Yet despite the unfashionable strength of her nose, there was something deeply striking about the woman on the canvas—an effect that was not purely due to the fact that she had four arms.
The oddity was depicted with subtle elegance, so that one giving the piece only a casual sweep with the eye might not even notice. The limbs in question were arranged in a manner that made them feel entirely natural, though there was still something about them that reminded Lily of the grotesque statute in Robert Ash’s library—the goddess Kali, Mr. Cairncross had called her.
The woman in the painting sat in a chair before a large standing vase, its blue and white glazing done in a pattern of a thousand delicately-rendered keys. The vase itself contained a spray of long-stemmed flowers—lilies, she recognized, with a slight start of discomfort. Flame-orange calla lilies.
The artist’s gown was black, a rich hue with elements of blue and purple, but it was not cut like a mourning dress. The neckline was fashionable, the sleeves—all four of them—elegantly tapered.
Her feet were bare, her toes just emerging from under the hemline of her gown.
Lily looked closer and realized there was something off about the floor as well.
It was not a floor at all but water—a dark, still surface that reflected the room above. Little ripples gathered around the legs of the chair, the bottom of the vase.
Then, of course, there were her eyes.
Instead of irises, they were filled with what appeared to be tiny, shimmering lines. The delicate network, like a spiderweb, was rendered with such skill it appeared not only on the surface, but as something with depth. Lily had the urge to ask for a magnifying glass to get a closer look and discern just how far they went.
Then again, the idea of getting that close to the woman in the painting was unsettling.
One of the artist’s hands held a painter’s brush and a fall of bright crimson silk. The other reached toward the edge of the painting, where, in the deep shadows, a more rugged and masculine hand could be seen extending toward it, just failing to make contact.
In her other two hands, she held a banner, a strip of parchment on which were written the words, “Méfie-toi de l’étranger dont les paroles sont douces comme le miel.” Lily’s schoolgirl French was enough for her to make out the message without help: “Beware the stranger whose words are sweet as honey.”
As she gazed at it, the buzz of conversation receded along with the uncomfortable warmth of the room. She felt as though she was viewing the artifact not in a crowded, brightly-lit gallery, but at the end of a long, dark hallway. Everything grew dimmer but the painting, the strange symbols woven into its fabric seeming to whisper to her from the canvas.
The understanding came to her with a clarity that defied doubt. This was not some artistic pretense. It was a language, one Lily didn’t speak but was just capable of hearing.
“So that’s her? That’s Mrs. Ash?” The words felt strange on her tongue, as though she had to remember how to speak them.
“There are artistic liberties, of course. I mean beyond the extra appendages. She was actually much prettier in real life. Made an unexpected splash when she came out. There were several very eligible bachelors competing for her hand. It was quite the contest.” He waved at the painting. “The work isn’t to everyone’s taste, but I’ve always found it engrossing. Not charming, certainly, but . . . challenging. Thankfully I am not alone in my appreciation. The show has just opened and I already have not one, but two offers on the table for her. Both highly motivated. The seller inherited the thing and could care less for it. There’s barely a reserve, but my commission goes up with the price, so let the battle commence, eh?”
Roth was clearly delighted by the notion of a bidding war, but something about the prospect left Lily feeling uneasy. She pushed it aside. What did it matter to her who ended up with the painting?
“Who do you have on your line?” she asked, more to make conversation than anything else.
He took a step closer to her, scanning the room, then nodded.
“There’s one. Dr. Joseph Hartwell, renowned physician, formerly of the Royal College, now in private practice. Counts among his clientele the Countess of Sussex and at least one dowager duchess.”
The man Roth indicated was a tall, striking older gentleman. He had a thick head of well-kept white hair and was impeccably dressed. She imagined he must once have been quite handsome. He still cut a dashing figure.
“The good doctor is very well respected in his circle. He has apparently made some remarkable advancements in the science of hematology. There is talk of a Nobel. Pity he’s such a rotter.”
Lily gave him a surprised look.
“Oh, he’s as gentlemanly as they come. Just thinks the likes of you and I should refrain from breeding.”
“Sorry?” she nearly choked on her champagne.
“Bad blood, you see. You Irish, us Jews. The Chinese, the Africans, more or less anyone with an income of under £500 a year. He’s founded a whole club on it.”
“The Society for the Betterment of the British Race?” Lily offered, instinct prompting the guess.
“Don’t tell me you’ve signed on.”
“No. I met a member on the way in.”
Roth sighed. “There are always a few of them buzzing about when the good doctor is in the room. He has quite the loyal following.”
“They’re eugenicists.” Lily had heard of the notion, though it was generally not painted in such bald terms as those Roth employed. It was framed as a scientific study that expanded upon the principles of evolution and applied them to mankind. The promise was that man’s rational capability for self-awareness and self-analysis, coupled with a greater understanding of the science of evolution and heredity, could empower him to take control of the destiny of his species and shape it, deliberately, in a direction that would foster growth and as-yet-unimaginable achievement.
A race of noble heroes, as the toothpick-maker at the door had promised her. One that excluded anyone who didn’t look and act like the men and women who filled this stuffy room.
Roth sipped his glass. It was filled with water, Lily noted, and not champagne. It did not surprise her. He was far too canny a businessman to allow drink to muddle his brain when there were deals to be made.
“He needn’t worry about it so far as I’m concerned. I’ve about as much interest in breeding as I do in drinking vinegar for breakfast. But he will pay for the piece.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because he was one of those suitors I mentioned.”
Lily started with surprise and was unable to conceal it. Her reaction clearly delighted Roth.
“Oh yes! And isn’t that ironic? The eugenicist on his knees pleading for the hand of the daughter of an Indian. Her father was a major with the East India Company, but her mother was a native. The family had distant ties to a Canadian rail company, so there was a moderate fortune behind her, but nothing to compare with Hartwell’s. It must have been impossible for him to imagine she would be anything but grateful for his offer. Yet she turned down the dashing, wealthy doctor for a scholar from a family nobody had ever heard of. Of course, I’m sure that the lady’s choice has nothing at all to do with the good doctor’s current passion for sterilizing her racial cohorts along with anyone else he believes should be tossed into the same bucket. I believe I am not taking too far a leap when I predict he will pay whatever he needs to in order to secure this painting.”
Lily found herself hoping that Roth would find a way to thoroughly fleece the respected physician on this purchase.
“And your other buyer?” she asked, curious as to whom she was apparently rooting for in the contest for Evangeline Ash’s portrait.
“That is the only complicating factor of this whole endeavor. He’s a regular client of mine and one of those rarest of beasts: a true bohemian, though you would never know it to look at him. Very modern, extremely discerning. He appreciates works that no one el
se in this room would be able to wrap their tonnish heads around. I just wish he had more money to spend, but despite the title, his credit is limited. If he had an extra thousand or two a year to play around with—oh, what wonders we might work together! That’s him, over there, the Byronic hero with the gloves on.”
Lily followed the line of Roth’s gesture, and the chaos and noise of the room focused to a point.
It was Lord Strangford.
Besides the slightly unfashionable length of his hair, there was nothing about him to support Roth’s claim that he was some sort of iconoclast. His evening dress was as unremarkably sober as the black suit she had seen him in the day before, if substantially more formal. It was well-made, the cut a touch out-of-date, finished with a simple black neckcloth identical to the one she had bled all over the day before.
There were no flourishes or flash—just those black gloves wrought in fine kid leather. Lily was certain they were the same pair he had been wearing when he had pulled her up from the road. She realized that they had also covered his hands when he appeared on the landing of The Refuge.
There were other men in the room who wore gloves as part of their evening kit, though those were almost exclusively white and of a fine fabric like silk or delicate wool, not leather.
The room was warm for such a heavy material. Lily began to wonder if Lord Strangford’s choice in wearing them was not a whim of fashion. Perhaps the gloves hid some scar or other disfigurement, but then, his appearance in The Refuge had been highly informal. Surely if he felt comfortable enough there to walk around in what was little better than a set of pajamas, he wouldn’t have needed to hide the relics of an old injury.
But what other purpose could they serve?
Roth leaned in to give her the rest of the story.
“Both Hartwell and his lordship there offered to buy the piece sight unseen, but I insisted they come to the opening before I would accept a formal offer. With the pair of them in a room together it’s far more likely the allure of the contest will get the better of them and drive up the price higher than they might otherwise allow, if they had time to think about it in the sober quiet of their drawing rooms.”
Roth was right, a notion that made Lily uneasy.
“As an added bonus, my little stratagem lures Lord Strangford from his townhouse. The man is a notorious recluse. The matchmaking dowagers have been trying all manner of tricks—deception, guilt, a little light blackmail—to pry him out to their balls and dinner parties for years. He always turns them down. And yet now I have got him out. What a coup for me, eh?”
Lord Strangford’s interest in the painting must not be for himself, but for the husband of the woman who had painted it—Mr. Ash. That Ash might choose not to come and bid for it himself was hardly shocking, given the grief she had glimpsed in him that morning when the topic of his wife had risen.
Her own sense of who ought to win the battle Roth had established was clear. Evangeline Ash’s portrait ought to go to the man the artist herself had chosen.
But would it?
Roth had indicated that Lord Strangford’s funds were limited, and it was clear that Hartwell was a man of substantial means. It was quite plausible he might offer more than Lord Strangford was capable of countering. As for Roth, he would not be moved by stories of lost love, no matter how poignant. He was too hard-nosed for that.
Not that it was any of her business.
Lord Strangford turned toward them. Lily looked away, pretending to study the painting.
She wasn’t at all sure what she should say to him if he noticed she was there. She could not shake the image of him standing on the landing of The Refuge, a building dedicated to the education and training of . . .
Charismatics, Ash had called them.
People like her.
A thousand questions burned in her mind, none of which she was willing to ask, because to do so might compel her to reveal her own closely-guarded secrets.
“Good evening, Roth,” Lord Strangford said, his voice rich and low behind her.
“Lovely to see you out and about, my lord.”
“You did make it rather difficult to stay at home. Can we speak of my offer?”
“Oh, there will be plenty of time for that. Why don’t you relax first? Have a drink, do a bit of mingling. You could start with an old friend of mine. Miss Albright, may I introduce Lord Strangford?”
There was no escaping it. Lily turned and offered Lord Strangford a polite smile.
“Good evening, my lord.”
She noted the quick flash of surprise. He reined it in. There was an air of tight control about him here that she had not seen out on the heath.
“A pleasure to see you again, Miss Albright.”
“You’re already acquainted?” Roth asked, clearly intrigued.
“Our paths have crossed lately,” Lily replied thinly.
“Then it will not be out of line for me to leave the two of you to catch up. If you’ll excuse me, I need to go harangue the caterer. The canapes should have been out twenty minutes ago.” He took up Lily’s hand and gave it a kiss. “It has been an unexpected treat, my dear.”
He slipped away into the crowd, deserting her to the awkwardness than hung suspended in the air between her and the man in front of her.
There were too many things she couldn’t say. The weight of them left her scrambling for some common courtesy to fill the space left by those unasked questions.
Lord Strangford got to it first.
“How is your leg?”
“Quite well, thank you.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
Another tense pause descended.
The crowd around them was growing more boisterous, the chatter amplified by the quick-flowing champagne. A particularly bright note of laughter cut through the hum of noise, as clear and resonant as a bell. Lily instinctively looked for the source of it but saw only the flash of a white gown between moving bodies by the front door.
A portly gentleman with a woman obviously not his wife on his arm moved past, a bit unevenly. Strangford took a step to the side to avoid them.
“Mr. Roth said you don’t usually attend events like this.”
“I’m not very fond of crowds.”
There was a tension in him. It was subtle but Lily could see it in the way he avoided contact with the close-pressed bodies milling around them. He hid his discomfort well but once she was aware of it, it became tangible.
She was reminded of his strange hesitancy on the heath whenever courtesy demanded he offer her his hand or his shoulder. That, too, had been subtle.
Too many questions.
She grasped for something safe.
“I hear you are a collector.”
“In as much as I can be, yes.”
“What’s your interest? Pastorals? Portraits?”
“Sometimes. But not exactly.”
“How enlightening.”
He took a deep breath.
“I am drawn to . . . anything that shows me something I did not expect to see.”
“Such as?”
“A cathedral turned inside-out. The rhythm of a sunrise. A certain arch of a woman’s eyebrow. It’s . . . hard to for me to put words to it. The works don’t fit into any box. They just . . . manage to capture some small piece of the truth.”
“The truth of what?”
“Of what lies under the surface of things.”
Lily considered him.
“So you really are a bohemian.”
Lord Strangford lifted a dark eyebrow.
“Roth said as much,” she explained. “But I found it hard to credit. Any other bohemian I have met was either far more colorful or utterly miserable.”
Something twitched at the corner of his mouth, his eyes bright.
“Is that so?”
Lily felt a smile tugging at her own mouth in response.
Roth returned.
“Lord Strangford, there is someone I would like you to
meet. Miss Albright, I promise I shall return him shortly.”
Dowager, Roth mouthed to her behind him as they moved away, nodding toward a straight-backed elderly woman in an elaborate pink gown. Apparently he was ensuring that the powers-that-be were aware of his social coup in getting Lord Strangford out of the house.
That left Lily alone with Evangeline Ash. As her attention returned to the painting, she felt its influence threaten to creep over her again.
She turned the other way, letting the crowd carry her along the room. The current tossed her up against a cluster of people gathered around the tall figure of Dr. Hartwell.
Curiosity about the other bidder for Mrs. Ash’s portrait—and former suitor for her hand—got the better of her. She let herself become attached to the little coterie.
Most of the bodies gathered there belonged to older, wealthy women, who were listening enrapt as a gentleman in evening tails puffed on about the greatness of Hartwell’s work.
“It is quite the most remarkable development—your excellent research into the possible organization of human blood into distinct types. You must understand the potential implications, ladies,” he added, addressing the crowd. “The transference of human blood from a donor to a recipient has been impossible without the risk of most terrible complications before now, but with Dr. Hartwell’s discoveries—”
“You mustn’t get ahead of yourself, Mr. Edwards. There is some distance yet to go before transfusion is a possibility,” Hartwell cut in. The modesty seemed to play well with the ladies of the crowd.
Lily noted that a few of the men scattered around Hartwell wore the Saxon hero rune pin of the toothpick-maker who had escorted her in, the sigil of Hartwell’s eugenics club.
One of them piped in.
“Of course, I am sure there are other questions you must wish to investigate. Such as whether some of these qualities of the blood constitute a superior strain, one which we might wish to encourage to propagate.”
At the mention of the word “propagate”, a few fans began to flutter, one woman letting out a nervous titter.
The Fire in the Glass Page 8