A Mad, Wicked Folly Read online

  “Congratulations,” I said. “You were brilliant. I’m so glad I was here to watch you. Well done, you!”

  But my words sounded false. It was as if someone else were speaking them, as if I had become some other version of myself.

  I could not sleep that night. My mind kept going over and over my reaction to the ring like a stuck disc record on a gramophone.

  Somewhere close to midnight I finally put it down to nerves. I was nervous. How could I not be? After all, I hadn’t wanted to become engaged in the first place, and it would take some getting used to. I did not love Edmund, but I hadn’t known him that long. Affection would take time to build as we came to know each other better. I just needed to concentrate on my work and let the rest sort itself out.

  Twenty-One

  At home and about town,

  fifth to twelfth of April

  MY MOTHER WAS so thrilled with the ring, you’d have thought she’d been given one herself. To me it felt uncomfortable and foreign, so I kept it in my pocket or art satchel whenever I wasn’t around my parents or Edmund.

  My mother began to employ her next scheme for stitching back together my tattered reputation. Or at least patching it up a bit. This meant making endless rounds of deadly dull calls, and driving the length and breadth of London in the carriage to the houses of people Mamma knew would accept me, such as the aristocratic Dowager Viscountess Somersby and the immensely powerful Mrs. Georgina Plimpton. These were my mother’s very close friends who had decided to rally round her and pretend my terrible behavior had not actually happened.

  Once word got round that these ladies had returned my mother’s card with one of their own or with a call during one of my mother’s at-homes, then all the underlings in their social circle would follow suit, like sheep following their bellwether. Calling cards for my mother and me would fill our silver salver in the hall. And so it would go. In time the horrid behavior of Victoria Darling would be a faint, distant memory. Or so my mother hoped.

  The Monday after the Boat Race we went round to five houses. While we waited in the carriage, John took my mother’s engraved calling card, with the corner folded down to indicate she’d been there personally, with my name penned in just underneath hers, to the front door to give it to the butler. At three of the houses, the women had daughters my age, so my mother included a card for each of them as well.

  As my mother predicted, all five cards were returned with cards. So we spent the next few days in the carriage paying calls during the women’s at-homes. I wore my engagement ring silently, letting the women notice it and remark upon it themselves. In time, word would get round that the newly engaged Miss Darling was not as unfit for society as once thought.

  Mamma was very shrewd, paying strict attention to etiquette by arriving at each house early, between three and four o’clock, and staying no longer than a quarter of an hour so as not to presume anything.

  But when the Dowager Viscountess Somersby and Mrs. Georgina Plimpton and her crushingly boring daughter Georgette came to my mother’s at-home on Thursday, she rolled out the tea table in all its glory, piled high with French fancies, Battenberg cake, and Victoria sponge. One by one, as predicted, the other women and their daughters came to call. Much chatting about the weather and fashions for the upcoming social season ensued. I sat on the edge of my chair and made charming conversation with the other girls. When I asked after the health of Georgette’s little spaniel, Bridie, my mother smiled at me and nodded.

  But all the while I was thinking of the cartoon I would draw of this day when I found the chance.

  When the teapot had gone dry and the last crumb had been eaten, the visitors left, and my mother sat back in her lingerie gown and declared my reentrance into society a success.

  “Providing you do nothing more to damage your reputation, my dear,” Mamma said, with a pointed look.

  I smiled and assured her I wouldn’t. But I was tired and fed up. I had not had a single moment to spend on my artwork in three days.

  A moment later Emma came into the sitting room, curtsied, and handed my mother a crystal tray with a gentleman’s calling card upon it. “Mr. Edmund Carrick-Humphrey wishes to know if Miss Darling is available.”

  My mother took the card, looked at it, and nodded. “Show him up, Emma.” She turned to me. “Pinch some roses into your cheeks, Victoria. You look quite pale.”

  I was just rousing myself to do this when Edmund entered the room. He was dressed in a motoring duster; he held his bowler hat.

  “I wonder if Miss Darling might be amenable to joining me for a ride in my motorcar?” he asked my mother, and then flashed a smile in my direction.

  My mother looked as though she had been kissed under the mistletoe. “I see no problem with that, Mr. Carrick-Humphrey, as long as Cumberbunch chaperones.”

  Emma was sent to fetch Sophie, and I went to put on a light paletot and collect my gloves from my bedroom. When I took the jacket from my wardrobe, I saw the edge of the hatbox filled with my art supplies peeping out. I nudged it farther back with the toe of my boot. What I wouldn’t give to be able to spend one whole day just working on my art. Soon, soon, I reminded myself. Only a couple of months until I was married and I could work whenever I pleased and however long I pleased.

  I pinned on my new hat—a straw chapeau trimmed with a wide velvet ribbon and black feathers—and since we were motoring, I secured it with a long chiffon scarf tied under my chin.

  “Pretty as a picture,” Edmund said as I came down the stairs to the hall. Edmund’s open-topped motorcar sat outside at the curb. It was expensive looking—long and sleek with a leather settee in both the front and back. It was painted a cream color, and the fenders and bonnet were highlighted in black striping. The front of the car shone with bright chrome.

  “Edmund, it’s beautiful,” I said. “I didn’t know you had a motorcar!”

  “It came in from the coach builder’s yesterday. A present from my father for winning the Boat Race.”

  “Is it a Daimler?” I asked.

  Edmund scoffed. “Better than that. It’s a Rolls-Royce Forty/Fifty HP—the Silver Ghost! Best motorcar in the world. I don’t really like the color; my father’s choice. I wanted blue, but my father said it was too flash. Still, I suppose it will grow on me.”

  He opened the back door for Sophie and then the passenger door for me. I stepped up onto the running board and climbed in. I arranged my skirts around me and pulled my chiffon scarf over my face. The inside of the motorcar was luxurious, leather and polished wood everywhere. It smelled faintly of Edmund’s cologne, that spicy scent I had come to associate with him.

  Edmund put a pair of driving goggles on. He did something complicated to the many levers and dials in the car, and then drove it out into the London traffic.

  “You’re clever to drive,” I said. “It looks ever so difficult.”

  “It’s dead easy,” he said. “I’ll teach you.”

  “I don’t know. I’m not very coordinated.”

  He looked over and smiled at me. “Not to worry. I had a very good teacher myself and I’m quite sure I can pass on the skills to you.”

  The traffic cleared a little, so Edmund coaxed the motor even faster. It was smooth and easy, and we went along at a good clip. The speed was exhilarating and frightening at the same time. I sat forward and gripped the dash. The wind tugged at my hat.

  “Where are we going?” I shouted over the engine. “It’s a fine day; perhaps through Hyde Park?”

  “Oh, I think we can do better than that,” he said.

  “Better than Hyde Park?”

  He overtook a hansom cab and blew the hooter. The horse shied, and the driver shook his whip at Edmund. Edmund simply laughed and accelerated the car in a burst of speed.

  “How would you like to see our new house?’

  “Our house?”

 
He grinned. “Our very own. I went to see my father at his club this afternoon, and he gave me the keys.”

  “Edmund! A house of our own. The idea of it!”

  “I thought you’d like that. It’s in Chelsea. Not such a fashionable address, but on the rise. It’s a large townhouse on Paulton’s Square, so it has a garden.”

  We turned onto a tree-lined road, which was a quiet oasis after the bustle of the main streets. Edmund pulled the car up to the pavement and we alighted. We stood on the walk and looked at the house. It was a three-story brick townhouse with a green door. Ivy crawled up one side and window boxes filled with pansies framed the windows on the ground floor.

  Edmund let out a little laugh. “Can you believe it? In August we will be married and snuggled up like two pigeons in a roost in this delicious house.”

  I slid my hand through Edmund’s arm and we walked up the brick path to the front door; Sophie followed behind. Edmund fished for a key in his pocket, slid it into the lock, and swung open the door.

  A small hall led to two rooms on either side: a sitting room and a study. Then straight ahead was the stairway.

  “The dining room is farther back. Bedrooms are upstairs,” Edmund said.

  “Oh, Miss Darling,” Sophie said. “Isn’t it lovely?”

  “Servants’ rooms are in the attic. Go on up, Cumberbunch, and choose your bedroom. My father says they’ve all been done up recently. Two of them have basins with running water.”

  Sophie went upstairs eagerly, and Edmund and I went into the sitting room. It was a spacious room with a coal fireplace and a mantel. Huge Palladian windows let in light that fell upon the oaken floors. Flowered Victorian wallpaper covered the walls. “Don’t think much of the wallpaper,” Edmund said, picking at it with his finger. “Those flowers would give a bee a headache. Still, we can get rid of it. Father said we could change anything we want.”

  “I can’t get my head round it, Edmund. It’s so beautiful.”

  The caretaker came inside just then, so Edmund started talking with him about the changes he wanted. I pushed open the French doors off the sitting room and went out to look into the garden. It was a mass of spring flowers: fragrant sweet peas climbed up trellises, daffodils nodded their heads in the breeze, and camellias opened their faces to the sun. A stone wall divided the garden, and there was a wooden door in the middle. I walked across the lawn and went through this, and it was like stepping into another world.

  I stopped, staring, unable to believe my eyes, for there in a little clearing sat a small summerhouse, a tiny little cottage no bigger than my bedroom in Mayfair. It had a rounded wooden door with wrought-iron hinges, three large windows framed in flower boxes, and a sweet little porch. Clematis vine blooming with purple flowers as wide as my palm crawled over the roof. I could imagine Little Red Riding Hood popping out at any moment, with her basket over her arm.

  I stepped up onto the porch and turned the door’s iron handle. I expected it to be locked, but it swung open easily. Inside, the summerhouse was empty save for a couple of wooden chairs and a desk, but the walls and floor were lined with polished wood. Best of all, the room was flooded with north light.

  I could not believe it. It would make the perfect atelier. Mentally, I began to fill it: a model’s dais could go there, just under that north-facing window, my easel just in front of it, in the middle of the room. And by the door, a table where I could place my brushes and paints and such.

  And then I realized that I didn’t have to wait. The house was ours and there was nothing to stop me from drawing Will here. All I needed was a key.

  I heard the door creak open, and I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned and Edmund was there. He pulled me to him and kissed me. And any lingering feelings of doubt I had about the engagement were gone.

  Twenty-Two

  The summerhouse, Chelsea,

  Thursday, fifteenth of April

  ON THE FIFTEENTH of April, the Thursday after Easter, I met Will, as usual, at the Royal Academy on time, as I was now a veteran Underground traveler. I held up my key ring. “I have a place for us to work in private in Chelsea,” I said.

  “Blimey,” he said. “How did you manage that?”

  “It’s um . . . a friend’s,” I said. “He’s away right now, so we’ll have it all to ourselves for a fortnight.”

  Will held out his arm. “Well, then, let’s go.” We headed off to the Underground and made our way to Chelsea. It was a short walk from the station to the house. Once inside the summerhouse, I pulled the door shut quickly. I didn’t think the caretaker was about, as I’d had a quick look in the windows when we went past the house, but I wasn’t taking the chance.

  “It’s so peaceful,” Will said. “Lucky whatsit. What luck to have such a place. This is bigger than my entire flat.”

  Will helped me pull the desk and chairs into the middle of the room. “Let’s get to work on your project first, and then we’ll do mine,” I said. My first project in my own atelier, I thought with pleasure, looking around the room.

  Will worked on writing his next episode, while I finished my latest illustration. “Dash it. Will, I drew a mustache on Hoode and he doesn’t have one.” I looked for my kneaded eraser in my pencil box to fix a mistake, but it wasn’t there. “My satchel is by you. Can you see if my eraser is in it? Not the square one; the one I squish up.” I studied the picture as Will rummaged through my art satchel.

  “I was thinking when you draw him at Spitalfields to hand round the money to the silk weavers, he should definitely . . .” Will’s voice trailed off.

  “Definitely what?” I added a touch more shading to the church steeple. “Definitely what, Will?”

  I looked up and saw Will holding my satchel in one hand, a bit of paper in the other, and it was this he stared at, his mouth open, a look of shock on his face. Shock and something else.

  It was Bertram’s drawing of me he held. I could feel a hot flush spread up my throat as Will studied the drawing of my naked body.

  “Is this you, Vicky?” he whispered.

  “You know it is! Stop staring at it like that!” My chair screeched on the wooden floor as I stood up. I snatched the drawing from his hand and held it tight against my side in the folds of my skirt.

  “It’s beautiful . . . the drawing, I mean. He’s . . . talented.” Will cleared his throat. He seemed to be nervous, which made no sense. After all, it was my naked self he’d stared at. “Is this why you had to leave France? Because you let them draw you without your clothes on?”

  I couldn’t bring myself to speak. I was nearly breathless with fear. If Will judged me like other people had, I would run mad.

  But the expression on Will’s face was not one of judgment; instead he looked as though he was trying to understand, so I began to tell him what had happened, haltingly at first, but then I let the story come out. “At first I was just taking lessons at the art school; I didn’t pose. But the other artists posed nude from time to time if there was no model, and so one day I did too. But a girl from finishing school tattled, and I was expelled. I would do it again, even though people judge me for having done it. I see no reason why I should ask anyone else to do something I’m not prepared to do.”

  Will was quiet then. He seemed lost in thought. “That’s fair enough,” he said at last. “If other people are brave enough to get their kit off for art, then you should be too.”

  And then he reached a hand over his shoulder and pulled his jersey over his head.

  I took a step back. “What are you doing?”

  “If you are brave enough, then I should be too.” His voice was muffled from inside his shirt. His head emerged, his hair mussed up.

  “Are you certain you want to do this?”

  He tossed his jersey onto the floor.

  I watched him unlace his boots, kick them off. Then he pulled his undershirt off. It was
nothing like watching the other artists disrobe. They tended to make it funny so that the humor dispelled any tension. It felt different with Will. I had studied the other models with an artist’s scrutiny. But with Will, I longed to see him without his clothes. If I was honest, I’d admit I’d even imagined him without his clothes on before. Would he look like the other nude men I’d seen?

  He was down to his drawers now. Without even pausing, he hitched his thumbs in the waistband. I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment, and then I slowly opened them.

  My hand unclenched, and Bertram’s drawing fluttered to the floor.

  Will was Michelangelo’s David, as I had imagined him from the first moment I saw him. Like David, Will was finely made, long and lean, with well-sculpted warrior’s muscles. I kept my eyes to his chest, not wanting him to catch me looking elsewhere. I tried to calm my nerves, but it was to no avail. A life-drawing session is always professional, never risqué, I reminded myself. But my emotions took no notice.

  Will watched me warily.

  I took a deep breath; let it out. “Do you mind if I touch you?” I asked.

  “Eh?” he said, confusion in his eyes.

  I gestured with my hands. “To pose you.” I hoped he didn’t hear the quaver in my voice.

  He made a slight shake of his head as if he didn’t quite trust himself to move.

  I laid my hand on his left shoulder; his skin felt warm, his muscles firm under my hand. “Put your weight in your right leg and relax the left. It’s called contrapposto, a classic standing heroic pose.” I bent his arm and held it to his shoulder, shaping his fingers into a cup as if they were holding a sling. I turned his chin with the tips of my fingers so that his gaze was just over his shoulder. “You’re Michelangelo’s David, looking defiantly toward his enemy.”

  I chose a conté crayon, turned my sketchbook to a fresh page, and sat down and began to sketch.

  Will did not budge. It was as though he didn’t dare. I could barely see his chest moving as he breathed. The pastel I had chosen was a rustic bronze color, and it lit his figure with a burnished glow that seemed from another time. He was no longer Will. He’d become my muse once more. The desire to touch him turned into the desire to draw him. We were artist and model again. I was so inspired it was as though Michelangelo himself guided my fingers, and I fell into the dreamlike state that happened when art took me in this way. And nothing mattered anymore.