His footsteps slowed, and he felt . . .pleasure. The sort of simple pleasure he hadn’t experienced in years. Here, on a street where no one knew him, he could luxuriate in the freedom of a simple pleasure.
A smile, wide and unruly, played about his lips, and his eyes blinked open. When had they drifted shut?
The question was destined to remain forever unanswered as his brain registered a sight he’d had no way of anticipating. A nondescript woman, her head down, with no concern for any but her own forward trajectory, about to charge directly into him. Between the tick and the tock of his pocket watch, time did a funny thing and elongated, even as it compressed and intensified. He had only a blink to brace himself for impact.
The instant their bodies bounced off each other, the woman’s round, blue eyes met his and clung to him in speechless shock. A heartbeat later, the heat of recognition thrummed through Jake.
This small-scale typhoon was none other than Lady Olivia Montfort.
His right hand shot out when it became apparent that Lady Olivia wasn’t only bouncing backward, but backward into a street full of late-morning traffic in the form of fast-moving carriages and delivery carts. His hand clamped around her forearm and jerked her upright to safety.
A loud, “Oof!” whooshed from the parted “O” of her lips as a sheaf of papers flew out of her hands and scattered across the fetid East End sidewalk. A confused moment followed as their bodies pressed full-length against each other—chests heaving, breaths mingling—for a heartbeat too long. Her head tipped back, and her eyes met his.
Gone was last night’s measured reserve. Now the primitive emotion that came from having cheated death blazed across their blue depths. A spark of lust shot straight through him, and his hand dropped from her arm as if scorched.
Her eyebrows knit together, and her head canted to the side. “Why on earth areyou—” she began before stopping short. Her face animated in wide-eyed panic. “My sketches!” She sprang away and began weaving through annoyed passersby in a desperate attempt to retrieve the sheets of paper strewn haphazardly across the sidewalk. She cut him a sharp glance. “Are you going to stand there all day, or help me?”
Jake found himself following her lead as he blindly crouched his way through a forest of tetchy legs and impatient feet. A few filthy minutes later, every sheet was accounted for.
Eyes slinging arrows his way, Lady Olivia closed the gap between them and snatched the sheets from his hands. “A bit of advice?” she began. “You should watch where you’re walking.”
He cocked his head. An air of expectancy hung about her. It was trying to tell him something . . .
It hit him. She expected an apology.
“Ishould watch whereI’mwalking?” he asked, astounded by the cheek of the woman.
“You mustn’t go around knocking ladies into the street. Or is that yet another social nicety neglected in your education?” She drew herself up in a show of righteous indignation. “I could have been killed.”
“You very nearly were,” he replied. “But ‘tis you who must be careful. A narrow London street in the East End might not be the most inviting location for a lady’s daily stroll.”
“You know nothing about me”—Her demeanor returned to its familiar state of studied calm. A pang of loss flashed through him for the other Lady Olivia he’d glimpsed, the one who blazed with emotion, primitive, raw, and open—“or where I should be . . .strolling.”
She glared at him from below, her fullest height no more than a few inches over five feet, her hair styled in a severe chignon. If they hadn’t collided, he would have walked right past her without a second glance. Impossible that the curves he’d glimpsed last night hid beneath the drab, serviceable overcoat that camouflaged her like some sort of slum chameleon. He couldn’t decide if the overcoat deserved a funeral pyre or a medal of honor.
As he watched her shuffle through the sketches, examining them one by one, a wisp of memory tickled at the back of his brain. He’d seen these sketches before or, at least, this subject. The material itself was typically representative of Japanese motifs—a serene depiction of nature both botanical and animal—but a specificity lay within these sketches that extended beyond their familiar subject matter.
It was in the brush strokes. A delicate, feathery quality characterized much Japanese art. But not these pieces. Here were brush strokes dense and bold, too singular to be ordinary or forgotten. Indeed, he’d seen these pieces before, but the context eluded him.
He caught Lady Olivia watching him. How had she, of all people, come by such a subject long enough to sketch it?
The baffling woman narrowed her eyes. “I would thank you, Lord St. Alban, but for what, I’m not precisely certain.”
“For saving your life?”
“When you are also the same who introduced the danger into it?” she shot back in that soft, yet steely, voice of hers.
He nodded once and allowed her the last word. Lips pressed in a firm line, she rolled up the soiled sketches and hailed a hackney with a short, sharp whistle. Lady Olivia surprised at every turn.
As soon as a hackney stopped, he tipped his hat and made haste to keep his appointment, resisting his body’s urging for a single backward glance. He’d gone only a few steps when out of the corner of his eye he glimpsed a shock of white amidst the sidewalk’s sea of grime. In three quick strides, he stood over the sheet of paper and snatched it off the ground. She’d miscounted and forgotten a sketch.
He started toward the carriage to return it when a detail at the bottom left corner caught his eye. A tall girl standing apart from a small group of other girls.
He stopped dead in his tracks. Context crashed down on him with the violent force of a hurricane, memories of when and where he’d seen the original paintings slamming through him.
Fifteen years ago. The Kimura compound in Nagasaki.Her, captured reading a book, a sliver of light catching the lines and angles of her face, immortalized in a priceless set of Japanese Kano paintings.
At the time, he’d barely questioned how she’d come to be part of that painting, in that particular room. Six months later, he’d known exactly why. But, by then, it had been too late.
