Chapter Three
“The Marquess of Bancroft to see you,” Grove announced.
Arthur is here?
Madeline set down her quill. “Is he with his brother?”
“It would not appear so, my lady.”
“Perhaps they’re following in a separate carriage.”
“Perhaps,” Grove said, in a manner that indicated he deemed that possibility unlikely. “I did not, though, hear any signs of a carriage.”
“Then I suppose you must send him in.”
The butler bowed and left the room.
Madeline pulled down the cover of her desk, removed her perpetually half-finished embroidery from a drawer, and strode to the sofa. Titian would have to wait. She settled on the cushions and feigned interest in stitching turquoise plumes on a peacock. She’d need to start a new embroidery project soon, lest the servants wonder why she’d never gotten further than an inch of the peacock’s vibrant tail.
Likely the man simply wanted ideas on a birthday present with which to gift Percival. Perhaps even an anniversary present for him and his wife. Fiona was her cousin.
He needn’t bother to visit.
Fiona liked anything that dealt with stones. Preferably those shaped into objects and buried centuries ago.
If only Gabriella were not out. For the first time she wished she lived with more than a single companion. A flurry of disapproving aunts, scowling through quizzing glasses, would be perfect now.
Steps sounded outside, and she smoothed her hair and dress hastily.
She hadn’t been alone with the marquess for years, and she didn’t want him to ponder any creases on her afternoon gown.
Even if this visit would in no manner resemble those earlier ones.
She was no longer a debutante, and Arthur certainly was no longer even feigning the interest of a suitor.
Grove cleared his throat, having at some point obviously determined that his most guttural sounds denoted politeness, and announced the marquess.
Arthur entered the room and swept into a cursory bow. “Lady Mulbourne.”
The words seemed unfamiliar on his lips, and she wondered whether it was her imagination, or if the man truly did scowl.
Likely my imagination.
The man’s presence seemed to inspire it to no end.
Madeline was too conscious of dark hair that swept over his brow in an elegant manner and deep blue eyes that were far too easy to become lost in.
He seemed to have grown more muscular, and his gaze didn’t linger on her.
She forced her face to remain pleasantly placid and darted her glance to the embroidery.
Not that it was any use.
Sun rays splashed through the lace curtains, and crowned him with light. Even the velvety fabric of his navy tailcoat seemed to gleam, as if urging her to touch it.
Likely many women did just that.
The man’s long legs invaded the carpet, and he tapped his fingers against the sides of the chair. The room had always seemed satisfactorily large, but now it seemed claustrophobic. Arthur’s presence seemed to overwhelm the carefully chosen furniture and paintings.
He leaned toward her. “I need to speak with you. In private.”
Grove’s expression flickered worry before he inhaled. “I shall inform the housekeeper to fetch tea.”
Arthur sighed. “We don’t need—”
“Tea is a necessity,” Grove said sternly and left.
Grove’s protective urges calmed her.
“Thinks he’s going to find us unclothed when he gets back?” Arthur laughed and then stopped. “That was perhaps…unnecessary.”
Perhaps he recalled their time seven years ago too. Well. It couldn’t be entirely shocking that he’d retained some semblance of a memory.
“It’s been a while,” Arthur said softly. He looked at her embroidery and wrinkled his nose. “Don’t you find that tiresome?”
“It’s delightful,” she lied.
“Hmph.” Disapproval emanated through his voice. How did the man’s murmurs seem to speak so directly to her?
It didn’t matter.
He could think her interests boring. Everyone did. Even her cousins.
It served her purpose if she could be dismissed as a silly member of the ton. Even though she was a widow, and allowed more freedom than most women of her class, people thought her too conscious of the rules to willingly break any of them. Those same people were happy to laud Lord Mulbourne’s knowledge of art, not noticing he’d had no interest in the subject before his marriage.
Arthur’s expression remained disapproving. The fact was not unusual. The man never seemed to find it improper to cast dismissive glances in her direction, when he’d been the one to abandon her.
She sighed.
Somehow it was different if Mrs. Smythe or Lady Jones thought her interests conventional while happily chatting over flower arrangements. She didn’t desire for Arthur to think her interests tedious. He’d been the first person to truly understand her, and his presence seemed to tarnish their memories.
Never mind.
The thought was ridiculous. Naturally the man hadn’t thought highly of her, even then. He’d left.
She strode to the window. Far better to focus on the clomping of horse hooves over the cobbled street, and the flowers that distinguished the rows of white houses from one another, than to linger on Arthur’s comment. “Why are you here, Lord Bancroft?”
A look of embarrassment passed over his face, and a prickle of anger traversed her.
“I suspect you are not here in a fit of delayed romanticism?” she asked.
The look of embarrassment on his face deepened, and she continued. “I know some men suffer from tardiness, but seven years is surely overly excessive for even the most nonchalant. Am I to perhaps assume you were called by a sudden urge of friendship? Because your brother married my cousin years ago, and though I’ve met your stepsister and sister, and even dear heavens your mother frequently, I’ve never seen you.”
He shifted his legs, crossing and uncrossing his ankles. Good. The man didn’t deserve comfort.
She’d been silent years ago, but she was older now. She didn’t need to hesitate, compelled to hope that his silence might be explained away and unwilling to encumber him with typical female expressions of frustration.
All women knew that men could be easily frightened, that invitations to meet a woman’s parents might yield sweat and indigestion. Men prided themselves on their logic, but she’d never met people less prone to it. They seemed to equate a quiet tea with a woman’s aunt and uncle with marital bells.
“It’s a shame to end your years-long habit of avoiding me with coming here yourself.”
“Look.” Arthur raked a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry about the past. I didn’t know you wanted my friendship—”
“I don’t.” She forced herself to smile sweetly and pushed her needle through the fabric.
“Perhaps you’ll be more effective using thread.”
She gazed down. She’d failed to thread her needle.
Arthur had always been agonizingly observant. Not a quality she associated with men.
Warmth invaded her cheeks, but she reached for her thread.
“I wanted to ask you a question,” Arthur said.
“Go ahead.”
At one point the statement might have made her heart skip. But that had been in the past. Before she’d learned that Arthur had left London in the middle of the night, without even telling her.
“There have been a series of jewelry thefts. I wondered if I might discuss them with you.”
Her back stiffened, and the moisture in her mouth seemed to have vanished. She coughed and forced her voice to sound even. “How curious.”
“I think so.” Arthur’s tone remained serious. “All the pieces belonged to a set, and they were all stolen from disparate regions over a two year period.”
She tried to laugh again. “I suppose everyone loves pretty things.”
Normally her girlish voice worked. Normally people thought her naive and unintelligent, two qualities that suited her. That’s why she’d been so successful at pretending her late husband had written books on art instead of her. They’d made a bargain soon after their wedding, and only occasionally did she wonder if she’d been foolish to publish all her work on art theories under his name. All the same, it had seemed to make sense at the time. It still did. No one cared what a woman thought about Michelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci, but everyone seemed to find an aristocrat’s opinion fascinating.
“I didn’t realize you were so interested in gems,” she said.
“I am a man of varied interests.”
“I imagine the newspapers will have information for your perusal,” Madeline said.
“Perhaps.” Arthur shrugged.
She took a thread and directed it at the eye of her needle.
Or at least, she attempted to direct it at the eye.
The task seemed to be of greater difficulty than she remembered, and she frowned at the offending turquoise thread. Her hands trembled, a fate that did not often befall them, even under the more questionable corners of the continent, but she supposed even then she did not have Arthur’s presence.
He might not be standing up, might not even be leaning toward her in his armchair, but she felt every inch of his six three height, as surely as if he were standing over her in a coat of medieval armor and waving a newly sharpened sword.
Madeline refused to let her expression falter, and she concentrated again on threading the needle. Her heart galloped inside her chest.
He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know.
The words rushed through her mind, as strong as any prayer.
A noise sounded, and she realized that Arthur was sauntering toward her. His shadow covered her, and then his hand reached toward her.
The scent of sweat and cotton wafted over her, and she inhaled. She stiffened, resisting the urge to close her eyes.
She hadn’t realized how much she missed his scent.
Surely she should have forgotten the particular mingling of masculine aromas that reminded her of him.
“Madeline.” His hands swept toward her, and she closed her eyes, already imagining the touch of his lips against her own.
He removed the cotton from her hand and took the needle. “Allow me.”
She watched, horrified, as he calmly threaded the needle and returned it to her. “Three younger sisters,” he said. “Makes me rather an expert.”
He did not say that she should be rather an expert herself.
He did not mention that everyone associated her with perfecting the ways of the female ton members.
Embroidery certainly should be well within her capabilities. Hadn’t she learned when she was five?
Heat flooded her face.
“That’s a nice painting of Venice,” he said, glancing on the wall above her. “Is that a real Canaletto?”
She stiffened. “No, it’s not.”
“I could have sworn…”
“Do you fancy yourself an art expert?” She kept a condescending note in her voice, but the man only shrugged.
“I’ve been doing some studying.”
“Studying?”
Oh, no.
“Reading. My new interest.” He grinned, and her heart leaped involuntarily.
“Quite a labyrinth of canals,” he said, musing at it.
“I like looking at it,” she confessed. “Makes me less lost if I ever visit Venice.”
“I was under the impression that you’d already been there.”
She gave him a tight smile. She hadn’t expected him to follow news of her through the gossip chains. But then, perhaps he’d only heard her cousin Fiona mention it.
“I’ve only ever had short visits,” she said.
“I’m particularly interested in Venetian jewelry.”
“Oh?”
It was best not to dwell on her knowledge of Venice. She couldn’t have him associate her with the Costantini family.
Thank heavens Gabriella was not here.
She hadn’t wanted a member of the Costantini family to be seen in London on the night of the jewel theft. She’d arranged for her to be at a house party in Cambridgeshire where many witnesses might testify to her presence.
So far no magistrate had linked either of them to the thefts.
She’d been successful in stealing four of the five pieces in the jewel set. She only needed to find the fifth one, and then she would have fulfilled her promise to Gabriella to restore her family to at least some of its pre-Bonaparte glory. Arthur’s eyes remained narrow, and she was grateful when the housekeeper arrived with the tea.
“Don’t you admire these teacups and saucers, Lord Bancroft?” she said in her most girlish voice. “The shade of green is really most fine. But perhaps you have a preference for blue and white teacups?”
“Green is fine,” he said.
“Just tolerable? Mrs. Humphreys,” she called out. “Perhaps you should bring the other tea set. The marquess does not seem to care for these.”
“Very well.” The housekeeper gave Arthur a disdainful glance. Likely Grove had shared his negative opinion of Arthur with her in the kitchen.
“It’s fine,” Arthur hastened to say. “These are quite—er—lovely.”
“You don’t find the color makes you want to cast your contents?”
“Er—no.” Arthur’s face did seem to grow somewhat greener, and Madeline strove not to smirk. Or at least, to keep her smirk to a moderate size.
“I’ll ring for you if the marquess finds he has overestimated the strength of his stomach,” she told the housekeeper, satisfied Mrs. Humphreys still looked appropriately disapproving at Arthur.
“I will not require that.” His tone conveyed an icy outrage, and his eyebrows soared upward. The man resembled an angry warrior.
“Then I shall leave you to it.” Mrs. Humphreys sniffed and left the room.
Madeline picked up the silver teapot and poured some tea into a cup. She added a modicum of milk and three scoops of sugar and passed the cup and saucer to Arthur.
“You remember how I take my tea,” Arthur said.
“Everyone drinks tea this way.”
“I seem to remember you preferring tea without sugar.” Clearly the man had recovered from her insult of his stomach capabilities.
He smirked.
The same smirk he’d thrown toward her when she was eighteen, and when she’d believed they shared private amusements together.
She cursed that the sparkle in his eyes still forced her heart to flutter in an inappropriate fashion.
“Nonsense.” She added three scoops of sugar to her already milky tea. “This is the ideal way to drink it.”
She swallowed the warm liquid and tried not to grimace at the overly sweet taste and the grainy texture of not yet melted sugar.
Arthur lifted one of his eyebrows.
“It’s delicious.” She set the teacup down. The china clanged against the matching saucer, and she forced herself to smile brightly.
The cockiness in Arthur’s face wavered. “I remember that you were very interested in art.”
“I’m interested in many things.”
He glanced at her abandoned embroidery. “Sewing?”
She despised the mirth in his tone. “Music. And—rambling.”
“Rambling?”
“I adore rambling,” she said defiantly. “Why look at art when one can walk outside?”
“Even in mud?”
“The uneven surface makes the activity more delightful.”
“I did not realize you had such a fondness for slippery activities.”
“It has been quite a while since I’ve had any interest in art.”
“Oh.” He assessed her. “That is a pity.”
His voice seemed so serious. His sudden earnestness to learn about her opinions on the subject was so endearing, and she needed to remind herself that no good could come of disclosing her knowledge of the Costantini jewels.
After all, he didn’t care for her.
He never had.
She may have spent too much of their time together lauding the art galleries in London. She’d been from Yorkshire. Her family’s collection had been the best in the area, but when she had her season, and first visited the townhomes of families with even more wealth than her own, she realized how much she’d missed.
She’d rapturized over the glories of Titian and Raphael, Poussin and Rubens.
When she wasn’t dragging her chaperones to museums, she was reading texts about art. London had seemed everything wonderful, and she hadn’t understood when her cousin Fiona, who had debuted at the same time, had not embraced the experience.
She’d been so eager to move to London, to embrace life, but in the end she’d spent too much time talking about her plans with the dangerously handsome, and even more dangerously roguish, Arthur Carmichael than securing a match. In the end Arthur had left London, and Madeline had been lucky to find someone to marry.
She wasn’t going to confide in him again.
Especially now.
“Please tell me you haven’t mistaken me for some appalling bluestocking. Still, aren’t pretty things preferable?” She picked up her teacup again, forgetting the overly sweet liquid. “Like this Staffordshire.”
She fluttered her eyelashes and kept her voice at a girlish pitch.
Most men would laugh at that point and call her a lovely little lady.
Arthur was not most men.
She wondered how his gaze managed to always remain so frustratingly intelligent. He might have a reputation for being a rogue, but he was cleverer than the set that lingered in gaming halls and tittered in balls, ranking the new debutantes on a numerical scale.
She knew the rumors about his work. She’d memorized every passing comment anyone had made about him.
She doubted he’d been the Corinthian he was rumored to be. And if there was only the slightest chance he was working for the government—
“Goodness.” She grabbed a sweet and munched on it. For the first time she cursed the small size. Larger sizes might be less elegant to eat, and though she prided herself on her elegance, tackling a weighty scone might give her more time to think.
“You wouldn’t know anything about why someone may have chosen to steal the pieces? It’s important to know what type of person to look for.”
She forced herself to smile. “I assure you that I am not acquainted with the criminal class.”
I don’t know other thieves.
His eyebrows rose. “Oh, of course I wouldn’t expect it of you.”
“I would hope not,” she said primly, doing her best to channel Mrs. Humphrey’s indignant rebukes.
“I merely thought…”
She gazed at him innocently, and he coughed.
“Your late husband was an accomplished art theorist.”
“Ah…yes,” she told the familiar lie. This time, strangely, it did not come as easily as it usually did. She forced herself to continue, “But Lord Mulbourne’s accomplishments were never my own…”