Page 9 of Forgery, Love, and Other Lies
“But how many others might know?” Papa yelled. “Why, Fiona?”
Because she’d wanted—needed—to help. Papa could not see past the glittering of jewels, and the family had been sinking. She was not like Posey—good with customers. Nor was she business minded, like Mama. Fiona had only her paintbrushes, a talent that had always cost the family more than it had provided. She’d needed lessons and paper and canvas and paints and brushes and… and no way to pay her family back for something she’d never really wanted to begin with.
Until she’d met the dowager.
“I am sorry, Papa, Mama. I—”
“Not good enough.” Father’s words were soft but threatened to shatter the windows nonetheless. “Do you understand the danger of a situation such as this?”
Silence welled up thick around them with his last word.
Then the swish of Posey’s skirts as she circled her father and settled a soft glare on him. “Papa, we must all settle down. Let us go into dinner.”
“What are we to do?” Papa demanded.
“Survive, as always,” Mama said. The gaze she rested on Fiona wasn’t full of rage like Papa’s. It brimmed over with sympathy, understanding. She knew, after all, the disaster their books had been in before she’d taken them over, and she’d notasked Fiona any questions about her sold paintings, which ones she’d sold or who to.
“Let us eat,” Posey said. “Every trouble feels worse on an empty stomach.”
Her face still buried in her hands, Fiona heard only the sounds of crackling flames and shuffling footsteps, the sound of the bath chair wheeling across rug and wood as Posey ushered them all out of the room.
Then a warm hand alighted on Fiona’s shoulder. “You are right, Fee.” Mama’s hand squeezed. “Wewerein trouble. I know the shop’s books better than your father. You should not have done what you did. Surely your father did not believe us to besodesperate but… you were right. Because wewerethat desperate. At times.” The warmth of her mother’s hand disappeared.
She meant to comfort, but Fiona might never know comfort again. She dropped into the chair next to the abandoned cards by the fire and finally dropped her hands to her lap to stare into the flames.
She was a fool. She knew that then and she knew it now, and her father’s words—what do we do now?—rang in her head. If she wasn’t such a fool, perhaps she could figure it out. Solving the mess that might see her hang remained her only means of redemption.
She knew quite well what to do now, as clear as where to put a line on a canvas when copying a master.
Adopt a version of Lord Lysander’s plan—find the dowager, find the originals, then beg for the copies, and burn them. But how?
Four
Fiona woke up tired and hungry, hollow and sick. An illness of her own making. She’d been determined to give up painting altogether, to focus her creative energy on jewelry design, but she couldn’t now. Not yet. Not until she’d put the mystery of the missing dowager to rest, not until Fiona’s missing copies were found.
So, as the first hint of sunlight crept yellow and slow into her room, she slung her feet to the floor, threw open the wardrobe, and dressed. And when she heard Posey walking around on the other side of the thin wall that divided their chambers, she ran the few steps to her sister’s room and knocked on her door. It swung open with a shockingswooshalmost immediately, and Fiona fell inside.
“Good morning.” Fully dressed in a muslin day gown but for shoes, Posey rubbed a fist in her eye and yawned the last word.
Fiona snorted. “Hardly good. Don’t let the sun fool you. But I’m determined to make it better.” She waltzed over to the window and stood sentinel, a general preparing for battle. London had no idea of her war waging, though. It drifted silent and lonely down below, the streets gray and empty. What sort of jewelry did one wear out on a day like this one? Perhaps a lady just stepping out, her cloak hood pulled low, her face turned down to prevent being recognized, wore only eardrops. Pearls that mirrored the morning fog. Her story would have a jubilant ending. But Fiona’s…
Fiona turned her back on the outside world. “Ishallmake it better.”
“Ah. How so? Wait.” She rummaged in her wardrobe. “Let me put my boots on just in case.”
Fiona clasped her hands behind her back. “You’ll need them.”
“Where are we going, then? We must be back in time to open the shop.”
“We are going to visit the duke.”
Posey stilled, one arm frozen halfway into her pelisse. “Are we? And why is that?”
“Because he knows everyone, and I need to know more about this Lord Lysander.” She slipped her hand into her pocket and pulled forth the calling card the man had left last night, wrinkled and dirty and not containing his name. “The card belongs to a Mrs. Blake. There’s an address, and I intend to visit it today. But first, I want to know all there is to know about the horrid man.”
They stepped into the early morning sunshine outside the townhouse arm in arm, and Fiona pulled her sister tight to her side, a warm strength, no matter what happened. They crossed a street, rushing their steps and clinging to their bonnets at the very last to avoid a careening carriage.
Fiona pulled her sister even tighter when they’d caught their breath and calmed their racing hearts. “Iamsorry.” Soft words to be lost in the morning wind.
