Reckless in Red

by Rachael Miles

  He decided truth was the only course. He stepped forward, pitching his voice confidentially. “I’m Clive Somerville, a surgeon, investigating a death for the police. Calder had some information for me.” He looked over his shoulder, making sure that none of the workmen were listening.

  “Ah, and you were to pay him for the information.” She stared at him.

  “Well, not exactly pay.” Looking into her dark eyes, Clive felt the world had somehow tilted off its axis. He tried to focus solely on her words.

  “But Horatio—Calder—would have expected something: if not money, then a favor.” Lena paused, then continued, “Have you much experience with men like Horatio? Charming, glib men of many gifts, a good number of them illegal. Are you always so gullible?”

  “I’ve never been called gullible.” Clive paused, trying to get the conversation back on track. “Calder said he’d traced a murderer to London and a local tavern. Calder saw him here—at the Rotunda—twice last week.”

  “Last week.” She sighed, but whether in frustration or sympathy he couldn’t tell. “If it’s a craftsman, that narrows your search to about fifty men, women, and children in the last week alone. But we also had deliveries from at least thirty companies, and some of those more than once. Our office looks down into the yard, so it might have been one of them. Or—and this is equally likely—it could have been one of the dozen sightseers Harald, our guard, turns away each day. Tell me, sir: what does this murderer look like?” She whispered the word as he had done. Her tone indicated clearly that she wanted nothing to do with him or his searches.

  “Calder was to give me more of a description. All I know is that our murderer likes his drink.”

  “A distinguishing fact, that is.” She all but rolled her eyes. “No, sir, I know nothing about murder or Horatio’s information. If you are looking for a drinking man, I suggest visiting Mr. Whitbread’s brewery.” She turned away to consult the plans tacked to the wall.

  He had been dismissed. But his curiosity wouldn’t let him go. Her relationship with Calder made her his closest thing to a clue. But something else attracted him to her: the unruly wisps of her hair escaping her bonnet, the paint in splotches all over her skirt and apron, the straight set of her shoulders. It wasn’t just the murderer. No, he wanted to know more of her.

  As if noticing that he had not gone, she pointed to the plans. “Even if I wished to help you, I haven’t time. Today, we must clear out all the scaffolds but these two.” She motioned to the structures standing to either side. “Then tomorrow, we must convert the gutter—that’s the space between the stage and the canvas—into the foreground of a battle scene . . . carrion birds and blasted bodies alike. As you suggested when we met before, this will not be a painting for the faint of heart.”

  “I must give you credit. Not many people fool me, but you did. I sincerely believed you were dim.”

  This time her smile was genuine. “Not much use to the police then, are you, if a simple woman can deceive you so easily?”

  He almost objected that he was rarely deceived by women. But he didn’t want to quarrel, not if it meant risking that brilliant smile.

  “I have a feeling that nothing is simple where you are concerned.” He motioned toward the theater curtain hung over the canvas. “Why all the secrecy?”

  “Whatever Horatio’s other sins, he is a brilliant showman. Make it a game. Make it secret. Make people stand in line to see it.” She turned her attention back to the workmen. “No, Joe, move it a little to the left.”

  “Tell me something about yourself, Miss Frost. It is Miss, isn’t it? You haven’t made up a husband to use Mrs., have you?”

  “Perhaps I had a husband, but I had him killed to steal his money.” She turned back to him, her eyes inscrutable, but even so, he felt drawn to her.

  “Perhaps.” He offered his most winning smile. “You strike me now as a very capable woman.”

  “Now?” She tucked a wisp of escaped hair behind her ear. “Ah, yes, as opposed to yesterday when you thought I was a dim-witted enthusiast.”

  “I’ve admitted you fooled me.” He held out his hands, palms up like a penitent. “But that only makes you more interesting.”

  “I have no desire to be interesting.” She looked directly into his eyes, as if to warn him off. “In fact, I’d prefer you find some other pursuit, perhaps a horse race, or a boxing match. Surely you find those sorts of sports entertaining.”

  “Ah, Miss Frost, you crush me.” He put his hand over his heart and gave her his sincerest look, the one that always put him in good stead with his companions.

  “I doubt that,” she said flatly, and her eyes moved back to her crew.

  He looked around the exhibition hall, knowing that soon she would call one or more of her very sturdy crew and have him removed from the premises. Her premises, her exhibition. Suddenly he knew what would make her talk to him. “Why all the scaffolding?”

  “The scaffolds are constructed to serve as our horizontal lines, and the plumbs you see every five feet are our verticals. It’s how we get the perspective right, even with a concave surface.”

  “Concave? How does it work? The panorama, I mean. How do you make it . . . stay up?”

  “If I answer your questions, will you go away?”

  “I’m more likely to go if you answer, than if you don’t.”

  She sighed in a sort of defeat. “There’s a segmented pipe shaped into a semicircle running along the top and the bottom. The canvas is sewn on to the top first, then the bottom.”

  “I can’t see any sign of sewing.”

  “I hired ship riggers. For fine sturdy stitching in tarpaulins or canvas, there’s none better.”

  “Then what?”

  “To give the canvas tension, we weight the bottom with stacks of bricks every few feet. But because the shape is a semicircle, the pull makes the canvas concave. So we have to account for that in the design of the image, and we have to hide the edges on the sides here. That’s why we’re covering these two scaffolds with painted panels. Does that explain it?”

  “Yes. Tell me—how do you know Calder?”

  She sniffed in derision. “I placed an advertisement in the London Times. ‘Wanted: journeyman painter, who perfectly understands his craft and whose character will bear the strictest enquiry.’ Clearly I failed to enquire strictly enough.”

  “You placed an advertisement? I thought Calder was in charge.”

  “I am here. Calder is not. Which of us looks to be in charge?”

  “When was the last time you saw him?”

  “Wednesday.” She looked distressed for a moment. “He was planning to go to Tattersall’s, and he needed to make a withdrawal from his account.”

  “Who holds his account, a banker, a solicitor?”

  “I do. I kept—keep—all our funds in the office. Calder spends his portion on credit, then criticizes me for not doing a better job of keeping him from his money.”

  “He sounds like a difficult master.”

  “Another master might insist on being in charge. So I keep him . . . for now. This show”—she gestured at the walls—“will make the name of the company and me with it.”

  “You seem to have great confidence.”

  “I know my audience. The public loves a spectacle; the ton loves a success. All I need is one of the two.” She turned back to the workmen. “Wait, Hedley, don’t tie that off. The hills in your section should line up with the hills on the canvas. I made a mark on the wall to your right. Give me a moment, and I’ll tell you how much it needs to lower.” In an instant, she was climbing another wall ladder, this one leading from her observation platform all the way to the ceiling.

  Clive’s mouth grew dry at the height, wondering how often each day she climbed that ladder. Miss Frost’s skirt divided to reveal wide-bottomed pants cuffed at the ankles like those Clive had seen in engravings of Turkish women’s costume, the only difference being that instead of slippers, Frost wore low-heeled
leather boots. She climbed almost to the top, then stopped, using her new position to gauge how well the panel corresponded to her mark.

  She hung there for several minutes fifteen feet above him, one arm holding on to the next rung up, her toes tucked into the space between the slats and the walls. He wanted to call out for her to be careful, but he knew the advice would be unwelcome.

  “Raise your end a bit more, Hedley.” She pointed with her free hand. “Another hand span. Just a bit more. Perfect. Tie that up.”

  The sounds came to him all at once. The nails creaked as they pulled from the wall, and the wood slats snapped as they broke under her weight. Frost scrabbled to find new footing, but gasped—along with her men—as she fell off the ladder down to the stage. Somewhere in the midst of those sounds, Clive moved. He positioned himself as best he could below her. She twisted as she fell, like a cat trying to find her feet. She angled past him, and he threw himself into her path, catching her and turning a deadfall into a rolling jumble of limbs. All the while, he held her in his arms, never letting go. Afterward, they lay on the platform, knocked breathless by the fall and by fear.

  He could hear his heart beat and, where he still clutched her to his chest, hers. But when she raised her head and looked directly into his eyes, the deep color flecked with green, gold, and bronze, he thought his heart had stopped altogether. She didn’t speak, and neither did he. They merely looked into each other’s eyes. In her pupils, he saw his own reflection. Had she stolen his soul? Was it looking back at him?

  Eventually, his heart found a more stable rhythm. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but instead moistened her lips—pink and full—with the tip of her tongue. He breathed in her scent, lilac water with a hint of paint. Irrationally, he wanted never to let her go.

  The world came back into focus in an instant. Her men, climbing over the platform and up the ladder, arrived in a rush of sound. Suddenly Lena was gone, picked up off his chest by her men, and he was left lying on his back, looking up at a circle of concerned faces. He closed his eyes, testing his body for anything broken or strained. He would ache tomorrow, his muscles stretched and jarred by the fall to the floor and Miss Frost’s weight. But it would be no worse than his aches after any dozen sports he’d played with his brothers. The workmen began to talk about him as if he were deaf or dead.

  “Anyone know who he is?”

  “I’ve never seen him before, but he saved Miss Lena.”

  “It’s a miracle, it is. She never lets anyone up here when she’s directing.”

  Clive opened his eyes and sat up. The men immediately patted the dust from his clothes and asked him to move his arms and legs. One man handed him a wooden cup, and he drank, the gin burning a line to his belly.

  “Give the man some room. He might need some air.”

  Clive started to say something, but decided against it. He struggled to his feet.

  Lena was sitting on a stool. The men were flanked around her, close but not crowding her. One placed a comforting hand on her back and said something in her ear; Lena responded, both of them watching him approach. Their solicitude surprised him, but he couldn’t consider it now, not when he felt like he’d been run over by a horse at Tattersall’s. The crew stepped back as he drew near.

  * * *

  In the second before the rung broke, Lena had been considering how to send Lord Clive Somerville away without losing Lady Wilmot’s or the duke’s goodwill. She’d used all of Lady Wilmot’s advance to pay her craftsmen for another week, and she couldn’t give it back. Clive was the kind of man—she could already tell—who didn’t let go of an obsession easily, and she had no intention of attracting his further interest.

  But that was before the slat had broken.

  She’d flailed desperately to find another foothold, but the wood wouldn’t hold. And as she fell, she knew she was already dead, if not from the fall, then from her injuries.

  The seconds had drawn out forever. All her losses, all her regrets, had played across the stage of her memory, including one regret that she hadn’t yet recognized. At the end of her memories, she saw only one image, the face of her burglar-Adonis.

  Then he caught her.

  She’d opened her eyes—still alive—to find his studying her. She breathed in his scent, a woody, clean, comforting scent with pine and a hint of musk.

  In that moment, she’d imagined she could see into his very soul. She’d wanted that moment, when their eyes met, to last forever, but the world had returned to its normal speed. As her men lifted her up, she’d felt bereft, of him and the unexpected kindness in his eyes, as if she’d finally found a safe place, and it had been denied her. The vulnerability of that moment shocked and disturbed her, making her ill at ease and suspicious.

  She was obligated to him now, though strangely, the thought wasn’t wholly unpleasant.

  “A good man puts himself in danger to help another.” Louis remarked from behind her shoulder.

  “You sound like Horatio.”

  “Horatio is at heart a good man, but he is thwarted sometimes by circumstances.”

  “Are you saying I should trust Somerville because he caught me?”

  “I’m saying that you are alive and unhurt because he didn’t hesitate. He didn’t measure one action against another. He merely acted.” Louis patted her shoulder as Somerville pulled himself to his feet and approached.

  He knelt in front of her. “I’m a physician,” he announced to the men, giving his attention to Lena. “Are you hurt?”

  “I feel like an elephant dropped me on my head.”

  “An elephant?”

  “I rode one once when I was a child.”

  “Did he drop you on your head?”

  “No. But if he had, this is how it would feel.”

  The men laughed. “That’s our Miss Frost, always a clever one.”

  “Stretch out your arms.” She complied, but only because her men were watching. Clive tested the movement of her wrists and elbows, then turned her palms up.

  He grimaced. The skin on her palms was badly torn and raw, and her fingernails were jagged and broken. “A pumice stone will even your nails, and some calendula salve will help with these abrasions.” Then, taking care to acknowledge her authority, he asked, “There’s an apothecary down the street. Can one of your men gather some materials for me?”

  She nodded and called to one of the workmen, giving his name—Louis—with a French inflection. An older man, gray-haired and lean, listened carefully as Clive gave him instructions on what to purchase. When Clive pressed a half-crown into his hand, Louis hurried away.

  “Let’s see to the rest of you.” Stepping behind her, he placed his hand on her upper back and thumped it with his first two fingers. The remaining men looked confused.

  “Whatever are you doing?” Lena’s voice was returning to its normal state of annoyance.

  “It’s called percussion.” Clive thumped again.

  “I’m not a drum.”

  “Yes, but your chest is.” He tapped his hand one last time, listening to the sound her chest made. As a doctor, he should be paying attention only to her heart, but his attention kept drifting to the rise and fall of her bosom, and the pinkness of her lips. “It’s a technique from Vienna for diagnosing ailments of the chest. Sometimes a fall can injure the lungs, so I wanted to listen. Can you stand?”

  Lena rose, stepping a little gingerly, then more solidly.

  “Does that ankle hurt?”

  “A little, but not so much that I can’t stand.”

  “Can you walk on it? Try from here to the front edge of the platform.” Clive stepped back. When he leaned against the wall next to the Rotunda plans, looking every bit a Greek god, Lena forced herself to look away.

  She surveyed the concerned faces of her men, then stepped forward decisively, to prove to them that both ankles were fine. Her right ankle pinched when she stepped on it, but not so much that she needed to limp to protect it. She made it to the edge
and back without incident.

  Clive studied her intently as she moved, watching—she knew—for the slightest sign of pain. Soon, she would have to send him away. He was too observant to keep close for long. Still, if he were successful in finding Horatio, he might solve all her problems.

  When she walked back to the group, her crew exhaled in relief and began to disperse back to their work.

  Soon Lena and Clive were left alone on the platform.

  “Now for your hands.” Clive gestured for her to sit on the low stool, but she tucked her palms against her belly, regarding him suspiciously.

  Before she could object, Louis returned with a packet from the apothecary and a bottle of gin.

  “Let him help you, Miss Lena. He’s already saved your life,” Louis insisted.

  Lena shrugged acceptance and sat down on the stool.

  Clive pulled the low bench forward. Beside him, he set the gin and the apothecary’s packet, which contained calendula salve, willow bark, a roll of linen, a pumice stone, and a needle. He gave her some willow bark to chew.

  She unfolded her hands slowly and held them out. Her fingers were long and slender. Her skin was soft in his hand, making him wish that he was holding her hand under more private circumstances.

  He wet some linen with the gin and soaked her skin, then carefully he teased out each splinter with the needle. “It wouldn’t do to leave a splinter to fester.” Helping the stubborn Miss Frost captivated him. Even when her men had rallied around her, she had seemed unaware of the depth of their support and affection. It was as if she had lived a long time without a community—or a community whose care she could count on.

  When he’d removed all the splinters, he eased the calendula salve onto her broken skin, then he picked up the roll of linen to cover her wounds.

  “Must you bandage my hands? I have too much yet to accomplish today.” Her dark eyes met his, pleading her case, and he found himself unable to refuse.

  “The salve needs several hours to work. But if I wrap the linen thus”—he began at her palm, then tied off the bandages at her wrist—“you still will have good use of your fingers and hands.”