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“He might have guessed that Rembrandt van Rijn had nothing to do with the portrait of the woebegone old man that now glooms beside Fanny’s shelf of Dresden medallions.” Alan released her hand and sat back.
She curled her fingers and jammed her fist into her skirt.
“My brother has secrets of his own.” Alan tilted his head. “He doesn’t leave his correspondence lying about.”
“It was in a drawer.”
His lifted brow dared her to confirm his suspicion.
She wavered, only for a moment. “A locked drawer.”
His glance traveled over her. “Reeve has you thieve for him.”
“I learned to pick locks from a friend. Not for any purpose. More of a . . .” She bit the inside of her cheek. She couldn’t explain the particulars of the education Ruby offered.
His slitted eyes prepared her for the question she’d been dreading. “Where is he?”
She barely breathed it. “You know I can’t tell you.”
“Can’t? Or won’t?” His mouth compressed, creating caves beneath his cheekbones. “What I know is that your brother has spent over a decade coercing your obedience. You didn’t lie about wanting a life apart from him. The bakery. Your dream of gooseberry tarts.”
“I didn’t lie,” she confirmed, his certainty giving her a flicker of directionless hope. “Not about that. Or the village, and my aunts’ cottage, and the hill with the gooseberries.”
“Reeve’s jaunt to Pentonville.” How gray his eyes looked, gray as iron bars. “It coincided with that prolonged visit to your aunts?”
She made no reply. He didn’t need one. The set of his mouth became grimmer by the second.
“In fact, your brother failed to keep you with him. His choices led to your separation. He proved himself unfit as a guardian. When it became clear that you were safe and happy elsewhere, he should have kept away. Instead, he took you back and put you to work, in that emporium. He sent you on risky errands. Sent you to me, to snoop.” His smile looked dangerous. “He should have sent you back to the countryside.”
His gaze bored into her, bored through the dark and light rings she’d grown around her love for Jack, year by year, layers of solace and hurt, hope and fear.
“He should never have put you in this position. He should have used the money he plundered to establish you far from the orbit of his misdeeds. Instead, he makes you party to his crimes. That’s harm, Nina. He has harmed you. And it’s in your power to stop it, now.”
Wildness rose in her.
“You don’t know as much as you think you do.” She was shaking, cold sweat breaking out on every inch of her skin. “His crimes are my crimes.”
Here was the edge. She could scramble back. Nerves jumped in her skin and she flung forward. “Jack didn’t paint the pictures you saw at Broughton’s, or the ones Syme bought for the museum.”
His face darkened, but his eyes, they looked strangely vulnerable, a profound bewilderment in their depths. And then his pupils flared.
She nodded. “I did.”
Chapter Twenty
When the coach rolled to a stop, he wondered if she would run, and if he’d try to chase her down, or simply let her go.
She didn’t run. She walked with him into the house. He paused in the vestibule, where he’d inspired her with his lips, and his heart twisted. That sketch. Had he really thought that her emotion had spontaneously overflowed, swept along her untrained hand?
He’d ignored every sign that she wasn’t what she seemed.
She looked at him with bottomless eyes, and turned. He followed her down the hall into the library, shut and locked the door behind him. She was already disappearing behind the settle.
Slowly, he crossed the room.
“I’ll tidy up.” She stared down at the stacks of books for far too long, avoiding his gaze. “I don’t suppose I’m still your secretary.”
“You were never my secretary.” He studied her: navy dress, severe chignon. She appeared, at first glance, such an average specimen of English womanhood.
