The Forgotten Room (13 page)

“You're lucky,” Lucy said. “To have a sister.”

She used to imagine brothers and sisters for herself, a whole household full of companions. But no matter how hard she wished or imagined, it was always just her. There had been a miscarriage—twins, Lucy knew, from what she had overheard from behind the door, clinging to her doll—and then nothing. Her parents had shared a room, but not, apparently, anything more.

Mr. Ravenel was watching her with a little too much interest. Hastily, Lucy said, “But what does this have to do with your visit to New York?”

Mr. Ravenel regarded the baroque curlicues on the handle of his fork. “As I said, it's hard to explain. Cuba made my father's career—but
it was more than that. He never spoke of his life before Cuba. It was as if he sprang full blown as a grown man, with an easel on his back and a paintbrush in his hand.” He shook his head. “Most artists have early works. Old sketches, experiments that failed. My father—we have only one painting that predates Cuba. And I only found that one by accident. He was,” he said, as if by way of apology, “a very private man.”

Lucy's mother had been like that, too. Lucy had always had the sense of her mother as a traveler at a wayside inn, hugging her past to herself like a precious bundle she was afraid to lose.

“Do you think your father has something to hide?” Lucy asked practically. “Was he wanted by the law?”

Mr. Ravenel lifted both hands. “If I knew that . . . All I do know is that he was originally from this part of the world. He never said it in so many words, but . . . there were details he let slip. Mentions of Central Park, of the smell of the tanneries on the East River. Little things.” Parallel lines appeared between his brows. “And my mother said she once saw him writing a letter addressed to someone in New York.”

“About his paintings, perhaps?”

A shadow crossed John Ravenel's face. “He hid it when he saw her coming. There was something—or someone—in his life in New York that he didn't want her to know. I've wondered sometimes if Ravenel is even our name.” He gave a little shrug. “It's the name on my birth certificate, so I suppose I'm as entitled to it as any other. But . . . it would be nice to know for certain.”

There was a lump in Lucy's throat that had nothing to do with lobster.
I understand,
she wanted to say. But she couldn't. Not to a stranger.

Instead, she said, with false brightness, “Why don't you ask him?”

His eyes met Lucy's. “My father passed. While I was away in France.”

“My mother died last year.” The words came out of nowhere, from
deep in Lucy's chest. She set her fork down on the side of her plate. “Consumption. She had been sick for some time. I—I wish I had known her better.”

She felt instantly mortified. Mr. Ravenel didn't want to know her history. But he answered easily enough, “You never really think of them as people, do you? It's hard to imagine your parents being—well, anything but your parents.”

He seemed to require a response, so Lucy nodded, even though she wasn't sure she entirely agreed. Her mother had always had that air of mystery about her, of not quite belonging where she was. Maybe it was because her grandmother had been so very forceful, had made it so clear that the bakery was her province, had inserted herself so strongly into Lucy's upbringing.

Her mother had fought a little less every year, had drifted back and back and back until it was as though she wasn't there at all.

Mr. Ravenel was caught in his own memories. “By the time I was old enough to remember, we were already in Charleston, Anna and Oliver were squalling in the nursery, and my father was a household name.” His expression turned thoughtful. “Sometimes, it seems like my father just leapt into being in Cuba in 'ninety-three, as if there was nothing before then. But there must have been.” He sat up a little straighter, his expression determined. “One thing I know about painters, Miss Young. Painters paint. They'll scribble on the walls if there's no canvas for them to paint on. I've never met an artist who hasn't had a portfolio of youthful embarrassments tucked away somewhere.”

“If they're so embarrassing, might he not have done away with them?” Lucy toyed with the contents of her lobster shell. She ought to have been feasting on the succulent lobster, but her appetite had fled. “Filed them in the fire, so to speak?”

I'm no artist,
her mother had said.

“No, I don't believe so.” Mr. Ravenel seemed very sure. But, then,
it was his father. Perhaps Mr. Ravenel senior had been the sort who couldn't be brought to throw away a scrap of brown paper or a frayed roll of twine. He leaned forward, one elbow wrinkling the creamy tablecloth. “If I tell you something . . . can you keep it to yourself?”

“I keep everything to myself, Mr. Ravenel.” Her entire life was a lie. Remembering that she was there in her professional capacity, Lucy added virtuously, “As long as it doesn't compromise the firm in any way.”

“Not the firm.” Mr. Ravenel turned his fork over and over in his hand, the heavy silver catching the light. “Recently, a series of paintings appeared on the market. They were unsigned—but they were unmistakably my father's work.”

He was watching her closely, looking for a reaction. Lucy frowned at him. “How could you tell? If they were unsigned?”

“I know my father's work the way you know your own handwriting. And it wasn't just me. A colleague brought the first of them to my attention. The technique is unmistakably my father's. But the subject matter is . . . different.”

“How different?” Something in the way he said it made Lucy wonder just what these secret paintings might be. Nude ladies? Scurrilous sketches?

“In Cuba,” said Mr. Ravenel, “my father became known for his realism, for painting what he saw as he saw it. These are . . . I guess you could call them allegorical. Fairy-tale scenes. Knights and ladies and Arthurian legendry.”

A knight raised his sword in the mural on Lucy's wall. Brave Saint
George, perpetually poised to rescue the maiden, eternally chained to the rock.

Lucy felt a sudden surge of frustration with it, with all of it. Why didn't the maiden just break her chains and save herself? Why hadn't her mother said anything, done anything?

“Miss Young?” Mr. Ravenel was regarding her with a little too much interest.

Flushing, Lucy recalled herself to the present. “That was a popular subject,” she said quickly. “But if these are so different from your father's other works, can you be sure . . . ?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Ravenel. “Do you remember that I mentioned that I had one of my father's early works? It's a miniature. A portrait miniature. One of these new paintings—the lady in the painting is the same as the lady in that miniature. I would know her anywhere. In fact . . . Well, let's just say it's a distinctive face.”

Lucy looked keenly at Mr. Ravenel, intrigued despite herself. “That's why you're here, isn't it? Those paintings.”

The waiter slipped silently between them, taking their empty plates away, but Lucy didn't need Mr. Ravenel's nod of corroboration to know she was right.

The waiter brought them coffee in delicate china cups. Lucy toyed with the handle. “Are there details in the paintings, physical objects, that might give you a clue as to where your father came from?”

“I'm hoping I can do better than that. I'm hoping that if I can trace the paintings themselves, find out where they came from, I might be able to learn something about my father's secret life.” His lips twisted wryly. “You must think it sounds absurd, a grown man chasing after a ghost. I've been told as much before.”

He didn't specify by whom.

“No,” said Lucy. “No. It's not absurd at all. Sometimes . . .
sometimes knowing matters. Knowing where you came from.”
Father . . . Legacy.
Taking a quick sip of coffee, Lucy said, “Shouldn't it be simple enough, though? All you have to do is find the seller and find out where he acquired the paintings.”

Mr. Ravenel's lips set in a grim line. “You would think. But these paintings weren't sold through conventional channels. There are men in the art world who deal with . . . well, they call them works of dubious provenance.”

“What do you call them?”

“Stolen,” said Mr. Ravenel bluntly. “It doesn't look like the seller knew what they were—they weren't marketed as Ravenels—but there's something about the business that smells wrong. You don't go under the table unless you have something to hide.”

Lucy hated to say it, but . . . “It sounds to me that what you need is a private investigator, not a lawyer. I am sure that Mr. Schuyler could provide a referral for you.”

For a moment, she saw the shrewd businessman behind Mr. Ravenel's easy façade. “I have one of those. He's located the seller.”

“And you need Mr. Schuyler to put the fear of the law into him?”

“Something like that,” said Mr. Ravenel. He drained his coffee. “I'd meant to discuss it with him tonight, over dinner . . .”

“But you got me instead.” Lucy felt wretched, thinking of Mr. Ravenel expecting Mr. Schuyler, hoping for answers, and seeing her walk out of that elevator instead. Given how disappointed he must be, he'd been more than decent about it. “I'm sorry.”

“I'm not.” The waiter came with the bill. Before Lucy could tell him to put it on Mr. Schuyler's account, Mr. Ravenel dropped what seemed an alarming number of bills on the table.

“You mustn't. Mr. Schuyler—”

“Isn't here,” said Mr. Ravenel firmly, and came around the table to
pull out her chair for her before the waiter could reach it. “And it's my pleasure.”

“He really was unavoidably detained. I'm sure if he'd known, he wouldn't . . .” Lucy floundered, torn between loyalty to her employer and guilt. “I can clear a space on his calendar for you on Wednesday. If that wouldn't be too long?”

“That wouldn't be too long at all.” When Mr. Ravenel offered Lucy his arm, it would have seemed churlish not to take it. “It may take some time to arrange a meeting with the seller of those paintings. And . . . I'm rather taken with the idea of spending a little time here in New York.”

Lucy glanced up at him. “Getting to know your father's city?”

“Something like that.” They paused before the cage of the elevator, beneath the great gilded wheel that slowly revolved as the elevator clanked and groaned its way from one floor to the next. Mr. Ravenel studied Lucy's face as though it were one of his father's paintings, until Lucy was sure he could read all of her guilty secrets beneath the brushstrokes, that he knew that Mr. Schuyler was currently training his opera glasses on the second act of
Tosca
, and all of that rubbish about an emergency was just that, rubbish. “Miss Young, I know this is presumptuous of me. I don't want to impose—”

“Don't be silly,” Lucy broke in brusquely. “I'm happy to do anything I can to help.”

Mr. Ravenel cocked a brow. “Anything?”

Lucy shrugged. “Anything other than getting you an appointment on Monday. I don't think even Saint Peter could manage that.”

Mr. Schuyler had a standing game of golf on Monday, followed by a trip down to Philadelphia to squire his fiancée to some dinner or other, a dinner that would undoubtedly be chronicled in loving detail in the society pages by Wednesday.

“Well . . .” Mr. Ravenel drew the word out, several syllables long. “I
wasn't thinking so much of Monday as tomorrow. There's a whole long day ahead of me—and I've already been to the Metropolitan Museum more than once. Is there any chance I might persuade you to sacrifice some of your time to the entertainment of a lonely traveler?”

J
ULY 1944

Kate

“Dr. Schuyler? Dr. Schuyler?”

Two gentle shoves on my shoulder brought me awake, although it took a long moment for me to recognize where I was—inside the nurses' sleeping quarters at Stornaway Hospital. But just a few minutes before I'd been standing on the sidewalk below, holding hands with my mother and looking up at the tall, Gilded Age mansion, while my mother told me to pay attention. She was telling me the old story about the mural of Saint George in her childhood bedroom, and that it was important that I understood.

I had been about to ask her what she'd meant when the shoves on my shoulder had begun.

“Dr. Schuyler?”

“I'm awake,” I said in a matching loud whisper, blinking several times to clear the sleep from my eyes, and recognized Nurse Hathaway. “What is it?”

“It's Captain Ravenel, Doctor. He's having one of his nightmares and Nurse Houlihan and I can't calm him down. I could give him a sedative, but you told me not to—that I should come to you first.”

I was already standing and sliding my arms through my bathrobe's sleeves. “Is he feverish?” I asked, furtively searching with one foot for my slippers, then finally giving up and dropping to my knees. I retrieved both from the farthest reaches under my bed and put them on.

“No,” she said.

“Good. Wait for me outside. I'll be right with you.”

She gave me a brief nod, then waited outside the door while I carefully slid my hand into my pillowcase and pulled out the linen-wrapped miniature portrait I'd taken from Captain Ravenel's duffel. I had no intention of keeping it, but I couldn't leave it in Dr. Greeley's office. I couldn't imagine his blunt fingers pawing around the captain's possessions and discovering it. And seeing the resemblance to me. At least that's what I told myself.

Pushing back my inner voice, which kept reminding me about curiosity and the cat, I slid the miniature into the pocket of my robe, then quietly exited the sleeping quarters. I began to walk as quickly as I could in slippers toward the staircase, Nurse Hathaway keeping pace beside me.

“It's the old nightmare. The one where he thinks he's landing on the beach again.” She paused as our feet clattered up the stone steps. “And he's calling that woman's name again.”

I stopped for a moment to look back at her. “Victorine?”

“Yes. That one. That's how I knew to come get you. He always seems to think it's you and calms down once you speak to him.”

I gave her a brief nod. “Thank you. You did the right thing.”

We reached the top of the stairs, then moved quickly toward the smaller staircase that led to the attic of the old mansion.

A bare bulb burned in the hallway to light our way. With all of the
windows painted black or covered with dark shades, the bulb burned night and day, so it was nearly impossible to determine the time of day. I had no way of knowing how long I'd been asleep, or how close to dawn it was.

I heard him even before we reached the door, shouting out men's names as if he were still commanding his soldiers on a beach somewhere in France. I entered the room and saw in the dim light of the bedside lamp the other nurse on duty, a fresh Irish immigrant whose name was Mary or Margaret Houlihan. It's not that I didn't bother to learn the nurses' names, but with the rapid turnover it was impossible to keep them straight.

Her accent thickened vowels and tripped on consonants, but I was familiar enough with an Irish lilt from living in New York City my entire life that I could still understand. She pressed a compress against the captain's forehead, the water dripping down his temples. I quickly approached the bed. “I thought there wasn't any fever,” I said.

The Irish nurse shook her head. “No, Doctor. But I thought he'd find a cool compress a wee bit soothing.”

I snatched it from her. “He nearly drowned at Normandy. I don't think splashing cool water on his face is going to help him.”

His troubled face moved from side to side on his pillow, seemingly searching for a way out from a hell nobody could see but him. He clutched at his sheets, his knuckles white. He lay still for a moment, his eyes moving rapidly beneath the lids. “Victorine,” he said softly.

Gently, I pried his hand from where it gripped the edge of the sheet and wrapped it in mine. He was a large man, but his hands were long and elegant. Artist's hands. “I'm here,” I said softly. “It's Victorine.”

His body relaxed, his face softening. “I knew you'd come.” His words slurred as he seemed to drift back to sleep, still holding my hand as a drowning man would grasp a rope.

I turned to the nurses. “You may go see to the other patients. I'll stay with him for a while to make sure the nightmare doesn't return.”

Nurse Mary Houlihan—or was it Margaret?—looked scandalized, but Nurse Hathaway pulled on her arm. “It's all right, Bridget. Dr. Schuyler knows what she's doing.”

I wasn't all that sure I agreed as far as Captain Ravenel was concerned, but I nodded my thanks and watched as they left the room.

I sat on the side of the bed and continued to hold his hand while he slept. I told myself that it was because he was gripping it so tightly that I would have awoken him if I'd pulled away. But I knew there was something else, something in the way he looked at me. Something about the way he recognized something in me. His face relaxed in sleep, making him no less handsome but more boyish, less troubled. More intriguing. But it seemed that it was more than the war that had added the lines to his face and the shadows in his eyes. There was perhaps something before that, perhaps even in his boyhood, that made him look out at the world, searching for the familiar.

And there was the miniature, of course. The painting of the woman that was as familiar to me as my own face.
I should go,
I told myself. I even tried to extricate my fingers from his, but he held firm. I resigned myself to a night spent staring at the blacked-out window, waiting for dawn to emerge around the edges. I'd awaken him then, after I was assured he'd had a restful sleep and before anybody realized I was in there, dressed in only a bathrobe. I sat back against the headboard, trying to find a comfortable position, and began to count the scrolls on the tin tiles of the ceiling.

For an indeterminate amount of time, I rotated between counting scrolls and tiles, allowing my gaze to drift downward to the captain's face, and then forcing my eyes upward again to begin counting over. Every once in a while I tried to pull my hand free, vigilantly aware that the light outside had shifted and that I'd have to awaken him soon. I'd
just started with another round of counting tiles when I was interrupted by a decidedly masculine voice.

“Dr. Schuyler?”

My time spent with mostly men in medical school and then soldiers for the last few years had taught me several expletives of which my mother certainly wouldn't have approved. But I used several of them then as I jerked my body off the bed, managing to slide onto the floor, taking most of the bedding with me.

“Didn't mean to startle you, Doctor. I was just going to say that if you want your bed back, I'll be happy to move over.”

“I thought you were sleeping,” I said through gritted teeth as I hastily rearranged the bedclothes, doing my best not to notice the unclothed captain or his long, muscular legs. I gave up trying to tuck everything in with jittery fingers and just focused on covering up anything I shouldn't be noticing.

“I was, but when I awakened I didn't want to interrupt your counting.”

I glared at him. “I'm sorry, Captain. I shouldn't be here—not dressed like this at any rate. You were having a nightmare again that the nurses weren't able to pull you out of, so they came and got me.”

“No apology needed, Doctor,” he said, his morning stubble doing nothing to detract from a grin that Margie would describe as wicked. “There are worse things than waking up in bed with a beautiful woman.”

“I wasn't sleeping,” I said in my defense, and realizing my error too late. I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to block out his grin, then jerked them open again as I raced to the window and pulled away the side of one of the blackout shades. I hoped it was light enough outside already or that the civil defense warden didn't happen to be looking up at the moment to see a contraband sliver of light, but I needed to know
how much time I had to race back downstairs to change my clothes before anybody saw me.

The sky was still dark, with tiny pinpricks of stars shooting a feeble light down upon the sleeping city. The moon was a slender fingernail nudging its way across the horizon, with no sign of a rising sun to ruin its fun. I let the shade fall back, then pressed the heel of my hand against my chest to slow my hammering heart.

“It's three twenty,” he said with a slow drawl. “You could have just asked.”

I looked back and saw the captain holding up his GI-issued Bulova wristwatch.

Despite my best intentions, I barked out a laugh. “Captain Ravenel, you are incorrigible.”

“Thank you,” he said with a quick bow of his head, as if I'd just given him the most sincere compliment. His smile softened. “I've missed you. You seem to have deserted me, leaving me at the mercy of the much less attractive Dr. Greeley. I hope there wasn't any misunderstanding.”

Had he forgotten?
“You kissed me.”

“Not properly, but I enjoyed it. And if you keep avoiding me, there won't be a chance for another.”

“I could have been fired, you know.”

“I know. That's why I made sure Dr. Greeley knows that you were an unwilling participant and that no disciplinary action is needed. You just need to be more careful next time, Doctor. There's something about you that I find so . . . captivating.”

I stepped toward the bed to let him know in no uncertain terms that there wouldn't be another kiss, but stopped as I felt the weight of the miniature in my pocket. Having prepared no statement to explain why I had possession of it, I simply pulled it out and handed it to him.

I watched his beautiful fingers slowly unwrap the linen
handkerchief and take out the small portrait. “Where did you find this?” he asked, shadows moving behind his eyes.

“In your duffel bag. I was searching through it looking for more contact information for relatives in Charleston and I came across it.” I put my hands behind my back like a little girl about to be scolded. “I thought you might want to have it with you.”

He held it toward the light and I bent my head toward it to get a closer look.

“It's uncanny, isn't it?” he asked.

I pulled back, wondering if he saw what I saw. “What is?”

“How much you look like her.”

Our eyes met, and in the dim light his seemed more gold than green, like a chameleon. “Who is she?”

He studied the portrait again, tilting it in the light. “I'm not sure. It belonged to my grandfather, the great artist, and then to my father. And now it's mine. All I know is what my father told me—that the woman was my grandfather's great and true love. You can tell by the way he painted her, that there was true passion between the artist and his subject.”

“Your grandmother, then?”

His lips quirked upward. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. It was given to my father by an old friend of my grandfather's after my grandfather's death. The friend had been a fellow artist living in Cuba before the Spanish-American War, and he had possession of this portrait and my grandfather's journal.” His eyes brightened. “The journal contains quite a few salacious details regarding my grandfather's amorous activities while in Cuba—mostly revolving around a beautiful Cuban girl, Maria, who eventually became my grandmother. I never met her, but I'd like to believe she's the woman in the portrait. Except . . .”

“Except?” I asked, leaning closer.

“Except that in my grandfather's journal he mentions Maria's beautiful brown eyes.”

I took a step back, having the sensation of a cold breath on my neck. “You said you've been drawing me since you first picked up a pencil. Is this who you meant?”

He was silent for a moment. “Yes. I found her intriguing, mesmerizing. Mysterious. I felt compelled to draw her. And when I first saw you . . .”

“You thought you'd found her,” I finished. I licked my dry lips, wondering if I should tell him more. Wondering how I could not. “There's something else . . . ,” I started to say.

I was interrupted by a brief knock and then Nurse Hathaway stuck her head around the door. “Dr. Schuyler? The first-shift nurses will be up soon. I thought you might want to be downstairs before they awaken.”

I looked at her with sincere gratitude. “Thank you. You have no idea . . .”

“I think I do,” she said with a sparkle in her eyes. “You go on downstairs and try to get some sleep.”