Lady Rogue

by Theresa Romain

  The yard was pitted and cluttered with a kitchen garden, a chicken coop, a wash area. At night, the plants were shadowed skeletons, the coop a great looming blackness. No wonder the Quality walled off the backs of their houses: the perfect façade would be spoiled by revealing all that it took to maintain it. They picked their way cautiously across the yard, pausing when the moon popped from behind a cloud to shine extra light. All was silent, though, the servants asleep in their beds save for the unlucky ones who had to wait up for their gallivanting master and mistress.

  Callum went before, carrying the painting in the dark lee of the house. Isabel veered to the other side, following the line of the wall and searching out their entry point. The wall met up with the house behind the second set of windows. Fortunately, the study was near the rear, so they could enter from this hidden area. There was the fifth window back, and the fourth . . .

  Oh, hell.

  Taking care to be silent, she crept to where Callum stood. “Butler’s boy couldn’t count,” she whispered. “Or he couldn’t aim. He broke the third window back, not the fourth or fifth.”

  Callum said something unprintable, then apologized. “What will the third window lead us into?”

  Isabel thought about the windings of the house. “The music room, I think.”

  “Nothing for it. That’s where we can get in without causing further damage, so that’s where we’ll go in.”

  She agreed. He set the wrapped painting down gently next to the house, then undid his own pack and pulled out a rope with a sort of metal hook at the end. Stepping back, eyeing his target, he spun the rope in a quick circle—then flung it high. The hook hit the window frame with a thunk, then slid, moonlight glinting on its silvery surface, and bit down hard into the wood.

  Every sound set Isabel’s nerves on edge. Andrew, if you weren’t already dead, I would kill you for putting me through this.

  They waited, pressed against the house, for an endless few minutes. When no one and nothing appeared, Callum tugged at the end of the rope. Satisfied that it would hold, he whispered, “You can wait down here. Less trouble for you that way.”

  “No, no. Butler is keeping watch from out here. I can keep watch from indoors. One person to carry the painting, one person to drug the dogs.” She didn’t have enough faith in the day’s walk to keep the dogs sleepy and silent throughout their time in the house.

  “Fine. But I’ll go up first,” he insisted.

  “In that case, take several of the cakes.” She opened her satchel and took a packet of wrapped aniseed cakes. She’d estimated the weight of the dogs and carefully droppered in just enough laudanum to give them a peaceful night’s slumber.

  Callum slipped them into his pocket, then drew on a pair of black gloves. He laid hold of the rope and began to climb, bracing his feet against the side of the house, aiding his arms as he drew himself up hand over hand. His progress was swift, almost effortless. Isabel swallowed. Nerveless and nervous though she was, she appreciated the sight of his firm backside, his strong legs, the inexorable grasp and climb of his hands.

  At the top of the rope, he studied the window. They had wondered if it would be covered with something on the inside, and from the way he gingerly poked at the hole in the window, she guessed that a board was blocking it. Still grasping the rope, braced against the wall with his legs, he poked at the broken edges of the glass—then put a gloved fist through the hole in the window and pushed out the board. He contorted himself wildly, arm jutting and angling—trying to catch the board as it fell forward? Oh, she hated being below and helpless. Her pounding heart made her eager to move.

  Finally, he undid the latch and slid up the sash, then swung a leg over and climbed inside. Isabel strained her eyes, her ears, for a few seconds that took years—then Callum leaned from the window and silently motioned her up. Wrapping the painting in knots of rope, she settled it gently on her back like a cape. Then, bracing her feet on the wall, she climbed up, half pulling, half being pulled. It felt good, so good to use her muscles in this capable way.

  Then she was at the window. She swung one leg over the sill to steady herself, loving the freedom of her boys’ trousers, and leaned forward flat. Callum’s hands worked over her back, a series of silent pressures undoing the rope, and he drew the painting free and eased it through the window. It was a rare feat, taking some coaxing on his part and some wiggling on Isabel’s, but then it was through and he leaned the painting against the wall.

  Taking her hands in his gloved ones, he tugged her through the window. When she placed both feet on the floor, she let out a soundless, belly-deep breath. Swiftly, firmly, Callum gathered her into his arms. For a moment, they stood thus with their heartbeats tripping against each other. Body to body, silent in relief and partnership. Isabel breathed him in, the scent of his neck, his hair. I couldn’t think of doing this with anyone else.

  He bent his head to her ear. “Boots off,” he said in a tickling voice that was little more than breath. They were in the music room, as she’d expected: there was just enough light from the moon for her to spot the large instruments.

  Releasing each other, they removed boots, and he stripped off his gloves and tucked them away. Every movement seemed as loud as the stomp of an elephant. Her breaths were shallow scoops of air, silent and quick. But it was all right. They were done; ready to move to the study.

  Then outside the closed music-room door, they heard footsteps—and a dog began to bark.

  Chapter Eleven

  Callum’s heart thudded, too loudly. The footsteps were drawing close, then closer. Too close upon the floor of the corridor. The dogs were a riot of sound, bark after bark. To shield her, Callum pushed Isabel behind him. Each movement was silent as a breath. Each breath was caught, trapped, stifled.

  The barking continued—but the footsteps went past the doorway. Their owner spoke up at last: “Quiet now, ye damned beasts! Wouldn’t be no need to check all the doors if it weren’t for you shoving ’em open with yer great dirty bodies.”

  The accent was too thick to belong to any member of the family. So, one of the servants, keeping vigil while his fashionable employers were about their entertainment.

  “There! Eat it and be quiet.” A rrruff, then clicking claws as the dogs evidently pounced upon some treat. “Don’t be wakin’ the whole house.” Keys jingled. Heavy-soled shoes shifted, headed back the way from which they’d come.

  It was like attending a play with his eyes shut. Callum strained for every noise, every clue, even as he held Isabel still and taut behind himself. Was that it? Could they proceed?

  The footsteps crossed before the music-room door again—and the barks and snarls resumed. Callum gritted his teeth. If the servant opened the door, there might be just time to hide in the shadows behind the pianoforte. Better that than coshing the man. He was innocent, only doing his job.

  No, not even that. Whatever he was supposed to do for the dogs, he gave up on it. “Ahh. Be damned to ye, then. Hobbes can lock you away himself. I’ve no wish to lose a finger.”

  A whistle and a throw, then an object struck a wall down the corridor. “There!” called the man over the noise of the dogs. “Fetch, and if ye break yer necks, all the better.”

  It was impossible to track the sound of his steps after that. Had the man gone away? The dogs returned to the music room, pacing before the door. Whining. Scratching at it. The servant, whoever he’d been, said no more. He must have returned to his bed.

  “We were lucky,” whispered Isabel, “that the servant hated the dogs. If he’d noticed they were interested in this room . . .”

  “It’s the aniseed,” muttered Callum. “I told you they don’t follow calmly.”

  “Nor will they resist it.” With nimble fingers silvered by moonlight, she teased open the satchel she carried and pulled out a paper-wrapped parcel. The clawing at the door intensified when she unwrapped it to reveal a half-dozen small cakes.

  “Any one of these should cause a do
g to fall asleep,” she whispered.

  Would one fit under the door? He wasn’t eager to open it, exposing them to the large dogs. Maybe it would fit, if he squished it flat. He re-folded the paper about the cakes and pressed them between his palms. Isabel made a sliding motion, her brows lifted: she understood.

  “Two cakes at a time,” she suggested. “No more than that, in case one dog gobbles everything.”

  He crouched before the door, thankful for every bit of the solid wood between him and the great hounds Isabel had told him were called Gog and Magog. The door was bearing the brunt of their attention. Someone would have a job painting over the claw marks marring it.

  Again, he unwrapped the cakes. Set one before the door, then shoved it with fingertips through the narrow space beneath. Hot canine breath touched his fingertips as he withdrew them, and the clawing stopped. Sniff sniff.

  He did the same with another cake, then stood, wiping his fingers on the paper wrapping. Then there was nothing to do but wait.

  As an Officer of the Police, Callum was comfortable with waiting. With letting a pause stretch out awkwardly long, so his quarry felt the need to fill it. With keeping a quiet watch on a person or a piece of property.

  Waiting with Lady Isabel Morrow? That was no hardship at all.

  They were alone here. More alone, in the dark and soundless room, than they’d been at the grotto in Vauxhall, where fireworks exploded overhead as they took their pleasure of each other. How had that night led them to this one?

  Thank God it had led to something; that that had not been the end of Lady Isabel Morrow in his life.

  With only moonlight behind her, her hair was night-black as her clothes. The gentle light made her features glow.

  “What is it?” she asked softly, eyeing him with some trepidation. “Do you hear—”

  “Nothing,” he said. “You are beautiful to look at.”

  At once, she turned away. “How can you say that at a time like this?”

  “Because it is true. At any time, it is true.”

  “Silver tongue.” She shook her head. But she must have believed him, for she closed the distance between them, fitting her head onto his shoulder. Her hair tickled his neck, his chin. Her breasts pressed his chest; her arms linked about his waist. And here he was, still holding the ridiculous but necessary parcel of aniseed cakes, unable to take her in both his arms as he wished.

  He had one, though. One free arm. He placed the hand at the small of her back, enjoying the slide of his palm over the fabric of the odd shirt she wore. Like that, he held her, stroked her, fit her against himself. And they waited in the silence, aware of its pressure, of each other.

  And then: snore.

  A sleepy sound had issued from before the door. Then a snuffling sound, a half-hearted ruff.

  Isabel pushed away from Callum, instantly on alert. “Sit,” she hissed, loudly enough to carry.

  A click of canine toenails. Another animal snore.

  Was it one dog? Was it both?

  Slowly, he pressed the door handle and eased the door open, inward. Every little creak made him wince. The dim outside light picked out one large form on the floor: a hound stretched out on his side, breath whistling as he slept.

  One sleeping dog. Where had the other one gone?

  Callum eased a flat cake out of the packet and left it by the sleeping dog. “In case the other one comes back,” he said below his breath into Isabel’s ear. “We can pick it up before we go.” Isabel nodded, and he returned the cakes to her to put back into her satchel. He retrieved the painting in its wrapping, hoisting it under one arm.

  Leaving the door ajar, they left the music room. Already it had come to seem safe and familiar to Callum. Isabel linked index fingers with him, making a chain of themselves so as not to lose each other in the dark.

  Callum’s eyes had adjusted well enough to see in the windowed room. In the corridor, he was walking almost blind. The silence was oppressive; darkness lay heavy on his eyes. His eyes and ears were full of nothing at all, though he strained to see . . . was that a darker rectangle amidst the darkness? A doorway? Isabel stretched out a pale hand, brushing her fingertips downward—and found a door handle.

  Gingerly, he let out a caught breath. This was the study. As slowly as he had opened the music room door, she now did this one. Painting in hand, Callum stepped inside.

  Isabel’s drawing hadn’t prepared him for how cramped it was. A huge desk, a darker shadow among shadows. Heavy draperies over each of two small windows. He tugged one aside, just a little, and the crescent moon silvered the dark.

  Not much light, but enough to spot their quarry. Centered behind the desk was the painting. It was not especially small, but too small for all this trouble.

  He uncovered the genuine Botticelli. Held it up. There they were: three scarcely clad women with firm, pale limbs and joyless faces. In the moonlight, the two paintings looked exactly the same to Callum’s eye. But in bright light, would one with greater knowledge notice Butler’s clue? Or did one have to know the real painting as intimately as the fake?

  No matter. The fake would vanish, and Botticelli’s Graces would be the only ones to survive.

  So. He set aside the old painting and lifted the forgery down.

  Now came the tricky part of removing the fake from its frame. He had filled his pockets with tools, hoping against hope he wouldn’t have to use them. How could one hammer in a bunch of tiny tacks without being heard? If it came to that, Isabel could slip back outside and have Butler cause a commotion to distract the wakeful servant.

  On the desk, he laid out the tools. Pliers. Tacks. Hammer. A small knife. He flipped over the fake, and here was a bit of luck. There was no heavy paper over the back to protect the picture from dust. The stretched canvas was held into the frame by tiny nails through the stretcher into the wood of the frame. With his pliers, Callum yanked them all straight out, finding it as satisfying as if he were drawing out rotten teeth. As he tugged the last one free, the painted canvas tipped backward, falling right into Isabel’s waiting hands.

  She steadied it with one hand, slid the Botticelli to Callum with the other and tied the covering cloth around her waist. He fit the centuries-old painting into the frame, blessing Butler’s accurate eye when it slipped neatly into place. Now for the nails. He would re-use the old ones if he could. He picked up the hammer, gritted his teeth.

  Isabel tapped him on the shoulder. When he looked up, she handed him a . . .

  “A thimble?”

  She indicated he should put it on his thumb, then shove the nails in silently.

  Easy for her to suggest. But if he could find old nail holes and use those, perhaps it would work. Dubiously, he put the thimble over the end of his thumb. It looked like a too-small hat, and when he pressed at a nail head with it, it flicked off and struck the front of the desk with a tiny ping.

  Never mind that. He tucked the thimble into a pocket, then stripped off his coat. Laying it flat on the floor to muffle sound, he laid the framed painting on its face atop the coat. With the hammer’s head, he shoved silently at each tiny nail.

  Isabel took up the discarded painting by Butler, turning it too onto its face. She kneeled on the floor beside Callum, pliers in hand, and yanked free the fastenings holding the canvas to its stretcher bars. They had planned this ahead of time. Off its wooden skeleton, they could roll the copied painting small, dispose of the wood bars, make a quick escape.

  It was an odd partnership, switching paintings in silence by night. For an Officer of the Police, it ought to have been unacceptable, but he found he rather liked it. Perhaps he would have liked any task done at the side of Isabel.

  He paused when he heard claws clicking in the corridor. The first dog awake? The second returning? Isabel, too, froze.

  A snuffle. A growl. A gulp. More claws on the polished floor, steps receding.

  In a crouch, moving with the sinuousness of a cat, Isabel rounded on the door and eased it open
a fraction. One eye pressed to the crack. When she turned back, shutting the door again with a slow turn of the handle, she pumped a fist in silent triumph.

  Still asleep, she mouthed. Which meant the second dog had returned to eat the remaining cake. Good. Gog and Magog would be sleeping like baby giants by the time Callum and Isabel completed their task.

  Back to work, then. Infinitesimal bit by bit, he forced the nails through the stretcher bars of a canvas once touched by Botticelli. Through wood they went, into the frame. He did not use as many as had held Butler’s painting, but time was short. Every minute made the return of the family possible, the wakefulness of a dog likely.

  Silence was key, speed only slightly less so—yet maintaining either was impossible. Each time Isabel separated one of the wooden bars from its neighbor, there was a crack. Callum ventured a whap with a hammer occasionally, deadening the sound by working beneath a tent of his coat, then removing it to examine his work by moonlight.

  Before he was done, Isabel had completed her task, creating two rolled bundles. One was the canvas, tight-wrapped and tied like a scroll. The other, the stretcher bars, was a collection of smooth kindling the size of two fists together.

  “Good work,” he whispered.

  “Ready?” she returned. He nodded.

  She eased her bundles atop the duke’s desk, then laid hold of a corner of the bulky framed painting. On his fingers, Callum counted off, one—two—three, and they heaved it upright. Isabel eased her side of the picture into his grip, then guided him by the elbow. Forward, sideways, up—all in silence, all by touch. Her fingers were warm through the thin cloth of his shirt, making his skin prickle with sensation. Every sense was heightened, on alert.

  As he hung the picture back on the wall, letting the frame settle into its accustomed spot, triumph rushed through him. It was done, and they’d managed it together. Once they were on the ground, he would kiss the devil out of her—or into her.

  The last steps were drawing on his gloves again, then closing the draperies. Then, a moving shadow in the night-dark room, Isabel took hold of the door handle. Slowly, she eased the door open. The doorway across the corridor showed paler with moonlight from the open window, beckoning them forward. Out. To safety.