Page 20 of The Lady Sparks a Flame (The Damsels of Discovery #2)

20

Shall we educate ourselves in what is known, and then casting away all we have acquired, turn to our ignorance for aid to guide us among the unknown?

—Michael Faraday

Sam had to credit Phoebe. She took the revelation with one hundred times more sangfroid than he had a few weeks ago when she’d popped up behind his back as he was calling her names.

Without blinking—uncanny, that—Phoebe turned to face the girl who’d been sneaking around the corner of the building behind them and hoping to come upon them unnoticed.

“Hmmmm.” Phoebe let out a sound halfway between a feline growl and a disappointed sigh.

How did women do things like that?

“This must be one of your pack, Mr. Fenley. Introduce me.”

Back to Mr. Fenley, were they?

“Certainly, dear. Here is one of my many, many sisters. Sarah Fenley…”

The purring had ended in a cough. Phoebe shot him an outraged glare. “What did you call me?”

Sam bit his upper lip to keep from smiling. Wait until she met the rest of his sisters: Laila, Lucy, and Laura. No matter what seven kinds of chaos they would leave in their wake, no matter what insults or tears or long monologues about the inherent uselessness of the male sex—Sam’s sisters loved him unconditionally and he loved them back without reserve. Everyone should have a family like his. Especially Phoebe.

Sarah ignored him, concentrating on the woman standing in front of them.

“Are you wearing one of our Pretty Pelisses by Poppy? From the second floor of Fenley’s?” Sarah asked. “It hangs nicely, but you’ll want it taken up an inch. Do stop by the third-floor tailors when you have a moment. We give a discount for clothing purchased at the store.”

“I…thank you?” Phoebe said, staring, eyes wide, at Sam.

Perversely, he decided not to intervene.

Sarah shook her head sadly.

“You let her leave the store without a matching bonnet.” She cocked her head a fraction, eyes narrowing in thought, then reached out and straightened the collar of the pelisse.

Phoebe’s expression grew more panicked.

“Greycliff and his friend Earl Grantham have been looking for the both of you,” Sarah said, still walking in a circle around Phoebe, measuring the skirt by eye, no doubt, and thinking of various ways to tailor it. “They didn’t tell me anything, but you know how I am. I listened at the door. It has to do with the bombing in Kennington Common.”

“How did you know we were back here?” Sam asked.

Sarah snorted. “You sent the stock boys home with a penny each. The talk was all over town by this morning. Then, Olivia Scattering’s sister’s beau saw you drinking during the day at the Hearty Cock.”

“What was Olivia’s sister’s beau doing at the Hearty Cock in the first place, I’d like to know,” said Sam.

Sarah rolled her eyes. “He’s a man . I figured out where you two might hide, and Greycliff will figure it out as well. He’s not as thick as some.”

Sam frowned. “Are you referring to me?”

The sibling love lasted for only a short time before it devolved into squabbles.

“It was a pleasure to meet you,” Phoebe said. “Unfortunately, I must be going.”

Having had a moment to adjust, Phoebe had pulled herself back together. She presented a cool facade, the untouchable aristocrat.

Sam knew better. He knew the woman who lurked behind the pinched mouth and narrowed eyes, and he wanted her back in his arms as soon as possible.

“Nice try, Phoebe-girl, but you cannot get rid of me that easily,” he said to himself.

···

“Going where?” Sarah asked.

Phoebe did not bother to answer. Let the girl think her rude. It was time to leave before Sam got any bad ideas.

“Mr. Fenley. Thank you for your help in this matter.” Phoebe did not look directly at Sam as she spoke, instead staring down at her wrist as she unbuttoned and rebuttoned her glove. “I do not want your family to be adversely affected by this situation. I will return home to my mother and sister and…”

“Did you do it?” Sarah asked.

Phoebe considered the young woman. The woman, girl, had the same small frame as Letty, except her hair was a plain bark color, rather than the distinctive cornsilk blond–bright golden locks of her brother and sister. She had sky-blue eyes that darkened with curiosity.

Sam’s eyes darkened with desire.

The two of them were beautiful but in a different way than her sisters and Moti. The Fenleys seemed to come most alive when there was a question to be considered, a puzzle to be solved.

Was this perhaps Sam’s attraction to her? Was Phoebe merely an equation waiting to be worked out?

“Of course she didn’t do it,” Sam snapped. The angry note in his voice scared her a bit.

“Well, all right,” Sarah said, taking a step back and holding up a hand. “No need for you to fly in the boughs. If she’s one of yours, Sam, she’s one of us.”

One of…What the devil?

It took all Phoebe’s self-control to keep her jaw from dropping at that declaration. Good thing she had hold of herself, for she might have made a most unladylike noise when Sam came beside her and wrapped his arm about her shoulders.

In a public place! His arm!

Moti would faint dead at this.

“I knew I could count on you. Now, where shall we hide her until we sort this mess out?”

Deaf to her protests, the two swooped around her like pigeons, clucking and cooing, and carried her on their noisy wings down the row of mews, and then another.

Phoebe understood the bonds between siblings. She and her sisters had spent their girlhoods on the lookout, protecting one another from their mother’s confusion and their father’s loathing.

This, the laughter and secret phrases, the teasing, and the insights; this was family of a different kind.

Family without fear.

Sam nodded at Phoebe as they approached the tiny alley that wound behind a row of houses. Only a handful had the money to keep horses, but there were enough stables that the alley smelled of manure and hay, a comforting smell covering the stench of the street from the front of the buildings.

America smelled just as bad, but only parts of it.

Her knuckles ached, and Phoebe tried to unclench her fists, but a strange fancy that if she relaxed her body the slightest bit, she would lose her composure kept her jaw tense and fingers curled.

“Told Mam I was going to Mrs. Eason’s house to bring her some tea and scones since she’s poorly,” Sarah whispered as they lurked behind a stable, watching the back garden of the Fenleys’ house to make sure no one was in the privy when they snuck across to the house. “Greycliff doesn’t know where you are yet, but if he puts Letty on your tracks, it won’t take long to find you.”

Sarah’s pert nose wrinkled as they navigated around a dung heap. “Lucy is home, but writing speeches in her room and doesn’t know anything. Laura and Laila know, though. We thought to hide you in the last place they’d look—right under their noses.”

In his element—participating in a half-baked scheme—Sam’s smile was so bright, he lit the entire alley.

“Do you know, it is almost worth the nonsense I have to put up with to have such brilliant sisters,” he said.

“You are a pain in the arse, Sam,” Sarah said cheerfully while they crept into the Fenleys’ back garden. “But we still love you.”

Clouds of cinnamon-and-yeast-scented air enveloped them as they tiptoed into the Fenleys’ kitchen. Sarah explained that the cook came only three times a week; they could hide in the kitchen for the nonce. The smells of sweet bread were from something their mother “slapped together.” Phoebe’s stomach growled at the news, and the young woman clucked like a hen.

“When was the last time you had a meal, Lady Phoebe?” Sarah asked, reaching on her toes to pull out a thick ceramic mug and plate. “Shame on you, Sam, for not feeding your…” Silence fell like the sharp blade of a guillotine at Sarah’s pause, and Phoebe could not look away from Sam’s twinkling eyes.

It had hurt.

It had hurt to hear him call her by a pet name as a tease.

Phoebe was practiced at numbing herself to the injuries a man’s words could inflict, but Sam Fenley rendered her skill useless. Each second in his presence robbed her of another half inch of armor.

Love, she was learning, was a knife. It cut away her defenses, so she was bare to the world, a mass of nerves and sinew.

Her first impulse was to take that knife and slash deeper than Sam ever could, to hurt everyone around her. Her second impulse was to use the knife on herself, cut deeper than anyone else would dare.

“I don’t care if you call her Your Majesty. Letty and Greycliff are on their way here, so youse better hide quick. Don’t tell Laura where you hide because she can’t tell a lie.” This came from a pretty blond woman who had craned her neck around the doorway, the lashes of her big blue eyes so long, the ones at the corner had tangled; her hands were on her hips.

“What? Laila, what do you know?” Sarah asked. Laila’s head disappeared for a second, then she tiptoed into the kitchen while Sam continued to rummage through an icebox and Sarah sliced pieces from a loaf of brown bread.

Not until Sam walked over and took Phoebe’s hands did she realize she’d been shaking. His palms were warm, she almost pressed them to her cheek. Almost.

“Hide them in your room, Sarah,” Laila said. “No one in their right mind would enter that room unless they prefer to be blinded.”

Sarah’s thick brown eyebrows drew together. “It’s called art, Laila Fenley. No one understands, not one of you.” She dropped her knife, spun on her heel, and stomped off, her petticoats flipping up as she exited.

“ No one understands,” said Sam without an ounce of sympathy.

“It’s called art ,” Laila explained, placing cheese and pickles between the slices of bread that Sarah had already buttered.

“Philistines,” said Sam as he poured hot water over a basket of tea leaves set in a squat clay pot.

Sam carried a tray with the food and hot tea. Phoebe followed on his heels with Laila behind them. Sam led Phoebe into Sarah’s room while Laila scurried off to collect bed linens and a ewer for washing up.

Blinding for certain, but Phoebe would also use the words startling and beautiful .

The chamber smelled of turpentine and oil paint, not so strongly as to be unpleasant, and against the walls were propped painting after painting. They were unapologetic in their use of color, but what fascinated Phoebe the most was they depicted real life in the streets of Clerkenwell.

“These are…” Phoebe stopped to stare at one picture that portrayed a little violet seller like the one she and Sam had encountered earlier this morning. Sarah had made no attempt to romanticize the misery of such a life. Instead, the little girl’s face was pinched with worry, her stockings were obviously mended at the knees more than once, and the posies in her basket were as wilted and pathetic in the painting as they had been in real life.

“What?” Sarah stood behind the door, one foot raised to scratch the other ankle, a look of sullen resignation pulling her mouth into a pout.

“Incredible.”

Sam, who’d been moving the easels and painting supplies to one corner, stopped his work and stared at Phoebe.

“This work is of the quality one sees in the National Gallery,” Phoebe continued. “I’m sorry to say I don’t believe a young woman’s work will ever hang there, but if it did, it should be work like this.”

Sarah’s mouth opened and closed, then opened again, her brows pulling down as she frowned.

“You are making that up,” she said, but Phoebe was already shaking her head.

“This is as far from romanticism as one can get,” Phoebe pointed out, then stooped and held her finger above the brushstrokes. “Your choice of colors is untraditional but bold, your brushstrokes can be choppy, and you need to practice more, perhaps with a tutor.” She straightened and looked at Sam. “I’ve spent hours at the gallery and been given lessons in art since a child. Your sister is magnificently talented.”

Sam glanced at Sarah, then back at Phoebe. “You aren’t doing a good job at being a villainess right now.”

Shrugging, Phoebe examined two more paintings, both of a greengrocer in Covent Garden. “I can be a villain and still speak the truth.”

“You aren’t telling me anything I don’t know,” said Sarah, her arms straight at her sides, fists clenched.

“Good.” Phoebe nodded in appreciation at the display of ferocity and self-confidence. “Those who don’t understand art you can ignore. It is the men who know what you’re doing and find it threatening you must watch out for. They will malign your talent and dilute your passion if you let them.”

The two women stared at each other, a volley of unspoken frustrations bounced between them, and Sarah nodded slowly. She had already encountered such men, it appeared.

“I am happy you have come to stay with us, Lady Phoebe,” Sarah said quietly.

“I am honored, Miss Sarah,” Phoebe said in return.

“If this mutual-appreciation society could conclude the opening ceremonies,” Sam interjected, “we should figure out how to hide if Letty decides to peruse Sarah’s paintings.”

“She never would,” said Sarah darkly. Nonetheless, the three of them moved the easels, and behind them, Sam hung a cloth dirtied with paint spatters onto two hooks.

“I will tell them I am experimenting with backdrops,” Sarah said when they’d finished. By this time Phoebe had eaten two cheese-and-pickle sandwiches.

“These are delicious.” She held a third sandwich and marveled at it. “How did I never know how delicious bread and cheese could be?”

“Because most likely you’ve never been hungry before,” Sam said. His tone was light and easy, as if he’d put no thought into the words, but they slapped Phoebe awake as though he’d tossed a handful of pebbles at her.

“I have been hungry many times in my life,” she contradicted him. “I think it is I’ve never been fed this generously.”

Sarah frowned, but Sam understood. Phoebe was again naked before him, her envy of this family, its uncomplicated, messy love exposed in her words and in her gaze.

“If you would like anything else, I will bring it to you,” Sarah offered.

Smiling to hide a flush of shame, Phoebe gestured to the tray. “I can’t fit anything else in my stomach. I might burst.”

A furtive knock at the door silenced them. After a second, the door opened, and Laila stood in the doorway, handing linens over to Sam.

“Letty and Grey are here to take Laura to the doctor’s with Mam. Sarah, you go down, you’re good at distraction. I’ve told them I’ve a headache so I can hide away without breaking down. Lucy is already haranguing Grey over the anti-Corn legislation. We can only hope they’ll be too distracted—or irritated—to wonder over anything out of the ordinary.”

Sarah followed Laila out of the room. Stopping at the exit, she turned and regarded Phoebe.

“Thank you, Lady Hunt. Even if you didn’t mean it.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t lie, child,” Phoebe said. She’d tried for her usual hauteur, but the familiar aristocratic chill had deserted her. “Why lie when the truth is so painful?”

The truth was, no matter Sarah’s talents, she would never become known for her art. Thus was the world, and even the loving Fenleys would have to accept this.