Page 10

Rafe reached for his pocketbook. Curse everything about this. He was going to be surrendering precious coin, all so that this stranger could give him a good dressing-down for something she could never understand. His business with Crofton was essential. His slipping about to conduct it, also essential.

Miss St. Quinton placed her own coin in the money-taker’s hand before Rafe could. His face stung, but he surrendered his own lone shilling. It shouldn’t be this way. He ought to be breezily—and unworriedly—paying for her admittance. Like a gentleman. Which he was not one.

They mounted the stairs to the gallery above. He’d chosen the perfect time to come. The skylights captured the last of London’s natural illumination, but an attendant was already milling about the room, lighting candles in anticipation of the evening opening. The crowds had yet to descend and turn the place into a social assembly. It was just Sir Reynolds’s portraits, framed in gilt and hung on every available surface.

“A catalogue for the lady?” On the landing, an attendant offered them a printed guide.

Miss St. Quinton reached for her reticule, but Rafe laid a staying hand over hers. “Do you wish to see the portraits, or learn which lord loaned them to the exhibit?” he asked.

She held his gaze. “See them, I suppose.”

He removed his hand. “Then don’t waste your coin.”

Her maid had stayed below to wait, and Rafe was glad that the northernmost room, where they began, was already occupied by a few couples. The dark palette favored by Reynolds was stark against the mauve-pink paint on the walls, and Rafe could almost rid himself of that foreboding feeling now that he was surrounded by the portraits that had so long prickled his curiosity.

Reynolds had been immensely talented, and never before had so many of his works been gathered in a central space. The exhibit was only to last a few months, and Rafe had been waiting for the moment he could enjoy it for himself.

He approached the railing, getting as close as he could to The Death of Dido. It was a much talked about piece for a reason. Smoke from the funeral pyre clogged the air and Dido lie upon it, the dagger she had inflicted upon herself still bloodied and abandoned beside her. In the distance, a ship sailed clear of the scene under blue, idyllic skies. Aeneas, her lover.

Rafe had seen a depiction of this same scene by Henry Fuseli some years earlier. A talented rendering, no doubt—and really, he was no painter himself, he hadn’t the right to be judging—but Fuseli’s work had been all darkness. It had the same smoke and the same characters, but there was something indelible about Sir Reynolds’s technique.

The anguish that lingered on the face of the dead woman. The perfect distribution of space and light among all the scene’s players and colors. In Reynolds’s work, there was still a larger world of sunlight and escape. Aeneas’ world. It made the grief of Dido’s fate all the more pronounced.

“This one is a bit different from the others.” Miss St. Quinton appeared beside him. Rafe spared her a moment’s glance. Her gaze was fixed on the portrait, her lips downturned at the corners.

“Yes. It’s a scene from The Aenid.”

“It’s rather … well, not vulgar, but …”

It was fantastic. “If it’s made you uncomfortable, it’s done its job.”

She huffed a laugh and met his eye. He wanted, immediately, to look away.

“I will admit it captured my attention more than many of the others,” she said.

“Reynolds excelled at establishing a sense of grandness. He grew popular enough to paint most of the peerage, but anyone he applied to canvas he lent an air of reverence to.”

She was studying Dido again. It didn’t appear she’d even heard him. Damn, why was he going off about this with her in the first place? Making a fool of himself, to be sure. She didn’t seem to care—

“So he creates an illusion, then?” Each time she pulled her eyes from the art and to him, her expression underwent minute changes, as if someone held a magnet over top her outrageous hat. Her eyes softened, her mouth altered from a faint frown to an equally obscure smile.

“I suppose you could say that. Yes.” Rafe placed his hands on the protective black railing, drumming his fingers.

“Who is this lady, just here?” She raised a gloved finger. “She looks quite like the subject, does she not? And so pitiful.”

“That’s Dido’s sister. I believe her name is Anna.” Anna crowded in protectively behind her sister, the width of her outstretched arms dominating nearly half the portrait’s length.

Miss St. Quinton had been right to draw attention to the sister. In Fuseli’s work, she was present, but her back was to the viewer, her expression impossible to guess at. Here …

“You can almost feel her grief, can’t you?” Rafe asked. “It’s extravagant.”

“I don’t care for grandiosity. Or illusions, for that matter.” Her words came at a quick clip, interrupting his reverie. He realized the room had emptied around them. She must have realized it, too, for she scanned the periphery before settling her icy attention on him. The brick rematerialized in his stomach.

“Do you think it difficult, Mr. Balfour, to travel to Greenwich? Discreetly?”

The weight of dread turned molten. How many times had he played his and Crofton’s conversation over again in his mind? Endlessly, for two days and two nights. Even his worst reenactments hadn’t foreseen she would know this much, that she could place him in Greenwich, making nighttime deliveries—for he was certain the latter had been revealed.

She stared at him openly, almost daringly. He realized he must be gawping at her, and straightened to full height. “What I think, Miss St. Quinton, is that your humor might be well-received in drawing rooms, but it isn’t with me.”