Lady Rogue Read online

  “Very well. Doubtless you noted the desirability of the neighborhood? The garden square? We could tour it if you wish.”

  “I do like the garden square.” Raised in the country seat of her father, Isabel sometimes felt starved for the sight of growing things in the city. “And there is no question that the neighborhood is fine. But let us have a look at the house first.” She took up another loop of the leash as Brinley sniffed circles around Nash’s patent-leather shoes.

  “Ordinarily I wouldn’t show this house to two females,” Nash confided as he unlocked the door. “But I have made an exception for a friend of the Duke of Ardmore.”

  Lucy darted a sideways glance at Isabel. Is that all right? Are you going to let that comment pass?

  Of course it wasn’t. And she wasn’t.

  “The dog is male, if that helps,” Isabel replied. “And why would you not show this house to delicate females such as ourselves?” She leaned in, eyes wide, and whispered, “Is there something improper about it?”

  “Heavens, no!” He pokered up. “But it is a large house and will require a steady hand with staff.”

  He wasn’t wrong about this; she could tell by looking at the broad stone façade. Three stories plus an attic, and who knew how many rooms?

  “If you swear it’s not improper,” she granted, “I suppose we will have a look.”

  With a sniff from Nash and the satisfying silence of well-oiled hinges, the door opened on a spacious entryway. It was at least three times the size of the one in Isabel’s current house, marble-tiled and silk-papered and pleasantly scented of beeswax and lemon oil. Bare of furnishings, it looked even larger than it truly was, and the staircase that lay ahead loomed just as wide and grand.

  Isabel knew at once she wasn’t going to take this house. “It is lovely,” she said over the sound of Brinley’s claws clicking over marble. “I am not certain, though, that it will suit.”

  She would bring a dog inside to disoblige Nash, but she wouldn’t purchase a house.

  “I understood you to want a tonnish neighborhood.” Beside her, Nash tipped his head and fixed a beady dark eye on her.

  Isabel handed Brinley’s leash to Lucy. “Tonnish, yes, with the emphasis on the ish. I don’t mean that I wish to have Angelus as a neighbor, but I don’t mind if I’m outside of Mayfair.”

  Nash waved a hand. “Of course you want to be in Mayfair. Now, have a look through this door. I believe you will be pleased at the size of this drawing room. I say this one, because there are several, all elegantly appointed. Come, come! Do not hang back. You must have a look at the house you intend to buy.”

  Lucy dropped the end of the leash. With a yelp and a skitter of claws over smooth stone, Brinley took off—first for Nash’s shoes, then, after he’d rejected them, into the drawing room to sniff about its perimeter.

  “Oh, dear!” Lucy clapped a hand to her mouth, looking almost genuinely distressed. “I am so sorry, Mr. Nash. I was overcome at the sight of the room. Truly, it is beautiful.”

  The house agent made a strange noise.

  Isabel fought to keep a solemn expression. “How embarrassing,” she cooed. “I must apologize, Mr. Nash! Truly, we should have let you hold the leash. You have the firm hand that we ladies lack.”

  Nash looked suspicious, as if he suspected he were being led by the nose but could not see the rope.

  Crossing the drawing room—which really was elegant and spacious—she took Brinley’s leash in hand. He whined a protest as she marched him back across the room, away from what had evidently been a fascinating smell. “Mr. Nash, would you mind holding him while we tour the remainder of the house? Excellent! I do appreciate it. You will know just how to handle him, I am sure.”

  The house agent looked at the leash in his hand, and the little dog winding it in a circuit around his legs, with some dismay. “Lady Isabel, I cannot—that is, it’s not done for you to look about the house without my supervision.”

  Again, she widened her eyes. “Oh, dear! But you assured us it was not improper! What ever will we find? Oh, Lucy dear, come take my hand.”

  Lucy’s mouth was twitching as she obeyed.

  “No, it’s not—I assure you, my lady, there is nothing improper in the house. Nothing that will offend your sensibilities in the slightest.”

  Isabel let out a great breath. “How you relieve my mind! Thank you, Mr. Nash. We should not have known what to do without you. Shall we meet you here in—let us say, fifteen minutes? Only I do not have a watch, so you must let me know when it has been long enough.”

  And with Lucy’s hand in hers, she turned about and swanned up the stairs, not much caring in which part of the house she wound up. Behind them, Brinley barked and whined. Nash called after them once, but she pretended not to hear.

  “Aunt Isabel,” Lucy breathed as they reached the first story and stepped onto a floor of polished wood, “you were marvelous.”

  “I can’t imagine what you mean. All I did was act in the way he expected. Dim-witted and helpless.” Isabel paused, looking about the corridor. Good lines. Wide, spacious. Far too many rooms for her needs. “Perhaps I took it farther than he expected. But you know, Andrew—Mr. Morrow—used to treat me as if I were helpless sometimes. I wish now that I’d turned it about on him, instead of lodging a protest to which he didn’t listen in the slightest.”

  “But you’re so brave. You traveled all those places with him, and you were so young.”

  Isabel smiled at that, but it was wry. “It was easy to agree and obey. Not to mention it was good manners, and above all I’d been raised to have good manners.” She turned around, looking at the dimensions of the house. “Do you want to look about anymore?”

  “Not if you don’t.”

  “It would be more entertaining to poke around if there were still furniture and belongings. In truth, I knew as soon as I saw the place that it wouldn’t suit, but we mustn’t let Mr. Nash know we females can make up our own minds. Not just yet.”

  The upstairs was pleasant enough, with filtered sunlight and the same clean scent of lemon oil. But there was not a chair in sight; not a stick of any furniture. So Isabel plumped onto the floor at the top of the stairs, setting her feet on a step as if it were a stool, and patted the floor next to her. “Come, sit by me, and I shall tell you the terrible truth about husbands.”

  Lucy looked wary as she sat. “I thought you wanted me to marry.”

  “Not if you don’t,” Isabel teased, repeating Lucy’s own words.

  “But I do.” Lucy caught one of her blond curls between thumb and forefinger, tugging and twining it about her finger. “Are husbands truly terrible?”

  “No, I was being dramatic. Though some are. It depends on the husband.” Her brows knit. “It depends on the wife, too. Some men will take exactly as much power as they’re given, and they’ll give as little respect as is demanded of them.”

  “But Uncle Andrew—” Lucy halted; she didn’t often speak his name.

  Isabel didn’t either. “I was meant,” she explained, “to be an adjunct to his career without asking too many questions. But once the wedding was done and we were alone on our honeymoon, I had nothing to say for myself. So much was drilled into me in order to get me ready for my come-out in society, I had never thought about what would come afterwards.”

  Lucy looked much struck. “You knew how to run a household.”

  “Does that fill a person’s days? It could, I suppose. But it felt like treading water. I never accomplished anything of my own.” She traced a vein in the marble of the top stair. “I knew how to paint a pretty watercolor, but I couldn’t discuss paints and shading as Andrew wished. And what good was needlepoint when our home was fully furnished? What use cards when there was no one to play with?”

  As if he heard her questions, a fit of yipping from Brinley echoed up the stairs.

  “He is enjoying himself.” Lucy frowned. “So what did you do?”

  “I read everything I could. I wante
d to learn, because if I didn’t learn, I wouldn’t be useful. And if I wasn’t useful, who would I be? I was useful to my parents when they thought I’d train up well and make a good match. But then what?”

  “It’s awful to be uncertain,” Lucy agreed. “But men in the ton don’t want useful wives, do they? Lady Teasdale’s son is in politics, and Mrs. Roderick’s son hunts all the time.”

  “They don’t want their wives to have to be useful,” mused Isabel. “But a pretty face fades over the years. A sharp mind doesn’t dull. Though as long as I was pretty and sweet, that was all Andrew expected of me.”

  Lucy drew up her knees, folding her arms around them. “Then why did you care?”

  Isabel rolled her eyes. “Ugh. I couldn’t imagine spending the rest of my life being nothing but pretty and sweet.”

  “Yet you can’t help it,” laughed Lucy.

  “Dear girl. I should give you more pocket money.”

  “You give me more than I could wish for.” Lucy’s brow puckered. “I should like to learn more too. About art. Do you—do you think I could learn enough to teach it someday? If I don’t marry?”

  Unspoken was the question: What if no one wants to marry me?

  “I think you could. Likely you already can.” I will watch over you.

  “If you wish to teach private lessons, we must look for a house with a fine studio space. Or you could teach at a girls’ school.”

  Lucy was shaking her head already. “Too many people.” She unfolded, sat up straight. “I think—I should like to get married. To the right sort of person.”

  “I would not want you to wed any other sort.” She couldn’t look at Lucy when she said this. A husband and wife’s private life was their own, and she hoped Lucy knew nothing of the realities behind Isabel’s marriage. Andrew Morrow had been Lucy’s cousin, and one never wished to speak ill of the dead. Or think it.

  With a ringing bark and a whirl of little churning legs, Brinley rounded the curve of the stairs. The leash trailed behind him, loose.

  “Brinley!” Lucy shot to her feet. As the beagle ran up the steps and skidded past them, she snagged the end of the leash. He halted at once, quivering with delight, and yipped again.

  “You imp,” said Isabel. “You’ve been leading Mr. Nash on a merry chase, haven’t you? We might as well descend now and relieve the poor man of his anxieties.”

  Lucy kept hold of the leash, and as a sedate trio, they descended to the ground floor. At the foot of the stairs, Nash awaited with disheveled hair, his breath coming in quick pants. “Little fellow . . .” He strove for good cheer. “Got . . . away from me. Never seen . . . such a little . . . animal move . . . so fast.”

  “He is part thoroughbred.” Isabel smiled pityingly, as if this made any sense at all. “You mustn’t blame yourself, Mr. Nash. But I don’t think this place would suit him, and I am sure it will not do for us.”

  Color rose in his cheeks. “Lady Isabel! I urge you to reconsider.”

  “All right.” She tapped at her chin with a forefinger. “No, my decision is the same. I am afraid we have wasted your time. So sorry. Two women, you know, we are doing our best.”

  “Do you not wish to set up your own household after all?”

  She dropped the feather-witted act, lifting her chin. “I already possess my own household. I merely wish to move it to someplace smaller.”

  “Because it is too much for you.” Nash was all sympathy at once. “I could show you a set of rooms in Cheapside. They are over a linen draper’s shop. Most respectable.”

  “Mr. Nash, come now. I haven’t the income of the Prince Regent, but I needn’t live in a set of rooms. I would prefer a house.”

  He was smoothing his hair, regaining his composure word by word. “You might consider the rooms, truly, if you seek to economize. The rent is most reasonable, and the widow who lives in the attic rooms is quite willing to cook and serve as charwoman.”

  “I am not in financial difficulty,” Isabel said. “I wish to move households because my husband died in the house I live in now.”

  Lucy looked embarrassed by this. But then, Lucy often looked embarrassed.

  Isabel knew this reason would satisfy Nash. Let him believe her sentimental and fearful—though in truth, Isabel had rarely entered Andrew’s bedchamber before his death, and she had no reason to now. The physical signs of his death were entirely gone.

  No, it was the physical signs of his life that bothered her. The fussy, fragile antiques on which one had to sit gingerly; the silks that could not be touched; the paintings that turned the house into an art gallery curated by someone whose tastes differed entirely from Isabel’s.

  “I understand.” Nash looked pitying, which was a sliver better than condescending. “I shall inform you if anything suitable comes on the market.”

  They parted ways outside the house, descending the steps to the landaulet as Nash relocked the door. At the carriage, Brinley sat on his haunches on the ground and looked up mournfully.

  “Hop in!” Lucy patted the carriage step. “Come on, boy. You love to ride in the carriage.”

  His long tongue lolled out of his mouth. He flopped over and lay on his back with his legs splayed out, looking as if he’d been pressed by an iron.

  “Oh, now you’re quiet,” Isabel groused. She clambered up and took her seat, then asked the groom to pick up the dog and hand him in after her and Lucy.

  As the bays set off at a trot, and Brinley rolled into a sleepy ball at their feet, Lucy turned to Isabel. “He’s not barking. He’s not even jumping. Have we found the answer to training him?”

  “Sheer exhaustion, after he runs away from everyone all morning and most of the afternoon?” Isabel laughed. “Perhaps we have.”

  It didn’t help her determine how to deal with the Duke of Ardmore’s dogs. And she hadn’t found a suitable house. But at least it meant the afternoon had not altogether been a waste, even as the time remaining before the switch of the paintings was growing assuredly short.

  Chapter Nine

  When Callum pushed open the door of Jenks and Sons Grocery at half seven on a Friday, his mother didn’t even look up from her cash book when she greeted him.

  “Hullo, Callum.” Davina Jenks dipped her pen once more, added a figure to the total, then bade a good evening to the well-dressed servant who had just selected dry goods on a household account. “Whit like are ye, son?”

  In all her years in England, she’d never shaken the comfortable old Scottish greeting, or the soft remnants of her burr.

  “I’m fine, Mum. Also a creature of habit, if you know it’s me without looking up.” Callum dutifully crossed to the huge shop counter, stretching across it to embrace his diminutive mother.

  “Had to look up to know it was you yesterday, didn’t I? When you came in for the tea.”

  He granted this was true.

  They had fallen into this routine of regular visits when he’d begun working for the Bow Street Public Office. Each week was, for him, completely different from the one before or the one that would come after. But every visit to the grocery was the same. Friday evenings, the same greeting, the same goods for sale, the same staff. For year on year, since the days his grandfather owned the shop, Jenks and Sons had been redbrick outside, wood-floored within, with a close plaster ceiling that somehow made the space seem pleasantly cool.

  A wooden counter both wide and long cleaved the space, with shelves on shelves climbing the wall behind. On those, bins and baskets held every sort of good imaginable—except for the sorts that were stored in barrels, like flour, or in great hanging ropes, like the pungent onions with their tops braided together.

  There were baskets, too, of dry beans and peas and of nuts in their shells, scooped out with Davina’s grandmother’s wooden ladle and sold by weight; spices and tea and coffee; pickled vegetables in jars; candles in great bunches; and a ladder tipped against the wall next to the shelves for fetching the high-up items. Little loaves of sugar and ca
kes of soap made attractive pyramids on the counter.

  Callum picked up a bar of soap and sniffed it. “Lavender?”

  “Indeed it is. And you’re dependable, that’s all.” Blotting the cash book, Davina tucked it away open beneath the counter. “Every Friday thirty minutes before we close, you’re here certain as sunset, unless you’re on a case. And glad I am to see you today.”

  His brows lifted. “Truly?”

  “Whisht! Of course. I’ve so much to—ah, just a moment.” She interrupted herself as the bell over the door jingled, signaling the entrance of another customer.

  Rare was the visit that didn’t bring a spate of tasks for Callum to complete “just this once.” He suspected this was why she was glad to see him. In exchange for the packet of tea the day before, he’d not only taken on Jamie’s queries about the tea shop for sale next door, he’d also agreed to ask at any fire-damaged businesses he passed whether they were selling off their stock.

  So it went. With a shrug, he turned away. Near the window, but not so near its inhabitants would suffer in the sunlight, hung a wicker cage in which hopped and twittered a pair of linnets. The male was just coming into his summer plumage, his reddish breast and wings fluffed proudly as he hopped from woven bar to bar of the cage.

  “Hullo, George,” he said. “Hullo, Charlotte.”

  The Jenkses’ linnets were always named after the king and queen, a dubious honor considering the little birds’ brief lives. But they were sunny and sweet, and customers loved to feed them seeds. A cloth in the bottom of the cage to catch their messes was changed daily and shaken outside—as Callum knew from past experience. If the shop was shorthanded or particularly busy, he was likely to be pressed into service doing any one of a thousand everyday tasks.

  But other than this late shopper, the grocery was quiet. One of the shop assistants—Lionel, a stocky man around thirty years of age—was sitting on a sealed barrel marked FLOUR, braiding the dry tops of onions together so the vegetables could hang in tidy ropes. He and Callum exchanged nods, then Callum settled onto one of the ladder-backed chairs around the Franklin stove. The stove sat where one might have expected a fireplace in a home, merrily boiling kettle after kettle of water for the shop’s teas and coffees, offered as samples for shoppers to taste as they sat on one of the little stools scattered amongst the bins and barrels.