She gave a start. Then straightened from her bored slump to bosom-jutting posture when she got a look at him.
She gawked. He wasn’t certain whether she wasadmiring his person or was marveling at the very fact that anyone had entered at all. She was young and charming: springy red hair scraped back from a face sprinkled with freckles, the kind of blue eyes that featured little yellow suns in the middle.
She blushed when she saw him, which was a good sign. It was so much more difficult to extract information from the jaded.
“I’m looking for a gift for a very—very—discerning friend whom I should like to impress, and your establishment has been recommended to me.”
“Well, you’ve come to the right place,” she said brightly. As though she’d memorized a script.
“I can also see that the proprietor wasindeeddiscerning when he hired his help.”
He’d also done the right thing. Her blush deepened and she tucked an escaped strand of hair behind one fetching ear.
“My friend is the Earl of Brundage.”
“Oh, the earl is an esteemed customer,” she said at once.
“I should think so!” Hawkes expostulated. “I wondered if you had a record of his purchases. I imagined you would, given the scarcity and value of the objects you purvey here. I should be horrified, you see, to duplicate the kind of spectacular acquisitions he’s already made.”
“Oh, yes, that would be shocking,” she said dutifully.
“And I know he’s purchased a few beautiful things from you.”
“Indeed, he has,” she said.
“So you’ve met him.”
She hesitated. “I’ve been informed that he is a devoted customer.”
It wasn’t quite an answer. He let it lie for now.
“I’m prepared to spend agreatdeal of money. I’ve got simply bags of it, all waiting to be spent frivolously.” He gave a merry shout of laughter.
She laughed, too. It was then, judging from her expression, that she fell in love with him.
“Of course, sir. I’ll just have a look.” She reached beneath the counter and retrieved a large book, which sent up a small cloud of dust when she hurled it onto the counter and flipped it open, ruffling the pages, which weren’t precisely crowded with notations. “We do not often sell vases or urns of the caliber the earl seems to prefer, so his transactions are easy to find and rather leap out,” she told him. “There are four, it seems. Yes, the Earl of Brundage he purchased one case February of 1812, and returned it a week after. Then again in 1813. It cost...” She gulped here, and nearly stammered the words. “Two hundred fifty pounds.”
“Two hundred fifty pounds for a vase,” Hawkes marveled, craning his head to look at the entries. “Good heavens. Is that all?”
Miss Wallace regarded him with dumbstruck wonder.
It was a ridiculous price for a vase. And it wasn’t at all what Brundage had recorded for the value of it in his account books.
Sothiswas how payments were funneled to Brundage. But from whom?
“The earl is indeed a very particular man,” Hawkes mused, “so I wonder... are you perhaps an expert in porcelain?”
“Oh, I fear I am still learning.”
Hawkes took pains to appear crestfallen. “And youhaven’thad the pleasure of the earl’s acquaintance, by any chance?”
She hesitated, then shook her head slowly.
He paused.
“Do you get lonely and bored in here with just the vases and whatnot for company?”
She blushed again. “We have very few customers, sir. And they all seem to want to speak to the owner,” she said wistfully. “I hear the girls what take this job never last long in it.”
