He strode to the doorway and poked his head around the corner just as the front door closed behind her.
She wasn’t getting away that easily.
Chapter 7
Jake rushed down the corridor and slipped through the front door. The conclusion of his conversation with Mrs. Bloomquist would have to wait for another day.
A quick scan of the sidewalks just caught the familiar swish of Lady Olivia’s skirts rounding a corner. One blink, and she was out of sight. What was the woman up to?
Before he knew what he was about, he was making the bend around the same corner. The ugly truth wouldn’t be denied: he was following her. That thought in mind, he was careful to stay a generous distance behind her. Should she look backward on a whim, he wouldn’t stand out in the crowd.
It wasn’t long before the air began to ripen into a distinctodor. A smell that could be rightly characterized as a stench. She’d led them far afield of Mayfair and directly into the heart of a slum. He wasn’t sure which one, but that detail hardly mattered. Why did Lady Olivia insist on spending her time hanging about slums?
As if she’d intuited his question, she set about answering it. Stride shortened, pace slowed, she approached a woman scrubbing a length of coarse linen across a washboard. Jake crossed the street and kept his head down so as not to attract undue attention.
However, he needn’t have concerned himself on that score. The entirety of Lady Olivia’s regard was fixed on the washerwoman. He couldn’t help noticing the other woman’s scarlet, cracked hands and stony expression.
The two women exchanged a few words before Lady Olivia reached inside her dishwater dull overcoat and pulled out a coin for the woman. The washerwoman slipped it between her considerable cleavage and settled back against the wall, her arms crossed in front of her in a pugnacious stance.
Pad of paper and pencil emerged from Lady Olivia’s flat black case, and she began scratching charcoal across the blank surface. The washerwoman’s face never once altered its expression. This woman had seen it all, and there were no surprises left in this world, not even a posh lady offering a bit of coin to take her likeness.
Jake slipped inside a dark alcove and watched, feeling like the voyeur he undoubtedly was. While he was ostensibly following Lady Olivia to find the art thief, he couldn’t deny that he was enjoying himself too much and experiencing the same set of emotions he’d felt the first night he’d met her: interested, engaged, and alive.
Her face had taken on a beatific aspect rivaling that of an Italian Renaissance Mary, so deep was her content in this interaction with a washerwoman. He would have never thought to combine a Society lady—daughter-in-law to a duke, no less—in the same body with an artist who delighted in sketching lowly washerwomen. As far as he knew, such occurrences were as rare as unicorns gamboling across misty meadows.
Yet here was one such unicorn.
She possessed untold depths, indeed. How did these depths relate to the stolen paintings?
It was becoming apparent to him that she, a woman whom he hardly knew, was capable of anything. Only a fool would think her incapable of connections to the underworld. After all, here she was at ease in a slum, a place where he was certain no othertonmatron had ever set foot.
She would lead him to the thief. He was more certain of it than ever.
Beneath his unblinking eye, she slipped the sketchpad back into its case, handed the washerwoman another coin, and proceeded down the street. Several minutes and winding streets later, she nearly tripped on a beggar slumped against a dingy wall, legs extended across half the sidewalk.
Nothing new in this scene. Jake gave away too many coins to count to this sort of man, woman, and child every day. He watched her drop a few coins into the beggar’s extended cup and retread the same routine with the beggar as with the washerwoman.
She had a way with people that put them at their ease, that rendered their difference in station insignificant. She was no ordinary lady. He would do well to remember it.
A sudden commotion ripped through the air, snapping Jake’s attention to the street. Not a block away, a large draught horse, harnessed to its top heavy cart, was rearing up on its hind legs, obscuring his view of Lady Olivia. With each movement, the horse alternately threatened to overturn the cart or race down the street with it.
The driver jumped to the ground, shouting at passersby to clear the area, before he began repeating the horse’s name over and over in an attempt to soothe the frightened animal. The horse was having none of it, neighing and whinnying and creating a general fracas.
Jake was about to bypass the entire scene when a small child, with no more than two years on him, toddled forward, hand extended, smile dimpling cheeks chubby with baby fat. Before he could give rational thought to the situation, he leapt out and swept the child behind him. The boy toddled off to his mother.
It was only Jake and the horse now. The massive beast shook its head from side to side as if to let him know this wasn’t going to be easy.
What the hell was he thinking? Only this morning he’d met the master of the Russell Court Mews, who’d imparted no small amount of advice on the soothing of a spooked horse. Jake wracked his brain for the man’s exact instructions and called a few to mind.
He stepped in smooth, deliberate increments toward the distraught horse, clicking and cooing all the time. A transfixed silence stole over the crowd when he came within three feet of the distressed beast. After a few minutes of this, the horse reluctantly relaxed and came down, ears flickering in response to the clicks and coos. It was as if they spoke the same secret language, and Jake was the only living being attuned to his distress.
Lay a hand on ’im, confident like, no fear in your eyes.
His hand found the horse’s muzzle and stroked down the curve of the beast’s glistening neck. The horse snorted a wet breath that caught Jake full in the chest, but he discerned a budding trust in the gesture.
Make certain it innit a rock in the hoof. More like than not, it’ll be the culprit.
Jake’s hand trailed down the horse’s proud chest, further down his left leg to his fetlock until his fingers dared reach the underside of a lifted hoof and pluck out a piece of debris visible only to him. The horse gave one last whinny and a toss of his shiny black mane before settling his hoof firmly on the ground, drama over.
