Secrets of Nanreath Hall Page 13

  He nearly knocked the plate of bacon on the floor as he came round the table and scooped me from my seat. “You delectable, ridiculous, stammering creature, don’t tell me you’ve grown cold feet.”

  “You might have done this before. It’s all new to me.”

  “Do you truly think I go about seducing young ladies like some modern Casanova?” He pulled me close, tucking my head under his chin. I liked feeling small and protected in the cocoon of his arms. “If you must know, my dear, you are the first . . . and the last . . . young lady I have ever worked my sexual wiles on. Too many places to see and things to do to settle down.”

  I tipped my neck back and my head up so I could look into his eyes, clear gold and green like the creek water running below Nanreath Hall. No clouds gathered there. No deceit. I smiled and kissed his neck. “And now?”

  “I’ve found someone worth settling down for, I suppose. Simple as that.”

  It wasn’t simple at all, but my bubble of panic subsided, and I was calm enough to finish my breakfast and accompany Simon to the narrow town house in Southwark where Miss Ferndale-Branch occupied the two topmost floors.

  The rooms were big and airy and painted white with two tall curtainless dormer windows overlooking the noisy street. A platter of half-eaten cheese and bread sat on a table beside a bottle of Veuve Cliquot and an ashtray littered with butts.

  Miss F-B (as she implored me to call her) wore baggy trousers that accentuated her leggy height and a blouse that clung to every voluptuous curve. Her hair had been cropped short and tied back in a beautiful silk scarf, and when she smiled her rather severe face melted into a cherubic pout that made you want to immediately smile back. “So you’re the innocent Simon has gone over the moon about. I hope you’ve skills beyond the bedroom. I need someone who knows what to do and how to do it as well as the diplomatic temperament I lack. I teach. I don’t coddle. And I don’t mince words. I’ll tell you what I think, good or bad. If you’re good, you’ll do fine and be paid accordingly. If you’re a fraud and a failure, I’ll tell you so and you can go groveling back to Mummy and Daddy in Cornwall. Fair?”

  She frightened me to death, but I liked her bracing acerbic tongue. So different from the veiled cushiony aggression I was accustomed to. “Fair.”

  Chapter 11

  January 1941

  A delay on the line stalled all underground traffic indefinitely, leaving Anna stranded at Blackfriars Tube Station with a long walk ahead. As she stepped out onto the pavement, she drew her coat closer around her. Winter clouds threw London’s already dingy gray streets into shadow, and a knifing January wind burned her cheeks and made her nose run. Tomorrow she had a meeting scheduled at the Joint War Organization about an overseas posting. She hoped for Africa or Palestine; a place of activity and purpose, a place where she could begin anew.

  A spiteful part of her toyed with the idea of sending Lady Boxley a note of thanks for her assistance. Nanreath didn’t want her? The feeling was definitely mutual, thank you very much.

  Her months tucked away in the Cornish countryside had dulled her to the harsh reality of London’s distress. As she drew closer to the West End, the crowds thickened to a sea of khaki. Enormous barrage balloons floated low over the city, and wherever she walked were signs of the months of nearly nonstop bombing. Boarded windows and smashed glass, rubble piles and war-hardened citizens ignoring the destruction as they went about their day with stoicism and a determined goodwill.

  The West Country was by no means immune from the war’s effects. German bombers heading back to their French bases had a dangerous tendency to drop their surplus bombs on any convenient target, while Plymouth was increasingly being battered by intense nightly attacks. But among the rocky cliffs and deep coombes it was easier to pretend life went on unchanged and uninterrupted.

  It was easier to forget.

  She had managed to avoid any glimpses of Aldersgate and the ruins of Queen’s Crescent. Twice she’d traveled from her small hotel to the stop where she’d so often disembarked to walk the few streets home. Twice she’d let the doors of the train close again and carry her away from the truth she would be forced to face.

  Still, the shades of Graham and Prue hovered close. Anna glimpsed them in every crowd of afternoon commuters and every clutch of haggling housewives. She even thought she’d spotted Mrs. Willits in mackintosh and gum boots standing outside a restaurant until the woman turned to reveal a rough bun of grimy yellow hair and vacant eyes. Anna countered these moments with a true soldier’s will, walling her memories away where they couldn’t touch her, couldn’t hurt her. Avoidance, the doctors in hospital had claimed when she’d lain there for weeks refusing to speak. A way to shelter the mind from a pain too great to bear. Anna merely knew it as survival.

  She rounded the corner onto St. Martin’s Place, feeling in her pocket for the scrap of paper she carried. One word penned quickly as she’d hurried to catch the lorry that would take her to the station—Balázs. Three pictures in Nanreath’s gallery bore his name; an enormous canvas depicting a young and glamorous Lady Boxley, a watercolor of a teenage girl, purse-lipped and sulky as she held a small dog in her lap that Hugh had told her was his aunt Lady Amelia, and the richly detailed oil of Lady Katherine smiling at someone standing just beyond the artist’s frame. Someone who would have been present at her sitting. Someone Lady Katherine might just have loved enough to risk all she had ever known . . .

  Anna tugged on the gallery’s doors.

  “Closed, dearie,” said a gray-haired man seated on the pavement alongside the portico. He clutched a beat-up leather satchel and an umbrella, his wiry hair standing like a halo around his narrow seamed face. “They even moved the pictures out to keep them safe. Just a few staff left behind to keep a watch. That’s all.”

  Anna pulled uselessly once more on the door handles, as if willing the man to be wrong. The door remained firmly shut; the National Portrait Gallery was closed for the duration.

  “Have to wait for the end of the war, I guess, dearie. Same as the rest of us what got let go.”

  “You worked here?”

  “Aye. Twenty years. Never missed a day. Not many can say that, eh?”

  Just then, a gentleman approached. He carried a briefcase, a newspaper beneath his arm, a ring of keys in his hand. “Hello, Mort. Good to see you today.”

  “G’day, Mr. Jamison,” the man answered with a tip of his weatherworn hat. “Spent another night in the Tube. Hell on my back. Bloody Jerries.”

  “Well, come in and get warm. There’s a lecture at eleven and a concert at four. Then out you go for the night.”

  “Excuse me, sir. Do you work here?” Anna asked the gentleman.

  “Yes, I do. Is there something you need? The place is empty, but a botany lecture’s been planned. You’re welcome to come in and wait. Nasty weather out.”

  “Actually, I’m looking for information on a certain artist. Balázs was his name. Have you ever heard of him? It’s awfully important.”

  “Is it?” He eyed her for a moment as if considering then nodded. “Come with me to my office. I’ll fix us a pot of tea and we can talk.”

  Emptied of its contents, the building echoed as they crossed the central hall beneath the blank walls and took the lift downstairs. Mr. Jamison’s office turned out to be barely bigger than a broom cupboard and cluttered with books, papers, and heaping folders. He removed a pile from a rickety chair and offered her a seat. “Sorry for the mess. You’d think there would be less to do with everything stored off-site. Instead, I feel as if I’m working double time to keep up.” He put a kettle on a small electric burner and dusted off two mugs. “Now, what can I help you with, Miss—?”

  “Trenowyth. I’m interested in finding out anything you can tell me about a portrait artist by the name of Balázs. I believe he painted in the years before the last war.”

  “You must mean Arthur Balázs. He was a sort of artist to the stars—society portraits, figures high in the governme
nt and the military, even a few members of the royal family. Quite popular. For a short time, everyone who was anyone wanted their likeness done by him. What did you want to know exactly?” He handed her a cup of strong, unsweetened tea.

  “Would you know where I might find him? Or have his telephone number or an address? I need to speak with him.”

  “I’m very sorry, Miss Trenowyth, but he’s dead. As a Hungarian national, he was interned as a foreign alien toward the end of the last war. Don’t think he ever quite recovered. His heart carried him off in the late twenties.”

  She put her tea down with a disappointed rattle. “Oh dear. Was there anyone . . . anyone at all who might have known him that I could speak with? Family? People he worked with?”

  “I really can’t say. It was before my time, I’m afraid. You seem very keen. What did you want Mr. Balázs for if you don’t mind my asking? Perhaps I can help.”

  “I’m interested in a painting he did just before the Great War. It was of a young woman by the name of Lady Katherine Trenowyth, a daughter of the Earl of Melcombe. I know it sounds mad to think he’d remember one painting among so many after all these years, but you see—”

  “Trenowyth . . . Trenowyth . . .” Mr. Jamison tapped a finger to his lips. “Of course. I thought the name sounded familiar.” He began frantically rummaging among the books and folders. “Astounding coincidence, you coming here and me just happening on it so recently. I suppose it’s one of those odd moments when you spot something and then it turns up everywhere.”

  Anna nodded as she watched him search the office.

  “Here. I knew I’d had it last week.” He pulled an oversize art catalog from underneath a stack of such. Flipped through it until he found what he was looking for then handed it over. The left page bore text only, but an enormous photograph on the right page showed a painting of a young woman rising from a tousled bed. Waves of curling hair tumbled over her alabaster shoulders, her full-lipped, half-lidded expression hinted at her earthy sexuality and the knowledge of her own power to attract. The same face as the painting in the Nanreath gallery, but this woman . . . this woman bore a siren’s curves and a courtesan’s talents.

  “It’s called The Red-Haired Wanton,” Mr. Jamison explained. “Lady Katherine Trenowyth served as the model. See here?” He pointed to a paragraph outlining a short history of the work.

  “Balázs did this?” Anna asked.

  “No, an artist by the name of Simon Halliday. Unfortunately, he’s dead, too. Killed during the Battle of the Somme in 1916. The painting is coming up for auction.”

  She set down the book and rose from her chair. “Thank you for showing me this. I’m quite grateful.”

  “You can have the catalog if you wish. I’ve too many to keep up with as it is. I wish I could have given you more to go on about the Balázs painting.”

  “No, you’ve done splendidly.”

  He escorted her back to the front doors. “You bear a striking resemblance to the wanton.” He flushed. “An odd thing to say, I know, but there you are. You did say your name was Trenowyth?”

  “I did. Another one of those odd coincidences, I suppose.”

  “Yes, of course.” He bid her good day and disappeared back into the gallery.

  “Find what you were looking for, dearie?” The old man from earlier remained at his post beside the portico.

  “Not really, but I may have found something even better. Cheers.” She dropped a shilling into his open briefcase.

  Walking briskly, she headed past Trafalgar Square and the Admiralty, Horse Guards Parade and across into St. James’s Park, finally pausing to rest on a bench across from the lake. She pulled the catalog from her bag and flipped once more to the page of The Red-Haired Wanton.

  Even pictured in black-and-white, the portrait bore a striking luminescence, the woman’s body rising from her bed, seeming to almost glow as she reached for her lover with one outstretched arm. Intent radiated from her eyes, a look of blatant invitation and the promise of paradise. Anna felt her cheeks warm, as if she intruded upon the most private of moments.

  “Anna Trenowyth? Is that really you?”

  She jerked her head up as she closed the catalog. Tony Lambert stood over her, a corner of his mouth turned up in a hesitant smile as if unsure of his welcome.

  Her heart fluttered uncomfortably. “What on earth are you doing here?”

  “Here in London or here with you?” he asked.

  Shoving the catalog back in her bag, she scooted over, giving him room to sit beside her. “To start, you can tell me what you’re doing in London.”

  “I wrangled a few days’ leave and decided to come up to meet a friend from home. What are the odds I’d bump into you in this muddle, eh?”

  “Barely measurable.” By now an uneasy suspicion tickled the base of her brain.

  “Exactly, but here you are . . . and here I am.”

  Was it her imagination or did his enthusiasm carry shades of a guilty conscience? “You have yet to tell me how on earth you managed to bump into me among millions of people.”

  Yes, now he definitely had a sheepish look to him. He didn’t quite meet her gaze and his jaw worked as if he were mulling his options. “If I pleaded an amazing coincidence, would you believe me?”

  “No.”

  Tony inhaled a deep breath and shifted on the bench, his eyes meeting hers. Funny but she’d never noticed how dark they were, nearly black in the dim winter afternoon light. Or the small silver scar high at his hairline that slashed downward into his right brow. For some reason, this awareness frightened her, and she dropped her gaze to the ground, at the pebbles mixed with the sand of the park path, at a puddle by her foot, black and slick with ice.

  “Sophie Kinsale told me what happened,” he began.

  She gave a strangled laugh. “I should have known.”

  “Hear me out, Anna. Sophie told me because she’s a good friend and she was worried about you.”

  “So why are you here and not her?”

  “Because I was worried, too. And I’d like to be a friend if you’d let me past all those prickles.”

  She finally found the courage to face him and was relieved that whatever insanity had possessed her, it had passed, along with the clammy twisting of her stomach and the odd lightness in her head.

  “If it’s any consolation, Hugh’s sporting a wicked shiner,” he said.

  “You didn’t.”

  “Not me. It was Tilly’s doing, but mum’s the word. She’s sure Lady Boxley would have her transferred to a British outpost in Bora Bora if she knew a lowly VAD planted her precious boy a facer.”

  Anna let out a sigh. “It wasn’t Hugh’s fault. Not completely. I knew why he’d brought me to the party. I just didn’t know the lengths he’d go to in order to throw the pack off his scent.”

  She shoved her hands under her arms. Hunkered into her collar. It really was bloody cold out here. Tony must have noticed. He removed his scarf, tucking it around her neck against the damp, clinging chill. The wool smelled musty and acrid, not unpleasant—she’d smelled much worse—more like what she imagined a boy’s dormitory smelled like or perhaps the bottom of his kit bag, an indefinable masculine smell. She burrowed deeper into the soft thick folds and smiled her thanks. “It was awful, Tony. Absolutely horrid. I had every woman in the village offering me their blunt opinions on my mother’s lack of morals and my own ulterior motives for turning up out of the blue. Hugh just happened to be the icing on the cake. It was as if he despised them.”

  “He doesn’t despise them. He despises himself.”

  She must have shown her confusion.

  “You really don’t understand, do you? Hugh was the petted heir then the dashing flyboy. That crash took more than his leg. It stripped him of everything that made him special.”

  “That’s rubbish.”

  “Nevertheless, it’s true. What has he got now? His mother manages the earldom, such as it is, and shows no signs of handing o
ver management to her ne’er-do-well son. If she didn’t already wrap him in swaddling, his behavior these days certainly wouldn’t convince her to trust him with more than a few meaningless responsibilities.”

  “What he needs is a swift kick in the pants. There’s no use feeling sorry for oneself. Not in times like these because for certain the chap next to you probably has it worse.”

  “Someone should tell him that.” He slid her an encouraging glance.

  She dug at the path with her boot; the ice cracked under her heel, fracturing outward in a million tiny slivers of white. “I see what you’re trying to do.”

  “Am I that transparent?”

  “Says the man who accidentally bumped into me in the middle of London.”

  “I won’t say another word. But you came to Nanreath Hall to learn about your mother. You can’t let Lady Boxley scare you away from your best chance at getting to the truth.” Anna opened her mouth, but he stopped her. “Now enough about Hugh and his woes. Let’s you and I celebrate. Come out with me tonight.”

  “What’s the occasion?”

  “Friendship.” He rose from the bench and held a gloved hand out to her. “And second chances.”

  The dance floor of the Café de Paris shook under the weight of dozens of madly jitterbugging couples hoofing it to Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood.” It hadn’t taken Anna but a few hesitant steps to be drawn into the music, her feet following the familiar rhythms, her heart leaping at every spin and shimmy. By the time the bandleader slowed the tempo and a singer in a slinky black dress stepped to the microphone to begin a heart-wrenching rendition of “I’ll Be Seeing You,” Anna’s blouse clung to her skin and she had to pant to catch her breath, but her mind seemed sharper, and her body seemed lighter, as if she’d laid down the burdens she carried for the space of a song.

  Tony pulled her close. Shadows lay in flickering bars across his face, the light from the chandeliers caught and refracted in his dark eyes. He smelled good—soap with a hint of cigarette and whiskey. His hand in hers was roughened by work, the palm calloused. But as he swung her around the floor, there was surprising catlike grace in his movements.