My Rogue to Ruin, page 17
The whole point of choosing him was that it had to be their choice. Not something he demanded.
Once the molds were full, he carefully pushed them into parallel lines. He turned back toward Marjorie, his hip leaning against the worktable. Before he spoke, he rubbed his face with his hands.
“You’re right,” he said at last. “I apologize for being jealous.”
“You have the right to your feelings. I would be distraught if my siblings came to you with a private problem, rather than to me. But you or me feeling sad or hurt does not mean that others should not have free will over their lives.”
“So tell me.” He kicked out one of the stools and sat down heavily on it. “What has my sister been doing with her free will?”
“Employing the Wynchesters. There’s no charge,” Marjorie added. “We never take money from our clients.”
“I’m not sure you understand the meaning of ‘employ’ and ‘client,’” Adrian muttered under his breath.
“Maybe it’s you who are choosing not to understand,” she answered.
He closed his mouth into a thin line. He’d forgotten she could read lips. Besides, his anger wasn’t with her—or even Iris. Adrian was angry at himself.
“All right,” he said. “Now that my sister has summoned the Wynchester team, what will you and your siblings do about her predicament? If there’s anything that can be done.”
She gazed at him for a long moment, then pulled the other stool right in front of his knees and sat down to face him.
“My sister Elizabeth and my sister-in-law Kuni are giving Lady Iris defense lessons,” Marjorie began.
Adrian’s spine snapped up straight.
“You anticipate violence?” he asked in horror.
“No plan without a contingency,” she hedged. “We don’t expect a skirmish, but Lady Iris might as well be able to defend herself against any attack.”
He blanched. “Defense lessons. Excellent. I shall have the most ‘accomplished’ sister in England.”
“My other siblings are lending their talents as well. We don’t just want to pull Lady Iris out from under Snowley’s shadow. No more reckless gambling. We want to leave her in a position where she need never take risks like that again.”
The full Wynchester crew was treating Iris as one of their own? Adrian was flabbergasted that a family could be like this. Completely, fully, unquestionably on Iris’s side. Rallying behind her not because she was perfect or innocent, but because she was imperfect and in trouble and needed their help. To the Wynchesters, seeing someone floundering meant offering a hand, not withdrawing their support.
Marjorie was fortunate to be part of such an admirable, incredible, dependable team. This was what family meant. He was lucky Iris had found them.
“Well?” Marjorie prompted. “What do you think?”
“I want to do my part.”
Which was what? Continue counterfeiting?
The treasure chamber was full of empty promises and broken dreams. The artifacts of people who turned to a man like Snowley out of utter desperation.
Artifacts.
Antiquities.
Forgeries.
Excitement coursed through his veins. He leaned forward and grabbed Marjorie’s hands. “We’ve got to get into that treasure chamber.”
“I know. That’s been the plan from the beginning.”
He shook his head. “Not just to find your client’s wedding ring. I mean to divest Snowley of every single item in that room.”
She arched her brows. “You don’t think he’ll notice his best pieces turning up missing?”
“No, I don’t think he will.” Adrian smiled like a fox. “Not if we leave spares in their place.”
24
The next morning, Marjorie spent several extra minutes arranging her hair. To be fair, she did not normally spend any time before a looking glass, which was why she often ended up walking about with smudges of paint on her cheeks or her nose. But since she couldn’t impress Adrian with one of the many colorful gowns in her wardrobe, the least she could do was invest a few moments on… uneven ringlets?
With a sigh, she gave up on mastering her sister’s curling tongs and hurried downstairs. Adrian had already seen Marjorie in messy hair and a dull, patched dress every previous day. Why spoil the pattern now?
Within the hour, she was back in Snowley’s den. As soon as the workroom door closed behind her, Marjorie launched herself into Adrian’s arms.
He caught her, kissed her, completed her. Made her heart beat faster and caused time to slow all around them. A rainbow of sugary confetti exploded throughout all of her senses. When she was in his arms, nothing mattered but the current kiss, and the next one, and the next.
She had tried her hardest to avoid thinking about what this meant. To cleave to her identity of determined spinster, of being the woman who could fill any empty spaces in her life by painting an alternate world on canvas.
But how did one paint a kiss? The feel of freshly shaved jaw in the morning, or the pleasing roughness of a hint of stubble in the afternoon? The taste of a man’s tongue? The sensation of his body pressed against yours, and the knowledge that every plane, every muscle, was now as familiar to you as your favorite palette?
How did one paint how it felt to be wanted? To be missed? To be desirable? What brush did she use to capture the scent of Adrian’s skin as he wrapped his arms about her and held her so close it felt as though he’d rather die than let her go?
She was more obsessed with him than she had ever been with oils or acrylics or watercolors. He was a world of color and texture and expression. She didn’t want it to end. But she knew it would.
And after their affair was over, when Adrian walked away… Marjorie would have to, too.
Unless.
Her heart beat faster. Keeping Adrian was impossible, but Wynchesters did impossible things every day. There could be a way. There would be a way.
If she were brave enough to take it.
“I suppose we ought to at least pretend to create a few coins,” she murmured against his mouth.
His lips twisted. “Must we? I’m already indentured for decades. What damage can five minutes do?”
“We’ve been kissing for…” She glanced at the clock. “Half an hour.”
“Half a day wouldn’t be enough.”
Marjorie suspected neither would half a lifetime.
Adrian scooped up a chalk mold and headed over to the crucible.
She joined him at the fire in silence at first. Words were Jacob’s skill, not Marjorie’s. Her talent lay in color and gesture and blending ordinary things in order for something extraordinary to emerge.
“Where would you be if you weren’t beholden to Snowley?” she asked at last.
“With Iris,” he replied without hesitation. “Begging for a second chance to be the big brother I always meant to be.”
“And after she says of course, you’ve never stopped being her brother?”
“What makes you think she will?”
“What makes you think she won’t?”
He stared at the floor for a long moment. When he spoke, she could not hear his words, so she could only assume he murmured them beneath his breath. “I want it too much.”
“Maybe she does, too,” Marjorie said softly.
Adrian’s gaze flew to hers, tortured. “Do I deserve a second chance?”
“Doesn’t everyone?” She touched his arm. “You will have one, Adrian. I know it. Sisters are special.”
“Is that where you would be if you weren’t in here? With your family?”
“Probably.” Marjorie gazed off out the window. “Normally I would say in my art studio, but… I think I’m going to consciously enjoy more time with my family whilst I have them. How are you planning on enjoying your sister’s company, once you’ve fully reunited?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “My imagination always got stuck on the reuniting part.”
She turned her gaze back to him. “How long will you stay in London?”
He frowned as if the words held no meaning. “How long?”
“This visit. Was it meant to be a week, a month, the entire summer?”
“I don’t know,” he said again, his expression embarrassed. “My rooms in Paris are paid through the end of the year.”
“Ah.” A pit grew in Marjorie’s stomach. “I assumed you’d return there.”
“I don’t know that I will,” Adrian said, surprising her. “Rather, of course I must, if only to collect my things. But I’ve traveled too much these past seven years to think of any one place as home.”
Of course he didn’t. Marjorie swallowed her disappointment. What was worse, knowing where he was, off in Paris, someplace she would never be? Or not knowing where he was, in some corner of the globe or another, also someplace she would never be?
“I had hoped…” Adrian said, then trailed off.
“To take your sister to Paris?”
“She would like that,” he agreed. “As would I. She said she’s looking for adventure, and who better to deliver than her big brother?”
“But you had something else in mind?”
“Someone else in mind.” He touched her cheek. “I had hoped you might like to visit.”
“Me?” she squeaked.
“Have you ever been?”
She shook her head. “I’ve never even left London, save in the company of my siblings. None of us have ventured abroad. This Christmastide, we’ll be visiting Balcovia with my sister-in-law, which is more adventure than any of us ever dreamt of having.”
His eyes narrowed. “None of you have ever dreamt of adventure?”
“Oh, very well. Probably most of us have. For most of my siblings, their regular lives are an adventure. Throwing knives, scaling buildings, infiltrating Parliament, impersonating the Regent, training Highland tigers…”
Adrian blinked at her. “I have so many questions, I don’t even know where to start.”
She laughed. “I’ll tell you stories as we work, if you listen for footsteps. I can’t let on that I’m not from the rookery.”
“Tell me stories about the Wynchesters as if they were a fairy tale,” Adrian suggested. “There once was a family who…”
“That could work,” Marjorie agreed. “There once was a family that came into being over the course of one summer. All of the Before portraits I painted are from that period.”
“And the After portraits?”
“I’ve not made much progress on the Then-and-Now series lately,” she admitted. “I only have Sundays free, which I’m sure to you sounds like—and is—a luxury. But first there’s the private tutoring. Now that it’s only once a week, my sessions with Faircliffe are longer than ever.”
“He’s making progress?”
“So much progress. From there I go to the studio in Charlotte Street, where I give lessons to over a dozen little girls every season. I feared I would lose some when we moved from Saturdays to Sundays, but they’ve all stayed with me.”
“I imagine they worship you.”
“And I, them. They are so talented and clever and fearless. They put paint on the paper to see what will happen, rather than wait for a muse to inspire them. They are their own muses and inspire one another.”
“It sounds lovely,” he said wistfully. “What I longed for when I dreamt of becoming an art instructor. I’m sure it doesn’t pay well.”
“I volunteer,” she admitted.
He laughed. “That is the genteel way. Perhaps my father would have responded differently if I’d framed my ambitions as an extremely time-intensive hobby, rather than a profession I intended to pursue.”
Marjorie set the finished molds on the worktable. “I should like to see some of your works.”
He made a face and slumped onto a stool. “I haven’t any.”
“Did you sell them all?” A terrible thought occurred to her. “You weren’t robbed, were you?”
“No, I mean…” He rubbed his face. “I’m not like you. I cannot create something from nothing. I can look at a thing someone else created and duplicate it down to the slightest detail. But that doesn’t make it my work. It’s just a copy.”
“Oh, Adrian.” Her heart twisted. “Do you want me to tell you what I tell my girls?”
“I don’t know. Do I? Children are made of hardier stuff than adults.”
“We begin every day with a blank canvas. What we put on it is up to each of us.” She touched his arm. “The same is true for you. The fact that you can sculpt things with your hands is what makes you an artist. Just because you didn’t invent ancient Etruscan pottery doesn’t make you any less talented.”
“I would argue that it’s imagination, not skill, that makes an artist. I value creations invented from the air over any of the forgeries I made for Snowley.”
“And yet which one earns money?” She shrugged. “That’s the nature of art. The artist doesn’t determine what a piece is worth. The person who falls in love with it does.”
“So children’s art is meaningless?”
“The opposite. It means everything.” Her heart warmed just thinking of all the ways. She scooted her stool closer to his and pulled a chain from around her neck. “I’ve carried this with me every day for the past two years.”
He nodded. “A pocket watch.”
“This one used to be Bean’s. Baron Vanderbean, that is. My adoptive father.” She ran a loving finger over its surface. “He used it as a locket. There’s a portrait inside.”
“Of you?”
“The two of us. Sort of. If you squint as hard as you can, and use a healthy dollop of the imagination you value so much.” She opened the lid to show him.
He couldn’t stifle his chuckle.
“I know,” she said dryly. “Believe me. I had gifted Bean several passable landscapes, but this was my first attempt at a portrait and it shows. I thought that my career was over before it ever began. That no one should take me seriously. That I had no talent. I was just a foolish, fumbling little girl who ought not to be allowed near a paint set.”
“What did Baron Vanderbean say?”
“He adored the miniature. My protests that it was embarrassingly amateur didn’t make the portrait not art. He admonished me to never, ever devalue myself or my work.”
“That’s beautiful.”
Marjorie nodded. “I didn’t believe it for a second. I told him if he liked terrible portraits so much, he could keep it. I never wanted to look at it again, because all I could see was my own failure.”
“He didn’t accept that?”
“He accepted the miniature, just as he accepted all my gifts. But this time, he forced me to accept a silver crown in exchange. Bean said every time he looked at me, he saw potential. And every time he looked at anything I created, he saw art. His personal chambers were filled with it. There’s even a portrait of him hanging over our mantel.”
“That’s beautiful. The baron left you the pocket watch in his will?”
She nodded. “He’d carried it with him every day for the rest of his life. Whenever he checked the time, there was our portrait. Where I saw failure, he saw potential. And he made me see it in myself, too.”
Marjorie handed him the watch.
He held it up. “The hands have stopped. Is it broken?”
“No.” Her voice cracked. “I stopped winding it the day Bean died, so it would be forever frozen in a moment in time when he was still here, loving me. Accepting me. Encouraging me.”
Adrian’s gaze met hers. “Have you any idea how lucky you are?”
“I do, actually,” she said softly. She would never forget. “What about you?”
He scoffed. “Me?”
“You’re an artist, too,” she prompted. “I imagine you have been, ever since you were a child.”
“Is that what you imagine?” Darkness crossed his face. “Shall I tell you about the time I presented my father with original pottery, and he threw it against the brick fireplace? I never attempted to create something of my own again.”
“I cannot imagine how much it hurt to have his censure rather than his support. No child deserves that.” She placed her hand on his knee. “But Adrian, your father banished you seven years ago. Don’t let his cruelty back then control you for the rest of your life.”
He closed his eyes and let out a ragged breath.
She touched him gently. “Every day after you left, when you traveled the world making forgeries… what happened to those works of art?”
“I sold them,” he said flatly. “To fund drunken nights of debauchery and a wardrobe full of the latest fashions.”
“That’s right,” she said. “You sold them. Because you have talent. Because your work has value. And even if you hadn’t sold them, art is worthy on its own merit. Because you have value.” She held up the pocket watch. “Just because the thing you created isn’t the thing you dreamt of creating, doesn’t mean you won’t get there if you try.”
“Try.” He folded his arms over his chest, hugging himself. “Do you think… Do you think I should take art lessons?”
“I think you should acknowledge that your father threw a piece of pottery into the fire. Not your potential. And not your career.” She pulled the watch chain back over her neck. “Don’t let him break you.”
“All right, you win. A few decades from now when I get out of here, I promise to try my hand at something original again.” His posture turned intimate, his gaze intense. “Make a note on your calendar. I plan to live in London, and I want to be tutored by the best.”
“Decades from now? I’m going to be busy then.”
“Oh.” His cheeks flushed. “I see.”
“And so will you, Adrian. Very busy. I’ll get you out of here sooner than you think, I swear it.”
He cupped her face. “I told you—”
“You’re not my client,” she finished. “I haven’t forgotten. You are the most infuriatingly stubborn, swaggering, distractingly handsome—”
