Mina laughed, but without humor. “Mr. Rourke knows nothing of the boy. Before I left Sparrows Nest, I sent a man to search for him, to see if he is even alive.”
“And to bring him back if he is?” Lowell held his breath.
“No, to find out if we were actually married.”
“Married?” Lowell exhaled. He was relieved in a way, not liking to think of Minerva as a light skirt. He had been excusing her in his mind, imagining the young, innocent miss she would have been, manipulated by the rakish Rourke. If she were married to the mawworm, however, she needed no defense. She had done nothing wrong . . . except marry Sparrowdale too. “But you wed the earl. I refuse to believe you were as bad as that loose screw, committing bigamy without a conscience.”
“I had a conscience, but no choice. My first marriage took place at night. We were exhausted, having just arrived across the border, and did not wish to roust out the local vicar so late. So we performed a Scottish handfast ceremony, a simple declaration in front of witnesses that we thought would be binding, binding enough to share a bedroom, for we were running out of funds. We intended to have a proper kirk wedding in the morning, to register the marriage and get written lines to show. We never had time. My father and Lord Sparrowdale arrived in the middle of the night, along with Viscount Sparling, and declared the marriage void. Father had it annulled, or perhaps he bought a divorce, or he paid the witnesses to lie. He would never say. I had nothing to prove otherwise.”
“You had a blasted husband! That ought to be proof enough of a marriage.” He let go of her hand to pound his fist on a book, sending up a cloud of dust.
Mina started pleating the fabric of the borrowed handkerchief. “No. My father paid Ninian to recant. He took the money and left. I never saw him again.”
Now Lowell slammed one book on top of another, rather than putting them in any order. “The cad! How could he leave the woman he loved—and his child—to the likes of Sparrowdale?”
“ ‘We . . . we had not been intimate until our wedding night.” If Mina had known what an uncomfortable, embarrassing ordeal it would be, she would never have gone through with the elopement. “Ninian did not know about the babe then, of course. Neither did I, but it would not have mattered. Mr. Rourke did not love me, it turned out. He only wanted my father’s money, the same as Sparrowdale. In fact, I believe Ninian must be dead, or else he’d be here now, thinking he could charm another fortune out of Malachy Caldwell’s coffers.”
“Poor puss. Did you love him very much?” Lowell had to ask. If the dastard was alive, he’d track him down and drag him back to marry Lady Sparrow again, with no way to weasel out of it this time, if that was what it took to make her happy.
Had she loved Ninian? Mina asked herself. She thought now that she did not understand love then. She had not watched for his smile, or tingled at his touch, or marveled at the gilt flecks in his blue eyes, reflected off his glass lenses.
Ninian Rourke had not worn spectacles.
“I do not know if I loved him,” she finally replied. “I was a girl, horrified at the man my father chose for me. I had never been in love, so I told myself the infatuation I felt for Mr. Rourke was enough. He swore to adore me past redemption. His ardor did not last past the first jingle of my father’s coins. My affection died at the same instant he accepted that purse, with no tender, lasting emotions.” Mina recalled now that she had not even felt any attraction for Ninian. Consummating the marriage before any kind of public wedding had been Ninian’s idea, not hers.
Lowell was doubly relieved. Not only was Lady Sparrow not a whore, giving her favors freely, but she had never loved the craven Ninian Rourke, and certainly not the crude Lord Sparrowdale. For a woman married twice, just long enough the first time to beget a son, her kiss was unpracticed. Minerva was pure in heart, where it mattered, if not in body. Speaking of bodies, his was reacting predictably—if problematically—to Minerva’s nearness.
“So you want your son, but not the earldom,” he said, getting back to the case, not the sad case he was in. “You cannot acknowledge him, you know.” She would be permanently ostracized from the haute monde. One of their own could succeed in foisting a baseborn child on them, but a shipbuilder’s daughter could not.
“I do know that admitting the birth of a child out of wedlock would undo your mother’s efforts at seeing me established among the ton.” She snapped her fingers. “That is how much I care for society’s acceptance. But having a mother labeled a light skirt will do Robin no good, either. I cannot decide what is best to do until I see him.” She leaned over to pick up the book nearest to her. Caesar. The boys did not need to learn how to conduct a war. She swiped at it with the dustcloth—except she was still holding Lowell’s handkerchief—and added it to the pile to be reshelved. “There are other complications, too.”
Lowell did not think he could take much more, smelling the lilac scent she wore, watching that apron’s bib pull across her breasts when she reached for a book, knowing she was not pining for a lost love.
He reached out, intending to lift the pile of books. Somehow his arms reached Minerva instead, and closed tightly around her as he brought their mouths together. The stack of books beside her fell over again. Herodotus hit the floor.
Mina did not notice. She went willingly into his embrace, elated that Lowell did not seem to mind about Robin. He did not think any worse of her or find her less attractive—unless he was kissing her because he thought she was fast. She was no wanton, willing widow. She pushed him away with a copy of Catullus. “I do not make a habit of kissing gentlemen on library floors,” she announced, straightening the lace cap on her head.
“Thank heavens. It is devilishly hard on the books.” Lowell smiled and pressed a quick kiss on her nose. He stood and began putting the books away again. “Now tell me the rest of the complications.”
Mina found the list on the floor. She pointed to the last set of initials, W. S. “Perry said there were other instances of bigamy, other possible breach-of-promise cases. This last child would be three years of age, conceived after my marriage to Sparrowdale. But what if I were still wed to Ninian Rourke at the time? Then I really was a bigamist, and my marriage to Sparrowdale could be overturned in favor of my earlier union.”
“Which declares your son a cuckoobird in Sparrowdale’s nest.”
“Yes, but a legitimate Rourke. That is not the point.”
“W.S. is. And he is the heir.”
“Exactly, if Sparrowdale actually wed this child’s mother, thinking his prior marriage to me was his excuse to leave her.”
Lowell forgot to look at the titles of the books he held, shoving them into shelves willy-nilly in his excitement of having a fine and worthy mystery to solve. “Then that marriage, W.S.’s mother to the earl, was actually legal, and the child W.S. is Sparrowdale’s lawful son. If he is a boy. If an unacknowledged child, bearing another’s name, can be a legal heir. If Sparrowdale did not use another of his ploys to trick the mother, like his false names or his fake clerics. If we can find the tot. There are so many if’s, it is a good thing you have an excellent investigator at your service.”
He smiled at her, and Mina felt her insides flutter. She wished either Lowell had a less appealing smile or she had fewer scruples. Lively kisses among dead Romans were altogether too tempting for her piece of mind. Alea jacta est, indeed, she feared. The die is cast.
“The first thing,” Lowell said, “is to send a man to Scotland to see if your marriage was registered or annulled. Do you recall the town or the names of any witnesses?”
“No, but the inn was the Tartan Rooster, which should not be hard to find, right at the border, just off the Great North Road.”
“Good. I will send one of my most trusted men immediately. Meanwhile, you and I, my dear, shall go have your portrait painted.”
“Why in the world would we do such a goosish thing? I should like to commission a painting of the boys eventually, but there is time for that later,
when we find the rest of them.”
“Ah, but we need to go visit Marcel now. While he spends time capturing his Vision, he just might recall Perry’s direction.”
That was if Mad Marcel remembered them, or Perry. “I am not posing without my clothes on, like those paintings he has everywhere!”
“I should hope not! Not for Marcel, anyway.” Lowell winked and grinned, in a decidedly wicked fashion.
Could a rake wear glasses?
Chapter Twenty-two
They traveled by closed carriage late the next morning, with a guard next to the driver, a groom up behind, and a ladies’ maid. The maid was there less for propriety’s sake than for propinquity’s. Lowell knew that if he sat near Minerva, he would have to kiss her. It was that simple. Instead he faced her and the maid across the coach, marveling again at the perfection of Lady Sparrow’s skin, the dainty grace of her fine-boned posture, the fullness of her pink lips.
Marcel was equally entranced with the countess’s appearance. Roused from his slumber, although the day—and the daylight he required for painting—was half gone, he was in raptures at their arrival. “La belle étoile! My beautiful star! My Vision, she has returned to me.”
They waited in the empty parlor below, unwarmed by any fire or refreshment, while he dressed. Granny Radway and the curate had not returned, obviously. Lowell sent the footman off to find a pastry shop or a hot-bun vendor and sent the maid to the kitchen to see if she could put water on for tea.
When Marcel came down, unwashed and uncombed, with paint smears still dried on his unshaven cheeks and in his dark hair, to bring them up to his attic studio, he was au anges. He was soaring with something, at any rate. Lowell went around opening the atelier windows before they all started to see visions.
Mina thought the artist looked thinner than last time, so she had the servants set up an informal tea on the only empty surface, which happened to be the model’s couch. She hoped Mrs. Radway could forgive their trespassing, but thought any woman would rather return to a messy kitchen than an emaciated lodger.
Marcel wolfed down the pastries and the tea. Either he was in a hurry to get to his easel or he was starving. “Haven’t you eaten since the curate left?” Mina asked, signaling the maid to bring more.
“What is food, when one has Art?” he replied.
“Necessary,” Lowell said, and then returned the miniature portrait of Lady Afton-Glover. “I was impressed by your, ah, style and thought to commission a portrait of the countess. I also thought we might chat about Perry Radway while you painted.”
“Non. No spectators while Marcel paints. No talk. The concentration, you know, it cannot be broken.”
Neither could the dauber’s ugly nose, to Lowell’s regret, not if they wanted to get any information out of him. Lord Lowell knew the artist only wished to get Lady Sparrowdale out of her clothes. One of his nudes would hang in Westminster Cathedral sooner. “No, I could not leave the lady unattended.” He took Minerva’s arm and headed for the stairs.
“Non, non! Wait. For the chance to paint the prefect face, the perfect form, Marcel can make the exception, non?”
“The perfect form?” Mina gasped.
“No, it is to be a facial portrait only,” Lowell said.
“Never! Mon Dieu, a sacrilege to leave such beauty unrecorded for posterity! She is to be my masterpiece, my grand opus, yes? Is that how you say it? My naked Madonna.”
“No!” they both shouted.
“The portrait will hang in public view, you see,” Mina explained, thinking they had been too harsh with the artist.
“But of course. Where else would a painting by Marcel Palombe hang?”
A cannon would not be too harsh.
“No nude. No body. No Madonna,” Lowell ordered. “We thought a small portrait, the kind that could sit on a desk or a mantel, to be admired.”
A crafty look came over Marcel’s face, between the streaks of paint. “What you are asking, interruptions while I paint, a new style, this is above my usual fee, n’est-ce-pas?”
“But of course,” Lowell agreed, then turned to Mina. “No price is too high for such beauty, do you not agree, my dear?”
Mina thought he was being altogether too free with her money. After all, what did she want with a portrait of herself? Who was going to see it except the servants and the children? “I am not so sure . . .”
“No matter, Countess. This is my painting, for my library. I say cost is no object.”
“Ah, a man of great taste.” Marcel kissed his fingers. “A connoisseur, mais oui. I should have known by your choice of companion.”
So Mina was posed on the couch, and Marcel took up his charcoal crayon for a preliminary sketch. Lowell started pacing, until Marcel frowned him into stillness.
“Such bones! Such eyes! Such lace—we remove some of the lace, no? To show the column of the neck.”
Mina pulled at the loose stitches that held the white lace to the high neckline of her black gown. She held it in her hands, for something to do while Marcel kept drawing. It was disconcerting to be stared at so intently. Marcel at least made lines on the canvas. Lord Lowell did not.
Marcel rubbed out the sketched lace with his fingers, then wiped his brow before returning to his canvas. He began to look like a coal heaver, and started cursing like one too. “Non! This is all wrong. Black, pah!”
He draped a turpentine-smelling yellow cloth over her shoulders, then a red velvet cape, then the brown blanket from his bed in the corner. Mina screwed her eyes shut and tried not to think of what might be crawling out of it. When she opened her eyes, the blanket was gone, and her gown’s tapes were loosened so the neckline fell well below her collarbone.
“Ah, that is better,” Marcel said, going back to his work.
Lowell sighed. That was much worse. “About Perry,” he began.
Marcel put his charcoal down and came out from behind his easel, a scowl drawing his eyebrows together. Mina thought he would banish Lowell from the room after all, but he merely tugged at the sleeves of her dress, baring her shoulders except for the charcoal streak his fingers left there.
“I do not think this is such a good idea,” she started to complain.
“What is it you wish to know about our Perry?” Marcel asked, stifling her protest.
“Where he is, of course.” If Lowell sounded a bit breathless, it was because of the paint smell, he told himself. “Where did Perry and his grandmother and the curate go when they left here?”
Marcel switched from the charcoal to a brush and a sienna wash, dabbing at the painting with the brush or a rag or his hand until it looked like one big reddish-brown smear to Lord Lowell, but what did he know? He would rather look at Minerva anyway.
“The hair!”
“Yes, they went there, but where?”
Marcel tossed the brush and the rag to the floor. “No, the hair, it is all wrong. Madame looks like the curate’s sister.”
“So the curate does have a sister?” Mina asked. “You mentioned a lot of sisters when we spoke last, but you were vague.” Which was the understatement of the day. Marcel’s mind was like a dandelion puffball in a breeze. “Is that where he went?”
Marcel had pulled the white lace cap from her head, staining it beyond repair in the process, Mina was sure, sorry for the waste of Cousin Dorcas’s work. Then he started pulling the hairpins out of her hair. “No, wait!”
“Monsieur’s sister?” Marcel hinted.
Mina nodded, and let him proceed. Soon the pins were out and her hair was spread in waves down her back and across one shoulder, which had somehow become further bared under his long, darting fingers. Another few inches and her nipples would be showing. They tautened at the idea that Lord Lowell would see. Color stained her cheeks. “Please . . .”
“Oui. The curate’s sister. She lives in Kent. A dried-up prune, yet where else would he go so no one could ask him questions? The curate, he cannot lie, certainement.”
Lowell hop
ed Minerva was making note of the cleric’s direction. The man could be in hell, for all Lowell cared at this moment. Devil take it, he was burning up himself at the houri she was becoming. He forced open a window that had not worked in years, so he could take a breath of cooler air.
“Did the boy and his grandmother go with them?” Mina asked, since her investigator seemed to have lost his tongue. “Are they all in Kent?”
Marcel twitched at her loosened gown again, and her curling hair. Mina moaned. So did Lowell.
“Why would Granmere go to Kent? Her sister lives in Bath.”
Lowell needed a bath, all right. A cold one.
Mina shivered. She was half naked, the windows were open, and her discreet inquirer was being anything but discreet in his ogling. A gentleman would turn his back, but then she would miss the gleam of naked hunger she saw in his eyes. That wanting brought a smile to her lips.
“Oui! That is it! That is the look I must capture! The allure, the power to make men grovel. The angel and the—qu’est-ce que c’est?—flirt.”
Flirt? Mina had never flirted a day in her life! Was that what she was doing? She thought she was posing for her portrait. And getting closer to finding the key to the whole mystery of Sparrowdale’s succession. That reminded her of her mission. “So Mrs. Radway is in Bath, with Peregrine?”
“Non, do not wrinkle the forehead!” Marcel blotted the canvas with his sleeve in exasperation. Still aggravated, he almost shouted, “My sister! I told you Perry is with my sister! Now sit still, madame, unless you wish to look like a cross-eyed toad.”
She smiled at that, and Marcel was content. He started to mix colors on his palette, muttering to himself.
Lowell had managed to get his baser instincts under control by the simple remedy of removing his spectacles. Now his interest in the case took precedence to his interest in a blur of skin and hair and—who was he fooling? He put his glasses back on, the better to think, and the better to lust after the woman who was paying him to find young Radway. Damn. “The boy is with your sister, you say, but where?”
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