Her gaze went sharp again, and teasing. “Though the same cannot be said for their son, who, I’m told, has a knack for finding adventure where a sane person would see none.”
Philly. He smiled and shook his head. “My sister exaggerates. We are at war, yet I am at home more than ever. A complete reversal of what one would expect from an adventure-seeker.”
“Because you have a purpose too important for your leaders to risk your life in battle.” A battle which seemed to be waged now across her countenance. Her inborn hatred of what he was, fighting against who she knew him to be; her liking of him pitted against her loyalty to her nation. Then as quickly as the weapons flashed through her eyes, they stilled. And she looked to that place beyond him again. “Do you know what Papa called this war?”
Quite a few words filled Thad’s mind to describe it, but he didn’t know the general well enough to guess at his choice. “Pointless, perhaps? Vengeful? A meaningless drain on British resources?”
She permitted a brief twitch of her lips and then schooled her features into a pleasant expression. “Foolish.” A smile half won its place, and she loosed a long breath. “I had forgotten that, but…he had been quite vocal about it being a drain on the French campaign, with which plenty agreed. But then when Napoleon surrendered and someone said something about it freeing the troops to be sent here… He always had England’s best interest at heart, but he thought this war a mistake.”
His throat went dry. “He said this in public?”
She nodded.
He gripped the cushion’s edge. “And now your uncle has announced they suspect an American spy murdered him, thereby turning against us any voices who would have been swayed toward your father’s way of thinking.”
For a moment Gwyneth moved her mouth as if about to speak, yet no words emerged. She just stared at him, agape, a million possibilities rampaging through her eyes.
Thad slid over to the place beside her and touched her hand. She sucked in a breath and blinked as she met his gaze. “I never…I never really paused to consider his opinion on it, what with Mama…But looking back now…He wanted this war to be over. He thought it stupid and vain. And Uncle Gates was loudly in favor of it. They debated it often. What Papa said that day, about destroying two nations with his greed…they must have been speaking of the war.”
He would have liked to smooth away the furrow in her brow, but he suspected he had a matching one in his own. “What could greed have to do with it?”
Her hand turned over under his, and her fingers found their place around his own. Given the contemplation saturating her face, he had a feeling she had no idea she had made such a move. “I am aware that men aplenty profit from war, but he is well enough positioned. His mother’s estates went to him. He had no need to sully himself with trade.”
Thad pressed his lips against a smile. “What a relief. A tarnish a man could never live down.”
Her snapping gaze came his way, the smile she wore so mischievous he nearly kissed her then and there. “Not in a civilized land.”
“Uncivilized, am I? And here I thought my hospitality and civility worthy of the Prince Regent himself.”
Her laughter filled the carriage, brightened it, and seemed to bring the sun through the clouds. “Nay, it is far too temperate and well considered.”
What was he to do but lift her fingers and kiss them? “I know not how I can suffer such an insult.”
Mirth fading to a smile, she shook her head. Her gaze tangled with his. “Thad, when you told me about your…Culpers. When I considered that I was apparently on your side, I knew not how to reconcile that with who I knew Papa to be.”
He ran his thumb over her knuckles, a seal upon the kiss. “But?”
“But Papa thought this war a mark against England. He wanted it over and he wanted my uncle stopped. Somehow those two are linked. So whatever I can do, know that I will do it.”
For her father, and perhaps also for England. He nodded because in this case it would also be for them, for his homeland. A war like this could benefit neither nation. All it could do was wear down both until there was little left worth the fight. “Your assistance I accept most gratefully, my lady.”
As Henry pulled the team to a halt, she sent him an arched glance. “Just do not expect me to play at espionage with you, Thaddeus. I will not do it.”
“I would never ask it.” Not, at least, until she volunteered.
He opened the door, jumped out, and reached up to help her. As his hands circled her waist, a tongue of lightning streaked across the heavens, and a peal of thunder rolled over the city, loud enough to shake the windows.
And Gwyneth, nymph that she was today, looked up at the sky with a smile. Thad put her feet upon the ground and drew her closer than he ought. “You want to play in it, don’t you?”
“I have not dared since I was a child, but there is nothing in the world like it.”
He chuckled and led her toward Mortimer’s. “Come, my Miranda. Let us see to Mother first, and then you can frolic in Prospero’s storm.”
She took a step away and grinned at him over her shoulder. “You know Shakespeare. Impressive, for an uncivilized savage.”
Oh, was she lucky that Jack was even now pulling open the door for them, or he would have…
“Uncle Thad, Grandmama has a stained ankle.” Jack tossed himself at Thad’s waist with his usual faith that he would be caught.
Thad swept the boy up. “I daresay you mean ‘sprained,’ matey.”
Mother’s face bore lines of distress, but her cheeks had good color, and her smile wavered only slightly. “My best guess. It is swelling and throbbing, but the pain has ebbed a great deal already. Your father will wrap it tight for me, and I shall be up and about again in a few days’ time.”
Thad didn’t dare argue, knowing her as well as he did. She would be up and about, even if it required a crutch. He gave Jack’s back a pat. “Go to Gwyn for a few minutes. I must carry Grandmama to the carriage.”
The fidgety Mr. Mortimer shifted, drawing Thad’s attention to where he stood a few feet away. “Need you any assistance, Lane?”
“With the door, if you please. I do appreciate it, Morty.” He passed Jack to Gwyneth so he would not be underfoot. As he leaned down to his mother and slid his arms around her back and under her legs, he whispered, “Are you all right, Mum?”
Her arm encircled his neck, and she offered him a reassuring smile. “I did not want to alarm Jack, though it was quite debilitating at first. It still hurts, but it really has gotten better since Gwyn went for you.”
“Good.” He lifted her and turned toward the door. “Father is going to fret something fierce, you know.”
Mother breathed a low chuckle and tightened her grip on him as he started forward. Then she hummed. “No wonder Jack climbs you and your father as if you are trees. You have a lovely vantage point from up here.”
Leave it to her to notice such things when injured. “I think so. ’Tis why I decided to grow so tall, after all.”
“Wise of you indeed.”
Grinning, he maneuvered her carefully out the door, nodded a thanks to Mr. Mortimer, and eased his mother into the carriage door that Henry held open, battling the wind to do so. A few passersby paused to offer assistance, but he assured them he had matters well in hand.
Next he reached for Jack from Gwyneth’s arms. She relinquished him with a lopsided smile. “Is there anyone in the whole city of Baltimore with whom you are not acquainted, Thad?”
He settled the boy beside Mother and then pasted a thoughtful look on his face when he turned back to her. “Possibly. Though if so, I don’t know who it would be.”
“Clever, aren’t you.” She accepted his proffered hand and settled inside.
Thad turned to Henry. “Sorry about the weather, old man.”
“You know I don’t mind, Captain.” He nodded toward the opening. “‘Specially if it’s for your saint of a mother. Now get on in so’s we can get
goin’.”
“Aye, aye.” He ducked and climbed in, giving himself a mental pat on the back for arranging the seating so that he had no choice but to be beside Gwyneth. Though his smile he aimed at his mother, tapping a hand upon his knee. “Allow me to be your footstool.”
It took only a few minutes for them to arrive home, for Thad to help her up to her room, and for Father to begin hovering, insisting she lie still, that she turn her foot just so, that she tell him exactly how it hurt, that she conjure up the names of who caused the mishap so he might devise a formula with which to torment them…
Thad shook his head and wandered to the window while Father wound a bandage round Mother’s foot and ankle. Gwyneth had said something about seeing that Jack was put down for his nap, and she must have succeeded in record time. For there she was in his backyard, circling around on the swing with her face tipped up to receive the drenching summer rain, her hair a river of burnished gold.
Oh, to be able to join her in the downpour without the fear that doing so would send her running back inside. To give the swing a twirl and hear the laughter sure to echo, to catch it again and threaten not to let go until she gave him a kiss. To chase her around the tree when she playfully escaped him. To catch hold of her, pull her close, and taste the rain upon her lips.
Thunder and turf, he had better go put himself to work. He spun toward the door—and collided with two amused, far too knowing gazes from his parents, who regarded him as if he were a child who had just, finally, learned how to add two and two. He groaned and held up his hands. “Don’t look at me like that, prithee.”
Mother grasped Father’s hand. Probably as much to keep him from fussing with the bandage again as because she was really so moved by the love-struck gleam she must have detected in Thad’s eyes. “Come now, Thaddeus. We have been waiting thirty years to look at you like this. Do not deprive us of the joy.”
“Humph.” He folded his arms over his chest. “Eight-and-twenty. And if you intend to lecture me like Arnaud did—”
“Alain does not approve?” Father frowned and slid one of his hands away from Mother’s to smooth down part of the bandage.
“Bennet.”
“Sorry.” He looked nowhere near sorry, though still plenty curious. “What did he say?”
Thad waved it off and strode toward the door. “He does not trust my judgment in love, that is all.”
“Thaddeus.” That particular tone of Mother’s could, he was sure, halt a stampede of wild mustangs. He stopped with one shoulder through the doorway and looked back at her. She sighed and repositioned her gown over her ankle. “The wound is still fresh for him. Those two years we were mourning him, he was living for the thought of coming home. To get here and find his wife deceased and—”
“I know.” All too well.
Mother lifted her brows. “It is understandable that he would preach caution. He does not want to see you hurt.”
Thad said nothing in reply. He merely nodded and ducked into the hall. He saw no point in arguing with his mother.
But sometimes, when talk turned to the topic love, he had to wonder if Arnaud really wished him well. Or if he rather thought Thad deserved to be every bit as miserable as he.
Nineteen
Gwyneth jolted upright in bed, her eyes searching the dark for some clue as to what had awakened her. Not a bad dream. Her heart wasn’t thudding, and no ferocious images snapped at the back of her mind.
A noise. She had heard a noise, and she heard another outside now. Not a suspicious one though—unless it was such to be whistling when the only light from the window was the pearly gray of predawn. She tossed aside the sheet and scurried to the window overlooking the street. Little light was needed to tell her who was striding down the walk with such cheer. She had yet to see any other man in Baltimore as tall as her Thad.
Thad—not her Thad. Heavens. She pressed a hand to her gritty eyes and spun back to her room, lest he look back and catch her watching him. And divine, as he so often did, exactly what she had been thinking.
Bother. Now her heart pounded, and she had no handy nightmare on which to blame it. And certainly no hope of claiming another hour of sleep. That was all right, though. With a lilt to her step, she dressed in her simplest day dress, jabbed a few pins into her hair, and gathered up her art supplies. If she went out to the garden now to set up, she would be ready for the first touch of morning light. She could finish her rendition of the Masquerade and then still be available to lend a hand to Winter later. Her ankle was largely healed these ten days after the accident, but stairs still caused her discomfort, and she walked with a limp yet.
Her shoes in hand so she could slip silently down the hall, she tiptoed past Jack’s room, the elder Lanes’, and down the stairs. Last evening Thad had mused that, as it was mid-July, Captain Arnaud ought to be back any day—an observation he would not have made around Jack had he not been certain of it.
She paused at the back door to slip on her shoes and let herself out into the pleasant morning mist. Warmer than any she had known in England, but still familiar, this fragile veil that hung over the day.
By the time the silver had turned to gold under the rays of the rising sun, Gwyneth had set up her supplies and brought out the nearly finished painting. She had thought it done four days ago, until she realized it had yet to pulse, had yet to breathe. Something was missing.
Someone. She had known right away that she would have to add Thad, though she had hesitated to do so. He had seen the truth of her father so quickly in that one. What would he see in this, if she included him?
She blew out a long breath to steady her hands and picked up one of the brushes he had bought her. Perhaps she risked revealing emotions of which she was still unsure, but she had no choice. The Masquerade needed her captain at the helm.
And she knew exactly how he must be—as she had sketched him that morning he took her to the stationer’s. His feet braced on the pitching deck, spyglass in hand, eyes sparkling with fascination with the world around him. His nose a strong line leading to his lips, quirked in that way of his. One side raised and the other steady. Not quite laughing in the face of the encroaching storm, but showing clearly that his respect for it gave no way to fear.
Finally, that pulsing surrounded her, each thump of light in time to the strokes of her brush. The Masquerade danced upon the waves, partially hidden by the froth and the coming tempest, but still bathed in sunlight that lit fire upon the water. So sure of her triumph, because her captain could take her through any storm, against any enemy.
She lifted her brush away from the black it had been headed toward, shook her head. No, no thought of enemies. Not now, not in this painting.
A curl fell into her face, obstructing her view. She shoved it aside and dabbed a bit more brown onto her brush. Just a touch, enough to add that depth, that texture to his hair.
Hers fell again, and again she shoved it aside. If she had to put her paints down to fasten her frustratingly unruly mane…
The mass of it lifted from her back, came away from her face, and cool air caressed her neck. She drew in a happy breath as she felt it twist and coil against her scalp. She reached out to stop his hand from grabbing the brush nearest him. “Not that one, I will need it in a moment. Use the bigger one.”
A low rumble of laughter tickled its way across her as he secured the knot of hair with the larger brush and then rested his hand on her shoulder. He circled his thumb across her nape.
She made one more dab, so minuscule it could scarcely be seen, and then paused. Her next stroke must be even more precise, and so she had better wait. Wait for his arm to come around her waist, wait for him to pull her back against his chest, wait for his lips to whisper from her temple to her jaw. Wait for…for…
“Oh!” She fumbled her brush, heat scorched her cheeks. What if he realized the thoughts that had flitted through her mind? And why, why had they so flitted? Why would she be waiting for something she had never experie
nced, never even dreamed of? Certainly never dreamed of. Those would be far sweeter images than the ones that visited her in the night.
She put her brush upon her palette and splayed a hand over her frantic heart. “You were not gone long.”
Thad chuckled again as he soothed and frazzled her simultaneously with another sweep of his thumb over her neck. “An hour, which was sufficient for verifying that Alain was home.”
Though her cheeks still felt warm, they no longer stung. She risked turning her head, tilting it back to look up at him. He was studying the painting. “Verify?”
His gaze fell upon her face, warm enough to make her cheeks flame anew. He grinned. “I awoke with an intuition and thought to see if it was accurate. Though I daresay Alain, who had only stumbled into bed two hours prior, would have preferred I had waited until noon to investigate.”
Her lips couldn’t help but mirror his. “I for one am glad I heard you leave. The light is ideal this morning.”
“So it would seem,” he said with a nod toward the painting. “It is perfect, sweet. I cannot fathom how you manage it. The sun glistening off the water, the mounting clouds on the horizon…” He shook his head, gave her neck an encouraging squeeze, and then stepped away.
Disappointment whispered until she saw him reaching for two steaming mugs on the small table near the door. He handed one to her and raised the other to his lips, his gaze still upon the canvas.
“Thank you.” Gwyneth took a sip and found the tea exactly as she preferred. The thought warmed her more than the beverage. Whether he had fixed it or Rosie, either way it was evidence of her welcome.
Thad folded his arms over his chest, his mug still half-raised as he studied the painting. “Is it finished?”
She moved beside him, trying to examine her work as a critic might. “It is hardly perfect. That section of the water there… But mostly finished, yes, except for the figure, which I just began.”
Whispers from the Shadows Page 18