Lady Rogue

by Theresa Romain

  Andrew would have loved them.

  Lucy paled, looking over the crowd. “There are so many people.”

  “I know, dearest. But we can only speak to one person at a time, and so it doesn’t matter if there is one person here, or five hundred. Whom shall we speak to first?”

  “Um . . .” Lucy looked dazzled.

  “Our hostess, then,” Isabel decided. Finding their way to the Duchess of Ardmore was a feat requiring fifteen minutes of struggle through the crowd. Along the way, Isabel made introductions to Lucy when she saw a familiar face. Mrs. Gadolin flicked her fan in greeting, thanked Isabel for agreeing to her dear Gadolin’s price on the Lombard Street house, then looked about to see whether anyone had noticed and whether it was quite the thing.

  When they finally reached the Duchess of Ardmore, she seemed pleased by their congratulations, distant and vaguely friendly as ever. She held a small flask from which she sipped occasionally, no doubt dosing herself with the medicine that left her in a perpetual cloud.

  And then they encountered the Dowager Lady Mortimer, whose younger son Isabel had thought might be a match for Lucy. The dowager had responded to this assay with a disapproval that she seemed still to hold tightly.

  “Lady Isabel! And Miss Wallace. I’m so glad you could attend. I didn’t know if it was your sort of affair anymore. You seem to have different tastes these days. I saw the most startling print recently!”

  Life was too short for veiled innuendo. “Do you mean that caricature of me wearing trousers? It wasn’t a bad likeness, but it wasn’t accurate either. I’ve never worn an outfit such as that.”

  The dowager pursed her lips. Had she powdered her hair? It was gray as a ghost, and her face held the same chalky color. “I did wonder, though, about the other part.”

  “My hair?” Isabel tutted. “It was in terrible disarray. I had a word with the printmaker.” She patted her own neatly dressed locks.

  “No! The . . .” Lady Mortimer leaned forward, confiding behind her fan. “The pistol.”

  Honestly. If the woman wanted to gossip with her, she might as well be straightforward. “You were curious about my husband’s death? You’re not the only one, my lady. I’ve wondered about it since the day it happened. I wouldn’t be so gauche as to speak about it, though. Would you?”

  The older woman’s mouth opened and closed.

  “I didn’t think you would.” Isabel smiled. “I’ve always known you as a woman of impeccable manners. Thank you for your concern, of course. Look, Lucy—there is George. Shall we say hello?”

  Isabel pushed through the crowd. The room was huge and warm, lit by hundreds of candles and stuffed with hundreds of elegantly-dressed bodies. The air was all perspiration and perfume and the hot burnt scent of melted wax.

  George was an elegant fixture at the ball in honor of his sister. He looked still better than the last time she’d seen him, without the puffiness of dissipation. The leanness she remembered from their late youth was coming back into his features, his form. It suited him. She watched narrowly as he took a proffered glass of champagne, then handed it off to someone else.

  “Abstaining?” Isabel asked.

  “Only from champagne.” He winked. “If it’s not fun anymore, then what’s the point of it? And I’ve never thought a bubbly wine much fun. A good brandy, now . . .”

  Isabel laughed with him. “I prefer port, myself.”

  Attending the ball was like slipping on an old garment. It still fit, and there was something nice about seeing it again. But it didn’t suit her like it used to. She felt more comfortable at the edges of the party. Because she was a widow, and she didn’t want to look for a husband as the Isabel of ten years ago had? Because she liked looking at people now, noticing what they were doing? Who was angry, who was flirting, who was hoping to retreat unseen. Everyone had a story, and if one thought only of oneself, one’s slippers, one’s next dance, then all these other stories were lost.

  She wondered what the person slipping away around the edges of the room was up to. He was too far away for Isabel to recognize him, though he had the sleek confidence of a scion of the ton. A bit of the look of Andrew. Oh! Maybe that was Lady Selina’s betrothed. What was he up to?

  Probably he was looking for the necessary. Isabel thought it was in that direction. Lucy had murmured something about finding it, and she and Isabel had been separated in the crowd before they reached George. No matter. Somehow they would find each other again.

  She was pleased to come upon Lady Selina, quite the belle in a gown of silver and blue. “I’m glad you could come!” said the duke’s daughter, sounding perfectly sincere. “I remember our discussion about marriage, and—well, you see that I took it to heart.”

  “Our discussion?” Isabel cast her mind back. Yes, she did recall a few sentences tossed back and forth idly. She’d been distracted at the time, wondering how to find the Botticelli within Ardmore House. It seemed ages ago. “You are wedding for love, then, as well as the more common reasons.”

  “Not as well as, but instead of !” Selina beamed. “I’ve no need to marry for money or security.”

  Yes, because you’ve had them in abundance since the day you were born. But: “Fortunate you,” was all Isabel said. “I am glad you are so well pleased.”

  “I wanted to tell you.” Selina put a confiding hand on Isabel’s arm. “Just because you needn’t marry for those reasons doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. A woman can never be too secure.”

  With this, Isabel could not disagree. “It is certainly easy for us to lose what we have.”

  “Especially reputation, which cannot be bought back once lost.”

  Isabel’s brows knit. “I agree, but I do not take your meaning as it applies to me.”

  Selina laughed. “Why, Isabel, you are becoming such a rogue! Taking your own household, throwing off fashion.”

  “I rather thought I was setting it,” Isabel sniffed.

  “Taking a lover . . .” Selina whispered. “Have you? Haven’t you?”

  “As if no widow has ever done such a thing before?” Isabel gave Selina’s hand a reassuring pat. “Thank you for your confidences, my dear. You may be assured, I will be careful to hold tight to the things that are important to me.”

  “Good, good.” Selina looked uncertain—then pulled her into an impulsive embrace. “You’ve always been such a good friend to George and me. I do want you to be happy, you know.”

  “I’m sure I shall be. It just might not be in the way I expected.”

  For one could be happy alone, couldn’t one? It was better than being wed to someone who never thought much of her, and far better than being paired with someone unkind.

  The only option compared to which everything else paled was the one she yearned for: being with someone wonderful, and damn however suitable or unsuitable he might be.

  “Excuse me,” said Isabel. “I’m going to see about getting a dance for Lucy.”

  “Of course!” Selina smiled, reassured that all was well as long as there was dancing.

  But she didn’t see Lucy in the ballroom. Not at the edges, either, where the wallflowers and matrons sat. She wasn’t at the punch table, or in the supper room, or playing cards.

  Isabel fought down a tide of worry. There was no need for concern. Yes, this was the first great crush Lucy had been to, but it was perfectly safe. Isabel might have missed seeing her. Or Lucy might still be waiting for a turn in the ladies’ retiring room. Yes, that was probably it. Isabel would slip out of the ballroom and find her.

  No. Lucy was not in the retiring room.

  Had she got lost? Impossible, with the clamorous noise from the huge ballroom to orient one. Even here, she could hardly hear her own footsteps over it.

  There was another corridor, heading farther away. Plain-papered and narrow, it was clearly meant for servants. It probably led to the kitchens, where food for hundreds was prepared and plated. Isabel peered down its length.

  And everythin
g fell apart.

  Because the corridor wasn’t empty. And it didn’t only hold Lucy.

  Callum Jenks was there, with those redheaded twins she’d met at Bow Street. The woman was holding fast to a struggling Lucy while the man bound her wrists with rope.

  On the floor lay a body. Dead? Unconscious? Callum was crouching over it, hunting for a pulse. The prone figure was the man Isabel had seen leaving before—a man she now recognized for certain as Lady Selina’s fiancé. His scalp was bloody, and there was a bullet hole in the wall.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Callum had wanted nothing more than to see Isabel again—but he would not have chosen a moment like this for their reunion. Never like this, with her ward in makeshift cuffs and a marquess’s heir lying in his own blood.

  She laid a hand against the wall, bracing herself. “What is this? What is happening? You—what are you doing to Lucy?”

  “The Duke of Ardmore asked the Bow Street magistrate, Fox, to recommend some people to keep peace at his daughter’s engagement ball. Guess His Grace was wiser than I realized.” Callum picked up the pistol from the floor beside the prone lord. “Lady Isabel, this belongs to you.” He offered it to her grip first.

  She extended a hand, looking full of questions.

  “It was your husband’s,” Callum explained.

  At once, she recoiled. “I don’t want it. I don’t even want to touch it. But—why is it here?”

  Callum looked at Lucy. Isabel’s gaze followed.

  “Lucy!” She took the girl’s shoulders, shaking her gently, even as Charles Benton put another knot into the cord about her wrists. “Lucy? Is—did he—what has happened?”

  “He made me pose,” she whimpered. “He made me pose for him.”

  “What is she talking about?” Isabel’s wild gaze swung between the Bentons and Callum. “Tell me right now. What did this man do to her?”

  “Why . . . nothing.” Cass spoke haltingly. “He didn’t even touch her, not that we saw.”

  Isabel crouched beside the man. Lord Wexley, Callum thought his name was. She swallowed heavily as she looked at the injured man, but she did not flinch. “She shot him, didn’t she? The bullet grazed his scalp and was buried in the wall.”

  Callum held out a hand to help her upright. “Exactly right. I believe he’ll come to at any moment.”

  “But . . . she shot him.” Isabel’s brows were knit. “Why? I don’t think she’s ever even met him.”

  “He made me pose for him,” Lucy cried. “I’ve been carrying his gun in case he made me do it again.”

  “His gun . . .” Isabel’s eyes widened. “Dearest. Lucy. Who is it that you shot at? Who made you pose?”

  “Uncle Andrew. Up in the hidden room. I had to pose like his paintings while he looked at them and he . . .” She was crying now, great blubbery tears. “I had to agree. You always said how nice it was that I was an agreeable girl, and I knew I had nowhere else to go.”

  Cass looked away, her eyes wet. Callum found it difficult to watch the girl too. For she was just a girl—terribly young, and more fragile than he could have imagined. He understood now, and he guessed that Isabel did too: in her distress, Lucy had mistaken Lady Selina’s fiancé for Andrew Morrow. Dark hair, going silver at the temples. In his early forties. There was a marked resemblance.

  Lord Wexley moaned, coming to. “What happened to me? Am I shot?”

  Charles left Lucy’s wrists and helped the man to his feet. “Not mortally. But that head of yours could use stitches.”

  When Wexley took a step forward, Lucy screamed. “No! Not again! Not again!”

  “Who—why is she shouting?” He put a hand to his head, then flinched when it came away wet with blood.

  “What sort of posing?” Isabel had gone pale. “What sort of posing, dearest?”

  Lucy cringed, hiding behind Isabel as if she were a wall.

  “Oh, God.” Isabel looked stricken. “Morrow did—and I made you believe that—oh, Lucy, oh no. No, no.”

  Gently, Callum put an index finger under Lucy’s chin. “Lucy. Miss Wallace.” He waited until her gaze flicked upward to meet his. “Did he touch you?”

  “I don’t even know her!” Wexley yelled.

  “Not you,” Callum all but snarled. “Andrew Morrow. Cass, will you go find Lady Selina? And Charles, a physician for his lordship. Or even a seamstress.”

  When he returned his attention to Lucy, his voice was gentle. “Did Andrew Morrow touch you?”

  “He never put a hand on me. But on himself, he did. He touched . . .” She turned her head away. Isabel stroked her hair, a mass of plaited gold. “I was so afraid. It kept happening. It happened again and again, even before I came to live with you.”

  “Even before . . . ?” Isabel shook her head. “He didn’t—I don’t understand.”

  Callum thought he did. He wished he didn’t. “I shouldn’t be surprised if her parents treated her much as Morrow did.”

  She took his meaning at once. “Oh, my poor girl. My poor girl, so trespassed against, and so violent. And I thought to marry her off, never suspecting how unhappy she was.”

  “She might not have been unhappy with you.”

  Lucy Wallace was a shrinking figure, a pitiable one. She had not committed a crime for gain. She had not done it for money. No, Callum had been incomplete when he’d once told Isabel that everything went back to money. Some things were even deeper. Sex. Power.

  The need to save oneself.

  What privilege he had grown up in, to be protected and kept safe by his parents. Compared to that, Lucy Wallace’s silks were nothing.

  As Wexley leaned against the wall, dabbing at his scalp with a handkerchief, Isabel and Callum teased out the missing pieces of Lucy’s story.

  Her parents had abused her, and in desperation, she one day shot them. She escaped with the pearl brooch—but after she came to live at Lombard Street, Andrew found it among her things. He made her pose nude, barely more than a girl, with the bare, false portraits in the hidden room.

  Mutual blackmail. Mutually assured silence. These circles were dangerous and fragile. Lucy had shattered it at last, warning Andrew Morrow that she would tell Isabel about the posing and the pictures and the hidden room. Everything.

  He couldn’t stop himself. And he couldn’t bear for his fraud and exploitation to be revealed. So he ended himself.

  Isabel stroked Lucy’s back, just as Callum had seen Lucy pet Brinley. “Shhh, shh. I know now. It’s over. It will never happen again.”

  Lucy was calm now, quiet. She had retreated within herself, like a turtle pulled into its shell. All they saw now was the shell. Callum did not know when she might come out again.

  By this time, Lady Selina had returned with Cass and a grim-faced housemaid was plying a needle in Wexley’s torn scalp. There ensued a clamor of explanations, reassurances, re-reassurances, and many complaints from the stitched-up lord.

  “We’re all witnesses, Mr. Jenks,” Cass said solemnly. “To how you saved Lord Wexley from the poor mad girl.”

  Isabel shut her eyes. “But what you all heard about Morrow—”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” said Cass. “I heard nothing except Lady Selina’s thanks for ensuring the safety of her betrothed. Miss Wallace was out of her wits, poor lamb. Raving. It was impossible to make sense of what she said.”

  The lanky redhead’s certainty was like a dash of cold water to the nerveless paleness of the duke’s daughter. “Of course,” said Lady Selina. “I cannot think what would be gained by looking for evidence of further crimes the girl had committed. I certainly observed none.”

  Isabel looked mulish. “Now that I know that Andrew—”

  “Lady Isabel.” Charles looked solemn for once. “In the eyes of the law, his trespass against her was nothing that is not excused every day. But hers against her parents or Wexley could see her hanged. You could best protect her with your silence.”

  Isabel pressed her fingers to her e
yes. “It’s unfair, all of it.”

  Callum knew what she meant. Andrew Morrow had escaped the consequences of his actions again and again, finally choosing death as a blanket over the truth. Who he truly was would never be known to the world.

  “Isabel,” he said gently. “We know. That’s the most important thing. We know.” He touched her arm lightly. “Remember, you’ve always acted for Lucy’s benefit, ever since the first time you summoned me.”

  To steal a painting and save a reputation. For Lucy, it had begun; for Lucy it would end here, and these few people would hold the truth in their hearts.

  Isabel held Lucy tightly, the girl’s head cradled under her chin. Callum had seen artwork like that before. It was always called La Pieta.

  “Do not let her be taken to a madhouse, please,” Isabel said. She exchanged some private words with Lady Selina, during which the young woman’s eyes grew round with shock, then soft with pity.

  “I shall not lay evidence against her,” said the duke’s daughter. “Nor will I protest whatever arrangement you think best for her.”

  Wexley grumbled a bit, but he too agreed. His adoration for his young betrothed was clear. And he would get to play a heroic, embattled figure when this scene was described for eager ears and scandal rags in the days to come.

  “You are very generous,” said Isabel. “I cannot thank you enough.”

  Cass took one of Lucy’s arms, Charles the other. They guided her down the corridor as one would walk a puppet. She was still but a shell, compliant and silent. Lady Selina and Lord Wexley followed them from the corridor, prepared to rejoin the ball.

  Isabel followed them all with her gaze.

  “You are blaming yourself,” Callum said. “I see it in the slump of your shoulders.”

  With an effort, she drew herself up straight and turned to face him. “How can I not blame myself? She was mine to protect.”

  “And before you, she was her parents’ to protect, and then Andrew’s. You alone took proper care of her. You gave her a year and a half of peace.”