October Revenge

by Farmer, Merry

  A slow grin spread across Angelica’s shapely mouth. “I like it when you look at me like that,” she told him with a slight flicker of her eyebrow. “It makes me feel as though our firstborn is right around the corner.”

  She had a distinct point. If they had been anywhere other than Shayles’s estate, he would have been severely tempted to sweep her into his arms, lay her in the grass, and make love to her until they were both spent and satisfied.

  She cut that fantasy short—or perhaps increased its scope and temptation—by growing suddenly serious and saying, “We need to break into the house if we’re going to retrieve your painting.”

  Mark grew serious with her, but he didn’t have an answer to her statement.

  “And if we’re going to break in,” she went on, “we can’t do it willy-nilly. We need a plan.”

  He hesitated, clenching his jaw and searching for any sort of alternative plan that might save them from the madness of a break-in, but he came up with nothing. “We’ll go back to the inn,” he said, starting forward and taking her hand to bring her along with him. “I know the house well enough to come up with a few possible points of entry, but if we’re going to do this, it would be best to do it under cover of darkness.”

  “We may need to find a ladder and perhaps some rope,” Angelica went on, her whole countenance sparkling with the plot.

  Mark eyed her warily. He would do whatever she asked him to do and probably more, but if there was a way to keep her from charging off into disaster as they pulled off the mad caper, he would stop at nothing to protect her.

  Chapter 15

  Angelica’s confidence in her and Mark’s mission to retrieve his painting faltered after wandering around the grounds of Ravencrest Hall and peeking through its windows. She didn’t believe in ghosts any more than Mark did, but there was a decidedly sinister feel to the imposing house and sprawling grounds. She couldn’t shake the feeling that the house wasn’t entirely abandoned.

  “And all those ponds around the outskirts of the grounds,” she told Mark as they discussed the situation over a light supper at the Traveler’s Rest inn across from the train station later. “I haven’t dismissed the idea that there might be bodies under all that dark water.” She shivered as she spoke her suspicion aloud.

  “I have never known Shayles to dispose of bodies on his own property,” Mark said with an expression that might have been meant to reassure, but didn’t. His words implied there had been bodies to dispose of.

  “All the same,” she went on, pulling herself together and sitting straighter. “It shouldn’t be terribly difficult to break into the house. Once we’re in, speed will be of the essence, though. Do you have any idea where Lord Shayles might be keeping your painting?”

  Mark met her question with a pinched look, his brow furrowing. “Unfortunately, it could be in any number of places. Ravencrest Hall is vast.”

  Angelica was afraid of that answer. She didn’t want anything to do with the ominous estate. If not for the painting and the significance she knew it had for Mark—in spite of his reticence in talking about it—she would have insisted they board the next train to head back to Blackmoor Close. But some things were more important than personal discomfort and wariness. She needed to prove to Mark that she would stand by him in any circumstances—even if it meant putting herself in peril—just as much as Mark needed to prove to himself that the past was the past.

  Which was why less than two hours later, she and Mark were back at Ravencrest Hall, slipping through the newly-fallen night to the back of the building where the cracked-open window was.

  “Once you’re up, stand on my shoulders,” Mark instructed her, forming his hands into a basket to boost her, even though she could have leapt to the window ledge, as she had earlier in the day.

  Angelica nodded, and without comment, rested her foot in his hands. With a quiet, “One, two, three,” she hopped up, surging even higher as he muscled her to the level of the window. She was surprised by his strength—as she was surprised by nearly everything about him—and couldn’t help smiling.

  That smile flickered to concentration as she adjusted to stand on his shoulders and lean against the side of the house. Mark held her ankles tightly, which gave her all the steadiness and balance she needed to grasp the bottom of the window and shove it up. It took several tries and more noise than she wanted it to, but before long, she had the window open wide enough to crawl through.

  Once she was inside the house, she worked the window open a little more.

  “Do you need me to find a chair or a ladder or something to help you up?” she whispered out the window.

  “No,” Mark answered.

  He followed his single syllable with a leap not unlike hers from that morning. He caught the ledge and pulled himself the rest of the way up, Angelica helping where she could.

  Once he was inside the house with her, panting from the effort of his climb, Angelica turned to survey the room. It was a small dining room, as she’d gathered that morning. The table and chairs and a sideboard were covered with muslin. A fine layer of dust lay on the floor, but since the longest the house could have been abandoned was only months, it wasn’t enough to make the house feel ancient and forgotten. Instead, it felt more as though it were in mourning or waiting for something to happen.

  “It’s so dark,” Angelica whispered, hugging herself and rubbing her arms. “I don’t see how we’re going to find anything without a little light.”

  “There should be lanterns throughout the house,” Mark said, moving forward cautiously.

  Angelica followed him out of the small dining room and into the hall. With so many curtains closed, hardly any light reached so deep into the building. Mark seemed to know his way around, though. All the same, he kept close to the wall, using it as a guide, while Angelica kept a hand on his back.

  They reached what must have been the front hallway, and Mark found his way to a curtained window. He threw the curtains open, letting in the light of the waxing moon. It was barely enough to make out the shapes of paintings hanging on the wall, the outline of a cabinet, and a long, wide staircase that stretched up to the first floor. With that light, Mark crossed the front hall confidently, throwing open the curtains of another window. Even with the amount of light doubled, Angelica was still wary about their chances of finding the painting.

  At least until Mark opened the small cabinet near the door and drew out a lantern.

  “Urban greeted guests at all times of the day and night,” he explained in a low voice. “He frequently carried a lantern with him—this lantern, I assume.”

  Angelica figured Urban was Lord Shayles’s butler. She gave the man credit for being prepared. Mark found a box of matches in the cabinet and lit the lantern.

  Immediately, the front hall was illuminated, but the light didn’t take away Angelica’s sense of foreboding. She hadn’t been sure what to expect from the artwork in Lord Shayles’s home, but the front hall was decorated with sharp-faced portraits of stony women and men who wore smirks.

  “Should we search the ground floor first or start from the top and work our way down?” she asked.

  Mark was silent for a long moment. “He wouldn’t have displayed the painting where anyone could have seen it,” he said. “Or if he had, I would have seen it at some point while visiting.”

  Angelica chewed her lip for a moment, frowning. “So he must have your painting in a room you’ve never been in before.”

  “Unless he moved it during the times I was here,” Mark said, heading for the stairs. “Though as that would have taken effort, I doubt it is what the man did.”

  Angelica tilted her head to the side in consideration as they started up the steps. That seemed to align with the little she knew of Lord Shayles. He was arrogant, fickle, evil, and conniving, which meant he likely only ever did things that benefitted himself the most with the least amount of effort.

  When they reached the top of the stairs, Mark turned righ
t. Two steps later, the floorboard creaked so loudly under his foot that it set Angelica’s teeth on edge. Worse still, something bumped deeper in the house. Her stomach swooped and churned.

  “Please tell me that was a mouse or a squirrel,” she whispered.

  “Probably,” Mark murmured over his shoulder as he continued on. “I’m certain this house is crawling with vermin now.”

  Angelica huffed a wry laugh. “From what you’ve told me, it was crawling with vermin before.”

  She caught the edge of Mark’s grin at her comment in the light of the lamp. The way he carried it cast eerie shadows over his usually stoic features. It gave her a paradoxical sense of warmth and animation from him, as if the dancing flame highlighted the excitement of their mission. Part of her knew it must kill him to have returned to Lord Shayles’s home, but she sensed passion and dynamism in him as they moved on.

  “The family rooms are in this wing,” he whispered to her as they turned a corner and headed through what appeared to be a receiving room of some sort. “As far as I know, guests rarely ventured into this part of the house.”

  “This has to be where the painting is, then,” she answered.

  But the artwork adorning the walls of the receiving room looked more like the inexpert collection of someone with juvenile taste who had bought up every painting depicting pink-faced shepherdesses cavorting in pastoral splendor they could find. The furniture was garish and outdated as well.

  “I wonder if Lord Shayles even spent time in this part of the house,” Angelica muttered as they crossed through the doorway into a narrower hallway at the other end of the room.

  “He did,” Mark answered with the kind of grim certainty that made Angelica afraid to ask more.

  A few yards down the hall, Mark stopped and rubbed a hand over his face. He peered into the darkness, then twisted to glance over his shoulder, back into the receiving room, then at her.

  “I’ve only been in this part of the house once, and not for long,” he said. “Shayles’s bedroom—his actual bedroom, not the one where he entertained—” he said the word with strong distaste, “and Lady Shayles’s suite were in this part of the house. His sister had a room here too when they were growing up.”

  “Lord Shayles has a sister?” Angelica’s mind rebelled at the idea.

  “Had a sister,” Mark said, moving toward the closed door nearest them. “She died in childbirth less than a year after being married off to a marquess in Yorkshire.”

  “Oh.” Angelica didn’t know what to say. Mark’s tone implied there was a story behind the death, but like so much else, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

  The first room they tried was a bedroom that hadn’t been used for so long that the muslin coverings over the furniture were caked with dust, unlike the dining room they’d come in through. The room across the hall was the same. A third room proved to be a repeat of the first two.

  Mark huffed an impatient breath as they entered a fourth room. That proved to be a small library, not much bigger than the bedrooms. Several shelves were stacked with books so old that Angelica was afraid to touch them, let alone pull them from their homes, lest they crumble. The furniture looked as though it had been covered in muslin, but someone or something had pulled the sheets on a leather sofa and over the desk askew.

  “I’m not going near that sofa,” Angelica said, the slightest hint of humor in her leery declaration.

  “Why not?” Mark asked, moving toward the sofa.

  He reached out a hand toward the muslin, but Angelica snapped, “Don’t! There might be a rat hiding in there.”

  Mark pulled his hand back, facing her with a look that said she might be right. He then turned in a circle, holding the lantern up to shed light on the walls.

  “It’s not here,” he said, disappointment ringing in his voice. “We have to find it soon. I…I don’t like the way the house feels.”

  “Neither do I,” Angelica agreed.

  She gestured for him to follow her back out to the hall. For a moment, she was plunged into darkness as she reached the hallway before Mark could bring the light with him. In an instant, she had the feeling that the shadows were shifting around her, that there was movement from the far end of the hall, and from something bigger than a rat. She was on the verge of rushing back into the library when Mark—and his lantern—joined her.

  “I don’t like this place,” she whispered. “It feels possessed.”

  Mark hummed in agreement and stepped ahead of her, walking carefully down the hall.

  “I understand why people think the place is haunted,” she went on.

  “It’s only haunted by the past,” Mark said, once again reassuring without making her feel the least bit better.

  They searched two more rooms, and though there was nothing of note in them, the uncanny feeling that they were being watched—no, that they were being stalked—grew in her.

  “Perhaps we should leave if we don’t find it soon,” she whispered, ashamed of her own cowardice.

  “We’ll find it,” Mark said. For once, he was the strong one.

  She latched onto that, resting her hand on his back as they continued down the hall. At last, they reached a door that opened into a room that didn’t feel as abandoned as the rest of the chambers they’d explored. Mark tensed before they even entered the well-appointed bedroom. A whiff of expensive cologne filled Angelica’s nose. She could only deduce that the room was Lord Shayles’s bedroom. It felt as though they were walking into the heart of a dragon’s lair.

  “I do not like the feel of this room,” Angelica said as they stepped deeper into the faded opulence. A window stood open and a single wine glass with the remains of red wine at the bottom sat on the windowsill, no bottle in sight. She glanced over the bed, its coverings rumpled as though the servants hadn’t bothered to touch the room at all before fleeing the estate, a shiver running through her. “It feels evil in here, like—”

  She stopped abruptly as she turned back to Mark. He had gone stock still, his mouth hanging open in shock, the lantern held up slightly as he stared at the wall above the room’s cold fireplace. There it was. Angelica knew in an instant the painting hanging over Lord Shayles’s mantle was the one they were looking for. A chill went down her back, causing her to shiver as she stepped slowly to Mark’s side.

  She was beautiful. The woman in the painting was lovely beyond measure. She couldn’t have been more than twenty. Her nude body was stretched languidly across a settee draped with a blue and gold scarf. Her curves were lustrous, painted with warm pinks and golds. She covered the lower part of her body with the scarf, but her breasts were bared. The expression on her rosy face was laughing and modest, as though the artist had sweet-talked her into posing and she had agreed as a dare, but couldn’t believe her audacity. Her smile was that of a lover—happy and carefree—and her blue eyes were filled with ardor and promise.

  She was the same woman who wept and screamed in every other painting in Mark’s studio at Blackmoor Close.

  “Oh, Mark,” Angelica whispered, stepping up to his side and resting a hand on his arm. “I’m so sorry.”

  She wasn’t completely certain what she was sorry about, only that the woman in the painting in front of them was so joyful and every other image she’d seen of her was bleak and dark. Something had happened to the woman. Something that had ruined Mark.

  Another detail caught her eye—one she was surprised she hadn’t noticed first. The painting wasn’t simply hanging on the wall. It was enclosed in a thin, glass case. The flicker of Mark’s lantern reflected from the surface, along with a dim, ghostly image of him and Angelica against the backdrop of Lord Shayles’s most private space.

  “I haven’t seen her in twenty-five years,” Mark said in a dry, strangled voice.

  Angelica wasn’t ignorant enough to think he meant the painting. At least, not the painting alone. “Was she your lover?” she asked in a soft voice, her hand still on his arm.

  Mark r
emained silent. The barest hint of a nod was all the answer he gave her.

  “Something happened to her,” Angelica went on. “Lord Shayles did something to her.” They weren’t questions. She could see the truth as plainly as she could see the affection in the painted woman’s face.

  Mark stood completely still, frozen by whatever thoughts were trapped within him. There wasn’t time to wallow in old memories, though. The creeping feeling Angelica had had since entering the house continued to weigh on her along with the desperate need to get out.

  “Take it,” she said, taking a half step forward. “Take your painting and let’s go.”

  “I can’t,” Mark said. “The glass.”

  Angelica studied him for a moment. Even in the lantern light she could see he’d gone deathly pale. His eyes were wide and full of sorrow, and a dusty, old sense of helplessness hung over him.

  “The glass doesn’t look thick,” she said. “There has to be something in here we could break it with.”

  She spotted a set of fire irons beside the fireplace and strode over to grab a poker. But when she turned back to offer it to Mark, he shook his head.

  “I can’t break the glass,” he said, sparing only a fraction of a look for her before gazing at the painting once more.

  “I’m sure you can,” Angelica said, walking back with the poker extended.

  Mark shook his head. “I might damage the painting. She’s been through enough already.”

  Twin jolts of frustration and sympathy shot through Angelica. He had a point. Shattering glass could very well slice through something as thin as canvas and paint. But the alternative was to leave it where it was. Unless….

  “We could take the whole thing down,” she said, tossing the poker to the bed and walking back to the fireplace. “Bring the lantern over here. The glass must be mounted on the wall somehow and the painting hung inside it. If we could find the fastenings—”

  “I wouldn’t if I were you.”

  The low, sinister voice spoke so suddenly that Angelica yelped in terror and wheeled back. A dark shadow emerged from a small doorway at the far end of the room. All Angelica needed to see was the shock of pale hair, the sunken face, and the disheveled appearance of the man to guess that it was Lord Shayles.