The Lyon’s Legacy (The Lyon’s Den Connected World)

Chapter Twenty-One

J ohn arrived home feeling that something was wrong. He tapped his inside waistcoat pocket several times, making sure the ring for Melissa was there. But when he burst through the front doors, Fletcher, the butler, looked astonished.

“I didn’t expect you back so soon, Your Grace.”

“I didn’t complete my day’s tour of the—” but then John noticed that Melissa’s pelisse was not hanging on the stand at the entrance. “Where is she?”

“Lady Thumbridge received a message via special courier and took the duchess’s carriage, Your Grace. She hasn’t been back.”

“When was that?”

“While you were out in the morning.”

John saw the grandfather clock in the hall; it was nearly afternoon. Quietly, the little kitten appeared and affectionately rubbed against John’s ankles.

“Angus, not now,” the butler said, but John bent down and picked the kitten up before the butler could.

“Meow-eee!”

“What is it, little one?” John saw the kitten and felt it was trying to communicate with him. His tiny triangular nose was pink with gray speckles, and his whiskers seemed so long that it seemed as if he still needed to grow into them. But there was an intelligence to his eyes that caught John off guard. Angus made a demand.

And John knew what it was. “I’ll bring her home to us. Do you know where she’s gone?”

Angus thrashed around and skipped out of John’s grasp. With an elegant jump, he landed on his front paws and started into the study, followed by the butler and John.

“Angus?” John called out and followed the kitten.

And when he found him atop the pile of folded curtain samples. “Oh no!” Fletcher exclaimed when Angus tugged at a fabric in the middle. It was a red satin folded into a much thicker rectangle. As soon as the kitten got his tiny sharp claws stuck in it, Fletcher hasted to catch the other fabrics from falling, and John knew. It was the fabric Melissa had been covered with when Cosway painted her.

“There’s an inn in the village. Isn’t that where the painter who came here to sketch her ladyship was?” John asked, but he didn’t wait for a response from the cat or the butler. He had to get to Melissa if she was with the painter.

Whatever reason she had to sit for a portrait for Prinny’s royal portraitist, John wouldn’t allow anyone to paint her in the nude. But as he stared again at the sketches Cosway had offered him, unease prickled at the edge of his thoughts. The details were exquisite—the graceful curve of Melissa’s shoulders, the delicate slope of her neck. Yet her face, the very essence of her character, was but faintly outlined, almost an afterthought. Why would a painter of Cosway’s renown, lauded for capturing the spirit behind the eyes of his subjects, choose to neglect the most expressive part of her?

John’s fingers tightened imperceptibly on the edge of the paper as the kitten brushed against his ankles. Cosway’s study of Melissa from a few days ago troubled John. Was this simply a matter of artistic preference, or was it something more deliberate? Cosway had been generous in describing Melissa’s form, speaking of shadows and contours in a way that made John’s skin prickle, but he’d offered no explanation for why he hadn’t captured the radiance of her face. He’d brushed off the question when John had asked, mumbling something about revisiting the study later—after another sitting.

It didn’t seem right. Melissa’s beauty was more than physical. It was in the lift of her chin when she met a challenge, the warmth in her eyes when she smiled. Cosway had ignored all that, and John couldn’t help but wonder why. Was it a matter of time, or was there something he wasn’t saying?

John bent down to stroke Angus between his ears and the kitten purred. But John’s jaw tightened as urgency settled in his chest. Whatever Cosway’s reasons, John intended to find out. If there was any hint of disrespect—or worse, impropriety—he would not hesitate to confront the man. Melissa was going to be his wife, his partner in life. No one would reduce her to anything less than she deserved to be. And yet, he had a feeling that this may have to do with her most recent confession: She’d asked Black Widow of Whitehall for help.

This would be trouble.