That Summer: A Novel (22 page)

“Don’t you?” Augustus’s smirk was a miracle of suggestiveness. “There’s no point in coming over all high-and-mighty with me. You can pretend to be all pure and high-minded, but do you think I haven’t guessed what’s been going on?”

“Spare me your lurid imaginings,” said Gavin tersely. The idea of Augustus thinking of Imogen that way—

“Lurid, is it?” Augustus strolled across the room, pausing to flick a speck of imaginary dust from the surface of a painting. “Tell me, how many times have you tupped the wife now? Is it an extra part of your fee?”

Gavin had Augustus up against the wall, his hands wrapped around Augustus’s throat, before he was even consciously aware of moving. Rage surged through him, like a red haze. He shoved Augustus back against the wall, hard, making the candlesticks on the tables rattle. “Take that back.”

Stunned, gasping, Augustus managed a choked laugh. “Or what? You’ll throttle me? You couldn’t paint in Newgate.”

Gavin pushed away, so abruptly that Augustus staggered. He leaned over, his hands on his knees, fighting a wave of nausea. Would he really have done it? Crushed Augustus’s windpipe, and for words?

Augustus massaged his sore throat with an air of innocent injury. “Do you think I don’t know what you’ve been doing—alone with her?” He readjusted his cuffs, tugging the folds just so. “She’s not bad looking for a woman that age.”

Gavin breathed in deeply through his nose, fighting the urge to slam his fist into Augustus’s smug face, to pound those arrogant features into a pulp. He wouldn’t let anger turn him from a man to a beast.

Clinging to self-control by a very short straw, he said brusquely, “For the love of God, Augustus. We’ve been in public, the whole time. In full view of the house. Trust me, the proprieties have been observed.”

Mostly. In summer, the shrubbery grew thickly around the summerhouse and the leafy branches of the trees shielded the interior from the view of the house. In his mind’s eye, he could see Imogen drawing the pins from her hair, undoing the mother-of-pearl buttons that fastened her collar and cuffs, beginning, one by one, to start on the long row of buttons that ran down her bodice from neck to waist. His fingers itched to undo them, to peel away the layers of fabric, to watch the play of light and shadow across skin and bone, bared in that glorious circle of seclusion among the shielding leaves of the trees.

One movement forward, one moment of encouragement …

And farewell to all his dreams of being an Academician someday.

“Have you seen that summerhouse?” Guilt made Gavin crude. “Do you really think I’d rut in a wicker cage for the amusement of every passing housemaid?”

“I don’t know.” Augustus’s heavy-lidded eyes regarded him shrewdly. “It depends on just how badly you want the lady. Or,” he added delicately, “how badly the lady wants you.”

“You impugn her good name,” said Gavin roughly. “You speak of a lady.”

Augustus raised a brow. “And my future mama, if all goes my way.” Almost gently, he added, “Don’t go all Knight of the Round Table on me. That’s the fantasy you paint on your canvas. Real life isn’t like that. And you know it as well as I.”

“You can keep your so-called real world.” The phrase tasted sour on Gavin’s tongue; he spat it out like rotten fruit. The world was what a man made of it, good or bad. Gavin would take his “real” over Augustus’s any day. Even if it balked him of his dearest desires. “And stay away from the Granthams.”

Augustus looked at him pityingly. “I don’t care what you do with the older one—but I intend to marry the younger one, before the year is out.”

He meant it, too. Gavin looked at him incredulously. “You’re mad.”

“Not mad, just ambitious, and a rich young wife will serve me well.” Augustus’s face hardened, steel beneath the sleek, social exterior. “Don’t cross me in this, Thorne, or you’ll see just how determined I can be.”

THIRTEEN

London, 2009

In the end, Julia didn’t have to call Cousin Caroline. Cousin Caroline called her, with an invitation to tea that felt more like a royal command.

Or, if not a royal command, at least a suitably regal one.

Out came the blue shirtwaist dress again, somewhat the worse for its recent dunking. That’s what she got for buying “dry-clean only.” But it was the only respectable outfit she’d brought with her and she didn’t think Cousin Caroline would take well to shorts or jeans. Something about the way Caroline had said
tea
had conjured up images of large hats and extended pinky fingers.

A train, a Tube, and a bus ride later, Julia was making her way through the iron gates of an alarmingly well-maintained redbrick house in Richmond. She felt that she had, at last, achieved a comprehensive overview of the British public transportation system. And she wasn’t looking forward to doing it again in another hour or so.

There would be no Nick to offer her a lift this time.

She’d really gotten the wrong end of the stick with him at the house last weekend. Unless, of course, that had been the right end of the stick and the sudden surge of cheer and goodwill towards men had more to do with her suddenly being in possession of a potentially interesting painting.

Much as the conspiracy theorist in her liked that idea, she didn’t think the painting was worth that kind of money. It was more that it was a mystery, a matter of curiosity—and curiosity didn’t attract men with a bottom line in mind. It was possible that he really had just been in a crappy mood the previous weekend, had gotten snippy, was feeling guilty, and was trying to make amends. Or he could be an asshole of the highest order.

She’d just have to see what happened when he showed up on Friday. She’d put in an order for chicken tikka masala, onion naan, and a mango
lassi
and refrained from asking whether he came with the meal.

He might just be a decent guy doing a favor for the cousin of a friend.

Or not. It was always safest to assume the worst.

Ahead, in the house, a curtain twitched. Cousin Caroline, watching for her from the bay window? The house looked like Aunt Regina’s on steroids: instead of a cracked old brick walkway, there was an entire courtyard of large, interlocking pinkish-red bricks. The house was also brick, a modern architect’s take on traditional architecture, everything just a bit too big, too sleek, too polished. When Julia pressed the bell, a series of sickeningly sweet chimes rang out.

Cousin Caroline matched her house, just a shade too carefully put together. Like Helen’s, her hair was an assisted blond, but where Helen’s ash blond managed to look natural, Cousin Caroline’s was chopped and styled and her tailored pantsuit was just a bit too much for tea at home.

Her verbal style matched her clothes. She was so frightfully sorry; she’d meant to welcome Julia before, but, of course, Julia understood how it was; one was just so
busy
. All the same, it was wonderful to see Julia after all these years and such a pity she had stayed away so long. Such a tragedy, all of it.

“Your poor, dear mother.” Caroline’s voice was syrupy with pity. “She and I were so very close. Practically sisters.”

The sort of sisters who didn’t like each other much?

From very far away, Julia could hear her father saying,
I don’t know why you let her treat you like that,
and another voice, a female voice, saying lightly,
Oh, it’s just Caroline. You know how she is.
And Julia’s father, grimly,
No. I don’t.

Memory? Or imagination? Julia shook the echoes aside and trotted out her best schoolgirl manners. “It’s so nice to see you again. Thanks so much for having me over.”

Caroline led the way into an overstuffed living room. The carpet bore the tracks of recent vacuuming. There was a tea tray on the table, the china a familiar pattern of roses and gilt. It made Julia think wistfully of Helen’s restful Danish modern.

Caroline indicated that Julia was to seat herself on the sofa. “Well,
naturally
. It was
the least
I could do. It must have been such a shock for you, inheriting the house, when you hadn’t even known Regina.”

Beneath the italics and faux sympathy was a distinct air of pique.

“It was a bit of a surprise,” said Julia cautiously. “But I’m enjoying getting to know more about the family.”

She seated herself carefully on the rigid cushions of the chintz sofa. For something so billowy it was a surprisingly uncomfortable piece of furniture. Julia sat on the edge, her legs crossed at the ankles, her hands folded in her lap.

Cousin Caroline looked at her with obvious condescension. “I can’t imagine you know much about it, living as you have.” She made it sound like Julia had been raised in a grass hut in the Ubangi. “The family has lived in that house for
generations
.”

And now, Cousin Caroline’s tone implied, it had fallen to the barbarians. Or the Americans, which was much the same thing.

“Yes,” said Julia demurely. “I gather my mother grew up there. I’ve spent some time in her old room.” Before Cousin Caroline could muster her guns, Julia said quickly, “I was hoping you might be able to tell me something about the family history. I asked my father, and he said you were the one to ask.”

The tactic worked. Cousin Caroline patted her too-blond hair. “Of course,
your father
wouldn’t take any interest. People with no family themselves…”

Julia took a hasty sip of tea to stop herself from swinging back with
my father is too busy saving lives to bother with genealogy
. Her father didn’t need defending. He was an internationally renowned surgeon, and, yes, she might have her personal quibbles with him—sometimes he had all the emotional sensitivity of a fossilized starfish—but he certainly didn’t need to be justified to a suburban snob in a polyester pantsuit.

Not like she was a little touchy or anything.

By an act of will Julia kept her social smile in place. That was twelve years of all-girls school for you; she could do nicey nicey phony phony with the best of them. “Dad mentioned that you had a family genealogy?”

Her father was right; Caroline did have a genealogy and she was only too happy to share it—all part of impressing on Julia that she was the degenerate and degraded branch of an otherwise illustrious family history.

The genealogy was one of those vanity affairs (“Just send 29.95 now!”), on faux parchment, with lettering in red and gold, going all the way back to the Conqueror, or, at least, to the Conqueror’s second cousin once removed. It got fuzzier and more fantastical the further back it went. Julia suspected that there was a strong element of fiction and wishful thinking going on. No one had that many monarchs in their family tree. And, yes, Charles II had fathered many bastards, but hadn’t most of them been recognized and given titles? She sincerely doubted that he’d taken the trouble to pop out an extra just to give Cousin Caroline a claim to connection with the Stuarts.

Although, given Charles II’s infamous amatory proclivities, who knew?

Cousin Caroline was more interested in the earlier, fictional portions of the family tree—which made sense, since it all became more prosaic the further it went. The earliest plausible ancestor was a Josiah Grantham, a wine merchant or, as Caroline put it, a purveyor of fine spirits. Julia thought that was rather like calling a janitor a custodial engineer, but she held her tongue. She had other fish to fry.

“There’s a portrait I’m particularly interested in putting a name to,” said Julia, making an effort to divert Caroline’s attention from the fourteenth-century Beaufort bastards to the nineteenth century. “It’s the one in the drawing room—”

“I am quite familiar with that drawing room,” put in Caroline loftily.

“Then you’ll know the one I’m talking about. It’s the woman in the blue dress with the”—Julia refrained from saying
Princess Leia hair
—“dark hair.”

“You must be thinking of Imogen Hadley.” Caroline pointed one immaculately lacquered nail at a line way down towards the bottom of the chart. “She married Arthur Grantham in 1839.”

Eighteen-thirty-nine sounded way too early. The Pre-Raphaelites hadn’t even gotten going until nine years later. Julia was looking for a marriage that had taken place in 1849 or later. “Are you sure it was 1839, not 1849?” she asked hopefully.

Caroline looked down her nose at her. “We have all the documentation.” She looked away. “At least, your aunt Regina had.”

Which meant that Julia now did. Somewhere.

Julia set her cup carefully down on her saucer. “Was this Imogen Grantham an artist’s model before she married?”

Caroline looked like she had discovered something unpleasant on her shoe. “An artist’s model? No. She was the niece of a baronet.” Julia gathered she was meant to be suitably impressed by this. “Where would you get an idea like that?”

“No reason,” murmured Julia. She didn’t want to tell this woman about her painting. Natalie knew, of course … but Julia was beginning to understand those barbed comments Natalie had made about her mother. Poor Natalie. Julia was beginning to feel a tardy appreciation for Helen. She scrabbled for an excuse. “It’s just that picture in the drawing room. It looks so … professional.”

“Oh, is that all?” Caroline gave a tinkling little laugh that sounded unnervingly like Natalie’s. “For a moment you sounded so like Aunt Regina. She was always trying to invent scandal. She said it added spice to an otherwise dull family tree. Such foolishness!”

Julia deeply regretted having missed out on Aunt Regina. “What sort of scandal?” she asked hopefully.

Caroline waved a hand. “Oh, this and that. All nonsense, of course.”

Grrr. Well, at least she had a name to put to the portrait, although she was resistant to the idea of relinquishing her beautiful artist’s model theory. Eighteen-thirty-nine, 1849, all it would take would be one smudged number. She would have to start digging through the house for that documentation that Caroline had mentioned, whatever it was that Regina had possessed. Somewhere in the recesses of the old house there had to be something.