The Painted Castle

by Kristy Cambron

  The door opened, cutting the moment short.

  Elizabeth did her best to compose herself after such a heartrending declaration.

  Beautiful and young—barely older than Elizabeth herself—Victoria entered with her gathering of attendants close behind. Though standing at five feet tall, she didn’t need a crown or precious jewels to present a regal entrance. The queen presided over her salon in a gown of simple design, with white gauze ruffles drifting about her shoulders and the usually tidy knot of chocolate hair unbound so it tumbled in waves across the front of her bodice.

  “Mr. Winterhalter.” Victoria addressed Franz as he tipped in a courtly and much-practiced bow. “We meet again.”

  “We do, Your Majesty. And this is an honor, as is every such occasion.”

  “Are we quite prepared? I’m afraid I cannot contain my jubilance at such an undertaking! How my Albert will be surprised by our ‘secret picture.’ I have been telling my ladies about your latest masterpiece, so much so they wished to accompany me this morning to meet the artists in person.”

  She turned her attention to Elizabeth, those light eyes and porcelain skin glowing in the sunlight. “And, Lady Elizabeth, I am most gratified to have seen the progress on your portrait as well. You are quite the young apprentice—a woman who is a skilled portrait maker in her own right, I’d say.”

  “Thank you, Your Majesty. I’m sure.”

  “Mr. Winterhalter hasn’t insisted upon an invitation for a student before, but I must admit that a break with tradition can have its virtues. Now I fear I shall have quite a task to choose which portrait will go to the prince for his birthday.” Victoria settled on the chaise, settling the folds of her gown around her in a pose regal yet unbound by the constraints of her position. “Let us begin our competition, Winterhalter, and discover who the winner shall be.”

  “Of course, Your Majesty.” And then, turning to Elizabeth behind her canvas, he said, “Are we ready?”

  Elizabeth blasted him with the most vehement whisper she could. “By all accounts, sir, I should throttle you for the absolute dastardly timing of your chosen revelations. How am I to focus at all with such questions flying through my mind? And with the queen of England sitting just there, breathing the same air as we?”

  “Questions are powerful when matched with a brush. Use them to your greatest advantage.” Franz gave a slight bow to the queen and a nod to Elizabeth, effectively declaring they were off.

  They fell into the artist’s rhythm—Elizabeth indolent at first, her heart beating wildly and her hands defiant in their wish to tremble. But soon she fell into a world of discoveries in line and light. Shade, shadow, and rich hues. Victoria sat still, talking with her courtly ladies about the room as Elizabeth captured the scene, softening lines around the queen’s locks, dusting the slightest pinch of blush to her cheeks and light to a pert nose. Stroke after stroke she perfected the queen to canvas, until daylight shifted in the room, signaling time had escaped before Elizabeth had even the chance to realize it.

  A few more moments and she may be finished.

  “Fine work.” Franz leaned in on a whisper, tilting his head toward the queen in her setting. “But I ask you before you lay down the brush . . . look deeper. What do you see?”

  Elizabeth stilled her hand about the canvas and gazed across the salon.

  Azure of the flower on Victoria’s bodice . . . deep crimson of the settee at her back . . . the graceful white gauze and unbound hair sweeping across bare shoulders . . . While not the typical posture of a queen, it was no doubt a royal pose.

  She’d captured it all, hadn’t she?

  “The morning is wearing thin, so I might suggest moving the settee closer to the window. I want to get this right.”

  Franz shook his head. With careful fingers, he eased the brush out of her hand and held it captive in his palm. “This is not about light—you have already mastered that. But if you can, forget that she is a queen for a moment and, instead, paint the woman.” His fingertips hovered over Elizabeth’s canvas, where Victoria’s eyes were set. “What is alive right here? How does she wear her heart for all to see?”

  Elizabeth swallowed hard, watching the queen who sat before them.

  She was royalty. Majesty. Beauty and perfection in a deceptively small package. Victoria ruffled her hair again, smoothing the coil just right over her collarbone, and then looked to a chair across the room. She gazed at it, a simmer of a smile tending her lips as if she’d tumbled away, lost in thought. Perhaps she was able to picture Albert himself was there to receive the secret language of a look passed between lovers. And try as she might, sitting with queenly posture and ladies all round, Victoria could not help but show an intimate display of unbound affection for her Albert, though he was not even in the room.

  What she bore in that instant was the stunning natural longing a wife had for her husband—one Elizabeth hadn’t considered might ever exist for her until that very moment. The memory of a sidewalk in Piccadilly shifted somewhere within her. The snow and gaslight and view of Keaton’s eyes changing with it so that the remembrance faded . . . and was replaced with something new.

  Elizabeth’s heart thundered in her chest as she considered the real reason he might have been on that street corner. And longing struck without warning, in a deeper place than what she’d expected, so that Elizabeth wished the chair had been filled instead with someone she had come to care for.

  Franz exhaled, as if he could read the very thoughts flying through her.

  “Das ist gut. Now paint it.” He smiled, placing the brush back in her fingertips before he returned to the delights of his own canvas. “Only someone who’s felt that look could ever hope to capture it. I believe you can. And I wonder who would be in that chair across the room from you, were he given the opportunity?”

  * * *

  July 17, 1843

  Parham Hill Estate

  Framlingham, England

  Stonemasons had set about a curious task of raising an outbuilding on the estate—a cottage tucked into the tree line, nearly hidden from view. Elizabeth peered through the carriage window as the coach emerged from the grove of willows.

  “Stop here, please, driver,” she called out, searching through the trees.

  The carriage slowed along the ruts of the rock wall–lined road, and she pressed a hand to the crated painting on the coach floor, holding Victoria still against the dusty violet linen of her traveling skirt as the coach drew to a stop.

  Burnished stone and leaded glass greeted her at the end of a cobblestone path. Elizabeth stepped out of the carriage and walked toward it as birdsong filtered through the trees. On this day the sky shone a brilliant blue instead of the rainy gray it so often appeared. A moss-green door waited for her. She reached for the latch and it gave easily, the new hinge silent instead of crying out like an aged one.

  Inside boasted a parlor. Humble but pleasant with flock wallpaper in cheery yellow and floor-to-ceiling windows, their abundance of natural light welcoming views of the meadow behind. In the corner stood the cottage’s lone inhabitants: a pochade box and easel, their gangly limbs creating long shadows to streak across the hardwood floor.

  In the silence Elizabeth turned, gazing down the length of a deep hall that led to a study with empty shelves—the oak smell still fresh and clean—its ledges aching for book spines, and a fireplace that longed to be used for the first time. She followed the hearth up to the mantel, and with a deep inhale, she rested her gaze upon the only splash of color about the room.

  A heart-stopping portrait . . . of her.

  Elizabeth removed her bonnet as she walked to it, then released the wide ribbon to allow the ivory satin and straw to dangle from her fingertips. She drew closer, staring back at the mirror image of herself captured in oil paint. She stood in a ballroom of robin’s egg–blue walls, in her soft yellow morning dress, an easel at her side and a paintbrush gently angled in her hand. And the telltale script of Winterhalter sang out from
the bottom corner, signed and dated in the bright titian script that was his hallmark.

  Did gentlemen run? Keaton was either unable or uncaring to hide the fact that he arrived quite winded, with his tie missing and shirt haphazard about the neck as he stepped into the light cast by the open door. Their gazes locked with the length of the hall between them, his eyes of stone and a jagged line of gold showing he’d indeed hoped to find her there.

  “Elizabeth—you’re . . .” A deep breath. “You’re back.”

  “I am.” She looked through the window to the coach that lingered on the lane, still sheltered by the protective haven of the willows. “But how did you know?”

  “Franz. He stopped me at the front gate, relayed that the dowager countess remains in London but that he’d accompanied her daughter back to Framlingham—in a separate coach, as was proper for a woman of her station. But he said in no uncertain terms before he shoved off to a commission in Paris that I’d be ‘zhe grandest fool in all of England if I didn’t cut across zhe meadow at all possible speed and meet zhat charming portrait artist before she gets away.’ Something to that effect. And I didn’t even wait to hear his laughter behind me as I headed in this direction.”

  “Oh. He said all that, did he?” Elizabeth hoped the presence of her portrait, the pochade box, and the easel meant what she’d dared hope. “What is this place?”

  “A beekeeper’s cottage.” His brow furrowed a shade. “Built so you might feel at home here. So you could have a studio. Your own library. And bees, just like at your father’s estate.”

  “You thought I should wish to feel at home . . . and bees were the best way to accomplish this?”

  Not taking himself too seriously at her humor, Keaton bounced back with a smile. “Your sketchbook said as much. I hadn’t anything else to go on but a series of drawings of bees and blossoms.”

  Yes. My sketchbook . . . and your image tucked in the back.

  Elizabeth allowed the satin ribbon its freedom, and her hat drifted to the floor as she walked to him. She looked up, his profile not bathed in shadows from a gaslight nor snow crying from a winter sky. This time the sun shone down upon him. And he didn’t hide his eyes under the brim of a top hat. He chose to meet her where she stopped, but paces away, his posture revealing an openness to answer her questions.

  “And what else did it say, my little book of pictures? I suspect it revealed the image I captured of you on a street corner in Piccadilly one wretched night. But for a reason from which you’ve never sought to defend yourself. And if I’m right, Keaton James”—she dared to say his name in the softest of tones—“I’d like to know why. Was that why you were there that night, to watch over me? To keep me safe somehow?”

  “You know it was.”

  One truth. One nod. And he didn’t hold back.

  His arms enveloped her. Those eyes that had always been evil’s companion in her memory drifted over her face with warmth, affection . . . and love. And she sank into him, meeting the softness of a kiss as if it had always been that way between them, instead of the enmity of the first time. Lost and somehow at home too.

  Keaton pulled back, eyes ardently searching her face. “I couldn’t allow a man’s family to be threatened. Harmed. Or worse. It so happens I was at the Theatre Royal that night, unsuccessfully attempting to draw a thespian brother back to the reality of duties at his estate. But there was an incident at the theater—men came hunting for your father. As reproach for his debts, they intended the worst. We attempted to find him first, Fenton and I. And even Christopher, at great personal risk were your mother to learn of his involvement. Please know we tried to warn your father. I knew I might be recognized, but—”

  “Yes. The top hat.” Elizabeth felt the warmth in her cheeks even before her lips could spread in a smile. She took the liberty of running her fingertips against his forehead, brushing a swath of dark hair from his brow. “You tried to shield your eyes from me but couldn’t.”

  “I failed terribly.”

  “You didn’t fail,” she whispered. “They brought me back to you, did they not? They are why I’m standing here. And now they look on me and I no longer feel afraid. Or alone. Or wracked with thoughts of vengeance. Instead they show me you. I see a man who commissioned a secret painting from the greatest portrait maker in Europe. I see a cottage so beautiful and perfect that it could be its own painted castle. And I see a man who honored my father’s memory for years after his death. It was you, wasn’t it, who sought to ensure we had an income?

  “It makes sense now, Ma-ma controlling the post, who I spoke with, and what invitations we’d accept . . . She was afraid I’d find out about my illegitimate half brother. And then what would we have? Every future she was trying to build for me could have come crashing down. And she thought her only recourse was to broker a marriage with you.”

  “I’d never have spoken of it.”

  “I know. But you couldn’t have kept me in the dark. There’s too much honor in you. And though I don’t expect this to be an easy path to walk—not with Christopher, nor with my mother—I’m still willing to try. That is, if you should like . . . I’m ready to give you my answer. And if you’ll pray forgive me, my dear Keaton, it is long overdue.”

  “Say yes because you want to. Not for any other reason than because you could love me in return as I do you. As I have from the moment you walked back into my life.”

  “Then it is a yes.” Elizabeth had dared to dream it, that he’d stand before her so open. Honest. With his arms ready to receive her, and she had but to take a step into them. “And I know I obtain the better bargain. In case you’ve forgotten, I am one of those penniless artists my mother would warn you about.”

  “Warn nothing,” he said, the slightest hint of humor alive in those beautiful eyes.

  It was nothing to come home to an estate. Or a cottage he’d built for her. But to slip into his arms and feel an overwhelming familiarity like she’d never known . . . his kiss was home.

  He was the turnabout of fate that she wanted, needed, and she fell into his embrace as they threaded arms and melded their future.

  “I’d never have believed it,” Elizabeth whispered when he pulled back for a breath, staying nose-to-nose close to her. “But Her Royal Highness, Queen Victoria herself, gifted me with my first commissioned portrait.”

  “Is that so?”

  Elizabeth tilted her head to the windows. “It’s in the carriage—you’ll be delighted to know Franz was struck down with envy that mine was dubbed her favorite of the two. But it should go home with me, she said, because I’d managed to capture longing in eyes that were not hers. So Winterhalter’s portrait will be gifted to her great love, and I was allowed to bring mine back . . . to you.”

  Thirty-One

  Present day

  10/11 O’Connell Street

  Dublin, Ireland

  Cormac motioned for Keira to pull the earbuds from her ears. She obeyed, pausing the music on her phone so Grace VanderWaal’s sultry soul cut off and was replaced by the crackling fire in the hearth and rain that cried down the glass of the pub’s street-facing windows.

  “I said, are ye ready to go?” Cormac stooped by Keira’s chair in the dining room. “I vote we close up early an’ go make merry wit’ the rest o’ the family. It is Christmas, ye know.”

  “I know. But it’s my gift to you—I’ll close tonight.”

  There hadn’t been but a few customers trickling into Jack Foley’s Irish House, but the last thing Keira wanted to do was toss poor tourists out in a steady downpour. It was why she’d chosen to wait in the cushy leather chair by the old stone fireplace—somehow the dance of flames helped her get lost when she’d needed to, and she could forget that it was a sloshy mess outside on O’Connell Street instead of the snowy wonderland it should have been on Christmas Eve. But the room was still. Only a few empty pint glasses lingered on random tables.

  She’d come home to this view once before.

  It wasn’t
like when she’d left New York. That had been about losing a job. Being wronged by an affluent family and their wayward son. But now, everything felt different—Emory had made it different. This time Keira wanted to stew. To let herself feel the loss of something she’d really wanted, Christmas or not. Between Victoria and the cottage and all the maybes that had come along with taking a chance—she wanted to pause and just feel sad for once, without her brothers trying to swoop in and fix it.

  “Look, it’s nearly closing time. Go.” Keira gave him a playful shove in the shoulder. “You have a family now, Cormac. I’ll lock up and then I’ll pop in at Ashford Manor for a bit after. I promise. I’ll be fine.”

  “’Tis freezin’ rain out there. Do ye think Laine’s goin’ to speak to me tomorrow if I let my little sister drive o’er the backroads to Wicklow by herself in all that? Don’ make me sleep on the sofa in my own house. I don’ see that workin’ out too grand for me in the end.”

  She couldn’t help but laugh. “When are Ellie and Quinn supposed to turn up here? I can just ride over with them.”

  “Change o’ plans. Quinn took Ellie straight o’er to the cottage at Ashford Manor so she could see Laine an’ the girls. Said he’d come back after—had somethin’ to pick up before mornin’.”

  “Honestly! You two. Must you leave your shopping until Christmas Eve every year? I cannot think of anything Quinn could need but a pocket calendar, and he could have picked that up weeks ago.”

  The front door bell chimed over her last words, followed by, “Heard that. Some welcome. Thanks a lot.”

  His accent wasn’t nearly as thick as Cormac’s, but the rest was so familiar she turned, finding Quinn had just stepped in from the downpour. He pulled a rain jacket hood back from his head, the never-shaven face, Foley green eyes, and chin-length dark hair of his tied tight at the nape, same as ever.

  The return of a gleaming smile was new though. Bright futures did that.

  “Quinn!” Keira jumped up—uncaring that he was rain-and ice-pelted. It had been months. Too many since she’d last seen him. And she hadn’t a chance to hug him for the many years he’d been split from the family and not at all since Ellie’s reclaimed health news, so she met him in the center of the room and threw herself up into his arms, squeezing tight so raindrops dusted her cheek and ran down her neck beneath her ponytail.