Lady Rogue

by Theresa Romain

  “Pity, though,” Butler mused. “I’d like to see all those copies destroyed. Botticelli wouldn’t like someone else’s work pretending to be his any more than I like the reverse.”

  “But that would involve going public about Andrew Morrow’s fraud,” noted Callum. “Or trusting to secrecy and bribes for each family that owns a Butler painting. Or carrying out numerous swaps.”

  Isabel slumped. “Each suggestion strikes more terror into my heart than the one before. Can we think on the potential scandal later, perhaps after Miss Wallace is happily wed?”

  “We should wait,” agreed Butler. “It’s not the young lady’s fault her former guardian set up this tangle.”

  “Thank you,” Callum burst out.

  At Butler’s puzzled look, Isabel explained, “Officer Jenks has told me something similar in the past.”

  Isabel outlined their plan for a swap that would go undetected by the ducal family.

  “But we’ve got to act quickly.” Callum drummed fingers against his knee, thinking. “Two nights from now, the moon will be ideal. We can’t wait much longer, or we’ll lose the painting to Angelus.”

  “And there are two dogs to consider,” Isabel piped up.

  “Large ones,” said Callum.

  “Loud ones,” Isabel added.

  “Then we’d best get on with the plan.” Butler stood. “Let me order us some tea and sandwiches, and we’ll have this out.”

  He excused himself, thundered down the stairs to speak to the charwoman.

  At Callum’s side, Isabel sat silent and straight-backed. A little nervous, a lot eager, and with a strange fizzle of something she didn’t understand at first. Something buoyant that had nothing to do with the room, or the river winding outside, or even the plan.

  No, it was the pleasure of the company, accepting and eager. It wasn’t only like righting a wrong. It was like . . . belonging.

  Chapter Seven

  By the time they left Butler’s rooms, the rain had stopped and the daylight was fading. Callum was more relieved than ever that he had happened upon Lady Isabel as she’d left her house. Despite the guards on patrol around the warehouses, the lanterns that winked on one by one as the sky darkened, the London docks were not the sort of place a woman ought to be alone.

  “How are you?” he ventured as they began to walk in the direction from which they’d come. Callum scanned their surroundings not only for activity, but for any signs of a hackney.

  “Fine. Why? Am I too conspicuous?” She tugged the hood of the dark cloak over her light straw bonnet.

  “No. I only wondered about the dark. You mentioned that you have not liked it since the time you were trapped in the hidden space in your house.”

  “Oh. Thank you.” She almost choked on the words. “I am perfectly fine. I am not trapped, you see. And I am with you.”

  He caught a foot on a loose cobble, taking a great step forward to catch himself. “How you knock me off balance.” The step gave him some excuse for the words.

  “Stay upright,” she teased. “We mustn’t draw too much notice.”

  No, they mustn’t. This was the city that existed outside of the gaslights and carriage-lanterns of the ton. The night was loud and roiling with life, with light, laughter, and the occasional drunken man spilling through the door of a public house. From alleys, prostitutes beckoned—and if Callum had his guess, there’d be a man waiting right behind most of them to bop a cully over his head and take his purse.

  Nothing he could do about that, unless he wanted to leave Isabel to her fate and go marching into every alley. Nothing he could do about most of the everyday trespasses against the law and civility. The worn-out mothers who shouted at children crying from hunger, the girls from the country who could make no living except on their backs. The street was narrow and crowded, with black smoke turning the sunset bloody and dark.

  “How do you make any progress,” Isabel wondered, “trying to watch everything as you do? There are so many pie sellers alone, I can’t imagine how one would notice—oh!” She halted. “That boy.”

  So. She’d seen it too: a boy no more than waist-high, nipping food from the wagon of a pork-pie seller occupied with a customer.

  “Good eye,” Callum said grimly. “According to the law, we could collar him and have him tossed into jail. He can go before a court tomorrow.”

  “Oh, no! For stealing a pie? No, please. He must be hungry.” Isabel hesitated. “Yet the pie seller is probably scraping by on every penny he earns.” She turned to Callum. “What would you do if I weren’t with you?”

  “I’d walk on. I don’t get angry at boys who steal food.” At the adults who drank away their money instead of providing for their children, yes. At the Prince Regent, who spent hundreds of thousands of pounds a year and had never known a moment’s want, certainly. Though such anger helped the city become safer as little as throwing a hungry boy into jail to await a sentence for stealing a pork pie.

  “Well, I’m not going to walk on. Hold a moment.” Isabel rummaged beneath her cloak—digging into a dress pocket, he assumed—then strode over to the pie seller. “Sir, I think you dropped this half-crown. See that you hold tight to your purse.”

  It was well done. She sniffed as she said it, so it wouldn’t sound anything like charity, then stalked back to Callum.

  Another child followed her, doubtless trying to sort out the best angle for picking her pocket. Callum caught the lad’s eye and gave him an unmistakable signal to shove off.

  When Isabel reached his side again, she took his arm as they resumed their walk. He pretended not to notice, and not to think it was the loveliest gesture he’d encountered in some time.

  “So many everyday crimes you must encounter every time you venture outside,” she mused.

  “Sometimes I wish I could stop noticing them. But if I didn’t, I couldn’t help. Then what good would I be?”

  “I know the answer to that question, but I don’t suppose you care about anyone’s answer but your own.” Her voice was quiet and low, cutting beneath the sounds of the city street. A breeze blew at the black smoke overhead, revealing a star that winked before it hid again. “So much to overlook or respond to. How do you decide?”

  “I keep in mind the law. Next, I keep in mind my sense of what’s right.”

  She mulled this over. “That makes sense. I wish they always went together.”

  “The law always goes with someone’s sense of what’s right. Sometimes that person was a king a few hundred years ago, though. Doesn’t do a pie seller or a hungry boy any good.”

  “Jenksie! Hoo!” A hoot echoed from one of the alleys, and a familiar figure sashayed forward.

  “Janey. How do you do?” Callum greeted his informant politely. She surely looked odd to Isabel, draped in any number of shawls and puffed up with petticoats. Sometimes a prostitute, more often a cutpurse, Janey also did a brisk business in stolen clothing and often wore her wares. All the better to hide coins and purses, Callum suspected. He had done his best never to learn the details. If he knew too much, he’d have to arrest her. Again. Too much of that and a good informant was lost.

  Janey did no more than wave, then return to her conversation with a pair of young men. They looked put out by the interruption, which was likely the point.

  Isabel looked rather put out too. Once they’d passed out of hailing distance, she said stiffly, “That was a very pretty young woman.”

  “Did you think so?”

  “Of course. Anyone would think so.” A pause. “Do you know her well?”

  He suppressed a smile. “As well as I need to. Janey’s one of my informants. London is full of people with sharp eyes and ears who could use a coin. We make use of their skills, and they dip into our pockets. Usually we know about it.” He darted a glance back over his shoulder. “She was probably too far away to try a dip this evening.”

  “Are all your informants young and pretty?”

  “I’d love to hear you say t
hat in the presence of Toothless Jim. Or old Rance McGillivray, who can’t hear a thing without his ear trumpet, but whose eyes are as sharp as a much younger man’s. Or Ellen Church, who used to be a mudlark, and who—”

  “All right. I take your point.”

  “Which is that prettiness has nothing to do with being a good informant.”

  “Maybe not for Toothless Jim.” Isabel sidestepped a pile of droppings. “But for Janey, prettiness helps. She’ll gather far more information from men if they like the look of her.”

  Callum craned his neck, looking for a damned hackney stand. “Will she, now. Is that the way of it in high society?”

  “Of course it is. Prettiness brings unwarranted advantages.”

  “You’d know.” The words slipped out before he thought better of them.

  Isabel choked. “Why, sir, was that a compliment?”

  He clamped down on the ragged edge of feeling. “I was calling you pretty, if that’s what you’re wondering. I don’t know if having unwarranted advantages deserves a compliment.”

  “Nor does the way my face looks, then, as I had nothing to do with its construction. Ah! There is a hackney. Let us hire it, if no one’s picked my pocket.”

  No one had, probably thanks to her long cloak or whatever complex arrangement she’d fashioned with a pocket and a purse. Callum gave the hackney driver an address a street away from Isabel’s house.

  Her smile was approving. “So we can return as inconspicuously as we left.”

  Once they descended from the carriage, the walk to the Lombard Street house was quiet, the air startlingly clean, the pavement uncrowded. He wondered if she noted the difference, and what she thought of it if she did.

  Waiting at the bottom of the steps, he watched for her to mount them and be let in by the butler. As soon as the door opened to her . . .

  Noise. A cacophony of crashes and yips and barks rolling down the steps into the street.

  What the devil? Callum pounded up the stairs, ignoring the butler, who held the door, and took Isabel’s arm. “Hold, please. Let me see if it’s safe.”

  “Miss Wallace,” intoned Selby, “is in the morning room. She is quite safe.”

  Wordlessly, Isabel and Callum looked at each other—then strode after the sound, following it to the morning room. Why didn’t the butler seem bothered? Maybe butlers never seemed bothered. Strange creatures.

  When the door opened: chaos.

  Yes, this room—specifically, the dog Brinley—was the source of the noise. He ran from one side of the small room to the other, baying his heart out. His path was unobstructed by furniture, as the table had been pushed to one side of the room, its chairs in rude disorder around the edges. Broken cakes and biscuits were scattered across the tabletop, while other dainties remained on silver platters. A young blonde woman, hair falling in disheveled hanks from its pins, was tossing bits of food at the running dog. Candles were lit against the fall of twilight, throwing grotesque moving shadows over the walls.

  Above the tumult, a large painting of fleshy nudes peered down curiously. They were spattered with wine from the god Bacchus, but the inhabitants of the room were the ones who truly appeared drunk.

  Isabel cleared her throat.

  “Oh!” The blonde woman turned as she threw the next object, and it hit Callum on the sleeve. It proved to be an almond.

  “Aunt Isabel! I didn’t know you were—that is, look! I have been training the dog.”

  This was the ward, then. The famous Lucy, for whom he had agreed to right a wrong perpetrated by a dead man. She looked young and innocent, with a great fluff of pale hair and the unconcerned movement of one who hadn’t yet got used to minding her every word and manner.

  The almond fell from Callum’s sleeve to the floor. With a yip of delight, Brinley darted for the almond and crunched it in his doggy jaws. And then, of course, he began sniffing around Callum’s boots.

  Callum had polished them, not that the results were impressive. He was never going to achieve a fine gloss like a gentleman’s valet could with champagne. But they looked a little nicer, he thought. Or they had before this afternoon’s excursion.

  Brinley gave a final sniff to the boots, then lifted a leg.

  “No, no!” Isabel swooped for the dog, clutching him belly-forward in her arms and aiming him toward the hearth. “Brinley! How could you?”

  The beagle looked proud, his tongue lolling from his mouth, as he piddled a stream over the spent coals from the morning fire.

  “That’s one way to ensure the fire is out.” Callum’s mouth twitched. “As all seems well, I’ll bid you good night.”

  “Ca—um, Officer Jenks.” Isabel set Brinley down carefully. “Please, don’t go. You are most welcome.” She performed the introductions between Callum and Lucy Wallace.

  “I was trying to coax Brinley to be silent and still. But it didn’t work, and so I . . .” Lucy trailed off, tucking fallen locks of hair behind her ears and resettling hairpins.

  “And so you had a bit of a battle,” said Callum. “With cakes and nuts. I understand perfectly. I thank you for the almond. Generally any food thrown at an officer is rotten and inedible.”

  “Um. You are welcome?” She looked befuddled.

  “Have you any ideas for getting a dog to be silent?” Isabel untied her bonnet and cloak, laying both on one of the disarranged chairs. Callum doffed his hat and set it there too.

  “That depends on the dog,” Callum said.

  “This dog,” Isabel called over the bark of triumph Brinley emitted when Callum bent to pet the little dog’s head. “The loudest dog ever. Surely not even the Duke of Ardmore’s dogs are as loud.”

  Lucy looked quizzical, but only popped a cinnamon biscuit into her mouth.

  Callum stood again, dusting his hands against his breeches, and let Brinley resume sniffing about his boots. “The scent of anise seed will make a dog follow. We’ve had some fun at the Bow Street court tossing anise oil on a fellow who’s about to make his rounds.”

  Isabel looked much struck. “Do they follow calmly?”

  Brinley barked. Callum frowned. “No. Not calmly. They become . . . spirited.”

  “I don’t suppose it bears thinking of,” decided Isabel. “Though I should love to see the effect on stray dogs when one of your fellow officers passes by with anise trousers. Ah—Lucy, would you take Brinley from the room before he eats our guest’s boots?”

  This was not an idle question. Brinley was showing his teeth, tilting his head to gnaw at the smooth surface of the boot. Callum shifted his foot back, drawing a mournful yowl from the dog. Too bad, dog. He hadn’t cleaned his boots for Lady Isabel only to have them consumed by a beagle.

  “Of course I will. Brinley! Brinley! Officer Jenks, it was good to meet you.” All of this was spoken in a single breath. Then, heedless of Callum’s protest, Lucy Wallace brandished a biscuit in each hand and backed from the room, drawing the dog after her.

  “She is an agreeable girl.” Isabel pressed her hands to pink cheeks. “Dear Lucy. I am glad you made her acquaintance at last.”

  “You didn’t have to send her away,” Callum said. “Or Brinley.” He felt an interloper in this household, where fine eatables were thrown around like waste and he had blundered into a game that halted because of him.

  “I didn’t have to, no. But I did. Do sit, will you? If we could just retrieve the chairs—there. I do apologize. And would you like some tea?”

  Callum shook his head again, but he gingerly accepted a seat beside hers. The chairs were still all askew, and some were scattered over with crumbs and almonds.

  And then he recalled himself, patting at his pockets. “If you truly would like tea, I’ve a parcel of a new variety.” He’d got it for his landlady, a robust elderly female who also served as his charwoman. No matter; he’d get more for Mrs. Sockett tomorrow.

  The excited lift of Isabel’s brows was reward enough for his offer. “Is this from the famous Jenks family grocery?�
��

  “It is.” He had escaped from the grocery today with the tea, yes, but also with the usual heavy complement of errands to complete.

  Ever since Harry’s death, the Jenkses didn’t seem to know what to say to each other. The hope of Sir Frederic’s trial had glued them together for a while, but that was gone now too. So Callum didn’t say much of anything, and his parents needled him for favors.

  This time, his brother Jamie had too. That was interesting. Wanted to know about the tea shop next to the grocery, and whether the man selling it was in debt, and to whom. Callum didn’t need to be an investigator to suspect that his brother was considering a move toward independence. Yet he was the last son in Jenks and Sons.

  The potential for familial awkwardness was not small.

  Isabel opened one corner of the parcel and breathed in the scent of the tea leaves. Her smile was a ray of light. “What a fine fragrance. I will ring for Selby, so we can have some of this brewed.”

  She suited her actions to her words. Once Selby had come and gone with the parcel, she added, “I must meet your family. I have never met a grocer before.”

  He stuck out his boots, examining the finish. Really, it was just as rough as ever. “Grocers are but ordinary people. They do not perform feats of acrobatics in their shops.”

  She went slightly pink. “That sounded dreadful, didn’t it? So rarefied. I meant rather that I realize how many gaps there are in my life.” Then she lifted her chin. “Besides that, I should like to meet your family. Not because they are grocers, but because they are your family.”

  “To what end?”

  Stretching out a hand toward the table, she dug in the bowl of almonds and whipped one at him. “What is the end, ever, in knowing someone?”

  “I’m not the person to answer that. Are you as eager for me to meet your relatives as you are to meet mine?”

  She pulled a face. “I wouldn’t want anyone to meet my brother.”

  “Is there some chance I might?”

  “I doubt it. He lives in Kent, where my ailing father is still.” She folded her hands into a tidy shape in her lap. “Lord Martindale—Martin, I call him—is not a bad man. But he is much my elder, and certain that what he believes right is in fact so.”