Page 24 of So Wild A Heart

“I’m sorry.”

“It is too late for me or Caroline. But Dev—Dev could still find happiness. That is why I wanted you to marry him. I think he could change his life with the right woman. He’s…deep down he is a good man, a man of honor. But he and my father could not get along. Dev could never do anything right in our father’s eyes. Dev was not like him at all. And he wasn’t quiet and dutiful, as Caroline and I were. He argued with Father, and it made Father furious. My father was a hard man. He was very religious, and he hated it when Dev gambled and drank and—other things. I always thought that was why Dev came to be so wild. He went in that direction because it made our father so enraged. Father hated Dev’s painting, too. He said it was not a fit thing for a nobleman, that Dev acted as if he had peasant blood in him, wanting to scratch about with paints. He thought it was useless and beneath him, but Devin loved it. So they fought over that, as well. Then, when Devin was eighteen, he went to London, as most young men do. And everything got worse there. He had freedom at last, you see, and he did just as he pleased. He worked on his art, and he met other artists, and Father thought they were a bad influence on him. But they were not the worst. He fell in with a set of people who were, well…not good people. They encouraged him to live the worst sort of life he could.”

“What did your father do?”

“He was so angry. He kept writing to Dev and telling him that he had to abandon his wicked ways and come home, and of course that just made Devin more stubborn. Father threatened to cut him off, and then, one time there was a scandal, worse than the others, and Father did cut him off. He would have disinherited him, but he could not. The estate is entailed, and he didn’t have the power. But he stopped his allowance. I’m not sure how Dev even lived then. I am sure that Michael and Richard and others gave him money. He can be quite charming, and—well, we love him. I slipped him as much money as I could. Richard told me once that Dev made money playing cards, and I suppose he helped to support himself that way. He and Father never reconciled. Just before Father died, Mother wrote to us that he was very ill, and I went back. I got Dev to go with me, but when we got there, Father refused to see him. He wouldn’t even let him in the room. Dev took one of the horses and rode back to London. He refused to go to Father’s funeral. I don’t know if he has been back to Darkwater since then.”

She stopped and sighed. “He wouldn’t have been like this if Father hadn’t been so hard on him.” Her voice hardened. “And if it were not for his…friends. I just know that if he could be taken away from their influence, if he could have some peace and happiness in life, that he would be a different man. I want that for him. That’s why I was hoping that…you know, that you would marry him.”

“I’m not at all sure that marrying me would make Ravenscar happy,” Miranda pointed out dryly. “We don’t get along very well, you know.”

“I know. But…insipid females don’t hold his interest. I thought someone strong like you, someone good, could make his life different.”

They were silent for a moment. Miranda looked thoughtfully at her hands. “You mentioned his painting…. He is an artist?”

“Oh, yes! He’s terribly good. Would you like to see some of his work?”

“Yes. I would.”

Intrigued, Miranda rose and followed Lady Westhampton as she went into the house through a back door and ascended a narrow staircase that she presumed must be the servants’ staircase. They walked down a hall to the front gallery, which ran the width of the house.

“You can’t see them too well, unfortunately,” Rachel said and gestured toward the outside wall, which was lined with long windows. “In the daytime, there’s plenty of light, but at night…”

All the sconces along the wall opposite the windows were lit, for the whole house was ablaze with light for the party, but even so, there were shadows.

“I can see well enough,” Miranda said, going closer to look at the first picture. “Are all these Ravenscar’s?”

“These first three are. There are more on the other side.” She smiled faintly. “I had to allow a few of the Westhampton ancestors.”

The first painting was a portrait of Rachel herself. She was standing beside a high pedestal, her forearm resting on it, and she looked out at the observer, a faint smile lingering on her lips. It was a younger and happier Rachel. The colors were muted greens and tans, against which the raven-haired Rachel in her simple white dress stood out vividly. The green eyes laughed; she seemed on the verge of revealing an amusing secret. And it had been painted, Miranda thought to herself, by an expert. The woman in the portrait had life; more than simply a physical likeness, her personality shone out, warm and inviting.

“It’s beautiful,” Miranda said honestly.

“I was seventeen when he painted it,” Rachel said quietly. “He gave it to Michael when we were married.” She walked on. “And this is Caroline. It’s a few years earlier. Dev was about, oh, seventeen or eighteen. Caroline must have been fifteen.”

Miranda looked with interest at the young girl, a dreamy sort with huge blue eyes and the thick black Aincourt hair tied back with a ribbon and cascading down her shoulders. She wore a blue cloak over her white dress, one side of it flung back over her shoulder, and she carried a cat in the crook of her arm. Every detail was rich and luminous. Miranda’s hands curled inward, fingers digging into her palms to contain the excitement that filled her on looking at the paintings. She moved on to the next, this one a landscape of a barren, rock-strewn countryside, beautifully stark and drenched in sunlight. She could almost feel the warmth.

“These are beautiful!” Miranda turned to Rachel, barely able to contain the pleasure that rose up in her. She had been enchanted with the museums and galleries that she had encountered in Europe. Looking at much of the splendid, often old, art, she had been seized with the same sort of excitement, even joy, that filled her now. “He is a wonderful artist! You say you have more?”

Rachel nodded, smiling. “At the other end of the hall, and in my bedroom and sitting room.”

Rachel took her along the gallery, where she showed her four more paintings that her brother had done, and then down the hall to a large, well-appointed sitting room. Here and in the bedroom beyond it hung another six paintings. One of the paintings was of a pale stone house, formidably large but graceful, built in the shape of an E.

“Is this Darkwater?” she ventured, and Rachel nodded. “Somehow I assumed it would be dark and brooding. The illustration in the book looked darker.”

“Oh, no, the name comes from the tarn near there. The tarn is black as coal. But the house is beautiful and light. At least from a distance. Up close, it’s rather falling to ruin. But gracefully. It’s limestone. When the sun hits it like this, it does look golden.”

That was the way Devin had painted it, with rich golden light cascading over the stones almost like water, the windows of diamond-shaped panes glittering.

“He painted that from memory,” Rachel went on. “He did it after he left home. This is one of the tarn.”

She pointed to another, smaller, picture, this one of an inky black pool set in the midst of outcropping gray rocks. It was a darker picture, shadowed and cloudy, with a single shaft of sunlight shooting down from the sky like a sword, its light swallowed up in the blackness of the pond. Miranda shivered involuntarily. It was as vivid in its own way as the lighter paintings, but its richness created an almost eerie scene, quiet and brooding, the piercing sunlight at war with the landscape. The other paintings were starker, too, one of a dark four-poster bed beside a window, the tangled white sheets a backdrop for a vivid red velvet dress tossed upon it, and another of a white washing bowl and pitcher upon a dark wood dresser, a bloodred rose lying wilting beside it in a splash of color. But in all of them there was the same richness of texture and color, the same expert hand in the details.

“May I see them sometime in the day?” Miranda asked, turning to Rachel, her eagerness showing. “I’d love to look at them in better light.”

“Of course. You like them?”

“I think they’re magnificent. I—” She came back to the painting of the bed with the bright red dress lying carelessly across the rumpled sheets. The painting was deeply sensual, almost erotic, and it stirred Miranda in a primitive, essential way. “I don’t know what to say. Are these recent?”