Mad for Love (7 page)

Perhaps the man had told the truth. Despite the fact that the tall gentleman thief had had to cross the room from the window, and pass at least three other paintings—two of which were not forgeries.
 

But it was all too hard to figure out with so much good brandy in her belly, clouding her brain. “Goodnight, Papa.”

“Good night, my darling.” He kissed her cheeks, and sent her toward the stair.

But just as she reached the first step he stopped her. “Darling? This terrible, tall, blue-eyed thief, he didn’t molest you in any way?”

“No. No. He was the perfect gentleman. For a thief. ”
 

In the end, the only thing he had managed to steal was a kiss.

They were all waiting for him when he returned to his townhouse—Archie, Ewan and Alasdair—lounging about his library, drinking his good brandy as if they owned the place. Alasdair had even gone so far as to seat himself behind Rory’s desk.

“Do make yerselves at home,” he invited in a tone rife with annoyance.

After so many years of friendship, they were deaf to his sarcasm. It took a long moment before anyone actually looked at him.

“Bloody hell, Rory!” Archie was the least patient of his friends, and nearly levitated himself from his chair. “What in blazes happened?’

What had not happened? “Things were rather more complicated than anticipated.”
 

“Were you caught?” Alasdair gave him one of his wry, half-smiles. “Which would be embarrassing. But not impossible to deal with.”

“I didn’t get caught, exactly.” Rory wasn’t sure how much of his tale he wanted to tell—the encounter with Miss Blois didn’t exactly show him in the best light.

“Exactly what
did
happen, Cathcart?” Alasdair probed.

“What did ye find out?” Archie was much more broad in his inquiry.

Ewan was more precise. “Did ye get the painting?”

“I did not,” Rory admitted. “The lass was there.”

“Lass?”

“Oh, no.” Alasdair pushed back in his chair. “Everything always goes to hell in a hand cart the minute our Rory starts talking about a lass.”

It might have been insulting if it hadn’t been true. At least in the past. Miss Blois was…different. “This was a purely professional exchange. Of weapons,” he clarified. “She cracked me over the head with a pike. And the least ye lazy layabouts could do under the circumstance is pour me a brandy.”

Archie swore another blue streak, but he moved quickly to fetch the decanter.

“Tell us all,” Alasdair urged. “But tell us first if you need a surgeon?”

“No, I thank ye. She patched me up.”

“The lass?” Archie handed him a well-filled glass.

Rory took it with a relief that was physical pleasure. “Aye. I made a mistake of the first order in my reconnoitering of the Blois townhouse—I assumed Charles Blois and his daughter would both be at the exhibition at Somerset House. But she wasn’t. She was home alone.”

“And she surprised ye, and piked ye, and kept ye from taking any paintings?”
 

Leave it to Ewan so sum everything up so succinctly. “Aye.”

“But did you see any more suspicious Vermeers?” Alasdair asked.

“No, but I did see that Hals portrait that Charles Blois mentioned to ye, Archie.”

Archie uttered a crude word of satisfaction before he asked, “Did it interest ye as a collector, or as an independent expert?”

“The latter.” Rory took a deep, necessary drink. Necessary to keep his mind focused on the conversation at hand, and not on the memory of Mignon Blois in her translucent nightie.

“Well?” Alasdair demanded, all aquiver, like a particularly eager gun dog on point. “What did you find out? Is it a forgery?”

“Can’t tell without examining the painting in a great deal more detail, and in a great deal better light than I was able to do while housebreaking, and having a pike—or whatever the damn thing with an axe blade the size of Grosvenor Square is—pointed at me.” He let himself collapse into a chair, and put his feet up on a hassock. Good God. It was only a little past midnight, and he was exhausted. This was what being piked did to a man. “Ye’ll forgive me if my examination was incomplete.”

Exhaustion was no excuse to Alasdair. “I’ll forgive you if you tell me what you’re thinking in that devious mind of yours.”

Rory took another restorative sip. “I’m thinking about Charles Blois.”

“And if he’s a forger?”

“If he is,” Rory mused, “he’s very, very good. Utterly superior. But I have my doubts that anyone could be that good.” At Alasdair’s skeptical scowl, Rory elaborated. “Let us look at him from another perspective. Blois has a priceless Verrocchio sculpture on loan to the Royal Society.” He ticked his evidence off on his fingers. “He comes from a family with a well-known collection. He has a very fine house in Soho Square. Therefore he is not living in poverty—he doesn’t need to forge Vermeers or Hals. Unless ye think the Verrocchio is a forgery, too.”

“No.” Ewan shook his head. “The statue has definitely been in the collection for years, and was last exhibited in Paris in seventeen and fifty-three.”

“When Charles Blois was eight years old,” Archie finished.

“Exactly. Very good, Archie. Ye
were
paying attention at school.”

“Of course I was, ye manky git.” Archie’s reply was only a little hot. Because they all knew mischief, and not maths, had been his forte.

“So Blois is not forging sculpture,” Ewan concluded.

“Just so.” Rory went on. “And if he wanted money, all he had to do would be to sell that Verrocchio. The
on-dit
from Mr. Christie’s is that the Duke of Bridgewater offered Blois ten thousand guineas for it.”

Archie let out a long, low whistle.

“Just so,” Rory agreed. “And if he has a Verrocchio that is worth ten thousand—and good God, what a price—why does he need to forge paintings?”

“Pride,” Alasdair offered instantly. “Vanity. Accomplishment.”
 

“And inquiries have revealed that he studied painting in his younger days,” Archie added. “In the French system, he would have studied and copied all the great masters to learn his technique.”
 

“Let’s remember the English also learn the same way,” Rory said. “Just to be fair. On any given day, Somerset House is full of copyists that no one could accuse of forging.”

“That means they’re just not good enough,” Alasdair opined. “Yet.”
 

Rory took another deep, fortifying drink of brandy before he decided to broach a new topic. “What do ye know about the daughter?”

“Miss Marie Chantal du Blois? Known as Mignon, twenty-two years old, considered something of a dark, Gallic beauty.” Alasdair, per usual, was impeccably well-informed.

“Is that the lass?” Ewan asked. “The lass who piked him?”

“Seems so.” Alasdair spoke with his usual confidence. “What about her?”

“Do ye think she’s in it with him?” Rory asked. The question had plagued him since the moment she had so kindly decided to let him go. And before that, when she had spoken of hydrogen water and styptics. Before she piked him for no apparent reason, of course.

“‘In it with him’ in what?” Alasdair rose from his chair. “You said you thought Charles Blois was not forging paintings.”

“Aye, that is what I said, isn’t it?” Rory called his brain back under starter’s orders. “I have no evidence to support the suspicion that Charles Blois is forging.” He could feel their disappointment as if it were a physical thing. Because he, too, felt that keen sense of loss—if for an entirely different reason. “However,” he continued. “I do think the matter bears further investigation.”

“Charles Blois himself bears further investigation, or your young Mademoiselle Blois?” Alasdair had such a keenly perceptive light in his eye, that Rory felt as if he were the one being investigated.

“Neither. I think I’ll leave the Blois family,
père et fille
, out of it, while I simply concentrate on the artwork.”

“That would be the sensible, logical approach,” Alasdair acknowledged. “But I’ll wager all takers a guinea that our Rory can’t possibly stick to such an outrageously simple plan.”
 

Chapter Seven

Rory knew that he was going to lose that guinea the moment he strolled into Somerset House, and saw Miss Marie Chantal du Blois standing there as fresh as a French daisy and as sweet as apple
tartine
.
 

And while he was thinking in such exaggerated, poetical comparisons, he decided that Mignon Blois was a dove in a henhouse in such a crowd—where most of the women present were fashionably overdressed, Miss Blois was dressed with exquisite simplicity in a white
chemise à la reine
, under an embroidered dove grey silk jacket that was perhaps a few years out of style, but which fit her delicate person exquisitely.
 

Though he did like her better in only her night clothes.

All in all, she was an exercise in restrained perfection. But her attire was nothing to the beauty of the woman herself. In the full disclosure of daylight she was a revelation—a gamine delight with skin the warm, blushing color of tea with cream, and hair and eyes of a black so dark, it reflected all light.
 

Yet, for all her dazzling, delicate beauty, she gave off that sense of restraint, of holding-back. There was a glint of something serious, even mysterious in the dark depths of her steely gaze that was disconcerting in such a soft-looking lass. Something innately French, that even all his years at school in Paris could not help him define.
 

Something that drew him to her—the hot flame desperate for the cool gray moth.

She was alone—or if not alone, her father was not visible—and seemed to be walking the galleries for her own pleasure. Except that she appeared too intent to be enjoying the outing—she did not smile, and though she looked at the masterpieces hanging on the walls with a well-schooled eye, her gaze would inevitably return to the Verrocchio statue displayed on a raised plinth in the center of the hall.

Or rather, now that he noticed, her gaze was following the people looking at the Verrocchio—studying them, almost as if she were gauging their reactions.
 

Curious. Delightfully, attractively curious.
 

So attractively curious, that wherever she went within the galleries, he went as well, following at a discreet distance, waiting and willing her to see him.

She disobliged him, and did not.
 

Rory toed his pride back into line, and drew nearer, learning everything he could glean from her presence. She was poised, with a fine balance between polite and guarded. She was graceful, with a lovely natural walk, elegant and economical, and not in the least bit mincing. He didn’t like mincing—it smacked of artifice and concealment—so it was convenient that she didn’t mince, because he had already decided to admire her.
 

And he wanted her to admire him. And failing that, he wanted her to at least
see
him.
 

So he decided to make his presence known, and stood close to her. Too close. Until she had no choice but to notice him.

“Oh, excuse me, please,” she began. And then she looked up again, and recognition lit her eyes. As did dismay. “You!” she breathed.