Page 6 of The Lady Makes Her Mark

He held them up, regarding her through the cracked lens, trying to imagine them on her nose, how they might change the look of her face. He raised and lowered them twice, three times, before realizing that the spectacles did not distort his view of her in any way. The glass was—he fetched a book from a nearby crate and studied the print through it to be sure—why, the glass was clear!

Carefully, he laid the spectacles aside, puzzling over why any young lady, especially a reasonably pretty one, would wear them if they weren’t needed, and turned his attention to the next item: a battered carpet valise, which did not look to him as if it had been in the finest shape before the accident. It bore all the hallmarks—scuffed corners, worn handles, a fraying seam—of a bag that had traveled many, many miles. Reluctantly, he withdrew its contents: two dresses, of much the same quality as the one she wore, or as he imagined it had been when she had donned it that morning; undergarments, unharmed but wrinkled, and nothing a man with seven sisters hadn’t seen dangling from the washing line or draped haphazardly over a clothes press; and another, somewhat less practical, pair of shoes.

Thinking the bag empty, he moved to lay it aside. But it weighed more than an empty bag ought. Upon further investigation, he found a small compartment beneath what had seemed to be the valise’s bottom. In it were tucked a letter, obviously old and often read, and a rectangular leather case, like the sort that contained a small picture.

He hesitated over them. These two items were things she had obviously wanted to keep secret, given that they had been hidden. He didn’t like to pry. But until the young lady woke, which he was beginning to doubt she would ever do, he had no other means of discovering anything about her situation or her history.

He opened the letter enough to discover that the salutation had been torn off—a fact that only increased his interest.

He glanced down the page, as if reading quickly lessened the intrusion on her privacy. A letter of parting, full of the sort of regretful effusions that might have some meaning to the person to whom they were addressed, but which told him little enough. A feminine hand, he thought, the ink faded with age. The letter broke off in mid-sentence, as if a second page had gone missing. Nothing to identify either the sender or the recipient, not even a date. Nothing at all to help him in his quest to identify the young woman.

He folded the letter again and set it aside.

Could the picture prove more helpful? With his thumb, he flicked open the clasp on the case to reveal a portrait of a young woman with red-gold hair tumbling over her shoulders. Not a painting of the young woman lying in a similar posture on the sofa opposite, though there was a resemblance.

Enough of a resemblance that a blush heated his cheeks.

The portrait was a nude. Skillfully done—artistic, one felt obligated to say. Though from the way the brushstrokes caressed the woman’s curves, Alistair had a hunch the artist had not been entirely free from lascivious interest in his subject.

He closed the case and laid it near the letter and the useless spectacles.

That left the pile of kindling—which had once been a box, he determined upon further investigation, now spattered with ink. Ruined paintbrushes and glass shards and broken ends of pencils stuck out from the wreckage at odd angles. Evidently it had been a case for art supplies.

So, the mystery woman was an artist?

“Better and better . . .” he muttered beneath his breath.

He moved pieces out of the way until he came to a stack of partially finished sketches, the uppermost rendered illegible by spilled ink. The next sheet, protected by the first, bore the outline of a pen-and-ink sketch in a style he had seen before. A cartoon, really. A caricature of the fashionable set, contemptuous of their clothing, their conversation.

Just left of center in the scene stood a dark-haired gentleman with a dour expression, ill-suited to the occasion. He looked very familiar indeed, as well he should—Alistair faced him in the mirror over his washstand every morning.

Where and when the artist had seen him in anything resembling such a situation or such a pose, he couldn’t guess. But now he knew when and where he had seen her.

He peered over the top of the paper at the figure beyond, sleeping, perhaps never to wake.

“Miss C.,” he murmured. “We meet again.”