"Do you really dislike my hair, Mama?" Theo had turned to her mother, and there was genuine anxiety in the question.
"No, I believe it suits you," Elinor said slowly. "We'll get used to it. In a day or two I'm sure we'll forget what it used to be like."
Sylvester doubted that he would. That blue-black river had been the focus of some of his most richly sensual pleasures. But Elinor was right – it did suit Theo.
"Clarissa, please don't move your head," Jonathan said suddenly from his corner, where he stood with his back to the wall, jealously guarding the canvas on the easel.
Clarissa murmured an apology and tried to sit still. "Couldn't I see it, Jonathan?"
"Yes, let us see it," Emily begged. "We're all dying of curiosity, and we've been so good and haven't so much as peeked when you're not here."
"An artist always keeps his canvases private until they're finished," Jonathan said, frowning. "It's customary."
"Oh, break custom, just this once." Theo crossed the room. "We know it must be wonderful. Do let us see?"
The young man flushed and laid down his brush and palette, saying hesitantly, "Well, if you really wish to -"
"We do." Theo smiled encouragingly. "Won't you turn it around?"
With an air of resolution Jonathan turned the easel to face the room. There was a moment of silence.
"Why, that's charming, Mr. Lacey," Elinor said faintly.
Sylvester felt Theo quivering with suppressed laughter and clasped the back of her neck firmly. His own countenance was severely schooled to an appropriate gravity.
Clarissa examined the portrait. "It's… it's very pretty, Jonathan. Does it really look like me?"
"Of course," Theo said stoutly, responding to the cue given by the warm, hard fingers on her neck. "It looks just like you would look if you were a nymph in a Roman pavilion. Jonathan has the curve of your mouth exactly right, and the color of your hair."
"But why would you paint her in those funny pieces of material floating all over the place when she's wearing a perfectly pretty gown?" asked Rosie, who'd returned as vaguely as she'd left. "And if you're painting her in the parlor, why is she sitting by that fountain?"
"It's the artistic vision, Rosie," Clarissa said in vigorous championship of her knight "Artists paint what they see."
"Well, you must have very strange eyes, Mr. Lacey," Rosie observed, taking an apple from a fruit bowl on the table and scrunching into it "Even worse than mine."
"Don't comment on things you don't understand," Emily said, coming to the support of her sister and the now beleaguered-looking artist "It's very beautiful, Jonathan, and I know you'll have a host of commissions when people see it What do you think, Stoneridge?"
"Undoubtedly," the earl agreed smoothly, increasing the pressure of his fingers as Theo quivered again. "It's a most accomplished piece of work, Mr. Lacey. Don't you agree, Edward?"
"Oh, uh, certainly," Edward said hastily, trying very hard not to look at Theo.
"Why, thank you." Jonathan looked gratified at these endorsements from those who surely knew better than an impertinent child.
"Oh, I forgot to say that Dennis says nuncheon is ready. There are cheese tarts," Rosie announced through a mouthful of apple.
"Oh, good," Theo said. "I haven't had cheese tarts in ages."
"I hate to disappoint you," Sylvester said. "But we have some obligations at Curzon Street."
"Oh, yes, for a glorious minute I'd forgotten," Theo said with a groan. "We must go, Mama."
"Of course, dear," Elinor said promptly. "Do you accompany us to the Vanbrughs' rout party tonight. I'm certain Lady Gilbraith and Mary would be most welcome to join us."
Theo looked up at her husband. Sylvester smiled. "It's a longstanding engagement, my love, of course you must go. I'm certain my mother won't wish to accompany you; she doesn't go about in Society much these days, and Mary is clearly in no fit condition to be gallivanting. I'm sure they'll both be glad of a quiet evening."
"Or you could entertain them?" Theo suggested.
"Unfortunately, I'm engaged elsewhere," he responded without the blink of an eye.
Theo grinned. "How surprising." She turned to Edward. "Edward, you could come for me. You wouldn't mind, would you?" She smiled at him, and he had little difficulty reading the imperative message in her eyes. Theo wanted more than his escort. Instinct told him to make some excuse, but the habits of long friendship and the knowledge that someone needed to know what she was up to had him agreeing.
"I'll come for you at nine."
Theo nodded her thanks, and Sylvester ushered her out of the house. Instructing Billy to walk Zeus back to Curzon Street, he handed Theo into her curricle and took the reins himself.
Only then did Theo give in to her laughter. "Of all the absurd fantasies," she declared. "Jonathan's made Clarry look like some simpering dryad on a chocolate box. It's the most ghastly piece of stylized pretension. He'll never make a living out of portrait painting, so we'll have to do something for them."
"Oh, I wouldn't be so sure about that," Sylvester said. "Those romantic backgrounds and classical allusions are becoming very fashionable. It wouldn't surprise me if young Mr. Lacey didn't find himself all the rage in a month or two."
"You're not serious?" Theo stared at him in mock horror. "People will pay for that rubbish?"
"Most certainly. I wonder how he'd choose to depict you," he mused with a wicked gleam in his eye. "Some wood sprite, I'd lay odds. All dark curls and mystery, with a hart or some such pretty woodland creature in the background."
"Over my dead body," Theo exclaimed, revolted. "I was toying with the idea of suggesting you commission a portrait of me, just to start him off, you understand, but not even for Clarry would I let him come within a mile of me with a paintbrush."
"Has he proposed to Clarissa, yet?"
"No, but he's spoken most sensibly to Mama," Theo said in accents remarkably like those of the Honorable Mrs. Lacey. "He explained how he didn't feel able to make a formal offer for Clarry until he'd sold one painting. Then he'd feel his career was really taking off." She pulled a face. "But that's never going to happen, so Clarry will have to do the proposing herself."
"Somehow I don't see Clarissa taking such a thing into her own hands," Sylvester said. "Rosie, perhaps. You, certainly. But Emily and Clarissa…?" He shook his head. "Definitely not."
"Now, that's where you're mistaken," Theo asserted. "Clarry's found her knight, and it'll be snowing in hell before she lets him slip away from her."
Sylvester contemplated this in the light of what he knew of the Belmonts and was forced to conclude that, unlikely though it seemed, Theo was probably right.
They turned onto Curzon Street, and Sylvester was suddenly silent. Theo glanced at his face. His mouth was grave, his eyes cool and serious.
She waited uneasily, but Sylvester didn't say anything until he drew rein outside the house.
"Look up at the house, Theo."
Startled, she looked at the redbrick double-fronted facade of the elegant mansion. It looked no different from always.
"Look up" he emphasized. "There are two balconied windows up there."
Theo raised her eyes and looked at her unorthodox route to her husband's bedside. From the ground it looked utterly terrifying, even more so than when she'd been negotiating it. She cast him a rueful grimace.