Reckless in Red

by Rachael Miles

  He heard the door open and close and the sound of movement in the room. The servants. They would be gone soon. He made no movement. This time the room remained dark—the way he liked it.

  “I wish I’d met the woman who turned Clive Somerville into a lover.”

  The voice startled him. He felt the frustration rise. Lena wasn’t any woman: she was his heart.

  He growled his way out of bed, throwing back the covers, and ran into his aunt Agatha.

  “How did you get in here?”

  “I bribed the porter with an exorbitant fee, which I expect you to repay.” Agatha threw open the curtains, and he recoiled from the brightness of the day. “You will not stay in this room or at this club for another hour.” She strode to the hall door and opened it to a crew of maids and footmen, carrying a tub and water. “You will bathe. You will dress suitably for leaving your rooms. And you will go out,” Agatha commanded, in a tone Clive (her favorite) hadn’t heard in years, and certainly never before directed at him.

  * * *

  “Are you quit pining?” Joe Pasten sat at his desk, across from the chair Clive had thrown himself into more than an hour ago.

  “Pining suggests a wayward or a juvenile passion. He’ll object to that.” Edmund looked up, then returned to his reading.

  Joe placed a long, unfolded document in front of Clive’s face. “It’s time to decide. Do you want this assignment or not? A dozen other men have asked for it. If you are going to retreat to your bedroom or your surgery for the rest of your life, I might as well make one of them happy.”

  Clive read the assignment papers. Scotland. “It’s so far away.”

  “We thought perhaps being far away for a while would provide you with some time to . . . recover. You need something to keep you from thinking, from dreaming of her fall,” Edmund said gently.

  “How do you know that?” Clive growled again.

  His twin merely raised an eyebrow, and Clive turned his face away.

  “Then that’s it.” Joe took the papers from Clive’s hand. “I’ll give it to Picket or Hatchett.

  “No.” He raised bloodshot eyes. “I’ll take it. When do I leave?”

  “The next mail coach to Edinburgh leaves in an hour.” Joe checked the wall clock.

  “I have to collect my things.”

  “It’s done already.” Edmund pointed at a large trunk beside his desk. “Aidan has made a cottage available for you. The servants are already in place. The gatehouse is occupied by some charity case of Sophia’s, but there’s no need to engage with them, except to give them this packet.” Edmund placed a thick leather case on top of Clive’s trunk.

  “It’s a six-month posting. But if you wish to extend it, you have only to ask.”

  Clive stared at the trunk. “How long has that been here?”

  “A week.” Edmund placed his hand on Clive’s arm. “Go, brother. I’ll follow next week to see if you need anything.”

  Clive looked into his twin’s eyes and found a depth of sympathy he couldn’t endure, not even from Edmund. The duke, his family, his friends, all wanted to talk to him about what had happened, but he needed to grieve where no one could watch. “I’ll go.”

  * * *

  The cottage was a distance from the center of town on a large acreage, and the coach driver was anxious to get back, unloading Clive’s trunk to the porch almost before Clive had alighted from the coach, and heading back down the drive before Clive had even knocked at the door.

  Clive looked around for a few moments. The cottage was more a manor house than a cottage. But what else would he expect from the northern property of a duke? Two stories, with large drawing rooms on either side of the front door. More house than he needed.

  No one answered his knock, though the housekeeper had set a light in the window. He had assumed the servants were in residence, but apparently they came in from the town. But he had no key.

  He looked around. The drive was carefully cleared, but everywhere was snow, heaped into tall piles along the sides of the drives and the path around the house. He walked around the house, trying the doors and windows, but all were locked tight, and no sign of any servants anywhere.

  He returned to the front door where his trunk waited on the porch. On top sat the leather packet for Sophie’s lodgers. Perhaps they held the key for him. He could deliver the packet, retrieve the key, and never engage with them again.

  The walk to the gatehouse was a long one, and desolate, the landscape snow-bound and devoid of color. By the time he reached the gatehouse, he was chilled to the bone. The windows were all well lit, and he could hear the sound of children. A family. Hopefully, not a happy one. That would be more than he could take, especially if the children were girls with raven hair and dark eyes.

  He used the knocker, but no one came. He knocked again, harder this time. The door opened, revealing a short, fat man, with long whiskers and red cheeks, wearing an apron covered with paint.

  “I’m the duke’s brother, come to deliver these papers and collect the key to the cottage.” Clive held out the package.

  “Ah, then come in, come in.” The old man gestured with his paintbrush toward the drawing room where a portrait stood. The smell of the paints turned his stomach. An image of Lena laughing, a paintbrush in her hand, filled his memory. He needed to escape, but he looked for the old man, and he was gone to retrieve the key. In the hour before he’d left, Sophia had told him she’d found a new painter, but he’d been unwilling to hear the words, so he’d brushed her away with an angry hand. Now he realized she’d been trying to warn him that her painter was also the Scottish lodger.

  He drew near to the painting. Even he could tell it was a masterpiece. In it, Aidan sat in the garden behind his London house, Lilly on his knee and his hand on her shoulder. The pair looked directly at the viewer, both smiling. In her hand, Lilly held both a pencil and a piece of drawing paper. Clive drew close. The paper showed what appeared to be one of Lilly’s drawings from the nursery, a fort with the ocean beyond it. The old man was a fine painter, able to capture Aidan’s affection for the child as well as the child’s energy and enthusiasm.

  Clive turned to the old man. “In recent years, I’ve seen that expression on my brother’s face far too little, and I’m grateful you captured him in that pose.”

  “You’ll need to tell the painter then.” The man waved to the back of the house with his paintbrush.

  “Are you not the artist?” Clive gestured to the man’s apron and brush.

  “Oh, no! I’m a student. Paint heather, I do, and thistle. Always wanted lessons, but we never had the luxury of a teacher here before.” The old man held out his hand. “I’m Squire Potts. Not a very useful or fancy name, but it’s mine. It’s my teacher you want, though. In the kitchen making tea. Come along.”

  Clive followed the squire to the back of the house, toward the kitchen. He could hear laughter, children’s voices, and the sound of pots clattering. Exactly the sort of noises he’d always imagined for a home of his, but that wasn’t part of his future, not with Lena gone.

  “Mary, Susan, come along now,” Squire Potts called out as he pushed the door open. “We must go home. We can return tomorrow.” Two small, blond girls curtsied good-bye to those in the kitchen, but Clive, standing somewhat back in the hall, couldn’t yet see his brother’s lodgers. “I’ve brought you a visitor.”

  He stepped to the side to let Squire Potts and the girls leave.

  The kitchen had grown quiet. He stepped inside to find a woman turned away from him facing the window. She turned to him, and when her eyes met his, tears streaming down her face, he began to weep as well.

  Neither of them moved, neither of them spoke, as if to move would break the spell that allowed them both to be in the room together.

  After several minutes, a voice broke their silence. “Well, what are you going to do, boy? She’s not dead. Kiss her!” Clive tore his gaze from Lena to find Horatio sitting at the far end of the table.
>
  In the next moment, Lena was in his arms.

  * * *

  “That’s why I had to die, you see. I knew you would never be safe, as long as we were together.”

  “After Lena asked the ladies of the Muses’ Salon for help, it was your brother, the duke, who planned how to manage it all, the fall, the removal of her body,” Horatio explained. “I was waiting in a carriage in the alley, and we left for this place that night.”

  “My brother?” Clive suddenly remembered Aidan, demanding, then cajoling him to listen. Clive had turned his face to the wall and covered his head with a pillow, until Aidan had given up.

  “Yes. We’ve sold part interest in the Rotunda to him, and together we have hired a manager. So far the proceeds have been more than sufficient to look forward to another exhibition in a few years’ time, when we are certain that the danger of the remaining resurrectionists has passed.”

  Lena’s hand covered his, and he didn’t dare move for fear if he stopped touching her, she would disappear, and this would prove just another cruel dream.

  “That’s when I come into the story.” Out of the adjoining room, Aidan joined them, followed by Sophia and the two Gardiner children.

  Lilly flung herself into Lena’s arms. “I brought my last lessons to show you. We had to come see you, so I could have another one.”

  “And I look forward to seeing them.” Lena hugged the child. “I have some easels set up in the morning room. Perhaps you and your brother would like to paint?”

  Sophia nodded to Ian, and he took his sister by the hand. “We would like that very much.”

  Horatio rose. “Then I’ll get you started.”

  Clive shifted his chair closer to Lena, and she leaned into his side. When Horatio returned, they picked up the conversation again.

  “When you discovered that Helena Winters had an inheritance waiting, I began to wonder about the requirements of that bequest,” Aidan began. “Horatio was able to offer us some information about Helena’s father.”

  Clive raised an eyebrow in question.

  Horatio took up the story. “You met my brother in the Denby churchyard—he’s the bell ringer now, but when we were young, we both worked in Baron Winters’s stables. I left home as soon as I was able, and I performed for some years in the regional theaters. That was all before Lena’s mother died. I didn’t return even for a visit until long after Lena had run away. I renewed my acquaintance with Baron Winters one day when he was talking to Miss Helena’s crypt.”

  Clive looked at Lena to see her reaction.

  “Horatio and I have had some time here to tell each other our secrets.” Lena smiled warmly at her business partner. “He has helped me reconcile, at least somewhat, with my father.”

  “We found each other good companions, and Baron Winters told me he knew his daughter was still alive. Madame Le Brun’s tender heart couldn’t bear the thought of a parent agonizing over a missing child, so she sent Winters regular notices, along with news of Lena’s success as a painter. Winters, by the time I met him, had taken the full measure of his wife’s character, and he’d kept those notices to himself. He asked me to find his girl, and I agreed. By the time I reached Le Brun, Lena was in Paris. But by the time I reached that city, she had already run home to England. I lost the trail.”

  “What happened then?” Sophia asked. “How did you find her?”

  “Purely by chance. I was drinking chocolate at my favorite shop, and Lena walked in, looking the very image of her mother. It didn’t take long to realize her partner in the Rotunda was a fiction, and it took even less time to become him.”

  “Did you tell Baron Winters you’d found Lena?” Clive caressed the back of Lena’s hand.

  “I traveled to Denby, but the baron had died while I was away. Her ladyship—having learned of Lena’s inheritance—demanded to know if I had found her. I agreed to work for her, in order to gauge the extent of her ladyship’s ill will for my girl.” Horatio gave Lena an affectionate grin.

  “Horatio knew that the baron had hidden papers in the crypt proving Lena’s claim to his inheritance,” Aidan added. “Lena gave her answers to me, and I have served as her agent in chancery. Sadly, the status of the inheritance has changed even since Clive left London with the papers.” Aidan picked up the portfolio and pulled out some of the pages.

  “But I only left London three days ago.”

  “You were in no hurry to arrive. We were,” Aidan explained, then turned to Lena. “Though I know you have been ambivalent about your inheritance, I still regret the news we bring you.” He gave Lena a tender look. “Your family’s manor house and stables have been destroyed by fire, though the livestock escaped unharmed. There is nothing left but rubble.”

  Lena gasped, and Clive wrapped his arm around her shoulders.

  “Several days before the fire, your stepmother posted a note to her solicitor, warning him that if anything were to happen to her, you would be to blame.” Aidan removed a letter from the portfolio, but Lena made no attempt to take it. “This is a copy. I included it in Clive’s packet because, at the time, neither I nor her solicitors believed that Lady Winters was in any danger from Lena.”

  Clive took it, reading over it carefully. “This is evidence certainly, but not of Lena’s guilt. Her stepmother’s madness is evident in every line. It’s rambling, incoherent, and nervous. The magistrates can’t seriously believe Lena is at fault.” It couldn’t be true; he couldn’t bear losing her again.

  Lena looked stunned. “As a child, I often wished her dead, but I didn’t kill her. What can I do?”

  “Nothing at all.” Aidan put the letter back in the portfolio.

  “Nothing!?” Clive interrupted, but Sophia placed her hand on his arm.

  “There’s nothing to do, because no one believes Lena is at fault. Squire Potts can confirm that she was here when the house burned.”

  “He has had a lesson every day,” Lena added in a voice somewhat dazed.

  “But even if Squire Potts didn’t have a fondness for drawing thistles, Lady Winters’s companion saw her ladyship methodically setting fire to every textile in the house. The companion didn’t appreciate that Lady Winters apparently intended for her to die in the conflagration as well,” Aidan explained. “The worst part, however, is that without the house and barns, your purchaser is no longer interested in the property.”

  “Clive appears to be exhausted from his journey.” Lena placed her hand on Clive’s shoulder. “Perhaps we can discuss the next steps in the morning.”

  Clive felt wrung out. In the space of an hour, his emotions had run from despair to elation to fear to relief. But with his brother, Sophia, and Lena in the same room, he had one question that couldn’t go unanswered.

  “Why?” He felt suddenly angry, as if they had all betrayed him. “Why didn’t you tell me your plan?”

  The three looked uncomfortable, but finally Sophia spoke. “You weren’t supposed to be at the gala.”

  “Judith left me a ticket.”

  “You might have found it odd if we didn’t.” Sophia looked at Aidan for help.

  “When Lena asked for the Muses’ help, she said that the resurrection men were working for a man called Charters. Sophia recognized the name as the man the Home Office believes murdered her late husband. So, we believed Lena when she said you and she were in danger.”

  “I’ve read Joe’s file on Charters—all the agents have.” Clive turned to Lena. “By all accounts he’s a very dangerous man.”

  “Then you understand how carefully we had to guard our plan and how important it was that you didn’t know it,” Sophia explained. “At the same time, you didn’t act as we had predicted.”

  “Had you come to the main entrance of the panorama, my men would have kept you out,” Aidan explained. “Edmund was waiting at the door to escort you home. We wanted it to look like you weren’t welcome or that your family disapproved of your interest in Lena. We hoped such a strategy would convince Lena’
s enemies that you and she had fallen out.”

  “I wanted you to be safe. I couldn’t have borne it if you were hurt or killed on my account.” Lena put her hand on his chest, and it felt . . . like peace.

  “But you took the back entrance, and once you were in, you had to believe it was real, all of it.” Aidan shook his head ruefully. “We needed for everyone associated with Lena’s enterprise to believe she had died.”

  “Your shock and grief cemented the story as nothing else we could have done,” Sophia added. “If you had remained home, we would have told you after the event, spirited you off to the assignment Aidan had arranged for you in Scotland, and no one would have needed to observe whether you were grieving or not.”

  “Or if you had come home after the gala, instead of going to your club, we could have done the same, though we would have had to put you in the coach for Scotland before we told you, so the servants didn’t question your immediate change of spirits,” Aidan watched his brother carefully.

  “But, instead, your friends took you to your club, where you refused to see us or, when you did see us, to listen.” Sophia explained gently. “We kept thinking you would come out, so that we could intercept you. But your friends stayed too close, and we didn’t know who might say something to the wrong person and defeat all our work.”

  “So you sent Aunt Agatha.”

  “That was a bit of a masterstroke. We knew no one would refuse her.” Aidan reached out to take Sophia’s hand.

  Lena pulled out of the circle of Clive’s arms and rose. “We can discuss more in the morning. But you have all had a long journey, and are, I’m sure, anxious for some dinner and a good bed. Squire Potts has had fires lit in the cottage bedrooms, and his cook should be there shortly to prepare something to eat.”

  Aidan, Sophia, and Horatio rose, but Clive remained seated.