The Wild Wellingham Brothers. Sophia James
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whole and good and true. It was not so hard here to imagine cousins or a beautiful mother who had not deserted her.
‘Liam is about your age, then?’ Lucy’s query was strongly voiced. Of all the Carisbrooks she was the most inquisitive.
‘No, he is a little older,’ she replied evasively, trying to remember the exact number of offspring she had invented for her fictitious cousin. Would ‘a little older’ render such children possible? Had she said four?
‘And did he like to read, Lady Emma?’ Lucy continued.
‘Like to read?’ Danger spiralled.
‘I think my sister is referring to the books in your aunt’s drawing room.’ When Lucy smiled and nodded, interest sharpened in his eyes. ‘Miriam does not strike me as a scholar of Arabic philosophy.’
‘And you think that I would be?’ She forced a laugh and was rewarded with a frisson of uncertainty. ‘Indeed, your Grace, the books were my father’s.’
‘Ahh, yes of course. The devout and invalided scholar?’
Emerald wondered at the edge of disbelief she could plainly hear and was relieved when Lucinda again garnered her attention.
‘I should like to sketch you while you are here, if I may, Lady Emma.’
Emerald looked up sharply. Was she jesting? Dangerous ground this. She didn’t know quite how to answer. How easy would it be for Lucy to fathom the memory of Liam Kingston in her face? ‘Are there many of your works here at Falder?’
‘That one is mine.’ Her hand pointed to a large watercolour above the fireplace depicting the castle and Emerald caught her breath.
‘You have a considerable talent. Do you sell them?’
‘No, but I gave Jack Henshaw one once as a gift and Saul Beauchamp. Asher’s friends,’ she clarified as Emerald looked puzzled. ‘I have not mustered up the courage to show them further, but if you would like a look at some other portraits I have done I would be more than pleased to show you.’
Portraits? Of her brother, perhaps? Emerald felt a rising interest until she saw the dark anger that coated Asher Wellingham’s eyes.
She was pleased when the servants began to clear away the plates and the women were able to repair to the smaller salon.
Taris sat against the window and placed his hand on the cold hard surface of the glass. From where he stood, Asher could see the outline of mist that surrounded his print. He wondered just how much of it Taris could also see. Today he had tripped over a stool in the study. A year ago he would have walked straight around it.
‘Emma Seaton is not as she seems.’
Asher stiffened and waited for clarification.
‘No, she is stronger than she pretends to be. Much stronger.’ He paused for a moment before continuing. ‘Describe her for me, Asher. What does she look like?’
‘Her eyes are the colour of the sea, she has the shortest hair I have ever seen on a woman and she never removes her gloves.’
‘Why not?’
‘God knows why, for I certainly don’t.’
Taris began to smile. ‘And her face?’
‘You could see nothing of her?’
‘I could hear that she is beautiful.’
‘That she is.’
Taris’s sudden laughter unnerved him. ‘And when was the last time you thought a woman beautiful?’
As Asher walked away from a discussion he did not want, he fingered the sapphire ring he wore on his little finger and cursed his brother.
Emerald dressed in black trousers and a jacket, stuffing a candle and tinder box into its deep pockets. It was already after three and the last sounds of people moving had been well over an hour ago.
She had memorised the layout of the rooms that she had been in, but was glad for a full moon. The light slanted against her as the curtain opened and she stepped out on to the balcony.
Night time.
She had always loved the darkness, even as a child, and here the sounds of the countryside after the stuffiness of London were welcomed. Shimmying down the ivy that hung from the latticed balcony, she crept around the edges of the lawn, careful to walk where the vegetation overlaid the grass so her footprints would not show. At the wide door that accessed the library from the garden she paused and drew out a piece of wire. Slotting it into the lock, she was glad to hear the mechanism turn and the portal spring open.
One minute at most.
Letting herself into the room, she stood against the velvet curtain and waited until her eyes had become accustomed to the darkness before lighting the candle.
Bookcase upon bookcase greeted her, the leather-bound copies of a thousand volumes lending the musky scent of learning to the air. Her fingers ran across the embossed titles closest to her: Milton, Shakespeare, Webster, Donne and Johnson. A library that embraced great authors and their ideas. She wondered which of the Carisbrooks was the reader and guessed it to be Asher, the thought making her smile.
A low shelf to one side of the room caught her attention. Rolls of paper were stacked against a cupboard and behind them there was an alcove containing other things. Umbrellas, parasols and walking sticks.
Her heart began to hammer. Could it be this easy? She held her breath as she sorted through the objects. A stick of ebony, another of some fragrant wood and a third handmade, using the shiny limbs of birch. Her father’s cane with the map inside it was not among them. Neither was it in the next room nor the next one.
Some time later she knew that she would be pressing her luck to keep searching. Already she had heard the stirrings of the servants in the kitchens and knew very soon other maids would come to set the fires or draw the curtains. Creeping out of the room she was in, she found herself in a smaller salon with a row of windows gracing one wall—it was then that she saw it.
The first light of pale dawn slanted across a portrait. A portrait of the Duke of Carisbrook and a woman. Her Grace, Melanie, the Duchess of Carisbrook, the title written beneath it said, and she was beautiful.
Melanie. As in the ship that was ready to launch in London? Asher’s wife? A red-haired beauty with eyes the colour of midnight. Emerald could not keep from studying the face.
What had happened to her? Where was she? The date on the painting was from ten years ago and she would have been merely the age that Emerald was now. Who could she ask? Lucinda, perhaps. Quietly, of course. She ran her fingers across the thick swirl of paint that made up a brocade skirt and looked again at the painting. Asher Wellingham’s hair was short and he was young. As young as his wife and in love. She could see it in the light of his eyes and in the way his hand curled around hers, holding them together in an eternal embrace.
And the ring that Melanie Wellingham sported on her marriage finger was the same ring that Asher Wellingham now wore on his little finger.
An unexpected noise to one end of the room had her turning and she left the house with only the slightest of whispers.
Asher stood against the door to the small salon and watched Emma Seaton blow out her candle and slide through the opened window with all the expertise and finesse of a consummate thief. Hardly a noise, barely a footprint. He had thought her an intruder at first until the light from the flame had thrown her high cheekbones into relief.
What the hell was she doing here? He walked across to stand where she had just been, in front of the picture above the mantel, and his heart wrenched with sadness.
The wedding