His dread returned—the dressing downs, the verbal punishments for never being good enough, being trapped here instead of schooling at Eton because his grandfather wanted no one to see the pox scars on Felton’s body. Tramel said he didn’t want him teased, but like the late duke, he surely didn’t want the family name drawn into ridicule.
The noise of footmen in silver liveries descending the stairs shook Felton free. Watson guided them to the carriage and all the luggage.
Felton should go up and see the old man, but his feet were planted, his bowed legs locked.
The disappointments. The arguments where Felton tried to defend Lady Tramel numbers two and three repeated in his head. All ended in damnation—father and son each wishing the other to hell, grandfather mocking both.
Agatha’s warm hand clasped his. Amelia helped and pulled him forward. “Do we get our old rooms, Papa?”
Jane was overhead on the landing. “Of course you do, young ladies.”
His sister looked healthy, with her hair pulled high in ringlet curls. Maybe a little tan too. She ran down the corkscrew stairs to greet them.
She bent to the girls, and they leaped into her arms. “Oh, I’ve missed you, missed you all terribly.”
Her shy glance at Felton seemed tentative, but what could he truly tell? He’d just committed to breathing.
“Girls, it’s been a long drive.” His tone was low and as always, he looked to his sister for help.
With a smile, she pointed. “Your rooms are prepared and there might be a gift.”
She jangled a bell and maids in white aprons and mobcaps came from everywhere. “They will help you settle.”
As Agatha and Amelia were shuttled upstairs, Watson and four footmen came inside with their travel trunks. In his man’s hands was Cecilia’s Port Royal painting, the one gifted to him from the Repingtons. He couldn’t bear to part with that.
“No. Watson, leave that . . .”
Jane went to him and took the canvas. “It’s lovely, Felton. Did Cecilia send this for Father?”
Hadn’t she just learned of his wife’s talents in December before Felton sent her to Aunt Nelly? Where was this enthusiasm coming from?
That feeling of being the last to know anything surrounded him, squeezing at his chest. He seized the painting and shoved it toward Watson. “Please, put this back in the carriage.”
“Papa would be so cheered, Felton. He’d love to see new art.”
New.
That was a comparison of some sort. It didn’t sound like the art Cecilia made years ago when they lived here. It barely sounded like the ones from last December. “Jane, what more do you know?”
That look on her face, the shrewish drawing of her lips, the jealous lifting of her short nose—she knew more, much more. “The studio he let her use when we all lived here, he’s let no one inside . . . it’s full of new canvases.”
Felton heard her words and added it to all the things she didn’t say, like the room had been emptied of everything when he’d moved the family to London.
No longer empty.
He pushed past his sister and lunged up the stairs. Almost breaking down the studio door, he rushed inside the room that was adjacent to their old bedchamber.
No longer empty.
Paintings were hung about the room. Each was a vision, a complex narrative of color mirroring people and places.
Two were of her jaguars. The eyes, they could be Felton’s or Tramel’s.
Next to the balcony doors, overlooking the property, was the largest painting of the collection, almost nine feet in height. It was a portrait of his father sitting, with Felton standing behind the gilded chair.
Cecilia, no one else, could paint these. While he searched all of London, every inch of England and Scotland, his wife, she had been here, here with Tramel.
He pushed to the balcony and opened the doors wide. The fresh sea air was the only thing keeping him calm, for he was ready to tear Warwick down to its foundation.
