Sarah assumed it would be impossible for her to be alone with Theo long enough to drive to Woodforde and back before someone missed her. But he was both a lord and a secret agent, and he exploited resources she didn’t imagine.
Only a day after the party, Jem found an excuse to speak privately with his temporary employer. He explained that Sarah should rise very early on Thursday and wait by the mews behind her home, keeping in mind to dress for the cold and have everything she might need in her reticule for the whole day.
“A carriage will come for you then, ma’am.”
“You’re not driving?” she asked, puzzled.
“No. I’ve another task. Lord Markham has arranged it so that you’ll seem to be at the Wolvertons in the morning, at the behest of Miss Bryony. Anyone inquiring about you there will be told you’ll return as soon as Miss Bryony can let you go. In the afternoon, someone will cover for you at the Athenaeum—don’t ask who. Either way, we’ve got a plan to make it seem that any caller insisting on seeing you will have just missed you. With luck, no one will notice, but your whereabouts shouldn’t be questioned until well after dinner, by which time you’ll be back at home with no one the wiser.”
“How can anyone manage that?”
“It does become easier when one has money and a number of morally questionable folks to press into service.” The way Jem grinned made it clear he was looking forward to whatever part he was to play.
Sarah promised to follow instructions, and the next morning, she was waiting exactly as she’d been told. Theo pulled up in a two seater he drove himself. “Get in,” he said. He was dressed in a nondescript, dark greatcoat. A hat concealed most of his face. He could have been anybody.
They drove to Woodforde. Theo made sure Sarah was well tucked in against the cold, and kept as fast a pace as he dared, considering the frozen roads and tracks.
Sarah watched the trees go by, feeling the winter landscape was a dream. With Theo beside her, she felt perfectly safe…and also dangerously out of her depth. She had agreed to come because she knew the information had to be there. Charlie always had to be smarter than everyone else. His hiding place would be devious. How could it be anything else?
Woodforde was called a hunting lodge, but it had been part of the Wolverton family’s property for so many generations that it was relatively close to the outward-creeping suburbs of London. No longer used for its original purpose, it had been converted into a retreat. Charlie claimed it shortly after he joined the Zodiac, and since then, the place had effectively been his own.
“You never saw the place?” Theo asked, as they drove through the frosted morning.
“No. Charlie spoke of it often. I knew he spent time there. He said he wanted to show me the place, but that until we were married, it would not be…ah, proper.” She checked her words. Theo was doing precisely the thing even Charlie would not.
Theo heard her, and gave her a look. “Are you worried?”
“I trust you,” Sarah said.
He laughed, a short, rather dark sound. “How reassuring. I hope I’m worth your trust.”
When they reached Woodforde, Theo secured the horses and headed directly to the front door. “Come on,” he said. “You should get inside where it’s warmer.”
“What if there are people here?” she asked, suddenly worried about being seen.
He shook his head. “Nothing to worry about. I grilled Georgia—subtly, of course. Woodforde never had a live-in servant. Charlie was too secretive for that, not to mention it’s quite small. There’s a caretaker who keeps an eye on the property, but he lives in the village, and makes his rounds here only after he attends church on Sundays. We’re quite safe.”
He opened the door with an ill-gotten key, and motioned Sarah in. “Can you get a fire going? I have to see to the horses.”
She nodded. A fire was quick enough to start. The whole place felt as if it was just waiting for the owner to return. Even after nearly half a year, it didn’t feel abandoned at all. If Sarah were superstitious, she might have expected Charlie’s ghost to appear.
“Not that you’ve ever stopped haunting me,” she whispered to the air.
She briefly explored the place, which was small by aristocratic standards, even for a retreat. The ground floor consisted of a main room dominated by a fireplace on the far wall, with a small kitchen and what looked to be a storage room or servants’ quarters off to the side. A staircase above the main entrance led up to a floor containing a few smaller rooms, two of which were bedrooms. Though it was sunny outside, the curtains of these rooms were drawn tightly, making the spaces dark as night. Sarah hurried back downstairs, glad that they would not be there long enough to see how the place looked when night truly fell.
Once the fire started to warm the main room, Sarah was able to look around. Art surrounded her. Dozens on dozens of pieces were hung up on the two long walls of the great room, covering nearly all the surfaces that weren’t windows. There was no order, no style, no sense of purpose. Medieval saints, renaissance princesses, and modern day landscapes competed for attention. She walked slowly around the main room, trying to match the names she’d uncovered to the images she saw. Some were labeled on the frame. Others were not.
Theo came in from the cold then, stamping his feet. He saw the walls and peered around in awed horror. “It’s hideous.”
“I have to agree,” she said. “What was he thinking? If someone saw this place, they’d know he didn’t care about the art.”
“You truly think it’s the key.”
“How can you doubt it?” Sarah said. “Charlie wasn’t collecting art because he liked it, or even as an investment. He used it to hide his real investment—the stolen documents.” It was a clever plan. Who looks at a portrait on the wall and thinks there’s anything behind the painting?
Theo nodded. “Then let’s get a closer look, shall we?”
He stood on a chair to pull down a lower hanging piece Sarah pointed out, then laid it face-down on a table he had covered with a cloth. “I don’t want to harm the art,” he explained. “Or let anyone else guess what we’ve done.”
He looked at the back of the piece, and made a disappointed sound. “There’s nothing behind it.”
Sarah stepped closer. “There must be. The notebook mentions this piece specifically.” She leaned over the painting, looking carefully at the back of the canvas, which was utterly blank. Nothing had been fastened to it. She ran her fingers over the canvas, hoping to sense something her eyes missed. Then she propped up the piece to peer at the art, the back of the canvas, the frame itself. Was there a hidden compartment? Some message hidden in the paint?
“Even if it’s not here now, it must have been here once. But no pins, no pocket, no cuts…just nothing,” she said in frustration.
Theo frowned. “It doesn’t make sense, does it? Why bother to mention the painting in code if there’s nothing there to find?”
“I don’t know,” Sarah responded, her irritation rising. She had been so certain.
Theo noticed her reaction. “It’s only one painting. I’ll take another down. Maybe he meant to put something here but didn’t have time.”
She looked over the relevant pages, then pointed up higher on the wall. “Take down that one, with the lady in the silver dress. It’s listed too.”
Theo scrambled up to loosen the picture from the wall, and soon the empty hook swung from the wire.
He laid it down carefully, the painting side face-down on the table. But there was nothing on the back there, either. Only the same clean, blank canvas.
“Oh, no,” Sarah said, feeling a lurch in the pit of her stomach. “I misinterpreted the code!”
“Don’t panic, sweetheart.” Theo bent to examine the piece. “There must be something here.”
Anticipating work ahead, he shrugged out of his jacket and laid it across a chair. He turned his attention back to the painting, and so he didn’t notice when the jacket slid to the floor.
Sarah stooped to pick it up. As she did, one of Charlie’s notebooks fell from an inner pocket. She laid the coat aside, and flipped through the notebook, wondering which one Theo felt the need to bring along.
After only the first page, she knew it wasn’t a book she’d seen before. A quick glance at the date showed it was the one Theo once said was missing. Clearly, it wasn’t. So why hide it from her?
By that point, she had mastered Charlie’s various codes so well that she could translate the words in her head. Sarah read silently as Theo continued to examine the painting, not noticing her distraction.
Bedded S today…
The words took a moment to filter into her brain. So Charlie did write about her. He wrote about seducing her. Humiliation washed over Sarah, followed quickly by anger. Anger at Charlie, for writing it. Anger at Theo, for knowing about it. And most of all, anger at herself, for being so foolish as to trust anyone.
“Sarah?”
She didn’t even hear what Theo was saying. She couldn’t rip her eyes off the page, reading the other damning phrases, the coded language not hiding anything after all.