.’ He gestured to some unframed canvases that were stacked against a table that was littered with jars, paste, knives, pestles and oil flasks. ‘Find it, Barney,’ Sir George ordered one of his apprentices. ‘It’s all his work, Captain,’ Sir George went on, ‘because it ain’t got to the point where it needs my talent.’
‘He couldn’t have finished it himself?’ Sandman asked. He sipped the tea, which was an excellent blend of gunpowder and green.
Sir George laughed. ‘What did he tell you, Captain? No, let me guess. Charlie told you that I wasn’t up to it, didn’t he? He said I was drunk, so he had to paint her ladyship. Is that what he told you?’
‘Yes,’ Sandman admitted.
Sir George was amused. ‘The lying little bastard. He deserves to hang for that.’
‘So why did you let him paint the Countess?’
‘Think about it,’ Sir George said. ‘Sally, shoulders back, head up, nipples out, that’s my girl. You’re Britannia, you rule the bleeding waves, you’re not some bloody Brighton whore drooping on a boulder.’
‘Why?’ Sandman persisted.
‘Because, Captain,’ Sir George paused to make a stroke with the brush, ‘because we were gammoning the lady. We were painting her in a frock, but once the canvas got back here we were going to make her naked. That’s what the Earl wanted and that’s what Charlie would have done. But when a man asks a painter to depict his wife naked, and a remarkable number do, then you can be certain that the resulting portrait will not be displayed. Does a man hang such a painting in his morning room for the titillation of his friends? He does not. Does he show it in his London house for the edification of society? He does not. He hangs it in his dressing room or in his study where none but himself can see it. And what use is that to me? If I paint a picture, Captain, I want all London gaping at it. I want them queueing up those stairs begging me to paint one just like it for themselves and that means there ain’t no money in society tits. I paint the profitable pictures, Charlie was taking care of the boudoir portraits.’ He stepped back and frowned at the young man posing as a sailor. ‘You’re holding that oar all wrong, Johnny. Maybe I should have you naked. As Neptune.’ He turned and leered at Sandman. ‘Why didn’t I think of that before? You’d make a good Neptune, Captain. Fine figure you’ve got. You could oblige me by stripping naked and standing opposite Sally? We’ll give you a triton shell to hold, erect. I’ve got a triton shell somewhere, I used it for the Apotheosis of the Earl St Vincent.’
‘What do you pay?’ Sandman asked.
‘Five shillings a day.’ Sir George had been surprised by the response.
‘You don’t pay me that!’ Sally protested.
‘Because you’re a bloody woman!’ Sir George snapped, then looked at Sandman. ‘Well?’
‘No,’ Sandman said, then went very still. The apprentice had been turning over the canvases and Sandman now stopped him. ‘Let me see that one,’ he said, pointing to a full-length portrait.
The apprentice pulled it from the stack and propped it on a chair so that the light from a skylight fell on the canvas, which showed a young woman sitting at a table with her head cocked in what was almost but not quite a belligerent fashion. Her right hand was resting on a pile of books while her left held an hourglass. Her red hair was piled high to reveal a long and slender neck that was circled by sapphires. She was wearing a dress of silver and blue with white lace at the neck and wrists. Her eyes stared boldly out of the canvas and added to the suggestion of belligerence, which was softened by the mere suspicion that she was about to smile.
‘Now that,’ Sir George said reverently, ‘is a very clever young lady. And be careful with it, Barney, it’s going for varnishing this afternoon. You like it, Captain?’
‘It’s—’ Sandman paused, wanting a word that would flatter Sir George, ‘it’s wonderful,’ he said lamely.
‘It is indeed,’ Sir George said enthusiastically, stepping away from Nelson’s half-finished apotheosis to admire the young woman whose red hair was brushed away from a forehead that was high and broad, whose nose was straight and long and whose mouth was generous and wide, and who had been painted in a lavish sitting room beneath a wall of ancestral portraits which suggested she came from a family of great antiquity, though in truth her father was the son of an apothecary and her mother a parson’s daughter who was considered to have married beneath herself. ‘Miss Eleanor Forrest,’ Sir George said. ‘Her nose is too long, her chin too sharp, her eyes more widely spaced than convention would allow to be beautiful, her hair is lamentably red and her mouth is too lavish, yet the effect is extraordinary, is it not?’
‘It is,’ Sandman said fervently.
‘Yet of all the young woman’s attributes,’ Sir George had entirely dropped his bantering manner and was speaking with real warmth, ‘it is her intelligence I most admire. I fear she is to be wasted in marriage.’
‘She is?’ Sandman had to struggle to keep his voice from betraying his feelings.
‘The last I heard,’ Sir George returned to Nelson, ‘she was spoken of as the future Lady Eagleton. Indeed I believe the portrait is a gift for him, yet Miss Eleanor is much too clever to be married to a fool like Eagleton.’ Sir George snorted. ‘Wasted.’
‘Eagleton?’ Sandman felt as though a cold hand had gripped his heart. Had that been the import of the message Lord Alexander had forgotten? That Eleanor was engaged to Lord Eagleton?
‘Lord Eagleton, heir to the Earl of Bridport
