Reckless in Red

Book 4: Muses' Salon Series

by Rachael Miles

Genres: Family Life; Women's Fiction; Historical Romance

Synopsis

A woman who has made her way in society without family or fortune, Lena is about to realize her first big success as an artist...until her business partner makes off with her money, leaving her with little more than her hopes — and a dead body in her studio. Now Lena is at the mercy of a strikingly handsome stranger demanding answers she dare not reveal....

Is it her seductive eyes or his suspicion that she’s up to no good that has Clive Somerville shadowing Lena’s every move? Either way, his secret investigation for the Home Office has him determined to uncover Lena’s hidden agenda. But the closer he gets to her, the more he longs to be her protector. Is she a victim of circumstance? Or a dark force in a conspiracy that could destroy everything Clive holds dear? Discovering the truth could have dire consequences — not only for Lena but also for his heart.

Release date: October 29, 2019

Publisher: Zebra Books

Print pages: 319

Sample

Winter 1820

“That damned swindler.”

From the office door of Calder and Company, Lena Frost could see the key, left precisely in the middle of the empty desktop. Everything else was gone: Horatio’s inkwell, his penknife, his little toys, even the carved bird he’d been toying with for the last several weeks. She knew what it meant: Horatio had left. For good.

But did he take the money? She snatched up the key as she rounded the desk. Perhaps he’d left it—or at least enough to pay the remaining craftsmen and open the exhibition. Perhaps: the word felt hollow.

Five of the six desk drawers stuck out several inches. Horatio had left in haste. She looked through the drawers, now a jumble. Unused correspondence paper in a variety of sizes. An assortment of bills, paid—because she had paid them—to the end of the quarter. A handful of artist’s crayons, almost used up. She picked up the sanguine pencil, its tip a ruddy red against her hand, then tossed it back into the drawer. Horatio was a talented artist, but his real skill was with words, most of them lies.

Nothing in the drawers was of any importance.

Only the drawer where she kept the money box was still shut. If the money was gone, her only hope would be to keep it quiet until she could open the exhibition. Subscribers had paid in advance to see what everyone was calling the most important art exhibition of the year. If she didn’t open, she’d have to refund their money. If she could make it two more weeks . . .

She hesitated before turning the key, torn between needing to know and dreading the knowledge.

No. Whatever is here—or isn’t—I will face it, as I always have. She turned the key. The drawer opened about four inches, then stuck. Hope bloomed for a moment. Perhaps the money box was still there, wedging the drawer in place, its banknotes and coin all still neatly arranged in divided trays. She pushed the drawer in, then tugged it out. But nothing would make it open wider.

She slid her hand in flat; there wasn’t room to make a fist. Then she inched her fingers forward. She felt nothing but the wooden bottom of the drawer. When she reached the halfway point, her stomach turned sour. The box was gone. But she kept reaching, needing to know the drawer was empty before she let herself sink into the despair already pooling inside her.

At the very back of the drawer, almost past her reach, her fingertips felt the edge of a thick piece of paper. A banknote? Perhaps he had left her enough to open the exhibition? Or at least to pay her rent? Pressing the tips of her fingers against the paper, she dragged it forward and out. The note was folded over twice, and she hesitated a moment, afraid of what it might tell her.

The paper was fine, well made, one of the sheets she used to correspond with wealthy patrons and subscribers. That in itself was strange: Horatio normally wrote on paper with a large watermark of Britannia in the middle of the page. He’d play a game with the ghost image, positioning his salutation so that Britannia would look at the name of the addressee or so that her spear would intersect with his period to make an invisible exclamation at the end of his sentences. Lena had shaken her head at his games, finding it hard to remain angry or frustrated with him. But if he’d endangered the exhibition, she might remain angry with him forever.

Tightening her jaw, she unfolded the page. In the center, Horatio had lettered a single word: “RUN.”

The despair in her stomach turned instantly to an unreasoning fear. Every creak, every groan of the old building sounded like a warning. Run.

She pushed the drawer closed, locked it, and replaced the key in the center of the desktop.

Surveying the room, she tried to imagine where Horatio might have hidden the money box. But, other than the desk, two chairs, and the old engravings stuck with pins to the walls, the room was almost empty. Everything was just as it had been for the last two years, except the money was gone, and Horatio with it.

All he’d left her was the note. She held it out, examining the way Horatio’s R curved oddly beneath the bottom of the U, and the final stroke of the N trailed upward. An extra blotch of ink widened the line slightly before the tip, like the hand of a clock. She held the page up to the light. No watermark, no secret design that played with the letters.

She stood, her arms wrapped around her chest, the note limp in one hand. She’d never expected him to betray her, to leave her with no way out but to run. All her energy, her passion, drained out onto the wooden floor and seeped away between the boards. The exhibition would fail. She would fail. And this time she had nowhere to . . . run. She traced the malformed letters of the note once more, then she crushed it against her palm and shoved it in her pocket.

From the outer office, the hallway door creaked open. When Horatio’d said run, she had no idea he meant so soon. Suddenly afraid, she scanned the room. The inner office door was partly open. The drop from the window to the street was three stories. She had nowhere to hide, and only seconds to make a decision.

Heavy footfalls approached. Though the crew and the ticket seller had left soon after she’d returned, the office door remained open to prospective subscribers until she or Horatio left for the evening. But should the intruder be dangerous, she would have no help. She looked down at her clothes, her best dress and coat worn to meet a publisher who’d agreed to sell engraved prints of the panorama. With only a moment to imagine a plan, she flung herself into a chair before the desk. Her only hope was to pretend to be someone else.

A tall man, strongly built, pushed the door open. Standing in the doorway, he seemed like one of the statues from the Loggia dei Lanzi come to life. And he was beautiful. His clothes caressed his form, revealing powerful shoulders, narrow waist, and firmly muscled thighs. His black hair curled in thick waves like Benvenuto Cellini’s Perseus. In Florence, she’d marveled at the sculptures of the classical gods, their muscles detailed in marble or bronze. But she’d never realized how breathtaking it would be for those ancient heroes to come to life.

He examined the room slowly before he turned his attention to her. And when his eyes met hers, it was both exhilarating—and terrifying.

“Are you Mr. Calder? I wanted to subscribe to the exhibition in your Rotunda.” She kept her tone breathless and a little naive. “I saw a panorama once when I was a child—the Temples of Greece—and I’ve never forgotten it, how you could stand in the middle and feel as if you had been transported to a different place and time.” She spoke quickly, letting her words jumble together in a rush of enthusiasm. “I’m looking forward to seeing your painting. I’ve read all the clues you’ve advertised for deciphering the topic. I think it must be Waterloo. What else could be painted in such a grand scale? How hard must it be to paint all those figures—the horses, the flags, our men marching valiantly into battle? It must be such a glorious scene!”

“Don’t forget the carrion birds and the jackals ripping apart the bodies of the dead.” His voice was stern, but the sound of it resonated down the line of her spine. “Or the bodies broken apart by the cannon or the bayonet.”

“Well, sir!” She rose, feigning offense. “If you treat a prospective subscriber so rudely, I will spend my sixpence elsewhere.” She walked briskly toward the door. When he didn’t move out of her way, she stopped just out of his reach.

He was considering her carefully, examining her clothes and her figure beneath them. Under the focused attention, Lena felt exposed, like a rabbit who’d encountered a hungry hawk.

Refusing to be intimidated, she examined him in turn. His eyes were a cold green, his chin firm. His cravat, tied loosely around his neck, made her wish it was tied even more loosely. Her fingers itched for her sketchbook and pencil. Oh, that he would be just another would-be subscriber! Then—perhaps—she could convince him to sit for her. She pushed the thoughts away. He might be handsome, even devastatingly so, but if he were Horatio’s enemy, he would likely be hers as well.

He remained in the doorway, and his stare intensified. She felt the heat of it along her neck and cheeks. Her stomach twisted, but whether in attraction or fear, she couldn’t be certain. The silence between them grew, and Horatio’s message echoed in her ears: Run.

“Will you at least be a gentleman and remove yourself from the doorway?” She pulled her shoulders back, as she did with suppliers who wished to take their fee from Horatio instead of from her.

For a moment, he looked abashed, as if he hadn’t considered that his behavior was ungentlemanly.

“It appears we both have business with Calder, and we are both disappointed.” He stepped away from the doorway, giving her ample room to escape.

Then, as she passed, he offered her a low bow, as if she were a princess or queen. She felt his stare on her back as she walked purposefully, but not too quickly, to the outer office door. She refused to look back at him, afraid to reveal her fear—or her interest.

When she reached the outer door, she allowed herself one last look at her Greek-god-come-to-life, but he had already moved into the office and out of sight. She stepped into the hall, listening. A subscriber likely wouldn’t wait too long for Horatio to return.

She heard the desk drawers open and close, and papers rustle. Not a subscriber then, and her disappointment felt like a rock in the pit of her belly. She waited another minute, but when she heard him wrestling with the stuck drawer, she finally took Horatio’s advice. She ran.

Hurrying down the two flights of stairs, she found the ticket office door standing open, and she ran through it without stopping. Her fear tasted like metal on her tongue.

In the narrow alleyway leading to Leicester Square, she kept to the deepest of the shadows, grateful that Horatio had refused to paint the building walls a bright, inviting color. “No, my dear”—Horatio had gestured dramatically—“our visitors must walk through the shadow of the towering Rotunda and down our dimly lit hallway. That way, when the door opens into the vast space of the panorama, they will feel as if they have stepped into a different world!”

Ahead of her, crowds of fashionable men and women jostled past. Leicester Square catered to the needs of the wealthy. Those with ready money or easy credit found a range of luxuries: from silks, laces, and furs, corsets and trusses, real ostrich feathers and artificial flowers, to wine, imported carpets, specially made fancy trim for the drawing room, and guns for hunting in the country and duels in the city.

She flung herself gratefully into the crowds. In her best clothes, she looked like one of the less-well-to-do shoppers.

The crush of bodies carried her along into the square. A stream of curricles and coaches pressed slowly forward, windows open, allowing their occupants to see and be seen. To her left, a lone sedan chair lurched slowly down the square, its occupant, an elderly lady in the height of fashion, waving directions with her fan. Lena hid behind it, following until she reached the opposite side of the square, then cutting through until she reached the intersection of Princes Street with Coventry.

There she hesitated. The coaches pushed forward too fast. Usually, she waited patiently for a break in the traffic, thinking of her paints and images. But this time, she inched forward, muscles tensed and ready, as if for the start of a race.

If she could reach her boardinghouse at Golden Square, she would be safe, or safe enough. Her landlady, for all her lace and ribbons, took after the troll in the old Norse story: no one could pass without paying a toll.

She looked over her shoulder, watching for the broad shoulders and the curling hair of her David come alive. How long would it take him to realize her deception and come looking for her? Was he already wending his way behind her, following her steps, as he pushed his way through the crowd?

The crowd concealed her escape, but it also concealed any pursuit.

She waited, tapping one foot unconsciously until the brown-haired street urchin beside her looked up at her speculatively. She was attracting attention. She needed to move, but to where?

She knew this part of London well. The side streets, the alleys, the apparent dead ends. She even knew which cemeteries she could cut through and not end up a corpse herself. But all her options required her to cross this street—or return the way she had come.

She looked over her shoulder again. Horatio’s boardinghouse was nearby on Gerrard Street. Perhaps he would be there, nursing his sorrows in a bottle of gin, hoping to avoid admitting that he’d taken the money to appease this or that gambling debt—or spent it entertaining one of the craftsmen who applied to work on the Rotunda. He had to be in distress, or he wouldn’t have taken the money, not when he knew how much it was needed to open the panorama.

If Horatio were in residence, the doorman would let her into the drawing room. The house was filled with male artists and often with their female models, so, once inside, no one would notice if she slipped up the stairs, and if they did, no one would care. She’d often had to come drag Horatio to this or that meeting. He wanted to be famous—Horatio Calder, impresario of the Rotunda—and she’d made him earn the name. But what if Horatio wasn’t home? What if he were hiding out somewhere from whatever danger he thought he should warn her about? Then she would be left standing on his porch, visible to any who were searching for him.

No, her rooms were best. She clenched her hands and watched the traffic. A nearby man hailed an approaching hackney. It slowed to collect him, and she took her chance, weaving her way between coaches, carts, and wagons until she reached the opposite side. She followed the streets almost mechanically, and at each street she checked behind her, praying she had escaped.

At her boardinghouse, she would slip through the basement door and up the back staircase, trying to avoid her landlady, Mrs. Abbott, who would expect next week’s rent. Once in her rooms, she would lock her door, stoke a small fire, drink a cup of tea, and wait until morning. Then she would return to the Rotunda, give the men their day’s directions, and plan how she might still open the exhibition without any funds.

It was strange to long for the safety of her rooms when for months she’d wanted other lodgings. When she’d leased the Rotunda, she’d planned to live in one of the empty rooms above the ticket office, but Horatio had objected strongly. “It’s not seemly, Lena-girl. You living there, and all those men in and out of the building. If rumors were to circulate, we’d lose our subscribers in a flash.” Horatio had snapped his fingers, then smiled, knowing nothing mattered more to her than the exhibition.

With each street, each turn, she made it closer to home. She kept to the middle of the crowds, letting the pace carry her along. When one group of pedestrians thinned, she rushed forward to the next, her progress measured in the fits and starts of a hundred shoppers and vendors.

Eventually she turned north, away from the safety of the crowds at Piccadilly and Haymarket. The streets narrowed, sporting less fashionable but more useful shops. She could map her progress down the streets by how each shop smelled. Ink and paper led to saddle leather, and burnished wood to varnish, until she reached the end of Great Windmill Street where the hint of stale blood signaled the surgeon, and sweet rushes and rosemary, the undertaker. At night, when the gaslights were dim, she often traveled the last blocks more by her nose than by her sight. She checked off the streets on her mental map, feeling safer with each block she passed, until she reached the chemical smells of Silver Street, with its soap makers, haberdashers, wood and furniture dealers.

When the thick, earthy fragrance of chocolate met her at the northwest corner of Golden Square, she was almost home. The grocer there—a jovial Mr. Krause—had expanded his business to include a chocolate shop. Just one more street, and she’d be safe in her rooms.

Safe.

She stopped short. The crowd pushed and jostled her before splitting on either side, as if she were a rock in a stream. When she’d hurried out of the Rotunda, she hadn’t been thinking about a plan or the implications of Horatio’s note. She’d simply run, as Horatio had instructed. But he likely didn’t mean to her boarding house.

Stepping into the doorway of Krause’s shop, she scanned the crowd. Surely, her intruder hadn’t followed her so far? Needing to think—and hide—she stepped into the shop itself, never taking her eyes off the road. From inside the shop, the proprietor, Mrs. Krause, a ruddy German woman with bright eyes, called her name and motioned her to find a seat. Lena complied. She chose a single seat in the back corner against the wall. From there, she could watch the door and the street, and if the need arose, she could escape through the kitchen into the alley.

A few moments later, Mrs. Krause delivered a cup of steaming chocolate. “Ah, Miss Lena, we haven’t seen you at all this week! When Mr. Calder traded Herr Krause tickets to your grand gala in exchange for a weekly cup of chocolate, I thought it was a bad trade. But my Pieter has been practicing his waltz for weeks. He comes into a room and dances with me like the old times. And that, my dear, is worth everything. We are going to be the best dancers at your opening, you will see!”

Lena forced a smile. Mrs. Krause was kind, but her shop was well frequented. One careless word about Lena’s predicament, and the rumors would spread across fashionable London within hours. Krause patted Lena on the back as she left to serve other customers, and Lena wrapped her fingers around the warmth of the chocolate cup.

She took a sip. Normally she would close her eyes and focus on the thick, warm silk of the chocolate. But not today. Though the chocolate felt soothing and warm, she wondered how much it would cost to repay the Krauses for six months of it. The gala had been Horatio’s pet idea: an exclusive party for London’s monied classes held the night before the exhibition opened, with dancing on the observation platform—and a ticket price at quadruple the regular admission. “Have no worries, Lena dearie,” he’d promised. “I will take care of every detail.” At first he had told her all his mad ideas to make the exhibition a success, from the musicians playing martial tunes from beneath the stage to the children dressed as banner bearers, who would guide the visitors down the darkened hallway to the panorama itself. But lately Horatio had been uncharacteristically silent. She’d imagined he was working on the gala and his other schemes to promote the exhibition. But what if it had been something else? What if he hadn’t been working on the gala at all? Despair pooled into a hard ball at the base of her stomach. Not only was the panorama itself unfinished, but she had no idea what remained to be done on the gala.

Her heart pulsed hard against her ribs. She was afraid, and more so for not knowing why. Certainly, Horatio was a rascal—some might even call him a scoundrel—but he wasn’t an alarmist. If anything, Horatio underestimated risks, always finding room for a bit more mischief before he finally abandoned a scheme. But for all his tricks and games, he would never intentionally endanger her or her work. Or would he?

And why now, of all times, just two weeks before the grand gala and the opening of the exhibition? Three years’ work, too much to lose all because of one of Horatio’s foolish schemes. She closed her eyes. If she gave the panorama up now, she’d be worse off than when she’d first arrived back in London after a decade abroad. Then, at least, she had hope and confidence and a bit of money in her pocket. No. If she left now, the panorama would fail, and her with it. She would have to reinvent herself again. The very thought of it made her almost weak with despair.

For the first time in months, she wished she had never left France. She’d survived the war years by hiding her nationality, transforming the solid Englishness of her surname into the gliding French givre. Lena Le Givre. Lena Frost. She could still see her mentor, Vigee Le Brun, at her easel, laughing, when she’d announced the name she’d chosen.

“But ma chère, le givre is cold, so cold. In changing one’s name, one should make a grand statement. Lena d’Or! Lena d’Argent! What man could resist a woman of gold or silver? Or perhaps you should choose a color—I am Le Brun, the brown. Look here: you could be L’Ecar-late!” Vigee had pointed to a rich red, almost scarlet, that she’d just applied to the canvas. “It matches the warmth of your spirit, the generosity of your affections. Lena L’Ecarlate!”

Her mentor’s patron, an Austrian count who had lived in England and understood better the nuances of the language, had shaken his head. “Oh, no, my dear, our Lena is too young to be a scarlet woman.” So Lena Le Givre it was. After the success of her first salon exhibition in Paris, Lena Le Givre had become a rising star, a portrait painter capable of competing with her mentor’s own skill. Her commissions had been steady, and she had begun to build a life in France.

Lena drank another deep draught, her mind returning—without wanting to—to the reasons she’d left France.

For the war years, she’d hidden in plain sight, believed to be French, except by her closest circle. Then the empire fell. Almost overnight, the climate changed. Hundreds of French monarchists that Napoleon’s edicts had forced to remain in England flooded home, and the English occupation forces, once welcomed, now found themselves hissed and booed all the way to the docks by the resentful lower classes. Soon the backlash extended even to those like her who had lived in France since childhood.

With every new report of hostility or of property seized, she’d begun to plan for the day that she too might need to leave. She’d quietly gathered letters of introduction from her dearest friends among the European aristocrats, gaining some commissions from minor English aristocrats before she’d ever left France. She’d purchased an open ticket for the English packet and sewn her jewels and money into her clothes. She even stored several trunks of her possessions in a friend’s attic. Even so, when the tide had turned against her, she’d still been caught off-guard. She’d barely had enough time to escape by the night packet, with one lone trunk and a basket of artist supplies, believing, from the number of her advance commissions, that she was already on her way to a career at least as successful as the one she was leaving behind.

Classically trained, she was adept in a variety of methods and genres. But after her first flush of success, she found that the English were not as open to talented women as the French, and she lost commission after commission to less talented men. Her only inroads were among the gentry and wealthy merchants. The most lucrative commissions with the bon ton remained outside her grasp.

Lena had soon decided to cast her fate on more popular tastes. And nothing—except perhaps the re-creations of Admiral Nelson’s naval battles at the water theater at Sadler’s Wells—excited the general population more than a monumental painting of a historical scene. Such works always garnered the greatest critical attention, receiving the loudest accolades at exhibitions and in galleries. In a gallery, a monumental painting might fill only a wall or ceiling. Panoramas took that scale and expanded it tenfold, with the circular painting standing as high as a building.

Lena had told the truth when she’d confessed to her handsome burglar that she’d fallen in love with panoramas—she had seen her first in London, a depiction of the classical world, with all the architecture and temples re-created intact and the statuary in color as the ancients would have painted them. When her childhood world ended abruptly, she had spent her last penny to take refuge there, and instead of ending, her world had expanded. She’d met Vigee Le Brun, an internationally famous portrait painter, who, estranged from her own daughter, had taken Lena as her pupil. Under Le Brun, she learned how to master the little details that could transform a canvas: the delicacy of lace lying along a wrist, the gentle taper of slender fingers, the fire in a jewel or in an eye.

After three years, her panorama was almost ready to meet the world. When she closed her eyes, she could see it all: the rounded walls of the panorama, the stage that jutted into the center where the viewers would stand, and the middle space between the canvas and the stage filled with objects that would make the viewers feel part of the scene.

She watched the painting take shape again in her memory. On the primed white of the empty canvas, she and Horatio had sketched charcoal outlines for the shapes of the background, then landscape and perspective painters had provided the broad sweeps of the background: the valley battlefield, the hills beyond, the sky gray and brooding. Then tents, wagons, and artillery had transformed that natural landscape into a human one, where hundreds of men stood in battle formation. The animal painters had filled in the camp animals—horses, nostrils flaring at the smoke and noise, mules, oxen, chickens, and geese—alongside the animals brought by instinct to the battle—vultures, crows, ravens, and eagles, foxes, and jackals. Lena, however, had merged the sensibility of a portrait painter to the requirements of a giant story. Though she’d hired dozens of painters, she’d kept the panorama from becoming a hodgepodge of various techniques by requiring all the craftsmen to adopt a common style.

In the last month, portrait painters had given distinctive faces to each enlisted man, minor officer, and woman. But for the faces of the major officers—on all sides—she’d wanted to be accurate, so they had taken the faces from printed engravings, other paintings, or personal knowledge.

When some of their painters had disappeared, one after another, in the space of a week, Horatio had promised to finish the dozen or so faces that remained. But whether he had completed them or not, she wasn’t sure.

It had been painstaking, exhausting, exhilarating work. And for what? If she abandoned the panorama now, she would have no way to repay the subscribers. Though she could hide behind H. B. Calder and Company and say that the failure was all Horatio’s, she’d still bear the blame. She, not Horatio, had written letters to the members of the aristocracy to explain their project, visiting their drawing rooms and collecting their money. She, not Horatio, had negotiated with booksellers to carry engravings of the giant painting, and in recent weeks, she, not Horatio, had ordered and paid for all their supplies. No, she might blame the invisible Horatio, but everyone knew her face. She would have no future as a painter in England, just as she no longer had one in France. And worse yet, where would she run? Even in India or New England, the failure could follow her. She forced the thoughts away, feeling the hard pulse of her blood. She wanted to hide or run, and she couldn’t do either.

I will not be afraid. I will not be afraid. She repeated the sentence to herself.

She forced her mind away from the thoughts, pressing the warmth of the mug against her lips. She concentrated on the rich, thick flavor, forcing her mind to what remained to be done at the Rotunda.

If Horatio’s faces were finished, she could remove the scaffolding and begin filling the area between the painting and the observers with the sort of things one would find on the battlefield—wagons, artillery, clothing, tents, even a cannon Horatio had rented for the purpose. That middle space would give viewers the illusion that they were on a battlefield and give the right perspective to the painting itself. She felt the tightness in her chest return. Without the objects filling the middle ground, the illusion that the painting was a real scene would be lost. But how would she pay?

She set the cup down, but too sharply, and it clattered against the saucer. The coffee-shop patrons looked at her. Careful. Careful. Don’t attract attention. She forced an apologetic smile, and they looked away.

She made herself breathe slowly, pulling the air deep into her stomach. At least . . .