Lady Rogue

by Theresa Romain

  “That is not quite an answer.” She thought. “Yes, it is. You weren’t there because of a case. Why, then?” She moistened her lips; her throat and mouth felt dry.

  “In truth,” he said, neatly dodging a governess with a pushchair, “it was because of a case. Yours. I have been thinking about when to time the switch of the paintings. Two nights hence, there will still be very little moon. I suggest we switch the paintings that night.”

  “So soon?”

  “Yes. The moon is waxing, and too much light at night will be our enemy.”

  “That makes sense. And I know we must act soon to catch the painting before it leaves the duke’s household.” All the better, then, that she was drawing Butler into the scheme today.

  As they crossed the shadow of the familiar old spire of St. Margaret Pattens, Callum drew her to a stop. “Let’s get a hackney rather than walk onward.”

  “I don’t want to be conspicuous.”

  “I understand that. But conspicuous is better than hurt or dead, and we’ll be crossing the edges of Spitalfields and Whitechapel. The major streets are all right, but it takes only a few seconds for someone to dart from an alley and—hmm.” He pressed his lips together.

  “Do I want you to finish that sentence?”

  “Probably not. And the smell of the tanneries alone will have you staggering on your feet.”

  She agreed, and Callum hailed the first hackney he saw. It was pulled by a shaggy black horse with two white stockings and a comfortably round belly. Like the horse, the hack was worn but well-kept, with the crest of its former owner a faded shape beneath the black paint on the carriage door. The jarvey touched his cap to them, but when he heard the destination, he whistled and demanded payment in advance.

  Callum hesitated.

  Isabel understood at once: he hadn’t the money. “I have a purse. Hold a moment.”

  Drawing her hands free, she found the purse of coin she had pinned within the pocket of her gown. She had to wrestle with the pin a bit to get it free. By the time she pulled out the required fare, it probably looked as if she’d had a tiny fistfight with herself.

  They took their seats within, the only passengers in the small carriage. The squabs were slick with wear, and the interior bore the scents of pipe tobacco and old hay.

  “I should have paid for the hackney,” Callum muttered as he settled onto the rear-facing seat.

  “Merely because you’re a man? Please do not think that I have such an expectation.” Isabel smiled. “How rude that would be of me to put you to any cost. This is my errand, upon which you were kind enough to join me.”

  He said nothing, but she felt his scrutiny beneath the brim of his hat. It was an annoying hat, allowing him to look at whatever he wanted without his eyes being visible.

  As the hackney drove them eastward, traffic increased in volume and decreased in size. Rather than glossy private carriages, here were carts pulled by donkeys or men. Children darted about, their parents nowhere to be seen. Pie sellers and broadsheet sellers and publicans all called out their wares, creating a clamor over which the ring of horseshoes on cobbles was almost inaudible.

  “You must think me naïve,” she said.

  “Because of this errand?” At her nod, he said, “Not at all. I think you well-intentioned. That is not the same as naïve.”

  She wasn’t quite certain what street they were on now. Her eyes roved the lines of the structures fronting the pavement, the eddies of people and wheeled traffic. “I should have known the city would change wildly as I traveled across it. This street is too busy, maybe, to be perfect.”

  “What if it is?” he asked. Never was there any sort of condemnation in his voice. She’d once felt he was interviewing her. Now she wondered if he was simply curious. All the time, always, about everything.

  “If the surface is imperfect in Mayfair, it must be fixed or one will be judged.”

  “Being judged isn’t a bad thing. It’s how some people go free.”

  “Spoken like one who spends a great deal of time in a magistrate’s court.” Now it was her turn to look at him aslant. “It’s how some are found guilty, too.”

  “Which are you, Lady Isabel?”

  As the hackney jounced and bounced them over every uneven cobble in the street, she considered. Her house, too large. Her clothing, still gray. The invitations she hadn’t received during her mourning, and the friends who had stayed, and those who would never speak to her again. “I think I’m finding my way to freedom. And I think I would like myself more if I were braver.”

  “Who would not wish to be braver? Yet in the matter of the Duke of Ardmore’s painting, you are brave enough to do the right thing for the sake of someone other than yourself. There are many who are not so brave.”

  “I don’t want to compare myself to the lowest. I compare myself to what I think I ought to be.”

  “And that is?”

  As she had in the public house the day before, she considered her answer. Really thought about it, until she hit upon the truth—and smiled. “A woman who wears red when she wants to, or the blue of a summer sky. Who chooses her own menu. Who eats when she wishes, and not when the clock says it’s proper. And who makes the sort of friends who gladden her heart, not those who can help her meet some goal set by someone else.”

  What a life that would be. Just speaking the words lifted her spirits.

  “Ah. You think you ought to be braver for yourself, then.”

  A bump bounced her from her seat, cracked her teeth together. She rubbed at her jaw. “It’s more difficult than being brave for someone else.”

  He leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. “Do you know, I agree with you. My brother Harry died for his fellow guards, and for the dull metal that the world says is worth more than a man’s life. What would it have taken for him to walk away, to give up his post and say, ‘Damn what everyone else tells me to do, I’m going to look out for myself’?”

  “I wish for your sake that he had. Yet when you put the matter in those words, it sounds so selfish.”

  “Not at all.” He edged a boot forward, bumping the toe of hers with his. “Miss Wallace is fortunate in your guardianship. Most people don’t have anyone who looks out for them. Not even the people who love them. It’s hard for them to think outside of their own wants and wishes.”

  “And what about you?”

  “It’s my job to think outside of that. Otherwise I’d never solve a case.”

  “Why is it your job?”

  He leaned back, pushing up the brim of his hat to regard her with wary eyes. “Because it is literally my job. I get paid to do it.”

  “Callum.” She knocked his boot with hers. “Why is that your job? Rather than working at the family grocery, or . . . or being an opera singer?”

  “I can’t sing a note. Other than that—I wanted to be like Harry, maybe. Protecting people. And I didn’t want to work in the grocery, because my family expected me to.” He smiled thinly. “Just being contrary, I suppose. Though it worked out all right.”

  “Who looks out for you, though?”

  He tugged his hat back down and settled against the squabs, arms folded. “So many questions.”

  “Hazard of your profession, isn’t it?”

  “I’m usually asking, not being asked. And I look out for myself.”

  Pat. A raindrop slapped the window. Isabel turned toward it, watching a second fall, then another. As they ran down like tears, she watched the city change around her. The buildings grew taller and narrower, the streets spiderwebbed into lanes and alleys. Rain grayed the sky, dimmed the light.

  Into the silence, Callum added, “I’ll look out for you, too. That’s why I’m here.”

  Brows lifted, she turned back to him. “Why will you look out for me? I suppose it is because I summoned you, and I hired you to help me.”

  “You tried to hire me. But I can’t take payment for breaking the law. Besides, looking out for you seems like the
right thing to do.”

  Was he blushing? It was difficult to tell in the shadowy carriage, where his face was half-hidden anyway. “Thank you,” she said simply, not wishing to embarrass him. “I am glad that you came here, and that you want to be sure I’m safe.”

  “You’ve been through enough. Shouldn’t be involved in another case without help.” He sat forward again, craning his neck to look out of the window. “Can’t tell if we’re getting close yet.”

  Isabel was struck, as she ogled her surroundings, by how much of London she didn’t know. She’d never had to know. And how swiftly a street could alter! One side of a street might be in genteel poverty, one side might be comfortably well off. At any place, a dank alley, from which a human form peered and lurked, could shoot off, and it gave her a most unpleasant prickling feeling.

  When she mentioned this observation to Callum, he said, “It depends on the landlords. And on the Watch in the area. Places have personalities, as people do, and that determines what sort of people want to live there.”

  The observation rang true. Certainly her own house had a personality: Andrew’s. “I never realized that before. It’s a privilege, isn’t it, never to have to think about how other people live?”

  “It is,” he said gravely. “But I wouldn’t wish it away from you. I’d only wish there was less for you to be shielded from. Fewer people who lived in desperate circumstances.”

  They passed by the tanneries, close enough for Isabel to catch the stench of rotten urine. Thankful for the rain and the quick-stepping hackney horse, she held her breath until they were past. As the rain continued to fall, the crowds thinned—though in these narrower streets away from Isabel’s plummy borough, they merely drew aside. In each alleyway, people looked and lurked. Buildings tilted forward or to one side, as if whispering about each other to their neighbors. Did you see . . . Can you believe . . . The pavement was broken here, ragged and uneven, and filth trickled down the middle of the street in a makeshift gutter.

  It smoothed out a bit shortly before the hackney pulled to a stop. Callum opened the door, then assisted Isabel down.

  “I don’t wait by the docks,” the jarvey called down. “Good luck to ye, gov, if you wants a ride back.”

  With a snuffle, the black horse shook its harnessed head, sending raindrops flying.

  “We’ll sort it out,” said Callum. “Thank you.”

  The hackney departed, and they turned to face their surroundings. The docks were a long and narrow portion of the city, with streets that dived down to the Thames in stone staircases of great anciency. The city’s lifeblood, the river was endlessly busy with everything from barges to one-person punts. It smelled of oil and old fish and refuse.

  Butler’s residence was in a set of rooms near the West India Docks, a neighborhood still respectable by virtue of being new. They found the right building after asking one of the warehouse guards. When they stepped inside, shaking off rain-damp hats, they were greeted by a tidy entryway with neat whitewashed walls and a sharply angled staircase. Up one floor, then another, then another still, until they were just beneath the attics.

  Following Butler’s direction, Isabel located the correct door. When Callum shot her a questioning look, she nodded. “Go ahead, knock. Please.”

  He gave a sharp rap at the door. In an instant, it was flung open, and the doorway was filled with the massive form of Andrew Morrow’s artist acquaintance.

  Isabel had met Butler in passing once or twice, as she had many of Andrew’s circle. Though it had been more than a year, probably closer to two or three, he looked exactly the same: light brown skin, short-cropped black hair with long side whiskers, a luxuriant mustache that curled up at the ends. This afternoon, he wore a paint-stained smock over his coat, shirt, and trousers; the unmistakable heavy odor of linseed oil and the sharp scent of turpentine revealed that he’d been painting.

  It was like being in the hidden room again, cramped among blank and covered canvases everywhere and the sense of being at a great height. But the rain made the place cool, and great windows opened the room to a view of the river traffic.

  “Lady Isabel! So good to see you again. It has been too long.” His voice was low and gentle, with flat vowels that hinted at time in America. “And you’ve brought a friend to meet me as well!”

  As he ushered them inside, she was reminded of his size. He was easily four inches above six feet, and broad and blocky, with hands that swallowed hers as he shook them in greeting.

  “Yes, I have. Though he’s more than a friend.”

  “Congratulations!” Butler beamed. “You were far too young to remain a widow forever.”

  Callum cleared his throat. “I’m an associate as well; that is what the lady meant.”

  “A friend and an associate and a romantic partner. Well chosen, Lady Isabel.”

  Suddenly bashful, she couldn’t look at Callum as she corrected Butler’s misunderstanding. She then completed the introductions between the two men.

  “Is it just Butler, then?” Callum asked.

  “Like Angelus,” Butler confirmed. “One name. More intimidating.” After a beat, he laughed. “Not really. It’s Ignatius Butler. But I even made my parents call me by our family name.”

  “Callum’s not my favorite either,” said that man. “Call me whatever you like.”

  “Butler. Jenks.” Isabel frowned. She didn’t really want to be called Morrow. “Just Isabel for me. We’re to be a team now, I hope. Ca—Jenks will help me to retrieve one of your paintings, and I hope that you will assist us as well.”

  Butler looked disappointed at the lack of a romance, but moved along to business. He began to perch on a high stool, but was caught by the long length of his smock. “Sorry about that.” With a roll of his eyes, he untied it and draped it over a handy bit of furniture. Then he seated himself, awaiting further explanation.

  “You recall,” Isabel began, “that Morrow had you copy original pieces.”

  “Of course.” Butler’s brows knit. “I must have painted dozens for him. He never paid me on time, but when he finally got around to it, he paid well.” An incline of his head. “You paid well, my lady, to be accurate.”

  “I would never let his final debts go unpaid.” She hesitated again. “I must ask you, now, if I can go into your debt. You see, there’s a matter with which I want your help. Perhaps you know Morrow sold your copies as the originals?”

  She wasn’t sure what he’d known, or when, and so she probed carefully. Butler sighed, his great shoulders sagging. “I didn’t ask what he did with them, and he didn’t tell me. But I suspected as much.” A corner of his mouth crimped. “Especially when I saw one of my works hanging in the Pall Mall Picture Gallery.”

  Callum slid to the edge of the seat, alert as a bloodhound. “I saw that painting too—and thanks to Lady Isabel, I have now seen the original. I could not tell it from your work. I haven’t an expert eye, of course, but how do you tell?”

  Butler’s hands spread wide, as if he were seeing the canvas in his mind. “In that one, there’s a drop of blood that wasn’t in the original. Just one extra, and I know where. In others, it’s a drop of wine, or a tear. Or I put a B in the background somewhere.”

  “You always leave a clue,” Callum mused. “Clever. Sir, you are very talented.”

  “I know I am,” he said simply. “I don’t like seeing Botticelli take credit for my work, the old bastard, but money is money. What I really want, though”—he slid from the high stool to pace around the room, dodging canvases—“is to have my art known for my own. I’m more than a copyist. I’m an artist. Here, look at this portrait.”

  He drew a cover from the canvas on an easel beside the window. Isabel had an impression of vivid color and bright joy that leapt from the canvas. She blinked, wondering, and the lines resolved themselves into the chalk-sketched portrait of a woman from the shoulders up. At an angle from the viewer, her face was tipped roguishly. A stunning blue fluff of a hat and a brill
iant lapis-blue gown set off her dark skin. Her lips were soft with pleasure, or maybe a remembered secret. The background was naught but a blur so far.

  “Who is she?” Isabel breathed. “She is beautiful. And so real; she looks as if she might speak to us.”

  “My wife. Angelica.” Butler looked proud yet wistful, and he drew the cover back over the painting. “She lives in New York with our daughters. I came to England first to earn their way, and for five years, I’ve saved what I can to bring them over here. I’ve almost enough now.”

  “Morrow was a villain to delay payment to you,” Isabel said. “I am sorry for that. Of course, I will pay you for taking part in this plan.”

  “Oh? How much is she paying you, Jenks?”

  Callum met Butler’s dark gaze with his own. “Not as much as I’m worth. But then, she couldn’t afford what I’m worth.”

  “It’s true,” Isabel said primly.

  At first, she’d been surprised that he wouldn’t accept any payment from her, but now she was glad. It made their every meeting a choice rather than a transaction, and how lovely it was to be chosen.

  Butler’s laugh began low, then built. “All right.” He stuck out a hand. “All right. I’m in. Whatever you have planned, I’m in.”

  “Hold that promise until you know the details,” Isabel said. “This has to do with the Duke of Ardmore.”

  Butler pulled back his hand, sucked in a deep breath. “So it’s true? The money troubles? The deal he struck with Angelus to erase his debt for a painting?”

  “There’s not a corner of London that doesn’t know the duke’s private business,” Callum noted. “The greater the secret, the quicker the gossip spreads.”

  “So. It’s one of my paintings,” Butler guessed. At Isabel’s nod, a smile spread over his face. “One of my paintings is set to haul a duke out of debt. My Angelica will be so pleased.”

  “Best not let that happen,” said Isabel. In a rush, she explained her reasoning: the possibility the painting’s true provenance would be recognized; the scandal; the destruction of Andrew’s reputation; the death of Lucy’s chance at a good marriage.