“It’s hard to say exactly. We only know about the attempts that got noticed, but Knox will tell you more about that.”
Royce had a sour look on his face. Usually Albert dealt with the client who wanted an item taken. Then Hadrian and Royce would watch the place for a few days, noting visitors and guards—if there were any—and determining when the lights went out and from what windows. Only on rare occasions did his partner check out interiors. If they needed floor plans or inside details, Albert would be sent for a visit. Hadrian knew Royce didn’t speak to many people, but he especially avoided priests, nobles, and most certainly high sheriffs. The last law enforcement officer he’d talked with had been found grotesquely butchered and decorating the fountain in Medford’s Gentry Square. Hadrian doubted Pastor Payne was aware of Royce’s involvement in that affair. If he were, he wouldn’t be so casual about introducing the thief around.
Chapter Four
Beyond the Sea
The next morning, Sherwood let himself into the study as usual. The castle staff had stopped bothering with him after the third week. Not that they’d known what to do with him before. An artist was an oddity in a castle—even a large one. In Dulgath, he was an outright enigma.
While gossip wasn’t something he intentionally provoked, Sherwood was delighted by the whispers his contradictions generated. He hobnobbed with the nobility, but dressed like the staff. Being friendly, he spoke kindly and easily to everyone without any hint of haughtiness, but he also told tales of intrigue in the courts of high kings.
On fine days, he kept to his room. On mornings after a night’s rain he took long walks, mostly along the coast. The castle staff didn’t know he was out searching for ocher, which stood out better from the cliff walls when wet, or that the snails he used to make Imperial Purple were more plentiful after a rain. The servants probably considered him daft. Oddly enough, his eccentricities gained him a queer sort of acceptance.
Before he’d left Mehan for Dulgath, everyone had warned Sherwood that the people he’d meet there would be a bit off. As a result, he fit right in and had become a part of the “castle family.” And since he had no title before his name and required no special treatment, Sherwood had become little more than furniture to the people who worked there—all except one. She was Nysa’s handmaiden, Rissa Lyn. He knew her name from the number of times the lady had called it during their sessions.
Rissa Lyn, make certain to lay out my blue gown for this afternoon.
Rissa Lyn, ready a hot bath for when I’m done here.
No, Rissa Lyn, don’t close the drapes. He needs the light.
In two months, Sherwood hadn’t heard Rissa Lyn say anything in reply other than Yes, milady. But she was all eyes. Rissa Lyn watched Her Ladyship, and she watched Sherwood. She was peering at him again that morning as he hauled his easel into the study. Standing just under the stairs, she blushed when he looked over and withdrew.
He placed the easel where he always did, the floor marked with charcoal to indicate where each of its tripod legs went. This maintained consistency of view from one day to the next. Consistency of light was a bigger problem, and the reason the sessions were held at the same time each day. He went to the windows and threw back the drapes, tying them up. He was lucky—no clouds. Still, the shift of seasons was devastating. He should have asked her to start their sessions earlier to compensate. Now she might not come at all.
He hadn’t seen Nysa since the door had slammed the day before. That wasn’t unusual. He rarely saw her outside their sessions, and he always arrived first.
Sherwood took off his jacket and hung it on the back of his easel. He rolled up his sleeves and pulled out the tray to oil his paints. He kept his palette loaded so as not to waste pigments, but overnight the paint thickened. He liked his paint to be the consistency of buttercream. He wiped the stems of his brushes clean and lined them up in neat rows—largest to smallest. His favorite was in need of a re-bristling. It flared from fatigue, and too much paint lay trapped in the stem. Sherwood was a curse to a fine brush; Yardley had always said so.
Sherwood had begun his apprenticeship when he was ten years old, making Yardley more than merely an art instructor. The old perfectionist, with the irritating laugh and disgusting habit of spitting every few minutes, had been more like a parent to Sherwood than the tin miner and his wife who bore him. In addition to portraiture, finding and crushing pigments, and caring for his brushes, Yardley had taught him to fish, whistle, dance, navigate courtly life, and how to defend himself with fists and a blade. Where Yardley had learned sword fighting was anyone’s guess, but he knew what he was doing and he’d taught Sherwood well. An artist wandering alone on the open road was a target too tempting for many, and Sherwood’s prowess had been tested more than once.
His prep work done, Sherwood pulled up the stool and sat.
The room was quiet except for the sound of the sea drifting in through the open window, soft and muffled, a distant unending war fought between wave and rock. A seagull cried twice, then was silent. Wind buffeted the drapes and rocked parchments rolled up on the desk behind which Nysa usually stood.
Sunlight moved in an oblong rectangle across the floor, slicing over the desk and running up the paneled wall. Sherwood knew the time by the path the light took, tracking it with a painter’s eye every morning. He’d worked on the background of the painting only when Lady Dulgath wasn’t in the room, but he had finished everything that wasn’t Nysa weeks ago.
As the light reached the edge of the stone fireplace, he knew she was late.
Sherwood touched the leg of the stool, patting it as if for a job well done. While not the stool’s doing, it managed to still be there. She hadn’t ordered its removal.
That’s something—isn’t it?
As the light moved across the first stone of the hearth—the one he’d struggled to match in color because he was low on hematite—Sherwood began to face the reality that Lady Dulgath was making good on her declaration. He hadn’t believed her. They’d only had a small quarrel, a spat. People didn’t—
He felt his heart skip and a pressure on his chest, a tightness that made it difficult to breathe.
I’m only a painter. I’m nothing to her.
He tried to swallow and nearly choked on his own saliva. I’ve never lost a subject before, he thought stupidly, as if that mattered, as if it ever had. Never failed to complete a project.
Sherwood stared at the empty space before the desk, at the marks he’d put on the floor to show Nysa where to place her feet.
It’s like she’s dead. The thought crashed in. What if she is?
He shook his head. No, the castle would be thrown into chaos. She just isn’t coming. She isn’t coming because she doesn’t—
The familiar swoosh-swoosh of the brocade gown preceded her entrance. Lady Dulgath entered without acknowledging his presence. She whirled on her mark, spinning on her left heel. After looping the fox over her neck, she clasped the riding gloves in her hand. Her eyes focused on the chandelier.
“Chin up, just a tad more,” he said softly.
She tilted her head without a word.
Outside the study’s door that Nysa had left open, Chamberlain Wells could be heard saying, “She’s indisposed at the moment. But…well, let me inquire. I suppose she might see you. Wait here.”