Mortal Arts (A Lady Darby Mystery)

by Huber, AnnaLee

  I watched him for a moment, frustration simmering inside me like the water heating in a teakettle. “But I’m not any good at it,” I blurted out.

  Will looked up at me again, as calm and unruffled as before. “Do you have to be?”

  I watched the way the wind ruffled his too-long hair across his forehead and considered his words. “But it’s not any fun to do something I’m not good at.”

  The corners of his handsome mouth quirked upward into a smile. He set aside his paintbrush and rose from his stool. “And, ignoring your previous drawing master’s idiotic comments, you have been good at everything else you’ve tried to paint, haven’t you? Even as a small child, I bet you could draw far better than most adults.”

  I hesitated, knowing it was impolite to brag.

  His grin widened. “It’s all right. You can speak the truth.”

  “Yes,” I admitted.

  Humor danced in his eyes. “Well, I’m sorry to tell you, but it was inevitable that you should come up against something that gave you trouble. Even geniuses and prodigies have their weak points. The trick is not to let those bothersome bits stop you. Persevere and you’ll be better all around for the effort.”

  I looked up into Will’s soft gray eyes and wondered at what he’d had to persevere. Little as I knew about it, Will had shown me that war was a terrifying, difficult thing. And I knew he had struggled, still struggled every day to leave it behind.

  The amusement faded from his eyes and his smile turned sad, as if he understood exactly where my thoughts had taken me. “Now, see here,” he said, pointing to the leaves of my trees. “Your sense of shade and definition have improved significantly in just the past few weeks. I noticed it in the portrait of Mrs. Caldwell you’ve been working on.”

  I blinked at the blurs of foliage on my canvas. “Really?”

  “Most definitely.”

  I gestured to the painting. “But the forest still looks dead. Like a flattened, lifeless slug.”

  He chuckled. “Oh, it’s not quite so bad as that. Even your worst efforts are far better than most can ever aspire to. But in any case, you don’t want to paint landscapes. You said so yourself.” He tilted his head and smiled, chiding me gently. “So stop worrying so. Approach them as the exercises they are, and concentrate on your brushstrokes, the play of light.” He gestured to the admittedly lovely panorama around us. “And enjoy the sunshine. You spend far too much time cooped up in your smelly studio.”

  I sighed, willing to concede that point. “It is easier to breathe out here.”

  He laughed outright and I felt a flush of pleasure at the sound. It was deep and husky, and far too rare.

  “I imagine so,” he murmured, bending over to pick up my brush. Blades of grass stuck to the paint-smeared tip. “Now,” he said, handing it to me, “study the way the sunlight glistens off that stream and try to re-create it.”

  I glanced at the flat blue-gray strip of water depicted on my canvas and nodded.

  Will truly had been an excellent teacher. Patient, understanding, and far better at motivating me to do the things I didn’t want to do than anyone had been since I had outgrown the care of my nursemaid.

  And now . . . look at what had become of him.

  Tears burned the backs of my eyes, their salty bitterness curdling my tongue. I pressed my forehead against the cool glass of the window, knowing it would leave a smudge, but not caring. I needed to feel the shock of cold against my skin. Gritting my teeth, I fought against the sob building inside me. It pressed hard on my chest. If I wept it would do no one any good, least of all Will. But in spite of my struggles, a single tear escaped to etch a trail down my cheek.

  I swiped the wetness away angrily, and then turned to slam the flat of my palm against the window casing. It smarted, but I welcomed the pain.

  Damn the old Lord Dalmay! How could he do this to his son? What kind of unfeeling bastard locks away his own flesh and blood in such a cesspit and then proceeds to erase him from his life?

  And Lady Hollingsworth along with all the other loose tongues here at Dalmay House should be ashamed of themselves. After everything Will had been through—his service during the war, his unjust confinement—he should be given a hero’s welcome, not spoken of in disgust and shunned like some criminal.

  My breath sawed in and out of my chest, rasping like a wounded animal, and I was forced to grip the drapes on either side of me and press my face to the cool glass again, trying to slow my racing heart. My breathing calmed, but the tightness in my chest remained, squeezing my breast every time I closed my eyes and saw Will’s haunted face.

  If only I could turn back the clock, return to the summer Will acted as my drawing master. Return to the months before he was locked away. Maybe I could convince Lord Dalmay not to fear his son. Or persuade Will to go to his brother in London. Surely there was some way we could have stopped it all from happening. If only I could fix this. If only I could make it right.

  I lifted my face from the windowpane, staring out at the shadowy landscape before me dusted with silvery moonlight.

  There had to be something I could do. Some way that I could help him get back what he’d lost, to return him to himself, to the man he was before he’d been confined to that asylum. Before all of those years of torment had been inflicted on his still-fragile mind.

  Knowing that I still had not beaten my own demons, it seemed somewhat naïve to think I could help Will to defeat his, but it felt even more wrong not at least to try, to offer whatever support or guidance I could. Too many people had turned away from Will—during the years prior to his confinement, when he struggled to escape the exhaustion and melancholia that had followed him home from war, and in the months since his release from Larkspur Retreat. I couldn’t be one of them. Not when I had experienced a similar shunning I was just beginning to fight my way back from.

  For all the things Will had done for me that summer as my drawing master and more, he deserved my friendship and my loyalty. To turn my back on him now would be a betrayal. I wasn’t sure I could live with myself if I behaved so callously.

  Of course, I didn’t know exactly what I could do for him. Despite the years of enforced tutelage by my late husband studying the intimate workings of the human body, I was not medically trained. I had no idea how to treat a man suffering from the manias and melancholia Will endured. But Michael must have consulted a physician—someone with experience with this sort of thing, someone who knew how to care for patients like Will. I could follow their direction.

  I worried my lower lip between my teeth. Unless the physician had told Michael to return his brother to the asylum. That seemed to be the answer for anything that baffled a medical man, and the more arrogant the man, the more adamant his protestations that nothing could be done. At least, that had been my experience. And as Sir Anthony’s wife, I’d had plenty of opportunities to witness prideful displays from him and his colleagues.

  In any case, Michael had told us his brother had improved significantly in the nine months since his release, so continuing on the present course must be better than sending him back. Perhaps all Will needed was more time and everyone’s patience, and his mind would heal itself. If he was sketching those frightening images on spare sheets of paper and his walls to purge his mind of them, then maybe he was already making great strides to mend himself. Maybe if I encouraged his efforts, let him know I understood, he could rid himself of those haunting memories once and for all.

  I rubbed my fingers against my right temple, knowing full and well it wasn’t quite so simple. Was I not still plagued by the images from my past? Pacing the floors of my room on some nights, unable to sleep?

  My fingers tightened their grip around the drapes, wrinkling the costly velvet.

  But surely it was better to at least try. Maybe Will would never be completely rid of his nightmares—maybe no one ever was—but he c
ould at least fight them. What other option did he have? Giving up, giving in was intolerable.

  Struggling as I was with such dark thoughts, I nearly missed the soft click of the door opening and closing behind me. It was latched with care not to disturb those in the other rooms nearby.

  I knew better than to suppose Lucy had forgotten something and come back to fetch it. Or that my sister was ready for a chat, when fatigue from her recent illness had marked her steps as she exited the drawing room after dinner. No one else should have been so presumptuous as to visit my room in the middle of the night, or to enter it without even knocking, but I knew who it was without turning. And somehow I felt I should have been expecting it.

  The anger I had only recently dampened flared back to life, sweeping swift and hot through my veins. I almost felt grateful for the chance to vent my spleen, especially on the man who was my intruder.

  Dropping the drapes, I whirled around to glare at him. “This is becoming rather a bad habit, isn’t it?”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Gage was not the least intimidated by my angry stare. In fact, despite his casual pose, leaning back against the doorjamb with his ankles and arms crossed, I could feel the full force of his displeasure across the twenty-foot room that separated us. It only served to enrage me further.

  “What are you doing here?” I demanded.

  He lifted one shoulder in the semblance of a careless shrug, but his posture was too stiff. “I thought we needed to talk.”

  “At midnight in my bedchamber?” I could hear my voice rising with my temper and made an effort to check it.

  “It was the only time and place where I knew we would have some privacy.”

  I narrowed my eyes, uncertain whether there was a hidden barb in there somewhere. “You are aware that just because I gave you leave to enter my chamber twice during your visit to Gairloch does not give you permission to do so now.”

  “Three times.”

  I had sucked in breath to offer him a set-down when his words caught me off guard. “What?” I snapped, shaking my head in agitation.

  “I entered your chamber three times,” he clarified. He pushed away from the door, stalking across the room toward me as he ticked off the encounters on his fingers. I stumbled back a step, but then planted my feet, refusing to give him the satisfaction of watching me retreat. “Once after Lord Westlock coshed you over the head, once when I brought champagne to celebrate Lady Stratford’s detainment, and once while Sir Graham Fraser questioned you after the ordeal in the boat.”

  The ordeal in the boat? That certainly wasn’t how I thought of it. And I was surprised Gage could refer to it in such mundane terms. “You mean when I almost died?”

  He stiffened, his steps faltering to a stop a few feet from me. “Yes. I well remember the more serious implications of that struggle,” he replied in a measured voice. He turned his face to the side and I could see the muscles in his throat working before he added in a huskier undertone, “I will never be able to forget them.”

  My cheeks flushed with heat and my eyes dropped to his cravat and the sapphire stickpin glistening among its snowy white folds. Of course he remembered. He had saved my life, at no small risk to his own. And how did I repay his discretion, his avoidance in bringing up such a sensitive subject, but by chastising him like a resentful harpy? What was it about this man that so riled me that I could forget all prudence and decency?

  “I . . . I’m sorry,” I murmured, stumbling over an apology. “Of course you remember.”

  He shifted uncomfortably and cleared his throat. “Yes, well . . .”

  I regained the courage to look him in the eye, noticing the faint lines at the corners of them. His finely sculpted cheekbones seemed tanner, as if he had been spending a great deal of time outdoors since last I saw him. If possible, I thought it made his already devilish good looks even more arresting, even at this late hour, with nary a stray beam of sunshine to highlight his golden hair. I had decided a portrait of Gage was best painted in the daylight, but now I wasn’t so sure. Here in the flickering shadows, his features might actually be more interesting.

  “You look well,” he said meaningfully, and I realized that even as I had been standing there studying him, he had been doing the same to me.

  I wrapped my arms around myself, suddenly self-conscious. Especially when I realized I was wearing naught but a thin night rail and my wrapper. When Gage had visited my chamber in the past I had always been properly attired in an evening gown or a morning dress, not bedclothes. “Thank you,” I murmured, praying he would not mention my state of dishabille.

  “Cromarty told me you’ve suffered no lasting effects from your injuries.”

  “Ah . . . no,” I told him. “Just a tiny scar.”

  “Good.”

  I pivoted to the side, fiddling with the long rope of my braid where it lay over my shoulder. “And you?” I asked, glancing at him out of the corner of my eye. “Are you well?”

  “Yes. Yes, I am. Thank you for asking.”

  I nodded, wondering if we could possibly have become more staid or polite. Either we seemed to argue with one another or we turned to stilted small talk. And I wasn’t certain I didn’t prefer the arguing. At least it didn’t leave me standing here feeling foolish and uncertain, wondering what Gage was thinking.

  “You said you wanted to talk,” I prodded, unable to stand the awkward silence a moment longer.

  “Uh . . . yes.” But he hesitated to say more, his gaze turning cautious, as if he wasn’t certain how to voice his next words. Or he was wary of how I would react to them.

  I tilted my head, considering him. Beyond his ruffled hair, which I knew he was prone to comb his fingers through when he was frustrated or impatient, he was still impeccably turned out in his evening kit. Even his cravat had not become rumpled through the evening’s events. I suspected he had been planning to make this midnight visit before we even parted company, and he had been pacing his room, biding his time, until he knew he could steal into my chamber without being seen. I had but one guess as to why he was so eager to speak with me, and it made sense he would be cautious in bringing it up.

  “This is about William Dalmay, isn’t it?”

  Gage did not try to insult my intelligence by denying it or couching it in gentler terms.

  I sighed in frustration, knowing what he was going to say. “I have no intention of discussing him with you.”

  “Be reasonable,” he said, an edge returning to his voice. “I’m concerned for your well-being. The man is simply not safe.”

  I glared over my shoulder at him. “Says who? You?”

  His mouth tightened into a thin line.

  “You have no right to speak to me on this matter. I think I know William just a little bit better than you do.”

  “Perhaps you did,” he replied, emphasizing the past tense of the word. “But he’s not the same man he was before he went into the asylum. You can see that.”

  “And what do you know of the matter? You were in London or Greece . . .” I gestured with my hand “. . . or wherever you were when he was locked away. And you’ve been here at Dalmay House all of—what? A week? How does that make you an authority on William Dalmay?”

  “It doesn’t. But I would wager I know far more than you about the inmates of lunatic asylums and just what they’re capable of.”

  “Will isn’t just some nameless inmate,” I snapped, hating that detestable word. “He’s my friend. And I am not going to let you scare me or turn me against him. He needs our help, not our condemnation.” I turned to walk away from him, but Gage’s hand shot out to grip my upper arm.

  “I’m only asking you to be sensible,” he growled, his face tight with frustration. “The man is, at the very least, unpredictable. And I don’t like erratic, potentially volatile men.”

  “Will is not volatile.” I st
ared up into Gage’s angry gaze, trying to make him understand. “I know him. He would never hurt me.”

  Gage’s eyes searched mine and in my gaze I pleaded with him to listen to me, to stop this ridiculous campaign to keep us apart. His hand pulled me closer to him, tightening almost painfully around my arm, and then loosened, though he still did not release me. “Who is William Dalmay to you?” he surprised me by asking.

  I blinked up at him in confusion.

  “Was there really nothing between you?”

  Heat blossomed in my cheeks as I realized what he meant. “No. I already told everyone we were just friends. He would never have behaved so dishonorably.”

  Gage’s gaze sharpened beneath his furrowed brow. I wanted to turn away, to hide from his all-too-knowing eyes. “But you wished he would?”

  My heart squeezed sharply, whether from the remembered heartache of my adolescent self or my current mortification, I wasn’t certain. Either way, I could not maintain eye contact with the man in front of me. “I was fifteen,” I offered by way of explanation. “And he was a handsome war hero.”

  He considered my words while I contemplated the lapels of his frock coat. “And a tortured one.”

  His insightful response drew my gaze back to his. “Yes,” I admitted.

  Gage nodded.

  “Didn’t you ever become infatuated at fifteen? Whether it was wise or not?”

  His mouth quirked wryly and a glimmer of humor returned to his eyes. “The young women of Devon were never more safe than when I left for Cambridge.”

  I arched my eyebrows.

  Seeing the look in my eyes, he coughed. “But let’s not discuss my adolescence, shall we?”

  I allowed the matter to drop, not certain I wanted to hear about Gage’s youthful conquests.

  He studied me closely, and at such a close range I felt a little like an insect beneath a magnifying glass. I tugged against his hold and he released me, allowing me to move to a safe distance. His gaze dropped to my upper arm where I was rubbing the spot where he had gripped me, not so much because it hurt, but because it still tingled from his touch, even through the thick fabric of my wrapper.