Lady Rogue

by Theresa Romain

  He intended to be kind. Or courteous, perhaps.

  “You mistake the matter, Officer. It was never my bedchamber, or ours. Only his. So no, it is not being used anymore.”

  She turned back to the wall, not caring if she sounded terse. It wasn’t uncommon for wealthy couples to separate at night as they so often did during the day. Most of them likely did so for different reasons than the Morrows had, but that was none of Jenks’s affair.

  She pressed up and down along the lines in the dark oak paneling. The spot she sought was somewhere around here—maybe up higher on this seam?

  “I never knew there was a secret space,” she said, still searching with her hands. “Until shortly after Morrow and I returned from Sicily, where we lived during the war. I came in here once for writing paper from his desk, and I saw a panel of the wall open.”

  Jenks’s voice came from just behind her. “How unexpected.”

  “It was. This is meant to be the outer wall of the house, you see. I’d no notion it was anything but wood and brick.”

  Flame sparkles from his lantern danced over the wooden wall—and there, the light illuminated a crack hidden by the pattern of the wood.

  “Ah! Here’s the spot.” With the heel of her hand, she pressed at it. A click and creak, and a doorway-sized piece of the wall swung open. Behind it was a cubby of a space, with a narrow staircase parallel to the bedchamber wall.

  “Impressive discovery,” Jenks said.

  “‘Impressed’ is not the word for how I felt when I saw this. I’d rather have found rats in the walls.” She had to laugh. “That didn’t stop me from going inside. Curiosity has led to a great deal of discontent in the world.”

  “It has. But so has doubt.”

  “I was fated to feel one or the other about this space.” Even now, with the lantern’s handle clutched in both her hands, she hesitated to step in. That first time she’d gone into the space, the panel had shut behind her. It had been a long wait in fathomless darkness, pressing for a latch at every bit of the wall she could reach until her fingertips were raw. When at last a light bobbed into view far above, and Andrew appeared, she had flung herself at him with a relief that had embarrassed them both.

  “There, there.” He had patted her on the back. “Funny old bolt-hole, isn’t this? I was just looking at some family papers.”

  She had accepted this and had not been eager to investigate again. But sometime after Andrew’s death, when she’d read Butler’s letters and noted a reference to paintings stored in “the hidden space,” she had wondered. And she’d looked. And she’d found evidence she wished she had never seen.

  That night, she’d gone to Vauxhall in search of distraction. And oh, how she had found it, in the form of Callum Jenks.

  That had been nearly a year ago. She wondered now how she’d had the boldness for any of that: the search, the intimacy. Taking what she wished.

  She wondered if she’d ever be bold enough to do something similar again.

  “I assume,” Jenks said, “that we are to climb those stairs. Would you prefer I go first, or that I follow you?”

  “You go first,” Isabel decided. “You will be able to hold up your lantern higher than I.”

  So he did, carrying his lantern with an outstretched arm. To squeeze up the narrow stairs, he had to turn sideways, shoulders against the wall. The staircase was a stacked tower tight as a spiral, but rude and rough with corners and switchbacks. Isabel trod behind him, skirts brushing dust from the walls.

  “Your husband can’t have had an easy time fitting into this passageway,” Jenks grunted as ragged wood caught on his jacket.

  “It was worth the trouble to him.”

  After that they climbed in silence—one story up, then two. Wooden treads creaked underfoot; the air smelled of dust and dank. The lantern light was weak and strange, flinging dots of light everywhere, but never enough.

  At the attic level, at last, a door faced them. Dim light leaked from around it.

  Isabel sighed. Here we go. She handed Jenks a key for the lock. “Open it, please, Officer.”

  When he did, they stepped into a narrow room. A glass skylight admitted fading afternoon light. Isabel stood under it and stared up at the sky, as if her eyes could drink in the sun they’d missed during the dark climb up the hidden stairs, storing it for the climb back down.

  Then she set her lantern on the floor, watching as Jenks scanned the room with the same focus he’d given earlier to Butler’s letters.

  The hidden room ran the full width of the house. Dozens of framed artworks lined the space, leaning against the inner wall. The pieces were covered with cloths, but their gilt and wood frames peeked out at floor level. Facing the collection of covered paintings was a small sofa from which one might sit and view. The space was tight and full of the scents of dust and old wood, and the temperature hovered between warm and hot.

  “It’s clever, isn’t it?” Isabel knew she sounded wry. “There are no windows to reveal the room’s existence to anyone from the street or mews. Why, the servants slept in attic quarters and never knew it was here.”

  “And what is it, besides a place the servants do not know of?”

  “They know of it now. Though not what’s kept up here. This is the home for the paintings Morrow wanted for himself. Officially, he sold these. In truth, they have all been copied, and these are the originals.”

  “Our friend Butler has been busy.”

  Jenks lifted a cloth covering and peered beneath. Paintings leaned in a stack against the wall: face after face, form after form. He flipped through them with slow, careful movements, minding their fragility. Isabel knew what he saw: jewel-bright paints and gold leaf; fleshy nude figures done in warm tints that breathed of life. Romantic modern portraits of young women under stormy skies, their eyes rolled to heaven and their hair in disarray.

  “Did Mr. Morrow collect nothing but pictures of women?” he asked.

  There was the question Isabel wished she had known to ask before her wedding day. Not that she’d known then about the secret room, or the forgeries, or any of it.

  “He traded in many sorts of artwork,” she finally said. “These paintings are the ones in which he had a private interest.”

  That skirted too closely to the truth, and for a moment she thought Jenks would press her for details. But no, he got that halted-on-the-edge-of-speech look on his face, then turned back to the paintings.

  A particularly large one faced the wall. Pushing it away a few inches, he squinted—then let out a low whistle. “I’ve seen this one. At the Pall Mall Picture Gallery.”

  “You haven’t seen the genuine one until now.”

  Gently, Jenks released the artwork and let it settle against the wall again. “I never suspected. Butler’s a talented fellow as well as a busy one.”

  “He is. The forgery still passes for the genuine piece, and collectors and artists far more expert in painting than you have not noticed.” Isabel hesitated. “That raises an additional problem. It’s not only Morrow’s reputation at stake, and mine, and Miss Wallace’s. It’s the reputation of anyone who bought or validated one of Butler’s paintings, thinking it a genuine antique. A great many people will be humiliated if the truth comes out.”

  “The behavior of other people,” he said, “is not your doing, Lady Isabel. Nor are their choices yours.”

  “Thank you, Officer. I do realize that. And yet . . .” She rubbed at her forearms, her long sleeves scratchy in the heat of the room. “The choices of others still have the power to hurt me. Or Miss Wallace. And if I don’t take steps to protect us, I cannot be certain anyone else will.”

  “Hmm.” He was the most unreadable man possible. She couldn’t tell if he was being further convinced to help her, or if one more sentence would send him striding indignantly from the house. “You didn’t know your husband dealt in forgeries. What did you think was the source of his income?”

  “Me.” She gave a humorless laugh. “Ma
ybe I should be relieved that he had other sources of income, even though fraudulent? He appeared wealthy and acted wealthy, and my father assumed he truly was. A man can get far with confidence and charm, if he is willing to lie by omission.”

  “So your family thought it a good marriage?” He was again flipping through the paintings, yet she had the feeling his attention was focused on her words.

  “Is that relevant to forming a plan to switch the paintings?”

  He lifted a painting of a nude Venus, frowned at it, then replaced it. “One never knows. An investigator should collect as much information as possible.”

  Ha. “Is that so?”

  “I would never mislead you about the role of an investigator.” When he turned to her, his eyes were frank—yet humor touched the corner of his mouth.

  A knot she’d not realized was tugging at her shoulders began to unravel. “It’s not as if any of it’s a secret at this distance in time. My father was pragmatic. He cared that my elder brother, the heir, married well and had children. I am much my brother’s junior, and my own marriage was of little interest to our father. As long as my husband moved well in society and had a plump purse, he was satisfied.”

  “‘Was,’ you say. Your father is no longer living?”

  “My father is living, but he is not well. My mother died at my birth. Lord Martindale, my brother, carries out the duties of the marquessate.” A sort of Regency in their own family.

  Not that Isabel’s father, the Marquess of Greenfield, was mad like the unfortunate king. He was simply absent, his mind having slipped away in bits over the years. Probably that had already begun when he’d first met Andrew ten years before. Neither Greenfield nor Isabel had asked the questions they ought to have. They had both been too trusting.

  “I see.” With that simple reply, he set aside the subject. “So, which of these paintings ought to belong to the Duke of Ardmore?”

  Right. The reason they were up in this secret little chamber. “It is this one.” She eased free a painting from one of the stacks, then held it out, making of herself an easel. The painting was not overly large, perhaps two feet wide and three feet high.

  Jenks studied it as if he were reading a page, eyes traveling from top left to right, then down a bit, again, again. There was no sign of desire in his features as he scanned the picture, as there would have been in Andrew’s. Thank heaven; Isabel let out a throttled breath.

  She peered over the top of the painting to see what Jenks saw, though she knew its image by heart. Three young women stood in a ring, clad only in gossamer draperies. One had her back to the artist—the viewer?—displaying buttocks of impressive roundness. The women’s arms were linked, raised, intertwined, as if they were in mid-step of a complex dance. Their hair was long and unbound, yet held back from the face in tiny knots and braids and frizzes.

  To Isabel, their faces were far more arresting than their graceful nakedness: features sharply outlined, gazes averted from each other. The one whose face showed best had a bit of a downward twist to her lips. For all their intricate dance, these lovely centuries-old women were each alone and unhappy.

  Or maybe she read her own feelings into their faces. These women were like all those in the paintings Andrew had kept: bare breasted, bare of hair at their women’s parts. Their forms were painted with depth, the flesh pale as marble. Almost lifelike, yet determinedly unreal.

  “I can’t imagine taking a private interest in this sort of thing,” Jenks said. “But what do I know? I’m a humble Officer of the Police.”

  “Something about the way you say that doesn’t sound humble at all.” At his shrug, Isabel set down the painting and turned its face to the wall. “This is a study of a piece of a much larger painting. The Italians call it La Primavera, the coming of spring.”

  “Are the three women spring, somehow?”

  “They are not. They are minor goddesses, the three Graces. There was no chance of taking the enormous finished painting out of Italy, but Morrow was determined to purchase this study. He thought it had been painted first, before the Primavera painting as a whole.” She drew the covering sheets back over the stacked-deep artwork.

  “Why would the artist have done this part more than once? Besides financial benefit.”

  Isabel cleared her throat before she turned back to Jenks. “It is the piece, I would guess, in which gentlemen would have been most likely to evince a private interest.”

  “God save us from gentlemen,” muttered Jenks. “All right. So you have this painting, and the Duke of Ardmore has the other.”

  Isabel nodded. “And I mean to see them switched. It’s possible, I know, that the fake would go unrecognized by Angelus. But if he were to spot it . . .”

  “A possibility voided by your clever scheme,” Jenks replied. “If the duke hands over a genuine painting to Angelus, unwanted questions would never arise.”

  “That was my reasoning as well.” Was the lantern guttering? She hoped not. Though they had another lantern, plus tapers and spills, queasy memories of being locked away made her shiver. “So, you see what we have to work with. Shall we return to a part of the house that’s not horribly hot and hidden behind a false wall?”

  “In a moment.” The room was not large, and when he took a step toward her, he seemed very close. “I’ve said I’ll help you, and I will. But I must warn you that I won’t ignore any evidence I find.” The clear brown of his gaze, the firm set of his jaw, were all determination.

  She tipped her head, not understanding. “Evidence of what?”

  “Evidence related to your late husband’s death.”

  “Can there be any at this point in time?”

  “I don’t know. But if there is, then I won’t ignore it. And I might even seek it out.”

  She held his gaze for a moment, then looked around the hidden space. Here was evidence of a sort, and she hadn’t blundered upon it until six months after Andrew had died. “That is fair enough. You’ve my blessing, Officer Jenks.”

  “There is a possibility,” he added, “that we’ll learn undesirable facts about the circumstances of your husband’s death.”

  “What could be more undesirable than the death itself?”

  He raised his eyebrows.

  She sighed. “I don’t suppose I want you to answer that. You must have twenty different responses at the tip of your tongue.”

  “No more than half a dozen.”

  Isabel crouched to pick up the lantern she’d set by the door. She felt calmer as soon as it was in her hands, the handle warm, the little flame winking in the deep blue light of early evening.

  “The investigation was closed,” she said slowly. “Should it not have been?”

  “What do you think?”

  She bit back a denial, considering her words with care. Jenks, more than any other person Isabel had met, was unbothered by silence. He simply waited for her reply, watching her with endless patience.

  No, she didn’t know whether the investigation ought to have been closed or not. Had Martindale been less determined to shield Isabel, she suspected Andrew would have been called a suicide. Buried in unconsecrated ground, his assets frozen for a year. Which would have meant shame and poverty—even if temporary—for Isabel.

  Instead, the death was tactfully determined to be death by misadventure. Morrow must have been cleaning his firearm, poor man. Looking into the barrel to see whether he’d got out every speck of soot.

  The law had been followed. But no, if Isabel were honest, justice hadn’t been done—yet that wasn’t for Andrew’s sake. It was a kindness to her. Or maybe it was just the easiest way for her family to put a period to a marriage that had never been much of a success.

  “I think,” Isabel said, “that you must follow your judgment in this matter. And so we have a bargain. You shall bring the investigative skill and the nose for inconvenient fact. What shall I offer our partnership?”

  For the first time today, he truly smiled. The expression hinted a
t danger, his eyes sharp and feral. “You,” he said, “are the inside woman. We will need you to enter the duke’s house and find the painting. We need its exact location if we’re to switch it for the genuine article.” His smile faded. “Can you do that? Have you a reason to call on Ardmore?”

  “I can fabricate one.” She handed him her lantern and took up the second. “Under the guise of manners, Officer Jenks, many battles have been fought. I shall enter the enemy’s camp tomorrow. And”—she added sweetly—“I shall do it over tea and cakes.”

  Chapter Four

  As Isabel had hinted to Jenks, a woman trained in the manners of high society possessed a formidable arsenal of weapons. There was the knife cut of a snub, the club of a set-down. The slow poison of a veiled insult. The scattershot volley of gossip.

  Men underestimated these weapons, yet women used them daily to shape society. Let the gentlemen have their Parliament; the ladies held sway in the ballroom.

  Or in the drawing room of a ducal home. The afternoon following the venture into the hidden room, Isabel and Lucy paid a call on the Duchess of Ardmore during her at-home hours. They were now sharing tea as Lucy eyed a plate of seed cake.

  The call was pleasant, all conversational weapons tucked away for the moment. While Isabel considered the duke her foe in the matter of the Botticelli painting, she rather liked the company of his wife and daughter.

  It was not the duchess but her daughter who dominated the room. “You’ve not met Titan yet?” Lady Selina Godwin, a pretty brunette who loved company and conversation, lifted a fluffy gray cat from the floor to the sofa. “I fairly dote upon her! My brother, George, brought her home for me last week.”

  “She is beautiful,” Isabel agreed. In truth, the half-grown cat looked confused, as if she still couldn’t believe this life of ease was now hers. Lady Selina had placed her on an embroidered pillow, and when the duke’s daughter petted the cat’s head, a purr like a baby rattle sounded through the room.