Page 22 of Forgery, Love, and Other Lies
“Look, you can leave any information you discover in a location in the back of the alley. I’ll check there a few times a week. That way, we never have to face one another let alone speak. And no one suspects matrimony is on anyone’s mind.”
“I don’t think anyone would suspect that anyway,” she insisted.
“You’re daft.”
“You’re annoying. Besides, I thought you found meamusing. Let me amuse you, Lord Lysander.” She fluttered her lashes, long and gold and hell—
His cock twitched.Triple hell.No good. The worst. She clearly had no idea the way her words sounded, like promise and seduction. And Zander, apparently, was willing to be seduced. No! Hecouldbe a gentleman. He whipped around and stomped toward the back door that led to the alley and the mews.
She chased after him. “You’ll truly insist we participate in silly games because you fear a jeweler will take it into his head that his daughter is being courted by a marquess’s brother? Do you hear that?Jeweler?Marquess? It is not a connection likely to be intuited.”
He grunted and opened the door. The alley beyond it was clear, and when she joined him in it, he shut and locked up the townhouse door.
“We are not climbers,” she insisted, more than irritation in her voice. He more precisely identified her tone as insulted.
“I’m not suggesting you are. I’m simply not willing to take chances. I’m in no position to support a wife let alone one as poorly off as I am.”
“This is absurd. I think you’re suggesting the note-passing nonsense to… to fob me off. You have no intention of working with me to solve this mystery.”
He stopped, turned on his toe, and towered over her.
She bumped into him then bounced back onto her heels even though they’d barely made a connection. Not that his nerve endings knew that. They had not only realized she’d brushed against him, they had decided they wanted it to happen again. Butmore.
“Listen,” he said, ignoring his screaming nerves, “I’m not in any way out to fool you, Miss Frampton. I just want my damn paintings back, and I’m willing to do just about anything to retrieve them. But my brother recently married for love, the lucky bastard, and his wife had no dowry to speak of but for a cottage in Cumbria and a small annuity to go with it. It’s a happy marriage but not a lucrative one. And during a time we needed lucrative.” They’d needed Raph happy more than that, though. He’d deserved happiness after over a decade’s dedication to cleaning up their father’s mess. “All that being true and pressing and all that, I’m in no place to marry. It would be unfair to any woman who aligned herself to me. I don’t even have a residence of my own. Do you understand? If I married, I would have to rely on my family for my wife’s sake, and I’ll not pinch them when they’re already in pain.”
She stepped back several steps, every thought in her head blazing clear in her eyes. He had the brief, mad desire to hear that litany out loud. It would likely entertain him for hours, days, a lifetime, even, but he wouldn’t ask for her to vocalize those thoughts. What good would that do? So he shrugged it off.
Finally, she gave a tight nod. “Yes. I understand. There’s a loose brick in the alley behind the shop, near the back door. I’ll leave note of anything I discover there. And you?”
“Same, Miss Frampton. Thank you for being so unexpectedly reasonable.”
She sniffed and paced past him. “Perhaps one day you’ll do the same.”
The impertinent, marvelous chit. He took several hard steps after her, then clutched his hands into fists, and glued his boots to the muddy ground. Arguing further would achieve nothing. When he had his temper firmly in hand, he walked to the end of the alley and swept his gaze both ways down the street. Gone. Good. He turned down the street in the opposite direction of Frampton’s shop, each step hounded by what he’d told her in the alley.
His inability to marry. At all. When, by some horrendous quirk of fate, he’d always sort of, just a little bit, wanted to. He had fond memories of his parents’ marriage—the looks they’d given one another, the jokes they’d shared, how they’d leaned on one another in times of woe. It had made him feel safe, loved, happy. Until, of course, he’d learned that the very ground they all stood on had rotted away, stability sold for a new painting or twelve.
Similarly, his hopes had been dashed this day. To find the dowager’s secret gallery only to have the paintings gone. Seemed a decided step back. But it wasn’t. It was merely that they’d not stepped forward at all. He’d always thought the paintings were gone, and they were. The tiny moment of hope had meant nothing but disappointment.
Damn disappointment—Zander’s lot in life. Everything he did seemed to rot away to useless pulp. Hopefully this partnership with the Frampton chit would not end the same way.
Eight
Words were more difficult than images. So many of them could represent a single idea. Images, however… You see a hill, you draw a curved line, more or less curved depending on the hill. A man has a long nose, you draw it that way. Easy. So was finding the right shape and color gemstone to create an effect.
But what words to use when you needed to tell a stubborn man that waiting wasn’t working?
Fiona paced back and forth in front of the small writing desk in the workspace in the back of the shop. She’d put her tools away an hour ago in favor of attempting to find the right words like she could find the right curve of a brushstroke. Hm. Perhaps it was the same. When she painted, she pursued honesty, truth, exactness. She sat down at the table and picked up her pen. There were words for that. She scribbled quickly.
“Fiona!” Her father’s voice from the front of the shop, a touch of irritation in it. “Lady Shellington wants to know more about your painting of the Thames.”
She folded the letter as she stood. “Coming, Papa!”
If only Lady Shellington and those like her wanted tobuythose paintings. No, if only her Papa would sell them when they inquired. But he refused, saying a lady like his youngest daughter didn’t sell her work. It would be undignified.
Ha. He knew the truth about Fiona’s dignity now. She had little.
She made a quick stop in the alley first, sliding the brick loose from its home, sneaking the paper inside, then replacing the brick. The first note passed between her and Lord Lysander, and ten days after their defeat at Lady Balantine’s art gallery. Too little happening too slowly. Hopefully this note would speed things along.
