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Sam joined her rueful laughter. It really was an embarrassing memory. He never quite knew why he’d gone to see her. “There I was, shoe buckles sparkling, Nile medal gleaming on my chest, dressed for a king’s levee and standing in line at your door with a dozen other hopeful chaps clamoring to be allowed in. Finally, when that damned fearsome beast of yours let me enter-”
“Smeaton. He’s very protective. But when he said there was a Lieutenant Samuel Pellow who wished to see me-well, my heart leapt a little at the thought of seeing you again. I convinced Smeaton to let you in, though he would have preferred to toss you down the front steps, thinking a mere lieutenant beneath my notice. But I longed to see you, despite our less than friendly encounter years before, and asked to have you shown in to my private sitting room.”
“My fellow supplicants at the front door were green with envy when that hatchet-faced butler led me inside. And I followed him past rooms filled with well-dressed gents who I knew in my gut, though I did not know any of them by sight, were some of the highest men in the realm. Beautiful girls in dresses that left little to the imagination sat with them in animated conversation, or more. When I happened to see Admiral Blackwood with a plump little blonde on his lap, I almost turned and bolted. I didn’t like to think of you in such surroundings, but it was in fact what I’d come to see. To reassure myself that you had turned out badly and I was better off with my Sarah.
“But then there you were, ensconced on a chaise like an odalisque, looking beautiful and sophisticated and far above my touch. Your Smeaton was right about that. I had come to gloat, and yet words dried up in my throat and I did not know what to say.”
“Your first blurted words, as I recall, were: ‘I am married and have a son.’”
Sam groaned. “I can’t imagine what you must have thought of me, the perfect idiot. I was no longer a callow youth, and ought to have had more finesse. Better yet, I ought to have stayed away. But I had come to gloat, after all, so I just launched into my speech without preamble.”
“And I accused you of coming there to be unfaithful to that wife I’d just learned about. I can’t imagine what you must have thought of me, saying such a hateful thing as that.”
“We both drew our lines in the sand that day,” Sam said, “establishing clearly who we were and the very different lives we led. You knew exactly what you were doing, Willie, establishing boundaries between us. I figured that out much later, and realized that you were a wiser person than I’d ever be. And despite pretending to despise your life, I found I admired you.” And even still loved her a little.
“Did you, Sam? Oh, I am so glad you told me. It means a lot to know you haven’t been hating me all these years.”
No, he hadn’t hated her. Never that. Sam had seen Wilhelmina casually a few more times after that meeting at her salon in ’99. Whenever he came up to London to visit the Admiralty or take care of other business, he always heard of her and sometimes ran into her at a social function. Once, after he’d exchanged a few polite words with her at a rout party, several of his fellow officers teased him, wondering why he never mentioned that he knew the infamous Wilhelmina Grant and wanting to know all about her. He skirted their questions and said little. He kept to himself the fact that he’d never known the great courtesan, but had once loved the blacksmith’s daughter.
“I could never hate you, my girl.” He kissed her hand again, and she gave him a smile that shot right through to his vitals. It emboldened him and, without thinking or giving himself time to change his mind, he bent his head and kissed her on the mouth. It was a simple kiss, nothing elaborate, but the sensation of his lips on hers, on the lips of the girl he’d loved, finally, after all these years, was filled with a sweet poignancy that made him feel young again.
He put his arms around her and deepened the kiss. Her lips parted beneath his, and he savored the strangely familiar warmth of her mouth. When he lifted his head, she looked at him with eyes wide with wonder. Had she, too, been momentarily transported back more than twenty years?
He trailed a knuckle along her jaw. “Never think that I have hated you, Willie. You will always be special to me. My first love.”
“You have surprised me, Sam.”
“By kissing you?” He smiled. “Let’s just say it was for old times’ sake.”
“For old times.” She moved out of his arms. “Thank you, Sam. You have relieved my mind. I did think you had hated me. I never thought you would be able to get beyond the life I led, to forget who I’d become.”
“Oh, I never forgot,” he said, shooting her a grin. “How could I when your every move was reported? I heard rumors…”
She sighed and scooted farther away on the bench. “I have no doubt of it.”
“It was said that even the Prince of Wales-”
She rolled her eyes. “I have been the object of rumor and gossip since I was sixteen. I long ago stopped listening. Or commenting. I am quite certain that many of the rumors you heard are true. Or based on truth. But I am equally certain that just as many of them are pure invention. People love to spread tales of women like me, whether they are true or not. You may choose to believe what you want, Sam. I will not go down a list with you and say yes to this one and no to that one.”
“Fair enough. It is none of my business, in any case.”
“Because of what we once meant to each other, I will tell you about two of the men in my life. The two men who changed my life.”
“Really, my girl, you need not tell me anything.”
She dismissed his concern with a wave of her hand. “No, I want to. But I will only tell you of two men and no more. The first was James Benedict, who was touring the West Country coast when he found his way to Porthruan in ’89, shortly after you went missing. He was a member of the Royal Academy and had come to paint the sea and the cliffs and the Cornish sunlight. He always said we had our own special kind of light in Cornwall.”
“Pixie light.”
“That’s what I told him. He always painted outside, even when he painted people. Whether portraits or allegorical paintings, he most liked to paint faces, and he took a liking to mine.”
“How could he not?”
Willie smiled at his flattery, then continued. “He paid me to pose for him, and he did a series of classical allegories where I was depicted as each of the nine Muses as well as various goddesses. It was easy work and I liked having my own money, which I tucked away without telling Mama. But most of all, James was kind to me at the lowest point of my young life. I was heartbroken and adrift, having lost all purpose when I lost you.”
She paused and took a slow, deep breath before she went on. A frown puckered her brow. “Mama found out about the posing, of course, and raised the roof. She railed and railed against my sinful ways. Papa seemed more sympathetic at first, but he was never a match for Mama’s temper, or her Methodist morality, so he did not fight her when she cast me out.”
“She really threw you out of the house?”
“Yes. A girl who posed for pictures, even with all her clothes on, had no place in the pious Jepp household. I went crying to James, and he said he’d take care of me. I was to return to London with him where he would make a proper artist’s model of me. I jumped at the chance to escape Porthruan Cove, which had too many memories of you. So I went to London, and my life changed forever. Even my name changed. I became Wilhelmina Grant. James’s paintings of me drew a lot of praise for his talent, as well as a great deal of attention to me. Suddenly I was an object of interest for many gentlemen, several of them members of the nobility.”
Sam knew those paintings well. One in particular, he knew very well indeed. “I saw some of Benedict’s paintings when I first came to London to find you, back in ’94. They were beautiful. You were as luminous as moonlight on a dark sea.”