Reckless in Red

by Rachael Miles

  Books by Rachael Miles

  Reckless in Red

  Tempting the Earl

  Chasing the Heiress

  Jilting the Duke

  Novellas

  Charming Ophelia

  Enchanting Ophelia

  Spirit of Texas in A Texas Kind of Christmas

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

  RECKLESS In RED

  RACHAEL MILES

  ZEBRA BOOKS

  KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Also by

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Epilogue

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  JILTING THE DUKE

  CHASING THE HEIRESS

  TEMPTING THE EARL

  ZEBRA BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2019 by Rachael Miles

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.

  If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the Publisher and neither the Author nor the Publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  Zebra and the Z logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  ISBN: 978-1-4201-4656-1

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4201-4657-8 (eBook)

  ISBN-10: 1-4201-4657-2 (eBook)

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  No book makes its way to readers without the kindness of many people. My agent, Courtney Miller-Callihan at Handspun Literary, never fails to offer smart direction and good sense. At Kensington, I remain grateful for Janice Rossi’s cover design, Anthony Russo’s illustration of it, Lynda Curnyn’s cover blurb, and Jane Nutter’s helpful promotions and advice—but most of all, for my generous and talented editor, Esi Sogah, who didn’t immediately object when I told her the next romance included exploding cemeteries and grave robbers. I appreciate as well Erin Bistline, Lynn Rushton, Michelle Carlin, and Ingrid Powell for attentive readings of this novel—and Brandon Shuler, Catherine Blackwell, Keisha Mackenzie, Coretta Pittman, and Marianne Hassan for helpful commentary on the novella Spirit of Texas (they should have been acknowledged there!). To my nephew, whose name I have stolen, and to my mother, Mary, who never fails to have words I could use.

  For technical guidance, I am indebted to Lynn Rushton, Public Art Collection and Conservation Manager at the City of Dallas’s Office of Cultural Affairs, for describing the materials and techniques early nineteenth-century painters would have used to create frescos and other works of art, and to Gordon Jones, Senior Military Historian at the Atlanta History Center, for providing information about the physical construction of giant panoramic paintings or cycloramas.

  As always, my deepest thanks to Miles, who reads everything with love.

  Chapter One

  Winter 1820

  “That damned swindler.”

  From the office door of Calder and Company, Lena Frost could see the key, left precisely in the middle of the empty desktop. Everything else was gone: Horatio’s inkwell, his penknife, his little toys, even the carved bird he’d been toying with for the last several weeks. She knew what it meant: Horatio had left. For good.

  But did he take the money? She snatched up the key as she rounded the desk. Perhaps he’d left it—or at least enough to pay the remaining craftsmen and open the exhibition. Perhaps: the word felt hollow.

  Five of the six desk drawers stuck out several inches. Horatio had left in haste. She looked through the drawers, now a jumble. Unused correspondence paper in a variety of sizes. An assortment of bills, paid—because she had paid them—to the end of the quarter. A handful of artist’s crayons, almost used up. She picked up the sanguine pencil, its tip a ruddy red against her hand, then tossed it back into the drawer. Horatio was a talented artist, but his real skill was with words, most of them lies.

  Nothing in the drawers was of any importance.

  Only the drawer where she kept the money box was still shut. If the money was gone, her only hope would be to keep it quiet until she could open the exhibition. Subscribers had paid in advance to see what everyone was calling the most important art exhibition of the year. If she didn’t open, she’d have to refund their money. If she could make it two more weeks . . .

  She hesitated before turning the key, torn between needing to know and dreading the knowledge.

  No. Whatever is here—or isn’t—I will face it, as I always have. She turned the key. The drawer opened about four inches, then stuck. Hope bloomed for a moment. Perhaps the money box was still there, wedging the drawer in place, its banknotes and coin all still neatly arranged in divided trays. She pushed the drawer in, then tugged it out. But nothing would make it open wider.

  She slid her hand in flat; there wasn’t room to make a fist. Then she inched her fingers forward. She felt nothing but the wooden bottom of the drawer. When she reached the halfway point, her stomach turned sour. The box was gone. But she kept reaching, needing to know the drawer was empty before she let herself sink into the despair already pooling inside her.

  At the very back of the drawer, almost past her reach, her fingertips felt the edge of a thick piece of paper. A banknote? Perhaps he had left her enough to open the exhibition? Or at least to pay her rent? Pressing the tips of her fingers against the paper, she dragged it forward and out. The note was folded over twice, and she hesitated a moment, afraid of what it might tell her.

  The paper was fine, well made, one of the sheets she used to correspond with wealthy patrons and subscribers. That in itself was strange: Horatio normally wrote on paper with a large watermark of Britannia in the middle of the page. He’d play a game with the ghost image, positioning his salutation so that Britannia would look at the name of the addressee or so that her spear would intersect with his period to make an invisible exclamation at the end of his sentences. Lena had shaken her head at his games, finding it hard to remain angry or frustrated with him. But if he’d endangered the exhibition, she might remain angry with him forever.

  Tightening her jaw, she unfolded the page. In the center, Horatio had lettered a single word: “RUN.”

  The despair in her stomach turned instantly to an unreasoning fear. Every creak, every groan of the old building sounded like a warning. Run.

  She pushed the drawe
r closed, locked it, and replaced the key in the center of the desktop.

  Surveying the room, she tried to imagine where Horatio might have hidden the money box. But, other than the desk, two chairs, and the old engravings stuck with pins to the walls, the room was almost empty. Everything was just as it had been for the last two years, except the money was gone, and Horatio with it.

  All he’d left her was the note. She held it out, examining the way Horatio’s R curved oddly beneath the bottom of the U, and the final stroke of the N trailed upward. An extra blotch of ink widened the line slightly before the tip, like the hand of a clock. She held the page up to the light. No watermark, no secret design that played with the letters.

  She stood, her arms wrapped around her chest, the note limp in one hand. She’d never expected him to betray her, to leave her with no way out but to run. All her energy, her passion, drained out onto the wooden floor and seeped away between the boards. The exhibition would fail. She would fail. And this time she had nowhere to . . . run. She traced the malformed letters of the note once more, then she crushed it against her palm and shoved it in her pocket.

  From the outer office, the hallway door creaked open. When Horatio’d said run, she had no idea he meant so soon. Suddenly afraid, she scanned the room. The inner office door was partly open. The drop from the window to the street was three stories. She had nowhere to hide, and only seconds to make a decision.

  Heavy footfalls approached. Though the crew and the ticket seller had left soon after she’d returned, the office door remained open to prospective subscribers until she or Horatio left for the evening. But should the intruder be dangerous, she would have no help. She looked down at her clothes, her best dress and coat worn to meet a publisher who’d agreed to sell engraved prints of the panorama. With only a moment to imagine a plan, she flung herself into a chair before the desk. Her only hope was to pretend to be someone else.

  A tall man, strongly built, pushed the door open. Standing in the doorway, he seemed like one of the statues from the Loggia dei Lanzi come to life. And he was beautiful. His clothes caressed his form, revealing powerful shoulders, narrow waist, and firmly muscled thighs. His black hair curled in thick waves like Benvenuto Cellini’s Perseus. In Florence, she’d marveled at the sculptures of the classical gods, their muscles detailed in marble or bronze. But she’d never realized how breathtaking it would be for those ancient heroes to come to life.

  He examined the room slowly before he turned his attention to her. And when his eyes met hers, it was both exhilarating—and terrifying.

  “Are you Mr. Calder? I wanted to subscribe to the exhibition in your Rotunda.” She kept her tone breathless and a little naive. “I saw a panorama once when I was a child—the Temples of Greece—and I’ve never forgotten it, how you could stand in the middle and feel as if you had been transported to a different place and time.” She spoke quickly, letting her words jumble together in a rush of enthusiasm. “I’m looking forward to seeing your painting. I’ve read all the clues you’ve advertised for deciphering the topic. I think it must be Waterloo. What else could be painted in such a grand scale? How hard must it be to paint all those figures—the horses, the flags, our men marching valiantly into battle? It must be such a glorious scene!”

  “Don’t forget the carrion birds and the jackals ripping apart the bodies of the dead.” His voice was stern, but the sound of it resonated down the line of her spine. “Or the bodies broken apart by the cannon or the bayonet.”

  “Well, sir!” She rose, feigning offense. “If you treat a prospective subscriber so rudely, I will spend my sixpence elsewhere.” She walked briskly toward the door. When he didn’t move out of her way, she stopped just out of his reach.

  He was considering her carefully, examining her clothes and her figure beneath them. Under the focused attention, Lena felt exposed, like a rabbit who’d encountered a hungry hawk.

  Refusing to be intimidated, she examined him in turn. His eyes were a cold green, his chin firm. His cravat, tied loosely around his neck, made her wish it was tied even more loosely. Her fingers itched for her sketchbook and pencil. Oh, that he would be just another would-be subscriber! Then—perhaps—she could convince him to sit for her. She pushed the thoughts away. He might be handsome, even devastatingly so, but if he were Horatio’s enemy, he would likely be hers as well.

  He remained in the doorway, and his stare intensified. She felt the heat of it along her neck and cheeks. Her stomach twisted, but whether in attraction or fear, she couldn’t be certain. The silence between them grew, and Horatio’s message echoed in her ears: Run.

  “Will you at least be a gentleman and remove yourself from the doorway?” She pulled her shoulders back, as she did with suppliers who wished to take their fee from Horatio instead of from her.

  For a moment, he looked abashed, as if he hadn’t considered that his behavior was ungentlemanly.

  “It appears we both have business with Calder, and we are both disappointed.” He stepped away from the doorway, giving her ample room to escape.

  Then, as she passed, he offered her a low bow, as if she were a princess or queen. She felt his stare on her back as she walked purposefully, but not too quickly, to the outer office door. She refused to look back at him, afraid to reveal her fear—or her interest.

  When she reached the outer door, she allowed herself one last look at her Greek-god-come-to-life, but he had already moved into the office and out of sight. She stepped into the hall, listening. A subscriber likely wouldn’t wait too long for Horatio to return.

  She heard the desk drawers open and close, and papers rustle. Not a subscriber then, and her disappointment felt like a rock in the pit of her belly. She waited another minute, but when she heard him wrestling with the stuck drawer, she finally took Horatio’s advice. She ran.

  Hurrying down the two flights of stairs, she found the ticket office door standing open, and she ran through it without stopping. Her fear tasted like metal on her tongue.

  In the narrow alleyway leading to Leicester Square, she kept to the deepest of the shadows, grateful that Horatio had refused to paint the building walls a bright, inviting color. “No, my dear”—Horatio had gestured dramatically—“our visitors must walk through the shadow of the towering Rotunda and down our dimly lit hallway. That way, when the door opens into the vast space of the panorama, they will feel as if they have stepped into a different world!”

  Ahead of her, crowds of fashionable men and women jostled past. Leicester Square catered to the needs of the wealthy. Those with ready money or easy credit found a range of luxuries: from silks, laces, and furs, corsets and trusses, real ostrich feathers and artificial flowers, to wine, imported carpets, specially made fancy trim for the drawing room, and guns for hunting in the country and duels in the city.

  She flung herself gratefully into the crowds. In her best clothes, she looked like one of the less-well-to-do shoppers.

  The crush of bodies carried her along into the square. A stream of curricles and coaches pressed slowly forward, windows open, allowing their occupants to see and be seen. To her left, a lone sedan chair lurched slowly down the square, its occupant, an elderly lady in the height of fashion, waving directions with her fan. Lena hid behind it, following until she reached the opposite side of the square, then cutting through until she reached the intersection of Princes Street with Coventry.

  There she hesitated. The coaches pushed forward too fast. Usually, she waited patiently for a break in the traffic, thinking of her paints and images. But this time, she inched forward, muscles tensed and ready, as if for the start of a race.

  If she could reach her boardinghouse at Golden Square, she would be safe, or safe enough. Her landlady, for all her lace and ribbons, took after the troll in the old Norse story: no one could pass without paying a toll.

  She looked over her shoulder, watching for the broad shoulders and the curling hair of her David come alive. How long would it take him to realize her decepti
on and come looking for her? Was he already wending his way behind her, following her steps, as he pushed his way through the crowd?

  The crowd concealed her escape, but it also concealed any pursuit.

  She waited, tapping one foot unconsciously until the brown-haired street urchin beside her looked up at her speculatively. She was attracting attention. She needed to move, but to where?

  She knew this part of London well. The side streets, the alleys, the apparent dead ends. She even knew which cemeteries she could cut through and not end up a corpse herself. But all her options required her to cross this street—or return the way she had come.

  She looked over her shoulder again. Horatio’s boardinghouse was nearby on Gerrard Street. Perhaps he would be there, nursing his sorrows in a bottle of gin, hoping to avoid admitting that he’d taken the money to appease this or that gambling debt—or spent it entertaining one of the craftsmen who applied to work on the Rotunda. He had to be in distress, or he wouldn’t have taken the money, not when he knew how much it was needed to open the panorama.

  If Horatio were in residence, the doorman would let her into the drawing room. The house was filled with male artists and often with their female models, so, once inside, no one would notice if she slipped up the stairs, and if they did, no one would care. She’d often had to come drag Horatio to this or that meeting. He wanted to be famous—Horatio Calder, impresario of the Rotunda—and she’d made him earn the name. But what if Horatio wasn’t home? What if he were hiding out somewhere from whatever danger he thought he should warn her about? Then she would be left standing on his porch, visible to any who were searching for him.