Whispers from the Shadows Read online

  Her frown went from concerned to perplexed. “Yet you are friends with Mr. Mercer?”

  “Not friends. I try to make an enemy of none, but some I simply cannot like.”

  “Hear, hear.” She lifted her cup in salute, though the hint of revelry faded from her eyes as quickly as it had sprung up. “Have you ever? Made an enemy?”

  “Hmm.” He took another sip and noted the new tremor to her hands. “None of a personal nature, so far as I know. And you?”

  Her eyes snapped for only a moment before her lips curved up. “A few, perhaps. I did, after all, steal the attention of Sir Arthur Hart from the other young ladies vying for it.”

  Sir Arthur Hart? A namby-pamby name if ever he’d heard one. No doubt belonging to some English dandy who had earned a knighthood by lending the Prince Regent a handkerchief on a day he had a runny nose.

  Thad selected a cookie and bit into it, figuring he needed the dose of sugar. “Your beau?”

  “No. Papa did not give his approval.” She turned sorrowful eyes upon him. “Could we go home?”

  His gaze fell from her eyes to the twitching fingers of her right hand. “Of course. You want to draw.”

  “Close. I need to paint.”

  He nodded, helped her up, and then wove his fingers through those of her right hand to see if they would still. For a moment he thought she would pull away. He expected her to. But then her palm relaxed against his, and her eyes reflected calm.

  ’Twould have been a comfort, had he not been so busy wondering what shadows would appear in this soon-to-be painting of hers.

  Arthur gripped the rail of the ship and told himself the whipping wind was invigorating. That the constant damp was refreshing. That the incessant rocking and pitching was soothing.

  But there was a reason he had joined the army rather than the navy.

  The sickness had eased, at least. Praise be to heaven for that. Gates had begun to look at him as though he were nothing but a green-gilled nuisance. In the day since he had resumed somewhat-normal activities, he liked to think he had acquired decent sea legs. Well enough to see him through the next five to seven weeks, anyway.

  “Did the ginger water help the seasickness, sir?”

  Arthur let go of the rail with one hand and turned in the direction of the semi-familiar voice. The boy, called Scrubs by the crew, stood with a mop in hand, as he often did. So far as Arthur could figure, the lad could be no more than seventeen, with a shuttered face that made him seem older and a drawl to his speech that begged the question of from where he hailed. “Quite an improvement, yes. Thank you.”

  Scrubs nodded, though nothing changed in his expression. “The captain gave me leave to bring you some morning and eve.”

  “I daresay that would be wise.”

  “Very well, then.” The boy turned away.

  “Scrubs?” Arthur lifted a hand without quite knowing why he wanted to detain him.

  He turned back around with not so much as a spark of curiosity in his deep brown eyes. “Sir?”

  Arthur sighed. Perhaps it wasn’t Scrubs he wished to distract so much as himself. “Where do you call home, boy?”

  He blinked. “The Falcon, sir.”

  At that Arthur shook his head. “And before you joined her crew?”

  Did Scrubs’s fingers tighten around the mop handle, or was it only Arthur’s imagination? He couldn’t be sure, but the lad’s chin lifted half a degree. Some indication, at least, of feeling. “Virginia, sir. Born and raised.”

  Virginia. Arthur pressed his lips together, but only for a moment. Some questions demanded answers, no matter how insensitive. “You were impressed?”

  “Three years ago, from my uncle’s fishing boat. Captain Yorrick claimed I was a runaway cabin boy from some British ship.”

  “Were you?”

  Scrubs turned again. “The only truth that counts on the Falcon is the captain’s.”

  Arthur let the boy stride away. Sad as it was to see someone forced into service, ’twas a necessity. The fleet was dangerously low on manpower, with desertion a rampant if risky business. What choice did captains have but to stop and search other vessels for their missing men?

  Yet he also knew they used that right as an excuse to take whatever men they needed, be they deserters or not, and who was to prove they were wrong? Scrubs was right about a captain’s word. It was more important than truth. It was law.

  He turned back to the rail and the vast, open nothingness of water beyond it. Nasty business, this naval one.

  “There you are, Sir Arthur.” Gates’s voice beckoned from the direction opposite Scrubs’s, and he looked that way to see the man approaching with the captain.

  Yorrick nodded toward Scrubs’s retreating back. “Is he bothering you?”

  “Nay. He only asked if the ginger water had helped.” He glanced from the captain to Gates, whose quirked brow questioned the truth of his claim. “And I asked him where he was from, as I could not quite place his speech.”

  “Ah. I found him in the waters of Virginia, with a deserter of an uncle.” The captain clasped his hands behind his back and directed his face toward Gates. “He claimed he had never stepped foot off Virginia soil, but the uncle was a Scot, no question.”

  Gates waved a hand in dismissal. “I would not question your tactics, Captain. The Americans may claim they are no longer under our rule, but they are naught but recalcitrant children left too long without the guiding hand of their parent.”

  Arthur leaned against the rail until he remembered nothing lay on the other side to catch him. Straightening his spine, he said, “I daresay they disagree, Mr. Gates, having won a war for their independence.”

  The man looked amused. “Just as a child of seven will insist he is able to care for himself after a scuffle in the schoolyard, but that does not mean he has the wisdom to do so. The American government is too young, too idealistic, too untried. It will fracture and fail, and then they will beg us to come set them to rights again, like a tot running for its mama.”

  Captain Yorrick chuckled. “Just so. Why, they think because they claim a thing, it must be. That regardless of the laws that have been governing British citizens for centuries, they can grant someone exemption from them after a man spends a few years’ tenure on their soil. They have no respect for us, yet expect us to have respect for them.”

  “As I say, they are children.”

  “And so they need the rod taken to them.” Yorrick gave a decisive nod and motioned them toward the companionway. “Have you children yourself, Gates?”

  The man gave a sigh that sounded soul weary. “I am afraid that blessing has been withheld from my wife and me.”

  “I am sorry for that. My sons are among my greatest joys.”

  Gates nodded. “It has been an eternal sorrow to Mrs. Gates. Fortunately, my niece Gwyneth has long been like a daughter to us. I am most eager to be reunited with her now that she is parentless, to make her a part of our home.” Over his shoulder he sent the closest thing to a smile Arthur had seen from him. “At least for the short time we shall have her before she makes her own.”

  A day that could not come soon enough. Arthur could only hope they would find her in time to keep her safe from whatever danger stalked her.

  Twelve

  If there were such a thing as a muse, she had taken over the house with a fury. Thad leaned against the trunk of the tree and watched the same basic activity he had been viewing for the past five days. Father dashing in and out on the quest for a new variation of a pigment he had concocted in his laboratory. Mother reading aloud to keep their guest soothed. Rosie emerging every hour to refresh drinks and all but force-feed the artist. Henry raising makeshift canopies to soften the glaring light.

  And Gwyneth. Thad could scarcely take his eyes off her and counted it a blessing she was too absorbed to notice.

  “She is a pretty thing, isn’t she?” Arnaud leaned into the bark beside him, his eyes on her too. “Jacques cannot cease tal
king about how she let him use some of her paints.”

  Pretty? Nay. Pretty was too tame a word for the way she looked as she stood before the easel Thad had made her, eyes focused on the canvas with unwavering intensity. They fairly glowed with concentration, like the water of the Caribbean when the sun shot through it. Her hair, gold spun with fire, had tumbled down again and, again, been tied into a knot and secured with a brush. Which he now knew would last until she needed said brush, at which point she would pull it out and send the curls down her back again, until one had the audacity to fall into her face. Then out would come another brush to play the part of a pin.

  Thad drew in a breath, watching as she made a broad, sweeping stroke in saffron. Then his friend’s words fully penetrated and he frowned. “You like her.”

  Arnaud’s lips twitched. “Certainly. Who would not? She is sweet and kind, and lovely besides.”

  Sweet, kind, and lovely? Those were the best words Arnaud could come up with to describe her? Thad shook his head and let his gaze drift her way again. She was more than those, so much more. She was heady honeysuckle, a wide open azure sky, pure sunshine gleaming through snow-white clouds. She was tossing waves and frothing whitecaps, churning tempests and searing lightning.

  And if Arnaud was smitten…the thought pierced. But if his interest was kindled by this nymph before them, then Thad would have to put aside his own intrigue.

  He had no choice. Not with all he owed him. With all the pain he had already caused. “Will you…come to call on her?”

  The twitch gave way to a grin. “Do I look daft? Non, admiration here is stayed by practicality. Something our charming Miss Fairchild is sorely lacking.”

  Thad’s straight spine stiffened. “She is not impractical.”

  Arnaud snorted a laugh. “You said yourself you keep coming home to find her near collapse, with that blasted brush still in her hands. That thrice this week you have had to carry her up to her room when she fell asleep on her feet. She hasn’t so much as a dash of temperance. Which is fine and well in a friend but not at all what one needs in a wife. The house would go to ruins in a week.”

  Thad’s house seemed to be ticking along just fine, but he saw no reason to talk his friend into paying her court if he weren’t so inclined.

  Arnaud’s snort turned to a full-bred chuckle. “She baffles you, n’est-ce pas? Unlike with every other man, woman, and child in these United States, you cannot look at her and divine exactly what she needs because she is far too scattered.”

  Yes, that was it. That was why he had found so many occasions this week to simply stand here and watch her. He was trying to determine what she needed and not just memorize the way her eyes narrowed or her teeth caught her lower lip, that curve of her shoulder when she made the smallest of motions with brush on canvas. “I will figure it out eventually.”

  “Hmm. Well, mon ami, you keep up the study. I need to get home. Find me when you return from Washington City tomorrow.” Arnaud clapped a hand to his shoulder and disappeared.

  Father emerged from the house yet again, stirring a pot of something or another. “Try this one, Gwyneth. Ground cochineal as one would expect, but I tried a different method of heating it with the linseed oil.”

  Gwyneth took a step back from her canvas and smiled as she lifted the stick from the pot and saw the crimson within. “It looks perfect, Mr. Lane, thank you. Let us hope it dries correctly.”

  “If not, let me know and I shall try a different ratio.” Father gave her a warm smile, full of contentment at getting to put his love for chemistry to use, and motioned to Mother. “Are you ready, my love? We don’t want to be late to Mr. Matthews’s.”

  Mother put a slip of paper in her volume of Shakespeare. “Of course. Gwyneth, do you need anything before we go?”

  A moment later, after the shake of Gwyneth’s head, his parents took their leave and silence descended upon the garden. Thad let it settle and wrap its arms around them. Let the birdsong filter into his consciousness. Breathed in the scent of the herbs Rosie had planted. Felt the bite of bark against his back. And watched her.

  Watched as she turned fully back to the painting. Watched as she dipped that brush into blood-red paint.

  Watched as tears welled in her eyes and her face pulled into a mask of taut agony.

  He pushed off from the tree. For the last five days, he had looked only at her. Her as she wielded paint and brush, not the canvas onto which she put it. But something whispered that it was time. Time to see the painting.

  Finally, after an eternity of working and mixing and glazing and drying, the world on the canvas began to pulse. Only then did she know a piece was nearing completion. When she felt the thud of blood through veins and timed each stroke accordingly. When light and shadow joined together and danced. When the elusive vision she had been chasing stayed, solidified, and became.

  When the critical shade waited, trial after trial of this hue and that finally giving way to the right color. The right preparation. The right use of sublimers and levigating mills and mullars, the right consistency of oil and pigment and turpentine.

  All for red. Crimson red, pure and bright, tending neither toward orange nor purple. No vermilion, no cinnabar. No rose nor carmine. Red. Red that gleamed like a ruby. Red that bespoke England and the army. Red that meant life and its loss.

  Her vision blurred, forcing her hand to pause. No. No, not now. She could not let the world double and waver. This moment, of all the moments of the past months, she needed clarity.

  Swallowing, blinking, and sucking in a long draft of air, she waited. There. No more haze. Just the canvas, every inch covered with paint. The garden outside Papa’s window, misty with greens and yellow. Verdigris, sap green, and the terra verte Mr. Lane had helped her perfect. King’s yellow, oker, and sienna unburnt.

  The desk, the shelves, Papa’s hair in shades of brown. Extract of liquorice, asphaltum, and umber.

  The play of light with white lead and crushed pearl. The score of shadow in lampblack and Indian ink.

  Scalloped edges and intricate curves. A window to a world forever lost.

  And now red. Brighter than the jacket that painted-Papa wore, underscoring, overcoming. There, here, dripping, staying. Hidden, always hidden.

  Always there. Taunting. Haunting.

  Shaking.

  She jerked her arm away before she could ruin it all, and the brush fell from her fingers and rolled down her dress. White turned crimson, with slashes and gashes on the swath moments ago still pure. Just like that, ruination and destruction.

  “Gwyneth.”

  Thad. When had he moved? Gwyneth lifted her head to find him beside her and realized his hand rested on her back. But he didn’t look at her. His gaze remained latched on the canvas, moving over it as if following a path. Reading a line. Darting and jumping, tracing the exact journey her brush had taken, the trail of colors in the order she had applied them.

  His face went tight. The hand on her back slid down to her waist and anchored there. When finally he looked to her, his eyes burned like a candle’s flame. “What happened to him?”

  Trembling, quaking that she couldn’t still. She looked to the painting. How did he see? There was no blade, no pool of blood. Just Papa, standing as he had been before the shelves she had practiced with pencil, behind the desk with its familiar scratches and dings. Papa, tall and strong.

  Papa, pierced through. But Thad wasn’t to see that. He wasn’t to see the slight variation in shade between jacket and blood, so easily attributed to light and shadow. He wasn’t to realize the look upon his face was that one moment between fear and pain.

  “Gwyneth.” He tightened his grip on her, demanding that her gaze return to his, making the tremors quicken. He searched her eyes until she felt sure he saw every thought, every fear, every monster hiding within. And he looked as though it rent him to pieces as it had done her. “He is dead?”

  The word bit like a sword, made her knees buckle and her stomach h
eave. Like Papa, she crumpled. Like Papa, she fell. But rather than a hard floor catching her, strong arms held tight, and her fingers found Thad’s lapels. A keening welled up, but her throat closed off to trap it.

  “Tell me.” Too quiet to be called speech, naught but a murmur in her ear. A bid more than a command, a begging. “You need to tell me.”

  “I…can’t.” Even those two words made her tongue twist. Made the black monster gnash its teeth. “He will hear me.”

  “He will not. Gwyn, look at me.” He pulled her head back and tilted her chin up. Gently but insistently, until those yellow-topaz eyes burned her anew. “You are safe. You can tell me. Tell me what you saw.”

  “Nothing.” She loosed his coat, but only with one hand. Only so she could grip his wrist and hold on. Hold it there, where it cradled and steadied. “I saw nothing. I can’t have. If he thinks I did, he will kill me next.”

  “He will not.” His words burned like his eyes.

  “He is coming, I know he is. He mustn’t hear me. He mustn’t know I know, or he will…he will…”

  “I’ll not let him. I swear to you.” His thumb swept over her jaw and lit a new quake that shivered through her. “Tell me, sweet. Tell me who killed your father.”

  The cry ripped out, savage and fierce. So long held at bay, but rising now like a tidal wave, pounding at the walls of her being until it forced her to the ground.

  Thad went down with her, never letting go. Tell me.

  Did he speak it again or just think it so loudly it echoed along with the sobs in her mind? She tried to shake it away, close it back up, and knit it tight, but tears rushed down her cheeks and surged through her throat. Through the hole they made came the gasp. “Un–un–cle.”

  “Oh, Gwyn.” He must have pulled her closer, for she felt his chin rest on the top of her head, his fingers tangle in her hair. Arms tight around her, keeping the demons away. “One of his brothers?”