Since the Surrender (18 page)

He settled for smiling a smile he knew didn’t reach his eyes, and he was certain Kinkade noticed. Chase shifted in his hair, accommodating a twinge in his leg, and hoped his friend would ascribe any tension to that.

“Did you draw them?” he tried.

“Them” being the tits.

“In my mind, ever night, after every ball. But I never got around to recording my imaginings in charcoal for posterity, if that’s what you’re wondering. Nor did I save any of my other pictures.”

“Fear not, Kinkade. I don’t need to look at pictures when the Velvet Glove is but a wish away. By the way, the Duchess sends her regards.”

“Did she? How kind of her.” Puff puff went Kinkade on the cigar. And then Kinkade swallowed the remainder of what seemed to be his third ale of the day, and winced.

“Pig piss,” Chase commiserated. “Marie-Claude is pouting for you, apparently. At the Velvet Glove.”

“Marie-Claude pouts for effect. Her heart isn’t broken, and I suppose I regret if her purse is growing slimmer. But one grows tired of the same thing day after day, doesn’t one? Covent Garden, brothels, gaming hells, horse races. One needs variety. Originality. To make life worth living. One must ever seek out new ways to not die of boredom.”

Interesting sentiment from a man who hadn’t seemed to change at all since the moment he’d met him, apart from the fraying head of hair.

“I suppose it’s why I’m going to India,” Chase said. “With the East India Company.”

“I heard you’d planned to do that. You call that variety, Eversea?

“I heard you’d planned to do that. You call that variety, Eversea?

Shackled to the army. Shackled to a woman,” Kinkade made a tsssking sound. “Why is it so many of our gender seem to need to be shackled to something? You’re a gentleman, Eversea.” He sounded indignant. He spread his arms wide, which was meant, Chase supposed, to remind him that the world was his oyster, his birthright.

“Structure, belonging, purpose, brotherhood, travel, excitement,”

Chase said. “A test of what you can endure. Honor,” he told Kinkade, ironically amused. “Those are reasons.”

“I’d frankly rather know how much pleasure I can endure, rather than how much sleeping near farting soldiers in the mud I can endure.”

“You were the worst offender, if I recall correctly.”

“You recall correctly,” Kinkade said solemnly.

“You were a good soldier, Kinkade.”

“Motivated by interest in survival.”

“Not just.”

Kinkade seemed to consider this. At a table near them, a woman shrieked and slapped without conviction at a hand creeping up her dress, and the man belonging to the hand laughed and laughed. Then Kinkade gave a short nod. “Very well, then. Not just.” He inhaled, with what sounded like impatience or discomfort. He contended with his own old wounds, less grave than Chase’s, but the scars on his back made standing or sitting for long periods of time difficult. He took a seat, turned it backward, straddled it.

“Some men are made by the army, Kinkade.”

“And some are destroyed by it. And one might substitute ‘women’ for

‘army’ in that sentence and it would just as easily be true.”

He had the distinct sensation that Kinkade was…not precisely taunting him, but definitely, deliberately, touching on sensitive places. Testing him?

Although he might very well, once again, be confusing his own conscience with Kinkade’s conversation. Chase was aware that his own weakness for one woman in particular could have destroyed his career. She had most definitely altered the path of it, and was in fact the reason he sat across from his friend now.

But Kinkade couldn’t possibly know this.

“Might one?” Chase asked idly. “Do you anticipate being made or destroyed by a woman, Kinkade? Reformed, and etcetera, perhaps? Don’t you see yourself one day leg—” He stopped. Legshackled made him think of the time Colin spent in prison, his younger brother’s legs dragging with the weight of the unjust chains, and he shied away from the term. “—married? You’ll need heirs to fill up your houses.”

“Oh, naturally, I shall take a wife one day. Someone mild, unobservant, easy on the eyes, wide of the hips, generous of the dowry. And thusly I shall continue to live as I always have. Choosing my amusements. I lived through a bloodbath, and I intend to ensure that the rest of my life is a monument to comfort and indulgence.”

“You’re a romantic, Kinkade,” Chase said wryly.

“It takes one to recognize one.”

Chase did laugh at this.

“Speaking of marriage, how is Colin getting on? One hears things.”

“He gets on.” He didn’t want to talk about Colin. Or cows. Or, God help him, marriage.

He slipped his hand into his pocket just to feel the garters. He imagined for an instant they were still warm from her skin, the satin of them reminiscent of that creamy satin between her thighs, and the thought made the muscles of his stomach tighten, not to mention what it did to his loins.

He might have been soundly rejected as a husband, but the issue of wanting Rosalind March—and of Rosalind March wanting him—remained…

It cannot happen again, she’d said.

He wondered how honorable it might be try to persuade her to want to go much, much further than the event in the library. And whether that would be at all wise for either of them.

He wouldn’t talk about marriage or cows. But the garters reminded him of Rosalind, and he would talk about horses. For Rosalind’s sake. He fingered those garters, and knew that a small fissure had opened up in his solid regard for Kinkade.

Chase succumbed to curiosity, and he knew a way to begin.

“Speaking of drawings, there’s a painting of a horse above the hearth in your library, Kinkade—do you recall it? Tall chestnut, fine head. Is it Ward?”

“Aye. My father commissioned Ward to paint it. My father’s favorite horse. Brandywine, his name was. Won a derby or two. Sired dozens of offspring. I suppose my father identified with him in that respect. The horse, that is, not the painter. Haven’t the faintest idea about the number of his offspring.”

Kinkade was blessed—or cursed—with innumerable siblings.

“My sister Genevieve—you met her last season, yes?—is the lover of art in our family. She’s quite knowledgeable. Is capable of falling into raptures over paintings. I managed to avoid acquiring any education in art at all. I know what I like and what I don’t.”

“You always do, Eversea.” A faint smile here. “Always did.”

The barmaid ventured over to them.

“Have you anything that doesn’t taste like pig piss?” Chase asked in all seriousness.

“No, luv. You might want to try the donkey piss.”

“Bring me one of those, then.” He smiled at her, and she looked as though she’d received a blow to her head. Her eyes filled with stars, and she basked and basked in it.

“Off you go, love,” Kinkade said gently. He shook his head at Chase. She staggered off, happily dazed.

Chase turned back to Kinkade. “Have you ever purchased any art?

I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

“One doesn’t buy art, Eversea. One inherits it. It comes with the houses.” Kinkade stretched out his legs and waved out a languid hand, like an orchestra conductor weary of bringing up the violins. The Kinkades had houses and property simply everywhere. Two The Kinkades had houses and property simply everywhere. Two town houses in London, an abandoned theater outside Covent Garden called Mezza Luna, estates in Northumberland, Wales, Plymouth. They didn’t equal the value of Eversea holdings, as the Everseas had been property holders since the Conqueror set foot on English shores, but the scope of them was impressive nevertheless.

“What if you inherit a painting you can’t abide? Do you keep it out of duty? Is one obliged to keep every horse, dog, and homely ancestor? Donate it to the British Museum?”

Kinkade looked amused. “Speak for yourself regarding the ancestors. But I cannot imagine feeling strongly one way or another about a picture. I haven’t done a thing with any of the paintings; they’re all welcome to stay, as far as I’m concerned. Now houses, one has little choice in the matter when they’re entailed, is this not so? Or property. Damned expensive to keep all of it up.”

So he hadn’t donated a Rubinetto to the Montmorency. Or…he was lying about it.

It occurred to Chase then that Kinkade had never felt strongly one way or another about much of anything, whereas he generally felt strongly one way or another about everything. And perhaps this was why they’d managed to tolerate each other for so long, and to call this tolerance friendship.

And perhaps this ability not to feel strongly was why Kinkade succeeded in his role in the Home Office. Yet despite his responsibility in determining the fates of so many, it occurred to Chase that his friend was strangely unmoored, and as such, as unpredictable as a comet heading toward earth: one never knew how or where it would land.

how or where it would land.

It might, of course, simply orbit randomly for eternity. It struck him as a dreadful way to spend eternity. But then, this probably described many a spoiled member of the aristocracy, untouched by the financial realities of their times, or by the struggles other soldiers endured in the wake of the war. How could a girl just disappear from Newgate?

Was Rosalind’s story true?

Of course it was. She would never prevaricate when it came to her sisters. She’d devoted her life to caring for them. She had reasons to care, unlike Kinkade.

The donkey piss arrived, and Chase raised it to his friend, who raised his dreg-filled glass in return.

“My mother wants our portraits painted by someone fashionable,”

Chase said. “Know of any portraitists in London?”

“I know everyone fashionable, and not one of them are portraitists. Or even painters.”

“More’s the pity. Speaking of the fashionable, is there anyone new and interesting I ought to meet, Kinkade?”

“I wonder who you might like.”

“Begin with a list of intriguing females.”

“Thought you were already captivated, Eversea.”

“Who says I need to confine my interests to merely one woman?”

“Shame you needed to depart early the other evening, because there was a countess you ought to meet, because from experience I can tell you she can put her feet over her head…”

The list of intriguing females was long and detailed, because Kinkade had rather a broad definition of what constituted intriguing. The prurient, trivial conversation rained down over him, allowing Chase to think and participate at the same time, and he kept his hand in his coat pocket, running the satin of two garters through his fingers.

The most fascinating thing in the room was the clock perched on the bar, because in two hours he could call upon Rosalind again. He knew he now needed to take her straight to the Montmorency Museum.

Rosalind wore a green dress, because it made her eyes greener, and because it made Chase’s pupils flare when he saw her, as she’d known it would.

There was nothing in the world, she decided, looking at Chase’s frame all but filling up her small parlor, that could possibly make his eyes bluer than they already were.

Apart from a certain solemnity of manner, he exhibited no signs of being shattered by the rejection of his proposal. He was all that was dignified and respectful. She was relieved.

But then a grayer mood settled when he told her about his visit with Kinkade.

“He won’t help?”

“He says he has tried to help. He says there was no record of Lucy Locke ever being in Newgate. He also says he never donated a thing to a museum.”

She felt her palms turn to ice. “I swear to you, Chase, she was there. I saw her, and she told me—”

“I believe you.”

“She can’t—She can’t just be gone. Someone knows where she is. Someone must—”

“I agree.”

“And the clerk at the Montmorency told me that a Mr. Kinkade donated that—”

“I believe you.”

There was something so unutterably bracing about his voice. Calm, even, certain. She took a deep breath and breathed in strength from his presence.

Still, she was now left with nothing, or so it seemed. The weight of it settled on her chest, and it was suddenly a struggle to breathe. She never gave up without a fight. But all avenues seemed blocked.

“What can I do?” she asked. She tried to sound strong. She heard, however, a whiff of despair in her own voice.

Later, she would realize it was probably portentous that he’d waited Later, she would realize it was probably portentous that he’d waited until she’d swallowed her tea and replaced her cup in her saucer before he answered.

“I should like to take you to a brothel.”

She went very, very still.

Had she…heard him correctly? Surely he hadn’t said…

She could feel heat scrolling rapidly up her face. She laid her hands flat on her knees, an attempt to steady her nerves. She was certain Chase was now looking at a tomato-colored woman. And yet…the very word “brothel” uttered in his voice touched the base of her spine with a long rough-tipped finger. Coincidentally, the kind of fingers Chase had.

“But…” she began.

But? But what? The proper response was probably righteous indignation. Or at the very least, Why?

He added very seriously, and in a mock rush, “Not because, Rosalind, I think you should apply for a position there. No insult to your powers of attraction intended.”

His wicked glinting eyes made a lie of his solemnity.

“None taken,” she said faintly.

The bloody man deliberately allowed her to flounder in confusion for a moment longer.

Oh, for God’s sake. She wasn’t a child. She inhaled. “I assume this proposed jaunt has something to do with Lucy?”

Her voice was even and cool, which she was proud of, but quite threadbare, which she was not.

“Well, here is the thing: My sister Genevieve has never heard of a painter called Rubinetto. And I assure you she knows a tedious amount about every important painter and all of the unimportant ones, too, particularly the Italian ones. Which in and of itself may or may not be significant. But I happened to recall—”