Page 52 of The Lady Makes Her Mark

They walked through what must have been anterooms to the chapel proper. Offices, perhaps, or the sacristy. Here and there, fallen stones had tumbled into the pathway or crumbled almost into dust. When they reached yet another staircase, spiral and narrow, he led the way up.

It opened onto a large square room whose original purpose she could not begin to divine. Large windows, their glazing mostly intact, overlooked the grounds to the west and the north, an awe-inspiring expanse of wilderness. But it was not that which took her breath.

All around the room stood canvases, some half-finished, others blank. Some leaned against whitewashed walls grown dingy with age, while others stood propped on easels or lay across a large table. In one corner sat a glass-front cabinet filled with bottles she instinctively knew contained pigments. In another corner she spied a collection of cloth-covered bundles tied with twine, dozens of rectangles and ovals of varying sizes—shapes that bore all the hallmarks of Rylemoor Abbey’s missing artwork.

“I don’t—” she began, but stopped herself. For the next word would have been a lie. She did understand.

“My father’s studio,” he said, looking at her and not the room. “Will it suit?”

There had been hints, of course. She would not have been at all surprised to learn that his father dabbled in art, a pastime of which Alistair clearly disapproved. Harriet’s gift had come from somewhere, after all. But this . . .

She spun slowly in a circle, trying to take it all in. This wasn’t dabbling.

“Yes,” she answered quietly. “If you’re sure.”

“Of course,” he said, though his face could hardly have been less so. “Meet me here tomorrow at two, then, and we’ll begin.”

“How will I get in?” she asked, thinking of the padlocked door and wondering whether the intent had been to keep others locked out or keep the memory of his father locked in.

He reached for her hand and pressed the key into her palm. The metal was warm from his touch. “Take this. I have another.”

Then he turned to go, obviously intending to leave her to look around the space and assess its contents. She had taken only a step or two toward the cabinet when he reappeared in the doorway. “What shall I wear for my portrait?”

She thought of how his battered greatcoat coat set off the breadth of his shoulders, and the way he’d looked when rain had dampened his hair and made it curl. Swallowing past a sudden sharpness in her throat, she said, “Something that you believe will show you to advantage for your future bride.”

Again that unnameable emotion flashed in his dark eyes, but he nodded and left without another word.

In the center of the room sat a chaise longue covered in worn rust-colored velvet, its scalloped arm framed in gilded wood. She made her way across the floor and sank onto it, no longer convinced her knees would hold her. A small cloud of dust rose from the fabric. She tasted its bitterness on her tongue and wondered how long her mouth had been gaping. A shaft of late-afternoon sunlight pierced the omnipresent clouds, making the dust motes sparkle and transforming the chaise to a chariot of flame.

The artist in her felt as if the gates of heaven had just been thrown wide. In her wildest dreams she could not have imagined an opportunity to work in a studio like this, and certainly not here.

But when she recalled the anguish in Alistair’s dark eyes and considered how the late earl might have contributed to the present state of affairs at Rylemoor Abbey, she wondered whether he hadn’t instead opened the portal to his personal hell.

Either way, what might it mean that he had chosen to do such a thing for her?