Portrait of a Scotsman by Evie Dunmore

Chapter 13

He sat in the drawing room unshaven, reading the same parliamentary minutes on the Customs and Inland Revenue Act for the third time when Aoife walked in. She must have entered the house with her key, for Matthews was given leave on Mondays. More significantly, her narrow face looked troubled when few things short of murder troubled Aoife, if that. He came to his feet right quick.

“I need a drink,” she snapped.

She looked unharmed; her movements were fluid. But she had carelessly plopped a hat atop her cropped hair rather than bother with pinning a braid to the back of her head. Definitely trouble.

“Could you make it a double? That would be charming,” she said when he went to the drinks sideboard to select a Scotch. She took the glass from his hand as she paced past with a murmured thanks, and then she said, “My house has been ransacked.”

Ransacked. Hell. “Are you all right?” he asked sharply.

She gave a dismissive wave. “Wasn’t home. I was at the music hall with Susan and then stayed at hers. When I returned this morning, I found chaos. So it must’ve happened between eight o’clock last night and nine o’clock this morning.”

It was ten o’clock now; she had come straight to him. “How bad is it?”

She half emptied her tumbler with one gulp and grimaced. “In terms of what’s been stolen, too soon to tell,” she said, “though all the rings and cuff links I kept on my vanity table are definitely gone.” She chopped at an imaginary neck with her hand. “Susan gifted me some of these pieces, and I want them back. In terms of damage, now, this is where it’s interesting.”

“Interesting how?”

“There’s two types of break-ins, isn’t there: either the place gets smashed up, or it’s done on cat’s paws and you won’t notice until days after the fact. But this—this was a strange one. Looked as though they started out carefully—just delicately sniffing around hoping I’d never know—but then they thought, Hold on, a proper burglary needs some chaos. So they knocked over a few lamps and vases and broke open my desk drawers. But the scattering, and the way things were knocked over, was odd. Oddly halfhearted, like an afterthought. I s’pose if I wasn’t used to seeing properly burgled places, it wouldn’t have looked so off, but to my eyes it was off.”

“Could have been a distraction done by an amateur,” Lucian murmured, “or someone wanting to appear amateurish. Where was your doorman?”

“In bed, sickly. Makes me think the house has been watched.” She finished her drink and returned to him for more since he was still holding the bottle.

“You have anything that could be of particular interest to anyone?” he asked while he poured.

“Always,” she said. “But I haven’t had any trouble for years. I’m on no one’s side, neutral ground. Whoever pays gets information from me. And now this is what I get.”

Her anger was palpable. Like him, she was attached to her shiny objects and the absolute privacy of her home.

“I’ll put a man on the case,” he said.

He sensed the wariness in her sideways glance. “Police?”

“No. Carson.”

“Thank Christ,” Aoife said. “The peelers make me nervous. Luke, I was wondering if they might’ve been after something of yours.”

He paused with his own tumbler halfway to his mouth. “What makes you think so?”

“Don’t bloody know,” she said, and shrugged, “just a hunch. Seems odd that it comes right at the heels of your wedding, which was all over the news.”

The list of people who knew of their connection beyond that of an informant-client relationship was short; they both diligently protected their relationship from the shadow world. Still, he considered his potential adversaries: the lords who owed him, the crooked art dealers or fellows from Scotland Yard who wanted artifacts in his possession, disgruntled figures from the past he had blackmailed or otherwise harmed … none of them a plausible suspect. But not impossible. The murkiness of the situation added fuel to his already simmering frustration, and he set the bottle down too hard. A jade figurine on the other end of the sideboard was shaken off balance, and he had to watch it topple into a crystal decanter and push the decanter over the edge. It smashed apart on the tiles with a terrific noise. He cursed.

Aoife was watching him with growing intrigue. “Why, you’re in a mood. It’s not all that bad—probably just a regular burglary.”

The burglary alone wasn’t making him tetchy. “Use my house in Richmond if you’d rather not stay at your current address,” he said.

She righted the nearest figurine on the sideboard with deliberate care. “You looked grim when I walked in and hadn’t yet opened my mouth. I’ve a feeling your mood has not all to do with the ransacking.”

She was too perceptive. It happened when one’s senses had been honed to cutlass precision on the grindstones of the gutter; survival on the street depended on quickly and correctly classing the mad, the bad, the drunkards, and the harmless, even from afar. He remembered there had been a time when Aoife and he had been friends—well, urchins, sharing the same dreary fate during the day and warmth on a pallet at night.

“Aoife.”

“Yes?”

“You’re a woman.”

Her brows rose. “I’m so excited to learn where you’re taking this.”

He gave a shake, wondering what had possessed him. “Forget I asked.”

“Oh, come now.”

“It’s nothing.”

“Trouble with the lady wife?”

“No.” Said too fast.

She cocked her head, a sarcastic glint in her eyes.

“Aye,” he muttered.

“Well.” Delight filled her voice. “I’m all ears.”

The words appeared to be stuck at the back of his throat like a fishbone, going neither forward nor back down. “She’s not … keen,” he finally said.

“Keen?”

“Keen on …” Astonishingly, getting punched in the sternum felt less excruciating than saying such things out loud. “Never mind.”

“Keen … ooh. I see.” She cackled, all witchlike.

Hot irritation surged through him.

“Keen,” Aoife repeated, and crossed her arms over her chest. “You sound like a doctor for female ailments, trying to make it sound all flowery and nice. Keen,” she crooned, “why not say fucking? Normally, you would’ve. Interesting.”

He realized he was grinding his molars. “What of it?”

“It’s interesting, that’s all. I thought the marriage business was just a means to an end—”

“It is, but the ends aren’t being achieved.”

Aoife pursed her lips. “Perhaps she’s scared of you.”

Scared? She had been chatty enough all day yesterday. She had come to his bedroom. But yes, then she had hared off again rather than finish what they had started ….

“I told her she needn’t be scared,” he said.

“I swoon,” Aoife replied dryly. “Well, I never even seen her. How can I know her reasons? I do know you’ve known how to do your duties since you were a lad, and there was happy sighs when the girls talked, not complaints—”

“She’s different,” he cut her off.

“Different?” Aoife said, sounding hostile now. “Like how? She has gills? Wings? A mermaid’s tail?”

Close enough. She had never lifted a finger for any of the meals she ate. She didn’t brush her own hair. She was considerably more intelligent than experienced, which made her opining pretentious, and she made him feel brutish just by standing next to him so utterly self-possessed in her ignorance and ruffled gowns. He had known who he was and what he wanted for over a decade, which allowed him to be in charge just as he liked it, and now he was ambushed by second guesses and thoughts he hadn’t expected himself capable of thinking. That bothered him more than her reluctance.

“What you mean is that she’s a lady,” Aoife said derisively. “But I’ve heard you’ve knocked knees with those before.”

“They sought me out for so-called depravity.”

“Perhaps that would be to her liking, too.”

Ah yes, he thought, because new brides crave to be bent over a divan and get their arses paddled.

“I’ve known a few mistresses in my time,” Aoife said, “and what I heard again and again is that gentlemen rut like beasts because they think they can’t inflict it on the wives. Meanwhile, perhaps it’s their wives knocking on your door?”

“How is this supposed to help?” he asked, incredulous.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I’m just always tickled when man’s division of women into frigid wives and lusty whores slaps them right back in the face.”

He growled. “Your advice is right shite.”

“All right,” she said, sensing that she was pushing him too far.

She put down her glass on the sideboard—gently—and came to him. Lucian watched with a furrowed brow as she took his hand and turned it over.

“I bet you’ve not lifted crates or broken heads with these in a while,” she murmured as she studied his palm. “And yet, they are still so strong.” She glanced up. “At the back of her mind, a woman knows she’s at the mercy of how well the menfolk in her life can control their hands, Luke. And you have the hands of a brawler.”

He pulled the offending extremity from her grasp. “I don’t beat women.”

“And how would she know, hmm? And perhaps you’ve been rough and not noticed? Men too often grab a woman the way they themselves want to be touched—stupid. Her skin is so much softer.” She raised a hand to his face and he allowed it, only for her to slowly drag a gloved fingertip along his jaw to the rasping sound of stubble against kid leather.

“So whenever you think your touch is light,” Aoife murmured, “make it lighter still ….” Her voice trailed off. Her gaze focused past him, in the direction of the door behind him, and she withdrew her hand from his face.

He turned. His wife had entered the room, her face more sour than spoiled milk.