The Painted Castle

by Kristy Cambron

  “Ben and Eli?” Keira asked.

  He checked his watch. “Noon. They never work over a meal. Must’ve missed them on their way out.”

  Keira turned away, a bundle of nerves as she stripped out of the sweater and let it fall to the floor in a soggy lump, then wrung out the tips of her hair over her tee, like there wasn’t the biggest lump in her throat at the same time. “So it’s just us.”

  He didn’t answer.

  Why was that? Just slid out of his leather jacket and walked over to hang it on a wall sconce. He ran his hand through his ebony hair, his palm catching at the nape as he shifted his weight to one leg. “Look—I’m not good at this.”

  “Not good at what? Slogging through a healthy English rain?” She tossed the hair at her shoulders, fluttering air through it in a bid to get something to dry. “Better get used to it, Yank, if you plan to make a go of it by staying on at the cottage. England invented rain boots for a reason.”

  Keira had meant it in cheek, hoping to calm the fluttering in her midsection. But total ignorance turned out to be something she owned in spades, because Emory looked torn to strips. He stood with his arms braced at his sides, like something was trying, and failing miserably, to stay tamped up inside him.

  “What Evelyn said is true. Why are we the ones doing this?”

  She swallowed hard. “Doing what?”

  “Hunting down a story that’s not ours. Finding out about Victoria’s past. Putting up walls in an old cottage—that should be Carter’s job. Why are we still here?”

  There were maybe a thousand answers.

  He liked research. So did she. Victoria was stunning, whoever’s work she was. They were being paid. It was a gully washer outside, and who wanted to brave the Framlingham roads to trek home through that? There was a manor with free coffee, art that begged to be researched, and enough painted sunsets to last them the rest of their lives, were they keen to stay.

  Those answers tried but weren’t nearly good enough.

  Keira didn’t know why, except that Parham Hill, Victoria, the cottage, and Emory . . . they’d awakened something in her that she’d been ready to give up. Dublin was home, but it didn’t call her the same way it used to.

  Not like a darkened entry with Emory in it did.

  “I don’t know.” Keira put herself in the last position she should have—taking a step closer to him that felt more like a leap across a chasm. “Why are you still here?”

  “You want the truth, Foley?”

  “Yeah. I could use some truth right now.”

  Truth turned out to be snogging that stole her breath in the dark . . .

  Emory Scott kissed to his own tune, with arms he slipped around her waist like they’d always belonged there, the feel of his heart slamming against her chest, her lips forgetting anything but what it felt like for his to explore them. It was the craziest sense of home she’d ever come back to.

  He felt like home.

  Then there was a minute of catching their breath and grinning like fools, and he pushing locks of wet hair back from her forehead with the heel of his palm, and she taking the liberty to wipe a smudge of dirt from the side of his nose.

  “I couldn’t put that off a second longer. I didn’t think it was right to pull you into all this. But I haven’t done it in a long time—”

  “I have a hard time believing you haven’t practiced that a bit.”

  “No, Professor. I meant I haven’t been able to trust anyone like this.”

  “Trust?” She pecked another kiss on him, lingering a moment. “Look, I’m just about to ask you to spend Christmas in Ireland with my family. I think I should be the one worried right now, especially given that my brothers’ overprotective vibe could mean I’m putting your very life in danger if you agree. And I’m kind of used to having you around by now.”

  When he didn’t reply, just took in all she’d said with a blank stare, Keira’s nerves kicked in.

  “You need a family to spend Christmas with, right? I’d hate to leave you frozen in that pitiful cottage out there. So . . . you know. Just a holiday. But no strings, of course.”

  He stepped off, keeping his fingers laced with hers, and tugged her toward the hall. “Come here.”

  “Where are we going?”

  The line they’d crossed began to fade as Emory walked her down the hall toward the light spilling out at the end.

  The library greeted them, rain still beating the manor walls and lightning creating flashes of white that lit up the room. The scaffolding had been lowered as the wall came down, and aged boards had been nailed up to cover the window that had once been behind it. But other than the reams of books lining all corners and her lovely Victoria holding court on the far wall, it was silent and still.

  “What’s going on?”

  “You mentioned it a while back, that the fade marks on the wallpaper meant there must have been a window behind the wall.”

  “Right. I did. So what?”

  “There were at least eight more paintings we haven’t accounted for. And I’ve been looking for them. Behind locked doors. In the cellar. Shut-up rooms. The attic . . . So now I need to know if you meant it,” he whispered, staring through her. “And if you can really trust me.”

  “Emory—you’re scaring me. Of course I trust you. Why?”

  He nodded. Just once, then turned away.

  It wasn’t when he reached for the tarp in the corner and pulled it free to reveal a shipping crate underneath. Or when he muscled a crowbar to peel back nails at each of its four corners. And even though the heart sinking in her chest tried to understand what was happening when he pulled the wood face free and a gold-embossed frame emerged in the center . . . it still didn’t seem real.

  Keira shook her head, her breath quickening with shock.

  An Empress lay before her, bathed in Klimt’s unmistakable gold—turning Emory into an art thief, with his long-lost Farbton masterpiece that wasn’t lost at all.

  Twenty-Six

  March 20, 1945

  Parham Hill Estate

  Framlingham, England

  After the weariness left over from the long winter of war, spring returned.

  Framlingham winters were long and chilling to the bone, but the promise of warmth always brought a thaw that was worth the wait.

  Hedgerows woke in muted yellows and soft greens. Hawthorns and willows bloomed, creating bowers of white along the road to town. And the air seemed scented with sweet violets no matter where you trod. Darly had fixed Amelia’s bicycle—with new tires from goodness knew where—and she’d regained the freedom of wheeling about town again.

  She’d set out for Wickham Market and the weekly shop with ration coupons at the ready, gliding past Bertie’s shop with another dress in its window display. She had just enough time to drop in at the Castle House before she rounded back to the cottage at midday. If luck was on their side, Wyatt would be on pass after being on duty for nearly a week, and Amelia would get to see him before he went up again. He’d healed enough that his burns had begun to fade on the outside, but it was the courage from someplace inside that said he wasn’t through fighting just yet.

  Amelia bit her bottom lip over a smile as she shrugged her bicycle against the stone wall of the Castle House pub. She’d felt an uncommon spring in her step after visiting Wyatt for weeks. After reading together and falling into a gentle rhythm of affections that had turned openly toward one another. She plucked two jars of honey from her basket and thought seriously about skipping her way to the pub door.

  A cry split the street in two before Amelia could reach for the front door handle.

  Sirens screeched a breath after—so loud her skin crawled—and she fumbled one of the jars. It dropped from her hand and shattered in a pool of glass and sticky gold at her feet.

  Amelia shot her gaze to the sky, clutching the other jar in a desperate, white-knuckled hold as she searched the clouds for angry black birds. There was a distant roar of planes, wasn’t
there? Or was that just her imagination?

  They were so used to the hum of engines blighting the sky that it felt normal to doubt the background noise now. The nearest bomb shelter was the largest—the underground in the Church of St. Michaels. There was nothing to do but calmly and assuredly walk toward it, and pray with each step that it was only the madness of another drill.

  Patrons bustled from shops, spilling into the street—Bertie among them with tailor’s tape draped over her neck, her face calm but her eyes terror stricken as she led women to the church in their various states of incomplete dress. The bookshop emptied of its horde of book lovers. The Castle House, too, saw diners flee, though Thompson was nowhere in sight—the crowd growing too thick to make out his face among them. A few US Army uniforms were in the fray—flyboys on leave, no doubt, though none Amelia recognized as Wyatt’s familiar build.

  She trekked with the villagers through the church graveyard.

  How could this happen? An air raid so early in the day? That only occurred in London. Or Norwich. And a few other fateful ports early in the war. But not as far off the beaten path as the East Suffolk countryside. Even if there was a base nearby, Framlingham was no prize of a target. Not like Westminster or Buckingham Palace might have been. And certainly not a thought to happen now that they’d come so far, with wits that had brought them within distance of beating the Nazis at their own devilish game.

  The Reverend Canon May stood with the church doors flung open, ushering the townspeople through the arched wood frames as he watched the sky beyond the trees and the sirens continued the urgency of their warning wails.

  Amelia ran in with them, block heels feeling loaded with lead as she climbed the stone steps into the lofty nave, following the backs of those in front of her. Which way was fastest to reach the underground?

  If only they’d had time.

  The walls cracked as though they were made of ice.

  Stones flew as a bomb blasted, splintering the air with shards of stained glass that pummeled the central aisle like rainbow rain.

  Amelia tumbled down to the ground, her knees hitting stone with a fierce slap that shot white-hot pain through her limbs. She crawled on all fours, glass inflicting tiny stinging cuts to her palms and knees with each desperate advance. A gentleman in a tweed suit and cracked spectacles ushered women to safety in front of him, moving her through a row of polished wood pews. And what must have been seconds felt an eternity of coughing and moving past debris that had crumbled in piles around them until she reached the nave’s wing.

  Silence drowned out the sirens’ mournful wails as Amelia hurried to curl up in the corner, under the shadow of the great Thamar organ. Townspeople followed. Some she knew. Others she did not. Packed in a tight sea of bodies with hands and arms covering heads.

  The organ echoed resonant tones and eerie whistles as the walls shook again. None cried out, even when another blast enveloped them—this one closer, taking down the wall behind the altar. A few strong voices—perhaps the canon or servicemen from the pub—worked to calm the people. And they were calm. They were Englishmen and Englishwomen, after all. And they’d withstood five years of death and destruction. What was one more bomb blast for a people who could stiffen their upper lip at the worst an enemy could chuck their way?

  Despite soothing voices and a stone slab floor that felt solid as a rock beneath her, the moments of Amelia’s worst remembrance came flooding back. Crippling in a wave of tears she didn’t choose. Couldn’t anticipate. And was powerless to stop.

  It was 1939 again.

  The library’s Palladian window shattered over her head, dumping glass in her hair . . . her mouth . . . and cutting into her body like razor-sharp shrapnel. All she heard was the whistle—a scant second of terror before the library wall crashed down around her. Then came the eerie silence. The sense that she’d bumped into things and tumbled down but didn’t know how or why. And black smoke from the fire choked every breath she dared try to take. She drifted through a sea of blackness until arms plucked her out of it, and she saw Arthur’s face hovering like a halo of light in the storm.

  And then . . . pain.

  She’d doubled over, crying out as the ferocity of it nearly sawed her in two.

  That was the end of life as they’d known it before the war reached out to claw them. And all Amelia could do some five years later, as bombs searched the earth to consume her once again, was hug a honey jar to her chest, cry, and pray.

  She cried for Arthur. For the unborn future they’d lost that day. For everything that had slipped from her when he’d enlisted as an RAF pilot and took to the sky out of blind, driving rage. But he’d never come home. Even after all the time that had passed, it felt fresh as the day the War Department telegram arrived.

  Everything had changed, but somehow she was thrust into the same nightmare once again.

  How could she tell Wyatt the truth? When the war was over, her pain wouldn’t end when plane engines fell silent and children were packed on trains to go home. If they wanted any future together, she couldn’t give him what he’d lost. They could never be a family unless he’d be content with a pile of books and a party of two to read them.

  Sobs racked Amelia as she pressed her cheek to the cold stone floor.

  God . . . where are You?

  * * *

  Amelia all but tossed her bicycle on the garden path and blasted through the Anderson shelter doors, immediately counting heads. She called out names. Pressed fingertips to little crowns, desperate for the feeling of silky hair beneath her palms, relief bouncing back each time a voice returned in answer.

  “Liesel?” No reply. She tried again, calling out, “Liesel—answer me! And Luca?”

  The Anderson walls echoed with her shouts, the children sitting in an evading silence as sunlight streamed through the open doors and Mrs. Jenkins stood guard over them.

  “We hadn’t time, milady.” She wrung her hands over the kitchen apron still tied at her waist. “Not to check the manor. Nor the outbuildings.”

  “But the officers—hadn’t they a plan for things like this?”

  “The officers about weren’t but a few. It’s the first light day of spring and they ventured into town. Those who were here helped as best they could to get the wee ones in first. They bid me to stay on while they went back out.” Mrs. Jenkins stared back, eyes wide. Lip quivering like she’d spent a night outside in winter. “Luca is missing.”

  “No . . .” Amelia’s insides clawed with the beast of panic, though for the rest of the children’s sake she fought it. “What happened?”

  “The sirens started in the midst of morning lessons. We rushed the children out—just as Captain Stevens had instructed. But no Luca. And no time. We saw them, milady. The planes in the sky.” Mrs. Jenkins sobbed into a handkerchief embroidered with pansies on the edge. “And heard their whistles cutting through the fields.”

  The meadow at Parham Hill was wide open—of course they’d seen them. How could they not? By the time the planes had reached town, it would have been too late. And as Amelia had run across Bridge Street, the terror overhead blocked by the bower of trees with spring blossoms, the children would have had a perfect view of great black death birds winging their way to the gardens.

  Amelia shuddered, her heart nearly breaking with empathy for what innocent eyes had seen—the dragon of death chasing them from London to the perceived safety of a countryside manor years ago, yet finding them there once more.

  It was too much.

  “Liesel refused to stay, even as bombs fell out in the fields. She went about looking for Luca, with Darly—they fled across the meadow together. Several of the officers went out too, milady, but we’ve not seen hide nor hair of them since this all began.”

  “And Wyatt?”

  “No sign of Captain Stevens, milady.”

  “Right.” Amelia exhaled, instinct kicking in. “Stay here! All of you.”

  If she was right—and her gut told her she
knew exactly where Luca had gone—the path to the cottage was all that separated her from the boy. As was his way, he’d have clutched his journal, with pencil in hand, and through the waves of sirens would have documented the date and time and ferocity of the blasts in his own little ledger.

  Or because he cared for Mr. Arthur’s memory nearly as much as she, Amelia had to consider he might have run to the cottage for another reason—to keep a watchful eye on the prized painting that had hung on the wall of Arthur’s private library since the day of the library bombing.

  No matter the reasons, Amelia fled back into the sunshine at a run.

  Feet pounded the path of fresh earth beneath her in a cadence that matched the fervent dance of the heart slamming in her chest. Breathing in and out, running over the rise, trying not to turn an ankle in block heels. She slowed at the telltale horror of smoke in a line of wispy black that rose above the trees.

  Bodies—two?—emerged from the trees. Walking slowly. Too slow to be running from trouble, they seemed resigned to a sluggish trek back to the manor.

  Amelia’s breath locked up in her lungs as Wyatt cut a line down the path with a soot-covered bundle in his arms. A tear-streaked Liesel cradled a book, holding Luca’s hand and fumbling her footing every few steps at their side. Luca’s mop of curls rested against the crook of Wyatt’s neck.

  “Wyatt!”

  Run.

  “What’s happened?”

  Liesel spotted her and sprinted her way, not stopping until she slammed them to their knees in the dirt and buried her face against Amelia’s shoulder. Liesel’s tears wet the collar of her blouse as she wrapped an arm around her shoulders.

  Amelia held her away, cupping Liesel’s face in her palms, seeing that whatever happened had covered her, too, with a film of soot, and tracks of tears had run right through it. “Are you hurt, darling?”

  Liesel shook her head, but no words left her quivering lips.

  “Answer me . . . Please.” Amelia brushed the matted brown hair back from the girl’s brow, checking her over, making sure she was whole. But Liesel collapsed again with her face buried in the cable weave of Amelia’s cardigan, breaking apart against her.