A Perilous Perspective (Lady Darby Mystery #10)(108)

“Barbreck should be informed the paintings have been found.”

That would be betrayal enough for one day.

Gage nodded, but I could tell he wasn’t convinced that’s all I’d been deliberating.



* * *




*

In the failing light of the day shining through his study windows, Lord Barbreck looked as if he’d aged a decade in the space of the past week.

As we’d finished telling him about our discovery of the paintings, his head had sunk back against his chair, and he’d closed his eyes. One might have expected him to feel some relief upon learning his paintings had not been sold, or damaged, or lost forever. But I didn’t think it was relief that made his head suddenly too heavy to hold up. It was grief. And sorrow. And shame.

Gage and I waited quietly for him to speak, allowing him the dignity of deciding how he wished the rest of the conversation to go. If asked, I would have said I anticipated he would nod his head in thanks and then dismiss us so that he could continue to brood in solitude. But apparently, he’d already done enough of that.

“I ne’er suspected him, ne’er doubted him. No’ in the fifty-odd years since,” he told us in a weary voice, lifting his head. “Maybe that was na?ve o’ me, but when I asked and he swore it was a genuine Titian, I believed him. But . . .” He held up his liver-spotted hands and sighed. “It turns oot he lied.” He reached inside the central desk drawer and extracted a miniature portrait that he clutched in both hands and gazed down at longingly. “And I was an even bigger fool than he.”

I didn’t need to see the image he was looking at to know whom it depicted. And the fact that he’d kept it all these years told me without a shred of doubt why he’d never married another.

“I always believed I was right. That I’d preserved our family’s honor. That Anne had been the one who lost oot, but I was wrong.” His brow crumpled. “It was me.”

“You’re not the only one who lost out,” I remarked. “Even if they were your actions and your foolishness.”

His stare hardened at my bluntness, but I was not about to gloss over the truth now.

“Miss Campbell lost, too.”

His shoulders bowed, and his eyes fastened once again on the image in the portrait, acknowledging this fact.

“She deserves an apology,” I pressed, but with less bite.

His mouth tightened in a firm line. “Aye, she does. Tomorrow.” He looked up to meet my gaze evenly. “Will ye join me?”

Though it might have been a plea for help in doing so, I didn’t think it was. He appeared determined to finally do the right thing whether I accompanied him or not. Rather it seemed more of a desire to have witnesses, to make his apology a public statement as well as a personal one.

I only hoped Miss Campbell proved as worthy of that apology as I wanted to believe.

I glanced at Gage before answering. “Of course.”

Barbreck dipped his head in gratitude, as I’d expected him to do five minutes before, and then returned to his contemplation of the miniature.

When after some moments he didn’t speak, we excused ourselves, closing the door to his study with a gentle click. I paused before the painting hanging several feet away of Christ at Emmaus by an unknown artist, likely a Venetian based on the color and light. Tracing the brushstrokes and falls of shadow quieted my mind.

“Well, at least that’s one mystery solved,” Gage remarked, standing just beyond my shoulder.

I didn’t comment, still unable to voice the dark suspicions swirling in me, trying to take shape. Part of me hoped my husband would attribute my failure to reply to my absorption with the painting, but the rest of me grasped he knew me far too well and was far too attuned to my idiosyncrasies to ever let it pass without notice. And the rest of me proved right.

“Kiera?”

“Hmm?” I hummed distractedly.

When he grasped my shoulders, turning me to look at him, I knew I was not going to be allowed to escape his interrogation with such a shallow ploy. He searched my face for the answers I didn’t yet know how to give. “Why aren’t you more pleased? You found the real paintings, and now they can be restored to their rightful place. What more could you ask for in that regard?”

I turned my head to the side, glancing at the study door. “For Alisdair not to have meddled.” Though meddle was much too innocuous a word. One for aunties trying to arrange marriages and sisters interfering in well-laid plans. Perhaps transgressed was better. Or betrayed.

“Yes,” he replied solemnly, matching my tone. But I could tell from the intent look in his eyes that he was not going to be so easily diverted.

Which made the sudden appearance of Morven and Lady Bearsden all the more fortuitous.

“Kiera!” Morven exclaimed, raising her arm to hail me as if I was across the garden rather than twenty feet down the corridor.

Before turning to greet them, Gage gave me a look that told me our conversation was not finished, merely temporarily suspended. One I ignored, determined as I was to avoid it until I was ready.

“What is it?” I asked my cousin as she bounded forward with Lady Bearsden trundling along more slowly behind her with the aid of her cane. Noting the triumphant gleam in her eyes, I trusted we weren’t about to be informed of another poisoning.