Lady Rogue

by Theresa Romain

  “Not angry, no. Just tired. Too tired to keep from wondering things I’d rather not wonder.”

  “Such as?” Her breath caught.

  A corner of his mouth lifted. “To what end, Isabel?”

  She reached for him, catching his hand. “We don’t have to ask that right now, do we? Can’t we just . . . be?”

  “Can we? I’m an Officer of the Police. Have you emptied out that hidden room yet?”

  Stung, she dropped his hand and drew back. “You know I haven’t. I don’t know what to do with the paintings. I thought you would help me find a safe place for them.”

  “I will if I can. And I won’t reveal your secret.” He sighed. “The thing about secrets is you always have to keep those walls up. Every brick, every stone. Every word, every action. You’re not Lady Isabel alone. You’re Lady Isabel and Secret. A team.”

  “It’s not even my secret!” she exclaimed. “That damned hidden room is part of my legacy from Morrow.”

  He looked at her. She looked back at him.

  “If I am to choose a team”—she picked her words carefully—“I want it to be with you.”

  “We were a team for a bit.” He paused. “I liked it.”

  Unmistakable opening. So she tried again. “I liked it too. Come and have a rest, won’t you?”

  He sighed. “You slay me, lady. I cannot fight you anymore.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t.” Taking his hand, she led him upstairs. Not to her bedchamber; not with all the servants knowing she had a caller. Instead, she showed him into a spare room, unused for . . . how long had it been? Yet there was a fine bed in here, with a mattress that was turned and re-stuffed as often as her own was.

  “This is an elegant room,” Callum observed.

  True enough. The chamber was done in white and cream and crystal and glass, all colors of colorlessness. “Morrow picked it all out,” she said. “This was his house. Never mine.”

  “You’ll soon remedy that, though.” He sat on the edge of the bed, then tugged off his boots with a groan of relief that made her grin.

  “What about a bath?” she asked.

  “No baths, temptress. But I wouldn’t mind a moment off my feet.”

  Without even pulling back the counterpane, he flopped onto the bed. He fell hard to the pillow, like a brick being dropped, and rolled onto his front.

  And he was out.

  For a moment, Isabel hesitated. Should she move? Would she wake him?

  Probably she wouldn’t. Already his breathing was slow and regular. He must have been desperately tired.

  Yet he had come to see her. An obligation alone, or had he wanted to see her as much as she him? Was she the part of his day without which there was no savor, no interest, as he was for her?

  Probably, she admitted to herself, she was not. There was much more to his days than Lady Isabel Morrow. The knowledge made her ache, and she sank to the bed, balanced on the edge.

  This was a small pleasure, giving him a place for the rest he needed. Getting him to accept it. She rested a hand on his back. Feeling the hard line of his spine, the thick muscles of his back. She had clutched it in passion. Just now, she felt something much different.

  Fondness. Protectiveness. A desire entirely separate from lust.

  He took care of others so often, it was a triumph to take care of him. And she wondered, what would she do for him, if he would only ask?

  She eyed the boots tumbled to the floor, one of them sliced by a bullet he had taken because of her. And she had an idea.

  After she crept from the room, she found Selby and asked him to bring her a tape-measure.

  * * *

  Callum had apologized for falling asleep on Isabel’s bed—not once, not twice, but until she shoved him out the door with a laugh. A pity he hadn’t made better use of her bed with her. There was really no excuse for that.

  But he wasn’t altogether sorry. They’d been together this evening without a murder or theft or flight or fraud to motivate them. If they had kept company in this way once, maybe they could do it again. And maybe the next time he wouldn’t sleep through the whole encounter.

  It really had been a long day, and despite his unintentional sleep, his footsteps were heavy and slow through the darkening streets. When he reached Drury Lane, almost home at last, he realized the day was to become longer still.

  The street was lit by lanterns and gas, a comparative blaze of light when one turned from the neighboring darkness. In the center of the thoroughfare, a group of people—some of them familiar from the stage—were dancing. It was as if the stage show had spilled out of the theater and into the street. Certain members of the orchestra were out there, fiddling their elbows off, and the tipsy-looking dancers were swinging through what might have been a country dance if they had been steadier on their feet.

  Statutes reeled through Callum’s head. Public drunkenness. Dancing without a license.

  Damnation.

  They weren’t hurting anyone, not like a murderer or rapist did—but he had already slept away several hours during which he ought to have been on duty. And being so close to the Bow Street court, the dancers were all but flaunting their lawbreaking in the face of the officers there.

  The officer here. He was here, and a representative of the law, and if that meant anything to him at all, then he had to bring these people in.

  Damn it all.

  He went to the fiddler first, putting a staying hand on the man’s bow arm and bringing the music to an instant end. “Sir. You can’t play here.” Raising his voice, he added, “Come with me, all. We’re but a street away from the magistrate.”

  The violinist protested, belligerent. The dancers scattered—all but one. A man of about forty years began to cry, the sort of desperate weeping one heard only from a child or from a man deep in his cups. “I can’t go to jail!”

  Callum rolled his eyes. “You’ll only be going to the watch house. You can see the magistrate in the morning.”

  “I can’t wait until then! That’s too long.” The man fished in his pocket, held out a fistful of bills and coins evidently intended as a bribe. The coins rattled through his fingers, clinking on the street.

  “Have a seat.” Catching the man’s elbow, Callum eased him to the curb. “For God’s sake, man. Get off your feet before you injure yourself.” With a few swift scoops, he gathered the fallen coins from the street and dribbled them back into their owner’s hands. “Now. What is so bad about sobering up in the watch’s house?”

  “My wife will miss me.”

  “Nice for you,” Callum said. “And nice for her to know you were doing something wrong.”

  “I wasn’t, though. She’s bound in a chair, and she knows I like to dance. She doesn’t mind. But if I’m not home by midnight, she’ll think I’ve left her.” He covered his face, crying again. “I’d never leave her. I love her.”

  The violinist, a grim-looking older man, hesitated, uncertain. “Officer, is this necessary?” His expression softened as he looked down at the weeping inebriate. “He’s too drunk to lie, and he’s not hurting anyone. Can’t he just go?”

  Callum had been thinking the same before the elderly man spoke the words. Why should he take anyone in for dancing outside of a licensed room? Who the devil cared where people danced?

  But what else could he do with himself? He was no tea seller, no grocer. He couldn’t spend his life behind a counter catering to the whims of irritable servants and cits. He was an Officer of the Police, and either that meant everything or it meant nothing at all. And if it meant nothing, who was he, and what use had been the last years and years of his life?

  “I’m sorry,” he said, meaning it. “You’ve both got to come with me.”

  For the first time since joining the police force, Callum hated the sight of the court at Bow Street. He took the drunken man, the annoyed violinist, to the watch house and spoke to the man on duty there. They’d be transferred to court as soon as Fox was on duty the ne
xt day.

  Callum patted his pockets, found a shilling. He handed it to the Watch. “Find a boy,” he said, “and have him take a message to the man’s wife that all is well, and he’ll be home in the morning. Surely he’s not too drunk to give you his own direction.”

  Exasperated, distracted, troubled, Callum turned his steps in the direction of his lodging again—only to be jerked from his thoughts by a crash and shatter and yelp of rage. He turned in the direction of the sound. In the illuminated circle of a gas lamp was a carriage; at its front, hardly visible in the dark, was an overturned table, and the smashed remains of plaster busts.

  He recognized the scam at once: worthless broken pieces, arranged as if they were valuables destroyed by the careless driving of the innocent dupe in the carriage.

  In grim admiration, Callum watched as the vendor pleaded and begged with the driver of the carriage. It was not a crested carriage—best not to aim too high—but a nice shining one. A merchant’s carriage. A man who could see a bit of himself in the desperate vendor, maybe, and who would pay anything to banish that realization.

  Callum wasn’t of a mood to stop the transaction—and since he hadn’t seen the table, he couldn’t prove the busts had been smashed already. But he suspected the same plaster sculptures had been smashed again and again, all to the feigned shock of their supposed sculptor.

  He let the scene play out, the carriage depart, then crossed to the vendor and gave him a word of warning. Helped him dispose of the broken pieces in such a way that they could not be retrieved, pretending he was doing the man a great favor and ignoring his sourness.

  He could never so much as go home to his rented rooms without coming across some trespass against the law, could he? The more time he spent with Isabel, the less he worked.

  The less he worked, the less good he did.

  Or had he really done any good, just now? Who was better off today for having encountered Callum Jenks?

  Maybe no one. But Callum Jenks was better off for having spent time with Lady Isabel Morrow. She was becoming indispensable not only to his happiness, but to his contentment. Without her . . . it didn’t bear thinking of.

  He forced himself to think of it anyway. He had been more honest with Isabel than he intended: he was too tired to keep his thoughts along their usual proper lines.

  Then at last he reached his rented rooms, ate a cold meat pie, and fell into bed feeling as if there was nowhere he belonged.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Lady Isabel Morrow exists. To what end?

  It was a good question. It was the only question. And Isabel was not certain how to answer it—yet.

  She had hoped Callum would help her. But he had enough to be going on with, keeping London safe. And Lucy was as mercurial as Brinley, leaping forward and back: I want to go out into society. I want to be silent. I want to be courted. I want to be alone.

  If Isabel’s questions were to be answered, she would have to answer them herself.

  So she did what she’d always done when she was uncertain: she tried to learn as much as she could. Dipped into the books in the library, most of which were about history and art. Not uninteresting, but she had had her fill of art for a while.

  Instead, then, she turned to novels for answers. The late Jane Austen had put it beautifully in one of her final works: a novel was literature, in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humor, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language.

  Who would not benefit from a greater knowledge of human nature? Especially a woman who sought to marry off her ward, determine the course of her subsequent life, and persuade a stubborn Bow Street Runner to fall in love with her?

  Just a few minor things to handle. Hardly a challenge at all.

  Ha.

  Isabel had never been in love before. She had been fascinated, attracted, dependent, befuddled. What she felt for Callum Jenks was all of these, but not as she’d felt in the past. All, and more, and—and surely she would know if she loved him?

  Oh, yes. She knew it. She didn’t want to admit it, but she knew it.

  She didn’t want to admit it, because she’d no idea what he felt for her in return. He was so stubborn, so brusque, so unflappable. Completely honest. If he loved her, wouldn’t his own internal code force him to admit it?

  Fortunately, she had distraction aplenty. She now owned two houses and was preparing to move her belongings from one to the other. Then sell the first, furnish the second, marry Lucy off, and after all of that, probably fall onto a fainting couch with a cool cloth on her forehead.

  Lady Teasdale’s son had called upon Lucy. He had brought flowers, which was good. He hadn’t returned for a second time, which was not good.

  Although in Northanger Abbey, a single dance had brought the heroine to the hero’s attention. They ought to attend more dances. Isabel made a note to sift carefully through her invitations.

  Into the midst of this quiet disquietude, Isabel received a caller she had not expected in the slightest.

  “A Mr. Gabriel to see you,” Selby announced.

  Isabel looked up from the writing desk in the morning room. It was early afternoon, but she had all but abandoned the drawing room of late. “Mr. Gabriel. I do not recognize the name. Have I made the gentleman’s acquaintance?”

  “He says you know him by name, but you have never met him in person.” Selby paused. “I took the liberty of seating the visitor in the drawing room.”

  Curious. “I suppose that was for the best. I’ll go in and speak to him. Please bring in tea as soon as a tray can be arranged.” And make certain he is behaving himself, whoever he is.

  When Isabel entered the drawing room, her caller stood. He was unfamiliar to her: a man of perhaps fifty years of age, with raven hair falling to his shoulders and streaked with silver. He carried an ebony cane with a great silver head, and his black waistcoat was shot with silver thread. The effect was harmonious and striking. Dimly, Isabel wondered what he’d have chosen to wear had he been born with ginger hair. A tartan waistcoat, perhaps. It would not have possessed the same dramatic appeal.

  “Mr. Gabriel.” Isabel crossed the room to face him, indicating that he might sit again. “I am told I know you?”

  “Not by this name, which was a dodge.”

  He waited as Isabel seated herself, a small table between their chairs. “Much of London,” he continued, “knows me as Angelus.”

  Isabel jerked. “Surely not.”

  Her caller looked wry, amused by his own nickname. “Melodramatic, isn’t it? Yet who would obey a man named Stuart Smith?”

  “Is your name Stuart Smith?”

  “Not at all.” His voice was low and carrying, with an accent she couldn’t quite place. Northern England, maybe, with a crisp tonnish overlay. “It is Gabriel in this drawing room and Angelus elsewhere.”

  She was blinking too much. Or not enough. Something was odd about her eyes; they were having trouble communicating to her brain that The Actual Angelus was here in her drawing room.

  But. “How do I know you are who you say?”

  He leaned the cane against the table, steadying it with the barest flick of his fingertips. “Does it matter?”

  “It matters very much, of course. How can I know how afraid of you I ought to be?”

  “Dear lady, you need not be afraid of me at all.”

  She shivered at something cold and flat in his eyes. A coiled capacity for rage and revenge—and then he shut it off, like blowing out a candle, and smiled at her.

  She said tentatively, “I thought you’d be . . .”

  “Different, of course. More brutal, perhaps? Less polished? Tut, tut. If I were always so, who would do business with me? How I present myself is—”

  “To do with money,” Isabel realized. “Everything is about money.” Callum had been right. How to win it, earn it, scar
e it forth: this was what the world wanted to know.

  “Just so.” Smith-Gabriel-Angelus folded his hands with satisfaction. “It is to do with money—or more rightly, the power that money can bring. And I am here, dear lady, because of that precise issue. You and I have an acquaintance and a business interest in common.”

  “Do we?” A business interest. She suspected she knew whom he meant.

  At that moment, a servant entered with a tray. Teapot and cups, tarts and fruits and biscuits. As everything was arranged on the table between them, Isabel gritted her teeth, holding carefully onto her calm when she really wanted to scream What did the duke say to you?

  When they were alone again, Angelus made a show of selecting an assortment of biscuits. “How hospitable. Black, please—and no, no lemon. Thank you. Let me see, what were we discussing?”

  Isabel poured out, willing her hands to be steady. “I should be shocked, sir, if you ever forgot what you’d been discussing.”

  “Just so. Such pauses offer a man a chance to observe, so I make liberal use of them. I note, for example, that you are not as calm as you appear. The muscle of your jaw—it twitches.”

  “A toothache,” Isabel lied.

  “Of course.” Angelus plainly didn’t believe her at all. “The common acquaintance is, as you must know, the Duke of Ardmore. He has communicated to me that I cannot have my painting until he concludes a matter of business with you.”

  Isabel took a bracing sip of tea, thoughts racing. She would try to brazen it out, do a little observing of her own. “Me, he said? How odd. I’m an ordinary widow. The duke and I can have no business to conduct. And knowing you by reputation, Mr. Gabriel”—the caller nodded—“I am surprised that he is in a position to dictate terms to you.”

  “He isn’t. But he piqued my curiosity, and I am not one to deny myself the chance to learn something I’m curious about.”

  “I behave the same way,” she sighed.

  “You sound as if the behavior has given you cause to regret it.”

  “It has. But not in this instance. I am sorry, sir, but I cannot imagine what the duke wants of me. My late husband sold him a painting years ago. A rather fine Botticelli study of the much larger La Primavera. I saw it in the duke’s study not a week ago, but that does not mean I have business with the duke.”