Secrets of Nanreath Hall

by Alix Rickloff

  “I’m not sure. I had the chance to ask. The Handleys—the couple who took me in after she died—never hid the facts from me. But when they offered to tell me more, I refused. I did everything but hold my hands over my ears and whistle.”

  “Why?”

  Anna shrugged in helpless incomprehension. “Guilt. Duty. Denial. A desire to be like every other child on my street with normal parents and a normal family. I didn’t want to be different.”

  “What child does?”

  Talking ripped open a wound barely healed over. Grief pressed against her chest like a weight, and it was as if she were back standing on the sidewalk, staring at the ruins of her world. “I suppose I always thought there would be time.”

  He stubbed out the cigarette butt in an ashtray. “A lot of us thought that, didn’t we?”

  Chapter 6

  November 1913

  Mr. Weiss has managed to sell four of my paintings. I’ve begun to think about leaving Balázs and setting up my own studio. There’s a building in Ralston Street. It has space below for display and a flat above. Not much more than a few rooms and a bath, but more than I need.”

  “That’s wonderful, Simon. It’s exactly what you wanted.”

  The two of us had found an out-of-the-way corner in Mrs. Comersby’s busy front parlor. Mr. Balász’s sister was just as I’d imagined she would be; a wide-hipped, apple-cheeked hausfrau wreathed in welcoming smiles who plied us with food and drinks until my initial uneasiness was overcome, and I felt myself melting into the loud, uninhibited chaos of her bohemian salon.

  A shout went up as the door opened to admit new guests. I could just make out the drape of a fur coat and a sleek bob of dark hair from my corner.

  “It is what I want, but not at the expense of seeing you hurt. I’m very sorry about the painting.” Simon sipped at his cloudy glass of absinthe. I had left mine untouched, the strong aromas of anise and fennel not to my taste. But wine I’d imbibed in plenty until I was quite relaxed and a bit buzzy-headed.

  “I admit it was rather a shock to see myself in such a . . . manner, but I’ve decided I quite like it.” The guests moved into the front parlor, two gentlemen in evening dress, and the woman who had removed her fur to reveal a daring Worth gown in sky-blue silk and Brussels lace. “Mr. Balázs once said what we believe is hidden is actually visible if one has the eyes to see. Perhaps the Red-Haired Wanton exists locked somewhere deep inside me and all I need to do is”—the woman turned her head and my mouth dropped open like a codfish’s—“hide!”

  I leaped from my seat as if I’d been scalded, ducking into the relative safety of the kitchen, which was thankfully empty.

  “Kitty, are you all right?” Simon had followed and now eyed me as if I’d run mad. “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “Worse. It’s Lady Ashdown. She’s one of the biggest gossips in London. If she sees me and gabs it to my mother . . .” I furtively peeked round the swinging door to see if I’d been spotted.

  “I see.” Simon’s clipped and icy voice drew me back into the kitchen long enough to observe that his expression bore all the marks of one having trouble chaining his temper. “I’m good enough for you, but not for your family.” I sensed deep hurt beneath his anger.

  “Don’t be absurd. Of course you’re good enough, but you don’t understand my family. They need time to accustom themselves to the idea. I need to ease into it slowly.”

  “Like you eased into telling them about art school?”

  The accusation struck me like the tip of a lash, and I gasped.

  “A cage is still a cage, Kitty, no matter how gilded the bars. When are you going to finally stand up for what you want? When are you going to let them see what I see? That you’re a strong, smart, beautiful young woman who doesn’t need Mama and Daddy telling her how to live her life?”

  I had no answer to that. I was still trying to adjust to being called strong, smart, and beautiful. It dawned on me that the only time I felt that way was in Simon’s company. He gave me confidence because in his eyes I was confident. “You really think I’m all those things?”

  His voice softened. “Of course, you darling idiot. Why do you think I’ve skulked about like a criminal to be with you?”

  His kiss took me by surprise, but I didn’t shrink from it as I had his first attempt so many months ago. This time I savored the slow exploration of his lips and the wickedly daring dip of his tongue. My bones turned to jelly as the knots in my stomach tightened, and excitement flushed my skin so that when the swinging door into the entry hall opened, the blast of cooler air was like an arctic shock.

  “Hi-ho, good people!” A gentleman giddily waved a bottle of whiskey in one hand while his other arm was thrown about the waist of a blowsy woman dressed in yellow silk. “What have we here? An interrupted tryst?”

  Terror splashed cold across my shoulders as I drew in a ragged breath. “Good evening, William. Funny meeting you here.”

  If being found out by Lady Ashdown would have been a disaster, to be tumbled by my own brother was a hundred times worse. To say I was surprised to see him here was a mild understatement. It would be more accurate to say I was at once astonished, appalled, and sick with nerve-tightening fear. If William’s initial reaction was any indication, he suffered from the same powerful mix of emotions. I clung to that with every ounce of quickly disappearing hope as his initial euphoria sank to a brooding silence, helped along by a few strong cups of Mrs. Comersby’s potent Turkish coffee. He sat at her kitchen table, staring into his cup, his face gray-green and jumping with mental agitation.

  Of his companion, I had seen nothing since Simon stepped into the brittle, ugly shock of our first meeting and whisked her away. His eyes met mine, and I saw in that moment both sympathy for my potential disaster and a reassuring strength I could lean upon no matter what befell me. It made me brave despite my quaking knees and jittery stomach.

  “I met Letitia at the Alhambra,” William mumbled into his coffee. “Charles Blakeney introduced us. She’s a friend of a lady he . . .” His words trailed into a quiet mumble.

  Not that I needed him to finish his sentence. I could well imagine what sort of lady both Letitia and her friend were, though I didn’t express this aloud. To cast stones seemed not the wisest course at present. And there was a part of me that thought if I remained quiet, perhaps William would finally reveal what kept him from Nanreath, his new baby, and bad as it was to say—me.

  I was not used to secrets between us. William might have been five years my senior, but we connected in a way I’d never been able to duplicate with Amelia, for all we were sisters. William and I shared a similar nature, though behavior deemed acceptable and even encouraged in the son and heir had always been seen in a daughter of the house as less than ideal. Still, when no one else seemed to understand me, it had been William who championed me time and again. I wondered what he would think of my dubious celebrity as the Red-Haired Wanton. Would he laugh it off as a grand joke or would he play the stern, protective older brother?

  Until now, I could have answered with certainty. Now I was not so sure—about that and about a lot of things I had always taken for granted about my brother.

  “I’m surprised we haven’t seen you more in South Audley Street since our arrival. But I suppose your friendship with Letitia occupies all your time,” I said, hoping to sound mature when in fact I felt completely out of my depth.

  He looked up from his coffee, his eyes starting to focus in the same direction, his long face seeming longer in its inebriation. He rose, grabbing his jacket from the chair and swinging it across his shoulders. “Come along, Kitty.”

  I had no choice but to follow, leaving Simon and my increasingly horrid evening behind.

  We walked the empty dark streets, slick with rain from a passing shower. The gas lamps flickered their greasy circles of light along the pavement, and in the distance someone sang a plaintive love song from an open window. It made me unaccountably sad an
d very lonely, despite having William by my side.

  He broke the silence first. “She doesn’t mean anything to me. She seemed a good sport and up for a lark. That’s all.”

  “Her kind usually are,” I grumbled.

  “Kitty!”

  So much for remaining nonjudgmental. “I’m not a child, William, despite what everyone in this family thinks.”

  “But you are a well-bred young lady . . . out alone in company with a gentleman.” My head snapped round. “Or did you think I wouldn’t notice that part of your adventure?” he added with an air of wilted triumph.

  I jerked my chin upward, as if preparing for a fight. “Don’t turn this into an indictment of my behavior. I don’t have a wife and child waiting for me at home.”

  He had the grace to look away, his shoulders stiff, hands shoved in his pockets.

  “William, what is going on? I know Cynthia isn’t the easiest person to get along with, but she’s your wife. You love her.”

  His laughter was cold and ugly. “Kitty, you tell me you’re not a child, but then you say such beautifully ridiculous things. Do you really think love had anything to do with our marriage? It was her money for our connections. Simple as that.”

  “You didn’t have to agree to the marriage.”

  He responded with a snort that told me I was being a sentimental female. “You know the impossibility of defying Father once he’s made his mind up. One would have greater luck holding back the tide. And since my duty was to marry, it may as well have been Cynthia as anyone.”

  It wasn’t that I didn’t understand the pressures and expectations, but that didn’t make me any less nauseated by William’s plainspokenness. “You’ve only been married a few years. Perhaps given time, things will change between you, especially now that you have Hugh.”

  “Yes, Hugh. He does change things, doesn’t he?” William said with a puzzling ambiguity. He took my hand in his own. “Come on, Kitty. Let’s get you home before Mother realizes you’re gone.”

  “You won’t tell?”

  His eyes met mine, deep hollows shadowing the pinprick gleam of his irises. “Not if you won’t.”

  “Never.”

  He chucked my chin. “That’s my girl.”

  And just like that, we were pals and comrades once again.

  Simon’s painting eventually turned up at an exhibition at the Freeman Gallery in New Bond Street, and within days The Red-Haired Wanton—and the model who’d inspired her—became the talk of society.

  I knew I should have been upset or embarrassed, but there was only a feeling of inevitability, as if my life were unrolling toward some unknown end beyond my control. Unfortunately, my parents felt none of my serenity in the face of such public scorn. Raised voices behind closed doors and the arrival of Mama’s personal physician had the household walking on eggshells. Even the servants cast me furtive glances, their manner cheekier, as if I’d already lost my respected position within the family.

  I ignored them all as best I could, though each passing day grew harder to endure. The morning after a particularly galling evening, I rose as dawn crept steely gray over my windowsill. Taking up my journal, I tried writing out my wild swing of emotions, hoping the soothing act of putting pen to paper would untangle my tumultuous thoughts, but there was no peace to be found even in that familiar refuge.

  Looking round my room with its girlish frills and naive innocence, seeing my flushed and agitated reflection in the mirror, the desire to step into the unknown nearly overwhelmed me. In that moment I would have traded every elegant trapping of my privileged upbringing for the confidence and poise Simon had rendered with a few dabs of oil paints and canvas. I didn’t want to be Lady Katherine, whose fear held her captive. I wanted to be plain Kitty Trenowyth with the courage to fly.

  Dressing quickly, I took up my journal and workbox and left the house. As Burton opened the door for me, I let him know, should my parents inquire, which was doubtful since neither would rise before ten, that I had walked to Green Park and would be back in time for breakfast.

  A skittish wind had picked up overnight and the clouds sat thick and damp in an unsettled sky, causing the normal city sounds to seem muffled and forlorn. I headed south past the dawn inhabitants of South Audley and onto the busier thoroughfare of Curzon Street, and from there to the early-morning bustle of Piccadilly, ignoring the admiring looks and occasional greetings shouted from passing omnibuses or mumbled shyly with a tip of the cap and a nod. I entered the gates at Green Park where the fog hung in tattered veils along the ground and the grass dragged against the hem of my skirts as my heels sank into the earth. I chose a likely spot looking west toward Buckingham Palace and spread a blanket upon the ground, settling in to work. Soon enough the whirl of my thoughts focused down to the movement of my hand over the page.

  “You’ll catch your death on that damp ground.”

  Immersed in my own imagination, the shock of his voice sent a startled shiver up my spine, and I dragged my pencil like a pale gray thread across the page. “Bother! Now look what you’ve made me do.”

  Simon knelt beside me, laughing. “I thought for sure you’d seen me clomping up the hill toward you.”

  My hat shielded my face from close scrutiny, but I was sure my answering smile was obvious. I’d not seen him since our illicit rendezvous, but the brief pleasure of that one evening returned tenfold. “I was consumed with trying to manage that shadow along the path, but my pencil’s gone dull and I’ve forgotten a knife for sharpening.”

  “Allow me.” He joined me on the blanket, pulling a pocketknife from his jacket and whittling away at the little nub. “It’s awfully early to be out, isn’t it?”

  “I couldn’t sleep.”

  “Neither could I.” His eyes cut sidelong toward me, and his hand upon his knife tightened. “I haven’t been able to do much of anything since I saw you last. Even Mr. Balázs has started to notice I’m off my feed.”

  “So you decided to stalk me?” I said it with a small laugh, but his eyes remained on his work and my joke fell flat.

  “I don’t know what I meant to do. I suppose stare at your bedroom window like some lovesick Shakespearean swain. When I saw you coming along Piccadilly, I couldn’t believe my good luck.”

  “How could you tell it was me?”

  He frowned, and there was a solemnity to his features that seemed at odds with his usual breezy wit. “I could pick you out in a crowd of a thousand.”

  I felt the heat rise into my cheeks as I fought the battering of stomach butterflies.

  He reached for the journal. “May I?”

  I closed it and put my hand on the cover. “It’s private.” To soften my refusal, I added, “You wouldn’t be interested in any of my silly scribblings anyway.”

  “Don’t let your family’s opinions define you, Kitty.” His gaze met mine in a look of near challenge.

  Reluctantly, I opened the journal, flipping closer to the front, where he’d not accidentally come across anything I might have written about him. He was bold enough without knowing how much I began to care.

  “You’re a dream at landscapes, but it’s the faces where you truly shine.” He paused. “This one of the boy with his dog. Such pride in both their eyes.” Another page. “And the fishmonger there. Look at the way he holds his load. He’s tired, but he daren’t put it down lest he not be able to pick it up again.” He skipped to a third page. “And this one of your mother is dead-on. Look at her, so prim and proper. So smug with herself and her Victorian attitudes.” He sobered, his eyes seeming to spear me to the ground. I felt myself waiting with held breath. “Are you in much trouble?”

  “They never knew I was missing.” I took back the journal and flipped to my half-finished sketch as a way to avoid meeting his shrewd gaze.

  “That’s not what I meant. The painting . . . my painting . . . are you in much trouble over it?”

  “I’m to be shipped to Great-aunt Adelaide’s in Glasgow until the furor di
es down. I don’t want to go, but . . .” I shrugged at the inescapability of fate.

  “So refuse. Tell them about your plans for art school. Make them listen.”

  I couldn’t help the tears that pricked my eyes and made my throat burn. I snatched the book from him. “What’s the point? They’d never allow it.”

  But Simon was no longer paying me any attention. He scrambled to his feet, alarm quickly replaced by his usual easy self-assurance. “Good morning, Lady Melcombe.”

  I turned in time to see my mother storming toward us like an avenging angel, her lady’s maid, Green, following in her wake, smug in her moral superiority. “Burton informed us you had sneaked out. I should have known.”

  “Had I been sneaking, I’d not have told Burton where I was going.” I shoved my journal back in my bag and rose to meet her, trying hard to keep my knees from knocking and my voice steady. “Mr. Halliday happened upon me while I was sketching.”

  “It’s nothing untoward, my lady. Your daughter was merely showing me her work. You have my word.”

  “I wouldn’t give a ha’penny for your word, Mr. Halliday.” She dismissed him with a final icy glare before turning her wrath on me. “I’ve been tolerant of your whims, Katherine, but I have reached the end of my patience. I’ll have you packed and on the next train north. Aunt Adelaide will know how to deal with your waywardness.”

  I recalled Simon’s words. “No, Mama. I won’t go.”

  By now the frustration and swallowing of emotion over the last few months came to a boil. My vision narrowed. My throat burned. And there was a welling of every swallowed complaint and irritation I had ever felt. It could not be contained. Nor did I want it to be.

  “I’m not a parcel to be passed among the relations nor must my life be arranged as if I haven’t the sense I was born with. If Aunt Adelaide wants a companion let her find some poor appreciative Glaswegian relation.”