Why hadn’t the git who’d almost hit her at least cared enough to stop, make sure she was all right, apologize, maybe? If the git had lost control of his car.
Put it aside, lock it away. Today she was going to work.
Elizabeth took a third cup of coffee to the sprawling second-floor office on the west side of her house she’d turned into her studio. She’d picked that room because the floor-to-ceiling bow windows flooded the room with natural light after the heavy rain that had fallen throughout the night. She lifted the white sheet off the nearly finished portrait of her mother, to be her birthday present in August. She stood back, studied brushstrokes, light and shadows, her mother’s beautiful face, and sighed. Her mother rarely smiled anymore because of Tommy and because of her husband’s endless infidelities.
Elizabeth was painting the portrait from a photo of her mother taken soon after she’d married her father, the newly minted tenth Earl of Camden, before he’d dried up her smile, her joy in her new life. In the photo, twenty-four-year-old Lady Millicent Palmer was running down the long, graveled drivetoward her new home, Darlington Hall, just to the east of Brighton, set high on a grassy hill looking out to the Channel. She was laughing wildly, her blond hair streaming out behind her, shining beneath a bright sun. She looked ethereal, a fairy queen come to life. Was she running to meet her new husband, Elizabeth’s father?
Maybe the portrait would make a difference, remind her mother of the happiness she’d felt when they were first married. Just maybe she’d speak to her husband about those early years. Elizabeth sighed. She loved her father, commiserated and argued with him about the never-ending problems with Tommy. She wondered if he’d ever stop taking on mistresses and working all hours at his precious bank long enough to recognize he had a wife who needed him. Elizabeth knew he loved her, cared about her, but—there was always abutwith her father. How would her father react to her painting of his bride? Would it possibly make a difference to him?
It was nine o’clock, the sun in and out of dark clouds. The rain had stopped, always a blessed event in England, but it was still cold. Alas, the central heating system had the hiccups, roasting her one minute, freezing her the next. At least she’d finally gotten a repairman to agree to come that afternoon.
Her workroom grew uncomfortably cold, so she lit the fire in the seventeenth-century Carrara marble fireplace. She managed a minuscule flame, nursed it until the flames sprang up. She got to her feet, rubbed her hands on her jeans. She shoved a chair close to the fireplace, pulled a blanket around herself, and snuggled in. She’d get back to work as soon as the repairman performed his magic. If he showed up, another of life’s uncertainties. Elizabeth thought how nice it would be to fly out of Heathrow and park her bikinied butt on a beach in Majorca, a rum punch in her hand, the bright Mediterranean sun on her face.
The lion’s-head knocker sounded.
She checked her watch, frowned. It couldn’t be the repairman, it was far too early.
The knocker sounded again, twice, louder this time.
Her heart picked up. Was it the man who’d nearly hit her yesterday? Had he found out where she lived?
It couldn’t be Giles; he’d texted her he was nearly ready to leave for Ireland, where he’d get prepped to row down the River Liffey and raise his sails in the Irish Sea and into the Atlantic for his voyage to Greenland with his two best mates. All of them were nutters in her opinion.
Was it one of her friends? No, her friends worked, and they’d have called her first, not showed up unannounced at her door. Tommy, come to get money? Yes, it could be Tommy, but he’d just unlock the front door with his key. She walked slowly to the thick black-lacquered mahogany front door, original to the house. She looked through the peephole her mother had insisted on installing when Elizabeth moved in. Oddly, she saw a black brolly, even though it wasn’t raining.
“Who is it?”
A man’s voice called out, “A delivery for Elizabeth Palmer.”
Did he have a slight accent? “Leave it next to the front door, please.”
“Madame, I need a signature.”
Yes, there was an accent, but not unusual given it was London. Still, no way was she going to open the door. “Sorry, I’m not dressed. You’ll have to come back.”
The door knocker sounded again.
“Please open the door. I cannot leave the package without your signature.”
“Raise the package so I can see it.”
She heard the low voices of two men, and a noise, like someone bumping against her flower urn beside the front door. She pressed her face to the door. Were they whispering or was it the rising wind?
Two loud shots rang out. The door shook from the impact of the bullets, but they didn’t penetrate the thick old door. Elizabeth slammed the dead bolt home and backed away. She pulled her mobile out of her jeans pocket, dialed 999 as she ran from the door to her kitchen, and jerked her prized butcher knife from its block.
She heard another bullet hit the door lock. How long before it gave?
“What is your emergency?”
“My name is Elizabeth Palmer. Two men are at my house, shooting at the lock on my front door.” She managed to get out her address. “The dead bolt’s holding, but I don’t know for how long.”
“Hide, NOW. Police are on the way.”
Hide where? Behind a sofa? In a closet? The house was large, but they’d find her eventually, and then what could she do? They had guns, she had a knife. She heard the rain suddenly start up again, falling so hard she could barely make out the gate in her backyard that led to her small Ford Fiesta and the rubbish bins.
Elizabeth saw movement through the whipping rain outside the rear door. She ran to the door, flipped the dead bolt. But this door was new and not nearly as sturdy. A man’s gloved hand broke the narrow window high up on the door and reached for the dead bolt, but he couldn’t reach it, the window was too far up. She didn’t wait, she stabbed the knife deep into the back of his hand, jerked it out. He yelled out, quickly pulled his gloved hand back.
She felt giddy and sick to her stomach as she bent low and ran back toward the front door. Her heart nearly stopped—booted feet were kicking the door right below the knocker, and it shuddered. Would the dead bolt hold? How long would the door itself hold before it sheared away from its hinges? Elizabeth raced up the stairs, ran down the hall into her bedroom.She slammed the door, locked it. Not enough, not enough. She dragged a heavy armchair in front of the door and ran to the side window. She pulled the thick drapery aside, unlatched the window, and squeezed through it onto a skinny balcony. She reached in, jerked the drapery closed, praying it would buy her time. A full-leafed ancient live oak snuggled up against the side of the house, there only because, thankfully, her house was the last in the colonnaded crescent.
