by Liz Carlyle
Today was especially frenetic, with midday shoppers out in force, pushing past one another amid the hawking cries of newsboys and street vendors. Anaïs de Rohan, however, knew how to use her elbows as well as the next person. She put both to good use now, forcing an especially pushy pieman from her path while simultaneously holding a bandbox and wedging open the shop door for her elderly cousin.
Maria Vittorio stood pat on the pavement, scowling. “Not this one, cara.”
Exasperated, Anaïs puffed out her cheeks. “There will be carpets here, Maria,” she insisted. “The best ones—and for us, at a good price.”
Maria glanced at the shop’s only marking, a discreet brass plaque:
M. Jean-Claude Lefèvre
Purveyor of Elegant Oddities and Fine Folderol
“See?” said Anaïs. “Under new management.”
Maria rolled her eyes, muttered something in Italian, and pushed past.
Once inside the shop, Anaïs gasped. As always, elegant glass cases lined two walls, catching the early afternoon light to set row upon row of antique stemware and gem-crusted jewelry afire. In a rear corner, a mysterious-looking Egyptian sarcophagus stood on end, open but absent its corpse. An array of chandeliers glittered above hideous, befeathered masks from savage lands and Grecian statues which had survived the vagaries of history, while fine carpets lined the floors and walls—the latter interspersed with rows of Dutch landscapes.
Though she had little understanding of antiquities, Anaïs had occasionally come here as a child with her father, always going away breathless. She was not perfectly sure what had drawn de Vendenheim to this place; something to do with ill-got gains and police business, she supposed, the former proprietor having always danced on the edge of the law.
Still, regardless of the shop’s chequered past, it was quite an impressive sight.
It was also quite unoccupied.
She drifted past a table artfully arranged with a dozen blue and white porcelain vases—Yuan Dynasty, the rarest of the rare, and more costly than a small house in East End—all of which Anaïs knew only because the thick, white card propped on the table told her so.
“No one is here,” said Maria sourly. “Quick, stick one in your bandbox.”
“I heard that!” Suddenly, the jangle of curtain rings cut into the silence.
Anaïs spun around. A lithe, elegantly dressed man wearing a black monocle stood bracketed by the bottle green draperies that still shimmered from the force of having been thrown wide.
“Il figlio del diavolo!” said Maria under her breath.
“Mr. Kemble!” Anaïs cried. “What are you doing here?”
“Slumming, my dear. And frightfully.” George Kemble popped the monocle from his eye and strolled toward them, swinging it lazily from its black silk cord. “How do you do, Miss de Rohan? And look! You’ve brought Catherine de Medici again!”
“Mr. Kemble,” said Anaïs chidingly. “I think you know my cousin.”
“Indeed,” he said, walking a bit of a circle around Maria as he came. “And whilst my Italian is a tad rusty, I gather she just called me Satan’s spawn.”
“No,” Anaïs lied, catching his arm and turning him back toward the showcases. “She said you had delightful taste in interior design.”
“My dear girl, one knows the evil eye when one sees it.” Kemble cut a glance over his shoulder. “Why do I always get the sneaking suspicion that woman is placing some strange Tuscan curse upon me?”
“Sì,” said Maria snidely. “On your firstborn. When do you think that will be, eh?”
Kemble trilled with laughter. “Oh, you are ever a sly one, Mrs. V,” he said.
Defensively, Anaïs seized both the conversation and Kemble’s arm. “My, what a lovely spittoon,” she interjected, motioning through the glass to distract him. “How much is it?”
Kemble looked at her a little witheringly. “Oh, you really are your father’s child. That’s a hand-carved jade, Qing Dynasty cachepot mounted on solid silver. And it is priceless.”
“Well, priceless would be out of my price range.” Anaïs steered him further from Maria. “And yes, Papa always found you invaluable. But tell me, why are you here? He said you’d sold the business.”
“Apparently, I cannot even give this place away!” he sniffed with an airy toss of his hand. “Jean-Claude is off in Provence. Another dying grandmother—the cemeteries of France must be perfectly clogged up with them, for it’s his fifth or sixth, I’m sure. So I’m stuck here cooling my heels amidst the riffraff of the Strand, whilst the aphids make ready to feast upon my roses.”
He did not, however, look especially displeased, Anaïs thought, her gaze running over him. Though he was not as young as he’d once been, George Kemble still looked lean, quick, and faintly predatory, the silver at his temples serving only to lend him gravitas—not that he’d needed it—and the shade perfectly matching the faint gray stripe in his oh-so-fashionable trousers.
Anaïs had no doubt the fabric had been chosen for just that reason. Kemble’s particular friend, Maurice Giroux, owned many of London’s most exclusive tailors and haberdasheries.
“I’m very sorry about Jean-Claude’s grandmother,” she said solemnly.
“And my roses?” he asked tartly, pausing to polish the monocle with his silk handkerchief.
“Well,” said Anaïs, smiling, “I think I shall feel more sorry for the aphids once you can turn the full force of your wrath on them.”
Mr. Kemble sighed, his shoulders sagging a little as he tucked the monocle away. “Well, I suppose the truth is,” he said without looking at her, “that life in Buckhurst Hill has been a tad tedious ever since old Dickie Turpin turned up his toes.”
Anaïs hesitated. “But . . . wasn’t that a hundred years ago?”
“My point precisely,” said Kemble with a disdainful sniff. “Dull as ditchwater ever since, the whole village. Were the man still breathing, the boredom would kill him. But the occasional holiday was not enough for Maurice. He wanted a proper garden. A bigger kitchen. A conservatory, for God’s sake. ‘How much money, George,’ he often said to me, ‘does one require to be happy?’ And the answer is pots. But we’ve got buckets. And yet, sometimes it just isn’t . . .” His words withered.
“Sometimes it isn’t about the money,” she finished, catching his arm again.
“Just so! It’s about the thrill of the thing. The chase, so to speak.” Kemble waved his free hand theatrically as they roamed the shop. “That dark, glittering edge of . . . well, let us call it intrigue.”
Anaïs knew precisely what he meant. She often felt it, too. And he was not talking, precisely, about the acquisition of rare antiquities. Over the years, George Kemble had had his fingers in a great many pies, some far less wholesome than others. And his business dealings had not been confined to selling pretty pieces of porcelain to the dull dowagers of Mayfair.
His relationship with her father, too, had been complex. Sometimes adversaries, sometime allies, the men had forged a strange, unholy alliance, with her father often looking the other way, since his occasional need for Kemble’s specialized knowledge had sometimes superseded the strictest requirements of the law.
“Well,” she said consolingly, “at least you have roses now.”
Kemble smiled tightly. “And so I do,” he said. “Ah, well, my personal travails can be of no interest to you, child. What brought you to Jean-Claude today?”
“Oh, yes!” Anaïs returned her mind to the mission at hand. “Maria thinks I ought to purchase new carpets for the drawing rooms. I thought he would have only the best.”
“And he shall,” said Kemble confidently, “having been trained by that most discerning arbiter of good taste and fine décor—moi.”
“Indeed. So will you help me choose something?” asked Anaïs, unfurling her upholstery sample from the bandbox.
He sighed again. “Someone must, I daresay, for both your parents are hopelessly without éclat, verve, panache, or any o
ther fashionable French phrase,” he said, snatching the fabric. “Follow me into the back.”
Anaïs glanced around. Maria had dozed off in a chair by the door. “But there are a great many nice carpets here,” she said, her eyes settling on a gold fringed affair beneath the sarcophagus.
Kemble turned to shake a finger in her face. “No, no, my dear girl,” he said. “This is the commonest stuff imaginable. I will show you our private stock.”
“Will you?” Anaïs followed him through the green draperies. “I feel honored.”
“As well you should.” Kemble trailed through the workbenches and cupboards to a higgledy-piggledy stack of Turkey carpets piled twenty or thirty high. “But only the best will do, I think, since I hear these carpets are to be for a most special occasion.”
“Oh, you heard that, did you?” Anaïs grinned.
Kemble began to throw back the corners of the rugs, as if searching for something in particular. “Indeed, and I hear, too, that you’ve fallen in with the Fraternitas. I always knew the women in your family were fey. Now, morning sun? Or afternoon?”
For an instant, Anaïs froze. “Uh, morning, mostly,” she said. “And the . . . Fraternitas? I’m not sure I follow.”
Kemble cut an incredulous glance up from the pile, then, “No, no, no, no, no,” he said, snapping back the next five rugs. “Now, Monsieur Belkadi. There is a young man after my own heart. And handsome Lazonby, the infamous card-sharping killer is simply too luscious for—ah! Here it is.”
“Here is what?”
“A Persian Bidjar,” he said, seizing her fabric. “And I have a pair.”
“A pair? So you’ll discount one, then?”
Kemble looked at her in exasperation. “Have you any notion how rare a matched pair of Bidjars is?” he asked, billowing the upholstery out until it settled across the exposed carpet. “You say it like we’re discussing butter and eggs when—oh, my God!”
Anaïs looked down, gasping when she saw how perfectly the upholstery contrasted with the rug. Even to her untutored eye, it really was quite splendid. “Now that,” she said quietly, “is truly amazing.”
“Yes, yes, the very thing!” Kemble chortled, clutching the fabric to his breast as he glanced heavenward. “Oh, George! You are still the fairest of them all!”
Chapter 5
There is no vice so simple but assumes
Some mark of virtue on his outward parts.
William Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice
Anisha said little as Rance drove from Mayfair down to St. James. For the first time, she could sense a deep fissure between them. Rance sat ramrod stiff upon the cabriolet’s seat, his eyes focused straight ahead through the afternoon traffic, his jaw set hard—but no longer twitching from his temper.
It struck Anisha that she had never seen him quite so angry—or as tormented—as he had been in the garden. She saw no point in pressing him further; she had made her point. But it did strike her that he was behaving rather like the proverbial dog in the manger. Rance did not want her, yet it seemed he wanted no one else to have her.
Was that it? Did he want her?
Inwardly, she sighed. Of course he desired her, but sometimes lust was just lust. More likely he’d merely meant what he’d said. He felt accountable to her brother. And the fact that she might strike up anything remotely like friendship with Napier apparently struck Rance as a pure betrayal.
Still, she found Royden Napier to be a most intriguing man. And she was inordinately curious to see just what his late father had written about Rance all those years ago. No, she would not alter her plans merely to set Rance’s mind at ease. She had grown tired of trying to please the men around her and meant now to please herself.
The fact that she was pursuing Napier in order to help Rance, however . . .
Ah, well. That she would as soon not think about.
They turned into the environs of St. James Place, and, seeing the familiar carriage approach, a footman dashed down the steps of the St. James Society to take Lazonby’s reins. Across the street, Mr. Ringgold, the usual doorman, was nowhere to be seen, and the entrance to the Quartermaine Club was unmanned. It was, Anisha supposed, too early in the day for hardened gamesters, though she’d often seen disheveled, weary gentlemen trailing out of the club at an hour better suited to breakfast than dinner.
The door was answered by a portly servant who looked to have been roused from his luncheon, for he had a bit of cress stuck in his teeth. Anisha’s eyes roamed through the elegant entrance hall that looked much like the one across the street, with its broad marble staircase and ceilings vaulting two floors high. Indeed, the house was decorated almost as tastefully as the St. James Society, with silk-hung walls and a collection of fine French landscapes marching up the turn of the stairs.
Despite its beauty, however, the house felt cavernous and entirely empty. Soulless, Anisha thought, was the word.
Rance stated his business and, after cutting a curious glance at Anisha, the servant led them downstairs to the ground floor. The air in the stairwell was redolent of cigar smoke and, beneath it, a musky, citrusy scent that was decidedly male. Here, the décor became more subdued, and Anisha saw that the passageway below was lined with doors; the offices in which they counted their ill-got gains, no doubt.
Somewhere down the corridor a door opened on faintly squeaking hinges, then softly closed again, but there was no one to be seen. Anisha felt suddenly ill at ease for reasons she couldn’t explain, and was very glad she had come with Rance.
As if sensing her disquiet, he edged nearer to her side and set a hand almost possessively at the small of her back as they walked. She could feel the weight of his palm warming her through the fabric, and she was strangely comforted. It was always thus when she was with him, she realized. Even when they quarreled, she felt . . . safe, somehow. More at peace. And she wished, not for the first time, she understood why.
At the very end of the passageway, they were shown into a private chamber that could have been a gentleman’s study. Decorated in shades of dark green and cream, the room was large, high ceilinged, and comfortable without being ostentatious. Three French windows overlooked a small but lush rear garden, while books lined two walls.
A large walnut desk sat before the windows with a matching chest behind; a massive piece of furniture that held wide drawers covered by a pair of large doors. Anisha could see all this because the chest doors were thrown open, and a sort of leather-covered brushing slide was pulled out. A man who looked like a clerk stood there, his back to them as he counted out tall stacks of banknotes atop it.
The portly servant cleared his throat.
The man glanced over his shoulder as he put the last stack of money away. “Good afternoon,” he said, closing the slide.
“Peters, these people are here to see Mr. Quartermaine,” said the servant.
The clerk looked mildly surprised. “Certainly.” He shut both the doors, then locked them with a key that dangled like a fob from a chain at his waist. “I shall just see if he’s in.”
An odd smile played at one corner of Rance’s mouth. “You can tell him it’s Lazonby,” he said. “But I expect you knew that already.”
The man bowed. “Thank you, my lord. Yes, it is my business to know.”
With a stiffly polite gesture, he motioned them in the direction of the two tufted leather armchairs positioned opposite the desk, then vanished through a narrow passageway set into the wooden paneling beside the massive chest. Had one not seen it open, Anisha realized, the door would have been nearly invisible.
She cut an uncertain look at Rance. “Is that a secret passageway?” she asked.
“Something like that,” he said. “It probably runs between some of the gaming rooms, giving Ned a way to move about, and see without being seen.”
“None of this looks quite as I imagined,” she said, gazing about the room.
“Expected something more garish, eh?” Rance shot her a wink. “It’s just
a gaming hell, Nish, not a brothel. And to the sort of clientele Ned attracts, gaming is a deadly serious business. They don’t welcome any distractions.”
“Ladies do come here, though, don’t they?” she said. “The more dashing ones?
Reaching across the distance, Rance laid a hand over hers. “Please, Nish,” he said quietly. “Don’t even think it. Not just now. I’ve had about all the change in you I can fathom for one day.”
Having utterly no interest in spending an evening in a gaming hell, she cut him a dark glance. “Really, Rance,” she muttered. “I sometimes wonder if you know me at—”
The rest of Anisha’s retort fell from her lips. The paneled door swung open, and Ned Quartermaine strode in.
A man of perhaps thirty years, he moved with grace and radiated sophistication—as well as something a little more sinister, she thought. Anisha had seen him at a distance, but as he approached she could see that his eyes were green, and very sharp.
His hair was golden brown, and he wore, to Anisha’s surprise, a pair of eyeglasses. Oddly, she found herself wondering if they were worn, perhaps, to disarm people.
“Lazonby.” He offered his hand but fairly bristled with displeasure.
“Quartermaine.” Rance shook it. “I think you’ve not met Lady Anisha Stafford?”
“No, but I believe I know the lady’s brothers.” With a tight smile, Quartermaine bowed over her hand. “How do you do, ma’am?”
After a short exchange about the weather, they settled back into their chairs and Quartermaine offered Anisha tea.
“Thank you, no,” she said. Despite his spectacles, Anisha could still see a guarded wariness lurking behind the man’s eyes as they shifted back and forth between them.
“Doubtless you are wondering what brings us here,” Rance added.
“There are surprisingly few things I wonder at anymore,” said Quartermaine, steepling his fingers almost pensively. “No, with Ruthveyn abroad and the two of you seated here, one can only conclude this has to do with certain monies owed this establishment by Lord Lucan Forsythe.”