Chapter 4
Next day
Some days were born perfect.
On the bridge of an East Indiaman, with the open sea beneath his feet, the clear sky above his head, and a crew to command, the outside world didn’t stand a chance of touching Jake.
His head snapped around and another command issued forth. “You there, haul that crate to the foc’sle.” A cooling breeze lifted off the water and caressed the back of his neck. “And you, see to it the mainsail is trimmed and secured.”
On a trading vessel as well-run as the Fortuyn, every man understood his task and set about it with utmost efficiency. There were times when the deck of a ship resembled nothing so much as a hive of bees in springtime. It was a joy to behold.
Deep within him settled a feeling of peace. This was where he belonged. This was home.
A pair of watchful eyes drew his attention. In them, he saw the truth of the current situation reflected back at him. They reminded him that today wasn’t a perfect day.
The open sea didn’t roil beneath his feet, only a thin layer of muddy Thames kept the moored ship afloat.
The sky above wasn’t clear. In fact, above his head hung a sky oppressive with London fog.
And this wasn’t his crew to command. Not anymore.
Nylander, the man observing him and his closest childhood mate, was now captain of the Fortuyn. This was his crew to command.
Jake stood on the verge of crossing a line, if he hadn’t already. His function today was purely administrative on behalf of his family’s shipping interests. “Are you on schedule to unload her at the Pool before nightfall?” The Pool of London was a bureaucratic mess, but a necessary destination for all trade vessels making their way up the Thames.
Nylander nodded sharply before replying, “The men are anxious for home.”
Although the ship sailed under the protection of England’s colors thanks to Jake’s patrilineal line, home for many of the crew was the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It was obvious in the efficiency of their movements that both captain and crew were anxious to be on their way. They would have been separated from their families for more than a year.
Disappointment shot through Jake. “Ah, well, next trip I’ll buy you a pint, and you can regale me with a seaworthy tale or two.”
“Next trip.” Nylander paused, avoiding Jake’s gaze, before adding, “my lord.” The Dutch weren’t known for mincing words.
Jake’s past life had slipped through his fingers. No longer a sailor. No longer one of them, Nylander’s tactfully averted eyes told him. A viscount didn’t risk his precious, noble hide to captain ships or partake of any occupation that hinted at trade. He dutifully split his time between London and his country estates.
The bitterness of it clogged his throat. Christ, how he missed the open sea. He suddenly wanted nothing more than to be done with this meeting and off this ship. “All looks in order.” He passed the paperwork to his steward, Payne. “Captain, Godspeed.”
He held out his hand to shake Nylander’s. Rough callouses lined the captain’s palm, and Jake realized with a start that his own were fading. Soft hands, one of the many privileges of the soft life of a gentleman. He’d spent too much time in a seated position, attempting to balance a dead man’s books that refused to balance. A cord of wood must need chopping somewhere in Belgravia.
Another curt nod and Nylander’s sun-bleached head whipped around as he issued commands to the active crew, his attention concentrated on the monumental task of accounting for cargo accumulated over several months from myriad ports lining the Pacific and Indian Oceans.
Jake stepped off the gangway and onto dry land, Payne, mosquito-like, racing to catch him. Payne had also been the previous viscount’s steward. “Shall I summon your coach, my lord?” The tip of the servant’s thin, needle-like nose moved in unison with each word he spoke. A nose, Jake couldn’t help reflecting, which was a perfect counterpoint to the rest of the man’s rotund, yet compact, body.
“That won’t be necessary.” Jake quickened his step. “You take the carriage, and I shall walk.”
“Walk, my lord?” Payne called out, winded trying to keep up.
Jake came to a sudden stop and pointed his face toward a gray sky that precisely mirrored his mood. “I shall place one foot in front of the other until I’ve reached my destination.”
“Through Limehouse?” Payne struggled to keep up. “And the East End, my lord?”
“We shall review the ship’s accounting in the hour before tea,” Jake called over his shoulder, each step separating him from Payne, propelling him toward freedom as he set out onto damp, narrow streets.
“My Lord St. Alban,” Payne acceded, defeat evident in his fading voice.
St. Alban.
The Dowager had been right: he was St. Alban. It was time to get on with it.
However, she’d been wrong in one regard. He wouldn’t play protégé to the Duke of Arundel. He didn’t trust the advice of any man from a social class whose sole purpose was to lead as unproductive lives as possible. He couldn’t understand a man who didn’t want to dirty his hands from time to time or enjoy a frothy pint at the end of an honest day’s work.
To be fair, the Duke did appear to have a shrewd brain in his head. But Jake was determined to stay away from the man for an additional and entirely different reason: Lady Olivia.
He wasn’t sure what had been in the air last night, but in the light of day, he saw matters more clearly. And the fact of the matter was this: Lady Olivia may be connected to every lord and lady in London, but the woman was a walking scandal.
He would stop thinking about her and focus on any number of the ladies the Dowager had introduced to him last night after Lady Olivia left. Like Miss Fox, the only daughter of a baron and an ideal match, according to the Dowager. The lady had a spotless reputation with not a hint of scandal hanging about her. And if she was a little plain, well, he couldn’t hold that against her. Every woman was a little plain compared to . . .
Lady Olivia. There she was again, popping into his head. The woman intrigued him too much by half. Perhaps that was why he’d relentlessly provoked her.
It was possible he owed her an apology, except he didn’t feel apologetic. Not when she held her tongue in such controlled reserve, yet her eyes flashed hot and pretty blushes crept up from the creamy depths of her décolletage.
He would be willing to wager that he hadn’t been the only one interested, engaged, and enlivened by their banter.
No matter. He must banish her from his mind. She wasn’t right for him. More importantly, she wasn’t right for Mina. Mina needed a guide through Society who was wholesome and unblemished, who never spoke a wrong word and never took a wrong step. And Lady Olivia, well, she exemplified none of those qualities.
“Sir! Sir!” he heard behind him. A quick backward glance revealed a street urchin on his tail, a plaintive cry on his lips. “Milord! Milord! A penny, sir? A farthing, milord?”
Jake stopped and pulled a crown from his vest pocket. He watched the boy’s eyes go canny and wide as the coin glinted silver in a fleeting ray of sunlight. Before he could reconsider his offer, the urchin snatched it from his outstretched fingers and ran down a rancid alley as fast as his scrawny legs could carry him.
The fact that he carried coin had probably shocked the boy speechless. English gentlemen were above matters as trivial as money, pockets righteously empty of filthy lucre. And judging by his cousin’s papers, so, too, were their bank accounts. A thorough gentleman to the end, the late Fourth Viscount St. Alban.
Jake glanced about his surroundings before resuming his westward trek. He hadn’t the faintest clue as to his whereabouts, except that he should keep heading toward St. Paul’s Cathedral. He was definitely still in the East End, judging by the putrid smells pouring in from every direction: over from the filthy river, up from the filthy sidewalk, down from filthy chamber pots. Filth was the common thread that linked one slum to every other slum around the world.
He breathed it in, let it coat his nostrils. The air smelled real and like home. He’d never lived in a slum, but it wasn’t a stretch to say close quarters on a ship at full capacity often resembled one.
Here in the East End, surrounded by cutthroats, thieves, venders, beggars, and whores, he was able to experience that wildness of life missing from the tame drawing rooms of Mayfair and St. James. He was a duck out of water in those rooms.
And Mina?
His body tensed, ready for battle, as the buzz of the ton’s scrutiny, their speculation, their unkind titters returned to him. In her fourteen years on this earth, what a large amount of tumult Mina had endured. From the very beginning . . .
A face appeared in Jake’s mind’s eye: a clammy, labor exhausted face, the light fading fast from it, content in death at the promise she’d exacted from him. “Protect her, Jakob . . . she’ll have only you . . .”—Her weak grip on his arm had taken on an unexpected tenacity—“only you can do it . . . for Minako, my little Mina.”
Familiar pain spiked through him, and Jake banished the anguished face to the past where it belonged. His focus sharpened on the present.
The narrow London view was still gray, still filthy, and ever crowded as the morning progressed. He glanced at his pocket watch and picked up the clip of his stride. He didn’t want to be late for his appointment with yet another girls’ school.
He’d already interviewed three candidates with no luck. Mina needed more than piano lessons, drawing lessons, French lessons, and tea pouring lessons. Her brain tended toward natural philosophy and mathematics. The writings of Sir Isaac Newton excited her in a way that the newest dance step might for other girls.
The problem was that he had yet to find a school willing to teach to Mina’s intellect, and he resisted the idea of private instructors. She must form relationships with her peers if she was to have a chance of entering Society with a measure of success.
What was the name of the school Lady Olivia was connected to? The Progressive School for Young Ladies and something or another?
It mattered not, for he wouldn’t be pursuing that particular school. He needed to stay as far away as possible from the scandal-prone and, therefore, unmarriageable Lady Olivia Montfort.
Marriage. That was another way he would ensure Mina’s success. A stepmother of impeccable reputation and lineage would provide invaluable connections and assistance in the endeavor. He needed a partner in a wife. Whether or not she made him feel interested, engaged, and alive was of little consequence.
He shook his head, as if he could as easily shake Lady Olivia loose, and made to cross a street when a carriage whizzed past, splashing water fetid with street grime onto his boots. He snapped to. He would be run over and killed, if he wasn’t careful. A quick left-to-right glance confirmed the intersection was clear, and he jogged across uneven cobblestones until his feet hit sidewalk once again.
A voice called out, “Hey, guv, ye ain’t passin’ by without tastin’ one ‘a tha misses’ buns, are ye?”
Jake half-turned to find a rotund man coated in a fine dusting of flour belligerently eyeing him up and down. The man was a caricature of a baker come to life. “What have you there?” he asked, approaching the open window with the man’s substantial belly hanging out of it.
“We got yer stickies,” the baker said in a sheepish tone, clearly not anticipating Jake’s interest in his wares. He craned his head back and shouted, “Fanny! You got yer hot crosses out?”
“Out in two if a minute,” came Fanny’s shouted reply.
“Oh, come on, woman. Got a real gent’ulman customer ‘ere.” The baker pulled a beleaguered face as if to say, Ain’t it like a woman.
“A what?” The woman rounded the corner from the back of the shop and stopped dead in her tracks, straightening her apron as she puffed out her low-slung chest. “Oh, a real gent’ulman is right, I say.” She smiled what Jake would have called a toothy grin, if she hadn’t been missing her two front teeth. “Ne’er seen tha likes o’ ye ‘round here. New to tha area?”
“Something like that,” he said, his lips ticking up to the side.
Fanny sucked in a deep breath, further enhancing her breasts. In a whispery voice, she asked, “Wha’ canna git’cha?”
“A single sticky?”
“I can git’cha more ‘n that, guv.”
“Awright, Fanny, to tha back wi’ ye.” The baker shooed Fanny away, but not before she flashed Jake one last toothless smile. The baker shook his head in mournful fashion. “Sorry ‘bout that, guv. She gits like that ‘round yer lot. Mem’ries o’ days spent ‘round the street corner, if ya catch me drift.”
Jake set a coin on the window ledge. “Will this do?”
“And then some if ye can wait for a few hot crosses,” the baker said, pocketing the coin and shoving a sticky bun into Jake’s hand. “Tha missus won’t mind seein’ the front o’ ye agin, tha’s one thin’ for sure!”
The baker’s parting words were lost to Jake’s retreating back, the entirety of his attention now fixed on the not insubstantial task of managing the sticky bun. True to its name, it right and truly stuck to his fingers, a bit on the lapel of his dove gray overcoat, a drop on the top of his right boot. As soon as he was out of sight of the baker’s storefront, he tossed the thing into an alley and appraised fingers shiny with caramelized sugar.
Well, there was nothing else for it: he began licking. He had no intention of sticking to everything he touched all day. By the time he reached his third finger, he was distracted by the sensation of sugar-coated fingers in a way he hadn’t been since he was a tot in leading strings.
His footsteps slowed, and he felt . . . pleasure. The sort of simple pleasure he hadn’t experienced in years. Here, on a street where no one knew him, he could luxuriate in the freedom of a simple pleasure.
A smile, wide and unruly, played about his lips, and his eyes blinked open. When had they drifted shut?
The question was destined to remain forever unanswered as his brain registered a sight he’d had no way of anticipating. A nondescript woman, her head down, with no concern for any but her own forward trajectory, about to charge directly into him. Between the tick and the tock of his pocket watch, time did a funny thing and elongated, even as it compressed and intensified. He had only a blink to brace himself for impact.
The instant their bodies bounced off each other, the woman’s round, blue eyes met his and clung to him in speechless shock. A heartbeat later, the heat of recognition thrummed through Jake.
This small-scale typhoon was none other than Lady Olivia Montfort.
His right hand shot out when it became apparent that Lady Olivia wasn’t only bouncing backward, but backward into a street full of late-morning traffic in the form of fast-moving carriages and delivery carts. His hand clamped around her forearm and jerked her upright to safety.
A loud, “Oof!” whooshed from the parted “O” of her lips as a sheaf of papers flew out of her hands and scattered across the fetid East End sidewalk. A confused moment followed as their bodies pressed full-length against each other—chests heaving, breaths mingling—for a heartbeat too long. Her head tipped back, and her eyes met his.
Gone was last night’s measured reserve. Now the primitive emotion that came from having cheated death blazed across their blue depths. A spark of lust shot straight through him, and his hand dropped from her arm as if scorched.
Her eyebrows knit together, and her head canted to the side. “Why on earth are you—” she began before stopping short. Her face animated in wide-eyed panic. “My sketches!” She sprang away and began weaving through annoyed passersby in a desperate attempt to retrieve the sheets of paper strewn haphazardly across the sidewalk. She cut him a sharp glance. “Are you going to stand there all day, or help me?”
Jake found himself following her lead as he blindly crouched his way through a forest of tetchy legs and impatient feet. A few filthy minutes later, every sheet was accounted for.
Eyes slinging arrows his way, Lady Olivia closed the gap between them and snatched the sheets from his hands. “A bit of advice?” she began. “You should watch where you’re walking.”
He cocked his head. An air of expectancy hung about her. It was trying to tell him something . . .
It hit him. She expected an apology.
“I should watch where I’m walking?” he asked, astounded by the cheek of the woman.
“You mustn’t go around knocking ladies into the street. Or is that yet another social nicety neglected in your education?” She drew herself up in a show of righteous indignation. “I could have been killed.”
“You very nearly were,” he replied. “But ‘tis you who must be careful. A narrow London street in the East End might not be the most inviting location for a lady’s daily stroll.”
“You know nothing about me”—Her demeanor returned to its familiar state of studied calm. A pang of loss flashed through him for the other Lady Olivia he’d glimpsed, the one who blazed with emotion, primitive, raw, and open—“or where I should be . . . strolling.”
She glared at him from below, her fullest height no more than a few inches over five feet, her hair styled in a severe chignon. If they hadn’t collided, he would have walked right past her without a second glance. Impossible that the curves he’d glimpsed last night hid beneath the drab, serviceable overcoat that camouflaged her like some sort of slum chameleon. He couldn’t decide if the overcoat deserved a funeral pyre or a medal of honor.
As he watched her shuffle through the sketches, examining them one by one, a wisp of memory tickled at the back of his brain. He’d seen these sketches before or, at least, this subject. The material itself was typically representative of Japanese motifs—a serene depiction of nature both botanical and animal—but a specificity lay within these sketches that extended beyond their familiar subject matter.
It was in the brush strokes. A delicate, feathery quality characterized much Japanese art. But not these pieces. Here were brush strokes dense and bold, too singular to be ordinary or forgotten. Indeed, he’d seen these pieces before, but the context eluded him.
He caught Lady Olivia watching him. How had she, of all people, come by such a subject long enough to sketch it?
The baffling woman narrowed her eyes. “I would thank you, Lord St. Alban, but for what, I’m not precisely certain.”
“For saving your life?”
“When you are also the same who introduced the danger into it?” she shot back in that soft, yet steely, voice of hers.
He nodded once and allowed her the last word. Lips pressed in a firm line, she rolled up the soiled sketches and hailed a hackney with a short, sharp whistle. Lady Olivia surprised at every turn.
As soon as a hackney stopped, he tipped his hat and made haste to keep his appointment, resisting his body’s urging for a single backward glance. He’d gone only a few steps when out of the corner of his eye he glimpsed a shock of white amidst the sidewalk’s sea of grime. In three quick strides, he stood over the sheet of paper and snatched it off the ground. She’d miscounted and forgotten a sketch.
He started toward the carriage to return it when a detail at the bottom left corner caught his eye. A tall girl standing apart from a small group of other girls.
He stopped dead in his tracks. Context crashed down on him with the violent force of a hurricane, memories of when and where he’d seen the original paintings slamming through him.
Fifteen years ago. The Kimura compound in Nagasaki. Her, captured reading a book, a sliver of light catching the lines and angles of her face, immortalized in a priceless set of Japanese Kanō paintings.
At the time, he’d barely questioned how she’d come to be part of that painting, in that particular room. Six months later, he’d known exactly why. But, by then, it had been too late.
Another memory asserted itself: this set of paintings had been stolen in the dead of night, shortly after his departure from Dejima with Mina. The Kimura family had tried to hush up the details, to ensure they didn’t leave the Bay of Nagasaki, but word had leaked out anyway.
How had the paintings surfaced here in London? How was it possible that this piece of a long-buried past had followed him and Mina all the way to England? That someone else held the key that would unlock Mina’s secrets?
With the certainty and efficiency of a ship captain, Jake’s mind worked out a course of action. He must locate the original paintings and determine how much their “owner” knew about Mina. He didn’t know for certain that the person now in possession of the paintings stole them, but he did know that person, by virtue of owning them, was connected to the theft. It was safest to consider that person dangerous and a threat to Mina. It was possible this person—the thief, for expediency’s sake—intended to trade on her connection to the paintings and her true heritage. Her Japanese descent was obvious, but that only scratched the surface of the story.
Further, she wasn’t merely the daughter of Jakob Radclyffe, but of the Viscount St. Alban, exalted peer of the realm. With a few well-chosen words in the wrong ears, the thief of those paintings could destroy the new life Jake was constructing for his daughter.
He wouldn’t fail Mina the way he’d failed her mother. The truth must never find its way to the surface . . . or to the wagging tongues of Society. He would silence the thief.
His head whipped around. Lady Olivia . . . She was connected to the thief somehow. And he’d just let her go.
He pivoted and sprinted down the sidewalk against the flow of foot traffic, ignoring cries of half-hearted protests. On the run, he scanned the carriages lining the street, all black and ominously the same. He must reach her before she slipped away.
He caught a glimpse of wispy blonde hair showing through a back carriage window, making its way up Ludgate Hill and onto Fleet Street. His feet slowed before coming to a defeated stop, his heart an unrelenting hammer in his chest.
What did Lady Olivia know about the stolen Kanō paintings? His mind raced as the full import of the discovery crashed in on him.
Even if she was a walking scandal, Lady Olivia remained a glimmering jewel of Society. A lady with no business navigating London streets like a shop girl. She had the power of a dukedom behind her, quite the opposite of a shop girl who could be plied with a trinket or a night on the town. A literal fortress surrounded the blasted woman, likely a moat, too.
How could he get close enough to a woman like her to unlock her secrets? As soon as the question formed, two answers revealed themselves: The Duke of Arundel and The Progressive School for Young Ladies and the Education of Their Minds.
Immediately, he dismissed the idea of the school. Along that path lay too many unknowns.
But the Duke was an altogether different matter. The dukedom wasn’t the obstacle, but rather the key. It would place him directly inside her home as the Duke of Arundel’s protégé, allowing him access to her. Access to the paintings and the thief was only a step removed.
The uncertain and scandalous future he feared for Mina began to recede into a more manageable state.
Lady Olivia would provide him the information he needed.
It wasn’t a matter of if, but when.