Page 36 of The Rogue's Last Scandal
“From my father to yours.”
“If it came by pouch, The Duque will have read it,” he said.
“No. A friend has brought it.”
“Is it urgent? Father is in Bath.”
She cocked her head and studied him. “You have called him back, no?”
“One of our servants is talking.” Bakeley would want to know about that.
A wide smile displayed gleaming white teeth. “It is only a leap of logic from the reports in the scandal sheets.” She tapped his arm. “You have dallied with some other young woman. I, perhaps, must have a fit of jealousy.”
Voices outside drew their attention, and they waited until they had passed.
“I will save that for our next public meeting. For now, give that letter to him, and for your other request, I’ve learned that he was held in a farmhouse north of Pamplona, where the exchange was to be. He walked into a trap. The hostage was already dead of a fever. The money went to the French but…he was taken. It was a chance to obtain another ransom. A painting.”
His mind flew back to Perry’s accusation of theft after their mother’s passing.
“What painting?” he asked.
She tapped him again. “You know.”
He held her gaze.
Around the same time, Saints Felicity and Perpetua had disappeared from the wall in his mother’s bedchamber, replaced by a painting of her three children. Mother never said where the painting had gone.
“That’s madness,” he said.
“It was Lopez de Arteaga’s work, painted in Mexico City and lost with a Spanish ship full of treasure, that is, until your father obtained it.”
“A ship belonging to your husband?”
She shrugged again.
“And he has the painting now?”
A knock rattled the door. Charley stepped over to it. A dark-clad man who he recognized as one of the Duquesa’s guards whispered that they must leave, that a cart wanted to pass through the mews.
Charley shut the door and turned on her. “Well?”
“No. That is, I do not know where the painting is. But I know that, weeks later, when the painting was delivered, both the messenger and your father ended up in the hands of a French commander, and your father was never released. He escaped.”
“You know this how?”
“A peasant boy who worked at the estate.”
The door rattled; the Duquesa’s guard again. Charley quickly bundled her into the hackney along with her man, closed and locked the mews door, and climbed out through a window. He made his way to the street, whistling and pondering the story the lady had told him.
Later that evening, he caught up with Penderbrook at White’s and ordered both of them drinks.
“No family dinner for you tonight?” Penderbrook asked.
“I’ll join them in a bit. For now, what have you found?”
“No other McBankers than the one your brother lit upon. Shall I accompany you?”
While the waiter poured their wine, he sat back, thinking. McCollum’s was tied in with merchant shipping, that much he’d learned in his afternoon travels. He might as well make quick work of this conversation and go talk to Bink, who he suspected knew something more of this bank than he was mentioning. Perhaps from the Parliamentary work that Charley had been shirking.
