Father knocked on my door before breakfast, handing the above letter to me and having lost what little color he possessed. Once at the breakfast table, he was irate in a way I’d never seen, hardly touched his eggs, and jumped up as I placed the last of my bread into my mouth.
“I’m going to see her. I don’t like that she’s there alone. All this over a silly portrait.”
The fact was that Mrs. Northe wasn’t there alone. She had staff. But Father suddenly wanted to play the hero, and I tried not to smile at his uncharacteristic concern.
He was on his feet and ready for departure more quickly than I’d seen him move in some time, whereupon I took up Mrs. Northe’s letter and have enclosed it in these pages. I shall keep all evidence I find in this curious case. Someday someone might thank me for it.
Father told me I was to remain at the house while he checked on Mrs. Northe. I shook my head. I hailed a carriage and was seated inside before he was. He stared at me with his usual mixture of sentiment: always impressed by my initiative and always wondering why it never initiated my speech. Alas, I never had an answer to offer him.
I write this en route to Mrs. Northe’s residence, my mind whirling and my stomach in a knot. A dark cloud hangs about this painting and about all those who come across it. Will all of us end up like Crenfall, odd and inept and slave to this beautiful man? Or am I the only slave among us? I cannot get Lord Denbury out of my mind’s eye for a second, even in sleep.
Though I find Denbury a handsome, dashing man, I can only liken his effect to a siren as in the myths of old, meant to lure a hero toward danger. And I’ve arrived at his threshold once more.
Later…
Can you tell from my script how my hand trembles? The painting moved again! And this time I find there’s no other way to interpret the signs. Somehow this painting wants me, wants something of me. It is, in fact, calling to me.
Perhaps by writing down the events, I can achieve some sense of things.
Father and I were shown immediately to Mrs. Northe’s sitting room, where she stood to greet us, looking as charming as ever, if not a bit tired. Her vibrant eyes were ringed by faint dark tinges, as if the event had aged her slightly. It was the first time I’d seen her without Maggie present.
“I’m terribly sorry that you should have had to deal with such a matter as an intrusion. It rattles the soul,” my father said quietly.
“Indeed, Mr. Stewart. But what good cheer to have friends on hand to banish the terrible thoughts from one’s mind.”
We sat and busied ourselves with tea. Father paced a bit before sitting down, his verbal awkwardness as much a handicap as my inability to speak.
I finally signed to Mrs. Northe, asking how she was faring and if there was any word from the police about the wounded intruder.
“Not a thing. It’s as if he vanished into thin air. If you want my opinion, it’s someone Bentrop hired. He’s very angry we’ve made such a public and strong claim on the piece and will resort to trickery to come by it.”
“Is it really so valuable?” my father asked, an eyebrow raised.
I made a face just as Mrs. Northe scoffed.
“Really, Mr. Stewart, you surprise me. You don’t believe its composition, brushstrokes, and essence of life are unparalleled?”
My father nodded and sipped his tea. Clearly he was not as enraptured by the portrait as we were. But that was just as well. He didn’t know it was alive.
“Then why didn’t he simply outbid you if he feels it’s that valuable? Why go to all this trouble and risk a potentially damaging criminal record?” he asked.
“Certain objects, Mr. Stewart, will attract darkness. Something terrible happened around this painting and has imprinted the very fabric of the canvas. Not that the painting itself is to blame, but perhaps what happened to Denbury. Some people love to collect such objects and will use dark means to get them.”
My father couldn’t have looked more skeptical. “I fail to see an imprint, Mrs. Northe.”
“Then, indeed, its dark clouds will hardly be noticed in the grand company of other works at the Metropolitan. Let’s talk numbers, shall we? Natalie, darling, while I realize your new work is in acquisitions, I’ll not trouble you with monetary trivialities. Give us a moment to ourselves, would you?” And she nodded toward the hall. In the direction of the painting.
I nodded, rising slowly and setting down my tea. The truth was that I longed to run from the room and to Denbury. Having him to myself again for a moment was a thrilling prospect.
I moved toward the grandiose staircase where a great purple curtain was hung on the landing with the portrait behind it.
Climbing the stairs seemed to take forever. The gas lamps were trimmed low, and I kept glancing around, afraid the house staff would disturb my moment alone with Denbury, afraid I’d be told to keep back, afraid some sort of trap had been set on the velvet drape.
I tossed caution aside as I slid back the curtain. Seeing him again was every bit as breathtaking as the first time. Would it always be so? The hairs on my neck stood, I blushed, and my breath was short. He was so exquisitely rendered that his presence was truly felt. His luminous eyes set a claim on those who looked at him. The painting had a seductive quality that made the rest of the world drain away. When one looked at Lord Denbury, nothing else existed.
And then I noticed that much like with Mrs. Northe, Denbury’s eyes looked a bit darker, a bit older, and weary. Though he was still devilishly handsome, something had changed about him.
I studied the particulars of the scene. The book The Girl remained jutting out from the shelf.
And then I noticed a new shift. Something else out of place. Different.
On his desk, the pristine blotter bore droplets of ink, and the quill was lying on its side rather than upright in the shaft of the inkwell. Two words seemed to scream up at me from a note that faced my direction on his desk.
Yes, you!
I nearly fainted.
I scrambled backward, my small bustle grazing a potted fern that would have toppled to the floor if the corner of the balustrade had not caught its fall. I tore off my gloves and hastily gathered up the bits of soil that had spilled onto the floor. Perhaps, I thought, when I turn back to the painting, that note will not be there and this whole ordeal will prove to have been a welcome hallucination.
But no.
I looked again at the note and then up at Denbury. I swear to you that he stared back at me. I could just hear his ghost, who had indeed said the portrait was watching me.
My shaking hands closed his curtain again, and I had to hold the railing as I descended the stairs.
Standing outside the sitting-room door, I wanted to slip inside and continue on as if nothing had happened. But intruding would be improper when I had been excused, not to mention that I’d surely appear as though I’d seen a ghost. Because I had, in a way. One of them, at least, was reaching out to me in an unexpected, impossible way. I kept looking around for Denbury’s corporeal ghost, he of the stifling presence and disturbing intent. Thankfully, the darker Denbury did not show himself.
My trembling stride took me into the first lit room I came across a gilt-bedecked room filled with books, the gas-lamp sconces of beveled glass glittering and inviting. It was a room full of heaven. I’d have killed for such a library. Some cases were enclosed in glass and had locks. I was tempted to pull on the knobs to see if Mrs. Northe had indeed locked them. Were precious volumes of all manner of occult things within?
Snatching up a paper closest to me, I found it was a spiritualist tract.
I was fascinated to read about the idea of one’s essence being more, that life was more than simply our mortal coil. I was disappointed that the tract was about the cleanliness of the soul and maintaining a positive presence in the world for the benefit of one’s self and others. There was not a word about communicating with the beyond. Ashamed, I realized that I, like Maggie, was more taken with the sensational aspects of spiritualism. The dead. Séances. Haunted objects.
But if life was more than just a body, something of Lord Denbury’s essence lived on in a canvas and another part was walking somewhere around Manhattan. I liked his painting part a deal better than the other. Like a séance luring out the dead, was there somehow a way to bring his canvas to life?