The Portrait of Lady Wycliff

by Cheryl Bolen

  Harry faced Louisa, devilment in his flashing eyes. "All right. It's a good plan." He got to his feet.

  * * *

  As much as he disliked the prospect of wearing well-worn homespun, Harry knew he would have to disguise himself from the small army of footmen who had removed him from the castle the day before. The disguise became reality when he actually found clothing to fit him. Well, not really fit him since he had to tie the waist with a rope to keep the pants from falling down. The village's huge blacksmith was the only man who was close to Harry's height. The man parted with his old clothing for a guinea. The condition of the clothes the blacksmith had outgrown was poor indeed. He must have worn them daily for a dozen years, and they likely hadn't been cleaned more than a dozen times. Finding clothing for Louisa proved far easier. Any number of the stable lads were clamoring to part with their old clothing for a guinea. Only one of them, however, proved to be a close match in size to Louisa, and the poor lad possessed but one suit of clothing. Louisa promised she would bring it back as soon as she could, hopefully that evening.

  She made rather a cute boy, Harry thought. Of course her breasts were a bit of a problem, but he was not comfortable discussing them with her, as much as he would like to. She would likely slap his face were he to bring up the subject.

  Now suitably dressed, Harry had no problem persuading the greengrocer to carry a pair of extra companions into the castle yard — and to keep quiet about it – for a couple of quid. The ruddy man's eyes rounded when he beheld the money. It was probably more than he earned in several months.

  Harry was rather surprised at how easy it was to get within the castle walls. He and Louisa each carried a basket of vegetables down to the kitchen while the regular greengrocer spoke to the cook.

  From the kitchen Harry and Louisa crept up the servants' stairway and ducked into the silver closet. Since Tremaine was reported to be reclusive, surely there would be no upcoming function for which silver must be polished. Just to be safe, Harry and Louisa hid in one of the lower cupboards—which was no problem for Louisa, but which forced Harry to nearly fold himself into a box.

  They had decided to stay there until they presumed the dinner hour passed. That's when they would enter the dining room and relieve Lord Tremaine of his ill-gotten portrait.

  If the drawbridge was closed at night, they were prepared to spend the night under the dining room table and leave the castle when the drawbridge lifted at the first light of dawn.

  The problem was the deuced cabinet was unbearably hot and far too little for him. He decided to take his chances just standing in the silver closet. After all, anything could be had for a price. He would merely pay whoever discovered him to keep quiet.

  Then Harry remembered the fear he had seen on the London solicitor's face when he had declined Harry's generous offer. Tremaine instilled that kind of fear in people. The butler — or whoever found them — would be no different, Harry realized with disappointment.

  If he couldn't bribe the bloody butler or whatever servant might catch him, he would just have to tie up the servant and gag him with the rope that held up his pants. Harry had no idea how he would then hold up his pants in such an event.

  "I can't stand this another minute," Harry whispered to Louisa.

  "I know," she whispered. "I can barely breathe."

  "I expect I'm taking all the air."

  Unable to sit in the cupboard another minute, Harry got out. It felt deuced good to stretch his legs and fill his lungs with the plentiful supply of air.

  Louisa followed him.

  "What will we do if one of the servants comes in here?" she asked.

  "We shall have to see if my pockets are deep enough."

  A pity there was no window in the silver room. How would they know when night fell? Though it was only morning, the meager chamber was as dark as midnight. And to think, they would be confined here for another ten hours.

  Taking Louisa's hand, he slid along the back wall to a sitting position, and she rested beside him. Once again he was filled with a protectiveness toward the slim woman who sat so close to him in the darkness. He cursed himself for allowing her to come. If something should happen to her. . .it was far too painful to contemplate. He only knew he would give his own worthless life to protect hers.

  They sat in the dark stillness for an hour, neither of them needing words to bind them, for they were closer to one another than those bound by flowery phrases — or by a vicar's ceremony.

  "Harry?" she whispered finally.

  Nothing she could have said would have been more welcome. He hated it when she reverted to calling him my lord. Harry and Louisa suited them and their peculiar relationship. "Yes?" he answered softly.

  "I suppose when you regain Wycliff House you'll want to start a family."

  How had she known? Since the day he had reclaimed Cartmoor Hall, his goal had been to find a fine woman who could bear him children, thereby fulfilling the Wycliff legacy. Until he met Louisa he had never thought to find a woman who owned his heart as his mother's heart was secured by his father. "That's been the whole point," he said.

  She was silent a moment. "You want to reestablish the family that once meant so much to you," she said with an irrepressible sadness in her voice.

  "You know me too well," he said curtly.

  Silence hung between them. They could hear the shuffling of servants' feet outside their tiny chamber, and despite himself, each time footsteps drew near, his heart stampeded. Not for himself. Fear had always been a stranger to him, but a numbing fear for Louisa consumed him. "Perhaps you should get back in the cupboard. We can leave the door slightly ajar, and I'll swiftly shut in the event our presence is detected."

  "No! I believe I'd rather die with you than go on without you."

  Her words swamped him in a flurry of passionate emotions. His arm slipped around her slim shoulders and his lips hungrily moved to hers.

  She lifted her face to his and eagerly received his kiss.

  The kiss, the feel of her body pressed against his, the decimating effect it had upon his willpower all were a thousand times more potent than anything he could have imagined all those nights he'd lain beside her and dreamed of doing what he was doing now.

  Pulling away from her was the hardest thing he'd ever done, but their lives were at stake. He couldn't allow himself to weaken. Even for her. He must save them.

  She was silent when he drew away. He feared he had offended her. "Would that I could see my watch," he said in a feeble attempt to change the direction of her thoughts. "How will we know when supper is over?"

  "I expect we'll hear the sound of plates being carried back to the kitchen."

  Another great period of silence stretched. Poor Louisa, he thought, was just learning to trust a man for the first time in her life, and he had forced himself on her. How vile he was! Then he remembered the sweet taste of her lips – lips that had eagerly sought his. He remembered, too, the pleasure her words had given him when she had said she would rather die with him. Such thought had the power to give him hope that the proper little bluestocking did not find him so repulsive after all. He must do nothing more to repel her. She was far too precious to lose to his own carnal needs.

  After the passage of more than an hour, she spoke again. "I had not realized how hungry I'd be."

  He found her hand in the darkness and squeezed it. "You'll eat to your heart's content as soon as we get the painting." His stomach plummeted. What if they were caught? He had no assurances Tremaine would not prefer to mete out his own punishment. Harry could not risk Louisa's safety. Suddenly, his mother's portrait seemed not worth the huge risk.

  He rose to his feet. "I have lost my eagerness to reclaim my mother's portrait. If I pay Tremaine handsomely enough, perhaps he will allow me to have it copied."

  "Listen," Louisa whispered, "'tis the sound of dishes."

  The clatter of stacked plates tapping into one another drew closer, then faded away. Tremaine had finishe
d eating.

  Louisa came to stand beside him. "We can get it now, Harry. You've come so far, I can't let you leave empty handed."

  "It could be dangerous."

  "You have no confidence in my plan," she said with disappointment.

  He could envision a pout on her little rosebud mouth. He hated like the devil to squelch her confidence. "It was an excellent plan, but I seem to be too great a coward to pull it off."

  "You're lying to protect me. There's not a cowardly bone in your body."

  "You don't know me as well as you think."

  "But I do, Harry," she said in a soft voice. Then she laid a gentle hand on his arm. "Please, Harry, let's get your mother's portrait. I assure you we'll go undetected."

  She sounded so confident, his fears for her were swept away. "Very well. Shall we go for it, Mr. Lewis?"

  "You remember where the dining room is?" she whispered.

  "On the next floor. I believe we should take the servants' stairs."

  He crowded in front of her so he could be the first out the door. He crept into the cold stone hallway and turned back to motion for her to come. Then he rounded the stairway, placing his foot on the first step. As soon as he did so, he heard two laughing maids on the landing above.

  He and Louisa scurried back to the silver closet, with their ears to the door. They waited until the women had passed, then left the sanctuary of the closet once more.

  This time they made it all the way up the stairs. They saw and heard no one.

  When they arrived at the central hallway, he asked, "Which way's the dining room from here?"

  "I believe it's on the other end of this hall, but how can we avoid being seen by those footmen at the end of the corridor?"

  "We can sneak into the first room, and from there I can climb out the window and make it over to the window of the dining room."

  "Just because the dining room has been modernized with large windows doesn't mean the other rooms have. Do you remember how high and how small castle windows normally are?"

  "You have a point there," he said.

  "Not to mention we're not on the ground floor. You know how to climb horizontally?"

  "You have another good point."

  "It's a very good thing I came along."

  They stood there at the base of another flight of back stairs with no idea how they were going to get into the dining room. After some length and a dozen faulty scenarios, he exclaimed, "I have an idea."

  "What?"

  "I'm afraid we'll have to use you as a distraction. You will need to try to creep up the main staircase, then distract the footmen who are on the other end of the hall."

  "How can I distract them?"

  "Certainly not with feminine wiles," he muttered. "Not dressed like that."

  "I know! Pretending to be a boy, I'll say I'm looking for my Papa, who had business at the castle. I'll say I was playing with the baby kittens, and I fear he must have left me."

  "How do you know there are baby kittens?"

  "I don't." She smiled. "But they don't, either."

  "There's one major problem," he said hesitantly.

  "What, pray tell?"

  "Your. . .your breasts." He coughed.

  She looked down at her chest. If one looked closely, two smooth humps the size of small apples could be seen. "You do have a point there."

  "More like two," he mumbled. "Sorry, I couldn't help myself."

  She glared at him. "I suppose it's back to the silver closet. There were many rags in that room I could use to flatten my bosom by binding it."

  To his consternation, his heart raced as they went down the same flight of stairs they had just climbed.

  The only way they could see in the silver closet was to leave the door open while Louisa located the longest rags. Then, after closing the door to total darkness, she presented her back to Harry and shed her boy's shirt. "My shirt's off. You can bind me now."

  He began to wrap several layers of rags tightly around her chest, tying them in the back. It was bloody difficult not to think about her breasts, and the devil take it, he could not repress the desire to see them, to feel them. But, of course, he must.

  When they were finished, it was back up a flight of stairs. He stood near the servants' stairs while Louisa stole through the main corridor where she was supposed to distract the footmen.

  Just around the corner from the two liveried servants at the other end of the hall, Harry waited and worried for the next ten minutes. It was with relief he heard Louisa's child-like voice speaking with the sentries.

  With that as a distraction, Harry dropped to his belly and crawled like a snake, slithering into the first chamber. Fortunately it was the lady's study, which was a good thing, since there was no lady of the castle. He got to his feet and walked across the room, then dove to the floor again to crawl a few more feet down the hall to the dining room. Louisa's voice carried as she talked to the footmen, whom Harry felt would not be as likely to notice a dot on the ground as they would to notice a brute of man like himself strolling down the hall.

  All was well, and he got safely to the red dining room, breathing a sigh of relief. He remembered the housekeeper calling it the rose room. The room's candles were no longer lit, but the chamber was not in total darkness because its large windows gave out onto the lantern-lit castle yard below.

  He looked up reverently at the portrait of his mother. God, but it looked so much like her he could almost smell her lavender water and hear the soft whisper of her loving voice. He stood for a moment gazing at her elegance. It was as if her serene presence filled the room, lifting away his fears.

  Then he scooted a chair over to the fireplace so he could stand on it to lift down the gilded frame of his mother's painting. It was deuced heavy, but he managed to hold on to it and lower it to the floor. Then he set about removing the canvas from the frame.

  Just then bright candlelight filled the doorway.

  He turned to see a dozen or so footmen, some bearing candelabra, others, swords. They flanked Tremaine, who had a sadistic grin on his face.

  And Louisa was there, too, a gag over her mouth, a knife held to her throat.

  Chapter 24

  Harry had stood in the face of danger any number of times but never before had experienced a fear as numbing as that which now gripped him at the sight of Louisa with a dagger poised to slit her lovely throat. He suppressed his first instinct, which was to hurl his fist into the man holding the knife. Louisa's safety had to be his first concern.

  His gaze flicked to her. She stood proudly, even regally, at the side of the towering sentry. No one save Harry, who had come to know her so thoroughly, would ever detect the worry on her sweet face.

  "It seems I have outsmarted, you, Wycliff," Tremaine said. "Tell me, where did you hide all afternoon?"

  Harry, the tip of a sword nipping at his chest, refused to answer.

  "Never matter." Tremaine waved a bejeweled hand. "We have known you were here all day, but as I knew this room was your destination, we waited."

  "I beg that you remove the rapier from the lad's throat," Harry said, watching Louisa as his fear mounted.

  Tremaine threw back his head and laughed heartily. "Come now, Wycliff, surely you don't take me for an idiot. I know your traveling companion is none other than Godwin Phillips's lovely young widow."

  Harry's pulse accelerated and his mouth dropped open. "Whatever makes you think such a thing?" Harry asked, trying to sound incredulous. Anything to throw them off Louisa's scent.

  "I have spies in Falwell who inform me of the activities of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, but it was not until you spoke of Godwin Phillips's widow yesterday that I actually knew." Tremaine's eyes were faraway. "I know the signs of a man deeply in love."

  Harry realized in a flash of a second the truth in the words of the demented man. Harry was, indeed, in love with Louisa.

  And he had to get her out of here.

  "Let us go now, Tremaine, and you'll have
your fifty thousand pounds — as well as my gentleman's pledge to never reveal your vileness. I only beg that you'll allow me to have my mother's portrait copied."

  A ruthless look came over Tremaine's face. "I will not be able to oblige you. You see, Mrs. Phillips knows too much about me and my activities. I told that fool husband of hers not to tell his wife anything, but I see he did not keep his word, which should not come as a surprise to me."

  "He told her nothing," Harry countered. "Let her go. Your fight is with me, not her."

  "Actually, my fight is now with both of you, though I don't think fight is the right word." Tremaine stood back and stroked his beard, glancing first at Harry then at Louisa. "You see, fight implies two somewhat equal sides, some reciprocation. But you and Mrs. Phillips will not be at liberty to strike back." He looked at the dozen huge footmen. "I have not decided quite how I am going to get rid of the pair of you. It's most difficult to dispose of an earl, even if the good people of Falwell think of you merely as Mr. Smith."

  "Please," Harry said, "let her go."

  "I cannot do that. What I can do, however is lock you both away in the turret until I decide what to do with you."

  Tremaine began to stroll from the room, then turned back. "Take heart, Wycliff. Ever the one to encourage love, I shall let you and Mrs. Phillips die together."

  * * *

  At least there was a window in the turret room they were locked within, Louisa thought. A feeble bit of light amidst stifling gloom. Of course, the narrow window was barred as securely as the bar slotting across the heavily timbered door.

  Harry had used every bit of strength he possessed to try to dislodge the bars on the windows. Not that it would have done much good. The drop from the turret window had to be a hundred feet.

  With the aid of moonlight, Louisa could see Harry, sitting on the stone floor. Unused to rough homespun, he had removed the shirt. She could no more remove her eyes from his magnificent body than she cold cease to draw breath. Her gaze trailed from his solid shoulders, down the taut muscles of his manly chest to his narrow waist, where a trail of dark hair disappeared beneath the rope-tied waist of the blacksmith's former breeches.