She headed downstairs and into the garden. The wooden shed where James had relocated his work now appeared much smaller than her recollection of the previous day. After pulling the door open, she stepped inside.
There were a number of smaller paintings stacked against the far wall, but the space was mostly taken up by the two large easels which James had set up for the Derbyshire Twins. They were at the back of the cramped garden shed.
“It is nowhere near big enough,” she murmured.
Their butler had earlier informed her that it had taken more than an hour for them to carefully move the two large canvasses out of the drawing room and slowly inch them into place inside the shed. James had been at great pains to ensure neither of his precious paintings were damaged in the process.
She stood back from the first of the paintings and examined it. Already, the image of a riverbank and the overhanging grey willow trees had begun to take shape. Through the clever use of various shades of brown and green, James had been able to capture some shadows thrown by an afternoon sun.
Even to her untrained eye, it was clear James’s work was not a mere indulgence of a passing fancy. Her husband was truly gifted. Given the right support from his friends and family, James could be one of the greats. Someday these works would hang alongside those of the masters, such as Reynolds and Gainsborough—she was sure of it.
She wiped away a tear, her heart swelling with pride. If she had to make sacrifices in order to see him succeed, she would.
She stepped in front of the second of the two landscapes. Less than a foot separated them in the confined, cold space.
James had made significant progress on the work, his long hours at the easel evident. He had created the soft green and gold canopy of the woodland trees, and the first rough outlines of the lush undergrowth could also be seen. She could just imagine James picking up his paintbrush and adding color to bring the rugged bushes to life.
Her gaze then drifted from the paintings and took in the linseed oil rags which had been laid out flat to dry. If she had thought the paint and oil fumes in the expanse of the drawing room had been bad, in the tiny garden shed they took her breath away.
She sighed. James had been right; this was never going to work. Stepping back into the fresh air of the garden, her victorious mood of earlier that morning was now subdued by reality.
“I am a terrible wife,” she muttered.
James had supported her from the moment she’d fled the church. He had allowed her to make her own choices. He had seen her safely to her grandfather’s house. Never once had he forced her into doing something against her wishes. And this was how she, his wife, had repaid him. How she had shown him her love.
It was her husband who deserved her loyalty, not her parents. Not the people who had willingly sacrificed her to a life of misery for their own political gain. James loved her. Her parents only cared about status and power.
“Oh, Leah, you stupid, selfish girl.”
Little wonder James had refused to come to their bed last night. She couldn’t blame him, imagining how disappointed he would have been in her lack of support. How frustrated he must have felt standing in the garden shed, wondering how on earth he was going to be able to complete his work when he barely had room to stand.
A hopeful smile came to her lips. James would be at work until late today. She had time to fix this, to show him that his work was important. That if he succeeded in his efforts as an artist, it would be in part due to a wife who fully supported him. And if he failed, they would cross that bridge when they came to it together. In the meantime, she would do everything to help him.
“I hate morning teas and ‘at homes’ anyway. They are always full of harridans and their spiteful tongues,” she said.
The drawing room was still empty and with the help of the servants, she could set things to right before James got home. She would apologize for her berating of him the previous night. They would get their marriage back on an even keel.
With windows and doors left open during the day, she would find a way to deal with the smell of paint and oil. Hopefully, in time, she would get used to it.
She picked up his sketchbooks and tucked them under her arm. Then she bundled the linseed oil rags together and put them out of the way in a wooden box. This made a clear path which would enable the larger paintings to be moved back into the house. Her husband’s paintings would be returned to where they belonged, and James would know his wife loved him.
Leah returned to the house and spent the next three hours wandering from room to room. She searched for places in which James could paint in comfort, but which would lessen the impact of the paint fumes.
No other room, however, gave the same light and space as the drawing room. So, she decided to tackle the problem from another angle, eventually settling on the idea of relocating the dining and sitting rooms to another floor of the house. Moving their bedroom to one farther away from the drawing room would also help. With that problem hopefully addressed, she rang for the butler.
“I have decided to bring Mister Radley’s paintings back into the house. The garden shed is not big enough. Could you please assemble a working party to help move the two large canvases back upstairs and into the drawing room?” she said.
“Very good, madam,” he replied.
Leah pretended not to notice his scowl. His opinion of the goings on between husband and wife didn’t matter to her. Leah only cared that James could see that she had accepted the error of her ways and was doing everything to make amends.
Intending to personally oversee the delicate operation of bringing the Derbyshire Twins back into the house, Leah headed downstairs.
The smell of smoke greeted her as she reached the bottom of the staircase. She screwed up her nose. Someone must have been burning off rubbish in a nearby yard. London was a haze of smoke at the best of times, but this was close by the house. And with the drawing room windows open, the acrid smell would now add to the odor given off by the paint and oil. She made a mental note to close the upstairs windows once she returned.
Opening the door which led out to the garden, she was met with a sight that set her blood to ice. The garden shed was fully ablaze. Flames licked the walls and a golden glow could be seen through the window.
“The Twins!” she cried.
She raced to the door of the shed and grabbed a hold of the metal door handle. Searing-hot iron touched the palm of her hand, and she screamed. Fighting back blinding pain, she pressed on. She had just set foot inside the burning shed when strong arms wrapped around her waist and pulled her back.
“Mrs. Radley, you cannot go in there. You will die!”
She tried in vain to fight off the butler, determined to save anything of her husband’s work, but he was stronger. He dragged her away from the shed and to safety.
Servants came racing out of the house, attacking the flames with brooms and rakes as best they could. The sickening roar of the fire filled the air as the shed was engulfed in thick grey smoke. Flames shot into the sky.
Finally, the butler called the staff away from the shed, saying, “It’s gone. There is nothing to be done.”
Leah stood, tears streaming down her face, as the shed, along with James’s precious paintings, was reduced to ashes. When the pain of loss and her badly injured hand finally caught up with her, Leah fainted dead away in the arms of the brave butler.
Chapter Forty-Eight
James had spent the best part of the day breathing the foul air inside the hold of a recently arrived ship. Leah may well have her issues with the smell of his paint and linseed oil, but the fumes from them were nothing compared to the stench of a ship which had carried livestock across the Atlantic from America. For the second day in a row, he and Francis had been dealing with bad-tempered captains and poor paperwork. He could only pray that Leah was in a better mood than she had been last night.
He didn’t come in the front door of the house, deciding to go around and enter
in through the rear laneway. It had been a long day, and before he went inside the house and tried to make amends with his wife, he needed five minutes alone with his paintings.
He and Leah had both said unkind things to each other the previous night, but they were in love. Forgiveness and compromise were something all newlyweds had to learn.
He smelt smoke as he neared the back garden gate. For a moment, he thought that perhaps the household staff had been burning refuse, but the air was rank with the smell of linseed oil and burnt wood.
His hurried steps faltered as he laid his hand on the gate. The smell grew stronger. He came to a halt inside the garden.
Where once the garden shed had stood, a wasteland of blackened ash now greeted him. His jaw dropped open. Shock reverberated throughout his body. The shed was gone. He struggled to breath. Any moment, he would be sick.
“The . . . Twins,” he stammered.
All his work was lost.
Leah had threatened to burn his paintings, but never in his wildest imaginings had he thought that she would actually do it. Before his eyes stood the irrefutable evidence. His wife had followed through on her vow of vengeance and destroyed all his work.
He gripped the top of the gate. If he wasn’t going to cast up his accounts, he was certain he would faint.
“Why?”
His gaze now drifted to the house. Upstairs, there was no light in any of the rooms. The sitting room and their bedroom were in complete darkness. His life’s work was gone, and so, it would seem, was his wife.
She had made good on both of her threats. His paintings were gone; but far worse than that, Leah had returned to her family. She had chosen them over him. Their marriage had been a lie.
He turned and staggered out into the laneway. The dark of night was his only ally as it hid the tears which streamed down his face. He was struck dumb, his mind a whirl of uncertainty. There was only one thing he did know— he had to get away.
The sun was already working its way up the morning sky when James woke. He was lying under a tree along the banks of the River Thames, a near-empty bottle of whisky still clutched in his hand.
He had staggered in a daze from the house down to his old haunt, The Riverside. The irony that he’d chosen to get blind drunk at the exact same tavern that he and Guy used to frequent was not lost on him. He craved the comfort of familiar surroundings and old habits.
Rolling over onto his side, he struggled to his knees. When his head protested at the sight of the whisky bottle, he sat his drink on the ground. The whisky poured out, but he didn’t bother to right the bottle.
“I think I hurt enough,” he muttered.
The whisky had been his friend in the early hours of the morning, numbing him to the pain of loss, but now it only served to punish him. His head throbbed.
The bustle of busy London went on all around him. Carriages passed by, as did countless people. Everyone was going about their business. Lives continued.
He wondered if it was only his life which had suddenly stopped.
His mouth was dry, and his empty stomach growled. He hadn’t eaten anything since noon the previous day.
“Fuck.”
He should be at work by now, not nursing a hangover. Francis would skin him if he abandoned him to the task of cleaning up the shipping orders on his own.
All he wanted to do was lay down and die.
“How did it come to this?” he muttered.
A dozen theories spun ’round in his mind. Tobias Shepherd had made Leah burn the shed down. No, Guy Dannon had done it. Both of those ideas, while unpalatable, were still better than the thought that the woman he loved had turned traitor and betrayed him.
He began to walk. One foot painfully in front of the other. After finally making his way up from the river bank and to the street, he stopped.
There were many places he could go at this point. He could go back to the tavern and force himself to imbibe once more, thus waking up under the same tree this time tomorrow. But he felt sick enough, so that held little appeal.
He could hail a hack and arrive in his current disheveled state at his uncle’s shipping office, where no doubt he would be told to go home and not return until he was in a fit state.
“Or you could just walk home, sober up, and face reality.”
That last option, while being the least appealing, was the obvious choice. James had nothing left to lose.
He went home.
Chapter Forty-Nine
James stepped through the front door of the house and was met by the butler. He had hoped to slip in quietly, go to bed, and get some sleep before facing up to the aftermath of the fire and Leah’s departure.
“Good morning, Mister Radley. Shall I have cook make you some breakfast?”
He perked up at the thought of food. He would be able to think a little clearer after some sustenance. “Yes please.”
He had taken a step toward the staircase, when he stopped. There was no point in delaying the inevitable.
“Has my wife returned to the house this morning?” James asked.
“As far as I am aware, Mrs. Radley is still at home this morning. She had a difficult night, but her maid tells me she is up and about,” he replied.
Leah was home.
He didn’t wait to ask the butler anything further. All that mattered was that Leah was here. James raced upstairs. After searching through various rooms, he finally found her in the drawing room.
She was seated on the floor with her back to the wall, staring out the window. When James stepped into the room, she turned and glanced at him for a moment, then went back to looking out at the garden. The look of hopelessness on Leah’s face was heartbreaking. He prayed for the strength to find forgiveness.
“I was surprised to find you here. I thought you had gone,” he said.
“The doctor gave me laudanum last night, so I couldn’t have gone anywhere even if I’d wanted,” she replied.
Laudanum? “Why did you need a doctor?”
Leah held up her heavily bandaged right hand. James hurried to her side, all thoughts of confronting her over the fire put aside.
“I foolishly tried to take hold of the handle of the door at the height of the fire. My hand is badly burned,” she replied. She screwed her eyes closed. Tears began to pour down her face as she sobbed. “I expect you blame me for destroying the Derbyshire Twins. But you have to believe me, I don’t know what caused the fire. By the time I got to the garden shed, there was nothing that could be done to save them.”
“You did threaten to burn them,” he said softly.
Leah shook her head. “I was angry when I said that, but you can’t think I would ever really do such a thing. Your work means everything to you. And to me.”
James dropped to the floor next to Leah. Regret sat heavy on his shoulders. In the cold light of the morning, he questioned his rash decision not to come into the house the previous night. It shamed him to think he had immediately thought the worst of her.
“When I saw that the shed and all my work was gone, I thought you had abandoned me and returned to your parents. I’m sorry I was so quick to judge you,” he replied.
Hands came seeking; fingers locked together. For a time, they sat hand in hand in silence. James searched for the words to find a way forward.
“So that is why you didn’t come home last night? James, I would never leave you. I love you, which is why the loss of your paintings is so hard for me for bear. Knowing I have caused you such pain, unwillingly or not, is just tearing me up inside,” she said.
Leah didn’t know what had happened to cause the fire, but James still wanted to get to the truth. To stop it from ever happening to them again.
“What happened yesterday after I left for work?” he asked.
She shrugged. “I realized that I had been unfair in demanding you to move your paintings. I went out to the garden shed and it became apparent quite quickly that there was not enough room for you to work. I had bee
n wrong in asking you to move your paintings. I folded and moved your oil rags into a box, and then picked up your sketchbooks before coming back inside. I spent the next few hours trying to figure out a way to rearrange the house so you could go back to painting in the drawing room, and . . .”
James let go of Leah’s hand and shot to his feet. He felt like he had been punched in the head. Facing her, he raked his fingers through his hair.
“You piled the linseed rags into a wooden box? In the garden shed. Oh, Leah, no!”
A look of puzzlement sat on her face. “I didn’t want them to be on the floor and in the way of the servants when they moved the Twins back into the house,” she replied.
James took a deep breath. Leah had just handed him the answer as to what had likely caused the fire. “Linseed oil is highly combustible. The reason I lay the cloths out flat to dry is, so they do not ignite. By heaping them together, you created the perfect setting for them to spontaneously combust. While you were in the house sorting out rooms, the oil on the rags would have heated to a point where it finally ignited.”
She gasped. “Which means I did cause the fire!”
“Yes, but you were not to know. I should have warned you of the danger of linseed oil. We were just fortunate that it was only the garden shed and not the house. If anyone is to blame for the fire, it is me.”
Leah held out her hand. “James, please come and sit. We need to talk. There is something I want to ask you.”
He came back and resumed his seat next to her on the floor. His shoulders were sunk in defeat. Leah reached over and handed James his sketchbooks. He took them and sighed.
“I know this is cold comfort to you right now, my love, but you can rebuild. You have your sketches. If you have to go to Derbyshire now, then so be it. I will be waiting here for you when you return,” she said.
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