Lady Rogue

by Theresa Romain

  “It does not mean you don’t.” He drank from his own cup, eyes rather merry above its rim. She realized, with a hint of surprise, that she was more comfortable facing him than she had been talking with Lady Riordan during their recent chance meeting. What did that say about the sort of person Isabel was?

  “You call yourself a proper widow,” her companion observed, holding up the teacup to the afternoon light from the drawing-room windows. “How, then, do you account for my call upon you?”

  “I thought myself a conventional widow too. Just as I’d been a conventional wife, bride, maiden, daughter. But I’ve been forced to face a few truths, Mr. Gabriel, and there’s no going back from that. The world isn’t the pretty place I once thought it.”

  The hidden room. The hungry boy who stole a pork pie. Butler, separated from his wife and harangued by those who ought to treat him as a kindred talent. Janey, stealing until her looks and health vanished.

  Andrew Morrow, dead of a gunshot wound to the head.

  Angelus set down his cup. “This is fine china. I once sold a cheaper sort outside Covent Garden for scandalous prices. In my much younger days, that was.”

  He narrowed his eyes slightly, an evaluating sort of look. “Such subjects you think on, my lady; you are becoming rather roguish. But do not let your joy disappear. The world is still a pretty place, just not the way you imagined it. But one wed to a notable dealer in art would know all about such beauty.”

  Isabel bit off a ha of scorn. “It is possible, sir, to love art too much. It can drive a wedge between man and wife, or—”

  “Man and law?” Angelus selected an almond biscuit. “Tell me, Lady Isabel, do you know why your husband shot himself?”

  “He . . . it was an accident.”

  Crunching a bite of biscuit, he pointed the remainder at her. “That’s not what I hear.”

  Bewildered, she asked, “Why are you hearing anything about it at this distance in time?”

  “Our mutual acquaintance has taken a particular interest in your affairs.”

  The duke. Damn the duke. She should have expected him to retaliate in some way, angry as he was over the painting they now all must pretend had always been real, never been switched. “What sort of interest? Since you and I have both agreed how proper I am.”

  “There was never any suspicion directed toward you? Any investigation of your behavior toward your husband, or your whereabouts at the time of his death?”

  Angelus asked her all of this blandly, snapping his biscuit into pieces with each question.

  Isabel gaped. “No! I wasn’t near him when he shot himself—was shot? Accidentally—that was the ruling. I heard the gunshot from a floor away.”

  Angelus looked at her mildly. She realized, “You already know all of that.”

  He smiled. “Of course. But there’s more to know. There always is.”

  “There is?” Yes, there must be. Callum thought there was too.

  “Always. What’s this, no biscuits for you?” Angelus asked. “Are you upset?”

  “Yes, I’m upset,” she said. “We’re talking about death. It’s all right to be upset by that. And I’ll have three of the lemon ones, thank you.” She bit into them, sweet after sweet, hardly tasting them. As she swallowed each one, she felt a little more at ease.

  She finished with a sip of tea, then set down her cup with a proper near-silent click. “Do you know more than I do about my husband’s death? Did the duke—does he—that is, is there anything more to what he says than innuendo?”

  “I have my suspicions. However, I’m not a Bow Street Runner.”

  “Officer of the Police,” she corrected without thinking.

  “As you say. I conduct my own investigations. Your late husband concerns me only in that I do not yet have the painting. This is, I believe, the subject of the unfinished business the Duke of Ardmore has with you.”

  “It’s not. I am almost certain.”

  He lifted a brow. “I am all ears.”

  She hesitated. Should she tell him the truth? Could she trust him? No, she couldn’t trust him. But she couldn’t think up a pack of lies that would serve, and she’d no desire to keep compounding the secrets and falsehoods she’d inherited from Andrew.

  She settled on vagueness, leaving Butler and Callum out of the story entirely. Her husband, she explained, had hired an artist to copy selected works. When she learned that the Duke of Ardmore had such a copy and believed it to be original, she took it upon herself to replace it with the original art to which he was entitled.

  “I did it to protect my ward,” she explained. “I don’t want her to be dragged into a scandal during her first Season, especially one that ought not to involve her at all.”

  Angelus listened in silence, his head tilted to one side. When Isabel finished talking, he said only, “Does the duke know you saw to the painting’s replacement?”

  “He does.” This was perhaps overstating the duke’s certainty. “That is, he knows a copy has been replaced with the original.”

  “And now he won’t turn it over to me, when he was willing before. He wants to appear to pay his debts without truly doing so.” His face contorted, all rage for a flicker, then resumed its steely calm. “Don’t worry about the duke, or your ward. If he doesn’t give me my painting, then I’ll send someone to get it, or I’ll call in his debts. Either way, I won’t be subtle about the matter.”

  * * *

  She had taken tea with Angelus. Isabel hardly believed her own lips when she repeated these words.

  It had gone cordially enough, for tea with a criminal mastermind. His simmering anger hadn’t seemed directed at her, and when he’d left, he’d bowed over her hand with an almost courtly air.

  She was still bemused by the time she ordered the landaulet brought around for a bit of shopping. Since she’d be able to take possession of the Bedford Square house within the fortnight, she wanted to find art for it—for there was no way, after all the trouble Andrew and his art had caused, that she would bring along his chosen pieces.

  When the carriage arrived before her favorite print shop, she was all eagerness as she descended. Fine art, satirical prints, fashion etchings: Bedwyn’s had it all. There was always something new in the window, something interesting to look at. Perhaps she’d have to have it.

  But when she stood before the plate-glass window, her mouth dropped open.

  Lady I—M—, A fashionable Widow, read the caption of the print.

  The color was lurid, the figures exaggerated. At center, a black-haired, white-faced wraith lifted a gray skirt to reveal mannish black trousers and boots, all the better to trample a male figure beneath her feet. As his hair was dark, his head oozing blood, the man was evidently meant to be Andrew.

  A pox upon your House, said the trampling woman. In the background, a fair approximation of the Lombard Street house loomed, and a golden-haired maiden simpered out the window. Save me from scandal!

  Heedless of the other shoppers eddying around her, jostling her, muttering curses or apologies, Isabel remained transfixed by the print. A fashionable Widow, it said; she had never been featured in a satirical print before. A smile teased her lips. She looked quite good in trousers, even as a ghostly caricature.

  And then she noticed that the widow in the print was holding a pistol, and the picture ceased to amuse her. Trampling Andrew was one thing; being held responsible for his death was quite another. She had killed him, the print implied, with her mannish independence. Never mind the fact that while he lived, she had been a proper little mouse. He might as well have been stomping on her until the day he’d taken up the pistol.

  Why now, after so many months? Why was she the target of ridicule? For daring to order new gowns? For having money and no husband?

  No. This, she realized, was the Duke of Ardmore’s revenge upon her. He couldn’t report a stolen painting. He would probably have to turn over the genuine Botticelli to Angelus. In matters related to his debt, his options
were limited.

  But socially, they were not. He could drag Isabel through the mud, and there was nothing she could do about it. He tugged at her reputation; her proper, mousy public self. The one she had assumed for Andrew and kept for Lucy.

  Little did Ardmore know, she would not be sorry to see that reputation vanish. It was a cage. Andrew had left her in one after his death, as surely as when he’d been alive.

  Now that she was fighting free of it, she would not go back in. There was one thing she could do to fight back, and she’d do it right now.

  Adjusting her hat to a rakish angle, she barged into the print shop. “That print in the window,” she told the proprietor. “You’ve not got my likeness quite right. Study it from life.”

  * * *

  Indignation, determination, curiosity carried her back to the Lombard Street house—and as the carriage pulled up, she recalled Angelus’s words. There’s always more to know, he had said. About the ones we love, the ones we live with. About ourselves.

  Before she sold this house, she ought to search it. What if there were other hidden rooms? Hidden drawers in the desk? Priest holes, even? No, that was silly. This was a newish London house, not a Tudor castle.

  Andrew’s study had been gone through, the correspondence and accounts dealt with long ago. He had no steward, for there was no land. Just this house, this great pile of a house.

  But he hadn’t kept his secrets in his study. He kept them in his bedchamber.

  Entering it for the first time since retrieving the Primavera study, she wrinkled her nose against the stale smell. It was closed away, this poor room. It was not the room’s fault it had been owned by someone who had kept so much hidden.

  She searched it deliberately, pressing every seam in the wall-hangings. Shifting every cursed picture on the walls. Tossing back the carpet and treading each floorboard.

  Nothing. Hours of nothing. Did that mean there was nothing, or that she simply didn’t know how to find it? If she had to search every room in this house before knowing all of Andrew’s secrets, she would never be able to leave it.

  No, she would leave it no matter what. For all Angelus’s knowledge, he was just a man. He was not omniscient. This was the end: of the Botticelli switch, of living in Andrew’s house. It was an end she was happy to observe.

  She rolled the carpet into place again, then sat down heavily on it, knees hitched up. Her skirts were powdered with dust. No matter; they would brush clean. The turkey-red print was still pretty.

  On the subject of prettiness: she might take that writing desk with her when she moved to the new house. She didn’t like much of the furniture in this house, but the desk in this bedchamber wasn’t at all bad. It was lovely wood, and quite a useful little piece of furniture. Would it be odd to take something from the room in which Andrew had died?

  No, she decided. The desk did not care that it had borne witness to the end of Andrew’s life. She would let it instead bear witness to friendly correspondence. With whomever Isabel would write in her new house. Lady Teasdale, certainly. Lady Selina, most likely. The Duke of Ardmore, never.

  She creaked to her feet and swiped at her skirts. Best to make sure it was cleared out. She thought she’d checked it after he died, to make certain there wasn’t any correspondence she needed to answer.

  One by one, she opened the drawers. Empty. Empty. Good. The last one wasn’t, and she frowned at the dusty monogrammed writing paper still within. That could be pitched into the fire. No—that would be wasteful. It was fine paper. She’d cut off the monograms and give it to Lucy for sketching.

  She dug her fingers into the edge of the stack, tugging it from the drawer in which it was stuffed. It was stuck, the paper the same size as the drawer, and she had to pull, ease her fingers deeper into the stack, and pull again.

  With a wrench of her arm, she got the stack of paper free—and heard a rattle. From the drawer? She nudged it with her foot, and yes, there was the sound again. Yet it was empty.

  It wasn’t empty.

  Setting the paper onto the desk’s surface, she scrabbled for a penknife. Then she drew out the drawer and put it on the carpet. Crouching, she studied it all over. She poked every join with the penknife; eased the small blade into every crack. The dry wood of the drawer split and groaned, and at last it yielded its secrets with a click. A false bottom lifted away. The compartment below held a wooden box, flat and small, of the sort used for jewelry.

  Isabel picked it up, weighed it in her hand. Holding her breath, she lifted the lid.

  Within the box was a brooch.

  A brooch? A piece of women’s jewelry? She held it up, squinting at it. Surely she had never seen this before. A large and lovely pearl nestled at the center, surrounded by seed pearls set into gold.

  Why did Andrew have such a piece? Why had he hidden it?

  She stared at it, mystified. When she stood, she picked up the desk’s drawer in her other hand. Should she put the brooch back? She looked from drawer to jewelry, jewelry to drawer. It was all very strange.

  A voice sounded from the doorway. “Aunt Isabel, I’ve been wondering where you—oh!”

  Isabel looked up to see Lucy, stricken and shocked. Her ward’s eyes were fixed on the brooch in Isabel’s palm.

  “That’s not possible,” Lucy said. “It’s not possible for that brooch to be here.” Her face was drained of color; her slender form trembled.

  Her parents were murdered during a robbery, Isabel had told Callum. Only one piece of jewelry was taken. A pearl brooch that had been in the family for generations.

  And then Isabel realized what she held, and where it had come from, and she dropped the drawer on the floor so that it cracked into pieces.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “I’m sorry.” Callum’s voice was dim in Isabel’s ears. “This is not the evidence I thought to find.”

  Of course she had summoned him, her writing frantic. Douglas, the footman, had picked up on her sense of urgency. He’d bolted off at her instruction, returning with Callum just as Isabel had managed to calm Lucy with quiet words and more than a little brandy.

  She and Lucy were out in the corridor, because the room was again poisoned by its contents. Callum had looked at the desk. The broken drawer. The secret compartment.

  The brooch.

  When he finished, he rejoined them in the corridor. It was dark-paneled, the better to show off the art hung in gilded frames. Isabel wanted to smash it all, to get out of this house at once.

  For Lucy’s sake, she remained calm. Standing firm, she drew the younger woman into an embrace and patted her back. Over Lucy’s shoulder, she said to Callum, “I never thought you’d find any evidence related to Andrew’s death. It’s just been too long. But this—this isn’t related to Andrew at all, is it?”

  “It was in his desk.” Callum looked grave. “But that’s not an answer in itself.”

  The brooch was related not to Andrew’s death, but the death of Lucy’s parents. Would Andrew have killed them? Had he known the criminal?

  Isabel thought out loud, sorting through possibilities. “I don’t understand it. I wish I could remember, was he here? He didn’t keep a datebook. But surely he was never gone long enough to travel to Gloucestershire? No, never. It would have taken days, and he never departed for more than a single overnight.”

  Lucy pulled back, pale and shaky. “It couldn’t have been him. It couldn’t. It must be a coincidence.” She dashed tears from her eyes. “Or he tracked down the killer, and he got the brooch back, and—and he was keeping it to surprise me.”

  This sounded entirely unlike Andrew, as impossible a suggestion as his journeying more than a hundred miles and back again within twenty-four hours. But the hope in Lucy’s voice was pitiful and thin, and so Isabel kept her doubts to herself.

  “I’m sorry,” said Callum again. “I can make inquiries. But at this moment, all I can do is recommend a carpenter to fix the broken drawer.”

  “I don’t think
I’ll bother,” Isabel said. “But thank you.”

  They walked together down the corridor, Lucy turning off at her bedchamber with a promise to rest and relax. At the door of her own room, Isabel caught Callum’s hand.

  “I have something for you,” she said. “Since you are here. Come in for a minute?”

  He looked dubious. “The circumstances are not ideal.”

  “I know. But come in all the same.” So he did, and she shut the door behind them. Crossing to her wardrobe, she opened the doors and drew out a large box. “These are for you.”

  He set the box on the bed and lifted the lid. “Boots,” he said flatly.

  They were not just any boots. They were Hoby’s finest, sturdy and glossy and made to suit his feet exactly, thanks to the measurements she’d taken while he slept in her guest chamber.

  But the expression on his face stilled her tongue, kept her from saying any of that. “Will you try them on?” was all she said.

  He put the lid back onto the box. “Why did you get me boots?” His eyes searched her face.

  “Because you need them, and you won’t get them for yourself.”

  His lips tightened. “You don’t have to look after me. You don’t have to buy me gifts.”

  This was not the reaction she’d expected. She’d known he wouldn’t be effusive, but she’d thought maybe she’d get a laughing thanks. A rueful look at the damage his own boots had incurred. The lack of emotion was strange.

  “I know I don’t have to,” she said. “If I did, I wouldn’t want to nearly so much. But it’s my choice, and I want you to have these.”

  “That is thoughtful of you.” He took up the box, turned to go. “Thank you. I’d best be going. I have to work for my bread.”

  “I know, and I thank you for coming by. Lucy was grateful too; I am sure she will tell you so when she’s recovered from the shock.”

  He nodded.

  She wanted to keep him there; she kept talking. “I hope you will come to the new house when we’re settled in it. We do not see you enough.” As he opened his mouth, she blurted, “And do not say to what end. Seeing you is an end in itself.”