He gritted his teeth. It was all the fault of the damned duke and his new duchess, with their billing and cooing. Max and Lisette were so deeply in love that doves probably roosted in the canopy over their bed. Victor was truly happy for his cousin, but sometimes envy choked him.
Envy? Ridiculous. The only thing he envied was that their life was settled and his wasn’t. If he didn’t find Isa, he’d be tied to her until he died. He should probably divorce her—the Dutch laws were more lax than the English ones—but he refused to set her free when he was still enslaved to her memory. Besides, he wanted to retain the power of a husband over his recalcitrant wife for when he found her. He wanted to be the one to bring her to justice.
The snide voices of the past intruded on his memories: Tell the truth—it was your wife who made the imitations, who stole the real diamonds.
His inquisitors had probably been right, damn them. And he would make her pay for it, by God, if it took him a lifetime to do so.
“The point is,” he said curtly, “I have no stomach for this life of parties and such. I need a change.”
He also needed to learn the tricks of finding people, something for which Dom was famous. Victor had gleaned a few from his cases with Tristan in Antwerp, but not enough. And now that he had financial resources, he could widen his search. The half brothers might even help him, if he proved himself useful to them.
“We do have that one case you were about to turn down,” Tristan said to Dom.
“Why would you refuse a case?” Victor asked.
“Because it’s odd,” Dom said. “Pays well, but I don’t know what to make of it. And it’s going to take some time, not to mention travel.”
“Victor would be perfect for it,” Tristan pointed out. “He speaks Dutch, he’s lived in Belgium . . . and he’s good at picking out a lie from the truth.”
“Tell me, what do you know about Edinburgh?” Dom asked.
Victor blinked. “It’s a city in Scotland, filled with damned fine soldiers who make damned fine whiskey. Why?”
“How would you like to sample that fine whiskey straight from the still?”
Victor’s blood quickened. “I would if it means you’re offering to send me to Scotland on a case.”
“Does your cousin know you want to do this?” Dom asked intently.
“Does it matter?” Victor countered.
Tristan laughed. “Dom isn’t eager to involve the duke in our affairs any more than is absolutely necessary. He’s still smarting over how everyone insists on calling the agency ‘The Duke’s Men,’ even after all these months.”
Max had been forced to give the press a rather convoluted tale of how he and Lisette had found Victor, and in the process the press had conflated Dom’s agency with Max. Which annoyed Dom exceedingly.
“And how would you feel,” Dom snapped at Tristan, “if the business you’d worked so hard to build were credited to a duke who did nothing?”
“Nothing?” Tristan countered. “He gained us the favorable press that is bringing us all these new clients.” A sudden gleam entered his gaze. “Not to mention, he provided us with a free clerk.”
“Don’t let Lisette hear you call her a clerk,” Dom shot back, “or you’ll find yourself doing investigations at the back of beyond.”
In addition to being Max’s duchess, Lisette was Dom’s half sister and Tristan’s sister. The daft female enjoyed organizing their office as a sort of hobby.
Manton’s Investigations was a family business in every sense of the word.
Victor ignored their usual sparring. “Let me take care of Max. I assure you, he won’t interfere with my involvement in Manton’s Investigations. He has his life; I have mine.”
Dom looked skeptical, but Tristan said, “Come now, Dom, what will it hurt to give Victor a chance? You were going to turn down the case anyway, and now you won’t have to.” When Dom looked as if he was wavering, Tristan added, “We do owe Victor, you know. If not for him and the duke, I’d still be back in France, wishing I could come home.”
A long sigh escaped the older brother. “Fine. But only one case to start with. Then we’ll see.”
“Thank you,” Victor said, a weight lifting from his chest.
“You won’t thank me when you see what the case is.” Dom hunted through a stack of files, then handed one to Victor. “It’s the sort of unsavory work that I hate doing: investigating a man’s prospective fiancée for his meddling mother.”
Victor noted the signature on the letter on top. “The client is a baroness?”
“A dowager baroness, Lady Lochlaw. She isn’t pleased with her son Rupert’s latest love interest, a Dutch-speaking widow named Sofie Franke, who claims to be from Belgium.”
Franke? That was the maiden name of Victor’s mother. How odd.
“Apparently, her ladyship thinks that the widow is suspiciously lacking in a knowledge of Belgium,” Tristan said. “Given your long sojourn there, you ought to be able to tell if she’s lying.”
Victor skimmed the letter, and his heart began to pound. “And this Mrs. Franke makes her living designing imitation diamond jewelry?” Surely not. How could it be?
“That’s right,” Dom said. “You can read through the entire file later, but the main points are that according to the records at Customs, she entered Scotland from France with her business partner, another jeweler, nearly ten years ago. And when we put Eugène Vidocq on the case in France, he discovered that the Paris address listed for her at Customs never had a tenant. Indeed, we can find no record of any Sofie Franke living in Paris before this woman got on a boat in Calais to go to Edinburgh. So you can see the problem.”
He certainly could. Excitement growing in his chest, Victor flipped through the papers. “Is there any mention of the woman’s age or what she looks like?”
“Why?” Tristan asked with lifted eyebrow. “Is how she looks important?”
“Perhaps,” Victor said. Though not for the reason you think, you sly dog.
“The baroness described her as a ‘grasping siren with her hooks in my son,’” Dom said dryly, “so I assume she’s somewhat pretty. As for age, the baroness didn’t mention it, probably because she doesn’t know, but considering that the baron is only twenty-two, his lady friend can’t be too old.”
“Yes, but the woman is a soldier’s widow,” Tristan pointed out. “The Belgians haven’t fought any wars since Boney—and that’s been thirteen years. Depending on when her husband died, she could be well past thirty, easily.”
A soldier’s widow. Victor’s excitement ratcheted up a notch. It made sense that Isa would stick as close to the truth as she could. “She may have married young.” And she might know that her soldier husband was out for her blood.
What were the chances of there being two Dutch-speaking female jewelry designers with a penchant for imitation diamonds and soldier husbands? The timing was right, and Isa could very well have fled to Paris when she left him. There was also the fact that Mrs. Franke was at the very least hiding her real name and place of origin. And that she bore his mother’s maiden name.
Still, it made no sense. The Isa he thought he’d known—shy and hesitant and reliant on her family and him for everything—would never have had the fortitude to travel across the sea and become a partner in a business.
And the Isa of his suspicions—a scheming thief who cared only about money—wouldn’t have settled down in such a place as Edinburgh for ten years. She would have stayed on the Continent to live the high life under her assumed name. With her talent, she might even have gone on to more thieving, and that would have required moving around.
So how could Mrs. Franke be Isa?
“Soldier’s widow or not,” Dom said, “she has to be young enough to bear Lochlaw an heir.”
Victor froze. “So the baroness really thinks her son and this woman mean to marry?” The irony of it didn’t escape him.
“Her ladyship seems very sure of it,” Dom replied. “Her son will inhe
rit a great deal of money, and he has a title besides.”
His blood chilled. Well, that would certainly attract a scheming thief. Still, ten years was a long time to plot to entice a baron, especially since she would have had to start when the man was only twelve. And would she really be fool enough to commit bigamy?
Though perhaps she’d assumed that Victor had gone to prison for her crime. With her false name, she might have felt certain that no one would uncover her past.
“We can’t know the true situation for sure,” Dom went on, “until you get there and assess matters. You know these dowagers—they always think unsuitable women are trying to reel in their eligible sons.”
“Actually, I don’t know these dowagers,” Victor said. “Five months in London society hardly qualifies me as an expert. So you probably shouldn’t play up that I’m the duke’s cousin, because I’m bound to disappoint your client if that’s what she’s looking for.”
“The baroness didn’t hear of us because of the ‘Duke’s Men’ connection,” Tristan put in, “but because of a referral from someone in Edinburgh whose case Dom handled a few months ago. She may not even recognize your name.” He cast Victor an amused glance. “So you can be as boorish as you please, old chap. She won’t know you as anything but one of our investigators.”
Victor let out a breath. “Good.” Because if Mrs. Franke did turn out to be his missing wife, he would prefer that Isa not learn of his grand connections—not at first, anyway. The last thing he needed was for the thieving chit and her family—if they were still about—to try insinuating themselves into Max’s life on the basis of Isa’s marriage to Victor.
A marriage Victor meant to put an end to once and for all . . . assuming the woman in question was Isa. If he could prove that she really had been involved in the theft of the royal jewels, then no court in Europe would contest a divorce.
And he damned well would see her and her relations prosecuted for it.
The image of Isa’s last stark note to him flashed into his mind:
Dear Victor,
Our marriage was a mistake. I want something more than you can offer, so I’ve taken a position with a jeweler elsewhere. One day you will thank me.
Isa
Thank her? Even then, he’d known that would never happen, though he hadn’t quite believed her note. Even after she didn’t come home, even after her family disappeared, supposedly going off to look for her, he’d thought she was just suffering a case of new wife’s nervousness. That she would come back to him soon.
All of that had changed a week later, when someone at the palace discovered that one of the commissioned parures was imitation. When the authorities had come after him, he’d realized that Isa had really left him. That she’d intentionally sent his life spiraling down into hell.
Only then had he looked back to see the little signs he’d missed. Yes, she’d been an innocent on their wedding night, but that had been the only truthful thing about her. And perhaps she’d lied about that, too, sprinkling pig’s blood on the sheets or something. He’d been so stupidly in love that he would have believed anything she told him.
Not anymore. After her desertion—and his weeks of “interrogation”—his heart had grown hard as stone. He’d taught himself to be cold and thorough and unmoved by feminine wiles. So this time he would be prepared. He would turn the tables on her.
Perhaps then he could purge her from his mind once and for all.
♦ ♦ ♦
A FEW DAYS later, Victor arrived in Edinburgh. He hadn’t been surprised to learn that Max owned a house here, but he’d been touched when Max offered to let him stay in it as long as necessary.
He’d almost refused the offer, in case his quarry found out his connection, but it was hard to say no to the cousin he was just getting to know, and even harder to say no to the man’s meddling wife.
Fortunately, the house wasn’t a large, imposing palace in the center of town, but a villa outside the city proper. He should be able to stay there relatively anonymously, especially after he made it clear to the servants that his presence in Edinburgh needed to be discreet.
As soon as he got himself situated, he headed off to Charlotte Square to meet his new client, driving a phaeton from his cousin’s stables. But Lady Lochlaw proved to be not at all what Victor had expected, and not because of her relatively young age, either. Though the term dowager baroness might have led some to expect a doddering old lady, he’d known better. She was newly widowed, barely out of her mourning period, and with a twenty-two-year-old son; it made sense that she be in her forties.
He had, however, expected a woman very aware of her consequence and wealth. It was why she was hiring him to investigate her son’s “friend,” after all. And since describing another female as a “siren” generally showed a woman to be secretly envious, he’d also assumed she was unattractive.
Nothing could have been further from the truth. The moment he was shown into the drawing room of her fashionable town house, he was taken aback to find Lady Lochlaw tall and handsome, with honeyed curls, crystal-blue eyes, and a smile that would make any man feel at ease. Or the opposite, if the man happened not to be interested in what she was selling.
Which was why, when she ran her gaze down him familiarly while he was being announced, he had to grit his teeth. “My lady,” he said with a little bow.
“Please, Mr. Cale, do not stand on ceremony with me,” she purred as she approached to take him by the arm and guide him to a settee. “This isn’t stuffy old London, you know.”
When she sat down and patted the place next to her, he picked a spot at the other end of the settee and said firmly, “Ah, but you are still my employer, my lady. I wouldn’t dare to presume.”
It was a phrase he’d picked up at those London parties, though he’d never had to use it before.
“How very decent of you.” She cast him a dazzling smile. “Still, if I’d had any idea that dear Mr. Manton would send me such a braw fellow, as we Scots say, I would have insisted that you stay here at the town house.” With a fluttering of her lashes, she leaned forward to run a finger down his arm. “His letter of introduction said you fought at Waterloo. You must have been quite a sight on the battlefield.”
Trying not to stiffen visibly, Victor managed a bland smile. “Since I was only seventeen at the time and wet behind the ears, I imagine I was.” He made his tone crisp and professional. “Now, perhaps we should discuss the situation regarding your son.”
She stared at him, then sat back with an exaggerated sigh. “I only mentioned the war because my husband and I toured Waterloo in later years. Since we’d traveled all over Belgium, I found Mrs. Franke’s claim of being from Brussels rather suspicious when she didn’t seem to know much about it.”
That made sense. Isa had never been to Belgium. Assuming Mrs. Franke was Isa, that is.
“I see.” He drew out a notepad and a pencil. “When did your son and Mrs. Franke first become acquainted?”
“Acquainted? I fear it’s more than that. With her being so much older than Rupert—”
“How much older? Or do you know?”
“She looks to be thirty at least.”
Isa would be twenty-eight. “And they’ve known each other how long?”
“Only a year. They met when my son brought my jewelry into her shop to be cleaned.”
“But she’s lived here for ten. Are you sure he didn’t meet her before?”
“He was in school. He only came home after he reached his majority.”
“Ah, of course.” He scribbled notes in his pad. “Can you tell me anything else about Mrs. Franke that’s not in the materials you sent Manton’s Investigations? I gather, from your use of the term siren, that she is attractive.”
Her ladyship examined her fingernails. “She’s pretty in a vulgar sort of way. I’m sure you know what I mean.”
“Not really.” He began to dislike the baroness. And feel sorry for her son. “In my experience, women are
either pretty or plain, and I find both sorts equally distributed in all walks of society.”
Her gaze turned piercing. “Indeed? In my rather more vast experience, vulgar women lack the fine features and graceful movements of a woman of true breeding.” She leaned close again, as if to betray a confidence. “She walks like a man, as if she’s always in a hurry to get somewhere.” Her voice turned cynical. “And we both know where she’s in a hurry to get: into my son’s fortune.”
He took out the file he’d brought with him and made a show of flipping through it. “My understanding is that she’s a partner in a jewelry shop that does quite well.”
“Exactly!” she said. “A woman in trade? The very idea is appalling!”
“My point is, madam, that she has no need of your son’s fortune.”
“Oh, please do not insult my intelligence.” With an elegant roll of her eyes, Lady Lochlaw laid her arm along the back of the settee. “Any woman would leap to snag a rich young baron like Rupert, but especially a woman of her sort, grasping enough to go into trade.”
Inexplicably, that raised his hackles. “What did you expect a widow to do after she was deprived of the husband who’d provided for her? Starve?”
The minute he spoke the words he regretted them, for her ladyship’s gaze narrowed on him. And why was he defending the wife who’d deserted him, who had set him up to pay for her crimes? Mrs. Franke might not even be his wife. He must remember that, and stop antagonizing the woman who was going to pay Manton’s Investigations.
“Forgive me,” he said. “I have a tendency to speak too bluntly. All those years in the army made me ill-suited for the company of ladies ‘of true breeding’ like yourself.”
She softened. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say ‘ill-suited.’” Her gaze trailed down him. “Even ladies of true breeding sometimes enjoy a taste of wild game, if you take my meaning.”
He stifled a sharp retort. “If you don’t mind, my lady, I have a few more questions about the case.”
When the Rogue Returns Page 3