The world tilted slightly and went out of focus, so much so that one of her hands twisted around the base of the chair on which she sat in an attempt to keep herself anchored.
‘Are you all right, Flora? You suddenly look awfully pale.’ Her sister moved closer as Flora made an attempt to smile.
‘I am tired, I suppose, for London is a busy and frantic place when you have been away from it as long as I have.’ Her heart was racing, the clammy sheen of sweat sliding between her breasts. Could it be him? Could her kidnapper have survived? Was he here now in London, living somewhere only a handful of miles from the Warrenden town house? She made an effort to focus.
‘Mr Alfred Ward did ask me to consider the Heron commission in a letter he sent after we met him on Monday, but I declined.’
‘Well, it seems he has not relayed your answer to the prospective clients.’ Maria removed her hat and shook out her hair. ‘I knew something would go wrong with this scheme of yours, Flora. I knew that we could not trust Mr Ward with one meeting. He is a schemer and he wants more and more of you for I could tell from his demeanour and by all the words he did not say. Goodness, if he keeps this up you will be unmasked summarily and then what?’
‘He is a greedy man, Maria, but also an astute one. I told him if I am pressured too much I am inclined to bouts of severe melancholy. I inferred I was...brittle, I suppose, a highly sensitive artist who is not of this world so to speak. The cough helped, I think, though it has left me with a sore throat and a hoarse voice from having to do it so much.’
Maria looked aghast. ‘We should leave London then and just go home.’
Florentia frowned for suddenly she did not want to desert the city with such haste.
A true clear and pale green.
The words kept repeating over and over.
‘Is Lord Winterton married?’
Her sister’s mouth simply dropped open. ‘No. At least I do not think so. He is an old friend of Roy’s, so I could ask him of it. Why would you possibly be interested?’
Ignoring that query, she asked another of her own. ‘But he will be staying here? In London, I mean.’
‘He’s rumoured to be acquiring a substantial home somewhere to the west. He is also rumoured to be dangerous.’
‘In what ways?’
‘In every possible way, I should imagine. He is neither for the faint hearted nor for the timid. He looks as though he could eat the whole world up should he want to and everyone there at the Allans’ ball was a little afraid of him. It’s his wealth, I suppose, and the fact that he is said to have a scar upon his neck that makes it appear as though his head was almost torn completely off from his shoulders at some point long ago. He wears his neckcloth high to hide it.’
‘I see.’ Florentia stood and turned towards the mirror on one wall of her room.
For she did see. Everything. Too much. All of it.
It was him. She knew it. Knew it from the bottom of her racing heart.
She could ruin him in an instant as surely as he had ruined her. She could give her truth out loud and watch him suffer as she had, this lord of the ton with all his wealth and his connections and his beautifulness.
She felt sick and scared and elated and horrified. Every emotion melded into shock and then shattered again into coldness and fear.
But she could not just go home and leave it. To fester and burn and hurt her. Not again. She could not weather another six years like the last ones. The drawing she’d done in the dust of her grove came into recall. Seventy-two months. So very many lines.
‘Did you speak to him, Maria? To Lord Winterton?’
‘Yes.’
‘And he knew your name? Your unmarried one, I mean?’
‘I suppose so. Yes, I remember Roy introduced me by using it. Why? Why should that matter, Florentia? What is it that you are not telling me?’
But Florentia had ceased to listen altogether, lost as she was in her own desperate worry. Did Lord Winterton remember her? Had he recognised the Hale-Burton name? Had the world already tilted in a way that could not be stopped or altered?
The smallness of the room here in the Warrenden town house on Grosvenor Square suddenly felt like a trap and she longed to be out of it, walking and thinking.
She wanted her grove of trees and the soil of Albany Manor, but she wanted the truth even more.
Six years of hiding. It was enough. She just could not do it any more. Not for a day or a moment or a second. She needed to see Winterton, to look upon his face and understand what it was that lay between them, what it was she needed to do.
She could confront him personally or amongst a selected company and yet even that thought made her blanch. Her protections were no longer in place. Her father was ill and Maria’s husband was an old friend. If she told her sister Winterton was the one who had kidnapped her, Roy would imagine it his duty to issue him a challenge and gain a penance.
Winterton was a soldier and from all she had heard he was not timid. Roy wouldn’t stand a chance against him and if he died Maria would be miserable for all the rest of her life. Her parents would suffer, too, and the news would kill her papa. Had not the doctor said he needed to be kept in a calm and safe state of mind if he was to ever have a hope of recovery? Lately he had seemed happier, more himself, and she did not want to compromise that. Everything for nothing, but how could she meet him without being completely exposed in the company of society?
The higgledy-piggledy of it all whirled in her brain around and around until finally one perfect solution presented itself. She turned to her sister and her voice was certain.
‘I should like to draw him, this Lord Winterton. If he is as beautiful as they all say he would be the ideal subject for a sitting. It also sounds as though he could afford to pay. Well.’
Maria’s mouth dropped wide open.
‘You would draw him while you are dressed as a youth? Winterton is no milksop lord who would be easily duped, Florentia.’
‘If he is so very beautiful, I am sure that he would be flattered by the chance to sit for the first and only portrait I am ever likely to do in person. There is also the added advantage that if I complete this commission Mr Ward may leave me alone for a while. Perhaps this portrait is the answer we have been looking for.’
‘You sound strange, Flora, unlike yourself. You have never drawn anyone before in this way, right in front of you—’
Florentia interrupted her. ‘Then perhaps it is well past time that I did, Maria. A new direction, so to speak, a different turning.’
‘And the Herons?’
‘I shall leave London for good after completing the portrait of Viscount Winterton. After that it will all be finished. I can do other paintings to augment our income, but the requirements of Mr Ward will no longer concern me. I will be free of it and you won’t need to worry about anything at all going wrong.’
When
