She would do better next time.
She would at least try. Hopefully, he kept a key for the lock on his body, and if she could fight him, knock him out—something—she could get out of here. It really was her only option. For she would never paint for him.
Never.
He was going to kill her eventually—that she was sure of, for he certainly wasn’t about to set her free now—so Wynne wasn’t about to reward him with any paintings before that happened.
Her eyes whipped to the door as the knob turned. She scrambled forward, dragging the chain as she dove after her sturdiest brush. The only possible weapon in the room. She had picked at the end of it, forging it into a poker. If she could stick it in his eye, in his throat, then maybe, maybe she had a chance.
Wynne buried her hand holding the brush in her skirts.
The man stepped into the room carrying a bowl. He set it down by the door and Wynne could see that it held a spoon and something white.
He glanced around the room, his eyes resting on the blank canvas. “You have not started painting. Unfortunate.”
Wynne did not let the threat in his voice quell her. She stood. “Where am I?”
He glanced at her sharply, instantly irritated. “Here.”
“Where is here?” she asked, her voice stronger.
He stomped over to her, fist in the air. “We can do this again, if that is what you wish. Again and again until you do what I want. I do not tire of it.”
Her eyes narrowed at him. “I will never paint for you.”
A smile, evil, carved into his face. “We will see.”
His fist came at her head.
Wynne was ready this time and dodged out of the way. A second swing came at her. Wynne ducked, and it only brushed the top of her scalp.
Her grip tightened around the brush, poker end out, and she lunged, hacking it at his left eye.
He shifted and it hit his forehead, scraping along his skin to his temple. Bloody. But a minor wound. Nothing more. Nothing to slow him.
With a growl, his next fist made contact with Wynne’s left eye and sent her flying backward.
She landed hard, the wind knocked out of her. He followed her and stepped on her hand, grinding it with his boot heel until her hold on the brush fell apart. Brush on the floor, he kicked the stick across the room.
Wynne yanked her crushed hand into her belly, sheltering it.
“Are you ready to paint?”
Pain deep in her face, she opened her eyes to find she could only see out of one of them. But that one eye found his face. “I will never paint for you.”
The words weren’t out before he was on her. Fists so fast at her face that Wynne’s arms flew up to cover her head.
She kicked at him, a wildcat, both fighting and trying to escape at the same time.
But then a crunch.
A scream, and the instant pain up her leg told her he had broken at least one, maybe two toes with his hard heel.
He took a step back, and Wynne curled into herself, trying to make herself invisible. Walking around her, he blasted one last kick into the back of her ribs, sending her screaming, arching against the pain.
He bent down, balancing on his toes as he propped his forearms on his knees.
“Take care, Miss Theaton, or you will need to learn to paint while lying on the floor.” He leaned closer, his sticky breath invading her ear. “Are you ready to paint?”
Wynne had no breath, no way to speak through the vicious pain that consumed her body.
But she could shake her head.
“Unfortunate.” He stood.
Wynne tried to brace herself for another kick into her side, but could not control her muscles enough for even that.
His footsteps went around her head, stopping in front of her. “Then I will have to try a different way to persuade you.”
Cracking her one eye open far enough to see, she watched his boots retreat out of the room.
Her body went limp, defeated.
So that was what fighting got her.
She wasn’t given but two minutes of reprieve before the door opened again, his boots clicking on the wood floor. Wynne opened her right eye.
This time, he was not alone.
A skirt followed his boots, slippered feet jutting out from the folds. They both walked in, stopping in the middle of the floor.
Wynne followed the skirt upward, wondering what new torture a woman could bring her. Her eye landed on the woman’s face.
Shock so deep it froze time.
Froze Wynne to the point she could hear the blood pounding in her ears, feel her eyelid blink, hear the wood plank creak under her.
Her mother.
A gasp broke free from Wynne’s chest and ripped her from her shock. She jerked, finding the strength to sit upright. Not able to believe the sight in her one good eye. Not able to believe she wasn’t hallucinating.
Her mother. Her nose crooked. Gaunt. Pale. But her mother.
Wynne mouthed a “mother,” but no sound escaped.
Her mother’s eyes were on the window, glassy, unfocused. A soft smile played on her lips.
Wynne realized then that the man was holding her mother up, holding her steady.
Why would her mother need to be held up?
Why was her mother alive?
Words weren’t possible, so Wynne grunted. Grunted just enough to get her mother’s attention. It took eons, but her mother’s eyes left the window, drifting down to Wynne.
Still glassy. Still unfocused.
Her mother stared right at her, but it was as though she looked at air. No recognition of Wynne. No recognition that anything other than dust floated in front of her. Glassy eyes and a soft smile.
Her mother looked from Wynne to the man. “Dream?” Her voice, gentle as ever, floated to Wynne’s ears.
Wynne realized in that moment that her mother was drugged. Drugged to the state of incomprehension.
Dragging herself forward, trying to gain her feet, Wynne heaved an attempt to get sound out of her lungs.
The man’s hands moved up, and her mother swayed. The swaying stopped the second his hands went around her neck. Tighter. Tighter.
Wynne found her feet, stumbling forward, and then fell.
“Stop.” A word finally formed.
She fought to her feet again, watching her mother’s face turn purple.
Her mother didn’t struggle. The smile stayed on her lips, even as life was being choked out of her.
Wynne gained another step forward before dropping to her knees again. Her hand went up, pleading. “Stop, please.”
Trying to clear her mouth, Wynne gulped blood, clearing a path from her lungs. “Stop—let her go—I will paint.”
He did not loosen his hold. A vein on her mother’s forehead bulged.
“I swear I will paint.” Desperate words tumbled, almost incoherent. “I swear—I swear I will paint. Just let her go.”
His hold loosened, and he looked down at Wynne.
“I imagined you would say that.”
One hand going around her mother’s shoulders, the man leaned forward.
“For my trouble,” he said, and smacked his fist across her face. A crunch vibrated up from her nose, the pain overwhelming as she fell to the floor.
“I expect to see progress soon.”
Wynne could only watch through one foggy eye, stuck in a limp puddle, as the man guided her mother out of the room. The door clicked closed behind them.
Unable to move, Wynne lay on her side, her temple on the floor. Her brain was spinning in her head, creating a fog she could not see through.
Maybe it was time to die. She had always been a fighter. But this pain—it was too much. Maybe it was time. Just close her one good eye and let it all drift away.
Slowly, her lashes collapsed.
Darkness took over, and Wynne welcomed it.
But the pain remained.
She opened the one eye she could see out of.
“Not so easy to let it go, little bear?” Her grandfather sat on his heels in front of her, his arms resting on his knees, his beard as long as ever. He had a wood carving in one hand, a small knife in the other. He looked down at the piece, flecking free a chip of wood with the tip of the knife.
Wynne’s fingers twitched in his direction. This was either the afterlife, or she was hallucinating. She couldn’t be sure which world she was in.
“It appears you can do one of two things, little bear.” He looked from the wooden figure to her. “The first, is fight to survive. Fight to free your mother—to get back to those you love. The second, is to lie down and die at the hands of the devil.”
His voice, gravelly, weathered but gentle, filled her head. The voice she missed so much. The voice that had been her guide for so long.
He pointed at her with the tip of his knife. “The granddaughter I know would never let the devil win. Never.”
She nodded, her cheek scraping against the floor. It tore at her throat, blood trickling from her lips, but she forced words. “I know. But I…I hurt. I fought, but he…he is too strong.”
“You are right, little bear.” A smile split his haphazard grey beard and he whittled a few more shavings from the wooden figure. “You cannot win this fight with your strength. This is a fight you have to win with your hands, your brush.”
He moved forward, bending on one knee. He set the wooden figure onto the floor and tapped her forehead with his forefinger. “This is how you win this fight. With your mind. You know how to get out of this, little bear.”
“How?”
“You only need to trust in the one that you have sworn to trust.”
In that instant, he started to fade, his body shifting into smoke. Wynne reached out, trying to catch him before he left her.
“Grandpapa—how? How? Do not leave. How?”
He smiled, full with a twinkle in his eye as he inclined his head and pointed. Wynne followed his crooked finger downward, only to see the wooden figure he had set on the floor in front of her.
The start of a horse. The nose, the head, the mane, appearing out of the block of wood. Beauty out of nothing.
Her eye went back up. He was gone.
Only dust hung in room, floating in the light.
She looked down. The figure was gone as well.
Shutting her right eye, she tried to quiet her mind against the pain racking her body. She had to think.
Trust in the one I have sworn to trust. What the hell did that mean?
Irritation began to replace the pain in her gut. Since her grandfather had bothered to appear in the first place, he could have been a lot more specific about what she needed to do.
She latched onto a deep breath.
Sworn to trust.
Rowen.
If she could reach him, send him a message—he would come for her. He had to. He would not abandon her again. She had to trust that.
He knew where the shop was. He had to be searching for her. And he could find her. She just had to find a way to reach him. Send him a message.
He could find her.
Grimacing against the pain, Wynne crawled over to the easel, foot dragging the chain. She lifted the lid on the wooden crate.
Paints. Good.
She needed to get started.
{ Chapter 26 • Worth of a Duke }
Rowen stared at the hanging jowls of the man behind the sleek mahogany desk. The man’s elbows sat propped on the desk, and he did not look up at Rowen and Luhaunt for several minutes, instead, staring at a fat stack of papers bound in leather. A ledger, from what Rowen could see at his angle.
In the back of the rookery tavern, the Flashing Crow, Rowen resisted the urge to cover his nose—the stench of sweat and rotten ale and sewage and decomposition overwhelmed him the second they stepped into the dingy room.
But there sat the gleaming desk in the middle of the room, proud against the surrounding squalor. Red Bastnum leaned backward, and his bright red overcoat, trimmed in gold, stretched against his weight as his elbows left the desk. He clasped his hands over the mound of his belly.
“Ye wants to know about me paintin’ shop? Where the art be comin’ about from?”
“Yes.” Rowen refused to let his hand clench into a fist. They had already been through this conversation twice with Red, and had been interrupted twice by a squirrelly little man poking his head into Red’s ear.
“Ye be diggin’ in things ye no business to be diggin’ in.”
Rowen could feel the four thugs behind him and Luhaunt take a step inward, collapsing on them.
They had come into the Flashing Crow undermanned, with no alternate plan. But Rowen was desperate. And Luhaunt, to his credit, had not let Rowen come here alone.
“I will pay,” Rowen said, his voice even.
“Ye, ain’t be payin’ me ‘nough to ruin me right business. Me reputation. Ye ain’t ‘nough even for proper clothes.”
Both Rowen and Luhaunt had changed into rags of clothes so as to not draw attention in this part of town. They had both learned to play the part of nondescript drunkards during the war—and to great accomplishment.
But right now, that facade was hindering Rowen’s progress with Red. Rowen wasn’t about to tell Red his identity—he liked his own life too much and he knew the dowager would happily refuse to pay a ransom for his safety—but he needed to impress upon Red that he did have the means.
“I can assure you, sir, I have the funds. And I will be willing to pay a more than generous amount for the information.”
Red’s eyes narrowed at Rowen. “Ye got the funds, then ye got a noose for me as well. Yer language be too fancy for me establishment.” His forefinger sprung from his belly, and he swished it at the four thugs.
Blast it.
The tip of a blade poked into Rowen’s back. He could feel cloth tearing as the blade dug in. His hands flew up. A clear signal to Luhaunt they weren’t going to fight.
They normally would in this situation, but he wasn’t about to chance his only lead to Wynne.
“We are leaving,” Rowen said.
“Aye. And they be makin’ sure of it.” Red nodded to his thugs.
Seconds later, a foot went into Rowen’s back and he joined Luhaunt splayed out in the muck by the tavern’s back door.
Rowen sat up. Again to his credit, Luhaunt just looked at Rowen and laughed, shaking his head.
“It has been far too long since this particular scene has played out.” Luhaunt’s thumb jutted at the tavern. “Fond memories, my friend.”
“You regard this scene with much more humility than you would have in the past, Seb.”
“A man can mature, Rowe.” Luhaunt got to his feet, his hand extending down to Rowen. “Besides, a foot in the back is a gift compared to how that could have ended.”
“We are rusty.” Rowen grabbed his hand. “That is not the confidence I am accustomed to from you.”
Luhaunt chuckled, hauling Rowen to his feet. “Of course we would have fought them and been successful—it is just the aches and bruises along the way that I am happy to avoid. I do not recover like I did years ago.”
“Next you will be telling me how you are going to settle down with a wife and babes.”
“Do not go drastic on me—I only said I like to avoid fists to my face.” Luhaunt brushed his chest and chunks of mud flew off. “The ladies do not like the bruises. That is the extent of my settling down.”
Walking out to the main thoroughfare, Luhaunt surveyed the night traffic. Drunks and whores and thieves. He looked at Rowen. “So what is the plan now?”
Rowen shrugged. “Patience. Like always in this situation. I follow him. For his instant refusal of my money, there is something he knows. He will slip up. He has to.”
“He will.” Luhaunt clamped his hand on Rowen’s shoulder. “And I will keep watch on the docks and the leaving ships, just in case.”
“Thank you.”
“We will find
her, Rowe. I have never known you to fail on a mission. And I do not believe you will start with this one.”
Rowen nodded, mouth grim.
“It is good to see you like this.”
“Like what?”
“Torn up. In angst. I saw it at Notlund, but this is different. You have come to terms with how much you need this woman. It is good to see the passion in your eyes.”
Rowen sighed, not answering.
He did need Wynne.
And while Luhaunt saw some of it, he had no idea the depths to which Rowen truly needed Wynne.
No idea at all.
~~~
Five days, and no leads.
Rowen had camped himself outside of the Flashing Crow, following Red Bastnum to and from his business in the rookeries—whorehouses, gaming hells, thieves’ dens—the man had his thumb in any and every business that would make him a coin.
But not once did Red venture to the gallery. Not once had someone with a painting walked into the Flashing Crow. Rowen had fed Luhaunt every location that Red visited, so Luhaunt could dig deeper, particularly in the gaming hells, but to no avail.
Of the bits and pieces they did uncover, they were quickly finding out that there was a web of illicit artwork trading that most did not know of, and those that did, dared not to speak of.
Rowen took a sip of brandy from his tarnished flask, picking at the threadbare trousers he wore. He looked the part of the drunk, wedged into a sitting spot under some stairs a half block from Red’s tavern. Clothes that weren’t fit for a mudlark. Cap pulled down, almost over his eyes.
No one had noticed him, save for the pity glances, which was how he needed it. Following Red around was much easier this way. But Rowen was sick of sitting in this hovel. Sick of the cold. Sick of smelling like a drunk. Sick of not finding Wynne. Sick of imagining what had happened to her.
Endless hours spent staring at the battered black tavern door had given him too much time to think, too much time to dwell on what his life had almost been—a life with Wynne.
The way her hazel eyes lit up when she saw him. How she adored him without judgment, without asking for anything from him save for his love.
Lord of Fates: A Complete Historical Regency Romance Series (3-Book Box Set) Page 25
