Worthington after all.”
The woman spoke with such bitterness, Julia recoiled. “No. I don’t want that at all. I want only the happiness that comes from love—”
“Happiness? What utter madness! Who would aspire to happiness? Who would chase such a fleeting and horrible thing? No one is happy, Julia. Life is about perseverance. I have to protect my girls. That is what is left for me. Protecting them. Settling them. Then nothing can touch them. Nothing.”
“Let them find happiness. Please.”
But the countess’s eyes blazed. “I know what is best for them. Now please go. I wish to be alone.”
Julia left, drawing the door closed firmly this time. She was going to leave, but not without confronting Cal over what he was doing.
She knew the countess had spoken the truth in those unhappy moments. The countess believed the crash had been deliberate, not an accident.
But what had driven John to do it?
* * *
“Yes, milady,” the Worthington maid replied, in answer to Julia’s question. “His lordship has gone upstairs, to the attics.”
“The attics? Are you sure?”
“Yes, milady.” The girl tried to maintain a dutiful expression but then it failed, and her eyes were wide with excitement. “We’ve all been talking about it downstairs. Lord Worthington went belowstairs to speak with Mrs. Feathers. Then he wanted to know how to go up to the attics.”
“Is it true he has let go his valet, a footman and a hall boy?” Julia asked.
The girl nodded. “It is true, milady. He said they are to find better employment. He told the valet that having a man button his shirt was demeaning to both of them. Mr. Wiggins was right shocked—oh, I didn’t mean to be speaking out of turn, milady.”
“I will not say a word to the housekeeper, I promise,” Julia said.
As soon as she turned away from the maid, her patient smile died. She’d already heard Mrs. Feathers’s account of events. To ensure the cook stayed, she needed Cal.
Who was in the attic. For what purpose, she couldn’t imagine.
Julia hurried to the stairs that led to the upper story of the house—here were the servants’ rooms and the nurseries. Sunlight spilled out into the hallway floor from a room at the end of the corridor and she smelled a strong odor, like potent alcohol.
Was Cal up here drinking?
Julia reached the doorway of the unused nursery—
And stopped in her tracks. A wooden easel stood in the middle of the room, a table set up beside it. A painting stood on the easel, but all Julia could see was Cal’s back. He wore a white shirt with sleeves rolled up to bare his forearms. She’d never seen arms tanned to a dark copper on any man but a laborer or farmer. Wide shoulders filled out the linen shirt, and the tails hung out of his trousers. His feet were bare.
He balanced a flat board covered in blobs of oil paint and mixed it with a long, black-handled brush.
The muscles of his broad back moved under his shirt.
She was rooted to the spot—warm, breathless and feeling as if everything had fallen away.
Then Cal moved and she saw the picture.
“But that’s me,” she gasped.
It was a painting of the terrace where she had stood last night. The picture was only partly finished. It was sketched with lead pencil and her face was filled in, as was some of the background of the night sky.
It was a wild, modernist painting—the sky was rendered in vivid slashes of black and indigo and violet, with gray layered upon it to show moonlit clouds. The sky truly looked as if the clouds were hurtling past the moon. And against all that darkness, she seemed to glow like a candle’s flame.
Cal turned. “I don’t let anyone look at my unfinished work.”
“The door was open,” she pointed out.
“I was told nobody comes up here in the daytime.”
She looked past him at the intense, vibrant portrait. The woman’s face was definitely hers, but more perfect. Her lips even looked as if moisture glistened on them. The blue eyes seemed to burn with inner fire.
“What do you think of it?” he asked.
“You’ve made me much more vivacious and interesting than I really am.”
“I paint what I see, angel—but tempered with my feelings and my soul. I want to put raw emotion on my canvas. And that’s what I see in you. Raw emotion. Fire and passion.”
No one thought she was fiery or passionate. Everyone thought her cool and controlled. She felt passion, but she almost never showed it. How had he seen that inside her?
“You see something quite different to the person I am, Worthington.”
“I don’t think so.” He mixed colors on his palette, looking at her from under his mussed blond hair. “I think I see the real Lady Julia behind the restrained exterior.”
His gaze moved over her in the most shocking way. She should be outraged. Yet it wasn’t a bold look. It was a raw, appreciative look, given to her by a stunningly handsome man—
She had better put a stop to it at once.
“I am a lady through and through, Worthington. You won’t see anything beyond that.”
He grinned. “It’s too late, doll. I already do. And it’s Cal, remember?”
His soft, deep voice sent a shiver through her. Then she thought of the countess sobbing with shock and terror. Julia crossed her arms over her chest. “Was losing the cook part of your plan to tear Worthington Park to pieces? As well as firing servants who are now out of work, with no place to stay?”
To her shock, he did not respond. He went back to his painting.
“It’s rude to not answer,” she said.
As he worked he said, “It’s true that I would have waited to get rid of the cook. I like to eat. But it made me mad to see so much food thrown away. I know what it’s like to be hungry. Have you ever lived a day on some broth and one piece of bread?”
That startled her. “Was that all you had?”
He slashed paint on the canvas and a stone balustrade began to appear. It looked real, as if she could feel the roughness of stone.
“No, I went without food by choice, Lady Julia, what do you think? My mother would feed my brother and me first and if there was nothing left, she didn’t eat at all.”
“I’m sorry.” Of course, she didn’t know what it was to be truly starving. Even when they had been in financial dire straits at Brideswell, there was always food. Instead, she had
