by Noelle Mack
With so many sweet-faced females about, I was reluctant to go to the desk and enquire in a low voice as to whether, ahem, etchings of a certain kind were available. I saw no clue as to where a portfolio like the one I sought might be found. So I wandered about, pretending to browse the shelves.
I came upon a room with curtains drawn back over the arched entrance. It seemed to be for private use, but it was empty. I glanced around to see if anyone was looking at me— no one was—and I slipped inside.
Perhaps parties were given here to celebrate the publication of one book or another. I had been to a few of such gatherings, at other booksellers. They were dismal affairs. The guests tended to be few in number, clutching the books pressed on them by the newly minted author, who signed the title page with a flourish and high hopes of immortality. Most would sink into oblivion.
Which was what I wanted to happen to those damned engravings of the woman who looked like Xavi.
I walked out again and turned to the left, to a section marked Art & Antiquities, where perhaps the hunting would be better. Here a clerk was shelving new stock, and not only books. And then I caught a glimpse of distinctive green-and-white stripes.
He was intent upon his work. I hoped it was the one I sought, but that foolish thought was dashed when I saw not one but twenty portfolios in the rack he was filling.
I would have to wait for him to go away to examine them all. Fellows who haunted the aisles of bookstores looking at such things without buying had a way of being discouraged. Or guided swiftly out to the street and treated to a hard kick in the arse.
Still, I was well-dressed and looked every inch the gentleman. I pulled out a book at random and flipped through it, gradually feeling the uncomfortable sensation of someone's eyes on me. I looked up—it was not the clerk, who had finished his work and gone away.
A woman smiled at me pertly. A delicate pair of spectacles was perched on her nose, but they only added to her attractiveness. "That is a very good book, " she said, indicating the volume in my hand.
"Is it?" I turned to the title page to see what it was she thought I was reading. Fanny Hill. The Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. I closed the book with a snap and she went off into peals of laughter.
Several curls escaped her charming coiffure as she did. Was there no end to the temptations to be found in London?
"I assume you have read it, " I said boldly.
"Yes. I have.”
I had no idea what to say next. My virtue, such as it was, was not safe even in a bookstore. She brushed past me, running a fingertip over the shelved green-and-white portfolios.
"And have you looked at those as well?"
"No.” She looked at me over her shoulder, a pose I have always found fetching in the female of the species. "Should I?"
"My dear young lady, " I began, realizing that I sounded exactly like the sort of pompous jackass who went to bookstores to meet dear young ladies and try to impress them. "It is not for me to say, but—"
At that moment a man came around and took her by the arm to lead her away. He gave me a suspicious look that I ignored with all the hauteur I could summon up. I could have taken him in a fair fight, but these hushed aisles were hardly the place for a manly battle.
I was grateful to have the aisle to myself again and went through the rack of green-and-white portfolios as fast as I could. When I found the images of Xavi—no, the woman who looked like Xavi but was not her—I took the portfolio up to the counter and bought it straightaway.
One down, five to go. When I had got the thing home, I hid it under an armoire in my bedroom. I went to my study and looked through the receipts again, drawing a line through the one Mr. Martin had written out for Woolf's bookshop and moving it to the back.
The next name was Fotheringay's and the address was in Soho. Mr. Martin had hesitated when he said Quinn's rival was not the artist who had created these sets, but it didn't mean he was lying. The printseller could have been telling the truth. Why would Fotheringay buy his own work?
He might have done it to cover his tracks, I supposed, but that seemed like a bit of a stretch.
I was reluctant to go after his set alone, for doing so would undoubtedly mean tangling with the man, who had a disagreeable temper. No, I needed Quinn's help and I would have to wait for him to return from the country.
Recovering another set from the second bookseller would be easy enough, if it had not been sold. I tucked the receipts in my pocket, permitted myself a sigh, and went out again.
I arrived a little too late. A customer had one of Martin's distinctive portfolios under his arm and was paying for it. This shop was nowhere near as spacious or well-stocked as Woolf's and I spotted the other green-and-whites at once, in a rack on the floor. It was the work of an instant to go through them. My heart sank when I realized that the one I wanted had undoubtedly been bought by the man now walking out the door.
I would have to follow him.
Only a moment after his exit, I went out too, walking in a nonchalant way. He moved with long strides, whistling as if on his way to some pleasant assignation. Good. His mind was elsewhere.
He strode on for nearly half a mile. I found that following someone was a very odd business. I had to stop when he stopped, go when he was going, but not be obvious about it. Even the best neighborhoods of London had their footpads and thieves, plying their trade in broad daylight, and I did not want to be taken for one.
The man came to a town house, waving as he looked up at the second-floor window. It was framed with roses growing on a trellis and a woman leaned out to cut one and throw it down to him with a smile. A romantic gesture, but I was sure she was his wife. He blew her a kiss and entered when a maid, who cast a curious look at me, opened the door for him. He disappeared inside.
There I stood, a little unsteady on the cobblestones, my feet aching after my long walk. The man I had followed knew that he was going home to loving arms and his steps had been accordingly light, as if he was walking on the air of this balmy day. I could not very well knock on the door and ask if he wanted to sell his portfolio to me. I was not particularly surprised that he had brought it home as a gift to his little wife, for I supposed that to be the case. A happy couple might share such pictures to excite each other.
There could not be a safer place for the portfolio to be hidden. I walked the way I had come, more slowly now, my hands clasped behind my back. The familiar look of London, the humble chimneypots of its houses and the graceful spires of its many churches, both reaching toward the same sky, put me in an odd sort of mood. I turned my thoughts to the missing portfolios once more, glad to have the time to consider the problem at my leisure. Our plan to find them all had been hatched in haste, and Quinn and I had not even discussed the possibility that one or more of the sets might not be recovered.
Once back at my own house, I sat in silence. I felt lonely after following the stranger and somewhat disgusted with myself for doing so.
My gallant attempts to recover the portfolios were sure to be rewarded with ardent kisses and caresses from Xavi, but I could not help wondering if the effort was worth it. Once everything was destroyed and her husband's suspicions calmed, we could resume our affair... but what was the point? It would end badly, the usual result of affairs in which one or both sinners are married to other people.
Anne had dismissed me, Xavi was likely to do the same. I loved both; I had neither. Was there a woman in London who would someday be mine—all mine? A sadder question came to my mind. Was I worthy?
Probably not.
I enjoyed carousing with Quinn, I had a taste for sexual adventuring, and I came and went as I pleased at all hours. Our amorous encounter with the barmaids had provided welcome relief from thoughts of Diego and—I had to admit it, if only to myself—the mixed emotions that had bedeviled me in the last weeks. I liked my freedom.
Bah. At the moment I didn't want it. The glimpse of domestic bliss I'd been grant
ed between the unknown husband and his rosy wife had put me in a cynical mood.
I put the receipts with the ever-growing pile of paper I hid, and some note-sheets of Xavi's fell out. I smiled inwardly as I read them again.
She had rewritten the tale of the Frenchwoman, her brother's mistress, on these, not finishing it. It was hard for her to imagine her younger brother as a lover, and she left off abruptly after a description of Veronique Joubert.
Veronique's eyelashes fluttered and her bosom heaved with every breath she took of the warm air of Jamaica. Before her darling Thomas had come from England to succor her, a lonely young widow, Veronique had been forced to call upon her manservant, Tremont, known as Tree for his height and the length of his . . .
I read no more. Still, the wildly romantic tone was amusing and perhaps she meant it to be a parody. I smiled to myself. We were two of a kind: fools for love. Lightheartedness was a necessary counterpoint to the strong passions that drove us to risk so much. What I needed now was to see her, reassure her, hold her close, and that I would do at the ball.
My bad mood dissolved.
The musicians hired for the occasion were playing merry airs and the dancing had begun when I entered. There were no other guests upon the stairs or in the hall when I bowed to the brass-buttoned personage at the door and made a leg in the old-fashioned way. I knew that Henry, Lord Colefax's butler, would recognize me. I lifted my mask for a fraction of a second.
He did and kept his voice low. "Lord Delamar?"
Henry had never thought ill of me for dallying with Lord Colefax's wife. It had happened a long time ago and Henry had dallied with her too—at a different time and place, of course. Lord Colefax, who was universally disliked, had seemed to be none the wiser, and the young lady in question went on to take many other lovers, highborn and low.
"Hush," I whispered. "Yes, it is I."
Henry collected himself and pretended to take the invisible card I extended to him. Lord Colefax was not a complete fool, and he had never invited me to his house again. The protocols of entrance observed, I grinned at Henry and joined the throng in the ballroom.
The dancers had joined hands for a quadrille and went through the measured steps in time to the music. There were no bumblers among them and the sight was pleasing. I had been too long away from polite company. Its manners and mores encouraged self-restraint.
My heart got me in far greater trouble than my cock, I thought. It beat wildly at the sight of Xavi; it throbbed with fondness when Anne came back into my life. Worst of all, my wayward nature was not interested in choosing one or the other, but insisted on loving both.
If only I were like most men and let my cock direct me. That organ gave a twitch as a lovely woman danced by. Her hand clasped in her partner's and held high, her pretty chin tilted up and her eyes sparkling behind her domino mask, the dancer was the picture of grace. I wondered who she was . . . and then reminded myself of the reason I had come.
Where was Xaviera Innocencia? Taller than most of the guests, I scanned the crowd. She had not mentioned what she would wear, and it was possible she had on a powdered wig like many of the women as well as a mask.
I thought that I spied her, but I wanted to be sure. Edging through the guests and murmuring my apologies, I made my way to the side of a lady with a figure very like Xavi's, whom I could see only from the back. She wore a fitted gown in a garnet color, a shade that my darling particularly liked, and her dazzling white hair was adorned with tiny diamonds.
When the woman turned around, I realized my mistake. The lady wore no mask and her white hair was not a wig. It was gloriously thick, though, arranged in an elegant coiffure. Her beauty was of the mature sort but no less compelling than many of the younger women present. I made her a slight bow and moved on.
Ah—there was Xavi, in sapphire silk. Her mask was in the Venetian style, with upswept wings at the corner that wrapped around her dark hair. Her eyes flashed when she saw me, but she said nothing to me until she murmured some excuse in her charming accent to the handsome young man she had been talking to.
He could not be Don Diego, I thought, remembering Quinn's phrase for the Spanish ambassador: old goat. I glanced discreetly about for someone who might fit that description, but the company in general was quite attractive.
"He is not here," she said softly, taking my arm when the young man moved away.
"Do you mean your husband?"
"I do. He is in bed with the ague. I sent my own maid to comfort him."
"Was that wise? A very young woman might be the death of him."
Xavi snorted. "I don't think so."
So there was life in the old goat yet. How unfortunate. "I went to look in the printseller's window," I whispered.
She stiffened and would not look at me.
"I think I will be able to help you, Xavi. Only seven sets were printed and two are in my keeping." That was not quite true. Quinn had one and I had the other, but I thought his involvement might make her uneasy. "A third ..." I hesitated, not wanting to describe the rose-covered house and the damnably happy turtledoves living there. "A third set is safely hidden elsewhere."
"What about the engraving plates? Thousands more could be printed from them." There was a desperate tone in her voice.
"I bought those and they too are hidden."
She smiled slightly. "Thank you."
"Rest assured," I went on, "that Mr. Martin's window now has a new display. People will forget what they saw very quickly."
"Oh." There was the faintest trace of pique in her reply. "Well, what did you think of the etchings?"
I looked at her with some surprise. "Have you seen them, Xavi? I understood from your letters that you had not, only that you had been advised of their sudden appearance."
"Oh—no, I have not." Her reply was breathless. "I am not allowed to go about as Englishwomen do, in a free and easy way."
I felt a pang. It seemed unfair for her to be confined so much at home and to have to employ such complicated strategies to make an occasional escape, as she had tonight.
She was talking very softly now and I bent my head down to hear better.
"My maid described them to me in detail. She cannot read but she remembers everything and I trust her completely."
"Do you mean the English girl who was with you at Quinn's?"
"Yes. After the portrait he did of me was copied, it is not so surprising to find my face on another woman's naked body, eh?" She tapped my chest with her folded fan, playing the coquette for the benefit of those around us. They were not listening, preoccupied with their own conversations. "Do you have any idea who the artist is?"
"Not yet."
She pursed her lips. "I would guess that it is not Quinn."
"You are correct, but why do you say so?"
"I think you would have killed him for it."
"Xavi, I almost did."
She murmured her dismay and looked around to see if anyone had overheard.
"But I came away satisfied that he did not do it. And a good brawl with a good friend can clear the air."
"How very English of you," she said dryly.
I laughed a little, and pressed a kiss against her dark hair. It was no use explaining the joys of a masculine fight to a well-bred woman like Xavi.
She was lost in thought. "I thank God that my husband has not been informed."
"I was wondering about that and I have been worrying about you. Do you feel quite safe?"
"Until he finds out, yes."
I wanted to caress her shoulders, rub away her obvious unease, but I could not do it in public. "He will never find out, Xavi. And even if he does, he will have to agree that it is not you in the pictures, but only the copied features of an unknown beauty."
"Hmph. I am glad to be wearing a mask tonight."
She looked even more stunning in it. "This will all blow over soon enough." I hoped that was true. I wanted it to be true.
"If
it does not, Diego will... ah, there is no telling what he will do."
I led her away to a quieter part of the ballroom when the musicians struck up a lively schottische. "You must not worry. Still, I am surprised that he let you come out unchaperoned."
"I am not alone," she said lightly. "Another maid came with me. She is over there—" Xavi nodded at a mousy girl flirting with a lieutenant in scarlet regimentals. "We are safe enough."
"I see. Then let us do as they are doing and enjoy a glass of punch."
A liveried servant was passing by with the bowl upon his shoulder and his companion served from it, filling the glasses on the small tables around the perimeter of the ballroom. We refreshed ourselves and exchanged small talk with another couple at a nearby table for a while. When the exuberant music ended they turned to talk to their arriving friends and I lifted Xavi's hand to bring her to the dance floor.
"Shall we dance?"
She nodded and we joined the next group, going through the steps as if we had been dancing together many times. It was an odd feeling to be out in public with her—every one of our meetings had been in some secret place.
She had never seemed to mind. Perhaps growing up in a convent had prepared her for it—the thought was ironic indeed, considering the mischief we got up to.
We led the dance hand in hand, and broke apart to step to the side of the dancers in rows behind us, and went back to the beginning again.
When the music ended again, we bowed to each other and mingled for a while among the glittering throng. It would not do to be seen exclusively in each other's company. Lord Cole-fax hankered after celebrity and sent over a list of his illustrious guests to the Tatter after every party he gave. Although I had not been invited and my name did not appear, it was possible that some busybody might recognize me and add my name after all.
Don Diego might have sent a busybody of his own to keep an eye on his wife. And there was no telling who that someone might be. The popular image of a spy as tall, dark, and dashing was simply absurd. The least visible of men were the most ordinary in appearance. I caught myself—her watcher, if there was one, might be a woman, perhaps one that Diego was sleeping with himself. The white-haired beauty in the garnet dress was a likely candidate but she did not look in Xavi's direction, preferring to flirt with a circle of officers.