Lady Rogue

by Theresa Romain

  Oh, for the impenetrable confidence of those born into wealth and high status. “Are you in his disfavor, or is he in yours?”

  “Everything has put me into his disfavor since my birth when he was twelve years old. I ought to have been a boy, he thought.”

  Callum hid a smile. “I heartily disagree.”

  Her smile was faint; then her gaze shifted to the exuberant painting of Bacchus. “When I married—well, Andrew was rich, or so we thought. Still, Martin thought the family bloodline deserved better. My father is perhaps more practical. He considered a married daughter better than a spinster.”

  Isabel, married. Callum had met her only at the violent end of her marriage; it was odd to realize she had lived with Andrew Morrow for nearly a decade.

  “I’ve never wed,” he said. “But surely it’s sometimes better to be a spinster. It depends on the identity of the husband.”

  “An incisive observation.” Isabel unfolded her hands. “Not all husbands are created equal. Martin did consider a wealthy but untitled man better than a debt-strapped nobleman. He wasn’t well pleased, though, that we left England at once after our marriage.”

  That winking star had granted the wish he’d made the day before, over a mug of porter. He wanted to know everything about her—and wondrously, she seemed in a confiding mood. Perhaps planning a minor criminal assay had that effect on some women.

  “During wartime? Where did you go?” All right, that was two questions.

  “The Kingdom of Sicily.” She took up a single almond, then began scraping the fuzzy brown skin free with a fingernail. “It was under British control, so Andrew was sure it would be safe. And it was convenient for arranging the secret sale of artworks by nobles on the Italian mainland. I won’t use the word ‘smuggling’ since I am in the presence of an Officer of the Police.”

  “Wise of you.”

  “Also, because I don’t know exactly what went on. I was very young and not very worldly.” The almond was nude now, and she set it aside and took up another one.

  He wanted to ask more about this, but a servant entered just then with a tea tray. “That poor almond,” he settled for saying.

  Once they were alone again, and after Isabel had poured out, she shoved the plates of dainties along the table to Callum. “Have some . . . whatever we have left here,” she said. “It looks as though Brinley ate all the aniseed cakes, but there are plenty of sweetmeats left.”

  “That’s all right. I’m full enough of the sandwiches we had with Butler. What will you have?”

  “I don’t usually eat between meals. Morrow thought it unladylike.”

  He allowed his expression to communicate exactly what he thought of this.

  “I know, I know. Another habit from the days of my marriage that I haven’t yet shed.” Isabel plucked at the long sleeve of her tidy gray gown.

  Callum took up his spoon, stirring his cup of black tea unnecessarily. “I like you no matter how you behave.”

  She was silent long enough that he ventured a searching glance at her features. She looked distant. Considering.

  “I beg your pardon,” he said.

  “No, no.” She blinked back to the present. “I thank you. That was kind of you. I was only thinking of some things.”

  “Did you come to a conclusion?” He took a sip of tea. Well-brewed, hot and strong.

  “Never.” She attempted a smile. “Never mind. Forgive my wandering mind. I should recall Lucy to this room; she would make far better conversation than I. Even Brinley would, for that matter.”

  “Both are fine companions for you.” Her nudge to turn the subject was unmistakable, so Callum obeyed. “You’ve told me how you came to own Brinley. How did Miss Wallace come to be your late husband’s ward?”

  Isabel pressed a fingertip to a crumb on the tabletop; then another, and another, tidying them into her saucer. “Lucy’s parents died.”

  “I assumed.”

  She grimaced. “They were murdered during a robbery. But they weren’t wealthy; only one good piece of jewelry was taken. A pearl brooch, Lucy told me, that had been in the family for generations.”

  “I am sorry to hear it.” Murder for jewelry was dreadful. After all these years with Bow Street, he still found it difficult to accept that some people held life so cheaply.

  “The greatest pity was losing her parents, of course. I don’t mean to imply anything else.” Crumb, crumb, crumb. Tidy, tidy, tidy. “But not to have any legacy from them was a cruelty on top of a cruelty.”

  “The culprit was never caught?”

  She shook her head. “There was no Callum Jenks to take on the case.”

  He waved this off. “There are plenty of good investigators. Often a good one is not even needed; only open eyes to note the sloppy bits of evidence left behind.”

  “I don’t know if the Wallaces had even that.” Isabel sounded apologetic. “It was all in Gloucestershire, and Morrow didn’t attend the inquest or the funerals. I don’t know if he knew of any of it until Lucy turned up on our doorstep.”

  “And that was shortly after you returned from Sicily? Quite a busy time.”

  “It was an easy move.” Evidently satisfied that she had cleaned the tabletop to perfection, she shoved away her teacup and saucer. “In Sicily, I lived as I would have in England, surrounded by servants and seeing only other English people. When we returned to London after Napoleon surrendered for the first time, I could hardly have told this house from the one in Sicily. They were both so . . . Morrow.”

  There had been something odd about the marriage between Isabel and the late Andrew Morrow. Callum couldn’t quite determine what.

  Didn’t want to, really. If his thoughts turned to Isabel, there were other activities he wished to imagine.

  Again, Callum’s face must have shown what he thought of Morrow, for Isabel hastened to add, “He was not unkind or ungenerous in the slightest. He wanted me to have everything I wished for. There was always someone around me, watching to make sure my needs were met. And if there was anything I wanted to do, why, he would see it done for me to save me the trouble.”

  As she spoke, her expression flickered. It was sad, it was annoyed, it was rueful, it was resigned.

  He wondered if she realized what she had admitted. “He saved you the trouble of getting to make any choices on your own.”

  “You noticed far more quickly than I did,” she said softly. “A nobleman’s daughter in a gilded cage. I didn’t see the bars until after Morrow died. Now I realize I always lived within them. Before I wed, they were forged by my father and elder brother.

  “I sometimes wonder if I accepted Morrow’s hand just to disoblige my brother, Martin. But that’s not flattering to the dead, is it, or to me?”

  “I would not presume to judge your motivations,” Callum said.

  “Which means you think I’m awful, but you don’t want to say so.”

  “Not at all.” She didn’t seem to believe him, so he said it again, more quietly. “Not at all.”

  The room was warm and close and messy and full of odd smells from Brinley. Callum crossed to the window, unlatched it, and slid up the sash, letting in a puff of cool air heavy from the earlier rain.

  “Callum.” A pause. “Are you available this Sunday? I am considering a small dinner party to introduce Lucy to some friends.”

  “And you want some of these guests investigated?” Remaining at the window, he fiddled with the latch. Flipping it back and forth with the sash still open, so it locked upon nothing but air.

  “Not at all. I want you to be a guest.” She sounded amused.

  The latch pinched his finger. He muttered a curse. For the first time today, he felt ill at ease. He turned to face her. “Thank you, but I wouldn’t suit. Not at a table full of the elite, all dressed in their best, using a fork for this and a spoon for that, tossing in French phrases here and there.”

  He stepped closer to her, drawing near the middle of the small morning room. “Yo
u cannot pull me into your circle, my lady.”

  “Maybe I would rather pull myself out.”

  Playfulness would have wounded him, but her tone was nothing of the sort. She sounded considering, her words slow, as if the idea were being knitted only as she spoke.

  Her offer still unnerved him, but he liked that she had asked. “Thank you, but I will be working overnight on that date.”

  “Oh.” She tipped her head, looking as if she didn’t believe him. Wise woman. He hadn’t been planning to work overnight until this moment. “That is the night after we—um, visit the Duke of Ardmore. You will be tired out.”

  “It’s for the best if I’m not at a dinner. Most people don’t like me. Or police in general. It reminds them that everything isn’t as perfect as they’d like to think.”

  “I know that only too well,” Isabel said. “Although being around you makes me feel safer. But I mustn’t pull you away from your work; the city needs you too.”

  Her fingers drummed at the wooden arms of her chair. “It’s not really about work, is it, though? Your refusal? It’s about money.”

  Money, yes. Her elevated birth; his solidly low one. Families such as his were in-between, never good enough for the Quality, but always above someone they looked down on, and gratefully so. There were many layers in London society, and the only people who didn’t care were those at the top and those crushed beneath all others.

  “Yes.” He dropped into his chair again, knees almost touching hers. “You’re right. It’s about money.”

  She drew in a breath, doubtless readying an attempt to persuade.

  “It’s not personal. Everything is about money,” he said. “The reason that boy stole a pie: he didn’t have the money to pay. The reason my brother was killed: for money, stolen from the Royal Mint. The reason the Duke of Ardmore is selling a painting he believes to be valuable: money, and his lack thereof.”

  “Not the reason Morrow died, though.”

  “Maybe not. But money was the reason for the forgeries.”

  “It wasn’t only money,” she said. “It was covetousness. He wanted those paintings like he never wanted—” She cut herself off. “It doesn’t matter now.”

  He ought to say something understanding. Profound. Comforting.

  Fool that he was, he was only staring. She was running a finger around the edge of her china teacup, and the gesture was captivating. Thoughtful. Erotic, in its deliberation.

  With her hands, she had taken his arm. Taken all of him once, yes—but it had been a pleasure of an entirely different sort to have her lean on him as they walked together on a London street. Or to see her smile when she turned and recognized him.

  Two nights from now, their odd mission of illegal justice would be completed, and she would be done with him again. And maybe that would be for the best. Everything was about money. She had a lot, he little; they did not belong together.

  But for now, they sat in the same room, and she had welcomed him. And he did not have to leave just yet. Not just yet.

  “You are looking at me so oddly,” she said.

  “I should practice my expressions in a mirror,” he said, “if my regard looks odd to you.”

  Her hand lifted to her cheek. “Nonsense. After everything to which I’ve subjected you today?”

  “I’m not wily. I’m blunt. I can’t possibly deceive you about my own desires.”

  This convinced her better, he thought, than fine words would have. She lowered her hand, then looked at it as if it were an ornament she did not know where to place. Slowly, she extended it, following it with the line of her body. Leaning toward him, slow and inevitable, until her hand lay warm against his cheek.

  He shut his eyes. Her fingertips traced the side of his face. The lines of bone, the faint stubble. She found the little scars from thrown rocks, from razor nicks; as many inflicted by others as by himself. There were so many tiny ways to draw blood from a man. Her touch trailed over them all, soothing.

  Then she drew a fingernail around the edge of his ear, and he shivered like a green youth.

  “Lady Isabel, I—”

  “Just Isabel,” she breathed, and it was impossible not to kiss her. Eyes still closed, lips to lips, a gentle brush of intimacy. A thank-you for all she had told him; a thank-you from her, maybe, for absorbing her honesty. For being on her side.

  When she pulled back, her nose nuzzled his; her lashes touched his face. His every muscle tensed, fighting the wish to gather her into his arms, to enfold her and keep her safe, here, in this rare space where they could both exist.

  “You told Butler you weren’t fond of Callum,” she murmured. “But I am. The name and the man.”

  Blinking his eyes open, he saw her before him flushed and starry, and he copied her own actions. Touching the beautiful lines of her face, learning them in soft candlelight. He took her shoulders in his hands, drawing her nearer, and found her lips again with his. Like that, each in their own chairs, they kissed, and they kissed, their hands sedate and their lips saying everything they had not been able to speak.

  Later, they would talk more about the plan. Later still, he would leave.

  Two days from now, she might never care to see him again.

  But for today, she had welcomed him. Touched him. Invited him. Kissed him.

  Trusted him with her person, her reputation, her truth.

  By the time he departed the Lombard Street house, though he knew full well he’d no place in her life, she’d left him feeling as lofty as a lord.

  Chapter Eight

  To what end? Callum Jenks had said to Isabel. To what end?

  The question preoccupied her.

  To what end had she kissed him—or he kissed her? The night that followed his unexpected visit had been a confused one of broken sleep. But it was not the insomnia of recriminations Isabel had struggled with so often since finding Andrew’s hidden room. There were no shouldn’t haves and should haves, not with kisses. There was only a sweet recall, a yearning for . . . what? For more?

  To what end?

  Maybe the closeness, the pleasure, was the end in itself. For there must be an end. He was work, all work on London’s roughest streets, and she was a proper widow in a bubble of funds and fashion. A proper widow who would find herself new lodging. A space of her own, maybe to become a person of her own too.

  Only after a broken night’s sleep were manners and mores faded enough for a daughter of the ton to think in such terms.

  She arose early and wrote busily at the small desk in her bedchamber. Not invitations to the dinner party she had suggested to Callum. No, the dinner had been nothing more than a nebulous inkling, so she would place it on hold.

  Instead, she seized upon the promise idly made to the Duke of Ardmore that she intended to move houses. That was something she could do, to fill the time between invitations into society—or until the time she became a thief and housebreaker. A note to Septimus Nash, the house agent the duke had recommended. Lady Isabel had a desire to move households and would await Mr. Nash at his earliest convenience.

  Next, she wrote her father, knowing that the letter would instead be opened and read by her brother. Lord Martindale would be annoyed that she was moving households; he cultivated normalcy as gardeners cultivated roses. But if one acted like everyone else—wasn’t that ordinary, rather than normal? Isabel was not sure of the difference.

  She was not sure she wanted to be either one.

  By the time her lady’s maid had clucked over Isabel’s breakfast and helped her into another gray gown, a reply had arrived from Mr. Nash. He would be pleased to meet her ladyship at a certain address in Russell Square at a late hour of the afternoon, should that suit her. The property was most attractive and would be an excellent situation for a friend of the Duke of Ardmore’s.

  “Hmm.” Isabel knew she sounded like Callum Jenks, her brow creasing as she read this reply. Russell Square—surely that would be a stately, costly address.

  B
ut she might as well look. She returned a note of agreement to Nash’s reply.

  She spent the early afternoon paying calls with Lucy. To Lady Teasdale, of course, and to Mrs. Roderick and the Dowager Lady Mortimer—all women with sons of marriageable age. So often, a mother was looking harder for a possible bride for her son than he was looking for himself. Lucy conducted herself quietly—always so quietly!—but with pretty manners. If they were not striking, at least they did not offend.

  Perhaps she was regretting her failed attempt at training Brinley, though Isabel had assured her she thought it was quite funny.

  They returned to Lombard Street briefly to refresh body and clothing, then retrieved Brinley and clipped him to a long leather leash. The coachman, Jacoby, brought around Isabel’s landaulet, and women and dog clambered in.

  The journey to Russell Square was not long by foot, but in the crowded London streets, it took some minutes for Jacoby to thread the bays through the clutter of carriages and street sweepers and servants on foot. When they approached Russell Square, the accustomed noise of the city dimmed gradually, filtered out by the trees in the central garden.

  The landaulet pulled up before the given address. Brinley leaped out, yipping, his short legs a blur of hops and jumps, as Jacoby aided Isabel and Lucy in climbing down.

  Septimus Nash awaited them at the front door of the house, keys in hand. He was tall and spare, and he had a raven’s way of tipping his head and regarding one with skeptical eyes.

  “Lady Isabel. Miss Wallace.” Once the ladies had ascended the steps to join him, he made his bow, all the time regarding Brinley with a look of distaste. “The animal should remain outdoors while I escort you about the premises.”

  Isabel had intended to leave Brinley with the groom, but Nash’s nasal certainty set her teeth on edge. “The animal,” she replied, “will be accompanying my ward and me, as he is to live here too.” She caught up the end of the leash, wrapping it around her hand, and ignored the fact that Brinley had lifted his leg beside one of the gray stones framing the tall wooden doors.