Chapter Twenty
Clara had increasingly requested, in a variety of polite ways, that everybody not stand behind her while she worked on her portrait of Will. At each single mark she made on the page, someone uttered an encouragement.
“Marvelous.” “A clean line, that one.” “A gift, if ever I’ve seen one.” “The artist is officially at work.” “Brava!”
It wasn’t until she became so flustered she broke her lead, and then hit her head retrieving it, that Will jerked his thumb and told the audience: “Out.”
The following spectators exited in a subdued file: Victor, Lizzie, Christopher, Sarah, Jacob, and the new junior kitchen maid, Pip.
Mary was still gone, and without her, housekeeping limped along. No one knew where anything was kept, or what time things should be done. Clean undergarments were a rare luxury. But Angelika was glimpsing moments of Sarah taking charge.
“Out,” Will said again, in a kinder tone, to the last two remaining onlookers.
“We don’t have to leave, do we, Winnie?” Angelika said to Edwin, dancing him around the room in a waltz, his hand clasped around the base of her thumb. “We are allowed to stay and watch.” She was recovering from her ordeal, and the lump on her head was smaller. But on the next twirl she grew dizzy, and she halted before anyone could notice.
Angelika adjusted the cuff of Edwin’s new flannel trousers. Sewing baby clothes was one of the only ways she could take her mind off Mary’s disappearance. She had an idea that if she could prove she had been usefully occupied, Mary would return and be impressed.
Clara was at her wit’s end. “Miss Frankenstein, I cannot think with you twirling about, let alone put my lead up to ruin another fresh sheet. Will, please,” she appealed to him.
“No exceptions,” Will told Angelika.
“I have told you repeatedly, Clara, call me Angelika. Hmm,” Angelika hummed to Edwin and carried him to the seated Will, allowing the baby’s feet to kick his shoulder. Perhaps he’d boot a little paternal instinct into the man. “I suppose if it means this face is captured for all time—”
“In a rough sketch for the magistrate,” Will cut in wryly.
“Then I can allow being evicted. Clara, can I commission you to commence an oil portrait after this? And do you paint lockets?” Angelika was jealous of how Edwin mewled and reached for his mother, but she handed him back.
“Lockets?” Clara echoed in despair over her son’s head. “You have seen no proof of my talent to warrant a further commission.” The sheet on the easel had a one-inch line.
Her arms now horribly empty, Angelika went to Will. “My love, you are so terribly handsome, I would have your portrait painted inside the lid of my casket.” She tidied his thick dark copper hair, aware of Christopher’s ice-blue stare through the door crack.
“Dreadfully flattering,” Will advised her. His composure broke at her silliness, and he laughed. “You are so extravagant with praise, my love. Now, kindly leave this room before I must get stern.”
Angelika winked. “Ooh. All right, come along, Winnie.”
Clara said, “Edwin will sit and play down here by my feet, and you simply must go and sit with Christopher.”
“But—”
Clara cut her off. “The man’s absolutely desperate for a single glance from you.” Did she just sound very, very angry? Angelika studied her face, but any trace of temper in Clara’s eyes was gone in a blink. “I’m sorry. I’m worried I will fail at this task. Let us talk about an oil or a casket lid once I get through this.”
“She tends to put her faith in people in ways that come with some pressure,” Will told Clara as Angelika left the room. When she glanced back, he was looking down at Edwin. “But we can only do our best.”
Standing alone by the far window, Christopher did a good job at pretending he wasn’t waiting for her. He maintained it for five seconds, then he half jogged the length of the hall to her elbow. “Angelika. How I’ve longed for a moment alone. Are you quite sure you are recovered?”
“I am fine.”
He stepped closer and risked a touch, taking her hand. His was pleasantly warm and dry. “I will find the man who did that to you.”
“When you catch him, please don’t injure him or frighten him.” She winced at how poorly equipped she had been when she approached the man that day, and she reached up automatically to feel in her hair. Some tenderness remained. She also had a pinch in her rib cage and some frightful bruises. “He’s a simple man who doesn’t know his strength.”
Christopher’s temper flared. “Tossing a woman onto the ground like that? And you, of all victims? He’ll be lucky I don’t slit his throat, if the locals don’t find him first. He’s been stealing what he can. The village talks of nothing but the huge beast lurking in the forest. They haven’t decided if he’s a madman or a ghost.”
“Neither. He’s a poor soul who needs help. Just get the ring he took from Will in the least traumatic way possible, and I will compensate him for it. A finder’s fee, if you will.”
“I cannot imagine how you would know such a person. Is this one of the thieves who has been here? Or the man in the orchard who touched your hair? Please explain your connection.”
She ignored the request. “Promise that you will treat him as my personal friend and guest.”
Christopher relented with a nod. “With those eyes you have, I feel like you could make me promise anything. I am sorry I have not been able to court you as you deserve. I have been hard at work, trying to solve the mystery that might clear my path.”
He looked past her at the room they had left. A rare crease appeared on his brow.
She knew his worry. “To be frank, I thought you both had forgotten I exist.”
They began to stroll down the bright, sunlit hall to the drawing room. Victor and Lizzie had vanished, and Angelika prayed they could not hear their mattress from here. Sarah was setting down a tray of tea and interesting miniature cakes, courtesy of the new cook, Mrs. Rumsfield.
“Thank you,” Angelika said to Sarah as she served them both. “Still no sign of Mary? She’s not back in her room?”
Sarah shook her head. “Not at the boardinghouse, either.”
“What is it?” Christopher asked, puzzled, after Sarah left. They made themselves comfortable on opposite ends of the peacock-blue settee. The chair squeak was vaguely lewd. After all that had happened, being alone with a man on a single piece of furniture was enough to boost her pulse?
Angelika replied, “Just having some housekeeping issues with my staff. My oldest servant—and I mean that figuratively as well as literally—has absconded. Possibly with my mother’s emerald brooch, which is now gone from my bedroom.”
“More theft?” Christopher blasted indignantly, but Angelika waved it away, choosing a pretty lilac cake.
“We had such a row that in all honesty, I owe her an emerald. If I see her again and she’s got it pinned on her shawl, I shall not say a word except sorry.”
Angelika played it cool now, but truthfully, when she had noticed the gap in her jewel box, she had temporarily reverted to her most primitive self. Her vision had gone red; she’d snapped her hairbrush in half, pelted a perfume bottle into the fireplace—creating a pungent fireball—and, to finish the tantrum, she’d screamed like a banshee so loud that Will had come running from across the orchard. “You’ve lost an emerald,” he had wheezed, leaning on the doorframe. “Your problems are enviable.”
She hadn’t worn it for years, but now that it was gone, Angelika loved it more than anything else she owned. It was definitely Mary who’d taken it. She’d always remarked it was the finest jewel in Angelika’s collection. It had taken some deep breaths, and the patient counsel of Will, to come to terms with the spitefulness of the crime.
Funny how Will coached her through her worst moments for Christopher to witness her at her best. She sipped her tea and said to him now, “I shall consider it a retirement gift.”
“How extraordinary to simply accept this sort of news,” Christopher said, crossing a leg over the other. “You once told me you hate thieves.”
“I don’t think I do anymore. Everyone has a reason for what they do.”
Those thighs were twin works of art. Angelika bit so slowly and deeply into her cake whilst staring that he flushed pink. The man was so clean she could smell soap and starch.
Being alone felt like a bad idea.
After clearing his throat, Christopher said, “You see the good in absolutely everybody. I feel like I need to protect you from that aspect of your personality.”
Angelika looked into her tea and pondered this. “If you had met me a few months ago, you would have said I was a young woman who only ever saw the bad in people, and probably would have hung someone for a ring or brooch. You wouldn’t have liked me. Nobody did.”