Mad for Love (21 page)

“Yes.” She could only agree. This evening the criminal class had been her guardian angel. “Is it not lovely? You do not have to go to gaol, and I do not have to go to the Americas. We can stay right here, where it is so, so much better.”

“Enormously.” Papa clapped his hand over his heart, and then shot to his feet. “Champagne, we must have champagne to celebrate.” He looked at her, and clasped her hand again, and then kissed her on the forehead. “You really are the most remarkable daughter.”

“Not nearly as remarkable as Mr. Andrews, my gentleman thief. He is the one who masterminded the whole affair. I just found him. That is all I did. Because I love you, Papa.”

“My darling angel.” Papa looked moved to tears. “I love you more.” He wiped his eyes and shook his head, “Come, I will rouse Henri to find us some champagne, and we will celebrate your triumph.”

“Our triumph. But just one glass, Papa. I really am terribly exhausted. And I have to get up early, and go to Brooks’s.”

“Brooks’s,” Papa echoed. “I am beginning to like the sound of this Brooks’s.”

Chapter Twenty

Rory Andrews Cathcart slept like a baby, clear of conscience and with a smile on his face, despite the fact that the lady with whom he slept was made out of cold marble. Because she was merely a placeholder for the real thing—the real woman he meant to claim this morning. As soon as he had some breakfast.

Not even the sight of two of his best friends eating all his kippers could put him off. “Gentlemen.” He greeted them with all the
bonhomie
and goodwill he was feeling.
 

“Your triumph is all over the morning papers, Rory. Word must have got out quickly.” Alasdair folded the
Times
, and read, “‘Priceless Statue Stolen from Somerset House.’ And ‘Royal Academy Robbed.’ Though I salute your ingenuity in pulling this off, I do wish you hadn’t created quite such a sensation, and left me a problem restoring confidence in law and order.”

“I had my reasons, which ye’ll be glad of.” But Rory was not about to be made responsible for all the county’s problems, but he was loath to give his reasons without a full audience. “Where’s Archie?”

It wasn’t like his friend and erstwhile tiger to miss breakfast—or any meal that someone else was providing.

“Messenger came for him about an hour ago,” Ewan replied. “Ran out the door still tying his cravat.”

“But it sounds as if he is already come back.” Alasdair pulled back the curtain from the breakfast room window. “And he appears to be in the most enormous monstrosity of a carriage. Good Lord—the things people would rather have than their own money,” he muttered in judgement. “Best see what he’s about.”

“Not until I’ve have breakfast.” Rory held fast. “Or at the very least a very hot cup of very strong coffee. Standards must be maintained even with Archie flying about the place like an unleashed circus monkey.”

The unleashed circus monkey pounded through the front door, up the stairs, and flung his hat across the room with all the drama of a diva upon the stage at the Paris opera. “Do ye want to know who sent me home in that carriage?”

Rory took a long, fortifying sip of his coffee, and put his booted feet up on an empty chair. “A fellow never boasts of his conquests, Archie. It’s not gentlemanly.”

“No, it’s not a lady, damn yer eyes. It’s a man.”

“Archie, please. We’re at breakfast. And I repeat, a gentleman never boasts about his conquests, no matter what sort they are.”

Archie colored past his hairline. “Damn yer eyes,” he repeated. “Are ye going to let me tell?”

“You want to tell us.” Alasdair joined in the ribbing. “But do we
want
to know?”

“Oh, aye.” Archie nodded vigorously. “I rather think ye
do
want to know.”

“Then from
whom
did ye accept a ride in that carriage, Archie?” Rory asked. Just because he was a gentleman thief entertaining a gallery of rogues at his breakfast was no reason to abandon good grammar.

Archie presented his information like a gift. “Bridgewater.”

“The Duke thereof? Rabid collector?” And potential future husband of his very own Mademoiselle Mignon du Blois.
 

The thought brought Rory up short. Damn it, while basking in the heat of their triumph last night, he hadn’t quite got around to making sure that the Duke of Bridgewater
never
had a chance to become Mignon Blois’s husband. Because she was going to marry him, and become Mrs. Rory Cathcart.
 

Just as soon as he told her who he was.
 

“Indeed,” Archie was rubbing his hands together. “And do ye want to know what the Duke of Bridgewater was asking me if I know anything about?”

Well, good goddamn. Could Mignon have said anything to Bridgewater this morning, perhaps breaking off their engagement? But it was not as if he, Rory Andrews, had given her a reason—besides kissing her senseless—to officially break off her engagement. They had not discussed the future. They had exchanged no understandings.
 

But what else could Archie be talking about, unless… “The Verrocchio?”

“The Verrocchio,” Archie confirmed. “Aye. And do ye want to guess why?” Archie was enjoying himself.

Rory was not sure if he was. “He wants to impress Miss Blois, and avenge her loss?”

“Miss Blois?” Archie’s face went blank. “No, not a chance of it. He wants to buy it.”

“He wants to buy the Verrocchio?” Rory shot to his feet. “He wants to buy stolen property?”

“Yes. Exactly. Turns out the Duke of Bridgewater has some rather athletically bendable scruples.”

“My God.” Now that he was standing, Rory found he had to move. He paced toward the door, forcing Alasdair to move his feet.
 

“Careful.”
 

Rory didn’t care if he trod all over Alasdair’s rather large, expensively shod feet—he had other, more important fish to fry. But he had to hook the damn great big fish first. And keep himself, and his friends, entirely in the clear. “Why did he come to ye?”

Archie smiled. “I’m only an intermediary. Like ye, I’ve acquired a certain reputation for knowing things that generally don’t want to be known, but it’s ye Bridgewater thinks has a finger on the pulse of the art world.”

“What did ye tell him?”

“That I would make inquiries, and we would see what we could see.”
 

“Excellent.” So far, so good. But what came next? Could he work it so that the forged statue never saw the light of day, but kept the Blois family from any hint of wrong-doing?
 

It could work. They would make it work. “He understands that he will have a work of art that he can never speak of, never acknowledge, never display even in his own house, ever?”

“Absolutely,” Archie confirmed. “He wants it only for his own personal satisfaction and pleasure, he said. Just to know it was his, that he had stolen a march on his rivals, would be enough.”

“Well then.” Rory smoothed down his waistcoat. “I think we should sell it to him.”

Archie slid a smile across his face. “Aye. For an enormous fee.”

Something that must have been his own rather exercised scruples reared up in objection. “No. That would be wrong Archie.” For many reasons, but mostly just one. “Because it’s not a Verrocchio. It is a forgery.”

Archie’s mouth hung open in utter astonishment “Ye don’t say.”

“I do say. I had my suspicions, but she admitted it to me last night, confessed in the heat of battle, as it were. Made years ago, before the current count was even born.” That was stretching the truth a little, but protecting the current Comte du Blois was important to him now.

At that news, even Alasdair came to his feet. “So our instincts were right all along.” he gazed at Rory thoughtfully. “What are you going to do?”

Rory took a good deep breath, and let it out slowly. “I’m going to let ye dispose of the Verrocchio to the Duke of Bridgewater, in good time and with certain conditions—the most important and inviolable of which is that he must break off all contact with the Blois family, and with Miss Mignon Blois in particular.”

“All right.” Archie looked at the others for their agreement, and when he got it, he turned back to Rory. “And then what?”

“And then I think I’m going to go out and get myself engaged.”

Archie let out a slow whistle. “Ye don’t say.”

Rory was sure. He had never been so sure in all his life. “I do.”

Chapter Twenty-one

Mignon dressed carefully, in her finest day dress of embroidered lemon silk and white lace. For the first time in what felt like ages, she wanted to look her absolute best. Just in case. Just in case her gentleman thief should come to steal something else.

But the person who came was not the gentleman thief, but the gentleman who had been robbed—Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Henri’s announcement of their visitor only just gave Papa time to rearrange his visage into appropriately mournful lines. “My dear sir, what has happened?” He gestured to the morning papers with open astonishment. “How could this be?”

“My dear sir, I am everything apologetic. I can’t begin to understand how it could have happened—it was there one moment and gone the next.”

“The audacity!” Papa railed. “To wake to such news—” He clasped a dramatic hand to his heart. “It pains me so.”

Mignon did her best to look stern to quash any further theatrics, and asked instead. “What can you tell us, Sir Joshua?”

“Only that the Diana is gone, snatched in the most audacious manner from under the noses of the Bow Street Runners hired specifically to guard it. We are beyond understanding how.”

Papa allowed himself to sink into a chair with his hand to his brow, as if in mortal pain. But he still had enough of the scoundrel to ask, “But insurance cover was taken with Lloyd’s, so we will be recompensed for the loss of the statue—though it was entirely priceless, one of a kind?”

Here Sir Joshua looked more than pained—his face was pale and pasty with upset. “I regret that the cover had not yet taken effect, Count Blois, as the technical examination with the expert from Christie’s was still pending.”

This time, Papa did not have to playact his astonishment—he clutched his chest at the pain of the blow. “No.”

“Unfortunately, yes.” Sir Joshua took out an immaculate handkerchief to mop his brow. “I am afraid that there will be no recompense for the loss.”

Papa sat in utter, stunned silence. Whether it was acting or not, Mignon would not tell.

There was nothing for her to do but show poor Sir Joshua out. And then prepare to give Papa the rest of the bad news—that even if she had been the one to steal it, the Verrocchio was not coming back.

“Another gentleman to see you,
Mademoiselle
,” Henri called to her retreating back as she went up the stairs. “A Mr. Andrews of Brooks’s Club, though he does not appear to have a card.”

Mignon dismissed Rory’s lack of social standing with a gesture meant to hurry Henri along. “Show him in, show him in. To the salon.”
 

While Henri did so, Mignon hastened to arrange herself on the divan in the salon, attempting to appear all that was cool and composed, when she was practically bouncing on her seat.

But in another moment, there he was, her gentleman thief, standing in her salon impeccably dressed, hat and gloves in hand, smiling at her in best the fairy tale fashion.