What was that strange, sharp note he detected in her tone? If he knew her better, he might suspect resentment. But he didn’t really know her. Not yet, anyway.
He held his tongue, and waited. It wouldn’t do his cause any good to keep arguing his point. But that didn’t mean he’d ceded it.
This bargain was exactly what he needed. Here she stood before him, offering him this opportunity like it was her idea: time. Her time, even though she had yet to accept that fact. She would lead him to this Jiro, and Mina’s future would be secure. All he had to do was spend time with her.
Now to extricate himself from this desk and properly shake on their arrangement before she reconsidered her proposal. Another chance like this wouldn’t land in his lap again. If he wiggled left—
“You’re ridiculous in that desk.” The side of her mouth tilted up into a mean, little smile. It was more charming than it had a right to be.
He stopped cold. “I think that was the idea.”
“You wouldn’t be the first man to regret underestimating Mrs. Bloomquist.”
Again, he began muscling his way to freedom, and her mouth crept wider into a smile that revealed the tip of her crooked tooth. He saw with no small amount of gratification that when he stood, the mean, little smile slipped.
How very small and vulnerable she could appear in the blink of an eye. That curious instinct to protect her pulsed through him, and he squelched it. Instead, he held out his hand. “Lady Olivia, you have a bargain.”
Pointedly, her gaze lowered and returned to his eyes. “Gentlemen do not shake hands.”
“Sailors do.”
Her fingers inched forward until they touched his as gently as a butterfly alighting upon a petal. He squeezed her silk-gloved hand within his grasp and gave it a quick shake. A surprised laugh escaped her, and their eyes met, holding for a beat too long. Her smile faded.
She dropped his hand like a hot coal and stepped backward until her skirts touched the wall at the front of the room. Afraid to move and break the spell, he held still. In a matter of seconds, he could close the gap and have her pressed against the chalkboard, legs wrapped around his waist.
But what good would that accomplish? No good. None at all. Untold depths resided within this woman. If her depths could be reached, how far would he have to fall?
She blinked once, twice, swallowed, and the moment was gone. “I expect to hear from your solicitors in the next few days,” she murmured, her gaze refusing to meet his one last time. She neatly rounded the corner and stepped out of sight.
Alone in the room with his thoughts for company, a possibility came to him. A possibility unworthy of a gentleman. But he was a man who shook hands, so what sort of gentleman was he, anyway?
He strode to the doorway and poked his head around the corner just as the front door closed behind her.
She wasn’t getting away that easily.
Chapter 7
Jake rushed down the corridor and slipped through the front door. The conclusion of his conversation with Mrs. Bloomquist would have to wait for another day.
A quick scan of the sidewalks just caught the familiar swish of Lady Olivia’s skirts rounding a corner. One blink, and she was out of sight. What was the woman up to?
Before he knew what he was about, he was making the bend around the same corner. The ugly truth wouldn’t be denied: he was following her. That thought in mind, he was careful to stay a generous distance behind her. Should she look backward on a whim, he wouldn’t stand out in the crowd.
It wasn’t long before the air began to ripen into a distinct odor. A smell that could be rightly characterized as a stench. She’d led them far afield of Mayfair and directly into the heart of a slum. He wasn’t sure which one, but that detail hardly mattered. Why did Lady Olivia insist on spending her time hanging about slums?
As if she’d intuited his question, she set about answering it. Stride shortened, pace slowed, she approached a woman scrubbing a length of coarse linen across a washboard. Jake crossed the street and kept his head down so as not to attract undue attention.
However, he needn’t have concerned himself on that score. The entirety of Lady Olivia’s regard was fixed on the washerwoman. He couldn’t help noticing the other woman’s scarlet, cracked hands and stony expression.
The two women exchanged a few words before Lady Olivia reached inside her dishwater dull overcoat and pulled out a coin for the woman. The washerwoman slipped it between her considerable cleavage and settled back against the wall, her arms crossed in front of her in a pugnacious stance.
Pad of paper and pencil emerged from Lady Olivia’s flat black case, and she began scratching charcoal across the blank surface. The washerwoman’s face never once altered its expression. This woman had seen it all, and there were no surprises left in this world, not even a posh lady offering a bit of coin to take her likeness.
Jake slipped inside a dark alcove and watched, feeling like the voyeur he undoubtedly was. While he was ostensibly following Lady Olivia to find the art thief, he couldn’t deny that he was enjoying himself too much and experiencing the same set of emotions he’d felt the first night he’d met her: interested, engaged, and alive.
Her face had taken on a beatific aspect rivaling that of an Italian Renaissance Mary, so deep was her content in this interaction with a washerwoman. He would have never thought to combine a Society lady—daughter-in-law to a duke, no less—in the same body with an artist who delighted in sketching lowly washerwomen. As far as he knew, such occurrences were as rare as unicorns gamboling across misty meadows.
Yet here was one such unicorn.
She possessed untold depths, indeed. How did these depths relate to the stolen paintings?
It was becoming apparent to him that she, a woman whom he hardly knew, was capable of anything. Only a fool would think her incapable of connections to the underworld. After all, here she was at ease in a slum, a place where he was certain no other ton matron had ever set foot.
She would lead him to the thief. He was more certain of it than ever.
Beneath his unblinking eye, she slipped the sketchpad back into its case, handed the washerwoman another coin, and proceeded down the street. Several minutes and winding streets later, she nearly tripped on a beggar slumped against a dingy wall, legs extended across half the sidewalk.
Nothing new in this scene. Jake gave away too many coins to count to this sort of man, woman, and child every day. He watched her drop a few coins into the beggar’s extended cup and retread the same routine with the beggar as with the washerwoman.
She had a way with people that put them at their ease, that rendered their difference in station insignificant. She was no ordinary lady. He would do well to remember it.
A sudden commotion ripped through the air, snapping Jake’s attention to the street. Not a block away, a large draught horse, harnessed to its top heavy cart, was rearing up on its hind legs, obscuring his view of Lady Olivia. With each movement, the horse alternately threatened to overturn the cart or race down the street with it.
The driver jumped to the ground, shouting at passersby to clear the area, before he began repeating the horse’s name over and over in an attempt to soothe the frightened animal. The horse was having none of it, neighing and whinnying and creating a general fracas.
Jake was about to bypass the entire scene when a small child, with no more than two years on him, toddled forward, hand extended, smile dimpling cheeks chubby with baby fat. Before he could give rational thought to the situation, he leapt out and swept the child behind him. The boy toddled off to his mother.
It was only Jake and the horse now. The massive beast shook its head from side to side as if to let him know this wasn’t going to be easy.
What the hell was he thinking? Only this morning he’d met the master of th
e Russell Court Mews, who’d imparted no small amount of advice on the soothing of a spooked horse. Jake wracked his brain for the man’s exact instructions and called a few to mind.
He stepped in smooth, deliberate increments toward the distraught horse, clicking and cooing all the time. A transfixed silence stole over the crowd when he came within three feet of the distressed beast. After a few minutes of this, the horse reluctantly relaxed and came down, ears flickering in response to the clicks and coos. It was as if they spoke the same secret language, and Jake was the only living being attuned to his distress.
Lay a hand on ’im, confident like, no fear in your eyes.
His hand found the horse’s muzzle and stroked down the curve of the beast’s glistening neck. The horse snorted a wet breath that caught Jake full in the chest, but he discerned a budding trust in the gesture.
Make certain it innit a rock in the hoof. More like than not, it’ll be the culprit.
Jake’s hand trailed down the horse’s proud chest, further down his left leg to his fetlock until his fingers dared reach the underside of a lifted hoof and pluck out a piece of debris visible only to him. The horse gave one last whinny and a toss of his shiny black mane before settling his hoof firmly on the ground, drama over.
The crowd released its collective breath, and, like that, Cannon Street returned to its usual bustling self. The crowd dispersed and carried on with a hundred individual days.
Jake gave the horse one last pat as he glanced toward the place where he’d last seen Lady Olivia. The beggar remained in his place, but she was gone. Jake raced forward, craning his neck to get a better view. Nothing. The frustrating woman had slipped away from him yet again. Unexpectedly closer to his goal, it galled him to find it snatched out of his grasp.
Yet he also experienced a vague feeling of uncertainty regarding this underhand means of locating the art thief. It had to do with the depths he sensed within her. At the Dowager’s Salon, he’d assumed her the type of Englishwoman who would bore him within two sentences of conversation. But the last few days had shown him that Lady Olivia Montfort wasn’t the person her exterior suggested.
She wasn’t a type. She was, in fact, very much her own person.
And very like the ever-changing sea. One had to gain experience with the sea in order to read it correctly. Otherwise, its currents would carry a ship far off course before a sailor realized his error.
He did, at least, have some experience with the sea.
Would it be enough?
~ ~ ~
Olivia rolled her tongue against the roof of her mouth and attempted to rid it of its copper taste, the taste of bitterness.
Why had that acrid note sounded in her voice when she’d spoken of Lord St. Alban’s future, proper wife?
Even in her head, it sounded bitter. He’d caught it, too. She could tell by the tight narrowing of his eyes on her.
Why should she be bitter anyway? It was her choice not to be a proper wife. She’d once been a proper wife, and once was enough.
She increased her pace, her heels a purposeful click-clack against the sidewalk. It wouldn’t do to dwell on such musings. They could be sorted out later by the Olivia who dwelled in the West End. The Olivia who had just struck a bargain—and shaken hands on it!—with Lord St. Alban.
A gentleman doesn’t gift a lady with property, unless she agreed to be his—
She’d stopped him right there, she’d had to. He’d been offering to make her his—
She exhaled a forceful breath, hoping to rid her mind of the dratted man at the same time. She was striding toward the East End, a striking world that increased in vibrancy and vividness with each step. These environs never failed to offer respite, however temporary, from her small West End life.
Over the years, she’d come to expect any number of situations from a morning spent roaming the East End on her eventual way to Jiro’s studio: filth, poverty, rancidity, the odd moment of fright, the odd moment of kindness, but, most of all, she’d come to expect the unexpected.
Her purpose was to dash off quick sketches of street subjects. Jiro had insisted that this exercise was essential to her development as an artist. She needed to understand all walks of life in order to paint life in its full depth and complexity. How was it possible that a decade had passed between now and then?
It had begun with a simple scribble on Lucy’s watercolor set. She’d found herself invigorated in a way she hadn’t since Percy’s supposed death. Painting, creating something from nothing, connected to something deep inside her: it was hers alone. She’d never experienced a pursuit so reliant on her own skill and drive.
Within the week, she placed a discreet ad in the paper and found an art master, the recently immigrated Jiro of Nagasaki, and began painting: Lucy, the Duke, the household staff, the aged family dog Poochie, bowls of fruit . . . anyone or anything that would sit still for half an hour.
With Jiro’s encouragement she explored other parts of London, too. It was during this period that she began to evolve into the woman she was today. At least, that was how she viewed it in retrospect.
Instead of having Jiro come to her in St. James’s Square, she began going to him in Limehouse for her lessons. She’d hired a nanny to spend mornings with Lucy and began painting like a madwoman, paying her street subjects, like the washerwoman she’d just finished sketching, to sit for five, ten, fifteen minutes . . . whatever time they could spare.
For the first time in her life, she experienced the real world, and it fascinated her. It was a solitary venture, but she never felt lonely. She saw the dirty, impoverished, fetid side of London hinted at on the streets of St. James. But she also saw the various ways people lived with dignity in reduced circumstances. The poor were no longer an abstract concept for her.
This experience not only deepened and expanded her palette as an artist; it deepened and expanded her as a person. She evolved into a woman, a whole woman, not just some confection of a girl, the girl she once was.
Face tilted toward the cloudless sky, the first in weeks, she nearly tripped over a pair of legs, one of which was missing its foot at the end. “’Ave ole Boney to thank for that,” the legs’ owner piped up.
Olivia averted her gaze. She’d been staring. “Beg pardon, sir.” She dropped a few coins into the beggar’s cup. “Which campaign, sir?”
“The Peninsula, milady.”
The air arrested in her lungs. For a decade she’d believed Percy’s body buried in a soldier’s grave on the Peninsula. She drew enough breath to ask, “Which division?”
“Second, milady.” A cough rattled through the old soldier’s chest. “Signed on in 1809 and didna stop ’til ’14. Nearly had me whole leg blowed off. Lucky ole Boney just got me one foot.”
She cleared her throat, which had gone tight. “Do you mind if I draw your likeness?”
“Fine wi’ me. I ain’ goin’ nowhere fast,” he quipped and settled into the wall at his back.
She opened her case, removed charcoals and paper, and briskly set about sketching the old soldier. First came the shape of his face, hollowed out and coated with street grime. Then it was on to red-rimmed eyes sunk deep within their sockets, parched lips shriveled to the thickness of wrapping paper, pock-marked skin the texture of old leather. In all, a face as ravaged by war and poverty as one was ever likely to see.
Once her pencil found its rhythm on the paper, she began, “My—” she interrupted herself. She’d almost said my husband. She began again, “I once knew a man who served in the Second Division. Captain Lord Percival Bretagne. Perhaps you knew him?”
“Knew of ’im, milady, to be sure. Seen ’im sit ’is ’orse real pretty like.” The old soldier shifted his weight on the unforgiving sidewalk. “But we didna travel in tha same circles like. Unless ’is ’orse needed a shoe or tha like. In s
uch case, Jem’s”—The man jabbed his thumb into his chest—“yer man. I was told more ’n once that I was the best ’ostler on the Peninsula.”
She felt the heat of incipient shame brighten her cheeks. Of course, this old soldier and Percy hadn’t traveled in the same circles. Percy wouldn’t have had the faintest notion of this man’s existence.
Yet another lesson the London streets had taught her: places like St. James and Mayfair existed within their own social stratum, insular and impenetrable. The rest of London was the hinterlands as far as much of the ton was concerned. The masses were to be used for war and service and forgotten. She quashed the rise of anger that threatened, channeling it into her drawing, which was proceeding at an erratic pace.
“Seem to remember,” the old soldier went on, undeterred, “that ’e came to a bad end, if ya didna mind me bringin’ it up. Kill’t by one o’ our own at the Battle of Maya, wadn’t ’e?”
Olivia’s pencil scratched a dark, incongruous mark across the paper. “As it turns out, he wasn’t.” This old soldier must be the last person in London who didn’t know that Captain Lord Percival Bretagne was alive. “In fact, he surfaced in Paris last year, very much alive. The gossip rags had a field day when his wife petitioned the House of Lords for a divorce.” She blended out the errant stroke.
“You don’ say?” the old soldier said on a whistle. “If ya don’ mind me sayin’, the wife must be a right selfish and unnat’ral wench to do such a thin’.”
Her hand came to an abrupt stop. “Something like that,” she murmured. She began stuffing her materials back into her portfolio.
She glanced at the old soldier, his chatter filling in the blank spaces of absent conversation. “Treatin’ a war ’ero that way. Whate’er ’appened to a warm welcome ’ome?”
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