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  “Harnessing yourself right up with William, I see.”

  “Certainly. Aim for the top. A man’s reach must exceed his grasp, or what’s a meta for?”

  “Improving,” she said, considering the word judiciously.

  “I must confess it is a borrowing.”

  “Just punishment for your pride, to have to confess it,” she said, peering up at him with a laughing sidewise glance.

  “Prudence, you wretch! How dare you top me! That was my best one!”

  “No, you could do much better if you weren’t so punctilious. All right, I’ll stop!” she squealed, as he began to close his fingers around her throat in a playful rendition of murder. “I’m glad you promised to behave!”

  “It is all that saves you,” he said in a menacing voice, but those glowing eyes looking into hers promised a fate from which she had not the least desire to be saved.

  She reached up to pull his hands away, and he grabbed at them hastily. “It’s been so good to talk to you again, Prue. That is what I miss most of all, your sweet siren call in my ear--you’re a damned fool. And so am I, about you. May I call when I get back to London?”

  “If the Houses of Parliament and the actresses can spare you for an hour, I should be delighted to receive you."

  “Why don’t you come with me to Longbourne?” he asked impulsively. “You’ve never been there.”

  “Allan! You know I can’t go there with you alone.”

  “We’ll bring Fanny Burney along to play propriety. She’d love to come, and I must confess I grow to like her better as I get to know her.”

  “I’m not ready for another trip. I am promised to Lady Malvern 'til the end of the week. And they expect me at home."

  “Me hopes the lady doth protest too much? Say you would like to come at least.”

  “I would adore to, but I must get home and rescue Clarence from the lightskirts.”

  “I shall be in Grosvenor Square very soon, to rescue Prudence from her cold study.”

  “There is no such a thing as cold, Allan,” she informed him blandly.

  He arose reluctantly, pulling her to her feet, throwing his wrinkled jacket over his shoulder, and with an empty wine bottle in one hand, he pointed to the glasses. She took them both in one hand, and with their free hands tightly clasped, they strolled slowly back to the house, reconciled and happier than either of them had been for weeks.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The remainder of the visit passed quickly and pleasantly for Prudence, unhampered by any embarrassing questions from the other guests. Allan had left immediately without any more specific wording of a reconciliation than that he would call, but she knew in her own heart she had got him back. Maybe she was a fool to have him with his unstable streak, but when she learned the truth about the past, she could not find it in her to turn him off. He had risked his life for her. Was there a woman anywhere in the world who would not be influenced by that? He was generous too to have even spoken to her, thinking what he did. It was hard to put herself in a man’s place, but she doubted she would have been so forgiving. If she had risked her life for him and he had never so much as nodded in recognition of the fact, she didn’t think she would have shown him a jot of affection. That, coming on top of her novel--he must well and truly love her to want her still.

  As she jogged back to London in Mr. Moore’s coach, she could hardly tear her thoughts from him long enough to consider her uncle. She disliked what he was doing, disliked that Allan had a part in it, and considered means of putting an end to the studio. As it turned out, he had done it himself during the latter part of her visit to Finefields. He had put a padlock on the door and went no more to Bond Street. The cessation of his visits there was as mysterious as their commencement. He said nothing, but the golden locket was missing from his neck. His hair was cropped, and he wore a decent cravat. For the rest of it, he might as well have been in mourning. His face was miserable, his temperament not the sharp, faultfinding one Prue expected, but gentle. Uncle had never been gentle.

  Those people visiting his studio have insulted him, she thought. He has caught them out laughing at him, and is ashamed of himself. An indirect question showed her it was no such a thing. “The lads will miss going there,” he said sadly. “They liked very well to watch an artist at work. Neither Romney nor Lawrence ever had such hordes at their elbows.”

  Prudence thought it unlikely in the extreme these artists would have allowed such hordes in, but this was not what she said. “Why are you robbing them of their fun?” she asked in a jesting way.

  “Fun? There is no longer any fun in it,” he replied with a deep sigh.

  “Why is that, Uncle?”

  “I lost my model. My favorite model.”

  "There are any number of models would be happy to pose for you. Hire another.”

  “No, Prudence, when you have painted the best, your hand refuses to touch the next best. I have put aside my brushes. This hand will never hold a brush again."

  “Who was the model?”

  “No one you would know,” he said, and walked away to sit in a chair by the window, gazing out onto the empty street.

  It occurred to her she might discover the secret by going to the studio and studying the canvases. A positive identification might be difficult, but whatever he had put down would give an idea at least. “Have you sublet the studio?” she asked.

  “No, it sits idle like myself.”

  “You should bring your things home, Uncle. Your pictures and canvases and so on."

  “I haven’t the heart for it, Prue,” he said.

  “Shall I do it for you?”

  “That would be very nice of you. Take the carriage. I never use it these days. I don’t like the high perch carriage so well as my old coach.”

  She was saddened to see Clarence so despondent. His painting and his high perch phaeton had been his two main joys in life. What would become of him if even these ceased to cheer him?

  She went to the studio, full of curiosity, with the carriage, a footman and the key. Several finished pictures sat around the edge of the floor, for Clarence was never one to linger over a painting. There was one on the easel unfinished. It was better than the others. Not good, nor even passably acceptable, but recognizable. It was Cybele. She realized as she regarded it that there was something of Cybele in all Uncle’s paintings of women. He eliminated all faults, strove for the ideal of beauty, and as he had found it in Cybele, she looked more like herself than any of his other models had. He had worked harder on it, too. There was shading in such spots as the backs of the cheeks and the temples where shading had never been shown before in his work. Yes, he had lavished his meager skill on this one until it was quite clearly recognizable as Cybele, done in the old style of Leonardo.

  The girl’s name, her very existence was a thorn in Prudence’s side. To see her face smiling at her from the canvas filled her with the desire to take a knife and cut it to pieces. She wore a white gown and was dripping in diamonds, a slight modification to Mona Lisa, of course, that would not strike Clarence as inappropriate. Great drops hung at her ears and rested on her fingers, with a slightly smaller necklace around her neck. She stared at that necklace. It wasn’t possible it was the set of diamonds belonging to Clarence’s late wife. No, that was smaller. Still, the setting was the same. It would be unconsciously enlarged in Uncle’s painting to give it more significance. It was impossible he had given the diamonds to Cybele! This hussy had not, surely, forged her way into Clarence’s life, as she had her own.

  It wasn’t long before Dammler’s face darted into her head. He had got a model for Clarence. Not only the girl with the feather, but Cybele. He still saw her! She filled the footman’s arms with Clarence’s belongings, carrying the unfinished portrait herself. Several trips were necessary back up the stairs, but at last they had the carriage loaded and were going home.

  She went to her uncle with the picture and set it on the table before him. “Is this the
model who has ceased to sit for you?” she asked.

  “That is she. Cybele.” Clarence stared at the picture, a faraway look in his eyes.

  “How did you meet her?” she asked, trying to contain the anger that fought to come flaring out. But it wasn’t poor brokenhearted Clarence she was angry with, of course. He was pitiful.

  “Dammler got her for me. I asked him to get me some pretty girls from his play, and he brought her along.”

  “I see. And why did she refuse to sit until the picture was finished?”

  “She became bored with it, I think. This isn’t the only portrait I did of her, Prue. There is another, better, the Birth of Venus. You will like to see it. This one I just got started, but with Dammler gone away, you know, there was nothing to amuse her in the studio, and she left me.”

  “He attended the sittings, all the sittings?”

  “She only came back the once after he left. I daresay he told her not to come. He is a little jealous of me, I think. It piqued him that my atelier was such a success. A dozen times he has given a bystander a setdown when he was praising me, and he suggested more than once I oughtn’t to let such a crowd in.”

  Prudence was a little mollified to hear this. He had been trying to hint Clarence to common sense, then, but as her uncle talked on, a new fact emerged. “I daresay he thought when he told me to set up a studio that I would be a flop at it, but it was a great success.”

  “He told you to do it!”

  “It was all his idea. He said I couldn’t be bringing the actresses home to pose, and that is quite right. Couldn’t do it.”

  “He told you to hire a studio, then brought Cybele to you to pose?” she confirmed, not wanting to make any mistakes this time.

  “He didn’t want me to do her, to tell the truth. He was as jealous as a sultan from the start, but she heard about me from the other girls, and in the end he let her have her way. He never can refuse her anything. He said so. Every time she wanted an ice or a sweet while she was posing, he would dash out to get it for her.”

  Even this she had to believe. Oh yes, when he was gone and unable to do the fetching and carrying, Uncle must do it himself. Just one little doubt lingered. She had thought Cybele must have a new patron by now. “Whose protection is Cybele living under?” she asked, fully expecting to have her ears singed for the question.

  “She has been staying with old Exxon, but becomes weary of him. Dammler said he would take it amiss that I painted her, but Exxon went out of town, and he brought her along to me then. She wanted to come.”

  “He brought her, knowing it would alienate her patron. I begin to wonder if that isn’t why he did it.”

  “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised. That, and her begging him. He never can refuse her anything.”

  “Uncle,” she said with a fierce eye, “the necklace Cybele wears in this painting, is it yours?”

  “Yes, I talked her into it. She wanted to wear the great one Dammler gave her--earlier on, you know, before he was engaged to you--but it was so gaudy I talked her out of it. She wears it in the Birth of Venus.”

  This excellent folly gave her no merriment. She was too full of jealousy and fury. “Did you get it back?”

  “Not yet. She wore it home, but I’ll have Dammler get it for me. He will be seeing her.”

  “I have no doubt of that!”

  “Aye, I’ll take a run over to Berkeley Square when he gets back to town. I want to see where he plans to hang the ‘Birth of Venus.’”

  Prudence hadn’t thought it was possible to find one small corner of her heart to hold any more anger; it was full of spleen, but this new outrage must take precedence. “You don’t mean to tell me the picture was painted for him!”

  “I had planned to give it to Cybele, but Dammler was so eager to have it, I sent it around to Berkeley Square.”

  “He asked you for it?”

  “He begged for the thing. ‘Name your own price,’ he said. ‘It would mean a great deal to me.’ And a lot more in the same vein. I thought then she would pose for me again and let him have it, but once he went away, she only came back the once.”

  “I see. It is pretty clear what the attraction was at the studio--for both of them.” She arose and strode from the room.

  How had she been fool enough to trust him? How had she let herself again be talked into thinking he was possible of reformation? He was completely dissolute. He had urged Clarence into setting up a studio and brought actresses to him, knowing her uncle was a fool. Had brought Cybele, the minute her patron’s back was turned, and sat in homage at her feet while she was painted, did it to annoy Exxon so he would part with her. And then offered any price for the picture. He had always loved Cybele. He couldn’t stay away from her.

  She ran to her uncle’s room to look around for the golden locket. She found it, tucked up in his box of treasures relating to his late wife. There it was, with the platinum curl resting in its cavity. Poor innocent Clarence had been made a fool of, lost his diamond necklace and had his heart broken because Dammler wanted his mistress back. If he had been there that minute she would have spat on him.

  She had three days to let the poison fester before she saw him. She was wary. She had misjudged him once in the matter of the duel. She thought he had stayed away that time from pique, and it was possible she was misjudging him again. The picture, for instance--she couldn’t believe he cherished Clarence’s likeness of Cybele when he could well afford to have a proper likeness taken. But she could well believe he had asked for it to conceal it from herself. Either way, there was no decent explanation to be put on his latest exploit. At the very best it was ill-judged, and at the worst, it was infamous. For three days she watched Clarence mope around the house dismally, saw her mother worry and grow noticeably weaker, all because of Dammler. There was very little charity in her when finally he came to call.

  He had got himself rigged out in his finest jacket, freshly barbered, wore a bright smile and carried a bouquet of flowers. He knew as soon as he saw Prudence that he was in trouble. She had arranged to meet him alone in the saloon.

  “What’s happened?” he asked.

  The very question was incriminating. He knew he had left a powder keg behind him, and had a fair idea it had exploded.

  “Nothing for you to worry about, Lord Dammler, Clarence hasn’t managed to steal your girl friend from you. But then I imagine you know that. You would have called on Cybele before coming to me."

  “You found out about Cybele,” he said, nerves stretching.

  “Yes, I have--again. Found out all about her. But I would be interested to hear your version, before I jump to any hasty decisions."

  “Your tone tells me you have already decided.”

  “I keep an open mind.”

  “Good. Trust me, Prudence, I can explain everything.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Clarence wanted to paint her. He begged me to bring her around, and at last she got after me, too, and I decided to do it.”

  “When Exxon was out of town.”

  “Yes, has Exxon found out?”

  “You’ll have to ask Cybele that.”

  “I don’t plan to see her.”

  “Are you sure you’ll be satisfied with just her picture for company at Berkeley Square?”

  “You may imagine why I wanted to be rid of that thing!”

  “Would letting my uncle give it to the sitter not have got rid of it equally well? She seems very fond of taking things. Clarence labors under the hopes you will be able to retrieve his diamonds for him. We know you can refuse her nothing, and hope there might be some reciprocity in the arrangement!"

  “Oh, Lord, did the gudgeon let her get away with his diamonds? When did this happen?”

  “During your absence. The gudgeon, well-named I must confess, like you, can refuse her nothing.”

  “Don’t worry about the diamonds. I’ll get them back. She’s not a thief, you know. Only simpleminded. And is that the whole of it--Cybe
le got away with the diamonds?”

  “No, Dammler, that is not even the important part in my view. The important thing is that you got Clarence to set up a studio, took actresses to him, took Cybele to him when you knew her patron would dislike it..."

  “Now just a minute!” he said, holding up his hands. "I didn’t get him to set up the studio. He did it himself. And I didn’t sic Cybele on him, either. He begged me to take her.”

  “But why did you do it?”

  “She wanted to go."

  “That’s no reason! You must have seen it was an abominable thing to do, and you only did it so Exxon would turn her off, and you could take up with her again yourself.”

  “Prudence, how can you say so? You know she doesn’t mean a thing to me!”

  “How can I know it? Every time I turn around you’re running after her. You took her there, and danced attendance on her the whole time she was there, too.”

  “I only did it to hold her still so Clarence could get the damned picture done. She hops around like a monkey.”

  “More like a minx! From man to man, from Dammler to Exxon to Clarence to Dammler--always back to you!”

  “All right! She likes me. I was kind to her when she was under my protection. When Danfers mistreated her she turned to me, and I gave her a bed for one night. Is that a sin? To be kind?”

  “Was it kindness to help her act in a way that would lose her her latest patron?”

  “She was already fed up with Exxon.”

  “Ready for you again.”

  “What happened was that Clarence wanted to paint her, and she wanted to be painted by him. I took her to the studio and stayed by while he worked, so nothing would develop between them.”

  “Your attention must have been all on the model. You didn’t stop Clarence from imagining himself in love with her, and giving her the diamonds.”

  “I didn’t know anything about the diamonds. That must have happened after I left. He had finished her portrait, and I thought that was the end of it. I’ll get back the diamonds. That’s all there is to it.”