Chapter Text
She is so bored.
Tessa leans against an armchair, disregarding all her governess’s careful instructions that ladies do not lean in public, Miss Virtue, it gives off the impression of slovenliness, and sips slowly from the champagne flute held between two gloved fingers. Somebody brought it to her a few minutes ago...a navy officer or an ambassador’s aide or someone vaguely important but not important enough for her to remember. She’s quite sure that she smiled pleasantly and murmured thank you with just enough huskiness to her voice to make the young man blush and stammer a bit, dipped her lashes just so and contrived to produce an air of worldly innocence that would have pleased His Majesty himself, were that august personage in attendance.
It doesn’t matter who it was, the reaction would have been the same. The reaction is always the same. The smile, the glint of interest in his eyes, the offer to dance. If she accepted the offer, the tedious circuit around the ballroom while the exact same conversational topics were bandied about - the weather, the latest play at the Delphi or the Apollo or the Globe, the symphony concert two nights before, and (if the gentlemen were of a political bent), whether or not the French colonial issue was going to make travel up and down the Nile difficult during the summer. She would then be asked for another dance, and another, and after the third dance, the odds would increase exponentially that the gentleman would then beg to whisk her away to the conservatory. Under cover of its warm, humid darkness, he would then endeavour to steal a kiss, and if allowed such a liberty, would proceed to become more and more familiar until she had to decide whether or not she could risk being found with a hand up her skirt next to the Duchess of Marlborough’s prized orange bushes.
She sighs. It’s all so deadly dull, she muses, the same gentlemen, the same three waltzes at every single ball and soirée, the same kisses, the same ardent fumbling. If she could find one man, just one man in all of London society, who knew how to make her shiver with desire, who would tease and torment her and leave her aching with unspent passion, she swears to herself that she’d fall at his feet in paroxysms of gratitude. But they’re all so predictable, so ridiculously eager, so tentative, as if the embraces of a viscount’s daughter are some rare and impossibly fragile thing.
She knows this is ridiculous. She’s heard the gossip at innumerable teas and garden parties. She knows full well that even the supposedly untouched virgins of the peerage are far from innocent, particularly those who, like herself, have made it past 20 without marching to the altar. And yet, here she is, bored to tears, sipping champagne alone, wondering if it’s too early to slip away and call for her father’s carriage and go home. There’s a particularly erotic novel waiting for her under her mattress, hidden from her mother’s prying eyes, and she envisions a long hot bath with lavender oil and the ever-increasing wicked behaviour of the French count, who is currently lying in wait for the innocent yet passionate Mariette with plans to very thoroughly seduce her. Tessa cannot wait.
Flicking a careful glance to left and right, she drains the champagne flute and slips quietly into a back hallway to find her father’s groom.
He digs his thumb into one eye socket, then the other, willing to the colours to subside.
They do not.
He rubs both eyes with the heels of his hands, blinks against the resultant shower of sparks, and then opens them again. Nothing has changed. His canvas is still a wash of hazy green.
He sighs and tilts his head back until he can see his ceiling, which thankfully is not green. It’s the same as always, the dark brown of smoke-stained beams and the warped lighter brown of plaster higher above, interspersed with the dark rectangles of the skylights that are the reason he wanted this tiny, cold apartment in the first place. He shivers and makes a mental note to talk to Mrs. Giroux about the draft again, even though he doesn’t really expect her to do anything about it. Mrs. Giroux is not fond of doing anything for her tenants that involves spending extra money, particularly those tenants poor enough or unfortunate enough to inhabit the three garret rooms.
Scott is one of those tenants. He has been for three years, ever since he came down on the train from Edinburgh with all his earthly possessions in a single cracked leather suitcase and a stack of canvases held under his arm. He was bound and determined to make it big in the City, to become the next sensation of the London art world. He was young and brilliant and afire with love of Art and Beauty and Truth, and he was absolutely going to make his mark on the universe as a whole.
Thus far all he’s managed to do is eke out a meagre living painting signs for local merchants and advertisements for the pub down the street, augmented by a few portraits here and there. Despite what he writes in his letters home to his mother, none of the portraits have been of anybody even remotely important - a grocer’s wife, a spoiled young viscount’s mistress, a wine merchant’s mother. It paid the bills, to be sure, let him get a new pair of boots and a coat that wasn’t completely threadbare, but he certainly isn’t seeing his work in the National Gallery. Not at this rate.
That’s all about to change, though. Slowly, he pulls a calling card out of his back pocket and runs his fingers over the heavy embossed lettering, grinning suddenly as the dim light from his gas lamp glints off the name in the middle: The Right Honble. The Earl of Strafford. He still can hardly believe it. James A. Virtue, the Earl of Strafford himself, wants to meet him tomorrow afternoon at his townhouse in St. George’s Square to discuss having his youngest daughter sit for a portrait.
Earl of Strafford. St. George’s Square. It runs round and round in a loop in his brain, over and over again like a children’s nonsense rhyme. He glances surreptitiously towards his canvas and is relieved to see the hazy green almost entirely gone, orange sparking blithely at the edges instead. He has a commission. An actual commission. His mother is going to be so proud.
Scott sits up straight all of a sudden, though, not letting himself get distracted by the dancing orange. This is tomorrow. He has to be ready , has to make sure that he has samples of his work to show the earl, has to make sure his best (his only) good suit is clean and pressed, and he really probably should clean and shine his shoes, because he tramped through at least two miles of London muck and mire and his good boots won’t even be allowed inside the vestibule of the earl’s townhouse at this rate.
Underneath it all, though, thrums a delighted anticipation that rises bright and fizzy through him, like bubbles in a glass of good champagne - this is his chance. This is what he’s been waiting and working for, three long years’ worth of barely getting by for this one moment, this single opportunity. He can do it. He knows he can do it.
He just needs to impress the earl and his daughter, and from then on it’s a piece of cake.