“What’s happened?” Emily asked when Priscilla burst in on her. She set down her artist’s pallet and brush and wiped the bit of dark oil paint from her fingers onto the canvas smock covering her gown.
Priscilla found her tongue tied in shock. She wasn’t surprised Emily would care. They had been true friends for far too long. She wasn’t even surprised to find Emily painting. Emily was, after all, a talented artist who had recently joined that pinnacle of the art world, the Royal Society for the Beaux Arts. Priscilla was merely stunned to learn exactly what Emily was painting.
Or rather who.
James Cropper of the Bow Street Runners stood tall and confident, the polished oak of his staff of office in one hand, russet hair glinting in the sunlight streaming through the window.
“I thought you despised painting portraits,” Priscilla whispered as Emily pulled off her smock and stepped away from the canvas where Jamie’s likeness was slowly forming.
Emily’s skin turned rosy. “Father requested it.”
After Emily had suggested it, no doubt. Priscilla knew her friend was enamored of the handsome young officer of the court, but surely Emily understood the flirtation was fruitless. Whoever heard of a duke’s daughter marrying a Bow Street Runner?
“That will be all for today, Jam . . . Mr. Cropper,” Emily said, dark curls bouncing as she nodded.
“Finally!” Lady Minerva, Emily’s maiden aunt, rose from a chair at the far side of the room. She shrugged her boney shoulders, her black gown rustling with the movement. “I have better things to do than sit about watching you two.”
Mr. Cropper did not look displeased by his dismissal either. He probably didn’t relish standing so still for the hours it would take for Emily to paint him. Odd that he could find the time away from his duties, although Priscilla supposed that even Bow Street might be willing to acquiesce to a duke’s request.
“Miss Tate,” he said with a nod before turning to Emily. “Tomorrow at the same time?”
“Please,” Emily said, blush deepening.
His smile was positively wicked as he touched two fingers to his forehead. “Until later, then.”
“Until later,” she murmured.
As he quit the room behind a still grumbling Lady Minerva, Priscilla stared at Emily. Her friend’s usually pale skin had a becoming warmth about it, and there was no denying the light that shone in her dark eyes.
“Oh, Emily,” Priscilla said. “I’m so sorry.”
Emily raised her chin. “Don’t be. I find myself rather pleased with the whole situation.”
For now. But what would her father say if he knew the true extent of his daughter’s feelings? Emily was headed for heartbreak, Priscilla feared, if her secret love became known.
The thought brought her own circumstances thundering back to her. “Forgive the interruption, but I must have your help. Something dreadful has happened.” She fished the note from her beaded reticule and handed it to Emily. “I found this in my pocket.”
Emily frowned as she angled the scrap of parchment to the light as if to read it easier. Priscilla felt a chill remembering the stiff writing.
I no yer secrit. Stay away from the duc or lse.
“And you have no idea who put it in your pocket?” Emily asked.
“Actually I fear I know the culprit entirely too well. I spent the morning with Acantha Dalrymple.”
Emily stiffened and raised her gaze to meet Priscilla’s. “You think Acantha Dalrymple knows?”
Priscilla felt as if the tea she’d drank earlier might bubble its way back up. “Yes,” she managed in a whisper. “Oh, Emily, all is lost!”
“Not necessarily,” Emily said.
That was the problem with Emily. As the daughter of a duke, she was used to people treating her family with a certain sense of awe. No one would dare repeat secrets about the mighty Duke of Emerson.
But then again, perhaps the duke didn’t live in terror that the worst moment of his life would be revealed.
Priscilla stalked about the chamber, past Mr. Cropper’s portrait for the window. “Then pray tell me why I should not run screaming from London, if you please.” She felt as if eyes were even now staring at her in accusation. Certainly Mr. Kent has looked at her askance. She grabbed the brocaded curtains and snapped them shut.
“Because Acantha Dalrymple didn’t send this,” Emily said.
Priscilla turned. With the sunlight snuffed out, the room was lit only by the crimson glow of coal in the grate. Emily, dressed in the dark blue she preferred, was a shadowy figure across the room, her voice echoing with the confidence of an ancient pagan priestess.
“How can you be so sure?” Priscilla begged.
“If Acantha Dalrymple knew your secret, do you think she’d be content merely to frighten you?”
There was that. They both knew Acantha thrived on gossip. “And what makes you think she isn’t shouting it from the rooftops this very minute?”
“Because,” Emily said, reaching calmly for a cloth to drape her painting, “she’d want to tell you first, just to see you cringe.”
She was right. That was one of the things Priscilla loved about Emily. Emily was seldom wrong. But much as Priscilla wanted to believe that evil Acantha didn’t know the truth, she could not be easy. Someone knew.
She crossed her arms over her chest. “So who put that note in my pocket?”
“That would be easier to determine if you hadn’t closed the draperies.”
Oh, of course. Priscilla hurried to open them once more. Sunlight flooded in, anointing the elegant poster bed against the far wall, the two gilt chairs near the carved wood fireplace, and Emily standing at her easel by the silk-draped wall. Priscilla blinked against the brightness as she crossed to Emily’s side.
Her friend was rubbing the sheet of parchment between her fingers. “It has a nice feel to it. I’d say it’s costly stuff.”
“So someone wealthy,” Priscilla surmised.
Emily nodded. “Someone wealthy bought it. But see the torn edge? It was ripped off a larger piece. Perhaps someone found it in the rubbish and decided to use this scrap.” She lifted the parchment to her nose and sniffed. “Though it smells more like lemon than rubbish.”
“You,” Priscilla said with a smile, “have been spending entirely too much time with Mr. Cropper.”
Emily blushed and lowered the paper. “Well, he is a crack investigator you know. I find his work fascinating. Do you know he recently captured an embezzler?”
Priscilla didn’t particularly care if he’d caught the prime minister making off with the Crown Jewels. She’d thought it bad enough that Acantha Dalrymple might know the Dreaded Family Secret, but what would a complete stranger do with the knowledge? A tremor shot through her, and she wrapped one arm about her waist.
“I’m sure Mr. Cropper is brilliant,” she told Emily, “but I can’t very well involve him in this. My entire future is at stake! I cannot allow the Duke of Rottenford to learn the truth. He’ll never propose!”
Emily eyed her. “Are you expecting a proposal any moment?”
Priscilla hung her head. “Well, no. First I must get him to invite me to his masquerade.”
“On May Day,” Emily said with a nod.
Priscilla’s head came up. “You’ve been invited too?”
Emily grimaced. “Yes, days ago. But I’m certain it’s all because of Father.”
Not for the first time did Priscilla wish she had a duke for a father. If she did, she wouldn’t find herself in this impossible position of having to wed the wealthiest fellow she could find. She could have accepted any of the six charming, but considerably less wealthy, gentlemen who’d proposed since her come out ball. Nathan Kent’s face came once more to mind, but that was silly. If she was the daughter of a duke she’d hardly marry a personal secretary, no matter how dreamy his eyes.
“You see, Emily?” she declared. “My hold on His Grace is tenuous at best. We have to find this person who knows my secret before the masquerade or I’m done for!”