Just as Delilah briskly strode across the foyer.
She glanced at Hugh and then her head whipped back for another longer look and she stopped abruptly.
They regarded each other.
He dully.
Her with alarm.
“Dot, bring Mr. Cassidy another pot of strong coffee and an extra scone, please. At once.”
“I must look desperate, indeed.” He was surprised to hear his voice emerging raw and tattered.
Everyone knew, and likely about everything. Not just about his uncle. About Lillias being in his room all night.
And they’d know soon enough about the end of his engagement.
His face must have reflected all of it.
He supposed the reception room was for grieving, because Delilah took him by the arm and steered him into it and urged him gently down until he sat on the pink settee where the king had once allegedly sat. The sun was pouring a gentle light through the parted curtains.
It was usually empty during the day—Delacorte, Hardy, and Bolt were all down at the docks. Mrs. Pariseau, thoroughly enjoying her widowhood, was usually out gallivanting with one of her many friends.
He pulled the knife from his boot and cut the string on the package. Delilah, married to a former blockade captain who never went anywhere without a gun, didn’t even blink.
He parted the paper on the package and lifted out...
... a sketchbook.
He frowned.
And then his breath hitched. On the cover, in an elegant, tidy hand, was written:
Property of Lady Lillias Vaughn
But why had it been sent tohim? And who had sent it?
Delilah peered down and saw the cover.
She said, delicately, “Mr. Cassidy... will you be all right if I leave you here?”
He nodded absently, scarcely hearing her.
Breath held, he turned to the first page, as if he’d been given the key to a treasure chest.
In pastels and watercolors and charcoal he found drawings that were accomplished and bursting with vivid character, and clearly quickly done.
A girl in a night rail, sailing over a darkened London, her hair like a dark cloud, her smile slight and dreamy, and below, a man in a billowing shirt who had hold of the string wrapped loosely around her wrist.
On the next page a man descended a ladder, strong sinewy arms reaching up to grip the rungs, his bare-to-the-waist torso illuminated in sunlight. A girl watched him, her face peeping around the corner of a doorway.
On another page was a woman standing on the porch of a cabin, aiming a rifle. His mother.
And then on the page following, in front of the same imagined cabin, a woman arranging tiny scraps of cloth on a rail, while a little hummingbird hovered nearby, eager to make her choice from among them.
His hands were shaking now as he turned pages.
And then there it was.
