Page 66 of Forgery, Love, and Other Lies
Mama nodded in agreement. “Your father is absolutely right, Fiona. Your mistakes came when you thought to do something we did not approve of, nor even knew of. Don’t you see you do not have the brain to—”
“No!” She screamed it. She’d raise her voice as loud as it took for them to listen to her, to hear her finally. “I knew it was wrong, but I did it anyway, and you cannot comprehend the good it did us at the time. Or you are not willing to admit it. You would let me help in no other way. I have sketchbook after sketchbook filled to brimming with designs, and surely one of them will put that old Foggy to shame. But my helping seems to be most shameful to all of you. I am not ignorant. I am not useless. But I am willing to take risks for those I love, and despite your insistence on calling me silly and worse, I love you. And Lord Lysander needs me. So…” She swallowed hard and stepped backward away from her family. “I’m going with Lord Theodore, and I will be gone as long as it takes to find his brother.”
Mama held out a hand, a gesture of reconciliation. “Consider the propriety of it all, what it looks like. You cannot understand—”
“I do understand, yet I make this choice anyway.” She took another backward step toward the two bodies waiting with held breath and averted eyes near the front door of the shop.
She turned on her toe and made a steady path toward them. Lord Theodore pushed the door open, and Lady Cordelia stepped onto the street.
A hand clasped Fiona’s wrist. “Fiona,” Posey said, squeezing her hand. “I do not think you silly. I promise I do not. I love you, too, but… a missing man, a mysterious auction… why aren’t you speaking with me?”
“I will,” Fiona promised. “I’ll tell you everything. But I must go now. He’smissing, Posey. And my heart feels like it might bleed forever if we don’t find him, if he’s…” She dashed at a tear rolling down her cheek and looked at her sister over her shoulder. “Will you please let me do this? It is what I must do, what I need and want to do. Because I… I… well, we have no time right now for me to explain how I feel about him, but—”
Posey released her only to push her toward the door. “Go. Be safe. And know I’m rummaging through your sketchbooks while you’re gone.”
Fiona smiled and stepped into the crowded street with Lord Theodore, then climbed into a hack with him and Lady Cordelia.
* * *
One short, tension-filled ride later, she was knocking on Lady Balantine’s door, the others standing behind her like personal guards.
When the butler swept the door open, Fiona demanded, “I must speak with Lady Balantine.”
“She’s unwell, Miss Frampton.” He eyed the two behind her. “And you are?”
“This is Lord Lysander’s brother and his companion.” No idea what else to call her. His friend? His… mistress? But she couldn’t say that out loud. His betrothed? Didn’t matter. “May we come in and speak to Lady Balantine?”
“Now might not be the time for a chat,” the butler said.
“Please.” Her inflection made it sound like a question, as if she asked permission, but she edged her way inside, ducked beneath the butler’s arm, and darted down the hall. “My lady!” She ran for the small downstairs parlor she knew to be the baroness’s favorite that had been stripped bare. The paintings gone from the walls, the rugs missing, the statues—
Fiona gasped, the memory she’d been reaching for earlier slammed into her like a carriage at full speed. A statue of a naked man, about the size of her forearm used to live on the back corner of the mantel. It no longer did, and its absence almost brought her to her knees. She whirled in a circle and fisted her hands in her skirts, trying to gather her thoughts. But with her ladyship sunk lifeless and dull eyed in a chair near the window, and Lord Theodore and Lady Cordelia running down the hall toward them, she had no time for thinking.
She sank to knees beside Lady Balantine and grasped her hands. “My lady, what has happened here?”
Lady Balantine pulled up tall, the ire of a goddess in her eyes. “My son took everything. He said he needed it, that it would catch a pretty penny, and that I owed him.”
“Your son took the statue? That used to be just there?” She pointed at the mantel.
“That and more.”
Lord Theodore and Lady Cordelia entered the room, gazes flying everywhere. Did they notice what was missing though they’d never seen the room?
“Who are they?” Lady Balantine demanded.
“Lysander’s brother, Lord Theodore, and Lord Theodore’s…”
“Friend,” Lady Cordelia supplied. “I do not like being called his companion, as if he’s an eighty-year-old dowager.”
The real dowager in the room barked a laugh. “I like you, and I can’t like much right now, so you’re welcome to stay, the both of you.” She patted Fiona’s hand. “As well as you, my darling. But where is your beau, your Lysander?”
“That’s why we’ve come. We don’t know. He’s been missing for nearly a week.” She looked over her shoulder at Lord Theodore. “Do you still have the statue? In your pocket?”
He pulled it forth, held it out to Lady Balantine. “We found this outside my sister’s house. I have no particular reason to think it’s related to his disappearance, but he was often traveling with valuable art, and it’s not far-fetched to think someone might have—”
The dowager screamed. “That’s mine! Is that… is thatblood?”
“She looks like she might swoon,” Lady Cordelia said, looking at Lord Theodore.
