She shoved the candle and matches into his white gloved hands. “Please. Hold the light aloft for me?”
Jacobs deftly lit the candle and strode after her, as she made her way back to the powder room. But even before Jacobs lit the room, Nell could see something was wrong. There weren’t enough canvases in the crate. She flipped through them, trying to find her self-portrait, and not seeing it. Another painting was also missing—the landscape she’d done of home.
A pebble of discomfort formed in her belly. Where could these have gone? She couldn’t remember the last time she’dtouched these old works. “Jacobs, have either you or Mrs. Martin rearranged my paintings lately?”
“No ma’am,” Jacobs said. “You’ve been clear no one is to touch them.”
“Then where are they? I’m missing two pieces. A landscape and a self-portrait.” Nell flipped through the canvases again. She pushed aside the crate to see if they had been set to the side, but they hadn’t.
“I don’t know, ma’am.”
Nell whirled around. “Well, who was in here last?”
Jacobs’s face creased. “That would be Lord Beckett, ma’am.”
She blinked. And then it felt as if a bell jar had come down on top of her, stifling and muting the world as her emotions took over. He’d stolen them. While they spoke so intimately and purely, he’d taken from her. They weren’t just small objects that a thief might sell, these were as if he’d stolen a limb. The self-portrait particularly was not for casual viewing; it contained her most intimate beliefs about herself. And he’d not only seen it, he’d absconded with it.
She couldn’t think. She couldn’t move. A maelstrom in her head began whirling, increasing in pressure and velocity. The betrayal felt as keen as if she’d been slashed at with a thousand small knives.
The woman she wished she’d been, beautiful and demure, smart but not too smart, kind and nurturing, able to see and feel what others felt and care for them before they had to cry for help to get her attention. The woman every novel painted for her mind’s eye: the woman she was not, because she was the creature inside.
The creature who saw everything as too bright and too loud. Colors suffused in blinding saturation, beautiful to the point of pain. The creature heard even the smallest criticism of every person she loved as a painful refusal, a dismissal of her wholeexistence. The constant whirring and clanging and ticking of her mind, unceasing until sleep finally claimed her in total exhaustion. This was the self she’d put on that canvas, as if painting herself could help her hide it from the world.
It was the creature who had punished Monsieur Cobb. It was the creature that scrabbled and scrimped during the early days of Mrs. Dove-Lyon’s largesse. She wasn’t the woman in the portrait, for the woman was too pretty and proper to make the decisions Nell had made. The path that Nell had unknowingly carved.
And now Beckett not only knew about the creature, he took it from her. But why? Panic scrabbled at her temples. He also took her landscape of her family’s inn. Did he know? Was he going to find out what she’d done? Or did he already know and was taking the paintings as proof? Was he calling a constable on her right now? Was she going to Newgate?
She had trouble breathing. Dimly, she was aware of Jacobs taking her hand and guiding her back to the warmth and comfort of the sitting room. Words were spoken, conversations had, but Nell wasn’t able to comprehend any of it. The world was underwater, and she succumbed to the deluge of her senses. She tried to speak, but only keening noises would come out of her mouth. How could she tell them that her world was collapsing? That her carefully built, quietly tended existence in London was as tenuous as a sandcastle within reach of the tide?
She was forced to drink something bitter. Not that the taste mattered. But then, she was in her bedroom, and it was dark. Soft hands touched her forehead—softer than her mother had ever touched her, who had always been frustrated and angry that she wasn’t a help like her sisters, or strong like her brothers. But this hand didn’t mind, so Nell obeyed the unspoken command of the dark room and slept.
His friend’s expressionwas closed and pensive. He sifted through papers, his glass of port full and forgotten on the table between the two worn leather chairs at their club.
“Still working?” Beckett asked.
Timothy had arrived before him. Beckett still had mountains of proposals to sift through in his study at home. Parliament might be out of session, but that didn’t mean the work stopped. It only meant that it slowed down. The younger members used the time to draft bill proposals, and the older members used it to solidify political bonds and social pressures. His secretary had gone home hours ago, but Beckett hadn’t stopped working.
Beckett tried to stay afloat, feeling unable to do either. For the younger members, he agreed to read over anything they’d written, commenting in margins and slashing out whole paragraphs for grandiosity. For the older guard, he had stacks of invitations that he ignored and denied, as they were gambits for daughters and sisters, hoping to rope Beckett into a familial tie that could be used as influence. But that was precisely why Beckett held so powerful a voice—he was his own agent, and his allegiance was to ideals and progress, not to a group of men or a dynasty.
“Work of a sort. Haven’t heard from Mr. Smalls in a while and it worries me,” Timothy said, folding up another letter and moving onto the next one.
His secretary sent all of his refusals and monitored any correspondence from unknown persons. There were more than a few letters from random men who wanted to have Beckett’s ear, or at least rail at him for their perceived injustices.
“The infamous Mr. Smalls,” Beckett said. “My secretary takes care of all of those. The man doesn’t know when to quit.” Hepoured himself a splash of port from the decanter. He’d dined in his study at home, giving his cook a chance to fix him a tray. Poor woman hadn’t been able to exercise her skills in weeks. Perhaps he would host a dinner party for Mrs. Reid’s cohort. Would that please her? He didn’t know.
“I’m quite taken with him. He possesses a nice turn of phrase here and there. Prodigious mind.” Timothy tucked away the sheaf in a leather holder and stowed them away.
“Prodigious ink, I should say,” Beckett joked, but Timothy didn’t look like he was in the mood for joking.
“We have a responsibility, Beckett. If Mr. Smalls had befallen some kind of accident or difficulty, I should like to know. We owe the public.”
“And that’s why he reaches out. He courts influence and favor. Perhaps he found himself a marquess or a duke willing to return his letters,” Beckett said, sipping his port.
That sort of responsibility was precisely why Mrs. Reid’s invitation to the engagement dinner of her friend was appealing to him. He was there not as a member of the House of Lords, or an earl, but rather as a widow’s escort. He went as a gentleman, not a gentleman of rank. Oh, he knew they would all be aflutter that he was titled and powerful, but that was notwhyhe’d been invited. He was there because Mrs. Reid had asked for him. It was sweet. It was simple. And, if he could be honest with himself, he was charmed.
But Timothy could not be comforted. So Beckett changed the subject. “What have you found?”
“I have turned up something,” Timothy said, still not looking at Beckett. “But I’m not sure you want to hear it.”
