“Empty. Yet battle will do that to a man, I’m sure. Their captain is Miles Firth, the new Earl of Stonewold. He’s resigned his commission and is returning home.”
“How did she paint this? Was she there?” Evelyn could scarcely imagine such a fragile lady stomping through battlefields with charcoal in hand.
“I believe she questions foot soldiers in the hospitals. Asks them to reminisce, if they will, and sketches their experiences. Later she conveys it to oil. She signs herself merely as ‘The Witness’.”
“’Tis a moving tribute to the men that survived…and those who did not.”
Silence fell. And not a comfortable one.
The clock ticked and her gown rustled.
Her gaze swung from wall sconce to battlescape, from desk to opulent rug.
Swallowing heavily, she wheeled away, only to be confronted by the twoFallenpaintings, now side by side on the study wall.
Oh, how very foolish she’d been. Maisie appeared as an erotic blunder to her father’s delicate rendering. Both beautiful but worlds apart.
Spinning again, she found herself facing the duke.
Hemmed in on all sides by her own deceit.
“The doctor…” Evelyn inhaled, only to fill her senses with clove cologne, its scent spicy and rousing. She exhaled and steeled her spine. “The doctor recommends Artemisia have bed rest for a sennight. I… I do not know how long you were planning on keeping us here, but I would ask…”
She faltered. Could one ask one’s kidnapper to accommodate oneself for another week?
“Lord Helmdon did inform me of your sister’s condition.”
“Who?”
“Ah, he would have introduced himself as Dr Mainwaring but he’s also an earl.”
So unusual.
“I thought work an anathema to the aristocracy?” She arched a brow.
He arched one back. “And I thought prejudice was merely confined to that same aristocracy. But Helmdon is not of the norm. Some years ago, Ernest fell from his stallion and injured a leg. When it became infected, our doctor wished to remove it but I hunted an alternative opinion.”
“Your brother has no limp.”
“Lord Helmdon is the best.”
It should have cheered her, to have such a fine doctor care for Artemisia, but the noose of debt instead tightened further. She had nothing but the patched clothes on her back and they weighed so very heavy.
“I have no money to repay. And the doctor wishes her to–”
“Do you imagine I will toss you both onto the streets, Evelyn?”
Not the streets, no, but…
“Your reputation is not of a kindly man.” She paced, tired and fraught, throat tightening in despair, her only means of escape, of a future, being either to peddle that forged painting hanging on the wall or to sell her soul to the devil, stealing and whoring. Moreover, each day she ate and drank on the duke’s largesse, no longer scrabbling for air above the tide of debt but sinking further into its expanse. “And I have found nobles to have little knowledge of the real world. Of the hunger and toil and–”
He abruptly straightened and Evelyn took a step back.
That convivial demeanour had given way to gritted jaw and incensed eyes, fists curled as he stalked over.
“You may be correct on some counts, Evelyn,” he growled. “Because no, I have not starved on the streets or endured the slums but do not lecture me ontoil.” He stood rigid and tall, one small step from her. “I havetoiledwithout sleep to put roofs over my tenants’ heads. I’ve fought the House of Lords for reform and have dug interminable ditches on my own estate because no man would work for me, not trusting a Rothwell’s word of payment.”
Oh. And she stepped back once more, legs meeting the chaise. “I…”
