Page 3

She was intrigued, though. Perhaps the lady was excessively prudent, and wanted to make sure Bianca was a suitable acquaintance for her little nephew. Or perhaps, like many women of her rank, she was merely bored, and thought that a female artist must be a sort of novel creature one might gawp and marvel at, like some exotic animal in a menagerie. In either case there would be no damage done, and perhaps there would be superior cake on offer, and pictures to see. Surely there would be. Bianca was a great admirer of art and cake, in no particular order.

When Miss Constantine had washed and changed into more respectable clothing, she sought out her sister in her boudoir and told her of the curious encounter. Sabrina, peacefully nursing her youngest child, Anna, with the ease of long practice, was fascinated. ‘How grand! I don’t know her at all. But then we haven’t lived here all that long, and don’t really move in those exalted circles. Perhaps Viola might be acquainted with her.’

Mrs Da Costa, Sabrina, had married into a substantial fortune which had originated in trade a couple of generations back, but her husband, Laurence, had not severed his links with the enterprises – mainly connected with the Ottoman Empire and points east – that had made his family rich, and so his position in society, and Sabrina’s, was somewhat equivocal. Gentlemen weren’t supposed to work, certainly not in anything as degrading as honest business. As Sabrina didn’t want vouchers for Almack’s and wouldn’t care if she never went to another ball in her life, she didn’t give a fig what that sort of people thought of her; when her daughters were old enough to come out into society, their aunt Viola – who was after all a duchess whose station in life could not be questioned – would see to the matter. Young ladies with money must always be popular in polite circles, and their dubious origins in trade could easily be overlooked if their manners were polished enough. This was the way of the world.

‘Well, Viola knows everybody, so I daresay she is. I don’t know what Lady Deborah wants from me – maybe just half an hour’s entertainment to relieve her terrible boredom and ennui,’ Bianca said. ‘But if I do disappear and end up in a bordello in Marseilles, at least you’ll know who to blame.’

Sabrina chuckled, and shifted the sleepy baby to a position of more comfort. ‘Nonsense. You’re an heiress, and I daresay there’s a secret list of them somewhere that hard-pressed ladies can consult. Would you be astonished if Her Ladyship turns out to have a son or nephew who is in desperate need of a rich bride? Because I wouldn’t be. You think you can avoid that sort of entanglement by refusing to participate in the Season, but maybe you’re wrong. Maybe it’s a trap after all, just a more subtle one than your very vulgar cast of mind immediately suggests to you. A bordello in Marseilles, indeed! You’ve only been here a few days, and I can already see that you’re going to be a terrible influence on my innocent daughters. Thank God this one at least is too small to understand you.’

‘Well, I hope I shall be that. Otherwise, what are aunts for?’

They smiled at each other in perfect accord. Bianca had been very young when Sabrina had married; as the oldest and youngest daughters in the Constantine family, there was a gap of more than a dozen years between them, meaning that Sabrina’s first-born child was close on eighteen, only four years younger than his aunt. And so while Sabrina had always been a presence at family gatherings, they’d never really lived together before, or not that Bianca could remember. So there were bridges to build here, and she had been delighted to discover in the last few days, now that they met as adults, that Mrs Da Costa had a sly, salty wit and a penchant for saying outrageous things with a perfectly straight face that she found very much to her taste.

‘I’m only going to take tea with her, Bree. She can hardly keep me prisoner there until I agree to marry her wastrel son and let him get his hands on my fortune, anyway, can she? Assuming she even has a wastrel son.’

‘They always have wastrel sons. They don’t produce any other kind. He’ll be there too, making sheep’s eyes at you, I don’t doubt, and then you’ll be sorry you went.’

‘Rubbish. Young gentlemen don’t go to their mothers’ tea parties; they’re off boxing at Jackson’s Saloon, or whatever else it is that they do to occupy their empty days. Anyway, you’ll come and rescue me if I’m not back in an hour at the outside. Maybe all she wants is her portrait painted, and she thinks if she gives me cake and condescends to me, I’ll give her a good rate. I might, at that.’

Miss Constantine was not entirely unknown as an artist by now. She’d submitted a painting of a Venetian scene, and also a portrait of a street urchin done at about the same time, to the Royal Academy this year, under the thin disguise of B. Constantine; they had been accepted, and were hanging there even now, giving her a warm little glow of pride every time she thought of it. The portrait was a character study of one of her less respectable Venetian friends, while the landscape was her interpretation of a view – the Church of the Redeemer – which dozens of artists, if not hundreds, had painted before her. They were, admittedly, very high up on the wall in the summer exhibition in a place where they might easily be overlooked if you didn’t know to search for them, but this was a common enough fate for young painters’ works. At least they were there, and therefore in a fashion so was she, in that bastion of male superiority.

Furthermore, one of Miss Macintyre’s noble Roman acquaintances had kindly offered to write to his English relatives, recommending her skills, and while she had no commissions here yet, she was hopeful that they might come. Perhaps Lady Deborah could be the first of many. Perhaps she’d hire Bianca to paint Adrian, or herself, or the very grand-sounding Lord Fairmount would; her nephew, the new earl. Miss Constantine was versatile and not proud; she would paint the lady’s little dog or parrot if that was what she wanted. She didn’t need the money – not that she’d tell anybody that, because people didn’t value things they didn’t pay for – but she wanted to work and make herself a name. Perhaps this was the beginning; she was excited at the thought, and looking forward to the meeting, from which all manner of good things might well come.

4

There was, of course, because she was only human, the question of what she should wear to take tea with a grand lady. Luckily, she had a number of new gowns, one of which would surely be suitable.

In recent weeks, Bianca had discovered that the English mode of dress for ladies was now somewhat different from the continental one. In Italy, waists were still as high under the bosom as they had ever been, but at home the fashionable waist was rapidly dropping back towards its natural position for the first time in many years. Bianca didn’t mind either way, though her sister Allegra, who was generously endowed like all the Constantines but shorter than the rest of them, was in comical despair at what a top-heavy figure she must make.

Miss Constantine had replenished her wardrobe accordingly, being well able to afford to do so, and wore a muslin day gown of soft pink trimmed with ribbons of a deeper hue for her visit to Lady Deborah. If the woman was expecting a quiz of an artist in a dirty smock with paintbrushes stuck in her disordered hair, she would be disappointed.

She knocked upon the door of the very impressive house across the square just as the nearest church bells were sounding the hour of four. The butler she had met the day before admitted her, and a tall footman in livery and powdered wig conducted her up the stairs to a bright room overlooking the street, announcing her by name and then withdrawing.

Bianca curtsied correctly to her unknown hostess, and the older woman inclined her head graciously, indicating that she should take a seat. They sat looking at each other in silence for a moment; the visitor had a confused impression of wallpaper and upholstery in cool shades of blue, and interesting pictures upon the walls, but she had no leisure to look about her properly.

‘Thank you for coming, Miss Constantine,’ the Dowager said, commanding her attention. Deborah Townshend was a formidable-looking woman, tall and solidly built, with great quantities of grey hair, an impressive nose and an imposing bosom. She must be sixty, Bianca thought. She’d be a joy to paint; her face had character and humour. This might be intimidating to some, but Bianca’s own mother, Mrs Constantine, was just another such, so this sort of woman held few terrors for her.

‘I was a little surprised to receive your invitation, ma’am,’ she ventured. ‘It was a pleasant surprise, of course.’

Lady Deborah smiled. ‘I have seen you working away these past couple of weeks, catching my interest, and then my great-nephew told me that you had spoken together, and that you were, to quote him, “a nice lady”. So I thought that I would scrape acquaintance with you, if you cared to come.’

‘Lord Dawbney is a sweet, polite little boy. I was very happy to meet him.’

‘You are living with your sister across the square? A very busy household, I have observed, with a great many children.’

‘Yes, ma’am. Mrs Da Costa is my oldest sister; I am the youngest of six.’

‘Six girls! Your poor mother; how she must have suffered. Your family is an intriguing one, though, I understand. One of your sisters was married to that pompous old fool Winterflood, and is now wed to Ventris, the handsome devil, and another to that rising young politician whose name I forget but whose fascinating amber eyes I can quite easily remember. And you younger girls are heiresses from some aunt or other.’

This was blunt speaking indeed, and rather disconcerting. Bianca said with some spirit, ‘You are extremely well-informed, ma’am, about my family affairs.’

The lady replied with unruffled calm, ‘Of course I am, but such facts are generally known, after all. You must be aware, Miss Constantine, that your return to England has caused a certain amount of comment in polite circles. An heiress in our midst, and yet instead of taking your rightful place in society and snaring a duke for yourself, as well you might with your looks, connections and fortune, you choose to stay with the one of your sisters who has no pretension to rank or fashion, because of her husband’s involvement in trade, and, spurning the tulips of the ton, devote yourself to art in a most eccentric and unprecedented manner for a lady of respectable birth. Am I wrong in anything I say?’

‘Not in the least. But what I fail to see…’

‘Is how any of it is the least business of mine?’

‘Precisely!’