“They like you, Mark,” Angelica insisted, resting a hand on his arm. “Accept it.”
Mark glanced at her hand, his arm heating under her touch in spite of layers of clothing. “I’m afraid you will see too soon that your faith in me is misplaced,” he said in a quiet voice.
“Nonsense,” she contradicted him.
Their conversation was cut short as Templeton entered the room followed by one of his new maids with a tea service.
“This letter was delivered for you this morning, my lord,” Templeton said, presenting Mark with a simple envelope that contained no postage. “It was hand-delivered, and the messenger expressed a sense of urgency.”
“Thank you, Templeton.” Mark took the letter, nodding to both the butler and the maid, who knew enough to take the cue as the order to leave that it was. Angelica sat on the sofa by the table where the tea was set and poured as Mark opened and read the letter.
“What does it say?” Angelica asked.
Mark frowned as he scanned the short contents. “It is from Shayles’s solicitor, advising me against visiting him in prison tomorrow as has been arranged.”
“Against it?” Angelica blinked, her lithe hand poised over the sugar bowl. “Why would Lord Shayles’s solicitor not want you to visit him?”
Mark shrugged, dread pooling in his stomach. There could be only one reason, as far as he was concerned. His mind traveled back to the end of the trial, to Shayles’s threats to murder him in his sleep for betraying him. Obviously Shayles had violent intent and Mr. Lloyd knew it and was attempting to prevent a disaster.
He read through the short missive again, pacing a few steps across the parlor with his brow knit in a scowl. Was Mr. Lloyd truly trying to protect him or did he have another reason for not wanting him to speak with Shayles? Perhaps Shayles was ready to relent on the matter of the painting, but Lloyd didn’t want to lose face after having denied Mark what was his for so long. Or perhaps Shayles wished to make some sort of confession that Lloyd believed would be damaging to him.
“Mark, sit down. Have some tea,” Angelica spoke into his thoughts.
Mark was so unused to having a kind voice interrupt his thoughts that he nearly stumbled in the middle of pacing. He turned to Angelica, noting the look of concern and impatience mingled in her expression. He changed directions and moved to sit on the sofa by her side, accepting the teacup she held out to him.
“Does the letter say anything about your painting?” she asked.
So she hadn’t forgotten about that. Mark wasn’t sure if he wanted her to or not.
“No,” he said, then sipped his tea. She’d prepared it exactly the way he liked it. He didn’t remember telling her how he took his tea.
Angelica studied him while drinking her tea as though he were a particularly complex painting in an obscure gallery. At last, she said, “I think we should visit this solicitor with all due haste.”
Mark’s brow shot up. “You don’t need to come with me.”
“Oh, but I think I do,” she said with a note of menace in her voice that sent a chill down his spine. “This—Mr. Lloyd, is it?”
Mark nodded.
“This Mr. Lloyd has been far too cagey in regards to this painting. I’ve known men like him. They think they can get what they want by the virtue of stubbornness alone.”
“No doubt they can,” Mark mumbled.
“I never stood for it when I helped Grandpa Miles with his business, and I will not stand for it now.”
True to her word, Angelica finished her tea, set the cup down, then stood. “Come.”
Mark blinked up at her. “Come where?” He set his tea aside without finishing it and stood with her.
Angelica took his hand and pulled him toward the doorway. “We’re going to Mr. Lloyd’s office.”
“But we’ve just arrived,” he argued.
“Precisely,” she said with a smile, leading him out into the hall and surprising a footman, who must have expected his master to stay put moments after arriving. “Fetch the carriage,” Angelica told the young man, who jumped to do her bidding. To Mark she said, “If we arrive in Mr. Lloyd’s office sooner than he expects us, it will put us in a superior position and Mr. Lloyd on the defensive. Men on the defensive are more honest when pressed,” she insisted. “Especially if a woman has them on the defensive.”
Her words sunk in as they reached the front door, where Templeton scrambled to hand them their coats and hats as they waited for the carriage to come back around.
“Angelica, you don’t have to accompany me on this mission,” he said, his nerves bristling all over again. “In fact, it might be safer if you didn’t.”
“Safer?” She stared at him incredulously, then shook her head. “It’s far safer for me to be there by your side,” she said. “Another thing I learned from the New Orleans business world is that men will always, without fail, underestimate a woman and treat her as though they are in a drawing room at first. It gives one just enough time to rush in with guns blazing.”
Mark pressed his lips together and let out a breath. He wasn’t sure he liked the Wild West approach, but there was nothing he could do about it. Within minutes, they were seated in the carriage once more, on their way through traffic and noise and smoke to The City. Half an hour later, they were standing in the lobby of Lloyd, Palmer, and Leeds as one of the clerks scrambled to inform Mr. Lloyd that he had visitors.
The solicitor’s office was stuffy and a brittle feeling hung in the air. Mark had far too much experience with the place from days of assisting Shayles in fending off accusations and lawsuits. Accusations that were well-founded and lawsuits which should have continued and been the end of Shayles, if not for the mountains of dirt he had on everyone from Prince Albert to Lloyd himself. Reminders of his old life, of the cowardice he’d nearly drowned in, were all around him.
“Don’t forget to breathe,” Angelica whispered to him at one point.
Mark blinked and glanced to her only to find a mischievous grin on her face. She looked as though she were ready to battle the Huns, as if all of their Scottish-style training with rocks in the meadow was about to be put to use.
“Mr. Lloyd will see you, my lord,” the clerk said in a stumbling voice, gesturing for Mark and Angelica to follow him along one hall and down another lined with offices.
Before they entered Lloyd’s office, Mark steeled himself. He wasn’t a complete worm, after all. He was in the right, and Lloyd knew it. Shayles knew it as well, in spite of his threats and posturing. He had no reason to feel intimidated, especially with Angelica at his side. Though part of him found it awkward that he should draw strength from his wife when, in fact, he should be sheltering and protecting her.
“Lord Gatwick.” Lloyd stood from a small desk cluttered with papers as Mark and Angelica entered the room. “I did not expect to see you this—” He stopped and frowned at Angelica. “Who is this?”
“My wife,” Mark answered, “Lady Angelica Gatwick.”
Lloyd’s brows rose so fast and so high that Mark half expected his eyebrows to fall off. “Wife? I was not aware you’d married, my lord.”
Mark ignored what felt to him like a push for information. “Why do you wish for me to cancel my visit to Newgate tomorrow, sir?” Mark asked, going on the offensive.
Angelica was right. The unexpected forthrightness clearly had the man scrambling to think of a response. “It is not proper,” he fumbled. “You are widely regarded as the catalyst in my client’s conviction. I do not think it wise for you to have any further contact with Lord Shayles, now or when he is released from prison in two weeks.”
“Lord Shayles will be released from prison in two weeks?” Angelica asked, her face pinching with alarm.
Dread pooled in Mark’s stomach.
Lloyd looked even more surprised. “You are American?” he asked.
“I am the Countess of Gatwick now, so it hardly matters to you,” Angelica said, back straight, chin tilted up.
> Lloyd’s mouth dropped open as he stared at her, as if he were fishing for a response but had none. “Yes,” he answered at last, a shiftiness in his expression. “Lord Shayles is set to be released, his time served, as of October twenty-eighth.”
“I didn’t realize it was so soon,” Angelica said. She looked to Mark as if asking whether he knew.
Mark nodded, but maintained a studied air of calm that he didn’t feel. “I will be visiting Shayles tomorrow as he requested,” he said. “As for our business, I have asked you repeatedly to return a certain painting in Shayles’s possession to me and I have yet to receive what is mine.”
“Because it is not yours, my lord,” Lloyd said, shifting from surprise to stubbornness.
“It is,” Mark said.
Lloyd shook his head. “My client, Lord Shayles, informed me in no uncertain terms that the painting in question belongs solely and exclusively to him, and that all inquiries about it should not be answered. I believe his words were ‘Gatwick will never see so much as a scrap of that painting as long as he lives’.”
Mark frowned through the familiar mask of banality he’d put on. Inside, he was raging. Shayles had no right to lead him on a chase over something they both knew belonged to him. It was nothing more than an attempt to frustrate and humiliate him from a distance, now that he could no longer frustrate and humiliate him up close. And they both knew why.
“Where is my painting?” he asked, feeling as though he deserved at least that much.
“I am not at liberty to say.” Lloyd sent him a gloating smile.
“Where is it?” Mark repeated.
“I am not at liberty to say,” Lloyd said with more force.
“It was not destroyed in the Black Strap Club fire,” Mark went on. “Shayles told me as much.”
“You will not be able to retrieve it, my lord. I am under strict instructions to keep its location and its condition a secret until—”
“It’s in London, then?” Angelica cut him off.
Lloyd was so startled by the interruption that he swayed back, his mouth flapping in indignation.
“Clearly it is,” Angelica pressed on, dropping Mark’s arm and stepping closer to the desk. “Otherwise you wouldn’t look like such a catfish. Where is it? Has he stored it in a bank vault? Is it at his townhouse? Does Lord Shayles have it in prison with him?”
“My lady, I—”
“Are you keeping it here in your office?” Angelica rode right over him. She planted both hands on his desk and raised her voice. “Is it in one of those closets over there? Or do you have it in your own home. Should we call the local police to raid your house? Do you think they would take kindly to you harboring stolen goods?”
“I don’t have it,” Lloyd shouted at her, reeling back another step, his eyes wide with alarm.
“Will the police agree to that statement?” she went on, speaking even louder. “What would your wife think if she knew you were harboring stolen goods? Would she ever speak to you again, do you think? Or have you already destroyed it? We have it in our power to ensure that your entire practice is sunk into the ground if you don’t—”
“It’s at Shayles’s country estate,” Lloyd snapped, shrinking under Angelica’s onslaught. “He has it at Ravencrest Hall.”
Angelica straightened and stepped back to Mark’s side with a grin. “It’s at Ravencrest Hall,” she whispered, a twinkle in her eyes and gloating on her lips.
Mark’s heart rolled over in his chest, but at the same time, his stomach filled with acid. It might as well have been on the moon. “Thank you,” he said, glancing from Angelica to Lloyd. “I believe that concludes our business here.”
He turned to go, offering his arm to Angelica. She took it with a look of such haughty superiority that Mark almost broke his mask of indifference to smile at her. They started out of the office.
“Wait,” Lloyd called after them. “Our business is not finished. You cannot go to Newgate Prison tomorrow.”
“Good day, Mr. Lloyd,” Mark said, holding the door for Angelica as they exited into the hall.
“You must listen to me, my lord,” Lloyd pursued them. “Lord Shayles is in no fit state to receive visitors. Let the man serve out his term and retire in peace.”
Mark froze mid-step, as if lightning had struck him, then pivoted back to Lloyd. “Shayles no more deserves peace than…than I do,” he hissed.
Lloyd snapped his open mouth closed and his shoulders dropped. His whole manner melted into bitter derision. “On your head be it, then,” he said before turning to march back into his office. He slammed the door behind him, drawing looks from several clerks and assistants.
Mark cleared his throat, then escorted Angelica on. “As if it was anywhere else other than on my head,” he mumbled.
He knew what was coming. Lloyd hadn’t told him anything he hadn’t already known. At least he knew where the painting was now. He was ready to face the consequences of his life.
Chapter 9
Angelica wasn’t so enamored of London by the time she and Mark stepped out of the offices of Lloyd, Palmer, and Leeds and into the bustling street.
“The nerve of that man,” she huffed. “What possible use was it to keep the location of your painting from you but to vex you?”
“We know where it is now,” Mark said, his blank, distracted look in place. She couldn’t blame him for retreating into what she assumed were old habits after a meeting like that.
“The way he spoke to you,” she went on, pacing slightly in her agitation. “Does he not understand that you are a lord and he is, well, not?”
Mark fixed her with a flat stare. “You will find that in this modern era, a title only carries one so far. Particularly when one’s reputation is not as stellar as one would like.”
Angelica paused in her restless movements to frown at him. Before they had entered Mr. Lloyd’s office, Mark had been a bundle of nerves. Now he appeared as calm as a spring day. It was all an act, though, she was certain. The difference was that before he had worn his emotions openly, but now he had them bottled up.
She shook her head, unable to keep her own frustration in check. “Reputation or not, the man was rude. I’ve had more than enough of rude men to last a lifetime.”
Mark’s driver must have spotted them from the spot where he was waiting down the street. He moved the carriage out into traffic, then swooped by to pick her and Mark up. Angelica was in no mood to lounge inside a carriage, or a townhouse, for that matter.
“Is there somewhere we could go to walk?” she asked as the driver jumped down to open the door for them. “I don’t think I could sit still right now if my life depended on it.”
Mark’s blank look turned thoughtful. He handed Angelica into the carriage, where she wriggled and squirmed rather than settling comfortably. Then he turned to the driver. “Take us to the National Gallery,” he said.
“Yes, my lord.” The driver touched the brim of his cap, then closed the carriage door once Mark was inside.
As it turned out, the National Gallery was precisely the right place for Angelica to walk off her irritation.
“I’ve never seen so many masterful works of art in one place,” she said, gazing up at the walls as she strode swiftly through one gallery after another on Mark’s arm.
“You don’t appear to be seeing much of them now,” Mark said, enough of a hint of teasing in his voice to indicate he too was relaxing after the horrible meeting.
Angelica forced herself to slow her pace and send him a sideways grin. “Consider it a brief survey of all that the gallery has to offer before doubling back at a slower pace.”
“I should have taken you to Hyde Park,” he said with a wry twist to his lips that might have been a prototype of a smile. “That way you could run about with all the nannies minding children.”
Angelica laughed before she could help herself. She pressed a hand to her mouth as several of the gallery’s patrons glanced her way with varying degrees of s
urprise and indignation.
It would have been of no consequence at all if the patrons staring at her and Mark had been complete strangers, but as it turned out, that wasn’t the case.
“Good Lord,” a portly, greying man exclaimed, turning away from a particularly voluptuous Rubens. “Is that Lord Gatwick?”
A man standing with him turned and raised a monocle to his eye. “No, it can’t be,” he said. “Gatwick is the last man alive who could make a woman laugh.”
Mark stiffened so suddenly and so completely that Angelica feared if she tried to prod him to keep moving, he’d fall over and shatter, like a statue made of brittle clay.
“Denbigh, Herbert.” Mark greeted each man with a nod.
They stared back at him, their faces twisted with unkind amusement and surprise, then glanced to Angelica.
“And who is this?” Denbigh asked, eyeing Angelica up as though she were a piece of meat.
Angelica could feel the reluctance rolling off of Mark along with his tension. He cleared his throat and said, “Gentlemen, may I introduce my wife, Lady Gatwick.” His expression betrayed nothing, and Angelica sensed it was no accident that he did not give her full name.
Her guess seemed right when Denbigh and Herbert reacted as though Mark had introduced them to a trained unicorn. Both men gaped, and Herbert burst into laughter.
“A wife?” he snorted. “You? I never thought I’d see the day.”
“I didn’t think you had it in you,” Denbigh guffawed, bringing to mind what Mark had said to her about certain rumors regarding his sexuality.
“Oh, this is capital,” Herbert laughed on. “Isn’t there some sort of wager going around about whether Gatwick would ever so much as look at a woman, let alone marry one?”
“The wager was called off years ago,” Denbigh said, “on account of Gatwick being a complete cold fish.”
“Guess we were all wrong there, eh, Gatwick?” Herbert punched Mark’s arm so hard Mark flinched.
Before Angelica could open her mouth to give the man a piece of his mind, Denbigh went on with, “Does Shayles know about this?”
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