“So soon? Goodness, he visited a mere fortnight ago. The market in London must be flourishing.”
“It is the Season. The whole ton is in town with money to spare, and spirits are high. That is the best time to sell art.”
Stevenson peered at Gareth cautiously. “If I were to have a few more soon, would you be buying them for him?”
“I would, if they were of the same quality.”
“I can guarantee the quality. What I cannot guarantee is whether more are available yet.”
“When will you know?”
“Hard to say. I can send word and see, if you like.”
Gareth debated whether to continue with the plan he and Ives had put in place. If this man told the truth, and it sounded as if he did since he spoke without dissembling, he was not the mind behind this fraud. The person who brought him the pictures was.
Gareth removed a card and placed it on the counter. He also placed one of Ives’s cards beside it. “Stevenson, I have been deceiving you. I am not an agent for your London buyer. Nor will he be purchasing more from you. He is in Newgate awaiting his fate for selling forgeries. Forgeries he says he bought from you.”
“Forgeries! No, you must be mistaken. I sold him simple pretty pictures.”
“You sold him expert copies of works by major artists and old masters.”
“Major—old masters—you are wrong, sir, and I’ll not be impugned this way.”
Gareth waited until Stevenson had collected himself. “Perhaps you were hoodwinked by he who gave you the pictures as well as by he who bought them.”
“Indeed! I think so! If what you say is true, this is most shocking.” He turned and reached up to a shelf behind his counter and fetched a paper fan.
“Give me the name of the man who supplied you with the paintings, and I will find out the truth, I am sure.”
Stevenson flipped open the fan and beat the air near his red face. That pulled Gareth’s attention away from the face, and to the fan. And to the wall behind the fan, the counter, and Mr. Stevenson.
His gaze drifted up to the shelf, then higher.
“Not a man,” Stevenson said, struggling to speak normally. “A woman. Who would think a woman would do such a thing? What is the world coming to, I ask you? And what if she claims she was unaware and it is all my fault? Who is to believe me that I merely put some pictures in my shop to earn a few shillings? The magistrate? Not likely. This is—”
Gareth half-listened. His gaze had lit on a small painting hanging high on the wall like an afterthought. It showed a view of a field, with a large tree to one side and a ruin to the other. He narrowed his eyes on it.
Stevenson’s exclamations turned into a buzz that barely penetrated his ears. Gareth thought he recognized the landscape, or rather the hand that had painted it. His eyes werealmost sure, but his instincts were positive. He had seen the ghost of something similar on the floor of a ransacked house.
Surely not. And if so, it must be a thing apart from those forgeries.
“Her name,” he snarled, interrupting Stevenson. “Give me her name, or join your accomplice in Newgate.”
“Newgate! I’m a Birmingham man!”
“Give me the name, damn you, or you will be a dead man soon.”
Stevenson appeared ready to faint. Gareth reached over the counter and gripped his coats so he did not go down before answering.“Her name.”
“M . . . Miss Russell.”
Holy Damnation. He barely swallowed the impulse to punch the stationer in the nose for daring to utterthatname out of all the others in the world.
The man saw it. His eyes widened with alarm. “Eva, I think her name is.” He spoke fast between short gasping breaths. “I believe she lives in— That is to say, I am sure she—” All that red drained from his face. He swooned and became a dead weight. He slid out of Gareth’s grip and crumpled to the floor behind the counter.
Gareth strode to the back of the shop, found some water, and returned. He threw it on Stevenson’s face, then left to the sounds of gasping and groaning as Stevenson came to.
CHAPTER23
