Notorious Eliza

“But the vicar heard James singing to the cat, and now he wants James to sing in church. James would like that, but Mrs. Dent fussed and fussed and fussed. She told Mrs. Higgins the Uncharitables would be scandalized, and that she would not play the organ if James and his mama came. But James’s mama told the vicar no, thank you, because they were going to Chichester instead to see the cathedral.”

“A pity, but perhaps we will be spared Mrs. Dent some other Sunday.”

Ordinarily Mrs. Higgins would delight in a jest at Mrs. Dent’s expense. Today, her fidgeting reminded him strongly of Miss Wilbanks’s butler.

Lucy sighed. “No, James’s mama told him they will visit St. Olave’s next, because it is so old. After that they will go home to London.”

Once Patrick had tucked Lucy into bed and kissed her good-night, he returned to the kitchen.

“I’m very sorry, sir, if I’ve done wrong letting Miss Lucy play with Master James,” Mrs. Higgins said. “But I dared not go against the old lord. Would you care for some tea, sir?”

“Yes, thank you, if you will join me.” Perhaps that would reassure her. “Now, who is this boy James, and what has Lord Lansdowne to do with him?”

“If I might make the tea first, sir?” He nodded patiently, and she bustled about the kitchen with a frenzied clinking of teapot, bowls and saucers. Why couldn’t she just come out and say it, whatever it was?

When the tea was in the pot, the bowls and saucers and sugar on the table and Mrs. Higgins perched on the edge of her chair, he tried again. “Tell me all about James, and don’t look so worried. Everything will be fine.”

“Master James is a good boy, sir, as polite and wellbehaved as one could wish.”

“He sounds unexceptionable, so what is the problem?”

She pleated her apron between her hands. “It’s the mother, sir. The old lord hired her to paint, er, up at the Court…” Her voice drifted unhappily.

“Lord Lansdowne hired a woman to cover the improper murals in the ballroom?” Obscene was more like it. No wonder Mrs. Higgins was so perturbed. She had never seen the ballroom, but she’d heard enough from servants at Lansdowne Court to fire a lurid imagination. Even so, he doubted her imaginings came even close to what had actually taken place there in Uncle Lionel’s heyday.

Hence the ultimatum Patrick had issued to his incorrigible uncle: he would marry again and move his family into the Court to keep the old lord company in his last years, on one condition—that he paint over the orgies on the ballroom walls. “I can’t bring a respectable woman here,” he’d said. Already, he had steadfastly refused to bring Lucy for visits unless the ballroom was locked and barred.

Surprisingly Uncle Lionel had agreed. “Go to London. Maybe this Wilbanks chit will be the one. When you return, the ballroom will be as good as new.”

Damn Uncle Lionel. The old roué had never cared for propriety. Patrick, as his uncle’s steward, should have insisted on making arrangements for the ballroom walls himself, but Uncle Lionel, in failing health but imperious as ever, had waved him away to look for a wife.

Devious old devil. “Why didn’t he get some workmen to do it?”

“I’m sure I don’t know, sir. She’s been at it for three weeks now, going on four.”

Four weeks to paint the ballroom walls? “The woman’s staying at Lansdowne Court?”

“Oh, no, sir, she’s in the best bedchamber at the Anchor with her own private parlor, everything paid for by Lord Lansdowne. His lordship sends the gig for her every morning. Mrs. Pear at the Anchor says as she’s a pleasant lady, quiet and keeps to herself, but dearie me, sir, what lady would agree to so much as look upon them walls?”

The answer hit Patrick like a bludgeon.

Only one.

Mrs. Higgins was talking again. “What with the painter lady not wanting her boy seeing that nasty room at the Court, and not happy leaving him with strangers neither—he’s of an age with Miss Lucy—the old lord told me to keep an eye on him. I’m sure I’m very sorry if you’re vexed, sir. Mrs. Dent says you’ll turn me off for harboring the son of an abandoned hussy, but I ask you, Mr. Felham, sir, what else could I do?”

“You did very well, Mrs. Higgins. I am not in the least vexed, and you should know better than to listen to Mrs. Dent’s spite.” It seemed pointless, but Patrick had to be sure. “What is James’s surname?”

“Dauntry, sir. James Dauntry. Miss Lucy will be right sad to see him go. Would you care for a slice of plum cake?”

“You hired Eliza Dauntry?” The next morning, Patrick paced back and forth on the hearth rug in Uncle Lionel’s bedchamber. Lord Lansdowne lay propped by a quantity of pillows, the eyes in his raddled countenance brighter than Patrick had seen them in months.

“Why not? If I’d left it up to you, you’d have whitewashed the walls and let your new wife paper them over in spirals and roses. Are you engaged to the Wilbanks chit?”

“What?” With difficulty, Patrick dragged his mind away from the visions of Eliza Dauntry that had haunted his sleep. “No, I changed my mind. She won’t do.”

“Ah,” his great-uncle said. “Well, the Dauntry’s doing a bang-up job on the walls. I knew she’d see it my way. She knows a beautiful piece of art when she sees one. Discussed the project without so much as a blush. Clever, too. She’s transforming the orgies into something entirely innocent, as long as one doesn’t know what’s underneath. Almost more titillating than the original, if you ask me, and your namby-pamby wife, whoever she may be, need never know.”

Patrick ground his teeth. So much for agreeing to the ultimatum. “That’s impossible, sir, unless Mrs. Dauntry has painted over virtually everything on the blasted walls.”

“Go see for yourself,” Lord Lansdowne said. Patrick must have made a face, for his uncle added, “When did you become such a prude? You sowed plenty of wild oats in your day. Ran with a fast set, as I recall, and as for that wife of yours…Amanda was a woman after my heart. Set the ton by the ears more times than I can remember, and I’ll bet she was lively in bed.” He grimaced. “She’d not be pleased with what you’ve become, lad.”

“She would have settled down sooner or later,” Patrick said. “We all do.”

Uncle Lionel made a rude noise. “The Dauntry hasn’t, I can tell you that. The gleam in that woman’s eyes…Have you ever met her?”

Hell, yes.

“Once or twice,” Patrick said, keeping his voice cool. “We didn’t move in the same circles, but David Dauntry was a boyhood friend.”

“That’s right, I remember now. The Dauntry’s a tantalizing piece, even in the sack she wears to paint. Not beautiful, precisely, but if I were twenty years younger…” He sighed. “I bought one of her paintings, you know. Sandcourt’s mistress. He had to sell everything a year or two ago, so I snapped it up.”

I have one of her paintings, too.

“That’s what made me think of hiring her,” Uncle Lionel said. “She understands lust.”

I know. I have her self-portrait.

Patrick had bought the damned thing—he’d had to threaten the greedy auctioneer—before it got put on the block with everything else David owned. Then, Patrick had thought of it as a protective gesture. Amanda had been alive then, and he’d only allowed himself enough of a glimpse to be sure it was indeed the self-portrait David had mentioned one day when in his cups. Patrick had put it in an attic and all but forgotten it until several months ago, when he’d begun planning for remarriage.

He couldn’t burn it. Uncle Lionel’s opinion notwithstanding, Patrick knew a magnificent painting when he saw one.

Nor could he sell it; David might be long dead, but Mrs. Dauntry was very much alive. Just because she made her living painting other men’s mistresses, it didn’t mean she should be subjected to the lewd gaze of the highest bidder.

So he had kept it. He should take this opportunity to return it to her.

Hell, no. Which meant, he supposed, that he was as bad as the rest, but at least he wouldn’t display it for hordes of dissolute friends to see. The very idea appalled him. He might look at the portrait—he had done so, several times since Amanda’s death—but that was different.

Or was it? He conjured, in his mind’s eye, the Eliza Dauntry he’d met so long ago. If ever he’d been attracted to another man’s wife, it had been she. Back then, he’d dismissed the thought even as it surfaced. He would never betray his own wife or his friend.

To be honest, he shouldn’t intrude upon Eliza’s privacy now. If she wouldn’t want him looking at her portrait, he shouldn’t.

On the other hand, everything in him rebelled at the thought of asking her if she wanted it back.

Uncle Lionel had put him in an impossible position.

“Go have a look,” Lord Lansdowne said. “Use the secret room.”

“Watch her through a peephole? By God, Uncle—”