by Heidi Swain
I know I had moved to Nightingale Square with the objective of taking a year out, but I had no intention of letting a project of such magnificent proportions as this slip through my fingers.
‘I’ll hold you to that,’ said Luke, holding out his hand for me to shake.
‘Good,’ I swallowed, slipping my hot hand into his much cooler one. ‘I’d be disappointed if you didn’t.’
‘Come on,’ he said, squeezing hard and sending an electrical pulse from the tips of my fingers to somewhere deep in my belly, but not letting go. ‘I probably should have shown you this before, but come and see where I think the portrait of Edward would have hung.’
‘I’m pleased you’ve mentioned him,’ I said, falling into step and trying to relax my fingers which were still in his grip, ‘because that’s who I wanted to talk to you about tonight.’
‘And there was me hoping you were just here for my scintillating conversation,’ Luke grinned, but using a tone which suggested he wasn’t joking at all.
Looking at the fireplace in what had originally been the master bedroom, and thinking back to Harold’s photographs, I was sure Luke was right. This definitely looked to be the place where the smaller family portraits had been displayed. I guessed they must have formed part of a more intimate collection that Charles and his wife kept aside from the bigger paintings which had dominated the rooms downstairs.
We had only been in the room for a matter of seconds before Luke inhaled deeply and thankfully moved the conversation away from my motives for joining him.
‘Can you smell that?’ he asked, sniffing the air.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Well, I think so. I definitely just got a whiff of something, but whatever is it?’
‘Pipe smoke I reckon,’ he said, smiling broadly.
‘Pipe smoke?’
‘Yes,’ he nodded. ‘Whenever I come in here and look at this spot I get a whiff of it. It’s happened ever since the day I arrived.’
‘But where’s it coming from?’ I asked, looking around for the potential source. ‘You don’t think the place is haunted, do you?’
‘I think it might be,’ Luke told me. I was a little perturbed that he sounded so serious. ‘I get the feeling there’s some sort of presence in this room at least.’
I wasn’t sure I believed in ghosts, but the smell was real and getting stronger by the second.
‘Charles Wentworth smoked a pipe,’ Luke elaborated.
‘Did he?’ I said, crossing to the window and trying not to show that I was spooked.
I might have been intrigued by the man who had built my house, but I didn’t need the appearance of a ghostly apparition to seal my interest.
It was already dark outside, but I knew this window overlooked the garden and the main lawns. My body emitted a little shudder when I realised there would more than likely be a clear view of the tree under which Edward’s brief life came to an abrupt and violent end. I closed my eyes and turned my back on the spectacle as a chill ran down my spine. I didn’t want to see that tree or even imagine the scene which had happened under it. That was more frightening to me than the thought of Mr Wentworth’s ghost suddenly springing up.
‘Shall we carry on?’ suggested Luke. ‘I’m rather keen to hear what it is that you want to tell me now.’
I was relieved to find the rest of the house much as I expected and a little while later we found ourselves back in the old staff quarters where Luke was currently living. The conditions, thanks to the reconnection of the electricity supply, were a little more luxurious than those we Nightingale Square residents had endured on 14 February.
‘I’m just going to go and check on Violet and Dash,’ said Luke. ‘Can I get you a drink; tea, coffee, something cold?’
‘Something cold would be nice,’ I said. ‘I seem to have developed quite a thirst since the barbecue this afternoon.’
‘Something cold coming up,’ he beamed, heading for the kitchen. ‘I blame that spicy marinade John used on the ribs.’
‘I think you could be right,’ I agreed. ‘Shall I put a match to your fire while you’re gone?’
Luke turned back to me and laughed.
‘You already have,’ he told me.
Our eyes met briefly and again I recalled what he had said at the end of his speech, along with what both Lisa and Heather had intimated afterwards. More than intimated in fact.
‘The matches are on the mantelpiece,’ he said, finally letting me go. ‘I won’t be long.’
The fire was comfortingly crackling away by the time he returned carrying a chilled bottle of champagne and two flutes on a tray along with some leftovers from lunch.
‘What are we celebrating?’ I asked as he wrapped a napkin around the neck of the bottle and expertly eased out the cork.
‘I’m not sure yet,’ he said, ‘that depends on what it is you have to tell me.’
As I watched him fill the glasses and pop an olive in his mouth I wished I had more exciting news to share than ‘Charlie has drawn a blank’. I hoped he wasn’t going to be too downcast that my efforts so far hadn’t got us any closer to tracking down the portrait.
Perhaps the things John had discovered in the secret cupboard might lead us further along the trail. It had been difficult, once I realised what they were, not to sit and go through them on my own, but fingers crossed they were going to prove they were worth the wait.
‘Well,’ I said, once we had raised our glasses and I had taken a long and stomach-settling bubble-filled swallow. ‘As I mentioned upstairs, it’s about the missing portrait of Edward.’
‘OK,’ Luke nodded, his frown quickly falling back into place.
He was staring at me so intently I had to look away. I took another swig of champagne, a much bigger one this time.
‘As you know,’ I reminded him as the bubbles tickled my nose, ‘I have contacts in the antiques field which might prove useful when it comes to tracking it down.’
‘Contacts which you quite understandably said you didn’t want anything to do with because they were connected to your ex-husband.’
‘They’re the ones,’ I said, trying to make light of what I had said the evening I explained why I hadn’t offered to help him out before. ‘Contacts that could lead my path back to David, but fortunately, so far at least, haven’t.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Luke, shaking his head. ‘What exactly is it that you’re trying to tell me, Kate?’
‘Well, it’s the mystery of the missing portrait,’ I said quickly, drinking yet more champagne, ‘the lure of it proved too much in the end and so I called my old friend, Charlie.’
Luke shook his head again, more vehemently this time.
‘You didn’t have to do that, Kate.’
‘I know I didn’t have to,’ I said, ‘but after you’d explained how much it meant to you, and to this place,’ I hastily added to ensure he knew I had the interests of Prosperous Place fixed at the forefront of my mind, not his interests, ‘it was all I could think about and so I did the only thing I thought I could do to help. Charlie’s the best in the business,’ I went on, ‘and I’ve sworn him to secrecy. He promised not to mention any of this to David and he’s been putting out feelers in the hope of turning up the portrait, or at least sniffing out an idea or two as to where it might be.’
Luke turned it all over in his mind for a moment.
‘I can’t believe you would do that for me,’ he said. ‘Not after you told me that you had absolutely no desire to ever have any contact with your ex, or anyone associated with him, again.’
‘Well,’ I said, finally draining my glass. ‘I haven’t had contact with him and I did it for the house really and like I said, Charlie has promised that word won’t get back to David. He still has no idea where I’m living and I have every intention of keeping it that way.’
I was rather touched that Luke had taken my feelings, and the risk I had taken to jeopardise them, into account rather than asking straight out if Charlie had mana
ged to track down the portrait, but that was testament to the kind of bloke he was.
‘I only wish,’ I told him as he refilled both our glasses, ‘that I had something more positive to tell you, but I’m afraid Charlie has drawn a blank. He’s searched high and low, sent emails to practically everyone in the business, along with the finest auction houses both here and abroad, but there’s been nothing enlightening come back to him at all. There’s not been so much as a single hint of where the portrait has disappeared to.’
‘I see,’ Luke nodded, twisting the delicate stem of his glass around in his hands. ‘So, what do you think that means?’
‘Well,’ I carried on, ‘as far as Charlie’s concerned he’s certain the painting must still be here, actually on site somewhere. He’s convinced it can’t have been sold, not through any official channels, or via any of the larger houses that you would ordinarily expect to be involved, anyway.’
Luke shook his head.
‘But between us we’ve had the place apart,’ he sighed. ‘I’m sure it isn’t here.’
‘I know,’ I said, putting down my glass and reaching for the bag I had been lugging about all day. ‘Which is why I’m hoping there might be something among this lot which will lead us in the right direction.’
‘What have you got there?’
‘Mostly letters,’ I said, popping the lid off one tin and then the other. ‘They were hidden in a secret cupboard next to the chimney breast in my bedroom. They’re all pretty old by the looks of it and the paper is fragile so we need to be careful, but I’m sure they’ll have some bearing on the situation.’
‘Wow,’ gasped Luke, as he peered into the tins and reached for a pair of dark-framed reading glasses which I hadn’t noticed on the table behind him.
He shoved them on and I couldn’t take my eyes off him. In less time than it took my heart to beat, he had gone from male model to model student. He looked for all the world as if he deserved the coveted cover shot on the ‘hot dudes reading’ calendar. I was grateful that the kittens were consigned to the kitchen because had one of those jumped on his lap I don’t think I could have controlled myself when faced with such a sexy tableau. What the heck was wrong with me?
‘What?’ he blinked, when he caught me looking at him.
‘Nothing,’ I stammered, my face flushing scarlet as I forced myself to turn away.
‘Is it the glasses?’ he asked. ‘They’re pretty old. I keep meaning to get new frames.’
‘No,’ I croaked, ‘don’t change them. They suit you.’
‘I didn’t realise you went for geeky types,’ he teased, looking at me over the rims.
‘I don’t actually go for any type,’ I told him, trying to sound prim, but failing.
It was on the tip of my tongue to ask what he had been studying when he accrued his student debts before his modelling days, but I bit the question back and returned my attention to the letters.
They turned out to be even older than I had initially supposed and chronicled, among other things, the doomed love affair between Abigail and Edward and the relationship between her family and the Wentworths right up until around the time Doris must have been a young girl.
A number of the envelopes which had been sent to Charles had been returned unopened and I guessed that the shock of losing his son had led to him completely cutting all private communication with everyone in Abigail’s family. There was no mention from either side of the child, Luke’s ancestor, to whom Abigail had given birth.
‘I suppose this goes to show what a great man Charles Wentworth was, doesn’t it?’ said Luke huskily as we trawled through it all. ‘I bet anyone else in his position would have taken the house away and banished the entire family in a heartbeat, wouldn’t they?’
‘Yes,’ I said, slipping one of the letters back inside its envelope, ‘you’re probably right. The fact that he didn’t act out of spite, or otherwise, really shows us the mark of the man.’
It can’t have been easy for him knowing that the family of the girl who had cost him his son was living practically on his doorstep, but then they, in a way, had lost a child too. If only Abigail and Edward had been born a century or so later, then their story would have stood a much better chance of having a happy ending.
‘This letter from Charles’s wife, Rose,’ I said, picking it up again.
‘What about it?’
It was the only one we had found written in her softly slanting handwriting.
‘Well, as far as I can tell, it’s the only one that helps us at all in our quest to find the lost portrait.’
‘But does it?’ Luke queried. ‘I can’t see how.’
‘She mentions briefly a few things being sent to Abigail’s mother,’ I mused, running my fingers lightly over the paper, ‘which makes me wonder if there’s a possibility that Rose knew there was a baby, even if Charles didn’t. Perhaps she sent things that had belonged to Edward to Abigail’s family in the hope that the child would one day come to know who his father was.’
‘You might be right about that,’ said Luke thoughtfully. ‘From the notes Dad left behind and the things he told me he’d discovered from our side, I’m certain that before she died, Abigail had told her son who his father was, even though she hadn’t the evidence to prove it. In fact, it was that connection to Abigail’s family further south which put Dad on the Norfolk trail.’
It was such a shame that he never had the chance to reach its conclusion, but I didn’t think it necessary to point it out. Luke was no doubt thinking that for himself.
‘There you go then,’ I said instead. ‘Maybe Rose wanted Abigail’s family to have physical proof that the child was a Wentworth because she realised that the only way her husband’s heritage would live on would be to leave behind something incontrovertible that would ensure the legacy continued. Her other son had proved himself less than capable of following in his father’s footsteps, so maybe she felt this was the only way to give the Wentworth empire any chance of surviving.’
‘But it didn’t work, did it?’ said Luke. ‘The proof that Rose may have attempted to pass on didn’t make it to either Abigail or her boy. The factory and houses disappeared and this place was eventually sold off without so much as a hint of another heir. Edward’s son never stepped up to claim the title because he never had the proof to make the claim, even though he knew from his mother’s own mouth the source of the blood running through his veins.’
‘You’re right,’ I frowned. ‘And it wasn’t as if you could just pop along somewhere and ask for a DNA test in those days, was it?’
Edward’s son had never been furnished with the evidence to confirm he was a Wentworth descendant and that was why the connection hadn’t been made until Luke’s dad had taken advantage of modern technology and genealogical records and found it. We sat in silence for a few seconds listening to the logs crackling in the grate.
‘But you know, I can’t imagine Rose would have given that portrait away.’ Luke sighed, quashing my theory completely. ‘And we know it was still in the house when Harold’s photographs were taken.’
‘Oh yes,’ I tutted. I had forgotten about that. ‘Of course.’
I drank another mouthful of champagne and began to feel thoroughly deflated in spite of the valiant efforts of the fizz. I had hoped the secret stash of letters would have provided Luke with some decent, solid answers, but all it had actually done was create more questions.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said, sinking back into the cushions.
‘For what?’
‘All this,’ I said, pointing at the piles of papers. ‘I wanted to be able to help, but all I’ve done is produce more of a muddle.’
‘Of course you haven’t,’ Luke disagreed. ‘If anything, you’ve given us a new lead. Maybe the portrait went to Doris herself or one of her more recent ancestors. It must have been taken from Prosperous Place after those photos were taken. We just have to keep looking for the next link, one that doesn’t veer so far back.’
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‘I suppose,’ I said, wrinkling my nose.
‘After all,’ Luke went on, nudging my knee, ‘Doris’s family, who were my family, lived in your house right up until you arrived, so for all we know things could have been heading that way far more recently than we realise. Who’s to say the connection with the house ended when the Wentworths left here?’
‘Maybe,’ I said, scratching my head.
I knew he was trying to make me feel better, but it wasn’t working. I was certain there was nothing left to discover in number four and it was all beginning to look like yet another happy ever after that was destined to remain unsolved.
‘And anyway,’ he said, reaching for my hand and stroking the back of it, ‘as far as I’m concerned what we’ve discovered this evening goes to prove something far more important than where this blessed portrait has disappeared to.’
‘Does it?’ I swallowed.
Goose bumps had broken out along the arm attached to the hand he was still caressing and I sat up straight again as I caught the change in his expression.
‘Yes,’ he said, leaning closer, his eyes never leaving mine and his soft breath mingling with my own. ‘It does.’
‘And what’s that then?’ I whispered, my head spinning as a result of more than the bubbles.
‘It goes to prove that the men of Prosperous Place have absolutely no power to stop themselves falling in love with the beautiful women who live in number four Nightingale Square.’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I said, forcing myself to pull away a little.
I hadn’t expected him to say anything as monumental as that.
‘What I mean,’ Luke breathed, as he took off his glasses and laid them back on the table, ‘is that I’ve fallen for you, Kate. That I can finally understand what it was that my father meant by this whole one true love business.’
I shook my head, but neither of us moved. I had already been someone’s alleged heart’s desire and I didn’t have any love left to share with anyone else. Surely Luke had made a mistake but the look in his eyes suggested he thought otherwise.
I had spent so long grieving for my own once in a lifetime love that I hadn’t seen the signs my friends had teased me about, or factored into the equation the possibility that I might just turn out to be someone else’s.