Her Defiant Heart (34 page)

Jenny wound Mrs. B.'s plaited hair into a coil and secured it with a few pins at the nape of her neck. She helped the housekeeper adjust her nightcap so that it framed her round face attractively. "You, on the other hand, are looking quite fetching. Perhaps Mr. Marshall could be inspired to paint your portrait."

Mrs. B. blushed. "You're a flatterer, Jenny Holland. If you ever saw the women Mr. Marshall painted, you would know he wouldn't be interested in me. Still, thank you for the compliment."

Jenny bent down and kissed Mrs. B.'s warm cheek. "I wasn't flattering you. It's the truth, but I would be interested in seeing some of Mr. Marshall's work. Are there any paintings here in the house?"

"Only in his studio. Whatever was hanging came down. The Astors have a few pieces. And the Bennetts and the Schermerhorns. People like that. Friends of the family."

"Well, since I am not likely to be invited to Mrs. Astor's for tea and a private viewing, where is Mr. Marshall's studio?"

"On the fourth floor in the north wing. His mother had part of the attic converted for him before he ever went abroad to study. Nothing terribly fancy or he wouldn't have accepted it. When he came back he just stayed there, then the war came, and..." Mrs. B. took good measure of the interest she saw in Jenny's brown eyes. "Oh, no," she said. "I am not giving you my permission to go up there."

"You do not have to give me your permission. Just tell me where the key is."

"No."

"I'll tidy the place as you did."

"No. Mr. Marshall would be furious. He only lets
me
up there, and that's because he knows I am not prying into his things."

"I would not be prying," she said, affronted. "I will not move anything. It will be just as you left it the last time."

Mrs. Brandywine was skeptical and it showed. "Why is it so important?"

"I have a curiosity." Because she had lain in his arms, she could have said. She had let him inside her and sometimes now, in the surreal moments between waking and sleeping, she could feel him inside her again, driving his body into hers, filling her, and there was nothing that had ever happened to her, or would happen again, that compared to what he had made her feel. And in the aftermath, as he had beforehand, Christian Marshall remained a stranger.

"A curiosity," said Mrs. Brandywine. "You know about curiosity and cats, I suppose."

"I've heard. I promise I shall be circumspect."

Mrs. Brandywine made a frank assessment of Jenny's solemn features and judged her to be sincere. She sighed. "You will find the key in Mr. Marshall's desk. The one in his bedchamber, not his study. If he discovers you've been up there, you had better be prepared to tell him I sent you to clean."

"I can tell him that," Jenny said. "But let us hope he doesn't ask. I have been told I am not a very good liar."

Mrs. Brandywine was already regretting giving in before Jenny was out of the room. Then she was gone, and it was too late to undo what had been done.

* * *

The steps leading up to Christian's studio were so narrow that two people could not mount them abreast. Jenny held an oil lamp in both hands to keep it steady as she climbed. Its light revealed the dull blue wallpaper lining the stairwell had been scarred by the sharp corners of furniture and crates that had been forced through the passage. There was a worn and dusty runner contouring the stairs. It was held in place by brass rods that Mrs. Brandywine had not thought important enough to polish. The hem of her skirt scattered dust motes and cleared cobwebs. Every time she heard a sound, she paused and listened carefully. It was not the thought of Christian coming upon her that worried her. Jenny was more concerned with mice.

At the top of the stairs she stopped and unlocked a second door. Knowing that she would probably be damned for her curiosity, if not killed for it like the cat, Jenny stepped inside.

The studio was much larger than she had expected. Three, perhaps even four rooms the size of the main parlor could have fit into it. The mansard roof meant the attic's interior walls did not slant away at an angle that would have made most of the space useless. Almost every part of the studio could be walked in without bending one's head.

There were three skylights, none of which were of any use now. Even if it had not already been dark outside, they were covered with several inches of snow. There were also two windowed alcoves on opposite sides of the studio. They brought in natural light during the daytime; one caught the dawn, the other sunset. Below the unadorned mullioned windows there were built-in storage benches, their lids thickly padded and covered with blue velvet to make a comfortable seat. Jenny lit two more lamps with hers and continued exploring.

The room was too large to be heated properly. Even when the fireplaces off the twin chimneys were blazing there would have been a chill. It was a measure of her inquisitiveness that Jenny did not take much notice of the cold or the way her breath clouded in front of her as she examined Christian's clutter.

There were tables with dried palettes of paint on them. Brushes of every conceivable composition and size were scattered across the top. Most of them were ruined now because they had been abandoned with paint still thick on their tips. Jenny picked one up and pressed it to the tabletop. The bristles, brittle with paint, snapped as if they were threads of spun glass.

Jenny realized Mrs. Brandywine had found some things impossible to tidy. The palettes and brushes, once brilliant with colors, were dulled now by a thin film of dust. She had to use her imagination to recognize vermillion and emerald and magenta and sapphire and cinnamon and ginger and rose.

Grieving for Christian and the colors he had buried here, Jenny blinked back salty tears.

She found rough plans for homes that would never be finished, designs for an observatory, a theater, and, of all things, an ice cream parlor. Jenny impatiently swiped at a tear. No one could accuse Christian of pandering to the wealthy. An ice cream parlor!

Wandering the room, Jenny ran her hand lightly along the curved backs of the settees and chaise-lounges, touched the uppermost rungs on the ladder-back chairs and ran her knuckles down the ribbed cover of the rolltop desk. Sheets, judging by their relatively white condition, showed signs of a recent airing and shrouded the odd piece of furniture. The bed was neatly made. Twin pillows rested against the iron-rail head. It seemed to Jenny that Christian must have eaten, breathed, and slept with his work. How could he have given it up?

The photographic equipment was an unexpected find. Was it Christian's or Logan's? she wondered. There were several brassbound cameras of different makes and quality, the heaviest being about twenty-one pounds, the lightest about ten. To Jenny's eye they all appeared to be in good condition, and probably were all in working order. She found two boxes packed with lenses, another packed with chemicals that hadn't been opened, and three cases filled with a dozen glass plates each.

It was like finding gold. "Eureka," she whispered, her voice echoing strangely in the room. She shook her head, pained to realize how much further along she would be if she had known this was here. Reluctantly, she tore herself away from the equipment. The temptation to make use of it was so great that her hands shook. "You are not a thief, Jenny," she said. "Not yet, anyway."

She glanced around again, wondering what had been used for a darkroom. She saw a door off to her left that she had supposed led to the storage section of the garret. Now she noticed the placard hanging from the doorknob saying,
Keep out.
Jenny turned it over.
Stay out.
How typically Christian, she thought, amused. He did not want anyone interfering with his darkroom, whether he was working inside or not. She peeked in the room just long enough to assure herself she had not mistaken its purpose. The watertight glass baths arranged side by side on the waist-high bench and the rows of dark amber chemical bottles told her that she hadn't. Jenny stepped out of the room and turned to confront the thing that had brought her to the attic in the first place.

Christian's paintings were everywhere. Stacked five and six deep, leaning against the walls, they lined the perimeter of the spacious room. Although Jenny had been drawn to them the moment she walked through the door, she was equally wary of looking through them. She would not have thought twice about viewing them in a gallery or in someone's private collection, but now, seeing them like this, posed awkwardly and carelessly in the cold confines of Christian's studio, Jenny was reminded they were not on exhibition. This was Christian's privacy she was invading. It was more than dust she was stirring. It was the past.

All the paintings were turned to the wall; none of the canvases faced her. Perhaps a tenth were actually in elaborate gilt-edged frames; dozens and dozens of others remained stretched on the same lightweight wooden stays that Christian had once set on his easel. The city's hot, humid summers and bone-chilling winters had done considerable damage already. Most of the paintings were badly warped.

Jenny's eye caught the dates scrawled on the backs of several of them, and she used that as her beginning point, hoping that Christian—or Mrs. Brandywine—had organized the paintings in some sort of chronological order. Jenny bit her lip, hesitating. How much did she really want to know?

She started with 1855.

* * *

Christian noticed the light coming from one of the attic windows when he was still two blocks west of the house. At first he didn't think much of it, shrugging it off as Mrs. Brandywine doing her seasonal cleaning. Then he remembered Mrs. B.'s condition and the lateness of the hour. She had not dragged herself to the fourth floor twenty minutes before ten just to put a feather duster to his studio.

Christian warned himself not to jump to conclusions. There could be a number of explanations. The only one he would accept, however, was a burglar. A stranger in his studio was fine with him. He was likely to kill someone he knew.

Digging his heels into Liberty's flanks, Christian urged his horse home at a faster pace. He left Liberty with Joe Means, raced up the same slippery flagstones that had felled Mrs. B., and went straight to his study. He set down the stack of
Herald
dailies that he'd had neither the time nor the courage to read earlier, and removed an ivory-handled Colt Dragoon from the middle drawer of his desk. The shape of the gun was too familiar in his hand. When he checked its load, his palm began to sweat. He wiped his hand on his jacket, and with a last glance at the clock on the mantel, he began mounting the stairs.

He knew he was not dealing with a burglar when he went to his bedroom and found his attic key missing. He debated whether to leave the gun behind. In the end he decided to keep it but remove the bullets. It would serve her right if he used it, he thought, for in his mind there was only one person he knew foolish enough to be in his studio.

There was not a lot of satisfaction in being right.

Jenny Holland was sitting on one of the sheet-covered settees, facing the door. She was bundled in two thick blankets she had pulled from the bed and blowing on her fingertips to keep them warm. Her breath came in short, harsh sobs, and her long lashes were spiked from tears that rolled slowly over her cheeks. The area around her, the settee, the floor, her lap, was littered with hundreds of sketches he had made during the war.

Not only had she been through his paintings, he realized, glancing around the room to see the wreckage she had wrought, but she had found the sketches as well.

"Damn you." He pushed the door shut behind him and leaned against it. "God
damn
you."

Jenny's head jerked up. The sketches on her lap scattered. Her face went ashen as she confronted the terrible fury in Christian's eyes, and her mouth went dry when she saw what he held in his hand.

Christian peeled himself away from the door. His long, slightly uneven stride carried him to Jenny's side in seconds. His left hand wound in the thick coil of hair at the nape of her neck. He yanked her to her feet as if she weighed no more than the kitten he had once likened her to. Jerking her head back, exposing her throat, Christian pressed the cold barrel of the revolver under the delicate curve of her jaw. "God, I want to hurt you," he said between clenched teeth. He held her wide, terrified eyes captive with the strength of his narrow stare. "Do you understand? I want to
hurt
you!"

Jenny's voice was almost inaudible. "I know. In your place I'd feel—"

His left hand tightened in her hair so that she gasped with pain. "You can't begin to
know what it feels like
in my place
." He lowered the gun slowly, watching her face all the while. Finally he tossed it on the settee. He wanted to shake her. Instead he found himself forcing her on tiptoe, raising her face to his. Her mouth was slightly parted, her lips wet. Christian's punishing mouth covered hers. The kiss went on. And on. Something stirred in him. Not desire precisely, but a desire to wound. He raised his head and captured her eyes with his own. "Or what I'm feeling now," he said. "Shall I show you?"

Jenny's hoarse cry was never heard beyond the walls of the studio as Christian half dragged, half carried her to the bed. "No! Oh, God, no! Don't do this—" She clawed at him, kicked at him, but her heavy wool gown and the blankets that had been her cocoon impeded her attack. She was pushed down on the bed and his body followed hers.