He’d held her hand throughout; the feel of her fingers, slim and slender under his, helped settle his thoughts, and focus his mind in the right direction. Forward. “What are you expecting to happen once the portrait is painted and shown?” He glanced at her, caught her gaze. “Once people start to question the circumstances of your mother’s death, won’t they think…” He paused, then rephrased, “Couldn’t the answer be suicide?”

She shook her head vehemently. “No-no one who knew Mama would even suggest it. She loved life, loved living. She wouldn’t have suddenly decided she no longer wished to.”

“You’re sure?”

“Absolutely. No one has ever raised that prospect, not even though, believing me guilty yet not wanting it to be so, they’d grasp at any straw, even that.” She straightened, briefly searched his face. “Until I-we-convince them it wasn’t me, that it’s all right-safe if you like-to look for Mama’s killer, they won’t. And the real killer will remain free.”

Looking into her eyes, he grasped the point she knew, but had thus far not stated. “Your mother’s killer is still here-he’s someone you know.”

She held his gaze steadily. “He must be. You’ve seen the estate. It’s not easy to slip in undetected, not unless you know the place, and there were no gypsies or suspicious outsiders in the area when she died.”

He looked away, across the garden, still, silent and eerily beautiful under the now waning moon. A moment passed, then he felt her fingers tense within his hand, lightly grip. He turned his head, met her gaze, darkly shadowed in the night.

“You will paint my portrait, won’t you?”

How could he refuse?

She angled her head, brows arching, faintly challenging. “Can you do it? Paint me that well that my innocence will show?”

“Yes.” He had absolutely no doubt he could.

She drew a breath, held it, then quietly said, “I can understand your resistance to being manipulated into being an unwitting judge, but at my request, could you agree to being a witting one?”

He held her gaze, let a moment tick by purely out of habit; he didn’t need to think. “If you truly wish it, then yes. I will.”

She smiled.

“There will, however, be a price.”

Her brows rose, this time in surprise, but, her eyes searching his, she didn’t confuse his “price” with his commission. “What?”

He didn’t know-he didn’t even know what had prompted him to utter the words, but he wasn’t about to take them back. “I’m not certain, yet.”

She held his gaze, then calmly replied, “Let me know when you are.”

Desire lanced through him. From her tone, low and faintly sultry, he couldn’t tell whether she was deliberately challenging him, or simply meeting his challenge with her usual directness.

She drew breath and evenly continued, “Until then…I’ll do whatever you ask, tell you anything you wish, sit for however many hours you want-just as long as you paint me as I truly am so that everyone will know I’m not my mother’s murderer.”

“Done.” He held her gaze for an instant longer, then lifted the hand he held to his lips. He brushed a kiss to her knuckles, watched the slight shiver she fought to suppress, then turned her hand and, watching her still, deliberately pressed a much more intimate kiss to her palm.

And had the satisfaction of seeing her lids fall, of sensing her irrepressible response.

She was the quintessential damsel in distress and she’d asked him to be her champion; as such, he was entitled to her favor.

But he’d yet to decide what he wanted from her, and they were in the middle of an open garden. Reining in his impulses, with her unusually strong, unexpectedly definite, he rose, drew her to her feet, and escorted her back into the house.


Hell’s bells-what a coil!” Barnaby paused to study Gerrard’s face. “Can you truly do that-paint innocence?”

“Yes, but don’t ask how.” Sprawled in an armchair, waiting while Barnaby dressed for the day, Gerrard looked out at the sunlit gardens, at the lightly ruffling canopies. “It’s not so much a finite quality, as something that shines through in the absence of aspects that dim or tarnish it, like guilt and evil. In this case, given the effect the crime has had on Jacqueline, it’ll be a case of painting all she is, of getting the balance of the different elements right so that it’s plain what isn’t there.”

“The evil necessary to commit matricide?”

“Precisely.”

Seeing Barnaby loading his pockets with the paraphernalia he always carried-not just the usual gentlemanly things like handkerchief, watch and coin purse, but a pencil and notepad, string, and pocketknife-Gerrard rose. “In the circumstances, I want to get started on the portrait straightaway. The sooner I get to grips with it-get down what I need to show and decide how to pull it off-the better.”

The sooner Jacqueline would be free of the haunting of her mother’s death. And the sooner he’d be free, too, although what it was that, courtesy of Lord Tregonning bringing him here, now had him in its grip, he wasn’t sure.

As they left the room, Barnaby shot him a glance. “So you’re committed to this-to doing the portrait and, through that, starting a search for the real killer?”

“Yes.” They started down the corridor; Gerrard looked at Barnaby. “Why do you ask?”

Barnaby met his gaze, for once deadly serious. “Because, dear boy, if that’s your tack, then you really will need me here to watch your back.”

They’d reached the stairs; a noise in the hall below had them both looking down. Jacqueline, unaware of them, crossed the hall, heading for the breakfast parlor. She passed out of sight. In step, they started down.

“And, of course,” Barnaby mused, “someone will need to watch the lovely Miss Tregonning’s back, too.”

Gerrard knew a taunt when he heard one, knew he should resist, yet still he heard himself say, far too definitely to be misconstrued, “That, you may leave to me.”

Suppressed laughter rippled beneath Barnaby’s words. “I was sure you’d feel that way.”

An instant later, however, when they stepped off the stairs and Barnaby glanced at him, all trace of amusement had flown. “All teasing aside, chum, we will need to exercise a degree of alertness. I haven’t learned any more to the point yet, but I’ve heard more than enough to convince me there’s something very odd going on down here.”


He wanted to start sketching her immediately, but…

“I’m terribly sorry.” Faint color tinged Jacqueline’s cheeks. “Last evening, Giles Trewarren invited me to ride with him and a few of the others to St. Just this morning-I agreed to meet them at the top of the lane.”

Gerrard could read in her eyes that their discussion of the previous night-all she’d promised in return for his agreement to paint her-was fresh in her mind; she truly was sorry she’d accepted Giles’s invitation.

In light of that, he swallowed the urge to throw a painterly tantrum and insist she spend the day with him, wandering the house and gardens while he drew her out, and captured what showed in quick pencil sketches. The most preliminary of works, there would be many of them before he was satisfied he had the right setting, the right pose, and even more importantly the right expression for the portrait he was determined to create.

His enthusiasm and determination were running high; his commitment was absolute. Despite the success of his portraits of the twins, he was convinced his portrait of Jacqueline would transcend them; it would be the finest thing he’d done to date. His fingers were not just itching, the tips were almost burning with the desire to grip a pencil and wield it.

“I do hope you don’t mind?”

Her hazel eyes declared her sincerity. He inwardly sighed. “Perhaps Mr. Adair and I could accompany you-if you don’t mind?”

She smiled, genuinely relieved. Perhaps genuinely pleased? “That would be perfect. You haven’t seen much of the local area yet, and St. Just is the nearest town.”

Barnaby was happy to go jauntering-happy for the opportunity to talk to more locals and see what he could learn of the mysteries. After breakfast, the three of them met on the terrace, then headed for the stables.

Jacqueline was an accomplished rider; Gerrard inferred as much from the spirited bay mare that was waiting for her at the mounting block. Swinging up to the saddle of the chestnut gelding the stableman had chosen for him, he settled the horse, watching as Jacqueline let her mount prance, let her dance, then deftly brought her alongside.

The instant Barnaby had finished getting acquainted with his mount, a young black, they headed out, Jacqueline in the lead. She left the drive almost immediately, turning onto a grassed track between rolling green fields. Gerrard, watching her, caught the laughing glance she threw over her shoulder, then she touched her heels to the mare’s flanks-and raced ahead.

He was after her in an instant, instinctively, without thought.

With a startled “Whoop!” Barnaby followed.

They thundered over the turf, the rush of their passage converting the mild breeze to a wild wind whistling past their ears, raking through their hair.

The land rose steadily as they climbed out of the valley in which the Hall stood. When she crested the rise, Jacqueline pulled up, her mare cavorting, eager to fly on.

She looked back.

Gerrard was close behind her, closer than she’d realized; he wheeled the chestnut to a halt beside her. Barnaby, a few seconds behind, slowed; it was he who noticed the view first.

“I say!” His eyes grew round.

Gerrard turned. He said nothing, but when she looked at his face, she smiled. He was speechless. In that instant, the artist in him, the ability of his talent to take control of him utterly, was manifest. He sat mesmerized by the view, the magnificent sweep across Carrick Roads to Falmouth on the shore beyond.