Since the Surrender (19 page)

Wait. “Is your sister in London?”

A hesitation. “My sister is in Sussex.”

Which must mean he urgently wrote to his sister to inquire about the Rubinetto straight away, nearly the moment they’d met at the museum. He’d at the very least been very curious. For his own sake, if not for hers.

Still, she smiled slowly at him.

He frowned darkly at her, disconcerted. Knowing what she was realizing.

Which only widened her smile, as she was delighted to disconcert him for a change.

“As I said, I happened to recall that there was something very familiar about that particular angel. And now I remember. I believe I saw that very same angel in a painting in a brothel, a painting in much the same style as that Rubinetto. At the Velvet Glove.”

So matter-of-factly presented that the meaning of the words arrived whole moments after she’d heard them.

The Velvet Glove?

“A strong nasty drink and a woman,’” she murmured, quoting Liam. Looking at him wryly.

“I beg your pardon?” he said politely.

She declined to elaborate. She cleared her throat. “And you…have visited this brothel?”

This seemed rather evident. She didn’t know why she’d asked.

“A number of times.” He eyed her with maddening equanimity. She knew about men and brothels. Particularly soldiers and brothels. It was just that it was somehow tremendously uncomfortable imagining him selecting a woman the way she might pop into Madame Marceau’s to discuss a new hat. Or visit the butcher to purchase a chop.

It was tremendously uncomfortable imagining him with anyone else at all.

“Rosalind?”

“Yes?” She was startled from her thoughts.

“You were aware that I’m a man?” he said gently. His eyes were full of unforgivable glints.

“One can hardly overlook the fact,” she said dryly. He was delighted with her: she’d earned herself a quick half smile.

“Very good,” he said briskly. He was enjoying her discomfiture just a little too much. “I should warn you that the angel in this particular little too much. “I should warn you that the angel in this particular painting is engaged in behavior one doesn’t normally associate with angels.”

“She’s engaged in a boxing match?” she said lightly. She had the peculiar sensation she was observing this conversation rather than participating in it. A slightly out of the body feeling resulting, no doubt, from finding oneself dispassionately discussing a brothel.

Called, dear God, the Velvet Glove.

“The instrument she’s playing is an organ, not a harp.”

Her mind instantly exploded with thrilling and inappropriate wonderings and obliterated all rational thought. He waited patiently for her to speak.

And when it became clear that she could not, he said crisply, “I shall allow you to decide whether you wish to view it. But I think you should. And now, I think we should pay another visit to the Montmorency Museum to ask some more questions. Shall we?”

A familiar small dirty boy was entertaining himself by leaping from step to step in front of the museum when they alighted from the Eversea carriage.

The courtyard bore no evidence that hoards of visitors might be inside. The slap of the boy’s bare feet echoed throughout it. He greeted the two of them with an extravagant wave of both arms. Boys, Chase reflected, are forever waving their limbs about as though they’re still getting accustomed to possessing them.

“Liam, are you always in front of the museum?” Rosalind sounded a little wary.

Liam snorted, as if this was hilarious “No one is always anywhere, unless they’re in the graveyard, aye?”

Chase and Rosalind exchanged glances. Street urchin philosophy.

“But ’tis where the rich coves, go, ain’t it? I earn me a shillin’ ’ere and there.”

Puzzling answer, given that the Montmorency had seemed all but deserted the time he’d been there.

“Rich coves?”

“Callender, ’e pays most when I hold the carriage ’orses,” Liam volunteered, swinging his arms as though they were pumping the words out of him. “Ireton nivver. No’ even a ha’pence. Stingy!

Others, too. I ken the ones wi’ blunt. Ye’re a rich cove,” he said to Chase, demonstrating that he could indeed tell the ones with blunt.

“I will be one day, too.”

Said with such cocksureness that Chase could have been looking at his own ten-year-old self.

“How do you know these ‘rich coves’ are indeed Callender and Ireton?” Rosalind asked.

“The coats of arms on their carriages. Callender’s a barouche, aye?” Liam addressed this to Chase, clearly thinking that Rosalind would be thick about such a thing because she was a girl. “Four bays?”

Rosalind looked at Chase for confirmation, eyebrow arched, lips folded in on themselves to keep from laughing.

Chase reflected for a moment on the male of their species: a man could be acquainted with another man for twenty years and not be able to remember the name of his wife, but he would probably know the names of the man’s horses.

“He does have a barouche and four bays.”

“’As a spear, like, on his coat of crest, and a lion, like so?” Liam lifted his arms and made a roaring face, by way of illustration. Callender did indeed have a spear and a shield and a lion on his crest.

“Yes.”

“’As gray hair? Ancient? ’As a big dot ’ere on ’is cheek?” Liam pointed to his own cheek.

By “dot” Chase assumed he meant “mole,” which, in fact, Lord Callender did have. Callender might be ten entire years older than he was, which would make him a bit past forty.

“But…when, Liam? Have any rich coves been into the Montmorency today?”

“Oh, aye. Callender ’isself went in. And one came out this morning right before sunup.”

“You mean one arrived.”

“I mean one came out.”

Chase fixed Liam with a one of those truth-extracting stares.

“Sometimes they go in and dinna come out. Sometime they come out and dinna go in,” the boy insisted stubbornly.

“Liam,” Rosalind said gently, “why are you speaking in riddles?”

Liam was so indignant he stopped waving his arms about, planted his feet. “’Tis the truth!”

“But you’re not always here to see them coming in and going out,”

she pointed out.

“Aye. But sometimes I am ’ere all day. And this morning I was ’ere. Earned an ’a’pence when the rich cove go’ in the ’ack and left. Earned me an ’a’pence from Callender.”

“Do you remember what the rich cove looked like?”

“Nivver seen ’im before. ’Is clothes were like yers, but ’e wore funny shoes. Wi’ straps-like. ’Is toes they stuck right out! Why bother wearing anything at all?” Liam was amused. “Like shoes carved right up with a knife, they were.”

“He was wearing sandals?” Extraordinary. Like an Italian peasant?

The boy frowned. “Sand…?”

“Never mind.”

“How long have the rich coves been coming and going like that?”

Rosalind asked sharply.

“Always some coves wi’ blunt comin’ and goin’,” Liam said philosophically. “Always ’ave been. But many more lately. We even paid rent on our room,” he added proudly.

paid rent on our room,” he added proudly.

Who was “we”?

Pointedly, neither he nor Rosalind asked.

“Is it possible you simply didn’t see anyone go in and out?”

“Two ways in and two ways out, Captain Eversea.” Liam used both arms and simultaneously pointed at the great main doors and at the smaller door to the right, just around the corner of the building—the service entrance, from the looks of things—stairs down into it, surrounded by a short fence, backing out onto a mews. Anyone exiting it could be seen from the courtyard. “I knows because me sister works but one day a week inside. She dusts and whatnot.”

If Callender was inside now, they would certainly be able to find him.

“Thank you, Liam.”

Liam’s bony shoulders went up and down in a modest shrug and he put out his hand, since as far as he was concerned, “Thank you”

generally meant that he ought to be paid for something, even if he hadn’t the faintest idea how he’d just been helpful. Chase frowned at the boy long enough to cause the small face to begin to twitch with worry. And then he produced a ha’pence.

“My thanks,” Liam said, in an almost flawless imitation of Chase’s accent, and shoved the coin into his dirty trouser pocket.

“What fine manners you have, Liam,” Chase said dryly as he took Rosalind’s arms and led her up the steps.

“Aye, that I do,” the boy agreed reflectively, and resumed leaping from step to step, and waiting, they supposed, for the next rich cove. “That I do.”

“Good morning.”

The clerk bolted to his feet again. “MacGregor, sir!”

Chase tried not to smile. He’d inadvertently made the greeting sound like an order again.

Mr. MacGregor looked up at Chase, and then glanced at Rosalind, and…blinked.

And then…well, Chase would have thought it admiration, but MacGregor froze and went decidedly pale. Unless he’d begun the morning pale.

“Which regiment, MacGregor?” he asked softly.

MacGregor’s eyes flared in surprise. “The Fifty-first Foot, sir.”

Chase didn’t ask MacGregor what he was doing working in a museum. He was fortunate to have a job at all, regardless of the nature of it: so many soldiers from classes other than his own were unemployed in the wake of the war. Lost and at loose ends, impoverished.

“Did you know Sergeant Beresford? Good man.”

“Aye, I knew Beresford well, sir. I would agree wholeheartedly. And a friend—Percy Emry—served under you. Said it was an honor, indeed. Said he shouldn’t like to get on the wrong side of you.”

Chase ducked his head, accepting the compliment. Such as it was.

“And ’tis an honor to have been spoken of with distinction by a fine

“And ’tis an honor to have been spoken of with distinction by a fine soldier.”

Both Beresford and Sergeant Emry had died at Waterloo. Great swells of fatigue curved beneath the clerk’s eyes, which were pale blue and swimming in pink, rather than white.

“Late night, Sergeant?” he asked suddenly.

The eyes widened in surprise. “Er…”

“It’s just that you look a little pale.”

A hesitation. “I’ve a new baby, Captain.”

There was nothing Chase wanted to hear less about than a new baby.

“My felicitations.”

“Thank you,” MacGregor said somewhat faintly.

“I have a question for you, Mr. MacGregor. Our family—the Everseas—wishes to make a bequest of a few family artifacts to one of London’s fine museums. I’ve found the Montmorency quite interesting.”

“A bequest!” MacGregor seemed genuinely surprised. “That would be kind of you, sir. The British Museum, as you might well know, is usually the recipient of such gifts. We were outbid by the British Museum for the noose meant to hang Mr. Colin Eversea,” he said sadly. “Your brother,” he clarified needlessly.

“Er…well, that wasn’t quite the sort of artifact we had in mind for donating.”

“We invariably are outbid for things,” MacGregor said morosely.

“The Montmorency is.”

Chase redirected the subject. “The Everseas thought perhaps we’d donate a painting—we’ve quite a number of some historical interest to the British public—or a suit of armor, as we’ve more than a dozen in the house in Sussex. I understand your collection here at the Montmorency was not solely the result of the Earl of Bavelock’s death?”

“Aye, sir. We’ve had a few additions since he died.”

“How are acquisitions assessed and accepted?”

Another hesitation from MacGregor. “We could always do with a fine suit of armor.”

It wasn’t quite an answer. Was it evasion? The grains of Chase’s finite patience were sifting away.

“If someone were to drive a wagon up to the front of the building and deposit a few chairs, a spinning wheel, and a sketch of their grandmother on the steps, would you find a place for all of it inside?

Near the puppets, perhaps?”

“Certainly not, sir! The decision of worthiness is made by committee. Mind you, if you were to deposit the suit of clothes Mr. Eversea the younger were wearing on that fateful day—”

Enough was enough. “Who donated the Rubinetto in the East Wing?” he barked.

Sergeant MacGregor took a moment to recover from the barked question. He braced himself. “I fear I cannot recall, sir.”

Chase carefully didn’t look at Rosalind, who’d been told by the man in front of him that all the Italian paintings had been donated by the Kinkade family.

“A pity about your memory, MacGregor.”

“I’ve always thought so, too, sir.”

He stared evenly at Chase, but the white around his mouth had taken on rather a green cast. His pale eyelashes twitched nervously. The tip of his nose was pink. Chase was reminded of the time he’d held a soft little rat in his fist, its nose twitching, pink eyes frightened.

“How long has the painting hung on the wall there?”

“Some months.”

Bloody unspecific answer for a man who likely had an encyclopedic knowledge of the entire museum.

“You see, MacGregor, the reason I ask is that I thought I recalled another painting hanging on that wall, and I came in hoping to see it. But I could well be confusing the Montmorency with the British Museum.” It was useful to mention a rival, he decided. “Perhaps you’ve moved paintings within the museum? We’ve—the Eversesas

—an Italian painting or two we might wish to share with the art-loving British public.”

“I cannot recall moving paintings, sir. We’re simply happy to have a painting the…caliber of the Rubinetto to hang on that wall.”

Another answer that wasn’t an answer.

Which in itself, as far as Chase was concerned, was an answer. Of sorts.

sorts.

He suspected MacGregor had been instructed by someone to be less forthcoming. If not to everyone, then specifically to him.

“The reason I asked about the Rubinetto is that it’s hung in such a fine location. The room is snug, protected from too much light that might fade the paintings. Our donation might be contingent upon hanging our painting on that very wall.” This had the faintest hint of regretful warning. “I saw no other location quite so appealing. The painting I had in mind would beautifully suit the room.”