by Jill Jones
Although their sex had been steamy, it wasn’t long before his fascination with red hair and milky skin was replaced by a frequent desire to see her on the plane back to England.
Lying in the dark one midnight, listening to the even breathing of his finally sexually sated partner, Alex was suddenly filled with deep self-contempt. Their sex was hot, spontaneous, and uninhibited, but he had no business making love to Maggie night after night. He didn’t love her. He didn’t even like her. His was an animal, hormonal response, not rooted in any deep emotion, certainly not love. She had become just another woman in his bed, like all the rest.
The only difference was that she had been there more than one night.
Alex got up quietly, put on his pants, and never went back.
He had never told Maggie the real reason for his abrupt exit from her life. She had mistaken his desire for love, and he hadn’t bothered to tell her otherwise. He’d made up some excuse about it being too soon after his divorce, and then withdrew into a self-imposed exile, broken only by Herculean workouts every day at the gym that built his body to steel-hard perfection and helped to block Maggie Flynn and all the others from his mind.
It would have worked if Maggie had let it. Instead, she intensified her efforts to convince him that she was exactly what he needed, and after a few painful encounters, Alex realized to his horror that she had fallen in love with him. Either that or she was unwilling to be the loser. Whatever the reason, she’d kept up her efforts until merciful time at last put an end to their mutual misery and Maggie’s tenure at the college drew to a close. She didn’t call to say good-bye, but she left a note in his departmental mailbox: “My door will always be open…”
Lost among these gloomy thoughts, Alex arrived at the front door of the National Portrait Gallery without knowing how he got there. He was early, on purpose. His destination was Room 20 on the third floor. There, some of the names from the Poets Corner were reunited. Portraits of Tennyson, the Brownings, Thackeray, Dickens, and many more famous writers joined artists and musicians in a celebration of the arts against dark green walls. Among them, Anne, Emily, and Charlotte Brontë stared, somber and serious, from the famous “pillar” portrait painted by their only brother, Branwell.
Restoration of this piece had not eliminated the cracks from where it had been folded and stashed away after their deaths, but it had removed what was once thought to be a pillar between Emily and Charlotte, revealing the ghost of Branwell, who for his own characteristically inexplicable reasons, had decided to white himself out. The sisters regarded the viewer with expressionless eyes and pursed lips and appeared to earn their reputation for plainness.
Next to this austere portrait hung another, however, that gave an altogether different impression of young Emily Jane.
Alex gazed at this, the so-called “fragment” painting, for a long, pensive moment. Although some scholars claimed the painting was of Anne, he believed the profile depicted Emily. She would have been only fifteen at the time, but she looked somewhat older, perhaps because of the daring off-the-shoulder gown she was wearing. Alex had often felt that her attire in this portrait was inconsistent with academic studies that emphasized her plainness and inattention to her looks. The Emily before him was far from plain, almost pretty, in a delicate, Victorian sort of way.
“Anyone you know?” The voice behind him was feminine and husky and decidedly British. Alex froze.
Then slowly he turned to face those intense green eyes, that sophisticated curtain of satiny red hair, the too-generous mouth.
“You’re early,” he said brusquely, hoping to hide any sign that he found her attractive, which he realized to his chagrin that he did. Actually, she was stunning, as always. Her copper hair fell straight and perfect, curling under slightly at the shoulders. She wore an emerald silk suit, cut wide at the shoulders, and a slim, short skirt. Below, long legs stretched, shapely in dark green hose and matching heels. Alex let out a long, slow breath.
Maggie reached out and took both of his hands in her own. “Don’t I get a welcome kiss?”
Alex obliged, catching the scent of a familiar perfume as his lips brushed her cheeks. “You look great, Maggie,” he said, discovering suddenly and to his surprise that he still had some measure of affection for her. He wished they could be friends, like before, when they first met. They sat down on a bench in the center of the gallery.
“I’ve missed you, Alex.”
His reply was silence.
“So…” She searched for a way past the awkwardness. “How long will you be in London?”
“Just today. Tomorrow I leave for Haworth.”
“Not going to the British Museum first? There are lots of Brontë originals there.”
Alex felt the muscles in his jaw tense. “You know I’ve always wanted to go to Haworth,” he said, determined to stay detached. “It seems the best approach to my research, there in the Parsonage. If I don’t find what I need, then I’ll come back to London.”
Maggie cocked her head and said with a sardonic smile, “You’re not going to find what you need anywhere, Alex, because it doesn’t exist.”
The dragon lady had surfaced. Maggie the conqueror. He did not relish their confrontation later in the summer.
“Maybe not. But I have to give it a shot.”
“Of course, dear.” Maggie’s patronizing reply stung. She considered her battle already won. Alex had no doubt she believed she would eat his lunch in the debate, and maybe she would. But he didn’t like the way she salted her sandwich so early in the game. Irritated, he was about to change the subject when she did it for him.
“I’m glad you came early,” she said, looking at her watch. “I want you to go somewhere with me. I have been dying to see an art exhibit everyone in London is hot over, and today’s the last day. If we hurry, we’ll just have time to make it before the gallery closes.”
Alex groaned inwardly. He was already at the only gallery he was interested in seeing. “Look, Maggie, I can’t. I mean, I just got in a few hours ago. I think I’ll go back to my hotel…”
“Nonsense. It won’t take long.” She stood up and pulled him to his feet. The reality of Maggie Flynn iced any earlier misguided feelings of nostalgic affection for her and replaced them with contempt. What Maggie wanted, Maggie usually got. Including him, once upon a time. But no more.
“Thanks all the same, Maggie, but…” Alex dropped his hands from hers.
“You’ll love it, I promise. This woman’s work is so far out. It’s all the rage. You simply must go with me. I won’t take no.”
She was already walking out the door, passing the portrait of the three dour-looking sisters without so much as a glance. Perhaps one got used to such treasures when one didn’t have to travel across an ocean to see them.
Alex shot one last glance at Emily’s portrait, then turned and followed Maggie. Today, because he was so tired, it was simply easier to comply with her than try to beg off. But, he warned himself, giving in was a dangerous precedent to set.
Thirty minutes later they reached the doorsteps of the Perkins Galleries, a small, exclusive salon in the heart of Chelsea. They were the only customers in the shop. A well-dressed man in his late thirties was busily taking paintings off the walls and displays, dismantling the exhibit in front of their noses.
“Sorry for the disorder,” he apologized, introducing himself as Tom Perkins, the owner. “I’ll leave as many hanging as I can, but the artist will be here shortly, and I promised to have started the crating.”
Maggie assured him they were just browsing, and then they were left on their, own.
“Well, what do you think?” she asked, as if assured he would be totally grateful she had made him come.
“I think I need to go back to the hotel,” he said, furious with himself at letting Maggie draw him in one more time.
She looked at him, her face softening. “Poor dear. Maybe you should. I’m sure you are tired. You look quite dreadful. Well, we wo
n’t stay long.” With that she began a tour of the exhibit, leaving Alex staring vacantly at one of the paintings.
Either it was truly unusual, he thought dimly, or his fatigue and anger were creating monstrous distortions. The size of a large window, the canvas was covered with what looked like fog, or mist, or a muddy sandstorm. Bright images jumped out at random, their garish colors juxtaposed incongruously against the softness of the mauves and grays of the background. The figures exuded a fierce freedom, with black horses racing against the wind, fire burning out of control, an organ grinder’s monkey laughing raucously as he seemed to reach beyond the canvas to hand Alex a note.
The painting itself he found disturbing, but the scrap of paper in the monkey’s hand caught his eye. He looked at it more closely.
On the note the artist had painted a message of some sort, spelled out in a tiny, cramped style of handwriting. Squinting, he thought he could make out a few words:
my health…it would…the misery…myself. It is…They appeared to be parts of a sentence or two, disembodied words floating ghostlike on a painted scrap of paper, itself like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle.
“Would you look at this?” he exclaimed in a low voice.
Maggie heard him and returned to his side, smiling up at him, happy that he was finally enjoying the exhibit. As she knew he would. She tucked her hand in the crook of his arm. “What, love?”
Although Alex hadn’t meant to call her over, he pointed to the painted image of the written words. “What do you see there?”
“Hmm. That’s interesting. Looks like a note or something. I wonder what the naughty monkey has been into?” She laughed lightly. “Isn’t this great stuff? Really makes you think, and yet it is so whimsical.”
“Maggie, look again. What does the note say?”
She peered at the scrap of paper in the monkey’s hand, then gave him a withering look. “You know I can’t see close up without my glasses.”
“Then put them on.”
Maggie gave him an exasperated glance, then fished her glasses out of her purse. With the large lenses on her face, she lost some of her sex appeal, and Alex knew why she didn’t want to wear them. To humor him, though, she examined the image again.
“I don’t know,” she said at last. “The letters are so tiny.”
“That shouldn’t bother a Brontë scholar,” he commented, recalling his own eye strain from hours of working his way through the Lilliputian handwriting of the Brontë children’s juvenalia. Emily, in fact, had never outgrown that immature penmanship. “Looks a little like Emily’s scrawling, doesn’t it?” he added, jolted at the similarity.
“Emily?”
“Brontë.”
She removed the glasses, looked at him and raised her eyebrows. “I think it is time we got you back to your hotel.”
“Just joking, Maggie,” he growled. “But I do think those are actual words painted there.” He pointed to the top line. “It says ‘my health,’ then ‘it would.’ See?”
Maggie considered the painting again, studied it for a long moment, then replied with a shrug, “I suppose.”
Alex frowned. “Never mind.”
He moved on to the next painting, and the next and the next. In each there was a scrap of the letter, a tantalizing tidbit of the whole. A lover of word games, he wished he had more time, a strong magnifying glass, and no Maggie to contend with. What would the message reveal, he wondered, if it were pieced together?
The bell at the front of the shop tinkled, and Alex turned to see the figure of a dark-haired woman approaching. For a drop-dead moment his pulse came to a standstill. Alex was often caught like this, suspended if for only a moment in a timeless space, surrounded by fear and a dark, nameless pain. It happened when a woman even vaguely reminded him of his former wife. His reaction was irrational, neurotic, he knew. It engulfed him in anger and guilt.
And it had gone on far too long.
Alex watched the woman coming toward him, realizing that except for having long, dark hair, she looked nothing at all like his girl-next-door ex-wife. She was clad in a black turtleneck sweater, tight-fitting black leggings, and high-topped black boots. Over the silhouetting black, she wore a cape of brilliant magenta that fell to the tops of her boots and flowed behind her as she walked. She was of medium height, slender, and, Alex observed with a sudden and acute awareness, very, very beautiful.
She didn’t look British. Her face reflected perhaps a graceful Spanish or Italian heritage, rather than the pale and sometimes pudgy Anglo-Saxon features. Her olive complexion was flawless, her obsidian eyes breathtaking. Caressing her high cheekbones and delicately defined jaw was a mass of hair so dark the highlights seemed almost blue.
Alex felt the heat of her body as she passed him where he stood transfixed in the aisle. He turned and studied her from behind, watching her move gracefully to the back of the gallery where, to his disappointment, Tom Perkins greeted her with an effusive embrace and a kiss placed directly on her lips.
“I was getting worried, my dear,” he heard the gallery owner tell the woman. “It’s almost six o’clock. I’ve already got a good start packing up your things, although, I must say, if I hadn’t already booked the next show, I would hold yours over for another month. You really should leave a few pieces here for me to sell.”
Alex realized with a start the woman must be the artist, come to collect her work. He stared. Yes, she had to be the artist, for she was as fiercely exotic and mysteriously provocative as her work.
But what, he suddenly wanted to know, was her relationship to the gallery owner?
“You ready to go?” Maggie’s voice slapped him back into reality. It had an edge to it that let Alex know she’d caught him staring at the other woman.
I’ve been ready to go since we got here, he thought angrily, but he replied with only a nod, noting it had started to rain again.
Maggie steered him toward the front door, but before he left the gallery, Alex picked up a pamphlet about the artist’s show. The woman’s photo was on the back, her midnight hair tossed by the wind. She had signed it with a single name—Selena.
June 11, 1845
For one week now I have kept secret my patient on the moors. His name is Mikel, and he says he is the descendant of a gipsie king. He is darker-skinned than anyone I have ever seen, and his countenance is rough. I am frightened of him, and yet he is too injured to do me harm. He speaks little, and when he does, it is like a growl. I almost feel as if he is a wild animal. I have braced his leg as best I could with a timber I found, but I know he needs better. He will not have it, though. When I suggested I bring a doctor after all, I thought he would rise off the ground and wrench my neck.
I am uncertain what to do. I cannot continue to hide him. It is too difficult. Yet if I tell even Charlotte or Anne, I fear they would insist I alert the constable. Mikel has done no harm, so far as I know, and yet if the constable is called, I am certain he will end up in prison. I cannot bring myself to impose such injustice.
His appetite is getting better. I am going to have to make more gruel if I am to continue to feed him. It is fortunate that I cook most of our meals, for no one will notice if I make an extra portion.
Chapter 3
Selena disengaged herself from Tom’s unwelcome embrace. She wished he wouldn’t do that. He was an excellent art dealer, the best in London, and careerwise she needed him desperately. But she knew Tom would be more than willing to mix business with pleasure. It was an arrangement in which she was not the least interested, but she had to be very careful in the way she held his seductive intents at bay. He was, unfortunately, in a position to make her career, or break it.
“I’ll bring them back for another show if you’d like,” she said with a forced smile. “You mentioned the autumn maybe?” She moved away from him, going back onto the main floor of the gallery, putting space between them; professional space.
“Autumn, for sure,” he said with a sigh. “Well, love, I’d better
get back to the crating if you want to get out of here before midnight. You want to bring me those that are still hanging?”
“Sure.” Selena was in no hurry to take anything into the back room with Tom.
As soon as he disappeared through the doorway, she turned and stretched, weary from the long trip. She allowed herself the luxury of doing nothing for a moment, just looking around at her work on display in one of London’s top galleries. It was a lifelong dream come true.
Funny how things work out, she mused. The paintings hanging here were the least favorite of anything she’d ever done. In fact, she hated them. They frightened and intimidated her. But they had put her on the map as an up-and-coming talent. Who, she wondered incredulously, would want this sort of thing in their home?
At the moment there were two customers in the gallery, a man and a woman who stood together in front of one of her canvases, talking in low tones. Selena observed them, thinking that neither looked like they were having fun. She hoped it wasn’t her work that caused the pained look on his face or the barely suppressed anger and frustration on hers.
The woman was striking, draped in red hair and green silk, and frosted with white, white skin. She appeared elegant, well-bred, refined. But her beauty was interrupted by tiny lines straining from the corners of her green eyes and rigid lips pressed tightly together.
Selena shifted her attention to the woman’s companion. His face, likewise, showed strain, but it failed to detract from his strong, handsome features. His hair was dark and thick, combed to one side and back, away from his wide forehead, falling to an even trim at the nape of his neck.
