The Painted Castle

by Kristy Cambron

  “And now?”

  “It doesn’t matter if they believe me or not,” he whispered, and he stared up at the lights. “Because I have right now. Right here. I told God I wouldn’t hate Him for taking Elise and for everything else being stripped away, as long as He could still show me one good thing in every sunrise. And so help me I’ve looked. Every single day. That’s why it doesn’t matter what comes after this job, because my life is no longer my own. I’m four years sober and a lifetime away from the old Emory Scott. I won’t go back to who I was. Not for all the money in the world.”

  A small measure of softness took over Emory’s face and he stepped closer, slowly, with marked intention, until the tips of his boots could have brushed hers. Something in him spoke of understanding as he gazed down at her, that she couldn’t blame him for wanting to cling to something that was solid in their crazy, mixed-up world.

  It was the same thing Keira had clung to since New York—faith in what was good over what hurt like fire. The same thing she was holding so tight to now.

  “What if I said I agree with you?”

  “You want me to stay, Miss Foley?”

  “Of course I want you to stay. I’m tougher than I look too. And I like to think a bit smarter.” A smile found its way to her lips. Keira couldn’t have held it back if she wanted to. “Isn’t it obvious? She wants the painting, Emory.”

  “Marion? How did she find out about it?”

  “Through Carter. Through his mother. It doesn’t matter. You say you know these people? Well, I do too. And if Marion thinks we’ve found something, she doesn’t want you anywhere near it. Not because you’re a thief—because you’re good. And you know this business like nobody else. So I told her the fact she wants you out says more than she realizes, and you ought to stay here and fight in Victoria’s corner. Make all the Montgomerys out there eat their words when you clear your name.”

  Emory shifted his weight, like surprise had thrown him off balance. “You actually said that?”

  “Yeah. And you should have seen her face when I told her I was coming back to fight with you.” Keira tried to laugh it off, but he didn’t join in.

  Emory just stood there. Looking down on her as the wind kicked up, breezing through the holes in the roof and under the open eaves. He drifted a fingertip to catch the waves of hair that swept against her cheek, taking them dangerously close to something Keira promised herself she wouldn’t allow to happen again.

  The Scotts weren’t that different from the Montgomerys—London or not, Victoria or not . . . her heart wasn’t ready to get trampled in that world twice.

  “I’ll, uh . . .” She stumbled back on shaky steps, searching for a way to escape to the entry. “It’s getting late, so I’d better go.”

  “Keira—wait.” Emory followed, then stopped by the mantel, its wooden beam thick and well weathered. “You say you want to fight in Victoria’s corner? Come here. I found something today and I couldn’t wait to show it to you.”

  He ran his fingertip over a rounded embossing in the ivory tile surrounding the hearth. She squeezed in beside him, a thrill of connection charging through her. Keira brushed her fingertips to the same place he had, the carving smooth beneath her skin, then trailed the line of carvings that repeated across the top. “It’s a bee?”

  He nodded. Smiled. Heart-stopping a bit in a way Carter or Alton never could have been because the emotion behind it was real. And unforced. He’d genuinely been waiting for her to come back just so he could share something with her.

  “Your artist’s signature is right here, next to the initials A. W. And you know where else I saw it? The tile around the library hearth where Victoria was found. It’s the same design, Keira. There’s something that links this old cottage with that bricked-off library.”

  “You believe a bee could mean something more than the fact this estate was in the honey business?”

  “Why not? Since you admitted to Marion that you’re invested, and if you don’t mind a little rain coming through the roof, I’d say we work together to find out who A. W. is—on principle if nothing else.”

  “I’ve been thinking . . .”

  “Just what have you been thinking, Keira?” He turned to her, too close. Inspected her face, too long. And had whispered with a blatant softness that nearly stole her ability to string two coherent thoughts together.

  “We should search through the books.”

  Emory was cool enough to suppress the look he’d given her—that little tip of longing in his eyes retreated back behind his detached veneer. “The books?”

  “Yes. It’ll take time to go through the library, but maybe we start with the ones in the glass sideboard. In a library that’s been hidden away and a manor emptied and forgotten, there’s one constant—the books. They’ve been meticulously cared for. If they’re the only things left alongside Victoria, there has to be a link that ties them together. And if we fancy ourselves clever researchers, we’ll find it.”

  “We’ll find it?”

  The bower of lights proved entrancing. It was as if everything conspired to decide for Keira that she wasn’t going anywhere. Maybe it was a lovely little cottage with a broken side and forgotten past, or the artist’s signature embossed in tile, or the tiny flicker of a flame within her that said Emory Scott hadn’t given up.

  Not yet.

  And neither would she.

  Keira turned, found her coffee on the worktable, and dragged a bucket closer to the fire. Then she sat and sipped, waiting until he did the same. Emory picked up a bucket and sat too, stretched his legs out in the space between them, crossing one over the other.

  “So—Carter and M. J., huh? That’s a development.”

  “I don’t know, but I think I saw that one coming a mile away.” Keira couldn’t help but laugh, warming her hands around her cup.

  “Better watch out, Foley. You’re sounding more like an American every day.”

  The sun drooped low on the horizon as they talked, until its rays were gone and only an ink sky and coffee by firelight remained. The trip to London wasn’t all she’d expected—not for Victoria or for her. But answers would come later.

  For the moment, sitting with the unguarded Emory Scott was enough.

  Twenty

  December 25, 1944

  Parham Hill Estate

  Framlingham, England

  Rain had long ago turned to pellets of ice that racked the freshly replaced kitchen windows like pebbles thrown against glass.

  Amelia sat at the farmhouse table, stirring a spoon around the spray of tea roses lining her mother-in-law’s Crown Staffordshire bone china. Perhaps she shouldn’t have added honey to her Earl Grey when it could have been used for so many other things. Still, a tick past midnight on Christmas could afford her a little bit of sweetness, wherever she might find it.

  A pounding thumped the kitchen door, nearly startling the life out of her.

  Amelia jumped to her feet, snatching up the closest weapon she could—a scrolled jam spoon that hadn’t seen jam in ages. She brandished the dulled blade in front of her and cracked the door open.

  The shoulders of his flight jacket were covered in ice, his hair wet at the tips and face pink from the cold, but it was not an agent of the enemy or an apparition that had been sent to toy with frayed nerves.

  Just Wyatt.

  His breath flowed in and out on a heavy fog, like he’d landed a plane and sprinted all the way from the airfield.

  “Wyatt!” Amelia dropped the spoon where it bounced from the wood countertop to clang on the stone floor, disappearing in the darkness.

  “Did I miss it?” he breathed out, a hush falling over him as his breathing calmed.

  “I didn’t expect you tonight. Not now at least. But come in.” She pulled him inside out of the cold. “I’m sorry. You’ve missed Christmas. I’m afraid the children have all gone to bed.”

  “No—a call should have come in from the base. There’s an emergency situation at
the airfield. I tried the front doors. No answer, so I came around to this side.”

  “What do you mean? We’ve had no call. Last I heard the telephone lines are down from when the ice storm came through.”

  Wyatt finally focused through the darkness, squinting in the moonlight.

  It was then the arrow struck and he paused, surveying her head to toe with a sudden softness that had her look down, remembering.

  Except for services at St. Michaels, he’d very likely never seen her in a dress. And certainly not one of liquid satin that swept down in a train, fanning out at the tips of golden-toed heels. Her hair she’d rolled in sumptuous waves and left down to flow over her shoulders. She’d even kept the diamond teardrops in her ears, maybe her subconscious stalling because she just hadn’t wanted the night to end without him in it somehow.

  Hanging a dress back in the closet and dropping earbobs back in the jewelry box would have done it.

  “Oh. Yes—a dress.” Amelia blushed, feeling her cheeks warm, and touched a palm to cover it.

  “That’s not just a dress. If I’m honest, I think that’s every dress ever made.”

  “Darly seemed to think Christmas was the appropriate time for a gift worthy of dancing, frivolous as it is.” Amelia played off the praise with a shrug of the shoulders and a slight roll of her eyes to the ceiling.

  He started, a tiny flinch of the face indicating a track had just shifted in his mind. “You went to the USO dance?”

  “Not a particularly clever move, especially given the cost of such a gown. I can’t believe I went out in this weather. What was I thinking?”

  Either the blush in her cheeks or the tiniest bit of waver in her voice caused it, but Wyatt stepped up to her. Fast. Saying nothing as he took off his hat. Just stopped, a breath away, looking down at her in the gown shimmering so innocently in the moonlight when it had started the whole moment.

  “I would have come, if I could,” he whispered, hazel eyes searching hers, ardent even through the shadows. “I would have done anything to have been there tonight.”

  A wall fell, and Amelia allowed her heart to receive the honesty of his words. “I know that. I know.”

  She shook her head, trying not to think of where he’d been, the devastation he’d seen, or why he’d been so very late.

  She wiped her mind clean.

  Forget everything but what it feels like to see him again.

  “I didn’t have a choice. I was sent straight from the airfield as soon as our wheels hit the ground. We have a problem.”

  “What is it?”

  “Two hundred soldiers. Stranded—fortresses circling in air or landing God knows where because runways are iced up all the way down the coast. Framlingham is the last airfield able to take planes from the Channel, but the army doesn’t have barracks enough for all the men who might need to come in.”

  “And they’re asking us to take them here?”

  He nodded. “We don’t have space for a squadron at the base, let alone a fleet of hundreds. They’ve nowhere else to go. Nowhere else to land safely.”

  The chill from the windows ran over her, but Amelia defied it. “We may have to feed fireplaces with the last of the furniture, and it may be a feast of popcorn balls and cranberry strings from the Christmas tree, but the men won’t go cold or hungry tonight. They are all dear to someone, and they need their own promises remembered tonight.” She pressed a palm to the front of Wyatt’s coat over a trail of water that had melted from his shoulder, then slid her hand down the front. “Go back. Tell them we’ll open our doors.”

  Amelia worked in a dress that night for the first time in her life. As the clock ticked into morning and scores of airmen began to filter through the front gates of Parham Hill, Amelia unbuttoned pearl cuffs, rolled sleeves to her elbows, and covered satin with a plain canvas apron.

  They lit candles in the entry as a flurry of RAF pilots and Yankee flyboys trudged up the path. They settled tired bodies in as many corners as a makeshift cot could fit in the elegant Rose Room, pushed beds closer to make space in the Regency Ballroom, and lined pallets along the balcony of Parham Hill’s great ancestral hall.

  Amelia opened the cabinets and handed out the best bone china to warm freezing hands. Steaming tea they poured into porcelain and all the extra honey for winter stores was brought up from the cellar. And with blackout curtains drawn tight, they lit Amelia’s beeswax candles the length of the stairs up from the ground floor, in a flickering trail of circular magic that overtook three stories of the grand entry space.

  Handing out a stack of woolen blankets as she looked up to brush a stubborn wave of hair back out of her eyes, Amelia just caught the sight of Luca, his mop of brown curls weaving through the crowd of displaced servicemen. He hugged a special book in his arms as he filtered through fatigues and officers and drifted over to stand at the captain’s side.

  Wyatt didn’t need much to notice—he seemed aware of the boy’s presence already and responded by placing a hand upon Luca’s shoulder and keeping it there, much as a father would.

  As if her previous imaginings of fireside readings in the cottage could possibly come true, Wyatt looked up. Amelia watched as he searched through the happy madness until he rested his gaze upon her and smiled.

  “Silent Night” flowed from somewhere in the entry. With no big band or shiny instruments necessary, a clear, soft tone rose to the ceiling in a bittersweet combination of peace meeting war and banishing it from their world, if only for that one night. Voices floated up to the vault of their ceiling-sky in a soft chorus of hundreds, and to Amelia, it became the holiest night she’d ever known.

  When silence had again befallen the halls and ballrooms, and the children ventured back to their beds in hopes a jolly elf would yet have time enough to fill their stockings, Amelia drifted into the sanctuary of library shelves and her beloved books. She found Wyatt kneeling before the hearth, adding logs on the fire—like he knew she’d eventually meet him there when all the work was done. Flames fanned wildly with each toss, licking at the kindling along the back of chimney bricks and sparking up to carry into the night sky.

  At the sound of her heels clicking on the hardwood, he turned. She sighed, settling into the welcome corner of the open settee. “You know, I sat in this exact spot yesterday morning, wondering what would become of Christmas. And now look at us—a manor packed full with children tucked in their beds, half the country’s servicemen sleeping on the stairs, and I served tea in a gown worth more than this manor. What a beautiful, topsy-turvy holiday.”

  “Seems you’re the last one up again.”

  “You’re awake too. I’m convinced by now that you never sleep, Captain. You just keep going, defending the world like a machine in the sky.”

  Smiling at what she thought was her lighthearted jest, Amelia slipped her feet out of the gold lattice heels and gave the shoes a playful toss on the floor, then tucked her legs up under her. What she did not expect was for weight to settle upon his shoulders on the hinges of her words and a somberness to drift down over his face.

  It melted the ease within her.

  “Amelia—if I hadn’t come back late, you’d have still been there?”

  “Well, I almost didn’t show, if you must know the truth. I must have walked up and down the manor steps umpteen times in those horridly uncomfortable shoes. Maybe I feared this silly dress would have been ruined in the rain. And now look at it—splashed with tea and honey and I couldn’t care less because I’m so happy.”

  Amelia tried to cap the admission with a noncommittal laugh but fought to calm the racing of her heart when he didn’t buy it. Instead, Wyatt paused on what seemed a clear decision, then stood and walked over to join her.

  He knelt before the settee—before her—his arm casually draped over the armrest so the warmth of his fingertips curled in a graze against hers, then took the liberty of staring directly into her eyes. “You really waited?”

  How honest could she, should she,
be? Amelia couldn’t find the words. They choked out within her so she couldn’t utter a reply.

  “How long did I make you wait?” he whispered again.

  She swallowed hard. “I stayed until the band packed up their instruments and the last light was turned out.”

  Wyatt shook his head, angry at a fate he couldn’t have controlled. But it was sweet nonetheless. And telling, because he leaned in with apology in his voice that the weather dared alter best-laid plans. “Amelia . . . I’d have done anything to land on time.”

  “You don’t have to apologize.”

  “No, I want you to understand. Framlingham was the last airfield open for miles, so it’s by sheer luck we found a place to land at all, let alone to find an airfield that was already home. I need you to know it was a risk landing on ice and being late or running out of gas, crashing in a field somewhere, and risking being . . . well, really late.”

  “A better excuse for tardiness I don’t think I’ve ever heard. You are forgiven, Captain.”

  “It’s no excuse. But crash or not, it still would have been worth it. I promised a lady I’d come back by Christmas. And I always keep my promises.”

  “If that’s true . . . then someone convinced me today that it’s time.”

  “Time for what?” It was tender, the question and the way he allowed his fingertips to stroke her hand.

  Amelia looked back at him, into the eyes she hadn’t realized now had begun to feel so like home when they gazed upon her. “Not to waste a chance when it’s been given.”

  Wyatt looked to the faint scar at her temple, like he’d done before, but this time he didn’t hold back. He moved to edge back one of the barrel curls she’d styled so carefully at her vanity table earlier in the evening, and she allowed him to do it, his fingertips brushing her hair so it rested over the delicate rise of her shoulder.

  “Did you dance? I mean, should I anticipate any mounting competition because of my lateness?”