Page 26 of More or Less a Countess
For God’s sake, she hadn’t batted an eye over that ruffian who’d nearly choked the life out of her, but now that her precious sketchbook was at risk her face was bleached of color, and her lower lip was trembling. “Please, Lord Dare. I must have it back.”
Damn it. Nick wasn’t the heroic sort—gallantry was tedious, and far more trouble than it was worth—but any intention he might have had to leave the sketchbook behind fled as soon as he saw that trembling pink lip. “I’ll get it. Stay here, and for God’s sake, don’t stir from the carriage.”
Nick made his way back toward Birdcage Walk. The villain he’d felled had disappeared, but Nick found a few loose pages scattered about near the Royal Aviary. He caught them up one by one and followed their trail until he found the sketchbook at the bottom of Cockpit Steps. He scooped it up, grumbling when a few more pages slipped out and scattered across the cobblestones.
He flipped the sketchbook open, lay it flat on his palm, and started to shove the untidy pile of papers inside, but the vibrant blue colors of the drawing on the top caught his eye, and he paused.
When Almack’s Fails to Entertain.
The title was written across the top of the sketch in an elegant, flowing hand, and below that was a drawing of a fair-haired young lady in a blue gown hovering on the sidelines of a ballroom, her expression forlorn as she watched a dozen or so elegant couples twirl about on the dance floor. The sketch was amusing in a way, but there was something melancholy about it, too, perhaps because the forlorn lady looked quite a bit like Miss Somerset.
He turned a few more of the sketches over, reading their titles and chuckling at some of the more creative ones.
Drunken Rogues and Other Miscreants.
Ladies Who Despise Embroidery.
How to Escape the Torments of the Modiste.
This one showed the same fair-haired lady as in the Almack’s sketch. Her brow was creased with terror, and she was eyeing an evil-looking seamstress who held a tape measure in one hand and an enormous pin in the other.
Nick laughed aloud when he came to a rough sketch of a tortured-looking maiden in a prim gown slumped over a pianoforte. The title read,Useless Pursuits: Practicing the Pianoforte.
Odd, that a lady so accomplished on the pianoforte should despise practicing so much, but Nick didn’t have time to ponder every sketch. He was about to shove the pages back inside the book when the sketch she’d done of the burial grounds that afternoon caught his eye, and he paused to study it in the dim light.
It was bleak and austere, particularly the branches of the trees she’d drawn in the foreground. She’d shaded them heavily with her pencil, and they looked bare and stark against the gray sky above. It was a lonely scene, and her sketch reflected that, but there was also a certain raw magnificence he hadn’t noticed when he’d been there. It almost made him want to return to the burial grounds, to see if he’d perceive the same desolate beauty she had.
He turned over a few more of the loose pages, curious to see what else she’d done, but the rest of the pages were blank.
Or so he thought at first.
Just as he was about to close the book and hurry back to his carriage, he stumbled across an entire series of sketches tucked into the back of the book, almost as if she’d hidden them there.
And no wonder.
There wasn’t a single still life of flowers or fruit, no landscapes, and no portraits. There were no drawings of kittens, dogs, or horses, or anything else one might expect to find in a young lady’s sketchbook.
Nick’s eyes widened as he turned the pages over one by one. There was a sketch of Newgate Prison, and a rather sinister depiction of the bow window at White’s—one she must have risked her reputation to get, since it could only have been drawn from that angle if she’d been on St. James’s Street, right in front of it, and…good God, was that a sketch of the execution site at Tower Hill?
Unusual.A grim laugh rose in Nick’s throat.
Bunhill Fields Burial Ground was one thing. Headstones and graves, stray bones and charnel houses—they were odd subjects for a young lady’s pencil, certainly, but for every belle in London there were a dozen or more aspiring artists, and there was no telling what oddity might interest a lady with an inquisitive turn of mind. He’d half-convinced himself Miss Somerset had only taken him to the burial grounds because she’d thought an afternoon spent among long-dead plague victims was an efficient way to discourage him from calling again.
But this? This went well beyondunusual.
Tearing about London to take sketches of gibbets and execution sites? Risking her safety in such a reckless manner? That wasn’t harmless curiosity.
Nick stared down at the sketches in his hands, and a chill rushed over him as a new and unwelcome thought seized his mind.
Miss Somerset might be as mad as a bloody bedlamite.
Madness.Christ.
He’d overlook a few irregularities to secure a bride as quickly as possible, but the Countess of Dare, a madwoman? As badly as he wanted to leave England, he couldn’t do that to his aunt, and that was to say nothing of his future children. Madness tended to run in the blood, and even he wasn’t selfish enough to doom his heirs to the curse of insanity.
He peered down at the sketch of Tower Hill clenched between his fingers. She was skilled with her pencil—there was no denying that. There were dozens of sketches, most of them rough, but a few had been meticulously executed, and one or two were colored drawings of such high quality they could have been taken for the work of a professional artist.
He’d heard those who suffered from madness sometimes displayed a certain genius—a facility with numbers, perhaps, or a talent for writing or art.
