Reckless in Red

by Rachael Miles

  “Perhaps.” The older man nodded in agreement. “But Seamus told her information that puts our employer at risk, and our employer doesn’t like being at risk.”

  “Does my friend here look like such a woman?”

  The three men examined Lena, who tried to look demure, while holding her penknife. Taking the opportunity, Clive stepped closer, intending to put himself between the group and Lena. But he stepped on a dry branch. The loud crack caught the youngest villain off-guard, who, pulling a rock from behind his back, lashed out at Clive. Hit in the head, Clive reeled with the blow, then fell to his knees. His walking stick dropped to the ground beside him.

  From the top of the churchyard, the bell ringer, seeing the violence, called out an alarm: “Magistrate! Magistrate! Call the magistrate!”

  For a moment, the men debated whether to finish the fight. But seeing the bell ringer, magistrate, and a boy leading a pair of horses run toward them, they retreated into the fields beyond the churchyard until they were out of sight.

  Clive, his hands cradling his bleeding head, sat roughly on the ground. The laceration above his temple was sticky with blood. Clive felt the edges of the cut. “The blood makes it look worse than it feels.”

  “It looks bad enough, regardless of how it feels.” Lena brushed his hair back to inspect his wound, then pulled a handkerchief out of her reticule. “We should return to the inn and treat this. Can you ride?”

  “How did you survive?” Clive stopped her hand, holding it to his chest.

  “What?” Lena touched the handkerchief to his head, her stomach still twisting.

  “When you ran away, how did you survive?”

  She looked over her shoulder toward the church, where the bell ringer, magistrate, boy and horses were almost upon them. She couldn’t risk them overhearing, but she needed to give him an answer. At the same time, she needed to determine how much she was willing to tell him. “I’ll tell you. I promise. But can you ride back to the inn?”

  “No need.” He closed his eyes against the palm of her hand, his words slurring. “I had Fletcher follow in the carriage.” He fell unconscious to the ground.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  It took only a few minutes to call for Fletcher, who was waiting down the lane. He, the postilions, and the magistrate lifted Clive from the ground, each man taking a limb. Lena followed helplessly, the handkerchief covered with Clive’s blood still in her hand.

  At the carriage, she entered first, then the men handed in Clive, back first. He was too long and lean to position easily on the seat, so Lena sat with him in the well between them, holding his head in her lap. I will die in your lap, and be buried in your eyes. The line from Much Ado echoed in her head, and she whispered softly, “Please don’t die.”

  The laceration was still bleeding badly, and she pressed the handkerchief to his head. She wished he would awaken, so she could tell him how much he meant to her. But she knew that even if he did, she didn’t have the courage. Instead, she sang children’s songs to him softly, hoping they would comfort him.

  At the inn, Fletcher arranged for Clive to be carried to his room and placed in the bed. The other men withdrew, leaving Clive to the ministrations of Lena and Fletcher. They loosened his clothing and washed his wound with fresh water from the basin.

  “Don’t worry, Miss Frost. Somerville men have heads as hard as granite.” Fletcher patted her shoulder. “He just needs a little rest. He’ll be well in the morning.”

  Lena wasn’t so sure. But she treated his head with the salve the innkeeper sent up, and she waited beside the bed, watching for any fever or change of condition.

  * * *

  Several hours later, Lena woke to a room grown cold. At some point in the night, she’d curled up in the bed beside Clive, both of them almost fully clothed.

  Clive was breathing evenly, his forehead cool. He woke when she tried to cover him with the blanket.

  “Ah, my prickly darling, you haven’t answered my question.”

  “That’s the second time you’ve called me that.” Lena examined his wound and was pleased to find it closed. “Prickles, thorns: either way it suggests I’m disagreeable.”

  “No, a thorn is part of the structure of a bush, like a branch, and if you remove it, you destroy the limb. But a prickle is only part of the skin, and you can remove it with no damage to the plant. Now tell me before I fall asleep again . . . how did you survive?”

  She tucked her head into his shoulder. In the dark, she couldn’t see his face. It made telling her story easier.

  “Mrs. Edstein flattered my father, telling him she could make his daughter into a deferent miss, if he only supported her methods unwaveringly. At the end of the first month, I ran away from the school, having saved my pin money to buy a coach ticket. My father sent me back without hearing my complaints. The next time I ran away, I had no coin, so I walked home, keeping to the forest, fields, and countryside where I could scavenge food and sleep unmolested. It took me a week. When I arrived home, my father locked me in the nursery and sent for Edstein. He called me to his study to hear Edstein outline her plan for my next year under her tutelage—increased confinement, additional chores, no visits home for a year. He threatened that if I ran away again, I would be dead to him.

  “We were to return to Nottingham in the morning, and I knew if I returned to the school, I would be lost. I took my mother’s jewels, as much coin as I could find in the house, and I sewed it all into my skirts. That night, I ran to the Roma who camped near the village, asking them to let me travel with them to London. To take an English child into their caravan was dangerous, but they knew me—and my father’s temper—so they agreed.

  “Once in London, I tried to get work hand-coloring the illustrations in expensive books, but all the jobs were taken, though the women who did the coloring felt sorry for me and let me sleep in their apartments by turns. About that time, I ran out of money. I found a ragged copy of the London Times with the announcement my father had placed, ‘Dead, the daughter of Baron Winters, Denby, of a short illness.’ Since Helena Winters was dead, I became Lena Frost.”

  “A clever choice of name,” Clive murmured. “Go on.”

  “I spent my last halfpenny buying a ticket to the British Institution exhibition. There I met Vigee Le Brun, and she was moved by my plight. I became her protégée, and I left with her when she returned to France. I remained with her for over a decade.”

  “Thank you for trusting me with your story.” He nuzzled her neck. “And we’re still not even.” And he fell asleep.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The next morning Fletcher insisted the group return to London, and Lena agreed. Clive, his head still aching, slept most of the way, leaving her to her thoughts. But rather than thinking on the past, she considered her present, and in a small way, her future. She brushed back Clive’s curly hair with her fingers. She couldn’t get enough of the feeling of it between her fingers.

  She’d grown to love him, his kindness, his solicitude. He’d seemed to burrow his way into her heart and set up housekeeping. She felt as if she had known him forever, and her need for him already went bone-deep. Worse yet, she trusted him, more than she’d ever trusted anyone. But dukes’ sons did not marry businesswomen, and certainly not those with no true name or fortune.

  No, the only way to remain near him was to be his mistress, and she couldn’t do that, not even for Clive. Lover, yes, but not a mistress to be bought, whose love was merely another commodity to be bartered like her clothes, her food, her apartment, or her jewels.

  Lena studied his face, memorizing every detail: the small scar over his right eyebrow, the freckle at the corner of his eye, the indentation at the bottom of his earlobe. She wanted to remember each detail so thoroughly that when they were through, the memory of his face would comfort her when she was lonely or sad. She tried to think of a portrait or sculpture that was like him, but she rejected each one. Somehow Clive had replaced all her models with his own
face and form.

  She hadn’t dared yet to open the document that Horatio had left hidden in her tomb. When they had left the inn, she’d shoved it to the bottom of her carpetbag. Certainly, a baron’s daughter was closer in rank to a duke’s son than a nameless painter, but she needed resources to prove her claim. But pursuing her inheritance could cost her the one dream she still clung to: that with hard work and luck and an assiduous avoidance of notoriety, she might one day be a painter to the queen. Her life couldn’t bear the public scrutiny of a chancery suit wending its way slowly through the courts. And Clive wouldn’t want to be the subject of another public scandal.

  Perhaps if she could talk to Constance, her friend might help her imagine a future where Lena and Clive could be together. But Constance was hours away, and Clive was sleeping beside her.

  Whatever time they had left to spend together, she wouldn’t waste it. And when they were through, she would slip away and never see him again.

  * * *

  They’d arrived in London that night, too late to do anything but retire to their rooms. Clive had slipped into her bed sometime after the rest of the house had grown quiet, holding her in his arms until daylight. But when she’d awoken, Clive was gone, and a note from the duke summoning her to his study had been slipped under her door.

  She’d dressed slowly, choosing the nicest of Aunt Agatha’s morning dresses and a pair of matching slippers. Though the duke and her father were nothing alike, she felt the same dread as when her father called her to his study. Since visiting her own grave and her father’s, she’d found herself remembering more of her childhood than she’d allowed herself to in years.

  She’d measured her father’s mood by where he’d directed her to meet him. The house was a thermometer of his shifting temper: the morning room, genial; the stables, hardy; the estate office, practical; the conservatory where the gardener tended her mother’s plants, maudlin; and his study, imperious or drunk.

  On a good day, he would want her beside him. She would receive a note telling her how to dress and to meet him at the stables. Sometimes, she would ride across the estate with him, jumping fences and logs, until they raced back to the stables. Sometimes, clad in her best morning dress, she would accompany him as he inspected the work of the cottagers, delivering baskets of food to their wives as he met with the men. He would be proud of her then, patting her back and calling her “my good girl.” On other good days he taught her how to fish and hunt, how to evaluate a failing roof and a fallen fence. On bad days, he sequestered himself in his rooms, staying in bed and calling for his meals to be sent up on a tray, until the mood passed.

  She preferred the consistent days, either jovial or brooding, because then she knew her limits.

  The worst days, though, were those when he left his room and nothing she could do could please him. He began those days convinced that she was a useless child, good for nothing but the rod and work. If he called for her to read to him, he would criticize her diction; if he told her to write a letter, he would criticize her handwriting, no matter how carefully she formed her letters. On those days, she usually ended up dressed like a common maid scrubbing the floors or dishes, or even raking the stables as if she were no better than a groom. Those days, if they hadn’t begun in drink, always ended in the bottle. The worst of the bad days ended with her bloody and bruised, hiding from him and the servants. Those nights, when he fell down in a stupor, she would sneak up to his body to make sure he was breathing. She would call for the butler to move him to his bed, or they would cover him with a blanket where he lay, unwilling to risk another one of his rages.

  The only good thing about the worst days were the presents she would receive after them. A new horse, a new saddle, her mother’s jewels when she was far too young to wear them. On two occasions, when a bruise purpled her cheek, he’d handed her a pound coin—more than he paid her maid for a month—and promised he would do better. It might take a month or two, but he always broke his promises.

  As a result, she grew up an observant child, watching for any sign of a change of temper, and learning as best as she could how to change a mood with a smile or a bon mot and how to disappear when she couldn’t. Those skills had served her well on her own, when she was dependent on the goodwill of patrons and fellow artists for her food and shelter.

  She paused awkwardly before the door of the duke’s office, reminding herself that the duke was not her father, and she had no obligation to him, other than her business relationship with his fiancée. It had been more than a decade since she’d felt the back of a hand across her cheek or the toe of a boot in her stomach. When she had left her father’s house, gold coins and jewels sewn into her skirts, she had told herself she would not ever again be that afraid. And she wouldn’t. Not today. Not tomorrow. Even if the panorama failed, she would not be afraid. If necessary, Lena Frost would disappear, and she would reinvent herself again.

  She straightened her shoulders and knocked on the door, entering when she heard the duke’s “come in.” She could predict why he wished to speak to her: he’d seen her with Clive when they’d returned from Derby after all. The only question would be whether she would take the money. Certainly she could use it, but if she agreed . . . She turned her mind away from the question. A week ago, before she had come to know Clive, she might have been able to do it, but now, knowing him . . . Even if she disappeared, she did not want their friendship—if that’s what it was—to make her fortune. She could ill afford the scruple, but it felt right.

  “Ah, Miss Frost, it is kind of you to agree to a conversation.” The duke, seated before the fireplace, gestured her to sit.

  “I could hardly refuse my host.” She chose the chaise longue directly across from him. In dealing with patrons, or possible ones, she always sat herself in a nearby comfortable chair, presenting herself as being at ease and attentive.

  “Most would say they could not refuse the request of a duke.”

  “I lived for many years in France,” she elided.

  “And you have imbibed the revolutionary spirit. Rights of man, equality, and all that.” He appeared to be teasing her, but she couldn’t be certain.

  “No, I merely was thinking of the Terror, and how aristocrat, merchant, and laborer are all made of the same blood.”

  “You are too young to have seen the Terror.” He leaned forward, studying her face for signs of age.

  “Yes, but I knew those who did.” She mirrored his action, a tactic she’d learned early on to put a patron at ease.

  “Then we have that in common. Glass of wine?” He gestured to a nearby table that held carafes of various wines. “I have mountain if you prefer a sweet wine.”

  “Claret will be sufficient.”

  He poured, his movements smooth like his brother’s, but she felt no attraction to him. He handed her the glass. “I suppose you are wondering why I’ve asked for you to join me.”

  “I can think of several possibilities.” The lightness of her tone belied her interest.

  He nodded acknowledgment that she hadn’t answered his question. “My brother is fond of you.”

  “And I of him.” She waited, for the inevitable litany comparing his brother’s place in society to her obvious unsuitability: a woman in trade, who had lived in France under Boney, and who had no name or family. She predicted the objections easily, but was surprised at how sad the recitation made her.

  “I know, from my own experience, that the course of true love never does run smooth.” He leaned back, enjoying his glass.

  “Shakespeare?” She sipped the claret.

  “Midsummer Night’s Dream. It seems suitable.”

  “Is this the moment when you try to warn me off? Given that you are a diplomatic man, you might even offer me money to break off whatever affair we are having.”

  “Are you having an affair?” He raised an eyebrow, clearly expecting an answer.

  She shrugged. “I would not tell you if we were.”

  “H
mm.” He thought for a moment. “If I offered you money to let him be, would that work?”

  “No.” Her soft answer was quick and decisive.

  “No explanation of how your affections are more pure than any filthy lucre could sully.”

  She gave him her best cold stare.

  “Simply no.” He set down his glass and stared up at the ceiling for a moment. “It’s good that you are unwilling to reveal—or sell—your friendship with my brother, because I wasn’t offering to buy.”

  She felt surprised but said nothing, hoping he would explain further.

  “I’ve found in the last several months that I’m a terrible judge in matters of the heart.” His expression grew serious. “In fact, several months ago I had a conversation much like this, with another young woman who appeared by rank and class to be as wholly unsuitable a match for my brother Colin as you appear to be for Clive.”

  “Lady Colin.”

  He nodded, still somber. “She told me in no uncertain terms that whatever decision she made would be entirely her own. I believe our conversation encouraged her to hide—even from my brother—a secret that later caused her great harm. As a result, I’ve determined, in matters of the heart at least, to avoid giving my brothers advice.”

  “That’s very un-duke-like of you,” Lena assessed blandly.

  He smiled, and suddenly Lena could see the man that Sophia loved. “I hope that where my siblings are concerned, that I never act as the duke, but only as their brother.”

  “Are those things separable?”

  “In most cases, yes.”

  “How were your objections to Lady Colin resolved?”

  “Any objections based in rank and class were eventually proved moot, as she was revealed to be an heiress in her own right. I don’t suppose you are an heiress in disguise, Miss Frost?”

  “You would have to resurrect me as another person for that to be the case.”

  He turned his attention on her, looking again very much a duke. For a few seconds, he said nothing, just examined her, head to toe, as if he had never seen her before. She sat under his gaze unflinching, then his face softened. “As to the purpose of our conversation.”