Chapter Eleven

Callum’s heart thudded, too loudly. The footsteps were drawing close, then closer. Too close upon the floor of the corridor. The dogs were a riot of sound, bark after bark. To shield her, Callum pushed Isabel behind him. Each movement was silent as a breath. Each breath was caught, trapped, stifled.

The barking continued—but the footsteps went past the doorway. Their owner spoke up at last: “Quiet now, ye damned beasts! Wouldn’t be no need to check all the doors if it weren’t for you shoving ’em open with yer great dirty bodies.”

The accent was too thick to belong to any member of the family. So, one of the servants, keeping vigil while his fashionable employers were about their entertainment.

“There! Eat it and be quiet.” A rrruff, then clicking claws as the dogs evidently pounced upon some treat. “Don’t be wakin’ the whole house.” Keys jingled. Heavy-soled shoes shifted, headed back the way from which they’d come.

It was like attending a play with his eyes shut. Callum strained for every noise, every clue, even as he held Isabel still and taut behind himself. Was that it? Could they proceed?

The footsteps crossed before the music-room door again—and the barks and snarls resumed. Callum gritted his teeth. If the servant opened the door, there might be just time to hide in the shadows behind the pianoforte. Better that than coshing the man. He was innocent, only doing his job.

No, not even that. Whatever he was supposed to do for the dogs, he gave up on it. “Ahh. Be damned to ye, then. Hobbes can lock you away himself. I’ve no wish to lose a finger.”

A whistle and a throw, then an object struck a wall down the corridor. “There!” called the man over the noise of the dogs. “Fetch, and if ye break yer necks, all the better.”

It was impossible to track the sound of his steps after that. Had the man gone away? The dogs returned to the music room, pacing before the door. Whining. Scratching at it. The servant, whoever he’d been, said no more. He must have returned to his bed.

“We were lucky,” whispered Isabel, “that the servant hated the dogs. If he’d noticed they were interested in this room . . .”

“It’s the aniseed,” muttered Callum. “I told you they don’t follow calmly.”

“Nor will they resist it.” With nimble fingers silvered by moonlight, she teased open the satchel she carried and pulled out a paper-wrapped parcel. The clawing at the door intensified when she unwrapped it to reveal a half-dozen small cakes.

“Any one of these should cause a dog to fall asleep,” she whispered.

Would one fit under the door? He wasn’t eager to open it, exposing them to the large dogs. Maybe it would fit, if he squished it flat. He re-folded the paper about the cakes and pressed them between his palms. Isabel made a sliding motion, her brows lifted: she understood.

“Two cakes at a time,” she suggested. “No more than that, in case one dog gobbles everything.”

He crouched before the door, thankful for every bit of the solid wood between him and the great hounds Isabel had told him were called Gog and Magog. The door was bearing the brunt of their attention. Someone would have a job painting over the claw marks marring it.

Again, he unwrapped the cakes. Set one before the door, then shoved it with fingertips through the narrow space beneath. Hot canine breath touched his fingertips as he withdrew them, and the clawing stopped. Sniff sniff.

He did the same with another cake, then stood, wiping his fingers on the paper wrapping. Then there was nothing to do but wait.

As an Officer of the Police, Callum was comfortable with waiting. With letting a pause stretch out awkwardly long, so his quarry felt the need to fill it. With keeping a quiet watch on a person or a piece of property.

Waiting with Lady Isabel Morrow? That was no hardship at all.

They were alone here. More alone, in the dark and soundless room, than they’d been at the grotto in Vauxhall, where fireworks exploded overhead as they took their pleasure of each other. How had that night led them to this one?

Thank God it had led to something; that that had not been the end of Lady Isabel Morrow in his life.

With only moonlight behind her, her hair was night-black as her clothes. The gentle light made her features glow.

“What is it?” she asked softly, eyeing him with some trepidation. “Do you hear—”

“Nothing,” he said. “You are beautiful to look at.”

At once, she turned away. “How can you say that at a time like this?”

“Because it is true. At any time, it is true.”

“Silver tongue.” She shook her head. But she must have believed him, for she closed the distance between them, fitting her head onto his shoulder. Her hair tickled his neck, his chin. Her breasts pressed his chest; her arms linked about his waist. And here he was, still holding the ridiculous but necessary parcel of aniseed cakes, unable to take her in both his arms as he wished.

He had one, though. One free arm. He placed the hand at the small of her back, enjoying the slide of his palm over the fabric of the odd shirt she wore. Like that, he held her, stroked her, fit her against himself. And they waited in the silence, aware of its pressure, of each other.

And then: snore.

A sleepy sound had issued from before the door. Then a snuffling sound, a half-hearted ruff.

Isabel pushed away from Callum, instantly on alert. “Sit,” she hissed, loudly enough to carry.

A click of canine toenails. Another animal snore.

Was it one dog? Was it both?

Slowly, he pressed the door handle and eased the door open, inward. Every little creak made him wince. The dim outside light picked out one large form on the floor: a hound stretched out on his side, breath whistling as he slept.

One sleeping dog. Where had the other one gone?

Callum eased a flat cake out of the packet and left it by the sleeping dog. “In case the other one comes back,” he said below his breath into Isabel’s ear. “We can pick it up before we go.” Isabel nodded, and he returned the cakes to her to put back into her satchel. He retrieved the painting in its wrapping, hoisting it under one arm.

Leaving the door ajar, they left the music room. Already it had come to seem safe and familiar to Callum. Isabel linked index fingers with him, making a chain of themselves so as not to lose each other in the dark.

Callum’s eyes had adjusted well enough to see in the windowed room. In the corridor, he was walking almost blind. The silence was oppressive; darkness lay heavy on his eyes. His eyes and ears were full of nothing at all, though he strained to see . . . was that a darker rectangle amidst the darkness? A doorway? Isabel stretched out a pale hand, brushing her fingertips downward—and found a door handle.

Gingerly, he let out a caught breath. This was the study. As slowly as he had opened the music room door, she now did this one. Painting in hand, Callum stepped inside.

Isabel’s drawing hadn’t prepared him for how cramped it was. A huge desk, a darker shadow among shadows. Heavy draperies over each of two small windows. He tugged one aside, just a little, and the crescent moon silvered the dark.

Not much light, but enough to spot their quarry. Centered behind the desk was the painting. It was not especially small, but too small for all this trouble.

He uncovered the genuine Botticelli. Held it up. There they were: three scarcely clad women with firm, pale limbs and joyless faces. In the moonlight, the two paintings looked exactly the same to Callum’s eye. But in bright light, would one with greater knowledge notice Butler’s clue? Or did one have to know the real painting as intimately as the fake?

No matter. The fake would vanish, and Botticelli’s Graces would be the only ones to survive.

So. He set aside the old painting and lifted the forgery down.

Now came the tricky part of removing the fake from its frame. He had filled his pockets with tools, hoping against hope he wouldn’t have to use them. How could one hammer in a bunch of tiny tacks without being heard? If it came to that, Isabel could slip back outside and have Butler cause a commotion to distract the wakeful servant.

On the desk, he laid out the tools. Pliers. Tacks. Hammer. A small knife. He flipped over the fake, and here was a bit of luck. There was no heavy paper over the back to protect the picture from dust. The stretched canvas was held into the frame by tiny nails through the stretcher into the wood of the frame. With his pliers, Callum yanked them all straight out, finding it as satisfying as if he were drawing out rotten teeth. As he tugged the last one free, the painted canvas tipped backward, falling right into Isabel’s waiting hands.

She steadied it with one hand, slid the Botticelli to Callum with the other and tied the covering cloth around her waist. He fit the centuries-old painting into the frame, blessing Butler’s accurate eye when it slipped neatly into place. Now for the nails. He would re-use the old ones if he could. He picked up the hammer, gritted his teeth.

Isabel tapped him on the shoulder. When he looked up, she handed him a . . .

“A thimble?”

She indicated he should put it on his thumb, then shove the nails in silently.

Easy for her to suggest. But if he could find old nail holes and use those, perhaps it would work. Dubiously, he put the thimble over the end of his thumb. It looked like a too-small hat, and when he pressed at a nail head with it, it flicked off and struck the front of the desk with a tiny ping.

Never mind that. He tucked the thimble into a pocket, then stripped off his coat. Laying it flat on the floor to muffle sound, he laid the framed painting on its face atop the coat. With the hammer’s head, he shoved silently at each tiny nail.

Isabel took up the discarded painting by Butler, turning it too onto its face. She kneeled on the floor beside Callum, pliers in hand, and yanked free the fastenings holding the canvas to its stretcher bars. They had planned this ahead of time. Off its wooden skeleton, they could roll the copied painting small, dispose of the wood bars, make a quick escape.

It was an odd partnership, switching paintings in silence by night. For an Officer of the Police, it ought to have been unacceptable, but he found he rather liked it. Perhaps he would have liked any task done at the side of Isabel.

He paused when he heard claws clicking in the corridor. The first dog awake? The second returning? Isabel, too, froze.

A snuffle. A growl. A gulp. More claws on the polished floor, steps receding.

In a crouch, moving with the sinuousness of a cat, Isabel rounded on the door and eased it open a fraction. One eye pressed to the crack. When she turned back, shutting the door again with a slow turn of the handle, she pumped a fist in silent triumph.

Still asleep, she mouthed. Which meant the second dog had returned to eat the remaining cake. Good. Gog and Magog would be sleeping like baby giants by the time Callum and Isabel completed their task.

Back to work, then. Infinitesimal bit by bit, he forced the nails through the stretcher bars of a canvas once touched by Botticelli. Through wood they went, into the frame. He did not use as many as had held Butler’s painting, but time was short. Every minute made the return of the family possible, the wakefulness of a dog likely.

Silence was key, speed only slightly less so—yet maintaining either was impossible. Each time Isabel separated one of the wooden bars from its neighbor, there was a crack. Callum ventured a whap with a hammer occasionally, deadening the sound by working beneath a tent of his coat, then removing it to examine his work by moonlight.

Before he was done, Isabel had completed her task, creating two rolled bundles. One was the canvas, tight-wrapped and tied like a scroll. The other, the stretcher bars, was a collection of smooth kindling the size of two fists together.

“Good work,” he whispered.

“Ready?” she returned. He nodded.

She eased her bundles atop the duke’s desk, then laid hold of a corner of the bulky framed painting. On his fingers, Callum counted off, one—two—three, and they heaved it upright. Isabel eased her side of the picture into his grip, then guided him by the elbow. Forward, sideways, up—all in silence, all by touch. Her fingers were warm through the thin cloth of his shirt, making his skin prickle with sensation. Every sense was heightened, on alert.

As he hung the picture back on the wall, letting the frame settle into its accustomed spot, triumph rushed through him. It was done, and they’d managed it together. Once they were on the ground, he would kiss the devil out of her—or into her.

The last steps were drawing on his gloves again, then closing the draperies. Then, a moving shadow in the night-dark room, Isabel took hold of the door handle. Slowly, she eased the door open. The doorway across the corridor showed paler with moonlight from the open window, beckoning them forward. Out. To safety.

Then it happened, faster than he could understand.

A dark blur whipped by on the floor. Hit the door, knocking it free from Isabel’s grasp. It smacked the wall heavily, the sound resounding down the corridor.

A dog whined. Growled, close at hand. Further away came another growl, feeding the first. And then—the yowl of an angry cat? Where the devil had a cat come from?

The barking grew louder, the groggy dogs fighting off their slumberousness.

Callum caught Isabel’s eye. “Back. Go. Quickly as you can.”

Sidling along the wall, she whipped across the corridor in her stockinged feet. Shit! They hadn’t their boots on. He scrabbled for the bundles of Butler’s work from the desk, his coat from the floor.

A human voice rang out. “What now, ye bloody beasts?” The servant again. Callum swept his tools up from the desk, wadding them in his coat. Did he have everything? They must leave nothing behind. The need to hurry was like ice in his fingertips.

“Caught something, did you?” Now the servant sounded awake. Close as he had been in the music room, when only a door and his ignorance of their presence shielded them. There was no time for secrecy, for stealth.

Clutching everything against his chest, Callum kicked back, finding the edge of the desk. His foot made a hollow thud that he, with a great leap, was nowhere near. A distraction, he hoped. Enough of one?

No, the air stirred behind him. Teeth snapped. But the dogs were slowed and sleepy, and he was safely across, in the music room. Already Isabel had tossed their boots out the window. As soon as Callum entered, she shoved the door closed behind him, fumbling at the lock. No key! No help for it; they had to go, go, go, as the dogs snarled at the door and scratched it with their paws.

By this time, Butler was waiting below the window. Callum shoved out the whole bundle: coat, tools, painting, stretcher bars. With a quick squeeze of Isabel’s hand, he swung her through the window frame. She met his gaze, dark eyes wide in the moonlight. Quickly, he pressed a smacking kiss to her lips. “Go! I’ll be right behind you.”

Isabel shimmied her way down, looking up at Callum all the while. From half a story up, she jumped, not waiting for Butler’s helping hand or the support of the rope. She landed heavily, awkwardly.

Callum gritted his teeth, then swung out after her. As he disappeared through the window, the door burst open, and the room was full of hounds swaying on their feet. Snarling. A man, light glinting off a weapon.

Callum slid down, the rough rope heating through his gloves and shredding the leather. As soon as his stockinged feet touched the ground, he snatched his boots in one hand and took hold of Isabel’s shoulder with the other. With Butler’s help, he pulled her to her feet, then tugged at the rope to bring it down and slow their pursuers. The hook that had sunk into the window frame took a chunk of wood with it.

A man’s head stuck out the window, shouting something unintelligible. If they were lucky, he’d think he had surprised housebreakers in the act of entering, scaring them off before they got far.

Callum hoped.

He had hoped to go entirely undiscovered. He had hoped the servant wouldn’t carry a weapon. A blade? No, a pistol—and he was aiming it at them.

Butler and Isabel were hidden in the shadows; Callum was a step behind, slowed by pulling down the rope. As he turned away, a shot rang out—and a stripe of fire slit the cloth over his calf. Callum left it all behind on the ground: tools hidden in the turf; the rope a pale, sharp-headed snake in the dark. And they ran.

* * *

The frantic flight from the Duke’s house carried them for a few streets, Isabel wincing as she ran in her stocking feet. Yet the moon smiled on them, pleased with their night’s work. Clouds drifted over its bright face, bringing welcome darkness as they slipped away from the gas-lit street, then drifted on to give them a faint light once they reached a safe distance.

Butler had taken charge of the painting, his own rolled-up work. When they paused in their flight, he stretched it out to admire it.

“There’s the B.” He showed Isabel and Callum, pointing to a spot Isabel had taken for naught but greenery when she’d looked at it in the duke’s study. But there it was, picked out by the touch of his finger. The only signature Butler had been able to place on his work.

Satisfied, Butler rolled the canvas tightly and slipped it into a hollow cane. Likely there had been meant to be a sword stick. This painting was an even greater weapon against the duke, against Isabel, against Morrow.

Butler took the stretcher bars too. “Might put them back together,” he said. “Or I might kindle a fire against the nighttime chill.”

She hoped he would burn the copied Botticelli with its own stretchers. “Be safe,” she whispered.

He handed over her boots and wished her the same, then melted off. Isabel and Callum retreated into the deeper darkness beside the building. Several houses back—only a few minutes back?—the Duke of Ardmore’s dogs snarled and bayed their frustration. Dogs couldn’t climb down ropes, thank heaven. But as soon as they could run down the stairs, they could sniff out Isabel and Callum’s trail.

Impatient, she crammed her feet into her boots without bothering with the fastenings. Callum shoved his arms into his coat, his feet into his boots. Odd how undressed they’d become.

Hoping to confuse the dogs, she took out the remaining aniseed cakes from her satchel. Hard as she could throw, she flung one here, one there, and watched where they landed.

But there was something more on the pavement: drops, trailing black on the surface where everything was black or gray or silver. With her eyes, she followed them to the source—then gasped.

“You are bleeding! Were you shot?”

Callum cursed. “I was. It’s not bad, but we can’t leave a trail.”

“We’ve got to bind your wound.” From about her waist, Isabel untied the cloth that had wrapped the Botticelli on their way. It was a shawl, sturdy and black. She crouched, wrapping it around his leg once, then again, then tucking in the loose ends.

“That might be tidy enough to get you back to my house,” she whispered. “We can fix you up there.”

“What about you?”

“I didn’t get shot.”

“You fell. Hard.”

He was right. Her ankle had hurt like the devil when she’d collapsed onto it, but as she’d run, she’d forgotten it. Now a warning twinge returned.

“I’m fine,” she said. “Let’s go.”

Callum took the satchel from her and ripped it along the seam, making of it two dark and anise-fragrant rags. With them, he wiped up a bit of the blood, then tossed the rags in different directions. “That might confuse the dogs a bit longer.”

He put out an arm for Isabel, then asked, “What was it that tripped us up? There were only two dogs.”

“Titan.” Isabel snarled the name as if she were one of the duke’s hounds. “All our preparations for the damned dogs, and the creature that ruined our plan was Lady Selina’s cat.”

Callum chuckled, the unaccountable man. Hobbling and limping and skulking and sneaking, they made their labored way back through the mews. To Isabel, the journey back to her house seemed to take forever. Surely each street stretched out long and longer, like a sweet only half-boiled.

By the time they reached her back garden, tears sprang to her eyes with every step, and her right ankle and foot were nothing but a weight to be dragged along by her upper leg.

With all the servants asleep before they had left, she prayed that the servants’ entrance would still be open. She had a key, of course, but the easier the better. Every second, every step saved was a boon.

“Come in and we’ll see to your injury,” she told Callum.

“I’m all right. Come in and we’ll see to yours.”

Once they were inside, he added, “I didn’t intend to stay, but you can’t fool me, brave woman though you are. Your ankle is all but broken. Have you any more laudanum?”

“No laudanum.” She gritted her teeth. “There is port in the dining room sideboard.”

She pointed him in the right direction. For a few minutes, he was gone; when he returned he held a cut-crystal decanter.

“You carry this,” Callum whispered. “I’ll carry you.”

“No, really, you needn’t—”

“I want to,” he said. And she was in his arms, cradled sideways as if she were small and light instead of an average-sized woman with a useless foot that surely weighed a hundred pounds. His arms gripped her about her thighs, her back; his chest was a wall of support. As soon as he lifted her, the throbbing in her ankle eased a little.

In a low tone, she directed him to where he might find rolled bandaging. From there, she told him how to reach her bedchamber. The words were strange and intimate; she blushed as she spoke them.

With his hands on her, the frantic flight over, the switch of paintings a success, she was swamped with buoyant eagerness—a physical awareness she could never remember experiencing before. Every inch of her throbbed or tingled or was caressed by closeness. She was all a jumble, her thoughts and feelings in confusion.

But there was one thing she was sure of. Something she knew she wanted.

As soon as they reached her bedchamber, she said, “Lay me on the bed, Callum. And then lock the door so we won’t be disturbed.”