But how could she remove Hartwell from the game?
If she were her mother, she would cause a scene, manufacturing some offense or staging a violent lovers’ tiff in hopes of embarrassing him out of the room. Lily dismissed that. She was not an actress and had no desire to draw any more attention to herself in this place than she had already. However she did this, she would need to do it quietly—the way her father got things done, moving his pieces with elegant strategy from behind the scenes.
Art buyers didn’t walk into galleries with cash in their pocket. These purchases were negotiated on credit. If Lily could convince Roth that Hartwell was incapable of delivering whatever he promised, and then made Lord Strangford’s offer contingent on being accepted that night . . .
The bright, silk-clad crowd swirled around her as the plan pulled together in her mind.
This was not something Lily could suggest herself. Roth knew that she was acquainted with Lord Strangford. Anything she told him about Hartwell would be viewed, rightfully, with canny suspicion.
She needed this message to come from another source. It needed to be someone with social clout who clearly had nothing to gain from the situation.
Her eyes danced over the jewel-bedecked bodies and stopped on the figure of Viscount Deveral.
His handkerchief was at his nose again. He tucked it haphazardly back into his pocket.
Yes, she thought distantly. That could work.
The pieces had fallen into place neatly in her mind. As the son and heir of Lord Torrington, no one would question how Lord Deveral might have access to information no one else had heard. That relationship also far outweighed any dent his lifestyle choices might have made in his reputation.
And Lily had the means to blackmail him into doing what she wanted.
The boldness of it nearly made her drop her champagne. She kept hold of the stem of the glass by sheer will, frozen in place by the audacity of what she was contemplating.
It would enrage him.
Had there ever been any chance of some rapport between Lily and her half-brother, this was sure to destroy it.
Then again, tonight’s exchange had made it quite clear that a rapport had never been within the realm of possibility.
There was therefore nothing to lose. So why was her heart pounding like a steam engine inside of her chest?
He was just a man, she reminded herself forcefully. He meant nothing to her. The worst he could do to her in this crowded room was embarrass her and he couldn’t accomplish that without also exposing himself to scandal.
A man still enraged about the gossip his father had brought on the family decades ago would not willingly do that.
Lily straightened her back and slipped through the crowd, coming up to where Lord Deveral stood alone next to a scene of a fox being torn to pieces by a pack of beagles.
“I’d like you to do me a favor,” she announced without preamble.
“Why the devil would I agree to do anything for you?” he retorted flatly.
Lily pretended she had not heard.
“I want you to tell Roth that Dr. Joseph Hartwell’s credit is not to be relied upon.”
Lord Deveral turned to stare at her with obvious shock.
“Are you quite mad?”
“No,” Lily replied calmly. “Nor am I currently intoxicated with cocaine.”
He went still for a telling moment. Then he shrugged.
“So? It’s hardly a crime.”
“Would our father share that attitude, I wonder?”
His glare was like ice, cold and sharp enough to cut.
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“Why wouldn’t I? Though perhaps he wouldn’t believe me. What do you think, my lord? Would our father credit such a story, were I to ensure he heard it?”
“You’re a cold little bitch.”
“Just do it. Now. So I can hear you. And then I may return to ignoring you, and you to debauching yourself.”
She could see the war being fought inside of him, fear battling with some other urge, likely the instinct to strike her in the middle of this room.
Even for the heir to the Earl of Torrington, that would have been beyond the pale, as he well knew.
She held herself steady, meeting the violence in his gaze without flinching. She could not show any hint of uncertainty or the game would surely be up.
He cursed. It was a particularly vile one. His glass slammed down onto the table and he stalked away.
She watched him move through the crowd, all but pushing the pearl-strung dowagers out of his path on his way to Roth.
Lily followed more carefully, slipping through the close-packed bodies until she was within earshot of the gallery owner.
“Are you quite certain?” Roth demanded.
“I have it from a reliable source,” Lord Deveral replied flatly.
“And why share it with me? Out of the goodness of your heart?”
“Why does it matter?” the viscount snapped. “I shared it. Do with it what you like. I’ve done my part.”
He cast a razor sharp glare over at Lily before turning and stalking in the opposite direction. He pushed his way through the crowd to where Annalise Boyden stood, grabbing her arm and lowering his mouth to her ear.
“Oh, fine,” she replied. She flashed a charming smile at the gentleman in front of her, murmuring some excuse, and the pair turned, Lord Deveral plowing them a path to the door.
Lily’s limbs wanted to tremble, unraveled by the quick catch and release of conflict. She restrained the urge. There was another move yet to make.
She singled out Lord Strangford. He had found the Whistler and stood by it alone, his attention on it complete.
“Go to Roth. Make him an offer,” Lily ordered as she reached his side. “A generous one. Tell him it is contingent upon the contract being made tonight—that the portrait isn’t a particularly flattering one and you’re not sure Mr. Ash will be willing to pay so much for it once he’s seen it himself.”
“But none of that is true.” He gave her a curious look.
“Let Roth believe Ash might change his mind about the purchase once he sees the work.”
“What exactly have you been up to?”
“Do you want the piece or not?”
“It means a great deal.”
“Then do it,” she ordered.
He didn’t move. He gazed at her, making some sort of assessment she couldn’t guess at.
She was reminded, abruptly, of how many mysteries this man contained.
She closed her mouth against all of them.
“Very well,” he agreed and set down his glass.
He pushed himself into the crowd. Through the bobbing, bejeweled heads of the ton, Lily watched her little drama play out.
Lord Strangford delivered his line and Roth’s expression turned thoughtful. There was a moment’s pause before he motioned for his clerk.
Then both clerk and Lord Strangford exited together, stage right—the gallery office, Lily surmised, with a quick leap of her pulse.
Roth gestured to another of his staff. There was a brief exchange before the boy was waved off.
As he went, Roth’s eyes found Lily across the crowd.
He made her a subtle little bow.
He knew, she realized. And like any good player, he had accepted being outmaneuvered.
The second clerk returned and set a small white placard against the frame of Evangeline Ash’s portrait.
Sold.
Now for Act II.
Hartwell appeared. His tall frame visibly cut through the crowd as he stalked to Roth. Lily allowed herself to drift a bit closer. His voice was low, but it carried.
“Why was I not allowed to make a counter-offer?”
“The buyer’s reserve was more than met. I decided to make the sale.”
“And forgo the chance of a higher commission? Since when has one of your lot passed up an opportunity for a greater profit?”
The slur was
delivered so casually, it clearly came by instinct.
Roth gave no sign that it wounded him.
“There’s a charming little Gainsborough yet unspoken for, if you like. The piece is quite undervalued, in my opinion. An excellent investment for a discerning collector.”
“You may keep your Gainsborough,” Hartwell snapped. He turned away and scanned the crowd, as though looking for some answer there to the question that was plaguing him.
His gaze stopped on Lily.
She held steady and waited as he moved toward her, though her pulse pounded with a combination of both thrill and fear.
The fear was groundless, she told herself. What could Hartwell do in the middle of a room full of London’s finest, even if he guessed that she was behind this loss?
“This was your doing, wasn’t it?” he demanded.
“I hope you aren’t too put out. You did say the piece was rather flawed.”
There was no burst of temper. Hartwell’s self-control was substantial.
The painting in question, the portrait of Evangeline Ash, hung just behind him. The effect was uncanny. For a moment, it seemed as though the artist were there, in the room, peering over Hartwell’s shoulder with her cobwebbed eyes—as though the dead woman could see them, watching everything that was about to unfold.
“You play well, Miss Albright.”
Mrs. Boyden’s bell-like laugh rang through the gallery. Lily could see her wrapped in her wool cloak at the door. Lord Deveral’s arm slipped about her waist as they faded out into the darkness.
“This time, you had the element of surprise,” Hartwell went on. “I am not such a fool as to be taken off-guard twice. You may find our next match a tad more challenging.”
He lifted his champagne, a conscious mockery of a toast, and the pieces fell into place.
The glass in his hand blocked her view of the spill of red cloth held by Evangeline Ash. The painted silk turned the wine from gold to crimson. The black length of Hartwell’s arm crossed the banner the artist held across her lap, obscuring a handful of letters from the strange French motto written across it—the end of de, the opening letters of l’étranger. The foreign text slipped away, a word in Lily’s own tongue announcing itself from within the text.
Danger.
It was a message, the identity of its intended recipient coded into the vase of flame-hued blooms at the artist’s back.
Lilies.
No. That was madness. Was she really considering that Mrs. Ash had somehow guessed where her portrait would be hanging on one particular winter’s evening 30 years after her death and had designed the entire piece to send a single pointed warning to a woman who hadn’t yet been born?
She must have had more champagne than she’d realized. The words, the blossoms, the dead woman’s uncanny gaze—it was all just air and nothing.
“You have no idea what I find challenging,” Lily replied flatly. “If you’ll excuse me, I need a bit of air.”
She pushed away. The room felt too close. The heat of all those bodies was oppressive, the electric candles glaring, the smells of perfume and tobacco and wine choking her. She needed to escape, to get back to her safe little garret on March Place.
The current of the crowd was against her as she fought to get to the door, but at last she made it. She handed in her ticket and waited for her cloak. It felt like an eternity. She resisted the urge to desert it and go running out into the night.
At last it arrived. She slipped into the wool, then hurried down the steps, the cold night air a welcome shock after the suffocating heat of the gallery.
A voice from behind arrested her just as her slipper touched the pavement.
“Miss Albright.”
Lord Strangford stood in the doorway, framed by the gold light from the electric candles like some dark angel.
“Is something wrong?”
“No,” she replied quickly. “Just unaccustomed to keeping such hours.”
All those questions . . .
They hung in the air between her and the man at the top of the stairs, potent with significance.
Once she left this place, it was unlikely she would ever see him again.
It was now or never.
“A pleasure to see you again. Good evening, my lord.”
Lily climbed into one of the waiting hackneys. The driver snapped the reins and the vehicle pulled away.
She did not look back.
SEVEN
LILY WAS IN A bedroom.
It was not the one where she had lain down to sleep that night after coming home from the gallery. The room was much larger and grander than her own, dominated by an enormous four-poster bed hung with gossamer-light curtains.
Moonlight spilled in through tall windows, painting the space in shades of blue and gray. White powder hung suspended in the air like snowflakes inside a globe.
In the middle of that silent storm, two bodies moved under a tangle of sheets. Disembodied, Lily could not look away, forced to play voyeur to the intimacies of Annalise Boyden and Lord Deveral.
The scene shifted.
Lord Deveral stood by the window, clad in his trousers.
Annalise Boyden, in a pale negligee, sat at a vanity table beside him. She extended her hand and the viscount pulled a jeweled dagger from his pocket. It was a gorgeous thing, medieval in its splendor like a piece of regalia.
She waved it through the air and the white powder that still floated around them caught against the blade. She licked it clean with a neat lap of her tongue, then tossed the dagger onto the table and laughed.
Lord Deveral’s expression shifted, a cruel light coming into his eyes. His mouth moved, but the shape of his lips didn’t match the words that Lily heard.
Casting your line for a new fish, eh?
Annalise Boyden turned, her hand flashing out like the paw of an angry cat. Claws raked across his cheek, vivid red lines appearing in their wake.
A roar sounded in Lily’s ears like a wind blowing through the room. Lord Deveral left, the door slamming shut of its own accord behind him.
His lover drifted over to the bed, falling gently backwards onto the sheets, her eyes closing.
The gas lamps lining the wall flickered, flames rising and falling, burning a pale blue.
A shadow detached itself from the corner and drifted into the room.
It circled the bed, making a sound like the jangling of milk bottles as it moved. Its shoulders expanded into dark wings that loomed over the sleeping woman.
The winged nightmare bent, setting its mouth to her pale neck. She sighed, her body rising as it had before when she responded to the attentions of a very different sort of lover.
The dark form dissolved, fading into the shadows of the room. Annalise Boyden sat up in the bed, her hands clasped to her throat.
She fixed Lily with a merciless glare.
“You’re late,” she accused and the blood began to pour from between her fingers.
Lily woke gasping.
She threw off the blanket, the cold air of her room crashing against her skin.
Another vision.
The moving shadow, that bottle-glass clatter, the blood spilling from the dying woman’s throat—it was him. The same monster who was coming for Estelle.
But this vision was different. Lily’s heart galloped, fire pulsing through her veins, moved by more than just horror.
It was urgency.
The events she’d seen weren’t days or weeks away. They were imminent. The woman she met that evening in the gallery—the woman who shared some uncomfortable history with Lord Strangford, and who was currently the lover of Lily’s half-brother—was about to die.
She fumbled for the matches on her nightstand, struck one and lit the candle. The glow revealed the hands of the clock on her mantle.
It was three in the morning.
The immediacy of the danger raged through her, building a pressure in her brain so great she felt like a volcano primed to explode
.
She had to act, regardless of what good it would do. Even though she knew it was futile, she couldn’t lie here in her bed while a woman was moments away from being slaughtered.
She threw open the wardrobe, yanking out a jacket and skirt and throwing them on over her nightgown. She shrugged into her overcoat and grabbed her boots, tucking them under her arm with her walking stick as she raced out the door.
She ran down the stairs, her stockinged feet quick and quiet against the boards.
On the ground floor, she pulled the boots on, tugged open the door and dashed outside.
She stopped for a moment to consider her options. Unsurprisingly, there was no sign of a hackney on March Place in the middle of the night. She might have better luck on Tottenham Court Road, but it would almost certainly be faster to get where she needed to go on her own two feet.
She ran.
The stitches in her leg pulled in protest. She ignored them, bolting past the rows of dark, silent houses.
She didn’t slow until she had reached the well-kept garden of Bedford Square and the wide granite steps of The Refuge.
She paused to stare up at the door, her leg burning with pain.
What was she doing? Did she really propose to knock at the door of a virtual stranger at three in the morning?
More frightening than the impropriety of that was the notion of what would happen if her knock was actually answered.
She couldn’t hope to get what she needed from those inside that building without opening herself up to questions she had no desire to answer—questions that might expose her for what she really was.
The urgency firing through her did not care about any of that. It screamed in her ears, deafening. She thought of the blood pouring through Annalise Boyden’s fingers and mounted the steps.
She grasped the knocker and pounded it against the door.
A moment later, it swung open, revealing the figure of Sam Wu, his nightshirt hastily tucked into a pair of trousers.
She caught the quick, sharp suspicion in his look and knew that his own instincts were telling him to slam the door in her face.
Instead, he stepped back, making way for her to come into the hall.
The Fire in the Glass Page 10
