Page 80 of The Heiress's Daughter
Clarissa looked at the drawing of the old lady and nodded. “I have to find her and bring her home. She’s out there all alone and, and…Anything can happen to a beautiful young girl, all alone.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll find her.” He tucked Zoë’s self-portrait into a pocket. The drawings were beautifully vivid, but they gave no indication of where she might have run to. “Now think—where might she have gone? Would she go back to that orphanage?”
“Never. She hated it there. And she didn’t take anything with her—only the clothes she arrived in, which were so shabby.” She looked up at him, her face pale and anxious. “I’ve been thinking and thinking, but I cannot imagine where she’d go. I don’t think she has anywheretogo.”
“What about the place she lived in before the orphan asylum?” Surely she’d head for somewhere familiar.
Clarissa frowned, thinking. “I don’t know. I don’t think she ever mentioned any particular place—all I know is that her mother was a painter and an artist’s model. Maybe Betty will know more. They were friends.” She jumped up and sent for Betty, who turned out to be an abigail.
Betty stood in the doorway, wringing her hands on her apron. Another one who was distressed at Zoë’s departure. “No, miss, she never told me the place. I don’t know London that well, and place names don’t mean much to me. Sorry, miss. She never told me she was leaving or I woulda stopped her, I promise you.”
“I know, Betty. It’s not your fault,” Clarissa said softly. “Thank you.”
It was a dismissal, but Betty hesitated. “What is it?” Race asked her. “Is there something else you want to tell us?”
Betty bit her lip. “I’m not sure, my lord, it’s just…She left something with me, asked me to keep it safe for her until she came and fetched it. It was a few days ago, and I was busy and didn’t think anything about it at the time. But now, I’m wondering…Shall I fetch it?”
“Yes, please,” Clarissa told her, and Betty ran off. Clarissa looked at Race. “She didn’t mention this before, when we were questioning her. I wonder what it is.”
Betty returned shortly with a thick cardboard tube.
“Zoë brought that with her when she came from the orphanage,” Clarissa exclaimed. “I didn’t like to ask her what it was. She was so prickly at the time, and had so few possessions.”
The tube was corked at either end. Clarissa removed one, tilted the tube and a thick roll slid out. She carefully unrolled it. “Paintings!” she exclaimed.
“More of Zoë’s work?” Race said.
“No, most of these are proper paintings, in color, and some are on canvas.” She leafed carefully through them. “Some are in watercolor and others in oil. Zoë didn’t have any paints—I’d been meaning to buy her some, but I kept forgetting,” she said distressfully.
“You can buy them for her when we find her,” Race said firmly. “Now let’s look through these. There might be a clue among them.”
The paintings included a couple of watercolors and asmall oil painting of Zoë as a little girl. “Oh, look, her mother must have painted this one. She was so like Izzy, even then,” Clarissa breathed.
She set it carefully aside and picked up the next one. It was a watercolor of a castle, a castle in the French style. “I wonder if this was Zoë’s mother’s home in France.” She lifted it to examine it more closely and noticed a sketch pad underneath. “This might contain something that could help us find her.” She picked it up and began flipping through it. “No, they’re mostly sketches of people’s faces, nothing to locate—” She broke off, staring.
“What is it?” Race asked.
Wordlessly she turned the pad around so he could see it. It was a set of three small vivid pen-and-ink sketches portraying an elegantly dressed man with curly dark hair. He looked handsome and arrogant, and very pleased with himself.
Race shook his head. It was nobody he knew. “Someone you recognize?”
“It’s Papa,” she whispered. “Izzy’s and my papa—and Zoë’s. It’s unmistakable. If this were in color those eyes would be green. Hard, bright green.” She looked at Race, her eyes wide. “This proves it: Zoë is indeed our sister.”
Race nodded. It at least proved that Izzy’s mother had definitely known Sir Bartleby Studley—the sketch was in her style—the same style as most of the paintings and drawings in the tube. And Zoë’s resemblance to this man was unmistakable. As was Izzy’s.
“Zoë must have seen this,” Clarissa said. “So why didn’t she show it to us? She must realize this would prove her paternity.”
“It certainly adds to the evidence,” Race said.
“Maybe it’s too painful to look through her mother’s things. I know that from my own experience,” she told him.
Or maybe she just didn’t want to prove she really was Clarissa’s sister, Race thought. He didn’t understand why that might be, but the girlhadrun away.
Clarissa pondered it a moment, then set it aside. “Let’s look at the rest.” She started laying out the remaining paintings and sketches.
“Her mother didn’t paint this one,” Race said, indicating a small oil painting on canvas. “It’s by a different hand altogether.” It was of a young blonde woman wearing a shabby blue dress that matched her eyes exactly. She was holding a baby on her lap, a modern-day madonna. In the background there was a window through which was a hazy silhouette of several tall buildings, the tallest with three crooked chimneys.
“I think that might be Zoë’s mother, and Zoë as a baby,” Clarissa breathed. “All these must be very precious to her. Why would she leave them behind?”
