by Jo Goodman
The studio was in complete disarray. Jars of ground cobalt and sulfur had been opened and upended. Chalk dusted the table and the floor around it. The canvases that had been neatly stacked against every wall of the room were tipped on their backs and lay scattered across the carpet. Slender threads of rabbit glue had been drizzled across some of them. Hog’s bristle and miniver brushes littered the area beneath the shelves. The aprons had been removed from their pegs and tossed through the balcony window. One empty easel lay on its side; the other remained squarely under one of the skylights, the painting it held still shrouded in linen.
Stepping over a cracked mortar and around an overturned stool, Restell approached the standing easel, almost certain what he would find beneath the cloth. He grasped one corner of the fabric and tugged, letting it slide over the stretched canvas and fall almost silently to the floor.
Marisol—and Restell had no doubt that it was she who had laid siege to her father’s studio—had employed a palette knife to savage Emma’s painting. A Windy Day had been violently shredded with dozens of slash marks. Restell recoiled from the rage that had produced this violation, for he could think of it in no other terms. What had been done here was so intensely personal that it was painful to look upon.
He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again the colors blurred on the canvas. The brush strokes no longer seemed so well-defined. He blinked back tears until even the shredded threads of the canvas came into focus.
“Bloody hell,” he said under his breath. “Bloody, bloody hell.”
“Miss Vega’s not here,” Restell told Lady Rivendale. They had stepped into the hallway again to keep from upsetting Sir Arthur. “No one saw her below stairs. She must have left by the trade entrance.”
The countess held her chin, pondering this last. “I was so certain you would find her in the studio.”
“She was there. I think Sir Arthur must have known. Perhaps she told him, I can’t say, but it would explain his agitation.”
“What do you mean?”
“Later,” he said. “I think I know where she’s gone. Emma told me that Miss Vega suspected Mr. Charters meant to end their engagement. If there is but a scintilla of truth there, then it’s likely she means to end it herself—on her own terms, I fear.” It was an impoverished explanation at best, raising more questions than it answered. Restell took his leave before the countess demanded something more substantial from him.
Neven Charters was nursing a hangover with the hair of the dog when his butler announced that Restell Gardner wished to see him. “By all means,” he said, setting his glass of whiskey aside. “Show him in.” Neven rose from his chair in anticipation of Restell’s entry into the drawing room. He was mildly amused at the speed of Restell’s approach until he saw the dark expression that accompanied him.
Neven was instantly alert to a host of possibilities that could give rise to such a countenance. “What’s happened?” he asked without preamble.
“Is she here?”
Frowning deeply, Neven was genuinely bewildered. “I don’t know who you mean, but it doesn’t matter. I’m here alone.”
“Miss Vega,” Restell said. He removed his hat and placed it in the crook of his elbow. “Has she been here?”
“No. Has something happened to Sir Arthur?” He felt Restell’s narrowed gaze settle on him and was hard-pressed to remain rooted under it. “You will have to say something, Gardner. State your purpose or go.”
Restell advanced. He grabbed Charters by the neckcloth, twisted, and pushed him hard into the chair he’d recently vacated. “What’s your game, Charters? Did you arrange Emma’s near abduction this afternoon?”
Neven’s head snapped up. “What has she done?”
“Emma? Nothing at all to deserve the end you and Marisol planned for her.”
“No, not Emma. Marisol. I’m speaking of Marisol.” Neven struggled to his feet, an action that put him toe-to-toe with Restell. He held his stance and demanded again, “What has she done now?”
Emma sat at the table in her studio idly fingering the brushes she’d arranged in front of her. A gentle breeze from the open French doors ruffled her loosely pinned hair. A pair of wrens settled on the rope slung midway across the entrance to the nonexistent balcony. Occasionally they nudged each other, but mostly they seemed content to preen.
Emma picked up one of the round brushes and regarded the pointed tip, imagining the fine detail work she would be able to accomplish with it. The bright brushes, those with the broad ends, could apply a swath of bold color to the sky or sea or a young lady’s debut gown. She manipulated the brush through her fingers in much the same manner she’d seen Restell manipulate cards. It was a meditative exercise, she realized, requiring no thought for the task and allowing her mind to wander at will.
It wandered again and again to the Peele brothers. They would have killed her this time, she was certain of it. Perhaps they would have done so before if not for her escape from the cottage. She couldn’t know. The confrontation at number Twenty-three Covington hadn’t returned her memory, but she no longer felt a need to press for recollection. If it never came back, she could still be satisfied. Mr. Jonathan Kincaid—ambitious Billy Peele of Walthamstow—was dead, probably at Neven Charters’s hands, and she knew that Restell would see that Billy’s cousins were not long for true English soil, not unless they found a resting place beneath it.
The why of it remained unknown to her, but she was not in the dark about the who. She hadn’t been able to say it aloud to Restell, nor even yet to herself, but that didn’t mean she didn’t know the truth of it. It sat uncomfortably with her, an ugly worm of a thought insinuating itself deep in her gray matter.
Emma chuckled softly, mockingly. The image in her mind’s eye was not a pleasant one. She dropped the brush and nudged her drawing tablet closer. There were perhaps a dozen sketches in it, all of them of her husband. Restell grinning boyishly. Restell arching an eyebrow. Restell looking every bit the Viking warrior.
Emma picked up a pencil and began to draw. She started with an almost perfect oval and worked on a three-quarter profile. It required surprisingly few lines to give the face its doll-like perfection and only a few more to cast that same countenance in a more sly, clever light. Emma made the bottom lip of the bow mouth a shade fuller so that it thrust forward in an artful pout. A bit of shading about the eyes changed their guileless slant and revealed their cunning. Emma added more strokes to suggest ebon hair and a few fine lines to show the delicate wisps that often fluttered near the temple. The confusion that sometimes set these features awry was absent. The young woman staring back at Emma knew precisely what she wanted. Emma realized now that she always had.
“Marisol,” Emma said, recognizing the light tread on the stairs. She closed her sketch book and turned on her stool to face her cousin. “I didn’t expect that you would come here, though perhaps it’s just as well. It would be difficult to speak frankly in your father’s presence.”
Marisol unbuttoned her pelisse, then plucked at the strings of her bonnet as she surveyed the studio. “Father told me about this place. It is impressive what Mr. Gardner has done for you.” Removing her bonnet, she tossed it on a chair, then she slipped out of her pelisse and placed it over the back. “You don’t mind that your housekeeper told me you were here, do you? She offered to announce me, but I assured her we do not stand on such ceremony. I found my way.”
Emma realized she had not successfully captured Marisol’s over bright blue eyes in her sketch, nor the fine edge to her expression. “I didn’t imagine that Sir Arthur would mention my studio to you. To anyone, for that matter.”
“Why? Because you didn’t want anyone to know you paint?”
“It was your father’s wish that no one knew.”
Marisol gave her head a small toss so that her hair tumbled back over her shoulders. She spread her arms wide to indicate the whole of the studio. “This worried him, though I doubt you realized it when you broug
ht him here. That’s why he told me about what you’d been doing for him. He didn’t know what to do if you no longer finished his paintings. The fine work was no longer possible for him, he told me. He was afraid you would abandon him. Can you imagine? He was fearful that you meant to paint for yourself and not for him.”
“I didn’t know,” Emma said softly.
“Of course not. Didn’t I say as much? I acquit you of being cruel, Emmalyn. I know you didn’t set out to worry Father. That is not your way, although it made no difference to the outcome. I have come to realize, quite recently in fact, that one’s intentions do not always shape the consequences.” There was a hint of regret in Marisol’s brief smile. She began a tour of the studio, stepping first in the direction of the chaise longue, walking her fingers over the brushed velvet arm as she passed. “If intentions were all that mattered, well, I would not be talking to you now, would I?”
Emma followed Marisol’s slow progress about the room. “I was never a threat to you, Marisol.”
“I expect you believe that. It speaks to your naiveté, I suppose. Father and I managed quite well for years on our own, but with your arrival I became an afterthought.”
“That’s not true. You were everything to him. If I made myself useful it’s because I had no place in his heart as you did.”
“So you became his arms and his legs. It serves nothing to shake your head at me, Emmalyn. You cannot deny what I saw with my own eyes. You were always doing whatever he wished, whenever he wished it. It seemed to me that he no longer had to ask for anything aloud. You anticipated what he wanted. You even encouraged his connection with Lady Rivendale. You must have known I had no use for the woman, yet you welcomed and encouraged her and ignored every one of my concerns.”
Emma frowned deeply. She had not comprehended the depth of Marisol’s jealousy. “Sir Arthur enjoys her ladyship’s company. Would you deny him that?”
“She will ruin what little you have left untouched. She will take his heart as you have not been able to do. I cannot allow her to have the place left to me by my mother. Can you possibly appreciate that?”
“I don’t think I can,” Emma said carefully. She slowly turned on her stool to better follow Marisol’s circuitous examination of the studio. Her cousin was idly tracing the top of a lacquered box with mother-of-pearl inlay. Emma held her breath as Marisol picked up this small treasure, a gift from her own parents. It required considerable effort of will not to leave her perch at the table and seize the box.
Marisol allowed the box to teeter between her hands, but her attention was all for Emma. One corner of her mouth curled. “You still do not fully understand. I can see that you don’t.” She shrugged as if it were of no account.
Emma’s stomach was knotted with dread for all the things that Marisol was almost saying. “Are the countess and I truly such a threat? You can’t have forgotten that you will be married to Mr. Charters soon. Is he not enough for you, Marisol?”
“Because he dotes on me? That is what you think, isn’t it?”
“He does dote on you.”
“He is my keeper.” Marisol set the box down hard. The small end table wobbled with the force of it. “What he and I have is by arrangement. For all that I would have the ton believe otherwise, there is no love match. He is still in love with you.”
“You’re wrong.”
“You’d like to think so, but I know differently. Why else would he have killed Jonathan? I have the truth from Jonathan’s own cousins. They barely escaped themselves. They say Neven was enraged. He brought you back to London, right enough, but not before he found and murdered my poor Jonathan.”
Emma felt as if her throat was closing. “There is no Jonathan Kincaid, Marisol. There was only ever Billy Peele, and he betrayed you by keeping me alive.”
Marisol’s short laugh held no humor. “So you are not without some sense of what happened. I have wondered these many weeks what you had come to remember or what manner of things Mr. Gardner discovered. You have shared very little with me of late. It quite put me out of patience with you.”
“I shall be disappointed to hear if that is why you set the Peele brothers in my path again.” Emma held the threads of her composure together and managed a wry smile. “You might have just asked me.”
Marisol blinked as though startled. “Oh, you are teasing. I have always admired your self-possession, Emmalyn. I don’t suppose I shall ever master it for myself. Things are such a muddle for me at times. I think I know what I want.” She shrugged. “Then I don’t. It is all very confusing. Now, for instance, I am finding that I like you immensely.”
Emma noted that Marisol did not sound as if she was pleased to realize it. “I like you, too.”
“I know you do.” Marisol moved past the table toward open doors. The pair of fluttering wrens took flight. Marisol stopped, turned in Emma’s direction, and folded her arms under her bodice. “Did you know our grandmother, Emmalyn?”
“No. She died when I was an infant.”
“Did she? Father never said. I always had the impression she lived much longer. She was mad, you know, and confined to Bellefaire.”
“Mother said she was melancholic.”
“Father says it was snits and fits.” Marisol sighed heavily. “I do not think I should like Bellefaire. As Father is of a similar opinion, he arranged my marriage to Neven. In the event that something should happen to him—as indeed it has—he wanted to be certain I was settled. I like Neven well enough, I suppose, but he wears on my nerves. I liked Jonathan ever so much more. We had such plans, Emma.” Marisol’s perfectly symmetrical features were set awry when she drew her mouth to one side in disgust. “He disappointed in the end, though, and now I have come to wonder if that’s not always the way.”
“He never met me at Madame Chabrier’s, did he?”
“He was there. You must believe I didn’t mean that you should suffer, Emmalyn. I was most specific that it should end quickly. That’s what Jonathan promised. Instead, he watched. That is what his cousins told me, that he liked to watch. Odd, that he could observe such grisly fare as your face being pummeled. A man who could choose a Barcelona silk handkerchief seemed to possess finer sensibilities. Did I not say he disappointed?”
Emma could not suppress a shiver.
“They shouldn’t have taken you to Walthamstow. That was an annoyance, really. I could not imagine what had become of you.”
“My body, you mean.”
“Well, yes, but as you’re right here before me, it seems impolite to speak in such a manner.” Marisol unfolded her arms and let them fall to her side. “Father had the whole of it from me before your letter arrived. You will know that I have never been able to keep a secret from him, though I have had occasion to keep secrets with him. You will comprehend that is altogether different.”
Emma did not comment on this last. She was acutely aware of the distance that separated her from Marisol. Her cousin still stood framed by the open doorway, and sunlight cast a halo about her dark hair, lending it a blue-black sheen. That otherworldly appearance was at odds with Marisol’s cold, implacable smile. “Tell me about the evening when I almost drowned in Lady Rivendale’s fountain, Marisol. I should like to hear how that came about.”
“The merest happenstance. Neven should not have accompanied you to the garden. I have always made it clear that I would not countenance him trifling with you.”
Emma could not keep the incredulity out of her voice. “You struck him?”
“It was but the passion of a moment.”
“But Hobbes was there.”
“So he was, and he misjudged the view he had. You and Neven were occupied with each other. Some things are not so difficult to accomplish as they would appear in the aftermath. And truly, it was unexpected that Neven’s fall would trap you.”
“But not unwelcome,” said Emma.
“No,” Marisol agreed. “It was not unwelcome.”
“Do your father and Mr. Charters
know what you did?”
“If they do, they have never said a word about it. It is difficult for them, given what I know.”
“You are speaking of the forgeries now, I suspect.”
“How clever you are at times. I told Father and Neven they could not hope to keep it from you forever. They were content to wait, though. I didn’t understand it until I realized that you were finishing paintings for Father. His poor hands were stiff from attending to the master works that Neven required him to complete. There were many nights he did not come to bed. I wondered at his stamina to paint during the day as well, but that was my error. He was not painting then, was he? Or at least he was not painting as often. You were doing it for him, thinking all the while that it was his rheumatism that kept him away from the easel.”
Emma was glad for the stool under her. She had been so certain it was Neven Charters who’d made the copies. “But why would Sir Arthur do it?” she asked. “Why would he risk his—” Emma stopped. Marisol was advancing on her. She quickly slid off the stool and put it between them. “He did it for you, is that it? It was what Mr. Charters demanded in return for the promise of marrying you?”
“For the promise of keeping me,” Marisol said. “Father could not do to me what he did to his own mother, though perhaps he has had cause to regret that decision. I cannot say.”
Emma’s hand flew to her mouth. Above her fingertips, her eyes widened, and her voice did not break a whisper. “Oh, my God, Marisol. There was no accident before your father’s stroke. He fell because you pushed him.” Emma watched tears well in Marisol’s eyes and for a moment it seemed that her cousin was lost.