Page 46 of A Scottish Lighthouse Escape (Scottish Escapes #9)

The resentment and dislike had gone from them. Her gaze was wide, pleading, vulnerable.

I couldn’t do this. I didn’t like Ruth and I detested the way she’d treated my grandmother, but spilling everything out to this journalist, especially one who was showing no guilt or regard for triggering Ruth to faint. Well, it wasn’t right.

I attracted Mitch’s attention. He muttered something to Reece who nodded.

‘Sorry, I was mistaken,’ I said to an eager-faced Becky Hollis. I shot Ruth a brief look. ‘I thought I recognised the name of the artist you mentioned, but I’ve just realised I don’t.’

The reporter’s expression, like an eager bloodhound, faltered. ‘But… But you seemed to know her name.’

I shrugged. ‘Must have misheard. Sorry.’

She glowered at me from under her pink fringe before snatching up a canapé from a passing waiter and popping it in her mouth. ‘I’m not done yet. I want to talk again to Ms Mangan.’

‘I think it would be better if you left.’ Mitch reappeared beside me. His voice was composed but carried an element of steel.

Becky Hollis’s chin jutted out in defiance.

‘I’m not leaving until… Hey!’ But Mitch had grasped her by the elbow and was steering her through the guests towards the gallery door.

He unlocked it and angled her outside. He closed it on her protesting face.

‘I’m going to write about you, Mr Carlisle.

You won’t sell many of your paintings then, I can assure you. ’

Mitch shrugged. ‘Please feel free to write about me all you want, Ms Hollis. But you need to get your facts straight first. You see, I’m not the artist who painted these pictures.’

She glowered through the glass and wrapped her arms around herself. She looked like a furious fairy in her long, suede, winter coat. ‘What are you going on about?’

Mitch pushed his face closer to the door and dropped his voice. ‘I’m a lighthouse keeper, not a painter. And I didn’t paint those pictures.’ Then he gave her a dazzling smile and hauled the long, beige and chocolate curtain over the door to obscure her view.

After a few agitated thumps and kicks of the door from the other side, we heard Becky Hollis squeal away in her car.

Mitch and Reece wandered back over to me.

Ruth stared up at Mitch, a look of confusion rearing in her eyes. ‘Thank you. For getting rid of her just now.’ She took another gulp of water and rested the glass on her lap.

I turned my head away to talk to Mitch and Reece and lowered my voice. ‘I couldn’t humiliate her after what just happened. But I do still want to speak to her about Tilda.’

‘In private,’ nodded Mitch.

‘Yes.’

He slid his hand into mine and caressed my fingers. A wave of love gripped me. ‘What you did just now– getting rid of that horrible reporter– that was very kind of you,’ I said.

Mitch smiled. ‘And you could’ve blabbed to that journalist and really humiliated Ruth. But you didn’t.’ He gestured his head in Ruth’s direction. ‘Let’s give her a few more minutes to recover and then we could try and speak to her in her office.’

After a few moments, streaks of colour were returning to Ruth’s cheeks.

I studied her. ‘Are you alright?’

She raised her grey bob. It was flapping onto her face. ‘Yes. Thank you.’

I knelt down in front of her, my woollen dress fanning out over my knees. ‘Do you feel up to speaking to us? In private? It won’t take long.’

Her forlorn eyes felt like they were processing every inch of me. ‘Yes. Of course.’ Her cheeks blossomed with colour. ‘It’s the least I can do.’

She rose from her chair and Mitch walked beside her, just in case she felt faint again, although she looked much steadier on her feet now. ‘Nothing to see here,’ she joked to the faces of the concerned guests watching her. ‘Please continue to avail yourselves of the hospitality on offer.’

Taking her at her word, Reece gleefully helped himself to another flute of champagne.

Meanwhile, Mitch, Ruth and I headed to the back of the gallery floor. Ruth encouraged us into her office and clicked the door shut behind her.

Her office was a white affair, with an oval-shaped glass desk, dry reed plants and obscure black-and-white framed paintings of triangles and squares on its walls.

No sooner had Ruth taken up her seat behind her desk and Mitch and I had sat down in the two white leather chairs than I spoke. ‘Mitch didn’t paint those pictures, Ruth. He’s not the artist.’

Her attention pinged from me to Mitch and back again. ‘Sorry?’

‘It’s true,’ admitted Mitch. ‘I don’t paint. Well, a lick of emulsion in the lighthouse.’

Ruth’s mouth popped open. She looked from me to Mitch and back again as though struggling to understand what was playing out here. ‘Then if you didn’t paint those pictures, who did?’

I levelled my gaze at her. ‘My grandmother.’

Ruth’s red lipstick, which had faded somewhat, twisted into a stricken O shape. ‘But… But… Mitch… you said…’

‘No, I didn’t say anything. You just assumed I painted them.’

She started to clasp and unclasp her hands. Her shoulders sank under her well-cut suit.

Through her office door, I could hear fervent murmurs of conversation and the tinkling of champagne glasses.

‘I don’t believe you,’ she insisted, though the tremble in her voice was telling us otherwise.

‘What’s my grandmother’s art signature?’ I asked.

Ruth blinked at me.

‘She never autographed her work in the usual way, but she did always paint a tiny image of something somewhere obscure in all of her pieces. What was it?’

Ruth pressed her lips together. She shuffled in her office chair. ‘A butterfly. A small, yellow one.’

Mitch jerked his head. ‘Go and take a look at her paintings, if you don’t believe us. In fact, go and check the front right table leg of the French-themed breakfast watercolour that’s on display just outside this office.’

Ruth rose up from behind her desk and straightened the hem of her jacket.

She stalked past us and opened her office door, letting in bursts of laughter and conversation. She was only gone a matter of seconds.

Ruth returned and clicked the door closed again behind her. She was having difficulty looking at either Mitch or me. She resumed her seat and hooked some hair back behind her right ear. ‘I just saw it,’ she managed. ‘The butterfly.’

‘I was planning on making a big reveal of this,’ I admitted to Ruth. Her stunned expression was trained on me. ‘I was intending on embarrassing you, making you feel small, like you did with Tilda all those years ago. But when you fainted just now, I couldn’t do it.’

Ruth swallowed and dropped her eyes to her glass desk.

‘I was all set on revealing who the real artist was in front of all of those people. I wanted to show everyone how talented Tilda was. I also wanted to make you realise how petty and jealous you are. But then… well…’ I adjusted myself in the leather chair.

‘We know how talented she was. I don’t have to yell it from the rooftops. ’

Guilt controlled Ruth’s expression.

‘My grandma wouldn’t have wanted me to humiliate you like that. She wasn’t malicious.’

Ruth looked like she wanted to slither under her desk and vanish.

She toyed with her swan dress ring, twisting it over and over.

She bored her attention into her own hands for what seemed like ten minutes before finally forcing herself to look up at me again.

‘What that reporter said was true.’ She licked her lips.

‘I did try to pass off one of your grandma’s paintings as my own. I don’t know what I was thinking.’

I sat up straighter in my chair. ‘What happened? Why did you do it?’

Ruth rubbed at her face. ‘It was over forty years ago now. I wanted to win this prestigious artist award, but although my work was good, it wasn’t a patch on your grandma’s art.’

‘So, you decided to steal one of Tilda’s pieces?’ asked Mitch beside me.

Ruth blanched. ‘I’m so sorry. She’d painted the most beautiful impression of Rowan Bay harbour. It was the stillness and the atmosphere she’d created. I couldn’t compete with that.’

I eyed her. ‘What happened?’

Ruth kept putting her hands to rest on top of her desk and then removing them again. It was as if she didn’t know what to do with herself. ‘I submitted my application with a picture of your grandma’s painting and I pretended I was the artist.’

Colour illuminated her cheeks. ‘But what I didn’t know was that one of the judges was the sister of one of your grandma’s friends. She spotted the yellow butterfly insignia and she knew straight away I hadn’t painted it.’

Mitch flicked me a charged look. ‘What happened when Tilda discovered what you’d done?’

Ruth tried to keep her voice calm. ‘She was furious, and rightly so. Of course, she was. Anyone would’ve been.’

‘But?’ I probed.

Ruth let out a painful sigh. ‘But she said she wouldn’t take things further if I promised to make a significant donation to a charity she supported, helping working-class children to enter the arts.

’ Ruth paused. ‘My parents were very comfortable. They owned their own interior design business.’ Guilt tore through her lined eyes.

‘I was so jealous of Tilda. Of her talent, of her looks, of her as a person.’

I angled my head to one side. ‘Jealous, also, because she was married to my grandfather?’