Mad for Love (22 page)

“Rory” She stood and held her hand out to him, willing herself not to be nervous. Willing everything to be all right.
 

“Miss Blois.” Her gentleman thief came to her straightway, taking her hand to kiss. “Thank ye for seeing me.”

She ignored his formality, and the hint of something dire and unpleasant in his voice. “As if I would not see you.” She led him to the sofa to sit next to her. “I have been hoping all morning that you would call. And you have. And I cannot seem to stop smiling. I must look like a lunatic, but I am so happy. And I owe it all to you.”

“Miss Blois,” he glanced at Henri, who was reluctantly excusing himself out the doors, “Ye’re too kind.”

His voice was growing more distant, but she wouldn’t allow it. She wouldn’t. “I am not being kind, I am being factual. You have saved us. You must know that. You must.”

“I’m honored to have helped. But before ye say anything else, there is something I must tell ye.”

Mignon braced herself for bad news even as she refused to hear it. “It is quite all right. You need not tell me anything, really. You owe me nothing, although I hope this job has seen you into good money. I should be curious to know what you make from the sale of the Verrocchio, or what you hope to make—purely professional curiosity, you know.”

“There is no profit to make.” He shook his head even as he smiled. “Because that would be dishonest.”

Mignon went still, holding her breath so she might be sure she had heard him aright. “What do you mean?”

“I mean I’m not a thief. At least not a professional, full-time thief.” He took her hands and looked into her eyes while he spoke, as if he was making sure she heard and understood him.

Which she did not. “Are you not? Then what were you doing in our house? Taking the Hals…” That chilly feeling seeping into her chest was reality, rearing its ugly, insistent head.

“I am a specialist in fraudulent art,” her gentleman non-thief explained even as he held her hand and inched closer. So close their foreheads were nearly touching. “I am an expert in detecting, finding and exposing forgeries and all manner of falsities in the provenance of art. And I have been laboring under an alias, or a sort of truncated version of the truth. Because my name—my real name—is Rory Andrew Cathcart.”

“Cathcart? You are Mr. Cathcart?” It was as if the floor had moved beneath her feet—Mignon felt she might have fallen over if he had not continued to hold her hand tight.

“The same.” He nodded slowly, never taking his eyes from her face.

“You are not a gentleman thief.”
 

“No. Though, I hope I can call myself a gentleman.”

“But what were you doing here? That night you broke in—” Mignon looked over at the wall where the
Cavalier
laughed down at her.
 

“I was trying to have a look at yer Hals, which I suspect yer brilliant papa painted, when ye loomed up like an avenging ghost in yer white night clothes, and conked me over the head with yer pike.”

“It was a halberd.” Mignon didn’t know what else to say—there was nothing else she could say. Everything she thought was false—a forgery.
 

He was nothing that she had thought him to be.

But he was still sitting next to her, holding her hand as if he did not want to let go, and she could not understand why—

“Good afternoon.”

Mignon practically jumped out of her seat, astonished to find her father in the doorway of the salon. “Oh, Papa.” Her heart was ringing a peal in her chest. “You surprised me.”

“Mignon, I do not believe I have met your friend.” Papa came forward with his hand extended. “Charles Blois. How do you do.”

“
Monsieur le Comte
.” Her erstwhile gentleman thief bowed elegantly. “Rory Cathcart.”

“Ah, the Honorable Mr. Cathcart. Of the ruthless, tall blue eyes.”

“I beg yer pardon?”

Mignon had nothing but manners to fall back upon. “Papa, this is a friend of mine. He is—

“Yes, yes, Mr. Cathcart. Quite good looking, though a terrible man. No sense of guilt or shame.” Papa sat himself comfortably in a chair. “I believe we have some interests in common, young man.”

Mignon gaped as Mr. Cathcart—how could she call him Rory when she did not seem to know the slightest thing about him anymore?—and her papa put their heads together like two old friends. Two old, unscrupulous friends.

“We do, sir.” Rory leaned forward. “Ye have two rather remarkable lasses in yer family,
Comte
.”

Papa nodded in clear agreement. “But the question is, which one do you intend to keep?”

“The real one.”

“Ah.” Papa’s smile was slow, but spreading. “Very good choice, if I may say so.”

Mr. Cathcart nodded in complete agreement. “I think so, too.”

“And the other?” Papa did not even try to contain his enthusiastic curiosity.

“I have plans for her, too, Papa,” Mr. Cathcart said. “I think ye’ll approve. I’ve sold her to the Duke of Bridgewater.”

“Aha!” Papa clapped his hands. “Perfection. He’s the sort of man who would never think to have it verified. I’ve sold him several… Well, as you say, a very satisfactory conclusion. And what did you say he was going to pay, my son?”

“I didn’t say, Papa.” Mr. Cathcart smiled in his charming, mischievous way.
 

Papa was all smiling contentment as well—he leaned back in his chair as if he had eaten a fine, filling meal. “I hope you picked a nice round figure.”

“I did.” Mr. Cathcart—although it seemed even more bizarre to call him Mr. Cathcart than Rory while he was calling her father ‘Papa,’ and Papa was calling him ‘my son’—circumscribed the air with a figure. “Zero.”

Papa lurched to his feet. “What?”

“Please be seated,
Monsieur le Comte
.” Rory Andrews Cathcart, stood, and loomed over her papa, much the way he had loomed over her that first night. “Ye happen to be a forger. And I happen to be a man whose job it is to catch forgers, and put them in gaol.”

For the first time in Mignon’s memory, Papa began to look acutely uncomfortable. “Yes.” He adjusted his cravat, as if it were suddenly too tight. “That seems to be problematic.”

Rory nodded in agreement. “One of us is going to have to retire.”

Papa considered this proposal for a short moment. “How do you propose we decide?”

“I tossed a coin on it.”

“Ah?” Papa began to regain some color—the scoundrel in him no doubt plotting how he might turn either outcome to his advantage.

Rory was having none of that. “And ye lost,” he added before her wily old father could deploy any of his wayward plans.

“But—” Papa sputtered. “How can that—”

“Come, Papa.” Rory patted him on the back. “It’s for the best. Ye had a great run. Ye’re the best and ye know it—and so do I, and I had a pretty good look at that Hals. So why not hang up yer brushes, and go out while ye’re on top. Never defeated, never caught, with paintings in half of the serious collections in London, and in
all
of the better collections in Norfolk, excluding my father’s. But yer time at the easel is at an end,” he declared. “So ye can either see out yer days here, and in the lovely home I’m going to make for yer daughter in the highlands, where ye can watch yer grandchildren grow, or we can go at it.”
 

Happiness lit a cheery hearth fire within her, warming her from the top of her head to her toes. Making her believe, if only for the moment, that she could never be cold, or afraid of the dark again.
 

“Who knows,” Rory went on. “Maybe one of yer grandsons will take after us both, and take up art.”

At this news Papa brightened. “I never thought—” he mused. “Such a brilliant prospect.”

Rory put his arm around Mignon, and asked her father, “What do ye say?”

The question was not just about Papa’s future—it was about hers.

Papa thought for only a moment. “Here is my answer.”

Papa took Rory’s outstretched hand.

“Papa!” Hot salty tears were stinging Mignon’s eyes, but she didn’t care. She didn’t care if her nose got red and her face got splotchy. Because she had never wept such tears of joy.

Papa embraced her, kissing her on the forehead. “Mignon my darling, for you, and for my grandchildren, I will give it up.” He clasped his hand to his heart, but then drew suddenly back, all wide-eyed fright. “Tell me you have not already created my grandchild.”

“Papa.” Mignon could feel her face turn hot and pink. “No. My goodness, we’re not even married.”

“But, we will be posthaste,” Rory clarified. “Once ye say the word.”

“My children.” Papa’s face was wreathed in joy. “I give you my blessing.”

“Thank you, Papa.” She kissed her father on both cheeks, before Rory spoke.

“If ye will excuse us, Papa.” Rory bowed very correctly to her father. “I beg a moment alone with yer lovely daughter.”

“Of course, of course.” Papa waved his arm in permission as he left them to their own devices. “I must order champagne, so we might all celebrate. Henri!” he called as he went. “Henri…”

And then she was alone with her gentleman.

Who promptly went down on one knee.

“My dearest Mignon.” He took her hand, and for the first time in their association, her gentleman looked less than sure of himself. As if, for the first time, he might actually be afraid. “Before I can ask ye to make me the happiest of men, I must tell ye that I am not really a gentleman. I am a by-blow, the bastard youngest son of an earl, though he educated me, and gave me his name.”

She did not care for names or titles—they had only ever brought her family trouble. She only cared for him. “You are a gentleman, in every action and in every word. Even if you are a bit of a scoundrel. But you must know that I come from a long line of utter and complete scoundrels, so you will be quite at home.”

“I like yer scoundrels. And I like ye. I love ye.”

“And I love you, too. If for no other reason than because in fifteen minutes you have convinced my Papa to do what I could not in fifteen years of pleading, and put down his brushes.”

“Will ye only marry me for yer papa?”

“No.” She didn’t know how it was possible to cry and still be so happy, all at the same time. “I will marry you solely for myself. Because I am mad about you, my would-be gentleman thief. Mad for your love.”

An exciting excerpt from Elizabeth Essex’s next Highland Brides novel

MAD ABOUT THE MARQUESS

Purchase here

Chapter 1

Edinburgh, Scotland

June 1792

Lady Quince Winthrop had always known she was the unfortunate sort of lass who could resist everything but temptation. And the man across the ballroom was temptation in a red velvet coat. There was something about him—some aura of English arrogance, some presumption of privilege—that tempted her beyond reason, beyond caution, and beyond sense. Something that tempted her
to steal from him. Right there in the Countess of Inverness’s ballroom. In the middle of the ball.

Which was entirely out of character. Not the stealing—she stole as naturally as she breathed. But because the other thing that Lady Quince Winthrop had always known, was that the most important thing about stealing was not
where
one relieved a person of his valuable chattels. Nor
when.
Nor
how.
Nor even
what
particular wee trinket one slipped into one’s hidden pockets. Nay.
 

The tricky bit was always
from whom
one stole.
 

When one robbed from the rich, one had to be careful. Pick the wrong man, or woman for that matter—too canny, too important, too powerful—and even the perfect plan could collapse as completely as a plum custard in a cupboard. Which made it all the more curious when she ignored her own advice, and picked the wrong man anyway.

Whoever he was, he stood with his back to her, his white-powdered hair in perfect contrast to that red velvet coat so vivid and plush and enticing that Quince was drawn to it like a Spanish bull to a bright swirling cape. Unlike the gaudily embroidered suits worn by the other men, the crimson coat was entirely unadorned but for two gleaming silver buttons that winked at her in the candlelight, practically begging her to nip one of the expensive little embellishments right off his back.
 

A button like that could feed a family of six for a fortnight.

And while her itchy-fingered tendency toward theft was perhaps not the most sterling of characteristics in an otherwise well brought up young Scotswoman, no one was perfect. And it was so very hard to be
good
all the time.
 

She had much rather be bad, and be
right
.

So Quince took advantage of the terrific crush in Lady Inverness’s ballroom, slipped her finger into the tiny ring knife she kept secreted in the muslin folds of her bodice for just such an occasion, and sidled up behind Crimson Velvet.
 

She did not pause, nor give herself a moment to think on what she was about to do. She ignored the chitter of warning racing across her skin, and set straight to it, diverting his attention by brushing her bodice quite purposefully against his back, while she nipped the button off as easily as if it were a snap pea in a garden.