Reckless in Red

by Rachael Miles

  No, her rooms were best. She clenched her hands and watched the traffic. A nearby man hailed an approaching hackney. It slowed to collect him, and she took her chance, weaving her way between coaches, carts, and wagons until she reached the opposite side. She followed the streets almost mechanically, and at each street she checked behind her, praying she had escaped.

  At her boardinghouse, she would slip through the basement door and up the back staircase, trying to avoid her landlady, Mrs. Abbott, who would expect next week’s rent. Once in her rooms, she would lock her door, stoke a small fire, drink a cup of tea, and wait until morning. Then she would return to the Rotunda, give the men their day’s directions, and plan how she might still open the exhibition without any funds.

  It was strange to long for the safety of her rooms when for months she’d wanted other lodgings. When she’d leased the Rotunda, she’d planned to live in one of the empty rooms above the ticket office, but Horatio had objected strongly. “It’s not seemly, Lena-girl. You living there, and all those men in and out of the building. If rumors were to circulate, we’d lose our subscribers in a flash.” Horatio had snapped his fingers, then smiled, knowing nothing mattered more to her than the exhibition.

  With each street, each turn, she made it closer to home. She kept to the middle of the crowds, letting the pace carry her along. When one group of pedestrians thinned, she rushed forward to the next, her progress measured in the fits and starts of a hundred shoppers and vendors.

  Eventually she turned north, away from the safety of the crowds at Piccadilly and Haymarket. The streets narrowed, sporting less fashionable but more useful shops. She could map her progress down the streets by how each shop smelled. Ink and paper led to saddle leather, and burnished wood to varnish, until she reached the end of Great Windmill Street where the hint of stale blood signaled the surgeon, and sweet rushes and rosemary, the undertaker. At night, when the gaslights were dim, she often traveled the last blocks more by her nose than by her sight. She checked off the streets on her mental map, feeling safer with each block she passed, until she reached the chemical smells of Silver Street, with its soap makers, haberdashers, wood and furniture dealers.

  When the thick, earthy fragrance of chocolate met her at the northwest corner of Golden Square, she was almost home. The grocer there—a jovial Mr. Krause—had expanded his business to include a chocolate shop. Just one more street, and she’d be safe in her rooms.

  Safe.

  She stopped short. The crowd pushed and jostled her before splitting on either side, as if she were a rock in a stream. When she’d hurried out of the Rotunda, she hadn’t been thinking about a plan or the implications of Horatio’s note. She’d simply run, as Horatio had instructed. But he likely didn’t mean to her boarding house.

  Stepping into the doorway of Krause’s shop, she scanned the crowd. Surely, her intruder hadn’t followed her so far? Needing to think—and hide—she stepped into the shop itself, never taking her eyes off the road. From inside the shop, the proprietor, Mrs. Krause, a ruddy German woman with bright eyes, called her name and motioned her to find a seat. Lena complied. She chose a single seat in the back corner against the wall. From there, she could watch the door and the street, and if the need arose, she could escape through the kitchen into the alley.

  A few moments later, Mrs. Krause delivered a cup of steaming chocolate. “Ah, Miss Lena, we haven’t seen you at all this week! When Mr. Calder traded Herr Krause tickets to your grand gala in exchange for a weekly cup of chocolate, I thought it was a bad trade. But my Pieter has been practicing his waltz for weeks. He comes into a room and dances with me like the old times. And that, my dear, is worth everything. We are going to be the best dancers at your opening, you will see!”

  Lena forced a smile. Mrs. Krause was kind, but her shop was well frequented. One careless word about Lena’s predicament, and the rumors would spread across fashionable London within hours. Krause patted Lena on the back as she left to serve other customers, and Lena wrapped her fingers around the warmth of the chocolate cup.

  She took a sip. Normally she would close her eyes and focus on the thick, warm silk of the chocolate. But not today. Though the chocolate felt soothing and warm, she wondered how much it would cost to repay the Krauses for six months of it. The gala had been Horatio’s pet idea: an exclusive party for London’s monied classes held the night before the exhibition opened, with dancing on the observation platform—and a ticket price at quadruple the regular admission. “Have no worries, Lena dearie,” he’d promised. “I will take care of every detail.” At first he had told her all his mad ideas to make the exhibition a success, from the musicians playing martial tunes from beneath the stage to the children dressed as banner bearers, who would guide the visitors down the darkened hallway to the panorama itself. But lately Horatio had been uncharacteristically silent. She’d imagined he was working on the gala and his other schemes to promote the exhibition. But what if it had been something else? What if he hadn’t been working on the gala at all? Despair pooled into a hard ball at the base of her stomach. Not only was the panorama itself unfinished, but she had no idea what remained to be done on the gala.

  Her heart pulsed hard against her ribs. She was afraid, and more so for not knowing why. Certainly, Horatio was a rascal—some might even call him a scoundrel—but he wasn’t an alarmist. If anything, Horatio underestimated risks, always finding room for a bit more mischief before he finally abandoned a scheme. But for all his tricks and games, he would never intentionally endanger her or her work. Or would he?

  And why now, of all times, just two weeks before the grand gala and the opening of the exhibition? Three years’ work, too much to lose all because of one of Horatio’s foolish schemes. She closed her eyes. If she gave the panorama up now, she’d be worse off than when she’d first arrived back in London after a decade abroad. Then, at least, she had hope and confidence and a bit of money in her pocket. No. If she left now, the panorama would fail, and her with it. She would have to reinvent herself again. The very thought of it made her almost weak with despair.

  For the first time in months, she wished she had never left France. She’d survived the war years by hiding her nationality, transforming the solid Englishness of her surname into the gliding French givre. Lena Le Givre. Lena Frost. She could still see her mentor, Vigee Le Brun, at her easel, laughing, when she’d announced the name she’d chosen.

  “But ma chère, le givre is cold, so cold. In changing one’s name, one should make a grand statement. Lena d’Or! Lena d’Argent! What man could resist a woman of gold or silver? Or perhaps you should choose a color—I am Le Brun, the brown. Look here: you could be L’Ecar-late!” Vigee had pointed to a rich red, almost scarlet, that she’d just applied to the canvas. “It matches the warmth of your spirit, the generosity of your affections. Lena L’Ecarlate!”

  Her mentor’s patron, an Austrian count who had lived in England and understood better the nuances of the language, had shaken his head. “Oh, no, my dear, our Lena is too young to be a scarlet woman.” So Lena Le Givre it was. After the success of her first salon exhibition in Paris, Lena Le Givre had become a rising star, a portrait painter capable of competing with her mentor’s own skill. Her commissions had been steady, and she had begun to build a life in France.

  Lena drank another deep draught, her mind returning—without wanting to—to the reasons she’d left France.

  For the war years, she’d hidden in plain sight, believed to be French, except by her closest circle. Then the empire fell. Almost overnight, the climate changed. Hundreds of French monarchists that Napoleon’s edicts had forced to remain in England flooded home, and the English occupation forces, once welcomed, now found themselves hissed and booed all the way to the docks by the resentful lower classes. Soon the backlash extended even to those like her who had lived in France since childhood.

  With every new report of hostility or of property seized, she’d begun to plan for the day that she too might ne
ed to leave. She’d quietly gathered letters of introduction from her dearest friends among the European aristocrats, gaining some commissions from minor English aristocrats before she’d ever left France. She’d purchased an open ticket for the English packet and sewn her jewels and money into her clothes. She even stored several trunks of her possessions in a friend’s attic. Even so, when the tide had turned against her, she’d still been caught off-guard. She’d barely had enough time to escape by the night packet, with one lone trunk and a basket of artist supplies, believing, from the number of her advance commissions, that she was already on her way to a career at least as successful as the one she was leaving behind.

  Classically trained, she was adept in a variety of methods and genres. But after her first flush of success, she found that the English were not as open to talented women as the French, and she lost commission after commission to less talented men. Her only inroads were among the gentry and wealthy merchants. The most lucrative commissions with the bon ton remained outside her grasp.

  Lena had soon decided to cast her fate on more popular tastes. And nothing—except perhaps the re-creations of Admiral Nelson’s naval battles at the water theater at Sadler’s Wells—excited the general population more than a monumental painting of a historical scene. Such works always garnered the greatest critical attention, receiving the loudest accolades at exhibitions and in galleries. In a gallery, a monumental painting might fill only a wall or ceiling. Panoramas took that scale and expanded it tenfold, with the circular painting standing as high as a building.

  Lena had told the truth when she’d confessed to her handsome burglar that she’d fallen in love with panoramas—she had seen her first in London, a depiction of the classical world, with all the architecture and temples re-created intact and the statuary in color as the ancients would have painted them. When her childhood world ended abruptly, she had spent her last penny to take refuge there, and instead of ending, her world had expanded. She’d met Vigee Le Brun, an internationally famous portrait painter, who, estranged from her own daughter, had taken Lena as her pupil. Under Le Brun, she learned how to master the little details that could transform a canvas: the delicacy of lace lying along a wrist, the gentle taper of slender fingers, the fire in a jewel or in an eye.

  After three years, her panorama was almost ready to meet the world. When she closed her eyes, she could see it all: the rounded walls of the panorama, the stage that jutted into the center where the viewers would stand, and the middle space between the canvas and the stage filled with objects that would make the viewers feel part of the scene.

  She watched the painting take shape again in her memory. On the primed white of the empty canvas, she and Horatio had sketched charcoal outlines for the shapes of the background, then landscape and perspective painters had provided the broad sweeps of the background: the valley battlefield, the hills beyond, the sky gray and brooding. Then tents, wagons, and artillery had transformed that natural landscape into a human one, where hundreds of men stood in battle formation. The animal painters had filled in the camp animals—horses, nostrils flaring at the smoke and noise, mules, oxen, chickens, and geese—alongside the animals brought by instinct to the battle—vultures, crows, ravens, and eagles, foxes, and jackals. Lena, however, had merged the sensibility of a portrait painter to the requirements of a giant story. Though she’d hired dozens of painters, she’d kept the panorama from becoming a hodgepodge of various techniques by requiring all the craftsmen to adopt a common style.

  In the last month, portrait painters had given distinctive faces to each enlisted man, minor officer, and woman. But for the faces of the major officers—on all sides—she’d wanted to be accurate, so they had taken the faces from printed engravings, other paintings, or personal knowledge.

  When some of their painters had disappeared, one after another, in the space of a week, Horatio had promised to finish the dozen or so faces that remained. But whether he had completed them or not, she wasn’t sure.

  It had been painstaking, exhausting, exhilarating work. And for what? If she abandoned the panorama now, she would have no way to repay the subscribers. Though she could hide behind H. B. Calder and Company and say that the failure was all Horatio’s, she’d still bear the blame. She, not Horatio, had written letters to the members of the aristocracy to explain their project, visiting their drawing rooms and collecting their money. She, not Horatio, had negotiated with booksellers to carry engravings of the giant painting, and in recent weeks, she, not Horatio, had ordered and paid for all their supplies. No, she might blame the invisible Horatio, but everyone knew her face. She would have no future as a painter in England, just as she no longer had one in France. And worse yet, where would she run? Even in India or New England, the failure could follow her. She forced the thoughts away, feeling the hard pulse of her blood. She wanted to hide or run, and she couldn’t do either.

  I will not be afraid. I will not be afraid. She repeated the sentence to herself.

  She forced her mind away from the thoughts, pressing the warmth of the mug against her lips. She concentrated on the rich, thick flavor, forcing her mind to what remained to be done at the Rotunda.

  If Horatio’s faces were finished, she could remove the scaffolding and begin filling the area between the painting and the observers with the sort of things one would find on the battlefield—wagons, artillery, clothing, tents, even a cannon Horatio had rented for the purpose. That middle space would give viewers the illusion that they were on a battlefield and give the right perspective to the painting itself. She felt the tightness in her chest return. Without the objects filling the middle ground, the illusion that the painting was a real scene would be lost. But how would she pay?

  She set the cup down, but too sharply, and it clattered against the saucer. The coffee-shop patrons looked at her. Careful. Careful. Don’t attract attention. She forced an apologetic smile, and they looked away.

  She made herself breathe slowly, pulling the air deep into her stomach. At least she had a little time. She paid the crews at the end of every week and her suppliers at the end of each month. The next payment to the suppliers would fall after the opening of the exhibition. As long as none of the suppliers discovered her money was gone before the opening, all could still be well. The risk lay with the news getting out, and the suppliers canceling her orders or, worse yet, taking back their wares. To avoid that, her remaining crew had to get their wages on time. Some might be willing to wait until after the opening, when new visitors would bring new revenue. But even then, one careless word could reveal the Rotunda was in financial straits, and skittish subscribers insisting on the return of their funds had ruined more than one project.

  She had only a week—maybe two—to find Horatio and get the money back. Otherwise, the panorama would be ruined, and she with it.

  She reached into her pocket for Horatio’s note and her last sixpence. She’d intended to collect her own wages when she’d met Horatio at the offices that morning. She fingered the coin without removing it from her pocket. Even if she could return to her rooms, she didn’t have enough for another week’s lodging. And Mrs. Abbott was unlikely to extend her credit.

  She examined Horatio’s note. No signature, no indication that the note was for her, but she knew it was, just as she knew Horatio had written it.

  She drank down the rest of the chocolate. The last time she’d had a cup of hot chocolate she had been telling her friend Constance about how optimistic she felt about the opening of the exhibition. The empty place where her optimism had been now felt like gall.

  But, Lena realized with relief, Constance would take her in, if only for a day or two. And Constance’s shop wasn’t too far, perhaps a mile at most. All she had to do was travel north. Her burglar didn’t seem to have followed her, but even so she would be careful. She drained the last drop and slipped quietly out the back door.

  Chapter Two

  “I had the most interesting experience not two hours ago,” Cli
ve Somerville announced to his supervisor, Joe Pasten. Somerville removed his greatcoat, hat, and gloves, and laid them across a nearby desk, almost oversetting a pile of reports.

  Joe shook his head in amusement. “How is it that your everyday clothing is purely utilitarian, but when you dress for your class, you transform into a dandy, all narrow trousers and ruffled lace?”

  “I’m expected at the Ainslie ball this evening.” Clive looked down at his suit. His high-waisted tailcoat of blue wool was decorated with velvet lapels and velvet piping at the wrists, while his gray wool trousers sported velvet stripes down the seams. Under it, he wore a sunflower-colored waistcoat, crisp white shirt, and a cravat embellished with gold medallions. “After the Sinclair trial, everyone lectured me on my lack of morals. Montclair suggested that by dressing with restraint, I made myself appear amenable to weighty conversations.”

  “So, you took his suggestion to mean you should dress like a peacock?” Joe observed. “Had your brother Edmund made that recommendation, I’d assume he was in league with your new tailor, but Montclair is too upright for that.”

  Clive ran his finger along the velvet edge of his coat sleeve. “Montclair was right: when I dress like this, no one bothers trying to redeem me. Besides, there’s something pleasurable about the texture of the velvet.”

  “Ah, there’s my honest Clive under all that frippery.” Joe picked up a divided wooden box. Inside, pins with painted tips were segregated by color. The pins designated the various enterprises that their very secret division of the Home Office managed. The blue-tipped pins indicated groups or individuals engaged in suspicious, but perhaps not illegal, activities. The green-tipped pins signified an agent of the Home Office, either a trusted local or an officer—whether in disguise or not—dispatched to watch over the area. Joe carried the box toward a large map of England laid out on a table. “Back to your interesting experience this afternoon: is she pretty?”