by Carrie Lofty
He had been prepared to jump down from his horse—his ankle be damned—and drag Greta behind the nearest obliging thatch of shrubbery. Every time the incredulity became too much, he recalled that they had already dared such intimacies out-of-doors. Somehow that knowledge gave him permission to indulge. She was a wild woman, and he was a wild man when they were together. Shame and disbelief had become all too easy to ignore.
Leinz Manor loomed ahead of them, slowly coming into view with each of the horses’ weary steps. Only then did Oliver realize their predicament.
“Greta, I’m a servant. What are we going to tell the people in your household?”
“I don’t plan to tell them anything.” She tossed her hair, which caught the sunlight and shone pale gold. He wanted nothing more than to tangle his fingers in those strands and tug, baring her neck. Kissing her there would only be the beginning. “You are my guest. With Uncle Thaddeus gone, there will be no one to contradict me.”
“And later? When he finds out?”
A flicker of panic crossed her sweet features. “Maybe by then I’ll have figured out how to stand up to him. Finally.”
Oliver could no more interpret that statement than he could tear his eyes away from her beautiful face. Damn, he was smitten. Utterly entranced. He had once teased Christoph for falling so completely under Ingrid’s spell, and he had pitied Mathilda when love for Arie had dragged her across muddy, rain-drenched miles. He shook his head. They would have a good, long laugh at his expense if they knew but a fraction of what he’d already done for Greta.
He followed her to the manor and waited as surprised-looking grooms took their horses. Just like the first time he had visited her family home, Oliver entered by the front door—only now he wore garments more akin to those of a chimneysweep and walked with a limp. The staff averted their eyes and hastened to welcome Greta. Oliver was left with the task of simply…owning the moment. He assumed his brother’s confident gait, shoulders back and head lifted. He was a pretender in all things. This was no different.
Only a few minutes passed before Greta had taken him through the spiraling, looping corridors of the ancestral mansion. Her agitation seemed to grow with every turn, to the point where he felt compelled to take her hand.
“Later I can make inquiries as to who retrieved the forgery from Maria Lucca’s, and why,” she said. “But for now I want to make sure the original is safe. At the very least I’d like to have it available to send should she wonder where her painting has gone.”
“You think she might?”
“If the decision to revoke the bargain was my uncle’s.”
“That’s what you hope, isn’t it?”
Greta shrugged, then looked away. “He’s never taken my opinion into consideration on this matter. Why would he now? The original will be in storage.”
Oliver shelved thoughts of kissing. “Can you get in?”
“Yes, but I’ve never been there on my own.”
“Very well. But first I must send word to Lord Venner as to my whereabouts. This…absence will be too long to simply ignore. With tensions as they are in Salzburg, I want him to know where he can find me.”
“You will be careful in what you reveal?”
“Always,” he said with a tight smile. “And you should consider letting your uncle know, too. I’d rather not have the authorities assuming you’ve been kidnapped.”
After penning the necessary missives, he limped behind Greta to the east wing where they stood before a plain door. She pushed it open, wincing as the hinges protested with a strident squeak. Inside she quickly moved to the right and pressed a panel that blended perfectly with the cream floral wallpaper. Who needed a key when disguise was the measure of protection?
Oliver stopped for a candle, then ducked into a long corridor that sloped downward to a hidden safe room. The air was cool but not cold.
“Are we underground?”
“Just barely. It was thought that such a design would protect the paintings even if the manor were burned.”
“Your uncle designed this space, didn’t he?”
“He owns so many fine pieces,” she said, nodding. “He knew it would be a means of securing our future if we could hide it well enough. Only after I showed an aptitude for forgeries did he see an application for such talent.” She sounded tired, maybe even weary of revisiting the topic, but Oliver was eager to hear more about her past. “I suppose I should be grateful. After all, he would never have spent so much on my tutors had it been simply for my benefit.”
He stopped her, gently, and turned her to face him. “What would you paint? On your own?”
A sad smile graced her bow of a mouth. “Anything I wanted.”
She turned back to the task. Every inch of floor space along the rear of the room was lined with crates and boxes.
Oliver found a low stool and took the weight off his ankle, knowing even his hastily learned art lessons would be no use in helping her search. “If the painting was newly returned, it should be somewhere near the front.”
Greta nodded and continued looking, peering beneath dozens of protective pads and into buckled crates. Finally she exhaled. “Here it is.”
Holding the candle high, Oliver approached the find. Grim-faced men and women in formal dress crowded together for what had to have been a tedious family portrait.
“Certainly not the painting I would’ve imagined for a duke’s mistress,” he said.
“Her lineage, apparently.” She leaned nearer. “Wait, bring the candle here. Closer, bitte.”
Oliver obliged. A shiver of foreboding crept over his skin.
“This is my copy.”
Flipping the crate lid, Oliver read the stenciled writing. “This came from Maria Lucca. This is the copy that was returned.”
“But…where is the original?”
“Is there someone we can ask?”
“Herschel, my uncle’s assistant. But he’ll alert Thaddeus.”
Oliver stood and looked over the room stuffed with priceless art. “It must be in here, ja?”
“I would have agreed with you, but now I don’t know.”
“We can look.”
“Oliver, that will take hours. You…” She looked down to where her fingers twisted into a ball. “You don’t have to. This isn’t your problem. I…I never should’ve involved you.”
He touched her chin. “I’m here because I want to be,” he said softly. “All of it. You did nothing to force me.”
“This isn’t the first time I’ve tried to turn you away, but you refuse. Why?”
“Refuse you? I don’t know if I can.”
Greta pressed into his embrace and buried her face against his chest. Savoring the gift, Oliver laid his cheek atop her crown and held on tightly. They stood that way, motionless. The passion of their criminal evening and cross-country escape was a memory now, replaced momentarily by a sweet and tender affinity. He did not know which he would choose if forced to pick only one.
“All right,” she said. “We’ll get to it then. You find a place to sit.”
“Sit?”
“I won’t have you injure your ankle further on account of the search. I’ll order a little food. Then we’ll find this bloody painting.”
Oliver did as he was told. Although he helped when he could, he accepted that his limitations and lack of knowledge about art were two distinct hindrances. He was left with the task of drinking good strong coffee, sampling a plate of cold meats and pungent cheeses, and watching Greta work. She was more methodical than he’d imagined. Perhaps her energy suggested wildness. Her attention to order and logic, however, was most impressive, like watching her prepare to paint.
Despite the coolness of the room, she wiped sweat from her brow. The curves of her hips and bosom seemed even more extreme in the flickering candlelight. Outside it was full day, but that windowless hideaway nearly erased such knowledge.
Soon the pile of paintings left to check dwindled. Greta found three more
of her copies. The corresponding originals were nowhere to be found. A subsequent hour spent searching the manor from root cellar to attic revealed nothing.
“What does it mean?” she asked, angrily pushing damp hair from her brow.
“All right. So perhaps your uncle sold them.”
“But why? If he was willing to sell forgeries, why part with any of the originals? He knows how valuable they’ll be once people have money and the freedom to be opulent once again. The time to sell a masterpiece is not when Napoleon is charging across nations.”
“So if we assume your uncle is more sensible and shrewd, that leaves two possibilities. First, that he has a few select originals in hiding somewhere else.”
“I suppose. But you have no idea how he behaves, Oliver. Shoes in a line, sorted by color and age. Desk papers sorted by alphabet and date. He likes his systems, and he loves that this room was his design. It just doesn’t feel right to think he would have a second hideaway.” She slumped. “What’s the other possibility?”
“No. It’s all about the investment.”
“Then when would he ever realize they were gone?”
“Years from now, perhaps, after the fighting stopped.”
“By which time the discovery of your copies would mean the thief makes a clean getaway.”
“Stolen, then.”
The words hung heavy in the still air. Dark circles lined Greta’s lower lids, reminding Oliver that neither of them had slept. He curled a hand around the back of her nape, gently massaging with his thumb.
“Let’s find out what time it is and get some sleep. Worst case, we ask Herschel or even your uncle. If the paintings have been stolen, he’ll have to be notified.”
“That means revealing what we’ve done.”
“Don’t worry about that now.” He stood and kissed her slowly, softly. She tasted of coffee and sugar. Oliver wanted more than just a taste, but his ankle was a flaming horror. And he was tired. Wearily tired. “For now, we need sleep.”
“I’ll ask the housekeeper to arrange you a room.”
Disappointment hit him harder than he might have imagined. The meager reserves of energy in his body drained out through his toes. “Very well.”
Greta found a wobbling smile. “And then I’ll tell you how to get from your room to mine.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Greta slumped onto her bed. The familiar smells of linseed oil and canvas swirled in the air. She was home. She was a vastly different woman than when she’d left, but the comfort of her own apartments remained a blessing.
She wanted to get up, to wash, to prepare herself for Oliver’s arrival. But the effort seemed too great. Floating on a cloud of exhaustion, she did not even fight the weight tugging at her eyelids. The bed was simply too lovely. When she vaguely heard the sounds of Oliver’s arrival, she could only manage a dreamy smile.
The sound of a door closing brought her to full wakefulness. She must have fallen asleep in earnest, because her tongue tasted wretched and the sky was dark.
“Greta?”
“In here,” she called to Oliver.
“Greta, what happened?”
The note of alarm in his voice wiped away the last vestiges of sleep. Her back ached. Her bottom was incredibly sore. She hauled herself off the bed, lamenting the smell of her own sweat.
Oliver stood in the studio that adjoined her bedroom. He was surrounded by dozens of her paintings—paintings that had been shredded and scattered around the floor.
Greta gasped. She stumbled forward, her legs numb. “What…?”
“How did this happen?” he asked.
“I…”
But the words would not come. She collapsed to her knees before a particular favorite. Although painted from her memories, she had always imagined it a faithful likeness of her mother and father. The work had been slashed with a blade. Strips of canvas fluttered as she picked up the frame, her hands shaking. A sob tore free of her chest.
“Who…?”
Oliver joined her on the floor. He set the painting aside and pulled her face away from that hideous sight. “Greta, look at me. Was the room like this when you came up here?”
“No! Of course not!”
“Did you hear anyone come in?”
“I…you did.” She dared meet his stern gaze. “Didn’t you?”
“No. I couldn’t chance meeting you during the day. Your maid, Marie, made that very clear.”
“But there was someone here. I heard them. I thought it was you.”
The set of Oliver’s jaw became more tense, more taut. “Someone broke into your room and ruined your work…with you asleep in the next room?”
Cold sluiced over Greta’s skin. She sagged, slumping from her sitting position. Oliver’s sure hands helped guide her to the floor. Only then, lying at eye level with the wood, did the enormity of the crime hit her. Ten years of work. Every mistake and every triumph. The complete record of her progress as an artist. Each had been ruined with equal callousness.
Oliver had left her and was moving around the rooms, but Greta could hardly see anything beyond her tears. Great heaving sobs launched out of her chest. Part frustration, part fear, part blinding anger—she could no longer hold it in. She cried until her throat burned and her lungs ached. Everything she had ever completed of her own imagination, her own initiative, all destroyed. No amount of crying would ease that hurt.
When she despaired of being comforted ever again, she felt Oliver’s arms close around her. He pulled her onto his lap and held her, tightly at first when she needed something solid to fight. Then his touch became gentler as her fervor ebbed. Soon he was stroking her hair, stroking her cheek and neck. All she could do was lie there, limp, spent, buoyed by the man who had come to symbolize such strength and surprise.
“I searched the rooms,” he said at last.
Ah, she thought. He had left her to cry, but for a reason. She never should have doubted—not of Oliver.
“And?” she croaked.
“I found a Prussian army knife on your vanity table.” He swallowed so loudly that she heard it. “Greta, it was Karl’s. The design of it matches what we were issued upon accepting our commissions.”
“He would do that to me? To my paintings?”
“When we were younger, ruining property was his means of garnering attention. He still wants something from me.” In the palm of his hand he revealed a slip of paper. “He wants to meet me in Salzburg in three days.”
“To what end?”
“I know not. Perhaps more of this contorted charade. But Greta, he will pay for what he’s done here. I will make sure of that.”
“Promise?”
He helped her to a sitting position, despite how her spine seemed made of wool. “Look at me. I…” His voice broke off with a hitch. He looked away, his mouth tight.
Greta pushed past her hurt and grief. She found the resolve to sit up of her own volition, then snuggled closer to him. But she kept enough distance to see his face—needed to see his face. “What is it?”
“I would break into houses for you, apparently. I would conceal your uncle’s money-making schemes. I would make love to you with no possibility of a future. All of these things I never thought I would do. For you.” He shook his head. Greta laced her fingers together at his nape. His breath, so agitated and warm, caressed her cheek. “But protect you? Keep you safe? That was instinct from the first moment I saw your face. Now, to see you hurt this way… I cannot imagine leaving that unanswered, no matter the perpetrator. Greta, I’m so sorry.”
Heat, a wondrous heat, bloomed beneath her sternum. She needed to swallow a few times before she found her voice again. The emotion swelling inside her was simply too much to readily overcome.
“You blame yourself? For this?”
“Not for the crime. But you were asleep in the other room. He’s so altered that I hardly know him anymore. He could’ve just as easily slit your throat as one of these paintings.”
“I don’t know what I would do if something had happened to you.” He kissed her, so softly. “I love you.”
Greta clutched the muscled solidity of his back and shoulders. He loved her. God, what would she do with that knowledge? Their circumstances had not changed. His admission made her strong, but strong enough to defy her uncle and all of good society? She had never fancied herself that sort of fighter.
So she thrust it all aside. She could not answer his declaration with one of her own, nor could she push him away—and reclaim an appropriate distance from this handsome, gallant servant. Instead she opened her mouth, tasting the salt of his skin. He tensed, but not for long. Her tentative kiss become more certain, more frantic. Needier. She might have died in her sleep. Oliver could’ve been caught or killed on her foolhardy mission.
It was all too much.
She dug her nails into his biceps, then found his mouth with hers. Their kiss was an explosion, not a tentative hello. Tongues met, thrusting and dueling. The heat between them ratcheted to a quick boil. Because on top of the terrible possibilities that hadn’t come to pass, he was still not hers to keep.
Oliver stretched back along the paint-stained floor. He dragged Greta with him, his moan filling her mouth. The blunt hardness of his erection nudged her hip. Greta’s arousal, banked throughout the long and exhausting day, flared to life. She had teased him and hid with him and raced him. Now she straddled him, yanking her skirts up to her thighs. She dove back down for another kiss.
Threading his fingers into the hair at the base of her skull, he twisted. The clench of soft pain felt good—so good. It was a biting distraction from all the genuine pain still awaiting her. She trusted Oliver so implicitly that the rough treatment became a further arousal. Not daring to question such a strange perversion, she simply groaned as he twisted again.
With eager hands she unbuttoned the dirty black shirt that obscured his perfect torso. One button popped free and pinged across the floor. Soon he was naked from the waist up. Such a beautiful man, so alive, so perfectly symmetrical. His hands gripped her thighs, her backside. The sensations blended with the visual feast he presented. Greta kissed him again, tasting, exploring, before traveling down the strong line of his jaw, his neck, his chest.