Secret Admirer Read online

  “Jack has so many friends now,” Jack confided blissfully as they walked around the grounds after having what Jack described as “a snack” of capons and trout, and lime and raspberry ices on a table under a rose arbor. When Jack told her afterward that the cook was the best in the world, Tuesday was tempted to believe it. “Jack is very happy here.”

  “I am glad,” Tuesday told him, and she was. She was.

  Jack stopped suddenly and hit himself on the head. “But Jack has forgotten to show Tuesday the best part,” he said, and began dragging Tuesday at a breakneck pace toward the house. They had just reentered when Lawrence, who had been mercifully absent for the preceding two hours, materialized in front of them like the specter of old Lord Doom himself.

  “I think it is time we were getting back to London,” he told her, frowning.

  Jack’s face fell. “But Jack has not shown Tuesday the Basking Room.”

  “The what?” she asked.

  “The room with all the pretty women in it,” Jack explained. She just had time to give Lawrence a glare as Jack dragged her past him.

  Of course. There would be a room where women were kept as slaves or something. She had known this was too good to be true, that Lawrence Pickering would have done something sleaz—

  Tuesday stopped on the threshold of the room and gaped openly. It was not a large room or a particularly elaborately furnished room. In fact, there were only a few outsized couches all shoved in the middle. But the eyes of a dozen beautiful women gazed at her with various expressions. Gazed at her from the dozen paintings hanging on the walls—the paintings she had copied on the walls of her studio. Only these were the originals. The real pieces that comprised the finest collection of modern painting in England.

  “This is where they come to bask in the attention of the pretty ladies,” Jack explained into Tuesday’s dumbstruck silence. “And Jack comes here, too, whenever he wants.”

  Tuesday nodded mutely and turned her head from side to side and tried to make sense of what she was seeing. She was standing in a home for abandoned boys with the best cook, the best library, and one of the best art collections in England, if not the world. Her brother was ebullient. It was all Lawrence Pickering’s doing. And unless she had threatened him that morning, he never would have told her, she never would have known about any of it.

  “There’s even Tuesday’s favorite,” Jack said merrily, pulling her to a painting in the center of one wall. “The one of the man and the statue lady.”

  “Titian’s Pygmalion,” Tuesday breathed, staring at it with awe. Up close the painting of the sculptor Pygmalion bringing to life with a kiss the stone maiden he carved and fell in love with was almost painfully beautiful.

  “You can touch it, you know,” a very short boy said from somewhere near her elbow. “I licked that one of the Madonna once and Lawrence did not mind.”

  And they called him Lawrence. “Did it taste good?”

  “Nope. Like rubbish. I wrote a poem about it.”

  “I see,” Tuesday said, not really seeing anything. Turning, she realized that Lawrence had followed them in. He appeared to be making a careful inspection of one of his lintels.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” she demanded.

  “Tell you what?” he asked without taking his eyes from the door frame.

  “That this, what I painted, was your collection.”

  “Why should I have told you?”

  “So I did not make a bloody fool out of myself,” she heard herself saying, furious now. “I knew mine weren’t good but you didn’t need to lie to me.”

  The force of her anger took Lawrence by surprise. “I did not lie to you. You never asked if it was my collection that was auctioned off.”

  “If it was your collection, how did you get it back?”

  “Some friends of mine bought it and forced me to take it when I returned from Spain.”

  She hated the blasé way he said that. She hated everything about him. “You also should have told me about Jack. It was not fair of you to take him and just—” Just what, she asked herself? Give him a place? Give him a life? Make him happy? Do what I had never been able to do. “You should have asked me.”

  “So you could say no?”

  She bit her lip and swallowed hard. “I think we should go back to London. Something may have happened.”

  Lawrence agreed. It was only when they had been bumping along for over an hour that he realized he was feeling hungry. Again. The second time in two years. The second time in one day. Strange.

  In the coach on the way back Tuesday made herself stare out the window with tremendous interest in everything. She made herself count the cows—four, or forty-six, she wasn’t sure—and notice the way the fences were made extra straight and examine the skirt of that old woman’s gown, and smile at the pretty woman and the little boy who were waving, and wonder why that man who looked like George was ducking behind a tree (what would George be doing in the country?) and pay attention to the things she knew should be there but which she could not make her eyes see.

  Blast! Why was it so hard to concentrate? Why did she feel like her chest was too big or too small, like her muscles were all fraying. Why did she feel so angry? She realized that she was furious at Lawrence Pickering. Furious at him for having the best art collection in England. Furious at him for generously leaving it hanging so that the boys he gave homes to, boys who had been abandoned, could enjoy it rather than keeping it all for himself. Furious at him for having turned his country house into a school. Furious at him for having given Jack a place and a job, for the way Jack smiled at him, for the worship in Jack’s eyes, for the joy there. Furious at him for again not being what he seemed to be—what he should have been. Furious at him for being so much more.

  “You are not angry about the paintings,” Lawrence told her coolly, as they reentered London and neared her house.

  She tried to take a deep breath but felt like there was a weight on her chest. “Yes I am. And you are wrong if you think I am angry because you pulled away for no reason when we kissed yesterday.” Tuesday was stunned by her own words, but Lawrence wasn’t.

  He didn’t even pause. He said, like a slap in the face, “I had a reason.”

  “I don’t care. That is not what I am angry about.” She looked away. She felt like her teeth were cramping. Her eyes burned. Something was weighing down her arms. And yet they were trembling, trembling with rage. She felt like she could not count on herself, like she might do or say anything, like she had spun entirely out of control. Good girls didn’t get angry, nobody loved girls who were angry, angry girls get punished, angry girls are bad, everyone hates angry—

  (It’s my fault, dragonfly, I made your father angry—thwak)

  (I promise I’ll be a good girl, Daddy, just please don’t make Jack—thwak)

  (I will be better, Curtis, I will be a perfect wife I will be—thwak)

  Stop it!

  Across the coach she could feel Lawrence’s eyes on her but she did not care. She did not care what he thought of her. She cared so little that she could be angry in front of him, could feel out of control in front of him, and not bother to hide it. That proved she was indifferent to his opinion of her, she told herself.

  “I don’t care what you think of me,” she announced and the note of joy, of triumph quivering in her voice nicked Lawrence.

  “No, I don’t think you’d care for it at all,” he agreed.

  “That is not what I mea—” she stopped. It did not matter. She did not care. He could hang himself and his opinion of her from the nearest bough of that tree—the sixteenth tree they had passed, she noted, noting also that she was concentrating again, that she was breathing again, that she felt calm again—as far as she was concerned. “In the future I think we should limit our conversation to discussions of the investigation,” she informed him suavely.

  “You could not have expressed my own wishes any better.
”

  “Good.”

  “Good.”

  The silence lasted about three minutes after their return to Worthington Hall. That was when Grub burst into the studio and announced, “We got something, my lord. We got him!”

  The Lion carefully filled a jug and set it on the floor next to two others.

  He was having trouble keeping his hands steady he was so excited. He could feel it in the air, taste it. He knew what was about to happen. His glory, his genius, was getting ready to be known. Our Greatest Hero was about to begin to see what he could do. Boy would his, would all of their, jaws drop then.

  He dusted off his hands and looked around.

  How do we protect our fort?

  We disguise its strength.

  How do we fend off our enemy?

  We outlast him.

  The hideout was all set. There was enough there to keep him going for months. Probably he wouldn’t need it for a few days, but it paid to be on the safe side.

  It was almost a pity he wouldn’t be right there to watch their faces when it all started. See the looks of amazement and admiration. See the fear. But he would be busy elsewhere.

  He lifted a heavy satchel from the floor and hoisted it over his shoulder. It had his tools in it, along with something he’d bought that day. Sort of a present for himself. A celebration. It would make them rock back on their heels when they found out about it.

  He was singing to himself as he locked the door behind him and went down the stairs. One of his neighbors poked her scrawny neck out to see what all the noise was about and the Lion started to smile good naturedly at her, then remembered she was blind and wiped it off. No reason to waste one of those. He stuck his tongue out instead and made a lewd gesture at her. Stupid old bat. Her neck wasn’t even worth breaking.

  At the bottom of the stairs he turned and entered the miserable jewelry shop on the ground floor.

  “Going away again, then?” the faded man behind the desk asked politely. In the dim candlelight his face looked like he was already dead, the Lion thought.

  “That’s right, Mr. Carter.”

  “You work too hard, boy. Make them give you a few days off.”

  The Lion chuckled. Ha ha ha. Work. “I’ll do that. Tell them it was your idea.”

  Mr. Carter grinned, showing both his teeth. “How long’ll you be gone then?”

  “Can’t say. Probably not more than a night or two. But I wanted you to know so you wouldn’t worry.”

  “Good lad,” Mr. Carter replied. “’Preciate it, I sure do, your being so friendlylike.”

  What is the difference between a friend and an enemy?

  One you should kill. The other you must.

  “Of course. No other way to be.”

  “Report come in just now from over near Whitehall,” Grub explained excitedly, pacing around the studio. “A Mr. Potts sees a fellow of our description going up the stairs of a respectable looking house over there, above a jeweler’s. I sent over five men to watch and make sure he doesn’t get out, but I thought you’d want to be there, yer Lordship, when we make the catch.”

  “Excellent work, Grub,” Lawrence commended him. “Are Phillips and Nielson here?”

  “Yes sir. Also Coolidge and Jackson.”

  “Good. Leave those two to guard Lady Arlington. Have the rest follow me—”

  “I am going with you,” Tuesday informed him.

  “No.”

  “Yes.” When it was clear that he was going to object again, she pointed out, “You are my personal guard. You are supposed to go everywhere with me. What if I need to go somewhere while you are gone?”

  “Do not be absurd. I am doing this for your protection.”

  “My protection? I thought you were my protection.” She planted herself in front of the door, arms crossed, legs apart, scowling ferociously. “I thought we had to go everywhere together.”

  “Step aside, Lady Arlington.”

  “Only if you protect me like you are supposed to. Only if you agree that where you go, I go.”

  Many men had felt their insides seared by the glance Lawrence now gave her, but it did nothing to wipe away the hint of triumph dancing in her eyes.

  Triumph, damn her.

  I don’t care what you think of me.

  A muscle twitched in Lawrence’s jaw and for a moment the sound of three of his teeth being ground down to powder was the only noise in the room. Then he said, “Very well. Then neither of us goes. We both stay here.”

  The triumph died. “You are just doing that to be stubborn. Come on, we will—”

  “Be careful,” he said to his men over her head. “And report back as soon as you know.”

  Then he turned and seated himself in the gray-velvet lopsided chair. “You may as well make yourself comfortable, Lady Arlington. There is nothing for us to do but wait.”

  “That is my chair.”

  “I go where you go.”

  She flopped onto the settee. The next three quarters of an hour gave Tuesday a chance to observe Lawrence’s superior charcoal-tossing skills. (What had possessed him to give his coin to Jack?) It gave the musicians upstairs the opportunity to play the same tune twice. It gave Lawrence time to neaten up her worktable. And it gave them both a chance to showcase their better natures.

  “What the devil is that?” Tuesday demanded as two men came grunting in under a huge burden.

  “I am not spending another night on that inquisitor’s rack you call a settee. Put it there,” Lawrence directed the men. “And take that thing—” he pointed unceremoniously to the piece on which she was reclining, “—away.”

  Tuesday held onto the sides of the settee with both hands, planting herself firmly. “No. Take the one you are carrying away and leave this one where it is.” She faced Lawrence. “It is bad enough you are always straightening everything up, tidying everything. How dare you buy furniture for my house? If you don’t like it, you can sleep somewhere else. This was your idea, not mine.”

  “And better proof of my becoming feeble minded I could not ask for. Right where the other one is will be fine,” Lawrence continued, ignoring her. “And move that trunk so—”

  “Do not touch that trunk,” Tuesday said in a voice that made Lawrence hesitate.

  “Never mind about the trunk,” he told his men, bowing to her. “But put that down there.”

  “I am not leaving this settee,” she said as Lawrence moved toward her, wrapped her in his arms, lifted her from the old piece of furniture, and set her down on the new one.

  “Thank you, that will be all,” he announced, his eyes not leaving hers, his lips only two fingers’ width from hers.

  She gulped. “This isn’t very—”

  Grub’s heavy footsteps in the corridor outside the studio interrupted them. They just had time to fly to opposite ends of the settee before Grub trudged in and announced dejectedly, “False alarm.” His men filed in after him. “Nothing. Not a thing. Seems this Mr. Potts knew that his wife was getting a bit on the side and hoped that having a dozen of Lord Picky’s own men bursting in on her and her paramour might fix her for good.”

  “You mean, he hadn’t seen our man at all?” Lawrence asked.

  “Yessir. Not hide not hair not face not rear.” Then, realizing he was speaking in front of a lady, Grub blushed. “Sorry, ma’am.”

  “She doesn’t care,” Lawrence answered for her and was surprised that Tuesday did not object.

  She was too distracted, and not with straightening out her skirt from Lawrence’s aggressive approach to furniture moving. She had not realized it, but when the news that they had found the Secret Admirer had come in, she had felt not excitement but relief: relief that the doubts that had begun to creep into her mind, doubts about whether she had understood the evidence properly, or been fooled by it, were unfounded. Doubts fueled by how long it had taken them to find his trail. Doubts that were now reawakened and stoked.
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br />   Her anger had died down to a steady ache that felt like a cross between sadness, exhaustion, and hopelessness. As Lawrence and Grub reviewed for the eightieth time the shifts of men detailed to show the Secret Admirer’s picture around London, Tuesday rose and moved across the room. For a moment she stood in front of her copy of the Pygmalion painting. Hers was very similar to Lawrence’s, to the original, but her colors were wrong. They were muddier, and lacked the clarity and definition of the original. She used to imagine the moment Pygmalion sensed the girl become real under his lips, imagine the way he had felt, but she saw now it was just a placating fantasy designed to make people feel powerful. To make them believe that maybe with the right kiss, they could arouse a spark of life in something dead. Stupid. Who would even want to?

  She had strayed over toward the mantelpiece where the clock showed her it was past ten. Next to the clock stood a porcelain dog and without thinking, she picked it up and smashed it into the back wall of the fireplace.

  Grub and Lawrence turned to stare at her.

  She said, “I have a headache.” Then she crossed the room, slipped into her bed, and pulled the curtains closed.

  Their voices outside were just a low murmur but they were enough to mask the quiet sound of her sobs.

  She had a headache, the Lion echoed. A headache a headache, he repeated to himself in a strange voice, like a song, a mantra. He was so excited he could barely wait. He did not care that it was going to rain. He did not care about getting his boots wet. She said she had a headache. That was the sign. Tonight, she would open the Window of her mind to him again.

  Click. Squeak. Slide.

  The sounds of a door opening slowly. Tuesday’s eyes came unshut in an instant but the rest of her was paralyzed, listening. She had drawn the hangings of her bed closed so she could not see anything, but she thought she felt the fabric flutter.