Mortal Arts (A Lady Darby Mystery) (8 page)

Lucy’s brow puckered doubtfully.

“William Dalmay is just . . . ill. He’s quite incapable of hurting you.”

She considered my words, as if trying to decide if I was telling her the truth. “So . . . they was just feedin’ me gammon? The other servants?”

I hesitated, not certain precisely what had been said belowstairs. “It’s likely.”

Lucy scowled, evidently not liking the idea of being manipulated for someone else’s amusement. At Gairloch Castle she had been related to half of the staff and had grown up with the rest. A bit of teasing there was all in good fun. Among strangers it was not so kind.

She helped me out of my corset and petticoats and then set about straightening the garments while I sat down to remove my stockings and slippers.

“That Mr. Gage is here, isna he?” she surprised me by asking when she returned to begin removing the pins from my hair. “His valet was at dinner.” From her fierce expression in the reflection of the mirror, I could tell she didn’t like the man.

“Was he the one who told you Mr. Dalmay was mad?”

“Nay. But he dinna correct them.”

“Then what is so distasteful about him?” I pressed.

Her mouth screwed up. “He’s a might too high in the instep.”

I smiled. “I’m afraid that’s how most valets are.”

“Barnes isna,” she said, referring to Philip’s manservant. “And neither are the men who serve the Dalmays.” She uncoiled my rope of hair and began dividing it into three sections to braid it.

“So you’ve met Mac,” I asked, curious to get her opinion on the ill-tempered man.

“Nay. They be Clark and Donovan.”

I perked up at the mention of Will’s other manservant. “What did you think of Donovan?”

A coy smile brightened her face. “Oh, he’s a bit o’ all right.”

“Lucy,” I scolded, blushing at the admiring tone of her voice.

“What? A big, strappin’ lad like that. I couldna help but notice.”

“And do the other maids notice him as well?” I asked, interested despite myself.

“Oh, aye.”

I watched her in the mirror as she tied a ribbon around the end of my braid, not having failed to miss the telltale flush of attraction cresting her cheeks. “Well, just be careful there,” I felt compelled to warn her. At Gairloch Castle she was relatively safe from men with dishonorable intentions, surrounded as she was by three brothers and a handful of female relatives to look after her. At Dalmay House, she had only me.

“I will, m’lady. But no worries. He’s no’ likely to fancy me.”

I wasn’t so certain about that. With her creamy skin and buxom figure, Lucy was attractive enough to draw most men’s attention. I wondered if her sheltered existence had made her blind to that.

“Did Donovan mention anything about his former employment?” I asked, thinking back to what Gage had told me about him having some kind of medical experience.

Lucy helped me pull my nightdress over my head. “Nay, m’lady. Did ye want me to ask?”

She seemed far too eager to have any excuse to talk to the man. “Only if it seems natural to do so,” I told her, not wanting the girl to seem too keen.

“Aye, m’lady.” Her eyes twinkled. “He willna ken why I’m askin’,” she promised, misunderstanding my reason for concern.

I didn’t correct her, figuring the maid would take more care if she thought concealing my interest was the reason I requested her discretion. She helped me into my warm, midnight-blue wrapper, and then I dismissed her to seek her own bed.

I wandered the room restlessly, my mind too busy yet for sleep. The chamber assigned to me was swathed in shades of pale pink and warm chocolate brown in the most sumptuous of fabrics—velvet and silk and satin. The walls were hung with ivory silk speckled with pink flowers, which matched nearly perfectly the pearlescent pink marble of the fireplace. I did not know whether Michael and Laura had elected to place me in a premier chamber, or if all the bedrooms were decorated so lavishly.

A handsome landscape held pride of place over the hearth, depicting the sweep of a bay and the softly lapping waves of the sea. The tumbled rocks of the cliffs were shaded with sweeps of palest pink, tying the piece to the room’s color palette. I studied the painting, wishing momentarily that I was as skilled at bringing to life earth and sea and sky as I was at capturing it in the human face and form. Then I brushed the thought away, reminding myself to be grateful for the gifts I had been given instead of wasting my time longing for the things I couldn’t change.

Will tried to teach me that—the summer he spent as my drawing master.

I crossed my arms over my chest and moved to the window, lifting aside the heavy velvet drapes to peer out at the moonlit countryside beyond. A wide swath of lawn stretched before me, ending in the thick shadows of forest that extended inland toward Dalmay village, and then farther on to Queensferry. Will would have liked such a setting.

During that summer, which seemed so long ago now, Will had enjoyed teaching my lessons outdoors whenever he could. On warm, dry days, whether the sky was clear and blue or piled with towering clouds, he had escorted me out to one of the neighboring hillsides. Sometimes we carried easels and canvases, and sometimes merely sketchbooks, but without fail, on fair weather days we trudged across the countryside to capture one scene or another with brushes or charcoal.

At first I had hated those excursions, wanting to remain inside engrossed in my latest effort at portraiture. Painting people was safe, comfortable, and I felt relatively competent in the task. Landscapes were a different matter. They left me feeling frustrated, overwhelmed, and wholly inadequate. After a day spent sketching the River Tweed as it rambled past St. Cuthbert’s Church or painting the towering oaks of Dunstan Wood, I was left certain I had as little talent as my past tutor, Signor Riotta, claimed.

Then one afternoon in late June, after yet another failure to capture any sense of light or movement or life in the landscape before me, I threw my paintbrush down with a cry of exasperation. I was tempted to tear the canvas from the easel, throw it to the ground, and stomp on it, but for the fact that it took time and effort to prepare new canvases, and I had no desire to waste the ones already stretched and coated with noxious gesso.

“Why do you make me do this?” I demanded, pacing back and forth in a tight circle before our easels. “You
know
I’m incompetent at landscapes.”

Will continued to focus on his own efforts, leaning toward his canvas as he applied the paint on his brush to some detail. “Because you have skills yet to learn.”

“But I don’t want to paint landscapes,” I insisted, growing angrier in the face of his calm. “I don’t care if I know how.”

He sat back to study his efforts. “Perhaps. But there are still elements that can be learned from painting a landscape that apply to a portrait or a still life.”

I planted my hands on my hips. “Such as?”

He glanced up at me for the first time since my outburst and I felt my cheeks heat under his regard. “Light and shadow. The tone and depth of your hues. Texture.”

I frowned. “I can learn those just as easily on a portrait.”

He shook his head. “How will you learn the way sunlight affects your subjects? The way it saturates color or distorts texture?” I opened my mouth to protest, but he continued on before I could speak, lifting his eyebrows in silent chastisement. “And don’t tell me that all of your portraits will be composed inside. What if one day you are asked to paint a subject on a terrace or beside a window?” I snapped my mouth shut, angry that I had to concede this point. He turned back toward his canvas. “All of the skills you will study while painting landscapes will translate to your portraits.”

I watched him for a moment, frustration simmering inside me like the water heating in a teakettle. “But I’m not any good at it,” I blurted out.

Will looked up at me again, as calm and unruffled as before. “Do you have to be?”

I watched the way the wind ruffled his too-long hair across his forehead and considered his words. “But it’s not any fun to do something I’m not good at.”

The corners of his handsome mouth quirked upward into a smile. He set aside his paintbrush and rose from his stool. “And, ignoring your previous drawing master’s idiotic comments, you have been good at everything else you’ve tried to paint, haven’t you? Even as a small child, I bet you could draw far better than most adults.”

I hesitated, knowing it was impolite to brag.

His grin widened. “It’s all right. You can speak the truth.”

“Yes,” I admitted.

Humor danced in his eyes. “Well, I’m sorry to tell you, but it was inevitable that you should come up against something that gave you trouble. Even geniuses and prodigies have their weak points. The trick is not to let those bothersome bits stop you. Persevere and you’ll be better all around for the effort.”

I looked up into Will’s soft gray eyes and wondered at what he’d had to persevere. Little as I knew about it, Will had shown me that war was a terrifying, difficult thing. And I knew he had struggled, still struggled every day to leave it behind.

The amusement faded from his eyes and his smile turned sad, as if he understood exactly where my thoughts had taken me. “Now, see here,” he said, pointing to the leaves of my trees. “Your sense of shade and definition have improved significantly in just the past few weeks. I noticed it in the portrait of Mrs. Caldwell you’ve been working on.”

I blinked at the blurs of foliage on my canvas. “Really?”

“Most definitely.”

I gestured to the painting. “But the forest still looks dead. Like a flattened, lifeless slug.”

He chuckled. “Oh, it’s not quite so bad as that. Even your worst efforts are far better than most can ever aspire to. But in any case, you don’t want to paint landscapes. You said so yourself.” He tilted his head and smiled, chiding me gently. “So stop worrying so. Approach them as the exercises they are, and concentrate on your brushstrokes, the play of light.” He gestured to the admittedly lovely panorama around us. “And enjoy the sunshine. You spend far too much time cooped up in your smelly studio.”

I sighed, willing to concede that point. “It
is
easier to breathe out here.”

He laughed outright and I felt a flush of pleasure at the sound. It was deep and husky, and far too rare.

“I imagine so,” he murmured, bending over to pick up my brush. Blades of grass stuck to the paint-smeared tip. “Now,” he said, handing it to me, “study the way the sunlight glistens off that stream and try to re-create it.”

I glanced at the flat blue-gray strip of water depicted on my canvas and nodded.

Will truly had been an excellent teacher. Patient, understanding, and far better at motivating me to do the things I didn’t want to do than anyone had been since I had outgrown the care of my nursemaid.

And now . . . look at what had become of him.

Tears burned the backs of my eyes, their salty bitterness curdling my tongue. I pressed my forehead against the cool glass of the window, knowing it would leave a smudge, but not caring. I needed to feel the shock of cold against my skin. Gritting my teeth, I fought against the sob building inside me. It pressed hard on my chest. If I wept it would do no one any good, least of all Will. But in spite of my struggles, a single tear escaped to etch a trail down my cheek.

I swiped the wetness away angrily, and then turned to slam the flat of my palm against the window casing. It smarted, but I welcomed the pain.

Damn the old Lord Dalmay! How could he do this to his son? What kind of unfeeling bastard locks away his own flesh and blood in such a cesspit and then proceeds to erase him from his life?

And Lady Hollingsworth along with all the other loose tongues here at Dalmay House should be ashamed of themselves. After everything Will had been through—his service during the war, his unjust confinement—he should be given a hero’s welcome, not spoken of in disgust and shunned like some criminal.

My breath sawed in and out of my chest, rasping like a wounded animal, and I was forced to grip the drapes on either side of me and press my face to the cool glass again, trying to slow my racing heart. My breathing calmed, but the tightness in my chest remained, squeezing my breast every time I closed my eyes and saw Will’s haunted face.

If only I could turn back the clock, return to the summer Will acted as my drawing master. Return to the months before he was locked away. Maybe I could convince Lord Dalmay not to fear his son. Or persuade Will to go to his brother in London. Surely there was some way we could have stopped it all from happening. If only I could fix this. If only I could make it right.

I lifted my face from the windowpane, staring out at the shadowy landscape before me dusted with silvery moonlight.

There had to be something I could do. Some way that I could help him get back what he’d lost, to return him to himself, to the man he was before he’d been confined to that asylum. Before all of those years of torment had been inflicted on his still-fragile mind.

Knowing that I still had not beaten my own demons, it seemed somewhat naïve to think I could help Will to defeat his, but it felt even more wrong not at least to try, to offer whatever support or guidance I could. Too many people had turned away from Will—during the years prior to his confinement, when he struggled to escape the exhaustion and melancholia that had followed him home from war, and in the months since his release from Larkspur Retreat. I couldn’t be one of them. Not when I had experienced a similar shunning I was just beginning to fight my way back from.

For all the things Will had done for me that summer as my drawing master and more, he deserved my friendship and my loyalty. To turn my back on him now would be a betrayal. I wasn’t sure I could live with myself if I behaved so callously.

Of course, I didn’t know exactly
what
I could do for him. Despite the years of enforced tutelage by my late husband studying the intimate workings of the human body, I was not medically trained. I had no idea how to treat a man suffering from the manias and melancholia Will endured. But Michael must have consulted a physician—someone with experience with this sort of thing, someone who knew how to care for patients like Will. I could follow their direction.