The Lady in Red

by Kelly Bowen

  “Yes,” she replied. “In pieces.”

  “Pieces?”

  “I found one part in a church when I refused to listen to a man who had his doubts about me.”

  His fingers tightened on hers. “Charlotte, I should never have—”

  “Shhh,” she said, cutting him off.

  He fell silent.

  “And then I found another part in a studio when that same man took a good look at my work and made me critique it as his equal. Arresting and hopeless in corresponding measure,” she said with a small smile.

  “I stand by my assessment of your poker-wielding angel,” he murmured.

  She sniffed, and her smile widened before it faded again. “And then later, I found a little more when he made me believe in myself. When a man who I admired very much told me I was meant to do this.” She took an unsteady breath. “And then he compared me to his own Jeanne d’Arc, and I knew I had found the rest.”

  He brought his hand up and traced the side of her face.

  “So thank you,” she whispered, “for helping me become that better version of myself.”

  He leaned forward and caught her lips with his, kissing her tenderly, his heart hammering in his chest, emotion pushing thick and sharp into his throat. She let go of his hand and wrapped her good arm around his neck, pulling him closer, demanding more. He moved over her, his body fitting perfectly against hers.

  He deepened his kiss, and she opened beneath him, taking and giving. Her hips tilted against his, and he slid inside, burying himself deep. He heard her moan softly and broke their kiss, lifting his head to watch her face. Her hand slipped from his neck to touch his face the way she had done the very first time.

  “Don’t stop,” she whispered. “Don’t ever stop.”

  “I won’t,” he promised.

  Chapter 12

  Soldier and savior.

  Both completed and both to be left behind on the morrow. The scaffolds had been taken apart and removed, the tables of paints and brushes and thinners tidied and packed. The clergy and the church directors had been brought through the studio yesterday for a final viewing, and Lisbon had relayed that they had been utterly astounded and captivated by the finished paintings.

  As they should, Flynn thought with steady appraisal. This portrayal of an archangel rising up in furious defiance was Flynn’s finest work yet. And on the other side, another portrayal of that same archangel reaching out across the heavens, offering a soul a chance at redemption. On their own, each painting was extraordinary. Together, they were breathtaking.

  Which described the last two months entirely. Months that had been unlike anything Flynn had ever experienced, and it was because of Charlotte. She had been his friend and his lover. His teacher and his student. The one person who managed to argue and encourage all at the same time. She had never asked him to be anything he wasn’t. Never allowed him to doubt himself. Believed in him wholeheartedly.

  And though it was a bittersweet moment to leave these paintings behind, he knew that he would never, ever, be able to leave Charlotte Beaumont.

  They had not spoken of love, and Flynn had cursed himself for his lack of courage. For all the emotion that he had poured out onto that panel for utter strangers to gaze upon, he had been unable to expose what lay in the very depths of his heart to the single person who mattered most. He would remedy that now, he vowed. She needed to know how he felt about her. How he had fallen completely, helplessly in love with her. Because he was not ready for them to be over. He didn’t think he ever would be.

  A familiar knock sounded. “Come in, Mr. Lisbon,” he said over his shoulder.

  Henry Lisbon let himself into the studio, his boots echoing as he hurriedly crossed the floor. “Admiring your work, Mr. Rutledge?”

  “Yes,” Flynn said simply.

  “As you should. I can’t wait to see these hung. You and Beaumont have outdone yourselves,” Lisbon said with satisfaction as he took his sleet-covered hat from his head.

  Flynn only nodded.

  “Is Beaumont here?” Lisbon asked, jerking his head toward the room that Charlotte hadn’t slept in for a long time.

  “She is not. She has gone to post a letter.”

  Lisbon made a face. “That’s too bad. I could have saved her the trip. I was just there.” He reached into his coat pocket and withdrew a missive sealed with a blob of scarlet wax, a small emblem of a crown pressed into its surface. “This was waiting for her.” He passed the letter to Flynn. “I trust you can see that she gets this?”

  “Of course,” Flynn replied. Idly, he turned the letter over in his hands, L. C. Beaumont written in neat, precise script across the front. Idly, he wondered what the L stood for.

  “I wanted to thank you again for your progressive objectivity, Mr. Rutledge,” Lisbon said. “There are many men who have and would have refused to work with a woman. Your decency and honor once her identity was revealed are to be commended.”

  Flynn continued to stare down at the neat lettering, quite sure Lisbon wouldn’t think him honorable or decent if he knew just how much of Charlotte Beaumont had been revealed. And how much she had enjoyed every minute of it. Repeatedly. He had made sure of that.

  “Given your tribulations with the Lady Cecelia and her ilk, I wasn’t sure you would be quite so forgiving,” Lisbon said.

  Flynn raised his head, frowning. “Charlotte has absolutely nothing in common with Lady Cecelia,” Flynn said, a little harsher than he had intended.

  “I’m glad you could recognize that,” Lisbon said with a brisk nod, “given the trouble she went through to hide both her gender and her title for this opportunity.” The architect jammed his hat back on his head. “I must be off again. See that our Charlie gets her letter, aye?”

  Flynn might have nodded, but ice had crystallized in his veins and everything seemed to have slowed. Betrayal cut deep, confusion and hurt and anger bleeding from the gaping wound.

  Outside, the wind rattled a shutter somewhere, and sleet continued to batter the windows. Minutes passed. Or maybe it was hours.

  “Flynn?” The sound of his name brought his head around. Where Lisbon had been, Charlotte now stood, pink faced from the cold, wrapped in a warm coat and looking at him with concern. “Are you all right?”

  “You lied.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “What is your name?” he hissed.

  “Flynn, what—”

  “What is your name?”

  “Charlotte. Beaumont.” Her face had gone pale. “Why are—”

  “Your whole name.”

  Her warm eyes dropped to the paper in his hands. He could see a muscle working along the side of her cheek. “Lady Charlotte Beaumont,” she said evenly. “Daughter of the Earl and Countess of Edgerton.” Her eyes climbed back to his. “Is that what you wanted to hear?”

  It was suddenly hard to breathe. She wasn’t at all who she had pretended to be. Every whispered promise, every shared confidence, every piece of what he had believed to be real had been built on a foundation of lies. He had been played the fool.

  Again.

  He tossed the letter in her direction. “That was what I wanted to hear months ago. Before you lied to me and then kept lying. You’re one of them.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Was I an adventure for you too? A titillating, erogenous experience on the wrong side of civilized before you wed a man twice your age for his money and his wealth?”

  “You think I’m like her? Like Cecelia?” she whispered, her eyes pools of brown against a pale face.

  He didn’t think that, did he? But fury and shame were making it hard to think. She had lied. Over and over. And he had trusted her. Trusted her with his secrets and bared all the dark parts of his soul where insecurity and fear and vulnerability lay.

  And she hadn’t even trusted him with the truth. With her bloody name.

  “You would think I would have learned by now,” he said, running a hand through his hair in a
gitation. “You would think I’d be able to know when I am being used.”

  “I never used you.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “You want to know why I didn’t tell you who I was?” she asked, her voice rising. “Because Lady Charlotte no longer exists. Lady Charlotte was a miserable, isolated woman who was nothing but a disappointment and a duty to her family.” Her expression was stark. “It was simply Charlie Beaumont from Aysgarth who came to Coventry. To stand on her own two feet and to be judged by her work and her character, unfettered by bias.” She took a shuddering breath. “I am exactly who you know me to be.”

  “I have no idea who you are.”

  She looked as though he had struck her. “I am the woman who loves you.”

  “Loves me?” he sneered, something withering in him. “You don’t love me. You never even trusted me.”

  She looked at him sadly. “And if I had told you my name at the very beginning? Would you have reacted any different than you have now? Would you even have spoken to me? Or would the demons from your past have simply become mine earlier?”

  Flynn’s fists clenched and unclenched. He spun, heading for the door. He couldn’t stand here in the face of her duplicity. Worse, he couldn’t stand knowing that he didn’t have an answer to her question.

  “I regret that I didn’t tell you my name. I regret that mistake, and I regret that you’ve chosen to believe the worst of me,” she said to his back.

  He paused at the door, pride not allowing him to turn around.

  “But I don’t regret falling in love with you, Flynn.”

  He stepped out into the sleet and didn’t look back.

  Chapter 13

  Lady Charlotte.” King glided into the room with soundless stealth. His eyes slid over her altered appearance, though his expression didn’t change. “You look…well.”

  Charlotte remained mute.

  King stopped near his desk and leaned on his walking stick. “I was beginning to think that perhaps you didn’t receive my summons. Or perhaps you had had…second thoughts about our agreement. I was becoming concerned that you had chosen to travel elsewhere from Coventry.” There was a brittle quality to his words that Charlotte didn’t mistake as anything other than a threat.

  She lifted her chin, strangely unafraid. Maybe because she had already lost everything that mattered. “My apologies if my temporary absence caused you undue worry. I can assure you I have no intention of reneging on our agreement.”

  King eyed her coldly and silently.

  “But you are partially correct. I did not travel to London directly from Coventry,” she continued. “I stopped at Jasper House to collect something that I think will interest you.” She gestured to the two covered canvases that were propped up against a massive bookcase behind her.

  “I’m not interested in more forgeries.” His fingers were drumming on the silver top.

  “And I’m not interested in showing you any.”

  Curiosity flickered. “You have my attention once again, Lady Charlotte,” he replied.

  “The Royal Academy.”

  “What of it?”

  “If one wished to have a painting exhibited, could you make that happen?”

  King gazed at her. “I never took you as vain, my lady.”

  “Answer the question.”

  Pale eyes narrowed. “Have a care, Lady Charlotte.”

  “Please answer the question,” she amended tonelessly.

  A faint line appeared in his forehead. “Of course I can.”

  Charlotte closed her eyes briefly before she turned and lifted the smaller of the two canvases. She pulled the wrapping from it and set it against his desk, feeling his eyes following her. She stepped back.

  King’s eyes lingered on her before he turned his attention to the painting. “Very evocative,” he said slowly. “Masterful use of light and color. A contemporary piece, yet I see shadows of Raphael in this.”

  Charlotte only nodded, her voice suddenly choked by the sadness and regret that rose hard and fast.

  “But not your work, I think,” King continued, stepping closer to the painting.

  She shook her head. “I have merely borrowed it for a time.”

  “It surpasses everything currently on those pretentious Somerset walls,” he murmured.

  “I know,” Charlotte managed. “That’s the idea.”

  King turned to gaze at her in consideration as the Madonna continued to stare down in adoration at her son. “I can see it done.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Tsk, you get ahead of yourself with your gratitude.” He smiled an empty smile. “You have not yet provided me with something that makes my service worthwhile.”

  Wordlessly, Charlotte returned to the bookcase and pulled the cloth from the second painting. She let the fabric fall to the floor, and the silence that followed was absolute. The woman in this painting gazed past her nude reflection in a mirror, as if searching for someone just beyond the frame. Her fingers played wistfully with a single strand of pearls at her throat, each tiny orb as lustrous as her skin. She sat against a background of deep midnight, a robe of rich garnet covering her lap, both the perfect foil for her fairness.

  “You know what this is,” Charlotte said into the deafening silence.

  “Yes,” King replied quietly, his eyes not straying from the painting. “I was told that this version was lost. And it was certainly not in the attics of Jasper House. My men would have found it.”

  “No,” she said. “It was hidden in my rooms. My aunt had ordered it destroyed. Nudity of any sort offends her.”

  King hadn’t yet moved. “This isn’t a forgery.”

  “No,” Charlotte agreed, unsure if that was a question. “I have not yet attempted a Titian.”

  The clock in the corner ticked on.

  “There are two conditions that go with this painting,” Charlotte said into the quiet.

  She saw King’s hand tighten on the top of his walking stick. “Conditions from a woman who comes begging my favor?”

  “I trust a lost Titian should recompense any insult.”

  His impenetrable gaze slid back to her then.

  She didn’t wait for him to respond. “One, at no point in time should my name ever come up in conversation outside this room,” she said, repeating the words he had said to her what seemed like a lifetime ago. “Invent an acquisition story for this work that does not involve me.”

  “And the other?” He looked almost amused now.

  “When you sell this painting, you will not auction it off like a pretty mare in a Tattersalls ring.”

  His amusement slipped, and red-gold brows rose. “And just what, Lady Charlotte, do you propose I do with it?”

  “Sell it to someone who understands the deeper story that lies within this canvas.”

  “Which is what?” He was studying her keenly.

  “That love cannot be found in a beautiful reflection.”

  King regarded her, his austere features revealing nothing of his thoughts. “Very well,” he said. “I will meet your conditions, and your Madonna will grace the walls of the Royal Academy within a fortnight hence. With all the appropriate fanfare.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’ve changed, Lady Charlotte,” King said abruptly.

  “Yes,” she replied, because it was the only thing she could say.

  She would not discuss how Flynn Rutledge had changed her. She would not examine the love and the joy that had set her heart and her mind soaring. She would not dissect the trust and the faith that had made her believe—truly believe—that she could do more. That she could be more. She would not dwell on the knowledge that she had been gifted with all those things and had let them all slip away. Because in the end, she hadn’t been brave or confident or courageous. In the end, she hadn’t reinvented herself at all. In the end, she had been a coward.

  She withdrew the original missive that he had sent her and set it on the desk. “M
ay we get on to the business at hand?”

  King watched her for a moment more before he moved, settling himself behind his desk. “By all means, Lady Charlotte.”

  “I prefer Charlie. Charlotte, if you must.” She held her head high, as if that gesture could overcome the relentless pain that had lodged deep within her heart and would never leave. “Lady Charlotte posted a letter to London from Coventry informing her family that she was seeking her fortunes abroad. Lady Charlotte, as she once was, no longer exists.”

  “Very well.” His eyes slid from her hair to her baggy coat and trousers once more.

  “Good. I understand you have a painting for me to forge.”

  * * *

  Flynn looked around the cramped space of his rented London rooms.

  There was nothing that he wished to take with him. Nothing that he regretted leaving behind.

  Liar, a little voice in his head whispered. He was leaving love behind.

  His eye fell on the small canvas that lay flat on the top of a table, the figure of Adam reaching out to be touched. Unable to help himself, he picked it up. He hadn’t known what to do with it. He still didn’t know what to do with it. He couldn’t bring himself to destroy it, nor could he bring himself to pack it away. Instead, he found himself gazing at it more than was healthy or smart. Because every time he looked at the painting, doubt crowded in, making him question his decisions.

  He closed his eyes, unwilling to think on it any longer. No matter her protestations and declarations, love meant trust. Trust meant truth. And in the end, Lady Charlotte Beaumont hadn’t been able to give him that. He needed to forget her.

  He set the painting inside an open trunk and slammed the lid with too much force. Charlotte Beaumont was nothing but a mistake.

  Then why was this so hard? And why did leaving feel like the mistake?

  There was a soft knock on his door, and Flynn almost tripped in his haste to answer it. God, he needed a diversion. Any sort of diversion. He yanked open the door.

  And recoiled. Any diversion but this.

  “Flynn,” Lady Cecelia greeted, stepping into the tiny flat. Her pretty mouth made a predictable moue of distaste at the small confines before she smiled at the sight of his trunks. “Thank God. You’re finally moving. It’s about time. I’ve always told you that these rooms are beneath you.”