Yet in her wing of the Duke’s mansion, Lady Olivia’s apartments offered these two disparate strata of society the freedom to enjoy one another’s company. On the street tomorrow, it would be a different story. But, tonight, these rooms provided a sanctuary where the two could socialize without constraint.
And it was Lady Olivia who had created this space where art could bridge the gap. She was more fascinating than she had a right to be. It was no wonder she excited gossip.
As he strode through the doorway connecting to the main set of rooms, Jake passed a small sign:
Scenes Beneath a Night Sky
This room was much larger, but no less crowded than the last. He skirted the edge of the crush, scanning the space for his quarry. His height of four inches above six feet made it easy to determine that the thief wasn’t in here.
Even though he’d never met the man, he knew one fact about him: he was Japanese. Jiro. In a closed society like London’s, a foreigner—particularly one whose features were unmistakably not English—didn’t pass unnoticed. While it was possible another artist of Japanese origin could be here, it wasn’t probable. Were the man in the room, he would create a stir without once opening his mouth.
“Champagne, my lord?” a servant’s voice intoned.
Jake lifted a crystal flute off the servant’s proffered tray and downed the drink in a single swallow before venturing into the crowd and wending his way toward the room’s focal point, another staged scene like the one in the receiving room.
This scene was wholly different from the previous one. Where the other possessed a soft palette in color and theme, this one ratcheted up the drama ten times over. Hundreds of full-blown poppies filled every square inch of the tableau not occupied by the painting at its center. They even appeared to grow out of the floorboards to resemble a field lush with effulgent crimson blooms.
However, the cheeriness generated by the spectacular poppies was replaced by unease when the subject of the painting sharpened into focus: an opium den, and not the sort of the Romantics. No indulged lords lolled about on overstuffed sofas, content and oblivious to the world around them. In their stead, emaciated addicts, a puff away from starvation and death, lay about at odd angles, their gazes inward and grim.
To say that the cheery poppies threw the dire realism of the painting into sharp relief would be gross understatement. The irony was undeniable: beneath the surface of a thing of beauty could lay the seeds of one’s undoing.
An image of tonight’s hostess came to mind. Of her surface . . . Her eyes fluttering shut, lashes dark against her pale skin, parted lips reaching up, up, up . . . And her depths . . . The quality that made him want to forget his place, his purpose, himself, and dip his head and claim those lips until they were satisfied, sated. As if a mere kiss could accomplish satisfaction and satiety between them.
A soft swish of skirts whispered behind him, and a voice sounded in his ear. “Does it disappoint? Disappointment can leave one feeling decidedly unfulfilled.”
Jake looked right, and the room fell away. There she stood, throwing that word at him again. Disappointment. The idea that he’d disappointed her had gnawed at him since yesterday. And now she was throwing another word into the mix. Unfulfilled.
While he had no desire to leave this woman disappointed, he certainly didn’t want to leave her unfulfilled. In fact, under a different set of circumstances for their acquaintance, he wouldn’t walk away from this woman until she was thoroughly . . . exhaustively . . . fulfilled, satisfied, sated . . .
He reined himself in and cleared his throat. “I’ve never encountered art like this.”
A subtle smile curled the corners of her lips. “Let me guess. To you, art is pretty and facile and forgettable.” She gestured toward the painting. “And this is none of those things. It’s brutal, dark, and unforgettable.” The blue of her eyes deepened to match the sapphire of her gown. “It’s real.”
“I may have misjudged you,” he said, the words out of his mouth before he could contain them.
“You wouldn’t be the first, my lord.”
Their eyes held for a beat longer before he broke the contact. Her directness had a way of muddling his intentions. It was time to snap back into focus. He was here to find an art thief.
“I must admit,” he began, “your knowledge of the art world fascinates me.”
He sounded like a disingenuous prig even to his own ears, but he needed to right this conversation before it fell off the edge and into uncharted territory.
“Does it?”
“Did your family or the Duke introduce you? Or, perhaps, his son?” He couldn’t bring himself to say her husband, or whoever the blasted man was to her now. He despised the man sight unseen. If ever he came within arm’s reach of the man, he would clock him directly in the mouth.
“Percy?” An incredulous laugh escaped her. “My interest in the arts has naught to do with my marriage. I was a girl so in love with love that I didn’t have room for other interests.”
“In love with love?” An unexpected pang of jealousy flared through him, even as her words caught him a bit sideways. “You must have fallen in love with your husband during your courtship to have married him.”
“Our courtship was the most romantic courtship anyone had ever seen, I daresay.”
“And the marriage?” Why was he pushing the conversation in this direction? He had no desire to hear the details of that marriage.
“Not in the least,” she stated matter-of-factly. “And is love a requirement for the wife you’re seeking?”
“Of course not,” he said. A beat later, the weight of his confession hit him. He shouldn’t be speaking of love with this woman.
“Then what is the hurry, my lord? If you believe in love, you should wait for it.”
“My daughter needs a stepmother before the year is out. She’s of an age where the guidance of a lady who knows the ins and outs of the ton is necessary.”
Lady Olivia’s head canted to the side. “Did you never know young love?”
“I did.”
“And you weren’t caught in its sticky web?”
“I was.”
“Yet here you are, disavowing it.”
“And you?”
“What about me?”
“Need I ask?”
Her brows knitted together, and her gaze darted away from his. “Perhaps not. Perhaps we are both done with love.” A brittle crack sounded in her voice. “It can never live up to the perfection of its promise.”
“Yet—” He hesitated, attempting to slow the conversation. It seemed to possess a momentum that he was powerless to control. “I find that perfection bores me within minutes. Perhaps a little mess is—”
What you need. The words stuck in his throat. A blush spread across Lady Olivia’s décolletage and pinked her cheeks. He rather liked that blush. It spoke of knowledge, of connection.
He was unable to pursue that tempting line of thought when a statuesque lady stopped before them and dipped into a shallow curtsy. “Olivia,” the woman said in a low, contralto voice, “will you introduce me?”
Lady Olivia’s body tensed beneath the request, firing up a spark of intrigue. It was clear she harbored no desire to do any such thing. However, Society’s rules required a hostess to accede to the desires of a guest. Even he understood that much.
“Lord St. Alban, may I introduce Lady Nicholas Asquith?” she said, her tone rote, mechanical. “My sister.”
His eyebrows shot skyward. “Your sister?”
“My twin, in fact.”
Lady Nicholas’s eyes sparkled playfully. “You don’t see the family resemblance?”
It was immediately apparent that the sisters were, in fact, complete opposites, but in such a way that one complemented the other.
They must have excited a bit of a stir when they debuted.
“It’s true that we don’t much favor,” Lady Nicholas continued. “A not uncommon occurrence for twins, I hear.”
“No one would take you two for common,” he replied, the words flattering, but genuine.
Lady Nicholas met her sister’s gaze, and her brow lifted, a world of silent conversation happening between the sisters. Then her amber eyes shifted to continue her evaluation of him. She looked privy to a joke that he hadn’t yet caught onto.
“Olivia, this is quite possibly the most morbid soirée you’ve held yet.”
A long-suffering sigh escaped Lady Olivia. He couldn’t help feeling charmed by the push and pull of the sisters. “I was explaining to Lord St. Alban that art isn’t simply sunshine and rainbows. Must I explain the concept to you as well?”
“Well, I prefer the sunshine and rainbows.”
Lady Olivia held her tongue, but a grudging smile for her unconstrained sister tipped at the corners of her mouth. These two were opposites, but they were close, too.
Lady Nicholas’s determined hand snaked its way into the crook of his arm. “Shall we take a turn about the room?”
Jake held out his free arm for Lady Olivia, and her body, her entire being, went motionless, her eyes glued to his extended hand. She didn’t want to touch him.
A possibility slid in: perhaps she couldn’t touch him. Not without a little . . . mess.
She began backing away, for all the world a skittish deer in the crosshairs of a bow. “I’ve only recollected that I must see to a guest with a special dietary request.”
“Lady Bede’s goat milk?” Lady Nicholas asked.
Lady Olivia stepped forward and landed a quick kiss on her sister’s cheek before vanishing into the crowd, which appeared to have doubled in volume since his arrival.
“Shall we?” Lady Nicholas asked.
Jake nodded, and they strolled together in silence, the crush creating a raucous cacophony that both surrounded them and strangely insulated them from its din.
“What do you think is the true purpose of this soirée, my lord?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea, my lady.” In truth, he hadn’t considered it beyond its usefulness to him. Again, he scanned the crowd for the thief. Again, he turned up nothing. “Would you care to enlighten me?”
“About a year ago,” Lady Nicholas began, “an artist, who was a vital part of the arts community, perished of a long and painful lung ailment brought on by malnutrition and lack of medicine. He was only four and twenty years old. Olivia’s response was to begin hosting a soirée featuring a different artist every month. Each piece you see is for sale, and every last farthing goes to the artist with Olivia shouldering the cost of the soirée.” Lady Nicholas gave a short laugh. “She claims to be no crusader, but I have my suspicions.”
“It looks to be quite a monumental and meticulous undertaking for no—”
“Return?” Lady Nicholas interrupted. “Careful, my lord, one might catch a whiff of trade about you.” She cut him a speculative glance and slid her arm out from his as easily as she’d slipped it in. “Now, if you will excuse me, I see a dear, old friend to whom I simply must give a piece of my mind.”
Jake pitied that dear, old friend. He suspected Lady Nicholas’s curious and playful exterior masked an intellect and will of tempered steel.
Alone, he glanced about this new room. Corner to corner, a sumptuous spread of delicacies lined its four walls, tables heavy with roasts of all varieties: lamb, ham, pheasant, quail, even an entire roast pig. It was a feast fit for royalty. Yet there were no dining tables, no chairs, no silverware, no servants offering to fill plates, no invitation to feast on this banquet.
It struck him: the room itself was the stage. He pivoted by degrees until he located it: above a table laden with the most desserts he’d ever seen outside a sweet shop was the painting at the heart of this tableau.
The subject was a small boy curled into himself in sleep. Except this child bore no resemblance to the cozy lambs fast asleep in the receiving room. This child slept on a squalid sidewalk. His only shelter, a stone staircase; his only protection, himself. Where the lambs were white as snow, this child’s skin was stained with filth.
But these details were only background for the focal point of the painting: the boy’s face, pointed up to a vast, indifferent sky, a hollowed out shell resembling a man of eighty years, rather than a boy of eight.
Again, Jake surveyed the room. The roar of the crowd hadn’t followed him in here. Instead, the atmosphere was silent . . . chastened. Just as it wasn’t for the nameless boy, this feast wasn’t for them. He and his fellow guests were part of the performance of the piece.
We English are insatiable when it comes to having the best at the world’s expense.
Yesterday, he hadn’t given her words much thought, but tonight, in the context of this room, he understood what they said about Lady Olivia Montfort. How had a beloved daughter of the ton come to embrace such a radical perspective of the world?
All at once, a tingle raced down his spine, and he turned unerringly toward its source. There she stood, engaged in a conversation with a group of her guests. Presented in profile, he was confounded by how small she appeared. She’d begun to loom so large in his imaginings that the reality of her took him by surprise. From this distance, he could take in the entirety of her at his leisure.
She wore a simple, elegant gown of sapphire silk, deeper than the translucent blue of her eyes, expertly fitted to her petite body and cinched at her waist. He could only guess that she was dressed in the first stare of French fashion. Yet any woman who could create this atmosphere out of thin air and sheer will wouldn’t be a slave to fashion. After all, she tramped about London clad in an overcoat the hue of sidewalk sludge.
Still, she possessed a sense of her station. In here, she would dress the part. Lady Olivia understood roles, and when to play them to suit the moment.
The corner of her mouth quirked up into a smile for a male guest, and Jake’s insides gave a lurch. Then he noticed a detail that allowed him to relax: her smile for that man was polite, controlled, the sort of smile one offered a guest as a token. Quite unlike the one that had spread across her lips and shone for him yesterday. That smile had been glorious, lacking any hint of politeness or control. She had lacked the slightest hint of politeness or control.
Again, that word came to him. Unbound. And, again, he wanted her that way.
Her face angled to the side, and her eyes cut toward his. The room shrank down to him and her. Time had a funny habit of standing still around her. The indulgent smile dropped from her lips, and her expression transformed, as if she was considering him in some way.
A guest leaned forward and spoke a few words, pulling at her attention. It would be rude for her to ignore the guest, yet he refused to release her. But, alas, she didn’t need his permission, and she returned her attention to her guests and her duty. Time resumed its steady tick-tock.
He resisted the impulse to stride over and reclaim her for himself. Instead, he forced his feet to move in another direction, away from her. A strange restlessness simmered at her easy dismissal of him. It made it simpler to do what he needed to do. If the thief wasn’t here, then perhaps he could churn up some evidence of the man.
A quick glance to his right revealed a stocked sidebar. He wasn’t sure which variety of amber-colored liquid he was pouring into a tumbler, but it hardly mattered. Two, nay, three fingers of whiskey would make the task ahead more palatable.
He strode through to the next room and located an unobtrusive door tucked away in a shadowed corner. He turned the handle and was through it before anyone could notice. The door clicked shut behind him, and he stopped, allowing his eyes to adjust to the darkness.
A strip of light pe
eking out from beneath a door some twenty feet ahead of him revealed that he stood in a narrow corridor. He began moving forward, his stride purposeful and direct.
Lady Olivia’s apartments were bound to house secrets.
Chapter 11
Lord St. Alban wasn’t exactly forbidding.
That was the first thought that popped into Olivia’s mind as she cut a discreet glance his way, his eyes already upon her, watching her, absorbed in her as if she was the only person who mattered in this room, even in all of London. No one had ever looked at her like that.
Her pulse wanted leave to gallop through her veins. She inhaled to tamp the feeling down. It wouldn’t do to let gratification sway her into a course at odds with her goals.
She shifted her perspective and attempted to view him the way the rest of London must see him, as distant and unapproachable. It was his impeccable, physical perfection and those inscrutable eyes that refused to surrender a hint of his private thoughts.
Yet her perception of him continued to differ from Society’s. Their encounter on Ludgate Hill, for instance, away from the prying gaze of the ton, the informality of it, the intimacy of it. The way he’d snatched her from certain death and held her against his long, adept body for one, two, three heartbeats too long. Indeed, he wasn’t the sort of man who let a woman fall.
He wasn’t distant and unapproachable to her.
She tore her eyes away, determined to rejoin the conversation around her. “Lady Olivia,” said Lady Bede, a lively, if slightly eccentric, Society matron, “you must tell me about this artist. He is quite good, I’d say.”
“Lady Bede,” Olivia began, “he is a she who works from Le Marais in Paris.”
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