“He can be a little rascal, miss, but I don’t mind that. I can steer him in the right direction, just like I did the duke, many years ago.”
Eugenie had looked at him in surprise. “Have you known the duke that long, Robert?”
“Yes, miss, since he was a little nipper.”
“I always think of him as the perfectly behaved child.”
Robert had eyed her cautiously. “Well . . . I can say he weren’t no angel, miss. They sent him off to school and he hated that, but I suppose every boy in his high position has to bear the bad with the good. Then he got that painting lark into his head . . .”
“What painting lark?”
Again Robert considered his words. “I could be speaking out of turn here, miss.”
“I promise I won’t repeat anything you say, Robert.”
He nodded, accepting her at her word. “He wanted to be an artist, miss. A painter. You can imagine how well that went down with the duchess, as she was then. If he’d gambled his inheritance away on the cards they would have been upset, but at least that was what gentlemen do. Artists, according to the duchess, are Bohemians, not respectable at all. She made sure the tutor who’d en
couraged him was sent packing and Sinclair was told to pack up his paints and never put brush to canvas again, unless he wanted to be disowned.”
Eugenie felt herself trembling with righteous anger on Sinclair’s behalf.
Robert saw her feelings clearly enough and tried to sooth them. “He recovered,” he assured her. “Went on to find other hobbies, more fitting for a gentleman.”
“Well, they have certainly done a good job of turning him into the perfect duke,” she said. “More’s the shame.”
Robert’s eyes sparkled. “Don’t you believe it, miss. He still has his days . . . and nights, when he’s off painting away. No one to stop him now, see. He hasn’t changed that much, not underneath.”
Sinclair the Bohemian? Eugenie tried to imagine what sort of pictures he’d painted. They must have been risqué if they caused such consternation in his family. Perhaps, if she asked him nicely, he would paint her?
She thought she’d like that.
She’d like it very much.
Chapter 29
Sinclair had spent the morning riding one of his uncle’s horses, enjoying the exercise after being cooped up in the coach for so long. As he took a shortcut past the formal garden back to the stables, he noticed Eugenie walking there with a young man.
Their heads were bent close together and they seemed so intent on each other that neither looked up at his passing.
“That is young Nicholas,” his uncle said, when Sinclair asked him. “His father farms a good deal of land he leases from me. Nicholas will take over one day. They are a respectable family, well off, too.”
Sinclair found himself uncomfortable with the notion of “Young Nicholas” walking in the garden alone with Eugenie, and said so.
“Good God, nephew, are you suddenly becoming all namby-pamby? After you’ve been racketing about the countryside with the girl?”
“That’s different.”
“I don’t see why. Young Nicholas seems to have developed quite an interest in Miss Belmont.” He fixed Sinclair with a serious look. “You’ve said yourself that she’s rejected your less than respectable offer.”
“It was a perfectly respectable offer! Well,” he muttered, “you know what I mean.”
“Oh I know what you mean, dear boy! Swish apartment and all that. Strange she rejected you.” His eyes twinkled. “And of course you can’t marry her, can you? So what’s left for the poor girl? You should be thinking of getting her comfortably settled. I think you could do a lot worse than to put her in the way of Nicholas and see what transpires.”
Sinclair found he did not wish to see Eugenie comfortably settled. All very well for his uncle to place the practical solution before him but Sinclair was not feeling practical.
Not where Eugenie was concerned.
Eugenie was surprised to see Sinclair in his riding clothes striding toward her through the perennial borders. Mr. Fenton had just left her after a lengthy conversation about the butcher’s daughter and how he longed to marry her, if only his family would come round to the idea. Eugenie wasn’t surprised to be the recipient of a discussion of Nicholas Fenton’s personal problems; it was something that happened to her often.