The Painted Castle Read online

  Dedication

  For Big Ed and all the heroes of the 390th—

  You braved the skies.

  We thank you.

  Epigraph

  After the day is gone we shall go out, breathe deeply, and look up—and there the stars will be, unchanged, unchangeable.

  —H. A. Rey, The Stars

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Discussion Questions

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Praise for Kristy Cambron

  Books by Kristy Cambron

  Copyright

  Prologue

  For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.

  —Romans 11:29

  December 3, 1833

  216 Strand

  London, England

  Thieves did not stop for a spot of tea—as a rule, they robbed and ran.

  This one bucked convention though, as he lingered outside the tea shop door at Jacksons of Piccadilly as if he hadn’t anyplace else to be just then.

  Eleven-year-old Elizabeth Meade watched as snow drifted around the curious figure, dotting his shoulders. The flickering glow of gaslight cast shadows upon his face as he gazed up the cobblestone street. With one hand he tapped a walking stick in a cadence against the side of his boot, counting time to a private melody. The other hand he’d buried deep in his coat pocket.

  Carrying himself with importance, as her ma-ma would say—a gentleman bestowed upon with high birth and noble rank—he owned a flawless posture that could have had him standing by a drawing room hearth entertaining guests instead of lingering on a street corner in a steady bout of snow. He’d tucked his face under an exquisitely tailored beaver-skin top hat pulled low over his brow, yet his patched and threadbare coat, the waistcoat noticeably devoid of a button down the front, and a candy-striped ascot that danced on a bitter-cold wind proved the oddest of contradictions.

  He was common enough that passersby were content to see to their own affairs and ignore an aristocratic street urchin in their midst. But Elizabeth found him so clever a character that she’d reached for her case of drawing pencils on the coach seat—scolding herself that she’d not sharpened them beforehand—and opened her sketchbook the instant her pa-pa had stepped from their carriage.

  The portrait would be a welcome addition to Elizabeth’s sketchbook consisting mainly of flora and fauna from her family’s Yorkshire estate. She’d drawn fox, the occasional deer, sheep that grazed on the hills, and the landscape outside their manor windows. And though her mother cautioned her against encroaching upon the winged army that buzzed around the estate, Elizabeth had done many an intimate study—and paid for it with wicked stings—to capture images of honeybees among rows of apple blossoms in orchards on their land. With the exception of the nuisance of a rogue bee sting here or there, it was by all accounts . . . safe.

  Quite in secret, Elizabeth craved the opposite.

  It was earnestness that proved capable of satisfying the ache deep in her core. If she’d been born a boy, perhaps Elizabeth would have run off to join the Royal Navy and sketch the great vastness of the open sea, in a cadence of waves that railed and toiled against the horizon . . . Or grown to be a gentleman of industry, like her father, and have the ability to go wherever she pleased, exploring England’s secrets—the palaces and workhouses both—all tangled together in a web of sooty streets.

  Elizabeth fantasized about near anything that would free her from the confines of a ladies’ tea parlor. A second best to her imaginings was to accompany Pa-pa to his textile mill in Manchester City. “Mightn’t it help for an heiress to have a rudimentary knowledge of the trade her husband would receive from her in marriage?” she’d asked. It seemed if she spoke of matrimony one day in the future it was enough for Ma-ma to acquiesce and allow her visits to the mill.

  Relishing the opportunity, Elizabeth would slip away from Pa-pa’s office as soon as they passed through the carriage-clogged streets along the Ashton Canal. While he oversaw operations, she could move about as a ghost in the mill’s hidden corners and shadowed halls, sketching what she wished. There she’d fill endless pages with a fervor. Images of workers, their faces soot smudged, weary, and lined. The contrast of carding machines, clawing back and forth like cast-iron beasts, and cotton fluffs that danced about in the air like snow. Packhorses trudged through the cobblestone courtyard pulling shabby carts. Workmen muscled wares onto them, and all the women seemed to cough as they hurried by, their faces gaunt and clothing hanging off their thin frames until they looked like specters drifting on a breeze.

  Once Elizabeth had hidden behind a stack of crates to sketch one of the scavengers—a small boy employed to clean out the machinery—and after, she questioned her pa-pa as to why children her age were set upon to work at all. When did they receive schooling? And whilst the machines were running they continued working . . . Was that not dangerous?

  “Do not worry over such trifles,” he’d said. “It is beneath your station.” Elizabeth was clever, with a keen eye and a sharp pencil—he’d admit that. “But shouldn’t you focus on pleasant things? England’s rich landscape and our life in it. Why fret over the wretched plight of the worker?”

  If that was pleasant, Elizabeth didn’t want it.

  She wanted real.

  There was a world of it now to be found in just a few London blocks. Their carriage sat in the midst of it, she waiting while Pa-pa went about business, blissfully sketching what could be a true member of the grit and grime in London’s underbelly.

  Elizabeth pressed pencil to page, flitting her glance up and down, outlining the street urchin’s strong jaw and broad shoulders upon a lithe frame, and shading the fall of shadows around him. She waited for the rare tip of the man’s hat that might move the light just so, allowing her to capture the combination of street smarts and brash in his face, all the while he kept the walking stick tap, tap, tapping against his boot.

  As if reading her thoughts, the figure stilled the cane, the army of snowflakes the lone movement around his silhouette. He seemed to have discerned a gaze rested upon him, as without warning he shifted his attention up to the carriage . . .

  To her.

  Their gazes locked for the briefest of moments, enough that Elizabeth held back a gasp. He was young—no more than twenty—and owned a pair of eyes in a rare and piercing stone gray, the left iris nearly halved by a jagged vertical line of bright golden brown that cut from top to bottom.

  He seemed to understand their color was a rarity, so he broke away and tucked again under the top-hat brim. Elizabeth turned back to the page, wishing she’d brought her colored pencils to capture the intensity in his eyes, but continued sketching his face without them. She could add the contrast of hues later.

  A ferocious crack aw
akened her from the spark of inspiration. She jolted upright, snapping her gaze to the street.

  The top-hat urchin had vanished.

  He was replaced by shrieking ladies and passersby who recoiled in the gaslight’s glow. The horses lurched, jostling the carriage as Elizabeth tried to discern what the commotion was. She gripped a gloved hand to the window frame, fingertips battling to steady her.

  And then there was a man . . . falling.

  A cloaked figure absorbed what was assuredly a second gunshot fired from the alley shadows, then staggered back to hit the pavement in a dead flop. With the man’s riding boots having fallen limp in the center of the pavement, crowds tripped to get out of the way.

  And she watched in horror as her pa-pa lay motionless on the ground.

  No!

  Elizabeth flung the coach door open, uncaring if it caused the horses to bolt. She jumped down and ran, nearly turning her ankle on cobblestones as she pushed her way through the crowd.

  “Lady Elizabeth!” Kinsley, their coachman, bellowed to her from behind. She glanced back, seconds only, to see he worked to calm the fright out of the beasts in harnesses.

  Run.

  It was the only charge within her.

  “Pa-pa!” Elizabeth slammed her knees to the grimy slush when she reached her pa-pa. She parted his cloak, pressing her robin’s-egg gloves to his waistcoat, finding a wound in his middle. Her palms darkened to crimson without effort.

  “Pa-pa—what’s happened?” she cried.

  Elizabeth raised shaking hands to his wool cloak and gripped the lapels as if it would stop the flow of crimson darkening the stones beneath them. He searched the sky, with snowflakes catching on his eyelashes and drifting to rest in the amber bed of his beard.

  “It’s Elizabeth . . . ,” she whispered, her breath freezing into a fog over him. “I am here, Pa-pa.”

  Cathedral bells rang across the distance, the few blocks between St. Paul’s and them. Their chimes cut the ink sky with their ghostly song as snow fell and her pa-pa bled on the ground. Hamilton Meade, the Fourth Earl of Davies, looked through Elizabeth with a glassy stare as she held his hand. Watching. Numb. Lost.

  He released a grappling, ragged breath and then . . . nothing. Just chimes and snow and strangers, and an eerie stillness that settled over the sidewalk like a dark fog.

  Kinsley appeared then and fell to his knees in the gutter, leaning over Pa-pa to press an ear to his chest. He listened intently, but Elizabeth knew the effort was wasted. Pa-pa lay cold in death as an icy wind swooped around them. It toyed with the spilt tin of her mother’s favored bergamot tea and rustled a bag of peppermint sticks that had fanned out on the sidewalk past his outstretched fingertips.

  Elizabeth rocked on her heels. She gazed back to the carriage, its shadow a backdrop behind the cadence of thick, drifting snow and gathering crowds. Her sketchbook was still upon the coach seat, and she knew what was inside it.

  The drawing depicted no clever character now—the rogue in the top hat and candy-striped ascot was more than that. Even in youth, she could discern who was an enemy. In that instant the man became the shadow Elizabeth vowed to chase until they knew who had done the bloodthirsty deed. There would be no escaping it, for the best clue was seared to memory: the devil’s likeness in cool stone and a jagged line of gold.

  Elizabeth Meade had just sketched her father’s murderer . . . and those eyes would haunt her as long as she lived.

  One

  Present day

  10/11 O’Connell Street Lower

  Dublin, Ireland

  “Who is that, an’ why does he keep comin’ in here night after night, ooglin’ ye from across our pub?”

  Irked shouldn’t have described Keira Foley’s older brother at the moment—not after Cormac and his wife just had a new baby girl and with their older daughter, Cassie, he now had a family camped out on cloud nine. He grumbled from their perch behind the vintage wood-topped bar.

  Keira peered across the main dining room with nonchalance—past low-hanging lamps and tables packed with tourists enjoying a pint and a gab—as if the tourist Cormac spoke of was nothing more than a nick on the two-hundred-year-old wall paneling. The man had tucked into the far corner by the men’s snug, opposite an ancient hearth with a steady orange glow, and had casually leaned his chair back against the wall of wood and frosted glass.

  Act uninterested.

  She shrugged. “Him? I don’t know that he’s ooglin’ anything.”

  “He’s a tourist. An’ a Yank.”

  “Maybe.” Keira swept a towel over the bar top—already clean and bone dry, it didn’t need it. “Why does that matter? We have tourists in here all day long. They keep the lights on for us.”

  “That one keeps comin’ back, an’ he keeps watchin’ ye.”

  She looked back at Cormac, seeing the Foley green eyes she and her two brothers had inherited from their father—the owner and namesake of Jack Foley’s Irish House. Like Cormac, her father was a mite enthusiastic about preserving the tradition of the famous O’Connell Street pub and had disappeared into the depths of the kitchen to inspect the delivery of potatoes they’d just received.

  Thank goodness she didn’t have to manage them both.

  Where Keira was blonde and her brothers dark haired and the Dubliner’s brogue she’d had as a child all but faded to a hint of a London accent now, that’s where the differences ended. The Foleys were a bunch of Irish hotheads—stubborn and passionate in their own ways. It seemed Cormac had picked up on defending his little sister’s honor that night and was running full steam ahead with the classic definition of a Foley’s response.

  Keira tossed the tea towel against the pub logo on his shirt. He caught it in a palm against his chest.

  “I really don’t know what you’re getting after, Cormac. It’s not a crime to frequent a pub for a pint, you know—especially for a tourist.”

  “But wit’ a glass full an’ starin’ over here like the bar’s on fire?”

  “I hate to bring up the obvious, but I’m twenty-six years old. Even if that chap was ooglin’ as you say, it really wouldn’t be any of your affair. Unless you wish me to spend the rest of my life alone, you’ll have to permit a bloke to glance at me once in a while.”

  Cormac groaned and leaned over the bar like he’d just ingested a side of bad beef. He gave her a standard paternal look, for he had ten years on her and, in many ways, had helped raise her since their mum died so many years before. Problem was, his heart was gold and she knew it. It’s why the protective vibe never worked with her.

  Almost never.

  “When ye talk like that I’m reminded that I’m yer brother. Older brother. Who owns a nice pair of fists I wouldn’ mind showin’ off to any sod who steps out o’ line.”

  She poked him in the shoulder. “Don’t act meaner than you are or I’ll tell Laine on you.”

  If anyone could soften Cormac’s bristle and brash in two shakes, it was his wife. She was American. Unfailingly kind. And . . . she had Cormac’s number.

  “I’ll show you some grace at the moment because I know Juliette has been keeping her dear ma and da from enjoying a full night’s sleep.”

  Cormac looked up, half smiled.

  Good. Mentioning your girls always softens you, dear brother.

  “An’ her older sister, don’ forget. Cassie is just as enamored—an’ sleep deprived—as we are. The cottage gets smaller an’ smaller when Juliette cries middle o’ the night.”

  “And that’s exactly why I tried to convince you to live in that grand manor house at the Ashford Estate instead of building a cottage on the grounds.”

  “We wanted somethin’ smaller. An’ real. Maybe a little privacy—there an’ here.”

  “Which is why I can keep my smile and pardon you for being miffed. Look, I’ve watched over myself for quite long enough. There are dodgy patrons in New York and London pubs same as in Dublin. You can’t think I haven’t had to deter a few eager gents withou
t you looming large in the background.”

  Cormac groaned again, as if the imaginings of his little sister’s love life sent a fresh wave of nausea to cut him through his middle. “There are a thousand pubs in this fair country,” he muttered and turned to stoop behind the bar—back to stacking glasses. “Why don’ ye be tellin’ him to go find one before I lose what’s left o’ my good humor?”

  Keira bit her lip over a laugh. “Brilliant. I’ll tell him.”

  In truth, Keira had noticed the man. Every six-foot-plus inch of him, with his perfectly pomaded ebony crown and coy half smile, the instant he and his button-down oxford and leather jacket waltzed in the pub at closing one night.

  He was a tourist. That was clear the second he ordered “a pint of Guinness” without the knowledge that asking for a pint in any Dublin pub implied you wanted Guinness, full stop.

  Tourists were respected for the American dollars they brought to the local economy, but it was a horse of a different color to be accepted into the closed world of a pub that had been an O’Connell Street staple for more than two hundred years.

  This guy hadn’t the first clue how to blend in. What’s more, he looked like he couldn’t care less, sporting a black leather jacket with racing stripes down the sleeves. But then . . . maybe that was exactly what he wanted. To stand out in a room of strangers so she couldn’t pretend to ignore him, yet hold on to his air of mystery at the same time.

  Keira crossed the wood-paneled front dining room, checking on tables of pubgoers as she went, meeting his glances every now and then. They both knew she’d eventually end up at his back corner table.

  “Something wrong with your pint there, cowboy?”

  “Ah. You’re pretending not to know me because of your brother? I assume that’s the famous Cormac Foley over there behind the bar.” He tossed his glance over to Cormac, daring to smile at the fact her brother was simmering like a pot set to boil. “He looks irritated. Slow night?”

  “Don’t you think it’s about time you went on your way, Mr. Scott? You obviously don’t like our Guinness.”