“I see,” Evie said slowly, eyeing Bea with a sharpness that hadn’t been there before. “You’re in love.”
“Was.” The single word broke her heart, tearing at the hopes that she had harbored.
“Are. Why else would you be giving him a chance?”
The words floated in the air like Chinese lanterns, bright and optimistic, but destined to burn out and crash to the ground. Beatrice sighed and came to her feet, turning away from her sister’s all too knowing gaze.
“It doesn’t matter if I am or not. If he can’t prove that he truly loves me for me, then there is no future for us.”
Evie stood as well, coming to where Beatrice stood and slipping an arm around her. “Then let us hope,” she said, compassion gentling her voice and loosening the loneliness Bea had felt since Colin left, “that he specializes in the impossible.”
Blowing his hair from his forehead, Colin stood and set his hands to his hips, surveying the mess before him. The studio, the bedchambers, and now the attic had been searched from top to bottom. Not surprisingly, he hadn’t found any paintings. Nor chests of gold or hidden jewels, for that matter.
Bloody hell.
He blew out a frustrated breath, sending a puff of crystallized air to the attic rafters. Two hours in the freezing cold, three sneezing fits, one startled mouse, and exactly zero items of worth to show for it.
It just didn’t make any bloody sense. According to his family, Father was working on a fix to their problems. God only knew what, exactly, that fix was, seeing how the studio was all but empty. Which he already knew. Shortly after the creditors showed up on the doorstep, Colin had done much the same thing, searching the house for anything of value to sell.
It shouldn’t have been a surprise—he knew full well that Father hadn’t taken on any new clients in the months leading to his death. And even if he had, the portrait would belong to the customer. But he had hoped against hope that Father’s fix would have involved a brilliant . . . something. Colin didn’t know what. Another portrait of one of the royals, perhaps?
It wasn’t as though a normal painting would raise enough funds, after all. If Father was planning to paint them out of debt, it would have to be something so spectacular, it could bring ten thousand pounds.
Not unheard of for the old masters, but as celebrated as his father was, his pieces were not yet that valuable—particularly since they were commissioned to depict specific people.
However, as morbid as such a thought was, the fact that his father was now gone would have instantly made his paintings more valuable. Whether it would be valuable enough was a whole different issue—but at least it was a chance.
The resentment boiled up within him once more. Irrationally, he cursed his father beneath his breath. Colin had spent half his life cleaning up his father’s messes. Irate visits from their creditors, empty cupboards and dry lamps from his father’s forgetfulness to order more of what they needed. And now this. He couldn’t have died, leaving things in order. It wouldn’t have been his father if he had.
He wanted to rail at the man, to take him by the collar and demand to know why he had lacked all regard for Colin’s comfort and well-being.
“Find anything?”
He started at the sound of his sister’s voice and turned to see her framed in the narrow doorway at the top of the stairs. He must have been completely lost in his own thoughts not to have heard her come up. “All the dust you could want. My mother’s out-of-date dresses. A few pieces of ugly furniture.”
Cora wrinkled her nose, climbing the rest of the way up to join him. “So I’m to assume you dinna find a stash of gold tucked in the rafters?”
“I’d be halfway to London by now if that were the case.”
“Honestly, I doona know what happened. Papa spent hours each day wandering the estate, and then he’d hie away in his studio for half the night. He swore that he was working on something important and that we were no’ to disturb him. He even locked the door so I couldn’a sneak up. I still canna believe the studio was empty.”
Not just the studio. Everything was empty. Colin’s house was empty of anything of value. His mind was empty of a way to fix it. His heart was empty of the love of his chosen bride, and unless something drastic happened in the next two days, his future would be empty of promise.
He shook his head, looking over Cora’s shoulder out the small window that offered up a small, framed view of the estate. “It’s ironic, isn’t it?”
Cora looked up from the yellowed fabric of his mother’s gowns. “What?”
“A man spends his entire career painting portraits and yet he left nothing behind of his own life. No portraits of him, or even the old landscapes showing his childhood home. None of my mother, or yours, or even Gran. There were a few of me, but that was back when he was perfecting his art, and most of those were painted over. It was almost as if he was never here at all.”
Cora clearly didn’t know what to make of his maudlin mood. Holding out an arm, she said, “Why doona we go have a nice cup o’tea with Gran before the pair of us catches our death up here.”
Fifteen minutes later, with hot tea still warming his belly, he stood by the terrace door beside Gran. “If you were any sort of grandmother at all, you’d have the perfect plan for me to convince Beatrice of my intentions.”
She chuckled, her gaze on the rippled surface of the pond. “Would that I could, lad. Sometimes, no matter our intentions, things can gang agley. We have to work whit what we have. And at the moment, we have naught but one another.”
“Thanks to Father.”
“Judge not lest ye be judged,” she said, lifting her wrinkled brow. “I think ye forget, Colin, that yer father never set out to harm the ones he loved. Take it from an auld souclass="underline" It doesn’a do any good ta hate a man who has left this world ahint.”
“On the contrary. It gives me a target for my anger. If we lose this place—”
“Then we lose this place. It’s a great pile of stone, now, isn’t it? The only thing that matters is that we doona lose one another. And that be including yer father’s memory.”
A damn sight easier said than done. It seemed that everything he ever wanted in life had been jeopardized. How could he possibly forgive his father when he was on the cusp of losing it all?
Gran put a hand to his back, rubbing it like he was a child. “I think yer forgetting who yer father truly was. So here it is: I’m prepared to give up this old gusty place if it means ye’ll have yer life’s love. But what I’m not willing to give up is yer fondness for yer da’s memory.”
“I doona know if that’s still possible, Gran.”
“We’ll see about that.” She crossed her arms, rubbing her hands back and forth over her slender arms. “Ye know, there’s no better way to know a man’s soul than to walk in his footsteps for a day.”
Colin scrubbed a weary hand over his face. “Gran, I appreciate the thought, but I have absolutely no intention of following my father’s path. In fact, I have made a point of not following in his footsteps for years.”
“And see now where that’s gotten ye, lad.”
“Actually,” he said, making an effort not to grind his teeth, “it got me quite far, until this mess yanked me back. Which, I feel compelled to point out, was entirely of his doing.”
She clucked her tongue, shaking her head from side to side. “Ye’ve always been harsh where yer da’s concerned. No’ without reason, I ken. But have you acknowledged, lad, that ye’d have never met yer lass if it weren’t for him?”