“And when you came to me on our wedding night? Was it just to keep me from going off like a maniac and annulling our marriage out of misguided spite?”
“Yes, but perhaps not all. I didn’t know what happened between men and women so I had no idea how wonderful it could be with you. It was probably more that than any other motive, but it’s true. I was so dreadfully afraid you’d do something stupid that I came to you.”
“And now why would you come to me and seduce me?”
“To drive you mad with lust, even madder with lust than George Raven, poor man. There is still a lot that I have to learn, Marcus.”
“When you’re healed, when you’re laughing and dancing about again, I’ll be the most attentive teacher in all of Yorkshire, hell, in all of England.”
She smiled at him, a smile free of pain, a smile free of heartbreak, a smile filled with delight.
“Do you remember, I told you before that I want you to tell me everything now, all right?” He gave her a sideways look. “Really, Duchess, no matter what it is, you can tell me. There should be no secrets between us, not ever, as of this moment, all right?”
She cocked her head at him. She didn’t say anything, just stroked her fingers over his face again, and he wondered if she would ever tell him about her songs and her outrageous pseudonym. R.L. Coots—wherever did she get that absurd name?
Ah, but Mr. R.L. Coots wasn’t important, just she was, and Mr. Coots would come out sometime in the future, Marcus didn’t care when. But he would have liked to tell her how very proud he was of her. He quickly dismissed it as he kissed her not just once, but again and again, showing her how much he loved her, trying to give more of himself to her, and she smiled with relish when he whispered what he was going to do to her when she was well again.
29
IT WAS THE Duchess who next saw her mother-in-law lying flat on her back on the floor in the middle of the Green Cube Room, just staring upward. She didn’t say anything for a long time, just watched her look upward as if entranced with the ceiling. Then she too looked upward. The Green Cube Room was the only room in the entire house with a painted ceiling, actually groupings of paintings, all done it seemed by the same artist, all the scenes stretched out between the thick painted ceiling beams. She’d looked at these paintings since she was nine years old, particularly the Medieval ones. She’d thought them interesting, but she’d paid them little attention for they were just there, just a part of the house, a part of this odd chamber.
Patricia Wyndham was staring up at a small grouping or series of paintings, most of them scenes from village life in Medieval times. The paints had faded over the centuries but they were still vibrant enough to admire and study. She was even staring up at the Duchess’s favorite series of Medieval scenes, the first one depicting a beautiful young maiden surrounded by her servants, all gowned in flowing white, a white wimple, high and conical with a pointed top balanced on her head, her pale angel’s hair cascading down her back. She was seated atop what appeared to be a stone fence, leaning forward slightly, listening to a young gallant who sat at her feet playing a lute. The Duchess had always fancied she could almost hear the sounds coming from that lute, so spellbound did the maiden appear. She looked at the next scene, this one similar, but the young gallant was standing in this one and reaching upward to pluck something that seemed to be hidden in the thick branches of an oak tree. What was he reaching for?
She looked down and saw that her mother-in-law was still in rapt contemplation of the ceiling and continued her own perusal. In the third scene, a servant was handing the maiden a cup of water and the Duchess saw now that the maiden hadn’t been seated on a stone fence, no, it was the ledge of the top of a well. The young man had pulled a lute from the branches of the oak tree. A lute in an oak tree?
Suddenly she froze. Her heart began to pound. Oh no, was it possible? She shook her head, then stared upward again. In the next scene, the young man was holding both lutes, one in each hand, and he was still smiling at the maiden, as if he were offering her one of the lutes, his attention still firmly fixed on her. In the next scene, he was still holding the lutes, but now he was looking over his shoulder. Someone was evidently there and the young man looked frightened. He’d taken the slender necks of both lutes and pressed the instruments together, back-to-back, holding them in one hand. A lute was perfectly flat on one side and bulged out on the other. Why, then, didn’t he press the two flat sides together? Why the pregnant sides? It was awkward and difficult to hold them that way.
“Hello, my dear. I trust you’re feeling up to snuff now? Of a certainty you are, else my sweet son wouldn’t have allowed you to wander about alone. I’m looking at the ceiling. When I first visited Chase Park so many years ago, I was drawn to this room because of the paintings. So many of them, beginning with scenes from the Conqueror’s time and moving up into the early years of the sixteenth century. In truth it was those last scenes that particularly fascinated me, for in some of them are my brave Mary, Queen of Scots, so stouthearted, so noble in the face of so much betrayal. You see there are no paintings of her beyond a child, so the artist must have stopped around 1550. But then I realized, just three days ago, that there was more to the paintings than just the artist’s renderings of historical times. Have you seen it yet, Duchess? Ah, yes, I see that you do. Amazing, isn’t it?”
The Duchess jumped, then looked down at her mother-in-law, who was still flat on her back. “It’s easier to see everything from here. Come down, Duchess, and I’ll show you.”
The Duchess stretched out on her back next to her mother-in-law. “Now, my dear, tell me what you see.”
“The maiden is sitting on the rim of the well and the oak tree is overhead. Just like the clues. Now, what about the Janus-faced nines and the monster?”
“The nine business has bothered me no end. It was just yesterday that I realized the truth of the matter. Look at the lutes, Duchess.”
“Yes, the lutes. I was just wondering why he was holding them back-to-back, surely difficult since they’re so fat.”
“Think about music, my dear, think about what you would have if the young man were holding them facing each other.”
“Oh goodness, it’s not about nines, it’s about music! Those are the nines, the Janus-faced nines.”
“I believe so. I’ve played the pianoforte all my life and I swear to you this is the first time I am truly thankful that my mama forced me to read more music than to dance in the moonlight, which I was finally able to do with Marcus’s father, that wonderful man. Do you know music, Duchess?”
“Yes,” she said, so excited she could barely speak, “holding the lutes that way doesn’t refer to nines, but to bass clefs, back-to-back bass clefs. Oh goodness, they look like nines. I’ve looked at these paintings since I was a child, yet I’ve never really looked, if you know what I mean. Even after knowing the clues, it simply never occurred to me that these paintings—oh goodness.”
“Yes, indeed. The paintings are so familiar to everyone, but they were painted for a reason, at least these Medieval scenes were. Now, look at the next scene. The young man is looking at someone, someone who frightens him—”
“The monster.”
“Yes, the monster,” Patricia Wyndham said with a good deal of satisfaction. “The young man is now pointing to the lute. At what, I wonder?”
“The bass clef, that’s what he’s trying to tell us. See, he’s pointing into the lower tree branches, then at the second lute. Ah, ma’am, we’ve been so very blind. The clues were here all the time, here for centuries, yet no one has ever thought, ever dreamed, except you, ma’am. I believe you’re quite the smartest person I know.”
“Thank you, dear child, but we don’t have that wretched treasure yet.”
“May I inquire what you, Duchess, and you, Mrs. Wyndham, are doing on your backs on the newly swept Aubusson carpet?”