Mortal Arts (A Lady Darby Mystery) (24 page)

I was surprised to hear him speak of her in such a familiar manner, but then I remembered that Dr. Winslow had said he was often overly familiar with people’s names—a side effect from his time spent at the Larkspur Retreat.

From the tone of his voice, it seemed obvious that Will did not know anything about Mary Wallace being missing. He was not concerned, nor did he seem frightened for her. So if he’d had anything to do with her disappearance himself, then either she was safe or he didn’t remember. The latter did nothing to cheer me; nor the former, for that matter. But could Will really have harmed a person and not remember it? It seemed so unbelievable. And yet Dr. Sloane’s accusation hung over it all like a pall.

“I was told she likes to stroll along the water. Is that where you two met?”

He nodded. “Miss Remmington introduced us.”

It was my turn to be shocked again. “When?”

Hearing the unease in my voice, he hesitated.

“I’m just surprised she never mentioned it, is all. She was telling me how much she liked Miss Wallace.”

He nodded. “I suppose I can understand that. I got the impression when she was forced to introduce us, oh, a few weeks ago now, that she was not happy about it. I thought it might be because of my time spent in the asylum, but then I realized it was also because she didn’t wish to share her new friend. After that I tried my best to avoid meeting up with them so that Miss Remmington would not feel I was intruding.”

As Will gave this speech, I realized that the sunshine and fair weather must have been having the same effect on him as it was me. He spoke more freely, more easily. And he smiled, albeit softly and slowly—something that had been rare even a decade ago during our drawing lessons—especially as he talked about Miss Wallace. I watched his expression closer.

“But you met her at other times?”

“Yes. We stumbled upon each other during our walks.” And when he said ‘stumbled’ I knew he meant that it had not been entirely by chance. “I know you would like her. She is kind and quiet, and she listens.” He tilted his head, contemplating me. “She’s a bit like you actually. You both have something that makes you hold back and observe rather than taking part. In you, I think people suspect it’s boredom or disinterest, and in Mary, they think it’s shyness, but they’re wrong on both counts. You simply don’t know how to participate without revealing the differences you so try to hide.”

I didn’t quite know how to respond to this speech. That Will had so much insight into who I was surprised me enough, but the fact that he had compared me to Miss Wallace, a woman who claimed to have the second sight and was now missing, bothered me more. Perhaps it shouldn’t have. A hundred years ago we might have been burned at the stake together. She because of her ability to see future events and me because of my ability to see into the heart of a person and render it in paint and ink. My unnatural stillness and “witch bright” eyes, as they’d been called by others in London, also did not help.

But Will wasn’t privileged to these thoughts, so he did not know how unsettled his comments had made me. “Kiera, you’re the same as you ever were,” he added with a crooked smile. “Just maybe a bit . . . sadder, lonelier. I’m sure your marriage to Sir Anthony Darby did not help.”

I sighed. “No. It didn’t.”

“Why did you marry him?”

I gave a huff of humorless laughter. “I didn’t want the bother of picking a husband, so I asked Father to find a match for me. My only stipulation was that I be allowed to continue painting.” I glanced up at Will, a wry curl to my lip. “Sir Anthony failed to tell any of us just why he was so elated with my artistic talents, or that there would be a condition to my being allowed to continue to paint portraits.”

“Your father was a good man, but he wasn’t, perhaps, always the most astute judge of character.”

I glanced at him in puzzlement.

“He hired me to be your drawing master that last summer, didn’t he?”

“Now, that’s nonsense,” I protested. “You were an excellent tutor. Quite possibly the best I ever had. Did you know that?”

“I doubt it,” he replied. “But, anyway, it doesn’t matter. You’ve become a fine artist. A brilliant one, at that. If you were a man, the royalty of Europe would be clambering for you to paint them. But I suggest you trust your own judgment in choosing your next husband.”

I opened my mouth to tell him there wouldn’t be a second husband, but his next words cut me off at the quick.

“I know my opinion hardly matters, but I like this Mr. Gage of yours.”

I couldn’t manage to say anything for a moment and then I spluttered, “Gage is not
mine
.”

Will gave me a chiding look that made my heart begin to beat faster.

“The man barely tolerates me,” I protested.

He shook his head. “Oh, Kiera, for a woman who is normally so astute, how can you be so blind?”

I frowned. “You’re wrong. If Gage were seriously interested in me in that way, I’d know.”

“Kiera, a man does not have to kiss you for you to know he’s attracted to you.”

I felt a blush burn its way up into my cheeks. I snuck a look at Will out of the corner of my eye, and, seeing him narrow his eyes like an outraged older brother, I decided it was time to change the subject before I was forced to admit to something I didn’t intend to.

“How often do you go for walks?”

He still eyed me suspiciously, but answered my question. “Whenever I can. Every other day or so if the weather is fine.”

“Does Mac always go with you?”

“Or Donovan.”

I studied his innocent expression. “Or you go by yourself?” I asked leadingly.

His jaw hardened in stubbornness. “If I can manage it.”

“Is that safe?”

“I don’t know. But I can’t be caged.” He looked at me, determined to make me understand. “Do you know what that’s like?”

My chest tightened at the evidence of his distress.

He shook his head. “I spent nearly ten years locked up like an animal, and I can’t live that way. I have to know that if I wanted to I could get free. I need that assurance.”

I nodded, thinking I understood. However, his admission did nothing to comfort me.

And neither did the realization of what I’d seen earlier in the shadows inside that crumbled section of Banbogle Castle.

Will and I were passing by a shed not far from the main block of the stables, and its door stood open, allowing us a peek inside. The hull of a rowboat, about the size of a small coble, tipped on its side caught my eye and held it. There had been a boat inside the castle, and not an old, dilapidated one, to judge from the glimpse of the wood I had seen.

I glanced at Will again, remembering how he’d said he liked to scramble around inside the ruins of Banbogle. If so, he must know about the boat. Had he put it there? And, if so, why?

I tried to shake aside the uneasy feeling settling in my gut, but Craggy Donald’s words to us about a boat leaving Cramond Island on the day Miss Wallace disappeared would not let me.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

I
separated from William and Mac at the top of the main staircase and turned toward my chambers to change out of my soiled riding habit. I knew Lucy was going to sulk when she saw the state of it and my windblown hair, even though I was the one who would suffer through the detangling. If I was lucky, she would be in a better frame of mind this afternoon. Maybe she would even have my bath prepared for me.

I picked up my pace and had just turned the corner when I heard giggling at the end of the corridor—familiar giggling. I backed up a step to peer around the corner. The door to the servants’ stair stood open, held that way by a brawny arm, and Lucy leaned against the door frame laughing at whatever the person behind her was saying. Before the maid stepped to the side I already knew who was with her.

I scowled at Donovan, not caring when he looked up and saw me. He stared right back and mumbled something low to Lucy that I could not hear. She glanced over her shoulder guiltily at me, but her anxiousness at being caught quickly faded to something more belligerent.

“Lucy, I need to change,” I told the maid in a sharper voice than I intended.

I watched in dismay as her chin lifted, but did not stay to see if she followed. I couldn’t bear to stand there faced with Donovan’s self-satisfied smirk when I knew the man was only toying with the girl. In any case, Lucy wouldn’t dare disobey. Or so I hoped.

Even so, it took her several moments longer to appear than I expected, and that had given me several moments longer to grow angrier. “He’s not likely to fancy you, eh?” I mocked the girl, throwing her own words back in her face.

She scowled and marched across the room toward the adjoining bathing chamber. “Would m’lady like to bathe?”

“Lucy, I am not going to overlook what I just saw.”

She ignored me and disappeared into the bathing chamber to begin drawing the water. I stood in the middle of my bedchamber fuming. Stripping off my gloves, I threw them down onto the vanity with a satisfying thwack and then began picking out the hairpins still snarled in my hair. They each landed on the wooden table with a ping.

I heard Lucy return to the chamber but did not bother to turn around and face her. “After this evening, I will no longer require your services,” I told her.

The girl gasped.

“You can return to Gairloch on the mail coach. I’m sure the earl would be happy to welcome you back into his staff as an upstairs maid.”

“Oh, m’lady, please. I dinna want to return to Gairloch.”

“Well, I cannot keep you on as you have been.”

“But I’ve done my job,” she argued. “Ye canna say I hav’na.”

I turned to face her, close to screaming at her for her defiance. Instead I spoke in as calm a voice as I could manage. “You have been surly, and borderline disobedient, for days now. You were unhappy the moment we left Gairloch, and you have been insolent since we arrived at Dalmay House. Why on earth should I keep you on?”

“Please, m’lady,” she begged, tears now threatening in her eyes. “If ye send me back, the others’ll ken I botched it.”

I sighed, unable to remain so harsh in the face of her tears. “You can tell them you got homesick.”

She shook her head fiercely. “Nay. They’ll ken I’m lyin’. And I dinna want to go home. No’ when I just left it.”

“But you’ve been so unhappy. Do not lie and tell me you haven’t,” I ordered her when she opened her mouth to do just that.

“It’s just all so new,” she murmured in bewilderment. “And I’m no’ a fast learner. It took me months to learn to use the curlin’ rods wi’oot burnin’ me hands.”

“Things are always going to be like that when we travel. And in Edinburgh or London or wherever we end up, until you become used to your new surroundings. New places present new challenges.”

“I can manage it. I just needed to get my bearin’s is all.”

“Speaking of which,” I said, hearing the trickle of water. “The . . .”

“Och! The bath!” Lucy dashed into the bathing chamber. “It’s all right,” she called out to me a moment later. “I caught it afore it spilled o’er the edge.”

I crossed the bedroom and peered inside the tiled room at my maid, who was balancing against the edge of the tub while she carefully reached in to extract the plug to drain out some of the water. It was filled so close to the brim that I thought for sure just the insertion of her hand would send it cascading over onto the floor, but it didn’t.

There was a pop and a gurgle and she let out a relieved breath. When she extracted her hand, I could see it was red up to her elbow.

“How hot did you make that water?” I asked her.

She glanced at me sheepishly. “I had a bit o’ trouble gettin’ the temperature right. It’ll be cool enough by the time we get ye undressed.”

I frowned at the water level. “Well, don’t let it drain too much. Otherwise we’ll be wasting more of the water from the cistern.”

I turned away and marched back into the bedchamber. I removed the amethyst pendant my mother had given me and stared down at it, watching the deep purple stone flash in the late sunlight shining through the windows. Lucy stepped up behind me and immediately began unfastening the buttons that ran up the back of my riding habit. I could hear her worried thoughts as loudly as if she’d spoken them.

“Are ye really goin’ to send me back?” she finally found the courage to ask.

I set the pendant on the vanity. “I don’t know what else to do, Lucy. I’m worried about you.”

“Ye dinna have to be worrit aboot me, m’lady. I’m a good girl. I ken what men are after and no’ to give it to ’em. My mother and my brothers taught me well.”

“That may be so,” I told her as she helped me peel the fitted garment down over my wrists. “But there are more things at stake here than just your virtue.”

I could see her puzzled look in the reflection of the mirror and endeavored to explain. “The job of a personal maid is far more than pressing clothes and styling hair. In a way, it’s also being a sort of confidante, knowing the secrets you do about your employer. And I’m not just talking about the size of her waist or how much face powder she puts on every morning. Lady’s maids, and valets for that matter, know who their employers are keeping company with, in and out of bed, and often when they are sick or expecting a child before they even do. They are privy to some of their most unguarded thoughts and fears.” I turned to look down at her, seeing the guilt of disloyalty already stamped across her features. “Lucy, I need someone I can trust, and you are proving not to be that person.”

Her gaze dropped to her feet. “I’m sorry, m’lady,” she said tearfully. “I didna mean to tell Donovan anythin’ aboot ye. But he was so kind. And he was the only one who would tell me the truth aboot Lord Dalmay.” She blinked up at me accusingly through her tear-flecked lashes.

“And what was that?”

She hesitated, but just for a moment. “That he spent nine years in a lunatic asylum, and he’s kept under lock and key for everyone’s protection.”

“That’s true.”

She gasped in outrage.

“But did Mr. Donovan tell you that the reason he was kept in that asylum was not because he was mad, but because of his father’s own treachery?”

Lucy’s eyes widened.

“I thought not. He led you to believe exactly what he wanted you to so that you would feel grateful to him for his honesty and angry with me for lying.”

The reality of the man’s deceit slowly began to dawn on her. “But he’s kept locked up . . .”

“More for his own good than for anyone else’s protection. He gets confused sometimes. We all would if we’d been confined to a dark, dank cell for a decade. I’ve visited with him three times since our arrival at Dalmay House, and he’s never come close to anything resembling violent or aggressive. You have nothing to worry about. And I don’t know why Mr. Donovan has decided to make you think so. Unless it’s to get something from you.”

Her gaze was filled with a world of hurt. I sat down on the bench in front of my vanity and bent to begin unfastening one of my boots. A moment later, Lucy kneeled to unlace the other one.

“I feel like such a fool,” she muttered, but I was relieved to hear more anger in her voice than pain. “I kenned a man like Donovan would no’ fancy someone like me. Dinna I say so?”

I scowled. “Lucy, the issue of your attractiveness, which I think you underestimate, is not the matter at hand.”

“I ken that. But his interest shoulda been a red flag anyway. I never shoulda trusted ’im.” She fell silent as she worked the boot off my foot and set it beside the other one to be cleaned later. She helped me step out of the skirt of my riding habit and unlaced my corset, but before she removed my chemise, she paused to look me straight in the face. “I’m more sorry than I can say, m’lady. Is there no way ye could give me a second chance? I’ll prove to ye I deserve your trust. I willna let ye doon again.”

Her voice was so pleading, her face so earnest, I felt myself beginning to yield. I liked Lucy—I always had—and until this journey we had always gotten along well. Was our working relationship worth salvaging?

I crossed my arms over my chest. “If you tell me what Donovan was so intent to learn about me, it’ll be a start.”

She nodded and proceeded to explain how curious he’d been about my background, particularly the time I’d spent married to Sir Anthony, which, fortunately, Lucy knew very little about. However, what she did know was enough to damage a reputation. But a large portion of Great Britain, or at least the majority of the upper class and their servants, must already be aware of my scandalous past. Gossip traveled swiftly among the elite. So what use could Donovan have for it? Blackmail? He would fail in that regard. I had little money of my own, except that which I earned from the sales of my artwork, and even less inclination to keep secrets that were already known to a large portion of the country. No, he must wish to use it for leverage of some kind. I just didn’t know what. And that thought made me uneasy.

* * *

F
or the most part, I ignored Gage at dinner that evening, uncertain yet how to interact with him, especially in front of an audience. I was still angered by his revelation about working for Sloane, but the hours since our argument had given me time to think, and I thought I better understood his reasons for doing so, even if I wasn’t quite ready to forgive him. There was much we still needed to discuss, but dinner was not the time or place. And in the meantime, we had an investigation to continue.

I had taken the opportunity after dressing for dinner to jot off a quick note to Philip asking for information on Dr. Thomas Callart. Perhaps he couldn’t be Dr. Sloane, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t working for him. It seemed somewhat unlikely—after all, there must be dozens of physicians and surgeons in Scotland alone who claimed to specialize in afflictions of the brain—but I had learned not to doubt my intuition, and it was telling me there was some connection. How, I didn’t yet know, but I had hopes I soon would. Or else I would have to take seriously my concerns over Will’s professed ability to escape whenever he wished and the boat I had seen stashed in the ruins of Banbogle Castle.

Rather than following the others into the drawing room after dinner, Michael made our excuses and led Gage and me toward the central staircase. I glanced at Gage in confusion, but upon seeing the watchful look in his eyes I realized where we were headed. My stomach knotted in dread.

I’d known we would have to view Will’s sketches and paintings sooner or later, since Donovan and Mac had been unable or unwilling to shed light onto Will’s melancholic episodes or the events that had occurred in the asylum—the ones we believed Dr. Sloane was so eager to keep hidden—but I had not been looking forward to the endeavor. Ten years ago Will’s artwork had given me nightmares, and though time and experience had hardened me, I still did not think I was prepared to see those images again. However, I didn’t dare voice my trepidations. I could imagine Gage would be only too happy to leave me out of this task, and I was determined not to shy away from it, particularly knowing what I knew about his involvement with Dr. Sloane.

At the top of the stairs, rather than turning right toward the staircase we had always taken to the next floor and Will’s rooms, Michael turned left and led us to the door at the end of the hall. My thoughts had been troubled by this door ever since late that afternoon, when I had seen Lucy and Donovan hovering there. It clearly led into the servants’ staircase, which descended two stories below to the kitchen, and now I could see it also led two flights up to the attic as well.

“Michael,” I murmured as we approached the door leading into the corridor beyond the first locked door on Will’s floor, “you told us you keep all the doors locked so that Will cannot get out, but what about this one?” I recalled the footman who had brought Will’s dinner the previous night, who had almost stumbled upon me and Gage kissing. He had come through the door off the main staircase, not the servants’ stairs.

“It’s locked, too. Only Donovan, Mac, and I have keys.” He pushed against the door in illustration and nearly fell on his face when the knob turned and the door unexpectedly swung inward. “Bloody hell,” he exclaimed, righting himself. “This isn’t supposed to be open.”