Whispers from the Shadows (26 page)

“It matters.” When he framed her face in his hands and tilted it up, his gaze left no room for disagreement. “You have information yet trapped inside you, sweet. Still locked behind the pain and grief. This is how you work it out, through your art. Like the painting of your father.”

A shudder coursed through her. Secrets—those things she had always hated when she spotted them surrounding her—were trapped
within her own mind, and she couldn't lure them out. She didn't even know they were there until a memory surfaced that ought never have been sunken to begin with.

“What is wrong with me, Thad? I am broken.”

He pulled her close so she could press her face into the sandalwood-scented fabric of his shirt, so that she could wrap her arms around him and hold on while the earth rocked beneath her like the sea.

But even while she held on, she was ready to reject whatever assurances he would offer. He would try to tell her she was well, she was fine, there was nothing wrong with her. But there
was
. She knew it. She could feel that fracture within her. That missing piece. Visible only in those displaced shadows.

“Ah, sweet.” He sighed, shuddered with her, and rested his cheek on the top of her head. “We are all broken.”

The light had turned red-gold as the sun drifted toward the horizon, bathing the clouds in a rainbow and the Arnaud lawn in a soft warmth. Thad relaxed against the weathered wood of the chair he had claimed and smiled when Jack tossed the ball wide with admirable vigor.

Arnaud praised the boy's strength…and heaved a sigh as he ran, yet again, to fetch the toy. Thad hooked his hands behind his head and made sure he looked more relaxed than ever when his friend came huffing back. “So how did the flotilla look, then?”

Arnaud tossed the ball to his son, gently and precisely. “Good catch, Jacques!” He glanced at the sky and then at Thad. “In well enough order, I suppose. Though when one examines the state of things, really examines it, it is a wonder this war has not already ended in our defeat. Have we won any battles whose victory gained us an advantage?”

Thad ran his tongue along the edge of his teeth. “In the Chesapeake? No. But that is not the kind of war being waged, is it?”

Arnaud jumped high to snatch the ball. “Good one!”

The boy grinned, ran in a circle, and then pointed wildly at a bush. “Look, Papa, the fireflies are out! Can we catch them? Can we?”

“An excellent idea. You look over there and I will look over here.” Arnaud let the ball fall to the ground and leaned against a tree trunk. “I cannot say
what
kind of war is being waged. We are not a
Napoleon, trying to take over the entire world. We are not a rebellious colony that must be subdued. What, then, is their goal? To defend their Canadian territories against us, yes—that I understand. But here? If they are trying to conquer us again—”

“Then they must first weaken us.” Thad rubbed his hands over his face. “Divide us against ourselves. Send a portion of us running in fear and let another portion wax into complacency and so forget we are even fighting a war.”

“Papa, you are not looking for them!”

Arnaud grinned at his son. “Of course I am, Jacques. There is one right here, and I do not want to startle it.” He made a lazy swipe at an even lazier bug and scooped it into his palm. Jack let out a whoop and dashed over to look.

“How do they make their bottoms light up, Papa? I have tried, and mine will not do it.”

Thad snorted a laugh. “That sounds like a question for Grandpapa.”

“Most assuredly.” Arnaud stretched his hand flat to release the insect. “One more minute,
mon fils
, and we must ready for bed.”

With the expected groan, Jack took off after another slow wink of yellow light. Arnaud turned back to Thad. “Something else is bothering you,
oui
?”

“Gates.” He heaved out a breath and leaned forward, his forearms braced on his knees. “He must have something invested in this war. I cannot think what, not with so little knowledge of him, but it is the only thing that makes sense with all Gwyn has said. Her father's accusation of his greed, his determination to blame Fairchild's death on us Americans.”

Arnaud quirked a single brow. “Not just us Americans, Thad.
Us
. The Culpers.”

“He does not know who we are.”

“We do though,
non
? The only organized American espionage ring.”

Thad closed his eyes. “I wish I knew what we were up against.”

“That famed intuition of yours will decipher it.” Arnaud pushed off the tree and made a waving motion at Jack. “Come, Jacques. Time to go inside.”

“Do you want me to go or stay?” Thad asked in an undertone.

Arnaud's sigh spoke of exhaustion. “You had better stay. It being
his first night back at home, we both know how this is likely to go.”

All too well.

“But, Papa!” From his spot across the lawn, Jack stomped a foot and scrunched up his face. “It is still daytime.”

“It is still light out,” Arnaud said, the epitome of patience. Thus far. “But the clock says it is bedtime. You know it stays light later in the summer, but we still must go to bed.”

Jack's lower lip made its appearance, and he folded his arms across his chest. “No. I want to go back to Uncle Thad's.”

“No, you don't.” Thad put on a grin. “I would have put you to bed half an hour ago.”

With a huff, the boy stomped toward the door.

Arnaud made a show of loosening his shoulders, as if in preparation for a brawl. “If I require reinforcements, I will shout.”

“Alain.” When his friend paused a step away, Thad sighed and passed a hand over his hair. “Have I made it worse by being always here these last two years?”

For a long moment, Arnaud simply held his gaze, his own a surprisingly calm sea of sienna. Then he gave him a small smile. “It matters not whether it has made it better or worse, Thad. You are my brother in all the ways that matter. You were the steady presence in his life when I could not be here. You are our family. And so you
will
be here, always. I would never wish it otherwise.”

Thad nodded and let him stride after his son. But his gaze remained for a long time where Arnaud had stood. And he wondered. Wondered if it would have been better for this little family had he gone to sea once Arnaud came home, gone away and stayed away until Jack forgot that Thad's house had once been home. That for those six bleak months, Thad had been the only parent he had.

No, Gwyneth was not the only broken one. Perhaps her memory had not yet fought its way back from the fracture that sudden trauma and months of sleep deprivation had caused. But it had only been a few months.

Thad had had four years to deal with his best friend's presumed death and all its consequences, and sometimes he still looked at his life and saw only the fragments that had been left by that news. Shards that would never quite fit perfectly together again, even now that Arnaud was home.

And he would just have to wait and see what kind of mosaic the
Lord would make from the pieces.

Twenty

H
ow about now?”

Gwyneth took a step back and tilted her head, surveying the placement of the frame on both its horizontal and vertical planes. And not—most assuredly
not
—the long, well-muscled arm that held it there. “A pinch to the right and it will be perfect.”

“A
pinch
?” Thad sent her a patronizing grin over his shoulder. “Since when is ‘pinch' a unit of measure anywhere but in the kitchen? I am my father's son, Gwyn. I need precision. An inch more? Half of one?”

“I don't know.” She raised her hand and pressed her fingers together. “This much.”

Thad rolled his eyes. “And you pinch your fingers, as if this is salt going into a bowl. Very well.” He made a show of raising his pressed fingers and moving the frame that amount.

A smile tickled her mouth, but she held her lips together against it. “No, no, not
your
pinch. Your fingers are too large.
My
pinch.”

The glower he aimed her way was so exaggerated she had to put a hand to her mouth to hold back the laughter. Without taking his eyes from her, he scooted the frame back to the left a wee bit. “Better, my Lady of Exactitude?”

“Much.” She batted her lashes and heaped sugar into her smile. “That will do quite nicely, my Lord of Facetiousness.”

“That would be Mr. Facetiousness, thank you. No pesky titles in my fair land.” He had turned back to the wall again, but she heard his smile. With a few quick motions, he picked up the pencil from the mantel and made several faint marks on the wall.

Gwyneth nestled a little deeper into the eastern-style couch directly across from the dormant fireplace. The ottoman, she had learned, was directly from the empire after which it derived its name, brought back on the same nearly catastrophic voyage as the rugs Thad so adored. “Are you certain you do not need my assistance?”

“You ask as you stretch out like a cat ready to nap in the sun.”

“One can hardly help but do so on such a comfortable chaise.” She stretched a bit more for show. “Still, I would get up if it meant seeing my masterpiece properly hung.”

“No need for such a sacrifice, my lady. I daresay I can manage to get it square.” Laughter colored his voice, and he sent her a warm look over his shoulder. One that made her infinitely aware of the fact that her stretch had brought her skirts up an inch too far and put her figure on rather prominent display.

She all but leaped to her feet. “So you say, sir. But I have no evidence of that, have I? For all I know, your walls are bare because you have never managed to hang anything straight upon them.”

“You have found me out.” Ruler in hand, he measured something against the back of the frame, and then held the wooden strip up to the wall and made another mark. “I have proven myself utterly incapable of nudging a frame along its wire until it is straight. 'Tis a curse that plagues me daily.”

Gwyneth chuckled and eased across the space between them because…because unless she had a purpose for being elsewhere in a room, she always seemed to end up at his side. A realization that did indeed plague her daily. “I see no other reason for your dreadfully stark walls.”

The glance he sent her this time was far too serious for their banter. “I used to have a few decorations. I sent them all to Alain's new house when he escaped the Turks. To help Jack make the transition from my home to his.”

Her feet came to an abrupt halt with half the room still between them. She frowned. Was this another fact that had slipped through the cracks in her mind, or had it never been mentioned? “Jack lived here?”

“Hmm.” He scratched one more mark. “Before Alain returned home. Which was six months after Jack's mother passed away. Alain had hoped to return from his trip in time for his birth, but instead we got the news of his death. When Jack's mother died too, I was the closest thing he had to family.”

A shiver overtook her, despite the evening's heat. That explained much. “You said it was Barbary pirates who captured him?”

“First they left him for dead, and the sole crewman to escape brought back word that he had been killed with the rest. 'Twasn't for
another two years that we realized he had survived it, and that when they saw he lived, they sold him into slavery. We had no idea until he returned one day, out of the proverbial blue.”

Slavery. Another quake coursed through her. “What horrors he must have faced.”

“He has spoken to me of it only once, which was all he could bear.” Thad picked up the nail he had waiting on the mantel, and the hammer along with it. With one solid whack, he had driven it in just enough.

Poor Captain Arnaud. Gwyneth forced her feet back into action so that she could lift the painting and put it in his waiting hands. “There you are.”

“There I am indeed. And my first love with me.” He lowered it until the wire across the frame's backing caught on the nail and then nudged it to the right. “Is she level?”

Gwyneth retreated a few steps to better see. “Tap the left side once more.” Latching onto levity again with both hands, she grinned. “Or is ‘tap' too imprecise?”

He narrowed his eyes and tapped once upon the frame. “You tell me.”

Her breath caught in her throat as she took it in. Her painting, so prettily framed and hung in the center of the wall, where every visitor to the Lane house would see it. See her interpretation of his ship, the sea he so loved, him as fearless captain. Made all the more complete with said fearless captain leaning against the mantel and studying her as she studied her handiwork.

Her fingers tangled together over her abdomen. “Well, look at that. You managed it.”