He glanced up, bewildered. “You are asking me to explain what makes this so extraordinary?”
“Besides the unusual color of her eyes,” she said. “And the lavish use of gold. And the workmanship. None of these explains why it elicits such strong emotion.”
“It elicits strong emotion in you because you are sentimental,” he said. Reluctantly he brought his eyes back to the icon.
He cleared his throat and continued in the patient tones of a tutor. “One is accustomed to the classic Russian pout. But this is altogether different, you see. Baby Jesus looks truly cross and sulky, as though he’s tired of posing, or hungry—or merely wants attention. And his mama doesn’t wear the conventional tragic expression. She’s half-frowning, yes. Mildly irritated, perhaps, because the boy’s being troublesome. Yet she wears a glimmer of a smile, as though to reassure or forgive him. Because she understands that he doesn’t know any better. Innocent brat, he takes it all for granted: her smiles and reassurances, her patience…forgiveness. He doesn’t know what he has, let alone how to be grateful for it. And so he frets and scowls…in blissful infant ignorance.”
Dain paused, for the room seemed to have grown too quiet suddenly, and the woman beside him too still.
“It is altogether natural and human a pose,” he went on, careful to keep his tone light and neutral. “We forget that this pair represent holy figures, and focus instead upon the simple human drama within the artistic conventions and rich trappings. If this Madonna and child were merely saintly, the work would not be half so rare and interesting.”
“I see what you mean,” his wife said softly. “The artist has captured his models’ personalities, and the mother’s love for her little boy, and the mood of a moment between them.”
“That is what awakens your sentiment,” he said. “Even I find them intriguing, and can’t resist theorizing about what their countenances express—though they’re long dead, and the truth hardly signifies. That is the artist’s talent: He makes one wonder. It’s rather as though he played a joke on the viewer, isn’t it?”
Glancing up from the icon at Jessica, he made himself laugh, as though this heartachingly beautiful portrait of maternal love were merely an amusing artistic riddle.
She squeezed his shoulder. “I knew there was more to it than met my untrained eye,” she said, too gently. “You are so perceptive, Dain.” Then she quickly moved away and returned to her seat.
Not quickly enough, though. He had caught it, in the flicker of time before she masked it. He’d seen it, in her eyes, just as he’d heard it in her voice a moment ago: sorrow…pity.
And his heart twisted and churned into rage—with himself, because he’d somehow said too much, and with her, because she’d been too quick—quicker than he—to perceive what he’d said, and worse, what he’d felt.
But he was not a child, Dain reminded himself. He wasn’t helpless. No matter what he’d unwittingly revealed to his wife, his character had not changed.Hehad not changed, not a whit.
In Jessica, he had found a good thing, that was all, and he meant to make the most of it. He would allow her to make him happy, certainly. He would let himself be flayed alive and boiled in oil, however, before he’d allow his wife topityhim.
Chapter 15
Andrews entered then, and the first footman, Joseph, with him. His Lordship’s beefsteak was set before him, and his ale. Andrews cut the steak while Jessica, who had wanted to perform that small service, sat uselessly in her chair, pretending to eat a breakfast that tasted like sawdust and was about as easily swallowed.
She—the expert on interpreting men—scarcely understood her husband at all. Even last night, when she’d discovered he was not vain, as she’d believed, and that the love of women had not come easily to him, as she’d supposed, she had not guessed the extent of the trouble.
She had merely reminded herself that many men couldn’t see themselves clearly. When Bertie, for instance, looked into a mirror, he thought a man with a brain looked back. When Dain looked into his, he somehow missed the full extent of his physical beauty. Odd in a connoisseur, but then, men were not altogether consistent creatures.
As to the love of women, Jessica had never been exactly thrilled at the prospect of falling in love with him herself. It was understandable, then, that other women—even hardened professionals—might decide he was more than they cared to tackle.
She should have also realized, though, that the difficulty lay deeper. She should have put the clues together: his acute sensibility, his mistrust of women, his edginess in his family home, his bitterness toward his mother, the portrait of his forbidding father, and Dain’s contradictory behavior toward Jessica herself.
She’d known—hadn’t every instinct told her?—he badly needed her, needed something from her.
He needed what every human being needed: love.
But he needed it far more than many, because, apparently, he hadn’t had so much as a whiff of it since he was a babe.
…he takes it all for granted: her smiles and reassurance, her patience, forgiveness.
Jessica knew she should have laughed, as he had, and kept matters light, no matter what she’d felt. She should not have spoken of mamas and little boys they loved. Then Dain wouldn’t have looked up at her as he had, and she wouldn’t have seen the lonely little boy in him. She would not have grieved for that child, and Dain would not have seen the grief in her eyes.
Now he would think she felt sorry for him—or worse, that she’d deliberately lured him into betraying himself.
He was probably furious with her.
Don’t, she prayed silently.Be angry if you must, but don’t turn your back and walk away.
Dain didn’t leave.
All the same, if Jessica had been a fraction less accustomed to male irrationality, his behavior during the next few days would have destroyed every hope she’d cherished of building anything remotely like a proper marriage. She would have decided he was Beelzebub in truth, and had never been a little boy at all—let alone a heartbroken and lonely one—but had sprung fully grown from the skull of the Prince of Darkness, much as Athena had popped out of Zeus’ head.
