The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics Page 12

  “Are you quite sure you want me to meet your brother?” The countess dropped her eyes, taking one of those shy turns that Lucy had hoped were becoming less and less frequent with time and affection. “Are you certain it’s wise?”

  Catherine’s hesitance was understandable, but it still pricked all the tender spots of Lucy’s hopeful heart. “Stephen can be downright priggish where I am concerned, but he is far more liberal-minded to people who are not his sister,” Lucy said. “And a few of his friends are quite talented. Their paintings alone will certainly be worth the trip.”

  So Lucy put on one of her gray gowns—livened up with a puce chevron trim in Eliza Brinkworth’s clever hand—and they drove to the lofty neoclassical pile of Somerset House on the River Thames.

  The sky outside was lumpen with clouds, portending more rain, but Lucy didn’t pay this any mind. That was the one landscape she wasn’t here to view today. Bubbling with excitement, she slipped her arm through Catherine’s and led the countess up the curving flights of stairs and into the main Exhibition Room.

  The space was busy with people, but the bright half-circle windows far up in the high ceiling made it feel airy despite the throng. Every inch of every wall was covered by paintings, small delicate landscape sketches shoved right up against huge portraits and elaborate history scenes with ornate frames. As the eye wandered up, row by row, the paintings tilted forward more and more, arcing as if they were a wave about to crest and crash down upon the throng of viewers in a flood of paint and canvas. Lucy watched Catherine’s head tilt back in wonder, and wished she dared press a kiss to the graceful column of her throat.

  But this place was public, and it would be dangerous for Lucy to forget herself.

  They had barely wandered the length of one wall before Lucy caught the pitch of a familiar voice. Her brother and his coterie were massed in front of one of the largest paintings, hung right at eye level, a desirable placement that spoke of the judges’ strong approval. The artists in front of the piece, however, seemed less in awe of its genius than one might have expected. Arms were being flung with abandon, and gestures made toward particular parts of the canvas.

  The group was plainly midargument already, but if Lucy waited for the debate to end she’d be waiting until the next century. “Stephen!” she cried instead, pulling Catherine gently forward.

  “My dear sister!” Her brother was looking well, as he always did after a spell in the country: all bright eyes and ruddy cheeks and the air of a burden lately lifted. He pressed a kiss to Lucy’s cheek and bowed over Catherine’s hand when she was introduced. “It is an honor and a delight to meet the woman who was such a constant correspondent of my father’s—and who has lately taken my rather wayward sister under her wing.” He shot Lucy a sharp glance.

  Lucy’s pleasure at seeing him went brittle, and she had a sudden terrible urge to stamp her foot and pitch a tantrum like she hadn’t done since she was four years old.

  Catherine only smiled serenely: all her earlier shyness hidden carefully away beneath her countess’s poise. “Your sister is brilliant, Mr. Muchelney. The honor is mine, that I can enjoy her company until she has a chance to share her genius with other scholars and scientific minds.”

  Stephen blinked, surprised by Lady Moth’s staunch defense.

  Lucy felt pride and self-consciousness war with each other to burn in her cheeks, and wondered: If she were to burst into flame right here in the gallery, how many great artworks would perish with her?

  She turned to the large painting they were arguing over, hoping for a distraction. “Tell me why this one has gotten you all so stirred up.”

  Stephen spun on his heel, so eager was he to follow the change of subject. “It’s Kelbourne’s latest: Lord Elgin Approaching the Parthenon.”

  Lucy gazed up at the painting, slightly longer than her arms could span: the Parthenon’s ancient form took up most of the upper portion of the canvas, shining white and crumbling nobly against a background of rose and gold clouds. Below and to the right stood a solitary figure in a deep burgundy coat: one leg was planted up and forward, and two hands were clamped behind his back as he surveyed the ancient temple.

  Stephen’s best friend, Mr. Banerjee, leaned forward, a gleam in his eyes. “The question, Miss Muchelney, is whether the painting is a sunrise or a sunset. Is our hero arriving or departing this land of legend?”

  “Surely it’s the latter,” said one of the artists.

  “Preposterous. Look at the shade of that light. Rosy as the dawn.”

  “Dawn? Hah! That is obviously the rich, heavy gold you get at day’s end when the light has had time to steep.”

  “Pardon me,” Catherine interjected softly but firmly, “but it must be a sunrise.”

  Everyone stopped and stared, even Lucy.

  “How do you know?” an artist asked, tones laden with suspicion.

  Catherine gestured to the section of brightest light, to the left of the row of columns. “Because that is where the sun rises when you view the Parthenon from this angle.”

  Mr. Banerjee’s voice was all eager excitement. “You speak as though you’ve been there.”

  Catherine smiled. “I have.”

  “So it is a sunrise,” Mr. Banerjee said decisively, and frowned. “And what is the significance of the sunrise, do you think?”

  And so the argument played on, with Catherine adding occasional notes to the painterly chorus.

  Lucy hid a smile and drifted away to look at the rest of the Exhibition. She’d never thought painters could spend more time talking than painting, but they never seemed to run short of opinions.

  “Oi, Miss Muchelney!”

  Lucy spun round at the sound of the voice, and found herself looking at a big, broad-shouldered man with a face like a boulder and a boxer’s broken nose. “Mr. Violet!” she cried happily, holding out her hands.

  Peter Violet grasped her hands in his—not with a gentleman’s chivalrous grace, but as one would grip someone’s hand to seal a bet.

  She felt the strength of it all the way down to her toes, and grinned. “It’s wonderful to see you. Are you showing anything this year?”

  “A couple things,” he said, in the low-street London accent he’d never shed. “Are you here with Stephen?”

  “Stephen and—a friend,” Lucy said.

  Mr. Violet leaned closer, his voice a low rumble. “Not the famous Priscilla?”

  “No.” Lucy bit her lip. “The Countess of Moth.”

  “Fancy you taking a liking to a nob.” Mr. Violet’s grin was a whole dirty joke on its own.

  Lucy snorted before she could stop herself, and some tight-wound internal part of her relaxed. She’d been so careful and proper the whole time she’d been in London, and it had been more of a strain than she’d realized. It was nice to be with someone she didn’t have to play the lady in front of. She took his elbow just so she could secretly pinch him in rebuke. It only made him grin wider. “Come, now—show me your exhibits, and then if you behave I shall introduce you.”

  He had had three paintings accepted by the judges this year, it seemed. Two were sunset studies of the sea, rocky coastlines and roiling skies expertly rendered with confident, minimal brushstrokes in black and blue and searing orange. Ships were sketched in like ghosts, hulls and sails muddied by distance and the tactile weight of light. Half the art world hated his pieces; the other half lauded him as a genius. “It’s good you’re seeing this one now,” he said, “because the red in the center is going to fade by this time next year.”

  Lucy was appalled. It was one of his most successful paintings, in her semilearned opinion, and much of the vitality came from that bold red streak. “If it won’t last, then why use it at all? Why not use a paint that will still be bright in ten years’ time?”

  Peter turned horrified eyes on her. “This red is the right red,” he protested. “You’ve got to paint the colors right, even if they won’t stay that way forever. Nothing lasts.”

/>   “Some things do,” Lucy argued. “We’ve looked up at the same constellations since Aristotle’s time, and even earlier.”

  Peter’s smile was crooked, and a little sad. “They just change slower, is all.” He led her to the third and final painting. It had been hung right on the line, in the center of the wall: pride of place.

  Peter’s voice was sly and satisfied as he told her the title: “Medea Meeting Jason.”

  Lucy had a hard time finding the title figures, at first. The painting was mostly architectural—not surprising for Peter, who tried to avoid painting people insofar as he could—an airy confection of glowing domes and spires. At the city gate were two small and ghostly figures: a red-haired woman in flowing lilac, with touches of gold in her hair and around her wrists. Her lithe arms were wrapped around a bare-chested hero with a Grecian helmet and curling hair. He seemed to be half avoiding the embrace, head turned away and one arm raised to point down the wooded slope to a tree where the Golden Fleece hung in splendor, a guardian serpent twined around the trunk the same way Medea was trying to twine around Jason. A ship sailing away on the distant sea foreshadowed the coming moment when they would attempt to outrun doom and disaster.

  “Lovely,” Lucy breathed, because it was. “But not a very happy moment to have chosen. He looks half bored with her already.”

  “He doesn’t want her,” Peter explained. “He wants the Fleece, and seducing her is the easiest way to get it.”

  “The fastest, maybe,” Lucy replied. “I’m not sure it was easy on him, at the end.”

  “When she kills their boys, you mean?” Peter said, chuckling. “That’s going to be the next painting, to pair with this one. Jason on hands and knees, gold crown rolling from his head, and Medea sailing away in a chariot drawn by dragons. The corpses of her two littles slung all horrid over her arm. And in the background a ruined city, with towers aflame.”

  Lucy’s eyes goggled at the description. “I’m not sure how the judges are going to feel about that.”

  Peter Violet’s smile turned wry. “I don’t paint for the judges. If they like it, that’s terrific, we’ll hang it up and sell copies and let everyone ooh and ahh all they want. But they could tell me it’s not worth the trouble to spit on it, and I’d still choose to paint it—because there’s nothing else I can do and still feel like myself.”

  “So what’s this one really about, then?” Lucy asked. “Since unlike so many artists I know, you’re capable of giving a straight answer.”

  Peter’s eyes went grim as he looked over his own work, the product of so many months’ time and effort. “It’s about two people reaching out to take what they want, and getting burned.” His eyes flickered away from hers to land on the vivid red tongue of fire lancing out of the dragon’s open mouth.

  Lucy recognized the tone in his voice. She’d heard it often enough in her own, in those first few weeks after Priscilla’s wedding. Peter had known about her inclinations ever since Lucy had caught him and Mr. Banerjee together during one of their visits to her house: she’d told them about Priscilla to reassure them that she had no intention of using their secret against them. Pris had been furious, even though the two men were in a much more dangerous position than two women would be if anyone were to find out.

  Peter looked so tough, with his fighter’s face and the accent he refused to shed, but he felt things more deeply the less he showed it. Heartbreak would not sit easily on him.

  She squeezed his arm. “The red will fade, you know,” she said, since the dragon’s flame was the same bright but ephemeral shade he’d used in the other painting. Sometimes the passage of time could be a comfort. “You said it yourself: nothing lasts.”

  Peter’s smile was a hesitant, half-bitter thing, but it gave her some hope. “Let me show you my favorites by the other painters,” he offered, and Lucy agreed with a laugh.

  Catherine didn’t know how much time had passed when she emerged from the tempest of artistic opinion and noticed Lucy was no longer at her side.

  A quick glance around was enough to reassure her: there Lucy was, holding the arm of a, well, a rather rough-looking man, if Catherine were being honest. She could practically see his calluses from across the room.

  Stephen Muchelney caught the direction of Catherine’s gaze and smiled. “Ah, that’s our Peter Violet,” he said. “Born by the docks, not far from where we’re standing, and he’ll tell you all about it if you give him half a minute.”

  “But what is he doing here?” Catherine asked.

  “He’s got three pieces showing,” Mr. Muchelney replied. “You can pay for schooling, and you can pay for paint, but there’s no way to purchase genius, and Violet has that if any of us do. He and Lucy have always enjoyed each other.”

  As they watched, Peter’s eyes lit up and he said something to make Lucy laugh. The familiar sound of it did queer things to the tight-knotted strings of Catherine’s anxious heart. She pulled cold air into empty lungs.

  Mr. Muchelney leaned in conspiratorially. “To be perfectly frank, Lady Moth, I rather hope they’ll end up making a match of it. He may not be gently bred but he’s kind to her, and works harder than any artist I know. And Lucy’s not enough of a snob to sniff at his good qualities.” Mr. Muchelney’s smile was serpent-sly. “Maybe it won’t be too long before my sister stops taking advantage of your hospitality.”

  They did look well together, Catherine couldn’t argue with that: Lucy’s height and slenderness balanced by Mr. Violet’s craggy bulk.

  The countess swallowed hard against the ashes in her mouth. “You seem to think your sister nothing but a burden, Mr. Muchelney,” she said, hating the gravel at the bottom of her throat. “Let me assure you, the day she leaves me is not something I look forward to.”

  Beside her Mr. Banerjee twitched, his own face tight with a peculiar sort of intensity.

  Stephen Muchelney tilted his head as he looked at her—a gesture so like his sister’s that Catherine had to catch her breath. “What would you think, Lady Moth, about having my sister’s portrait painted? Then you’d always have something of her to treasure.” He grinned boyishly. “I happen to know an excellent portraitist presently in need of commissions.”

  He meant himself, of course. So either he had guessed that Catherine and Lucy were something other than simply friends—or it was blindingly obvious even to a total stranger how much Catherine cared.

  Catherine didn’t want to imagine what her face looked like just now. She could feel the strings of politeness’s mask pulling tight, and the porcelain going brittle and thin. “Pardon me,” she murmured, “but I think I will take a turn about the house and view some of the other paintings.”

  She walked away and found another frame to stand in front of, but could not tell you what colors had been used on the canvas or even what the subject was. She stared straight ahead, but her vision was turned inward, upon the wounds and ruins of her own heart.

  Foolish, to have let herself dream so much! Catherine had been so comforted by the freedom of knowing Lucy couldn’t ask to marry her, that she had lost sight of the simple fact that Lucy might very well think of marrying someone else. That was what Pris had done, after all. It’s what so many young women did, even the ones who loved other women—look at Aunt Kelmarsh, who’d loved Catherine’s mother deeply but who had nonetheless been married and widowed twice over in the course of her long and interesting life.

  She’d been in such high and tender hopes, today, being presented to her lover’s brother as though that might signify something about the nature of their connection. As though it meant Lucy cherished her a little. But Mr. Muchelney did not even seem to know about Lucy’s preferences—was that a deliberate blindness on his part, or had Lucy taken care that he shouldn’t know? Brothers had such power over their younger siblings, particularly sisters, and most particularly when that brother was head of the family.

  And Stephen Muchelney wanted his sister to marry Peter Violet. Would he cut her off if
she refused? Catherine could save Lucy from penury; the girl wouldn’t end up starving on the streets. But what if Lucy came to resent that dependence? What if Catherine, watching Lucy turn cold and bitter, became a brittle, anxious tyrant like George had been? She felt nearly tyrannical already, some wild part inside her howling with pain and rage even now, here in the heart of the polite and civilized world.

  She was so wrapped up in these fears that she almost stumbled headlong into Mr. Frampton. “Lady Moth!” he said. “Are you quite alright?”

  She forced a smile for him, then felt it take true hold. He was familiar, and kind, and his concern steadied her. “Just a little overwhelmed, I think,” she said. “There are so many people here!”

  “There are,” he agreed, peering down at her. His smile was sincere but a little tight, and there were worry lines in the corners of his dark eyes.

  So she took him by the arm, and saw some of those worry lines fade. “Come, sir,” she said. “Let us find the quietest corner and the humblest painting. Its creator will appreciate our attention more than any of the judges’ darlings, I’m sure.”

  His lips curved in amusement. “That’s one way of making an inexpert opinion valuable.”

  They turned their back on the chattering crowd and wound through the rooms of the Exhibition in search of silence and quietude. Catherine caught sight of a small, mud-colored painting in a corner of the last gallery that looked like it would do, but halfway across the space she was forced to halt because Mr. Frampton had jerked to a stop as if his feet had put roots down into the floor.

  His face was shocked, his lips parted as he sucked in a breath and held it.

  Catherine followed his gaze and saw nothing but a portrait of a merchant. A Frenchman, according to the title—a weaver. He sat at a desk among the detritus of his trade: spools of thread, measuring sticks, bolts of fabric, a large loom frame hovering behind his shoulder. One of the merchant’s hands was gripping a pair of calipers, and beside him, newly finished, lay a stack of cards with holes carefully punched in. A few other such cards were strung up on the machine behind him, waiting only for the handle to be turned.