by Lenora Bell
With a swiftly pounding heart, Thea cut the twine and Aunt Hen helped her remove the linen.
“Careful now,” Thea breathed when her suspicions were confirmed by the sight of a gold frame and cracked oil paint. “She’s two hundred years old.”
“Oh my,” her aunts exclaimed in unison.
Oh my, indeed.
A shaft of sunlight from the mullioned windows illuminated the emerald green of full sleeves and the rich brown of an artist’s smock.
Artemisia stood, black hair glowing, her head tilted at an angle, one arm poised, brush in hand, the other arm braced on a stone surface, holding her palette.
From her letters, Thea knew that in its day the painting had sparked an outcry of controversy.
A woman portraying herself as the epitome of the arts.
A bold, fierce statement to make.
“Why, she’s lovely,” Aunt Hen exclaimed. “So full of . . . strength, somehow. As if she might leap off that canvas and cross the span of time to be with us here in this room.”
A fall of soft light, deftly portrayed, illuminated half of Artemisia’s face, the contrast of light and dark imparting a sense of pathos . . . as if she were waiting to be fully lit.
Like Thea. Waiting for her day to shine.
That day had come. An idea occurred to Thea and she nodded her head. “I’m going to hold an exhibition of all female works of art. And if I can find enough, the paintings will all be self-portraits.” It was perfect. A fitting way to reintroduce Artemisia to the world.
“What a wonderful idea, dearie,” murmured Aunt Hen. “And so you must go back to London, mustn’t you? For you can’t have such a grand event here in Cork.”
Go back to London. She’d only just run away from there.
“What does this mean?” Aunt Emma asked, peering closely at Artemisia’s neck. “This pendant she’s wearing.”
The gold pendant around her neck shimmered in the sunlight.
Thea bent closer. “It appears to be a mask. Which would symbolize the arts.”
“A mask. How clever,” Aunt Emma said.
The mask symbolized art, but it held another meaning for Thea.
Artemisia was trying to tell her something. The mask Dalton wore had slipped and shattered. She knew the real man now.
And her own mask wasn’t needed anymore. The timidity. The nervous giggle.
The fear of failure.
In such a short space of time she’d become something wholly different.
And by giving her this gift, Dalton was trying to tell her something as well.
He believed in her dreams and her goals . . . and he wanted to be part of them.
“Oh, my dear.” Aunt Emma reached behind the painting. “There’s a letter here! It was nearly lost behind the painting.” She handed a folded sheet of paper to Thea.
With suddenly trembling fingers, Thea unfolded the paper. She recognized the sprawling, confident hand immediately.
“I think I’ll take a walk down to the shore,” she said abruptly.
Aunt Emma smiled warmly. “Of course, sweetheart. I’ll fetch your cloak.”
Balfry House, County Cork, Ireland
Dear Self-Portrait,
I see now why Thea wanted to unveil you. You are, quite simply, breathtaking. Gloriously female. Uncompromisingly powerful.
You don’t suffer any nonsense from difficult beasts who don’t know how to speak the things they truly wish to say.
Can you forgive me for allowing you to molder in my attic so long?
You see I have no heart.
But that’s only because I left it with you.
Sincerely,
Your unerringly foolish . . .
Duke
A tear splotched across the page. Followed by another.
Thea folded up the letter before the ink became too blurred to read again.
Was he saying he loved her?
If so, it was a roundabout way of expressing the sentiment. But at least he’d admitted that he wasn’t very good with words.
And he’d done all of those wonderful, kind things. Given Balfry to Con and Bronagh. Gifted all the books in his library to Molly.
Aunt Emma had Hen now to stay with her and keep her company at Ballybrack and help with the beekeeping.
Con had Molly, and Bronagh, and her sons to fill that enormous house with laughter and love.
She knew in her heart that Dalton had sent the letter to her family because he’d thought he was protecting her from regrets. He’d gone about it in a completely crackbrained way . . . but it had come from a place of caring.
Maybe he just didn’t know how to tell her he loved her.
She hugged the letter to her chest, staring out over the misty green hills and foggy cliffs of Balfry Bay.
As much as she loved it here, perhaps Ireland wasn’t her home any more than London.
Maybe home was more than a location. It could be . . .
Dark, midnight eyes that took no prisoners, yet transported her to a place of freedom.
An intriguing indentation softening an uncompromisingly angular jaw.
Strong, powerful arms around her, bordering the world with heat . . . and desire.
The wind whipped her curls into her face and she pushed them away impatiently as she climbed back up the steps to the cottage.
She had a letter of her own to write.
And another journey to begin.
Chapter 26
Two long weeks later
“Van and I are walking to the square,” Abigail announced. “His toy soldiers wish to launch a campaign next to the fountain.”
“It’s not a fountain, it’s the Berezina River,” Van amended. “Napoleon’s forces must cross . . . or die horrible deaths.”
“Ah yes.” Abigail nodded soberly. “Silly me, I forgot.”
“That sounds nice,” Dalton said nonchalantly. He’d been waiting for this moment since Patrick and Van arrived.
He nodded at Baum, his mother’s German lady’s maid, who stood by Abigail’s armchair with near-excitement in her normally staid and stolid brown eyes.
Baum curtsied. “I’ll fetch your bonnet and cloak, Your Grace.” She practically ran from the room.
Osborne Court, silent and shrouded for so long, now echoed with Van’s laughter and incessant chattering. The boy couldn’t seem to sit still or stop talking for more than five minutes at a time. And he terrorized the poor cats, which were accustomed to ruling the house, capturing them and subjecting the plump peach beauties to the indignity of a six-year-old’s kisses.
When the cloak was wrapped and the bonnet tied, and a dancingly impatient Van had been chided by his father for pulling on the dowager’s hand, the entire party—Abigail, Van, Dalton, Patrick, and a phalanx of footmen—walked to the front door, and the dowager set her foot outside the doorway for the first time in ten years.
She took a tentative step out the door and her green eyes clouded over.
Dalton held his breath, prepared to bundle her inside, but then Van grabbed her hand.
“Well, come on, then,” Van said, tugging on her hand. “Don’t be a slowpoke.”
“And what on earth is a poke?” the dowager asked. “My, how American you are.” She stroked Van’s head. “I hope your soldiers are proper British subjects at least?”
Van cocked his head. “I’m not sure. They’re all made of tin. And they can’t talk, you know. Wouldn’t that be something? A talking toy. Why can’t they invent one of those?”
“Because you chatter enough for everyone,” Patrick said affectionately.
And they were down the front steps and walking across to St. James’s Square, Van chattering the whole way, a steady stream of boyish enthusiasm that carried along the dowager duchess.
Abigail walked with short, trembling steps over the lawn of the square . . . but she walked.
And Dalton’s heart soared.
There had been moments of joy since he’d left Thea in Ireland, a
nd moments of pain. But the need to have her by his side never flagged.
She should be here to see this triumphant moment. It was all because of her.
Dalton had written her another letter but he hadn’t posted it. He’d said what he wanted to say in the letter he’d left with Artemisia’s portrait.
He knew Thea had to make the choice to contact him.
That he couldn’t push her into anything. She had to be ready to forgive him.
He’d been such an ass. Could she forgive him?
“Well, would you look at that,” Patrick said, shaking his head. He refused to be called Alec, but that was all right. The most important thing was that he was here.
Dalton cleared his throat as an answer.
The two brothers understood each other perfectly now.
They didn’t have to speak much. They communicated in other ways. By helping each other, and taking care of Abigail and Van.
They’d had one long conversation in Dalton’s library at his bachelor apartments that had involved some exceptionally potent Irish whiskey.
Dalton had told him all about being the Hellhound. And how Trent was hunting him. And Patrick had spoken of his law practice. And the impoverished clients he assisted with suits against powerful, corrupt men.
When they opened that second bottle, the ideas began to flow.
It had been Patrick’s idea to dig into Trent’s past even harder, using the information Dalton had gathered in his nights at the gaming hells, and combining it with his brother’s status as a counsellor to uncover more secrets they could use against him.
And what he’d found—Dalton hadn’t even been able to believe his ears. Flat-out treason.
It had been Dalton who’d cornered Trent late one night, outside his own house, and laid out the evidence to him in a manner he hadn’t been able to refute.
Because he was unconscious on the cobblestones. With a note pinned to his vest enumerating his crimes.
Trent had left England the next day. Back in Paris, most like. But he’d never dare show his face in England again.
Which had led to further brotherly collaboration.
Foxford retreated to a hiding hole next.
And then Marwood developed a sudden desire to journey to an alpine village in Switzerland.
Admittedly, those two were grudge targets, but they deserved exactly what they received.
Dalton had packed up his bachelor apartments and moved in to Osborne Court with Patrick and Van.
He wasn’t going to hang up his mask forever, but, little by little, he began to focus more on the legal possibilities of prosecuting evil without the use of fists.
Getting a bit old for the beatings.
Shoulder still creaky from the cracking blow he’d dealt Albertson in Bristol.
Patrick still maintained he wouldn’t stay in England long, that his practice was in New York, but Dalton had high hopes of finding a way to convince him to stay.
All Dalton had to do was find Patrick a British second wife.
He was passably handsome, Dalton supposed—he was his brother, after all—and in line to a dukedom. That ought to help. Even though he spoke with an American accent and preferred inferior cigars.
Maybe Thea would be able to help find his brother a suitable bride when she arrived.
If she arrived.
If she could find it in that strong, loving heart of hers to forgive him for pushing her away.
He missed her every second of every day.
During the long, lonely nights, he missed her most of all.
Every day he had to wrestle with himself not to saddle his horse and start riding for Ireland.
He’d had several letters from Con, the hoary old bastard, informing Dalton that he’d delivered the painting, and that Molly had read half the books in his library, but still asked about a position as a cabin boy on one of Dalton’s ships.
The last line of Con’s latest missive, slipped in there as if it were of little import, informed Dalton that Bronagh had agreed to be Con’s wife.
Dalton still couldn’t picture Con as a family man.
But then he’d never pictured himself pining for a petite lady with an inconvenient habit of not listening to a damn word he said.
He’d even taken to writing her truly terrible verses. Even worse than the ones he used to compose at Cambridge.
When he visited his friend James, Duke of Harland, at his town house, he performed dramatic readings of his poetry between glasses of Harland’s excellent brandy, to his oldest friend’s everlasting amusement.
Roses are fine. Violets are well. For Thea I pine. Without her it’s hell . . . and if she doesn’t come soon I’ll tie her up, hoist her over my shoulder, carry her back to London, and throw her across my bed.
Well, not quite a classic quatrain.
But James completely understood, because he was so thoroughly besotted with Thea’s half sister Charlene.
Dalton had been running from the fact that he needed love his whole life.
Now he knew love didn’t make people weak. It drew them together, bonded them into something so much stronger. So much more powerful.
Now he had a house full of loving family, but he needed Thea’s love and her belief in him more than anything.
He was a hair’s breadth away from storming to Ireland and fetching her when the letter finally arrived.
County Cork, Ireland
Dear Unerringly Foolish Duke:
After decades moldering in your attic I can finally feel light on my face again! I am very much fussed over, of course. And they tell me I am to travel to London, to meet the governors of the British Institution.
How grand that will be!
Throngs of admirers. Mounds of roses at my feet.
It’s only my due, after all.
Waiting to be adored,
The Self-Portrait of Artemisia Gentileschi
Coming to London, was she? Waiting to be adored? Surely that all boded well.
Though it had been written as the damned painting, not as Thea.
And she’d told him quite unequivocally that she didn’t wish for adulation. She wanted freedom.
Could she be happy with him?
He wouldn’t have to wait long now to sweep her off her feet and kiss her so masterfully that she would say yes to anything at all he might propose.
It was fine spring weather. No rainy delays. She should be here within two days at the most.
So he waited.
And waited.
Rehearsing the right words to say.
Dreaming of what he’d do with her in his great big lonely ducal bed.
Because a bed wasn’t welcoming at all without a demanding, delectable Thea in it.
And when he had her in his bed . . . he’d never let her go.
Chapter 27
One even longer week later . . .
“I’m late,” Thea announced.
The extremely correct and proper-looking butler who’d answered the door at Osborne Court stared at her blankly. “Pardon me, madam?”
“I told the duke I would arrive a week ago.”
“I see.” The butler stared disdainfully down his long nose, obviously considering the best way to eject her without dirtying his spotless white gloves or scuffing his polished shoes.
Well, who could blame him? She was dressed like a trollop. A Swedish trollop.
“Please inform His Grace that Olofsson is here to see him.”
He looked her up and down. “Just . . . Olofsson?”
“That’s right.” Thea shook her head and her unbound hair swished over her shoulders.
The butler’s eyebrows raised in an impeccably butlerish manner. “Please wait here, madam.”
It didn’t take long for him to return.
“Just as I thought.” The butler sniffed. “His Grace did not order any . . . services. And so I must bid you adieu, madam.”
He shooed her back out the door.
Thea ref
used to be shooed.
She planted her red boots on the marble tile. “Tell him Olofsson refuses to take no for an answer. Tell him she demands satisfaction.”
“Does she now?” a deep voice asked.
Thea’s heart thumped.
Dalton stood at the top of the stairs, staring down at her forbiddingly, so handsome it rendered her momentarily speechless.
How she’d missed the bold, powerful lines of his jaw and the enticement of the deep cleft in the center of his chin.
Thea raised her own chin. “She does.”
The duke strode down the stairs.
“What is the meaning of this?” he asked with mock sternness.
Thea cocked her hip. “Didn’t you receive my note, Your Grace? Why are you so surprised to see me?”
He gave her a devilish grin and hoisted her into his arms.
“Oh,” she cried. “You’ll crush my gown. And there’s a jar of orange marmalade in my cloak pocket.”
“I’ll teach you a lesson,” he growled. “About why it’s not wise to keep a duke waiting for weeks.”
The butler, clearly scandalized but struggling to maintain the indomitable composure of his profession, edged out of the way as Dalton carried her across the entrance hall and up the stairs.
She wrapped her arms tightly around his neck, thrilling to his nearness and the possessive look on his face.
“What are you wearing under that dress?” he whispered in her ear.
“Blue silk garters,” she replied saucily.
“God, Thea,” he groaned. “How I’ve missed you. Can you ever forgive me? I’ve been such an unmitigated ass.”
“You forgot puffed-up bastard. Or how about pompous tyrant?”
“All of those,” he whispered fiercely, clasping her to his chest. “And more besides.”
He kicked open the door to his chambers and then kicked it shut again.
“You belong in my bed, Thea.”
He tossed her gently into the center of his bed and stared at her with dark intent.
Like any rake worth his salt.
“I’ll tie you to the posts if you think of leaving me again,” he said sternly.
