Flirting With Fortune

Chapter Twenty-six

“Bea, you aren’t paying even a lick of attention. This is your wedding, my dear, not mine.”

Drat—now what had she missed? Beatrice looked at the two swatches of silk taffeta Evie held, the color seeming somehow faded, as if left in the sun too long. It was how everything looked to Bea these days—washed out, dull, uninspiring in the extreme. “The green, of course.”

Evie’s left eyebrow went up, and her hand went to her hips, the swatches adding a splash of contrast against her dark blue skirts. “They are both green.”

“That one,” she said, pointing to the swatch in Evie’s right hand. “Cece should have no trouble matching the flowers to green, at least.”

They had heard word from their cousin just that morning that she was planning to come to the wedding and would be bringing flowers from her greenhouse for decoration. Though Beatrice loved the idea of seeing Cece, knowing that the wedding might not even happen had sapped all the excitement from the news.

Looking over to Madame Gisele, who hovered over the pattern books laid out all over the worktable, Evie smiled. “Madame, could you see if you have any other silks in the back?”

It was her cue to leave, and they all knew it. The older woman, who’d been eager to please them since the moment they had arrived almost an hour earlier, dipped her head. “As you wish. Pardon me, s’il vous plaît.” With her unnaturally red hair bouncing in time with her enviable bosom, she made a quick exit, swishing the curtains closed behind her.

Turning her attention back to Beatrice, Evie dropped the swatches on the table and sat down beside her. She started to speak, but Beatrice held up a hand, silently asking for quiet. She knew a spy at work when she encountered one. Slipping over to the curtain, she cleared her throat loudly. Aha—there were the receding footsteps she was waiting for. Returning to her chair, she sank back down. “You were saying?”

Sighing, Evie shook her head. “Honestly, Bea, what has gotten into you? You had more fun planning my wedding than you’ve had planning your own.”

A very accurate observation. Of course, Beatrice had known from the beginning that Benedict had been madly in love with her sister. There may have been a few bumps in the road, but she never doubted the intensity of their feelings—or the truth of them.

“I just wonder if—” Bea paused, struggling with the right words to say. It was difficult to admit she had been so blind, so utterly oblivious. “If I wasn’t too hasty in agreeing to marry.”

All exasperation and humor vanished from her sister’s face. “And why would you think such a thing? I’ve seen the way he looks at you—as far as I could tell, it didn’t seem as though things could be hasty enough.”

Lust, pure and simple. Regardless of all else, she was attracted to him in a way she had never been to another man. More than handsome, well beyond normal—he was in a class wholly unto himself. “Attraction is hardly the same thing as love. Unfortunately, they are all too easily confused.”

“Such sage, wise words from one so young,” Evie said, the corners of her lips turned up. “Would you like to talk it over? I’m a dreadful listener, but for your sake I shall try.”

She had intended to keep the truth of it to herself until she heard from Colin, but blast it all, she wanted an ally. She wanted someone who could look at it objectively and then side with her. At the very least, she wanted reassurance that her pain wasn’t unfounded.

“He’s a fortune hunter.”

“A what?”

“A fortune hunter. One who wants nothing more than a moneyed wife so he can fill his coffers and—”

“I know what a fortune hunter is, Bea.” She rolled her eyes and picked up a piece of Pomona green silk taffeta, turning it in her hands. “I simply don’t believe the charge. Are you quite certain?”

“Ask your husband.”

“Benedict?”

“Do you have another?” At Evie’s sarcastic glare, Beatrice relented. “He did a little investigating for me to verify the truth of it.”

“And what is the truth?”

“That he owes ten thousand pounds against his estate, and he didn’t think to mention this to me before, you know, asking me to marry him.”

Evie cringed, biting her lip. “Oh my. I suppose such a truth doesn’t exactly cast his motives in the best of lights. What did he have to say for himself?”

The pain of their last conversation assailed her. The hopelessness of ever being able to trust him, of being able to believe that he truly fell for Beatrice, pulled at her belly. “The usual. He loves me; he felt that my dowry was nothing more than a happy coincidence, et cetera, et cetera.”

“The devil is in the ‘et cetera,’ sister-mine.” Her voice was soft and kind—if that didn’t speak to the gravity of the situation, Beatrice didn’t know what did.

“He swears he fell for me the person, not me the heiress. That we are each other’s perfect match, perfectly suited in every way. And . . .” She trailed off, thinking of his searing last kiss, of the heat of his breath across her cheek, caressing her ear.

“I don’t know what, exactly, you intended to say after ‘and,’” Evie said, her brow raised halfway up her forehead, “but based on the heat of your very rare blush, I’m not certain I wish to know.”

The warmth in Beatrice’s cheeks must have been more visible than she realized. A genuine grin, what felt like the first in a week, came to her lips. “Suffice it to say, though I may doubt his motives, I can’t honestly say I doubt his attraction.”

“Oh good Lord in heaven, if we need to move up the wedding, you need to tell me this instant, Beatrice Eloise Moore.”

She hadn’t meant to burst out with horrified laughter, but she could hardly do otherwise in the face of her sister’s aghast expression. “No, though it is almost worth it for me to say yes just to see my very levelheaded sister have a fit of vapors.”

“So glad I could provide you with such entertainment.” Her straight-faced, flat-toned response made her sarcasm abundantly clear. “Now, back to the issue at hand. Without reducing me to vapors,” she said, lifting a brow, “what does your heart say?”

“That he lied. That he manipulated me. That he betrayed my trust in a way that could never be fixed.”

“Well. I must say, that wasn’t the answer I was expecting. Why haven’t you broken the contract? I know there will be scandal, but it is a lesser evil than a lifetime of misery.”

She thought of his portrait, half finished in her studio. Every feature exactingly reproduced, each angle laid out with her brush with as tender a touch as her own hands upon his skin. She shook her head, swallowing back the unnamable emotion that clogged her throat. “I don’t know. He asked, and I let him have a chance to somehow prove himself.”

“You don’t know? I don’t believe that for a second. You’re the one who always knows everything.”

“I wish. This time around, I have been the worst of oblivious fools. When he was near, it was as though everything else in the world faded away. It was just him and me, alone in the world together. I saw only him, heard only him.” Tasted him, smelled him, felt him—his presence had consumed her every sense. She still didn’t know what happened to her normally astute self when he was near.

“I see,” Evie said slowly, eyeing Bea with a sharpness that hadn’t been there before. “You’re in love.”

“Was.” The single word broke her heart, tearing at the hopes that she had harbored.

“Are. Why else would you be giving him a chance?”

The words floated in the air like Chinese lanterns, bright and optimistic, but destined to burn out and crash to the ground. Beatrice sighed and came to her feet, turning away from her sister’s all too knowing gaze.

“It doesn’t matter if I am or not. If he can’t prove that he truly loves me for me, then there is no future for us.”

Evie stood as well, coming to where Beatrice stood and slipping an arm around her. “Then let us hope,” she said, compassion gentling her voice and loosening the loneliness Bea had felt since Colin left, “that he specializes in the impossible.”

Blowing his hair from his forehead, Colin stood and set his hands to his hips, surveying the mess before him. The studio, the bedchambers, and now the attic had been searched from top to bottom. Not surprisingly, he hadn’t found any paintings. Nor chests of gold or hidden jewels, for that matter.

Bloody hell.

He blew out a frustrated breath, sending a puff of crystallized air to the attic rafters. Two hours in the freezing cold, three sneezing fits, one startled mouse, and exactly zero items of worth to show for it.

It just didn’t make any bloody sense. According to his family, Father was working on a fix to their problems. God only knew what, exactly, that fix was, seeing how the studio was all but empty. Which he already knew. Shortly after the creditors showed up on the doorstep, Colin had done much the same thing, searching the house for anything of value to sell.

It shouldn’t have been a surprise—he knew full well that Father hadn’t taken on any new clients in the months leading to his death. And even if he had, the portrait would belong to the customer. But he had hoped against hope that Father’s fix would have involved a brilliant . . . something. Colin didn’t know what. Another portrait of one of the royals, perhaps?

It wasn’t as though a normal painting would raise enough funds, after all. If Father was planning to paint them out of debt, it would have to be something so spectacular, it could bring ten thousand pounds.

Not unheard of for the old masters, but as celebrated as his father was, his pieces were not yet that valuable—particularly since they were commissioned to depict specific people.

However, as morbid as such a thought was, the fact that his father was now gone would have instantly made his paintings more valuable. Whether it would be valuable enough was a whole different issue—but at least it was a chance.

The resentment boiled up within him once more. Irrationally, he cursed his father beneath his breath. Colin had spent half his life cleaning up his father’s messes. Irate visits from their creditors, empty cupboards and dry lamps from his father’s forgetfulness to order more of what they needed. And now this. He couldn’t have died, leaving things in order. It wouldn’t have been his father if he had.

He wanted to rail at the man, to take him by the collar and demand to know why he had lacked all regard for Colin’s comfort and well-being.

“Find anything?”

He started at the sound of his sister’s voice and turned to see her framed in the narrow doorway at the top of the stairs. He must have been completely lost in his own thoughts not to have heard her come up. “All the dust you could want. My mother’s out-of-date dresses. A few pieces of ugly furniture.”

Cora wrinkled her nose, climbing the rest of the way up to join him. “So I’m to assume you dinna find a stash of gold tucked in the rafters?”

“I’d be halfway to London by now if that were the case.”

“Honestly, I doona know what happened. Papa spent hours each day wandering the estate, and then he’d hie away in his studio for half the night. He swore that he was working on something important and that we were no’ to disturb him. He even locked the door so I couldn’a sneak up. I still canna believe the studio was empty.”

Not just the studio. Everything was empty. Colin’s house was empty of anything of value. His mind was empty of a way to fix it. His heart was empty of the love of his chosen bride, and unless something drastic happened in the next two days, his future would be empty of promise.

He shook his head, looking over Cora’s shoulder out the small window that offered up a small, framed view of the estate. “It’s ironic, isn’t it?”

Cora looked up from the yellowed fabric of his mother’s gowns. “What?”

“A man spends his entire career painting portraits and yet he left nothing behind of his own life. No portraits of him, or even the old landscapes showing his childhood home. None of my mother, or yours, or even Gran. There were a few of me, but that was back when he was perfecting his art, and most of those were painted over. It was almost as if he was never here at all.”

Cora clearly didn’t know what to make of his maudlin mood. Holding out an arm, she said, “Why doona we go have a nice cup o’tea with Gran before the pair of us catches our death up here.”

Fifteen minutes later, with hot tea still warming his belly, he stood by the terrace door beside Gran. “If you were any sort of grandmother at all, you’d have the perfect plan for me to convince Beatrice of my intentions.”

She chuckled, her gaze on the rippled surface of the pond. “Would that I could, lad. Sometimes, no matter our intentions, things can gang agley. We have to work whit what we have. And at the moment, we have naught but one another.”

“Thanks to Father.”

“Judge not lest ye be judged,” she said, lifting her wrinkled brow. “I think ye forget, Colin, that yer father never set out to harm the ones he loved. Take it from an auld soul: It doesn’a do any good ta hate a man who has left this world ahint.”

“On the contrary. It gives me a target for my anger. If we lose this place—”

“Then we lose this place. It’s a great pile of stone, now, isn’t it? The only thing that matters is that we doona lose one another. And that be including yer father’s memory.”

A damn sight easier said than done. It seemed that everything he ever wanted in life had been jeopardized. How could he possibly forgive his father when he was on the cusp of losing it all?

Gran put a hand to his back, rubbing it like he was a child. “I think yer forgetting who yer father truly was. So here it is: I’m prepared to give up this old gusty place if it means ye’ll have yer life’s love. But what I’m not willing to give up is yer fondness for yer da’s memory.”

“I doona know if that’s still possible, Gran.”

“We’ll see about that.” She crossed her arms, rubbing her hands back and forth over her slender arms. “Ye know, there’s no better way to know a man’s soul than to walk in his footsteps for a day.”

Colin scrubbed a weary hand over his face. “Gran, I appreciate the thought, but I have absolutely no intention of following my father’s path. In fact, I have made a point of not following in his footsteps for years.”

“And see now where that’s gotten ye, lad.”

“Actually,” he said, making an effort not to grind his teeth, “it got me quite far, until this mess yanked me back. Which, I feel compelled to point out, was entirely of his doing.”

She clucked her tongue, shaking her head from side to side. “Ye’ve always been harsh where yer da’s concerned. No’ without reason, I ken. But have you acknowledged, lad, that ye’d have never met yer lass if it weren’t for him?”

It was true, damn it. Colin dipped his head in reluctant agreement. Nothing else would have ever put him in the same room as Beatrice. And even if it had, the only reason she had given him even a moment’s notice was because of her fascination with his father.

The irony was rich indeed. His father was single-handedly responsible for both Colin’s love and heartache. He had simultaneously brought Beatrice to Colin and torn her from him.

Impressive, really.

“Oh, Colin, what’s an old woman ta do whit ye? Go. Walk the trails leading to the west. Frederick set out every morning for the foothills, no matter the rain or chill. I think ye need a different perspective, and sometimes that’s only ta be had among the forest. Ye never know when the fairies will whisper to ye.”

He doubted a trek through the estate in the dead of winter was going to bring anything more than frostbite. But he had been pacing like a caged lion in the house for days. There was not a room unsearched, no cupboard unopened. He was out of ideas, out of patience, and almost out of time.

“Perhaps I will.” Offering her a perfunctory kiss on her soft, wrinkled cheek, he strode to the front door, retrieved his greatcoat and hat, and set off toward the tree line where a narrow trail split the vegetation. The wind was vicious, but at least it had stopped raining last night, leaving the rocky path muddy but passable.

The cold was invigorating, clearing the muddled cobwebs from his mind. He took Gran’s advice, following the path to the west, away from the small loch and toward the foothills rising upward into the mist. He used to come this way when they first moved in, a young adolescent exploring his new domain. From the rolling meadow filled with wildflowers in the spring to the old gamekeeper’s cottage with its dilapidated thatched roof and river-rock chimney, to the crystal clear stream that swept through the property before dumping into the small loch not far from the house.

He might not have been born here, and he might not have even lived here for much of the past two years, but it was a part of him. It was home, more than any other place on earth. He loved it here and could scarce imagine anyone but his family calling it home.

The trail sloped up and to the left, delving deeper into the towering trees. He kept a steady pace, his boots hitting the rocky earth at an almost rhythmic pace. The bare, spindly branches extended over him in a weblike canopy, shielding him from the worst of the wind, but the bitterness of the day still chilled the exposed skin of his face.

His father had taken this walk nearly every day, Gran had said. Why? What had the land held for him? Perhaps he had been soaking it in. Enjoying the last of his time as master of the hard-won estate and the prosperity that he had earned and lost in the space of a decade and a half.

Before anyone else knew the dire state of their finances, he had already been saying good-bye.

Colin kicked a stone, sending it flying through the underbrush. A warning might have been nice. The selfishness of it all was hard to comprehend and impossible to forgive. Damn it all. This walk wasn’t having the intended effect. His breath came out in abbreviated puffs, and despite the cold, sweat trickled down his back.

He was about to turn around to head back when the stone chimney of the gamekeeper’s cottage came into view, its gray rock nearly blending in with the clouded skies behind it. It was probably best that he stop to rest before he soaked through his clothes and caught his death.

Slowing as he approached the tiny cabin, the barest hint of a smile lifted the corner of his lip. It looked exactly the same as it had a decade ago, with its squat walls covered in ivy and its uneven, thatched roof looking like an overgrown mop of hair. It sat right on the edge of the meadow, with a view to the mountains beyond through its two back windows. Perhaps “windows” wasn’t the right word—they were just open portals, covered by sturdy shutters that swung out on ancient hinges.

He’d spent many an afternoon in the place, exploring, reading, pretending to live alone in the woods. His pulse settled as he walked up the gravel path and stomped his feet on the flagstone stoop. It was like stepping back in time, standing here again. An icy blast of wind assailed him, and he quickly lifted the latch and let himself in.

Almost instantly, he came to an abrupt stop.

He stood in the doorway, frozen in a way that had nothing to do with the frigid air buffeting his back. Breathing deeply, he looked around the dim interior. The exact essence of his father was here—the scent of linseed oils and earthy pigments, the Spartan furnishings and bare windows, the open painter’s box set upon the single small table in the back of the room.

But the most significant of all was a simple easel set up beside the window near the back corner. On it a single canvas waited, tauntingly averted from where he stood.

Dear God.

Colin swallowed, his eyes riveted on the open frame of the back of the canvas. His heart beat so hard, the pounding seemed to ricochet through his head. Rioting hope propelled him forward, like sails catching wind for the first time in days. Please, please. He kicked the door shut behind him before rushing forward, the anticipation stealing the air from his anxious lungs. This could be it—everything he had hoped for. Everything that he had come here seeking.

Coming upon it, he paused, pressing his eyes closed. Sucking in a strangled breath, he sent up a quick prayer and stepped around the easel.

Blinking, he stared in astonishment at the sight before him, unable to fully absorb what he was seeing. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t possibly be. He rubbed his gloved hands over his eyes, pressing hard. Dragging in a deep breath, he opened his eyes, only to confirm what he already knew he would see.

The canvas was blank.