Gwyneth stared into her mirror, willing the image to change. Willing the circles under her eyes to disappear, her skin to regain its color, her hair its luster. She looked like a beggar who had stolen fine clothes.
Mrs. Wesley tugged on a lock of Gwyneth’s hair and then jabbed her scalp with a pin.
“Ow!” She jerked away, pressing a hand to the sore spot. “Take care!”
The woman’s face appeared beside hers in the mirror, consternation etched upon it. “My apologies. I am so poor at doing another’s hair.”
Heat bubbled and churned, moving from her stomach to her throat until it erupted from her lips. “Then perhaps Papa should have sent me with my lady’s maid instead of you.”
She slapped a hand over her mouth, but it did nothing to stop the hurt from settling on Mrs. Wesley’s face. Dear, sweet Mrs. Wesley, who had stayed faithfully by her side. Always there, waiting to be needed. Hovering. Chiding. Suffocating.
No. Gwyneth squeezed her eyes shut and tried to push down the bilious thoughts. Where did they even come from? “Please forgive me. I am so very grateful you are here with me. Truly I am.”
“You are not yourself yet.” Though it looked as though it took effort, Mrs. Wesley smiled at her reflection. “’Tis the exhaustion, love, not you. I only wish I knew why the sickness still plagues you. We have been on land over a week now.”
And had it been the sea that caused it… Gwyneth shrugged and focused her gaze on the curling tongs Mrs. Wesley removed from the small built-to-purpose fire. “Could we forego the curling? It is so dreadfully hot already.” She wanted to add that if the woman could not be trusted with pins, she certainly didn’t want to put her head near scorching metal, but she bit her tongue.
She would not be a slave to exhaustion and its moods. She would not.
Mrs. Wesley sighed. “But this will be the first you have gone out since you arrived, love, and it was so kind of Captain Lane to offer to take you to the shops. Ought you not look your best?”
She had no “best.” Not anymore. Only varying degrees of awful. Where on the scale could she hope to land today, after seven straight nights of terror that combined that poor felled soldier with Papa?
Another man dying before her eyes, the life extinguished like a candle too soon snuffed out. Leaving what? Vapors. Tendrils of smoke. Worse, the shifting shadows of smoke, the kind that one could only see in one’s periphery, that fled when one tried to focus upon it.
Was life any more than that? Did what one accomplished before death matter at all, or would it all be blown away like smoke?
She squeezed her eyes shut, blocking out the image of her hollow face. Papa’s life mattered. He did great things, fought battles, won wars for his country. Stood, always, as a shining example for those around him. Mama had brought grace and faith wherever went. But Gwyneth? No one would miss her if she were to fade away like a whisper. London would have forgotten her. Her friends would have turned against her when she failed to keep in touch. Sir Arthur would have found another young lady to woo, one more to the taste of his uncle.
And the Lanes—she was naught but a burden to them.
A light tug on the tendrils, and the familiar sound of hair being wrapped around the curling tongs filled her ears. “There now, it will only take a moment.”
She mustered a close-lipped smile and clasped her fingers together, digging nails into palms. She must focus. Must shake off melancholy as well as bile. Must determine what she was to do with herself.
She could not impose on the Lanes forever. As soon as word reached them of her father’s death, she must leave and find some safe place. Somewhere to hide away. Someplace she could…could… A sob tried to rise, but she minimized it to a gasp.
“Heavens, child, whatever is the matter?” Mrs. Wesley patted her cheek and loosed the now-perfect curl. “Perhaps you ought to nap rather than go out.”
“No.” She swallowed against the rising tide and reached up to her hair. She selected the next curl to tighten and extended it toward Mrs. Wesley. “I want to see some of the city.” She had already missed church, being too exhausted after a sleepless night following Mr. Whittier’s demise to join the rest of them. She would not miss out on this opportunity. Who knew when Thad would have the time for such leisure again?
Though she couldn’t determine what kept him so busy. He was out at all hours, usually her wakeful ones, and home at odd times. If Rosie or Mrs. Lane inquired as to his whereabouts, he would inevitably name some public house—yet he never carried even the slightest whiff of alcohol.
But if he were not there to drink, why would he be?
While Mrs. Wesley finished up on her left side and moved around to her right, Gwyneth reached for the pencil and paper on the vanity. The scene under her fingers would be better in oil on canvas so she could properly capture the glint of sun on water, the green cast that would edge the clouds on the horizon, but she dared not take this particular picture out of her room. Not when the master of the house was the subject, his feet braced on the pitching deck of the ship and spyglass in hand.
She set her pencil upon his face. He would have straight brows, eyes slightly narrowed to show concentration, yet sparkling with…not quite amusement. More…fascination with the world around him.
Mrs. Wesley hummed an old hymn as she twirled another lock of hair around the tongs, leaning over to watch Gwyneth shape his eyes. Her hymn turned to a hum of approval. “Never does your skill cease amazing me, love.” She chuckled. “Had I even half your ability, I would be a rich woman indeed from selling my work in London.”
Gwyneth’s pencil moved quickly. The line of his nose, leading to the peculiar quirk of his lips, one side raised and the other steady. Not quite laughing in the face of the encroaching storm, but showing clearly that his respect for it gave no way to fear.
Her hand stilled. No, this one could not leave her chamber. Not when every time she left a work in some other part of the house, she found Thad studying it later. Who knew what he would think if he saw this. “I have never considered selling them.”
“Of course not. You have no need of that.”
Gwyneth frowned and gripped the pencil harder. What if she did have need? She had no idea how much sterling Papa had sent with her. No idea how she would ever access what had been in the banks at home. Everything must be hers now, the London house, the small country cottage Mama had so loved—unless Uncle Gates’s treachery had somehow stolen that from her—but what good did any of it do her? When could she ever return?
Nay. She was trapped here in America, trapped not by the war but by her own family. And what if she hadn’t funds enough to support herself for long? Perhaps she could sell her art. Did the Americans spend money on such frivolities? She had heard scathing whispers about them in the drawing rooms when hostilities were renewed, about how uncultured and barbaric they all were, prideful but with nothing deserving of pride. Far from what she had seen thus far.
Though she also had not seen any artwork on Thad’s walls.
“There.” Mrs. Wesley smiled and moved behind her, urged her chin up with a soft finger until she met her own reflected gaze. “There is my beautiful girl.”
Gwyneth forced a smile for Mrs. Wesley’s sake but did not long study the sallow face in the mirror. Instead, she gathered up her pencil and paper and headed to her trunk to stash them. “I had best hurry. He will be waiting.”
She tossed open the lid to her trunk, set the page upon the other she had sketched of Thad three days prior, and paused. “Mrs. Wesley, do you know how much coin Papa sent with us?”
The woman made a dismissive noise. “More than enough to hold us all over until he joins us, love. Not to worry. You can well afford to buy yourself a little trinket while you are out today.”
“But…” She squeezed her eyes shut and rested her hand on her velvet purse. “But what if he is delayed? With the war worsening…”
“And you think your wise father did not take that into account?” Matronly hands urged her up. “You’ve enough in your trunk alone to see you through several months. He sent more in mine, and more still in Mr. Wesley’s. In case one of us were robbed, he said, and our trunks have a hidden drawer for to keep it. You’ve no worries, love. Here.”
Gwyneth took the reticule Mrs. Wesley held out and watched her drop a few coins into it. Her mind still reeled even as she nodded and snapped shut the top of the pineapple-shaped bag. Papa had sent plenty indeed, but she could not use it all on herself. The Wesleys must be cared for too, as the family they were. Would they stay with her? Or at war’s end would they want to return to England? They had a son in London, after all.
“You look as though you carry the world on your shoulders.” Mrs. Wesley gave her a nudge toward the door. “Go and enjoy a morning out with our handsome host. And you had best return with some color in your cheeks.”
“With this insufferable heat, that ought not be a difficult order to obey.” Bonnet in hand, Gwyneth paused at the threshold. “Thank you, Mrs. Wesley. For your assistance and for being patient with me.”
The woman clucked and waved it off, but her smile looked pleased. “Go on with you.”
She put her bonnet on as she descended the stairs. Though it was still morning, already the pleasant night air had begun to sizzle. And already the exhaustion crept up on her.
Mrs. Wesley was not the only one worrying. This past week, she had kept stranger hours than ever before. Up and reading or drawing or painting until she all but fell over. Sleeping until the red-saturated nightmares chased her from the sanctuary of slumber. Then up again. Rarely did she give any thought to whether sun or moon shone in the heavens but to evaluate how the light would dictate her pursuit.
And inevitably, at some point in the hours of waking, she would shake off concentration or distraction or daze and see a Lane studying her. Concern pulling their smiles into contemplative frowns.
They must all think her an eccentric. Or, worse, unhinged.
Gwyneth gripped her reticule tighter and paused at the base of the stairs. Thad had not said where he would be waiting, but her feet headed down the hall toward his study, so she let them take her where they willed. Perhaps they knew more than her head.
He ducked through the door as soon as she turned the corner, proving her feet right. And though they ought to have paused at his appearance and waited for him to come her way, they yet again took on life of their own when he smiled at her. Drew nearer until she could tuck her hand into the crook of his proffered elbow.
Thad covered her fingers with his. “You look lovely, Gwyneth.”
She had forgotten her gloves. His warm hand made a strange little pull-and-tug flutter in her chest. How long had it been since someone had complimented her? “Thank you.”
“Shall we?” He removed his hand and led her toward the front door, off the porch, out into the intensifying sunlight.
Gwyneth turned her head so that the brim of her bonnet shielded her eyes and saw that his gaze was focused upon her in that studious way of his. Today, for whatever reason, it made her throat go dry. “Is something the matter?”
“I hope not.” The thoughtful tone of his voice made his regard even heavier. “The Wesleys are troubled over you. They cannot fathom why your seasickness has followed you onto land.”
What could she do but lower her head and study the bricks paving the walk?
His hand covered hers again. “Seeing Whittier made it worse, did it not?”
The mere name brought the image back, that gaping wound in the same place Papa had been run through. That same agony on his face, that same desperation to convey one last message.
Run!
It had taken all her will to keep from obeying that silent command again, from running pell-mell into the street and not stopping until her legs gave out, until she outran the monsters behind her.
“Gwyn?”
But no command to flee had been on Mr. Whittier’s lips. She drew in a breath, measuring it out into a careful inhale—exhale. Nay, the fallen sailor had spoken far different words. Which made far less sense. “How is his family?”
“They are grieving, of course. And they are proud of his service. Otherwise, they are maintaining a very stoic facade.”
She risked a blinding from the sun in order to look up into his face. He appeared stoic himself but for his eyes. Those churned with contemplation. “Have they need of any aid? Will they be able to get on?”
A blink, and his eyes cleared and brightened as he smiled down at her. “They are well enough situated, what with his father’s shop supporting them.”
Her nod did little to quell the questions that had been niggling at the corners of her mind for the past week. Still they pushed their way forward, following the route the bilious words had earlier. “Why did he not go home in his final moments? Why did he come to you?”
Thad’s only response was a delayed, unamused breath of a laugh.
They turned at the corner, the same one she had watched Thad round last evening, and headed down the same street on which Rosie had told her the Whittiers resided. The street the man had ridden directly past, though home had been no farther away than Thad’s house, so far as she could discern.
“He obviously knew he hadn’t much time left. And he obviously loved his family. Why, then, would he choose to give you that message of affection for them rather than see them a final time and leave with them the message for you about the pending attack?”
Something shifted in the man beside her. Subtle, but with an undeniable effect. ’Twas as if he stood even taller, broader, just by tilting his chin.
Confound it, she would have to do another sketch.
“Perhaps,” he said so quietly she could scarcely hear him over the rumble of a passing carriage, “his thinking was muddled with pain. Perhaps he thought he had time enough to see us both.”
“He did not.” She had heard him insisting his time was short.
His gaze tugged until hers met it, and then he held her captive. “Perhaps it was because he knew I could be trusted to give them his message, but was not so certain they would remember to give me mine.”
“But—”
“Is it so beyond reckoning that a family struck by sudden loss would forget to relay something to a mere acquaintance?”
Gwyneth struggled for a breath and tore her gaze away. If she let him look any longer into her eyes, surely he would see within her the answer to that rhetorical question. That so many clouds obscured parts of her mind, so many holes gaped. So many simple answers escaped her, while some details stood out in stark relief.
Had she forgotten anything important from her father’s last moments? She didn’t know. Couldn’t know. And she hated it.
So then, she would focus on those details still so clear. “Are you in the military, Thad?”
His gait hitched. “Pardon?”
“You certainly do not seem to be, and that is something about which I can boast a bit of knowledge. So why, then, did he come to you to pass along this information about the target of the fleet’s next attack?” She did her best to look at him as Mama would have, with an arched brow and pursed lips that said I know something is amiss.
Except he was not supposed to smile in the face of it. “I am a member of one of the local militias.”
“A militia.”
Now he turned the look around on her. “You needn’t say it with such disdain. It was our militias as well as our general army that sent you Redcoats packing once before.”
Of all the… “But a mere ‘member of one of the local militias’ is by no means the authority one runs to when one overhears sensitive information, Thaddeus.”
He came to a halt, forcing her to one as well. He regarded her for a long moment in utter stillness before sighing and pulling her onward again, past a line of elegant town houses. “Alain likes to say I know everyone in these United States. An obvious exaggeration, but he says it because I do know most of the leading families. Between my parents’ connections with them and the ones I have made myself…I make friends, Miss Fairchild, ’tis my best gift. And so when one friend has a need to let some other friend with whom he is not acquainted know something, he comes to me. There is no mystery. I simply have friends in Washington City that Whittier did not.”
Did he really take her for such a simpleton? There was more to Thaddeus Lane than a friendly demeanor. A plethora of acquaintances alone did not give one’s chin that angle. Though she couldn’t think what did.
“Paper.”
“Pardon?”
Thad motioned toward a shop at the next corner. “We shall need more for you at the rate you have been drawing. I would have already purchased some, but I thought you may like to select it yourself.”
Gwyneth tried her hand at lifting her chin, though she suspected it would lend her no air of mysterious authority. “Are you trying to distract me?”
The gleam of amusement in his eyes rivaled the sun. “Is it working?”
What, row upon row of creamy, decadent paper, all blank and pure and waiting for the whisper of her muse? “All too well.”
He laughed, a sound she had heard often enough in his house. Still, it tickled out a smile to think that she was the one bringing joy. A feat far too rare these past months.
For a moment she breathed it in, holding all other thoughts at bay. And then she let the smile bloom. “I have noticed a sad lack of art upon your walls, Thad.”
“Have you now?” He pulled her closer to his side to lead her around a sunken spot in the sidewalk. “Well, I suppose that is because until now I hadn’t an artist friend to fill them.”
“Are you unacquainted with the practice of purchasing art? Much as you did those rugs you so love?”
He made a dismissive sound. “Why would I do that? ’Twas inevitable that eventually I would make friends with an artist to give me a picture or two. But now, rugs—what were the chances I could charm a Turk into gifting me one?”
A light laugh surprised its way from her throat. “So that is where your powers of friend making end?”
“Of course not.” He pronounced it with exaggerated bluster and then ruined it with a boyish grin. “But I did not dare assume anything with them.”
“Oh, but you will with me?” Her nose in the air, Gwyneth sniffed much like her friend Eliza Gregory was wont to do. “And who is to say I will not charge you a fee? Perhaps I have been inspired by this capitalist land of yours.”
He chuckled and held out a hand to indicate they ought to cross the street before the stationer’s. “And who is to say you are the artist whose work I would like?”
How long had it been since someone had jested with her? Emitting a huff of exaggerated offense felt like pure bliss. “You would be lucky to have one of my pieces, Captain Lane.”
His sigh was long, the roll of his eyes slow, his gesture indulgent. “Fine, fine. Give me one, then. I will suffer it.” The grin winked out again. “Make it of the sea, will you? Something with frothing waves and glistening sun and a storm on the horizon.”
Were she not dodging the unsavory leavings of a horse in the middle of the road, she would have closed her eyes in delectation. ’Twas as if he looked into her very soul and saw the image she had already imagined. “And your ship. What is her name?”
“Masquerade.” His tone was the very one Papa had used when speaking of Mama. Pure, selfless love. “She is a brig.”
Gwyneth had never pretended to be an expert on things naval, to know the difference between a brig and any other type of ship, but the name she could appreciate. “My parents first met at a masquerade.”
“Did they?” Thad led the way onto the opposite sidewalk and reached for the door of the shop. “I suppose you thought that terribly romantic.”
“It was, by their telling.” She stepped inside, her breath catching in delight at the shelves of heaven. “Though I confess the one I attended did not live up to my expectations.”
“Ah, Captain Lane! Good day!”
He relaxed his arm, freeing her hand. “Mr. Hatcher, good day to you too. How is Susan this week?”
The proprietor made some reply, but Gwyneth took a step in the opposite direction. Her gaze had already latched onto a stack of creamy stock.
Thad caught her fingers and gave them a squeeze as he grinned down at her. “Look your fill and select whatever you please. I have some canvas at home we can stretch whenever you need.”
The kindness made her eyes sting. “Thank you.” After a smile at him, she headed toward the shelves and trailed her fingers over the different weights and shades. The parchments and vellums and linen-cotton blends.
Within a few minutes she had put together a fair pile of paper in various sizes and thicknesses and textures, fingers twitching already. She would need new pencils too. And perhaps some charcoal sticks. And—
A shadow crossed her path when she turned toward the writing implements, one that nearly made her lose her grip on the paper. One that sent a bolt through her, fear so brilliant she could not move an inch.
Uncle Gates.
No, it couldn’t be! Not here in some random shop in a random neighborhood in a city she had never intended to visit.
But yet… Her stomach twisting, she turned her eyes to follow the man who had just entered the store. He strode toward Thad and Mr. Hatcher, calling out a greeting.
Not her uncle’s voice. Just similar to his build, his way of moving. But dark hair instead of gray. Too young. Too American an accent. Too extravagant in his clothing.
Not her uncle. But still his image overtook her, that sneering voice ringing in her ears. The flash of a blade, the stain of blood, a dying sailor on the table before her, a stranger who stood in that coiled way of her uncle, ready to pounce.
A monster’s mouth stretched wide before her, teeth sharp as blades. And the darkness, the too-familiar darkness yawned wide as it swallowed her whole.