“I’m still not convinced that del Toro bastard didna lie to us when he said he never knew her last name,” Ravencroft speculated. “He was a shifty tub of lard if I ever met one. I always thought he knew more than he let on.”
The laird’s words reflected Cole’s own suspicions. He had gone to the Bare Kitten the moment he was well enough to walk again. Del Toro had pretended not to remember Ginny at first, and then when he was caught out, confessed that he’d hired her not too long ago. He’d subsequently let her go because she’d attacked a customer. Though which customer, he couldn’t recall.
Not for the first time, Cole had wished he’d killed the greasy man right then and there. It would be no less than he deserved. Usually men didn’t lie to him, not when he had his good hand wrapped around their throats and the sharp metal of his hidden wrist-blade at their sacs. But back when he’d confronted the pimp and game-maker, he’d been barely released from the hospital. Weak, frail, and desperate.
What if del Toro had lied to him? What if the man had more guile than Cole had credited him with? What if … he’d kept Ginny for himself? Taken her to Sicily, perhaps.
The very idea made Cole’s skin crawl and his stomach clench. Every lead had gone cold, and the woman he’d pined for these past three years had simply vanished into the London mists.
“Perhaps your associate, Blackwell, has contacts in Sicily, and could find del Toro for me. I think it might bare new leads, interrogating him once more.”
“After this long, Trenwyth, the odds of finding her are approaching nil. Not one of the whores who worked with her stayed at the Bare Kitten. None of them remembered much about her either,” Ravencroft said carefully as he drew up behind him. “Och, I’m not accustomed to speaking to the back of a man’s head, Yer Grace,” he chided. “Are ye admiring yer own reflection in that window, or have ye found something that’s better to look at than my brutish face?”
“Neither.” Trenwyth opened the drapes further to share the view. “I was simply watching my insipid neighbor make as much of a disaster of trying to paint as she does of everything else.”
Ravencroft peered over his shoulder past the hedgerows that hid a stone and iron fence, on the other side of which the Countess Anstruther had wrestled her canvas and easel back into place. She currently settled herself into her uprighted chair, spreading a stained apron over her blindingly pink skirts.
The marquess gave a low whistle. “Well now, that’s a bonny view ye have there.”
“Her?” Cole snorted. “Hardly. She’s nothing more than a grasping opportunist that can afford a garish wardrobe.”
“She’s not wearing much of that wardrobe now.” Ravencroft chuckled. “Ye canna say ye hadna noticed.”
“Dressed or not, she is beneath my notice.”
Only … she wasn’t.
He’d noticed the day he’d returned to Trenwyth Hall that if the weather was clear, Lady Anstruther habitually took advantage of the light in her garden. Almost every afternoon she’d pack her art supplies into the sunlight, eschewing the help of servants, and set up in this very spot. The canvas would face the sun to the west, and she’d sit facing the east. The room he’d picked for his study happened to give Cole a perfect view of her. How could he help but notice her?
He noticed that, if the day was warm, she’d strip off her blouse, painting only in her chemise and corset as she did now. He noticed that she hadn’t the sense to use a lawn umbrella or parasol, so what occasional sun London enjoyed tinted her skin an unfashionable shade and darkened the freckles that marred her nose. He noticed that her hair was too golden to be called red, and too red to be called blond.
He even noticed her vivid expression of emotions that he’d never again hoped to experience as she daintily pressed her brush to the canvas with the most whimsical, almost unbridled movements. Inspiration. Nostalgia. Contentment …
Peace.
Lord, how it irked him. How little he regarded her, but how much he noticed her.
“I take it ye’re not friendly neighbors?” Ravencroft surmised.
Cole made a caustic sound. “Her late husband, Lord Anstruther, was a particularly decent man. She some-bloody-how got her claws into him as the old man—seventy if he was a day—malingered on his deathbed. They were married only nine months before he expired, and now she is the sole proprietor of his fortune, as he had no heir, and his estate was not entailed.”
“Is that right?” Ravencroft asked, conveying only mild interest. “I suppose that’s an infrequent occurrence among our class.”
“There’s the rub. The woman has no class. No family, title, or money. The daughter of an impoverished merchant, she was his nurse at St. Margaret’s, if you’d believe it. I’ve looked into her a little to see if I could wrest Anstruther’s legacy from her, but the documentation is ironclad. She certainly helped him put his affairs in order before she likely helped him to the grave.”
“That’s a substantial accusation,” Ravencroft remarked.
“More a speculation than accusation,” Cole admitted. “But I’d stake a rather mighty wager on it.” From Cole’s vantage, he could trace the errant breezes that riffled through the glinting fall of her unbound hair as though carefully choosing which strands to pull away from her shoulders and across her heart-shaped face. She tucked at it with a long and graceful finger, stained with blue, and she left a streak of it in her hair that she didn’t seem to be aware of. “She’s even presented her younger sister to society, to the queen!” he scoffed. “Pretty girl, but who would lower themselves to have her?”
Ravencroft shifted more to his right, leaning farther into the window to catch a better view. “Ye can never tell these days,” he stated blithely. “The Anstruther fortune may not be as vast as our own estates, but it is significant. I imagine many impoverished noble families might come up to scratch. The world is changing. More and more land-owning peers are forced to swallow their pride in favor of a much-needed dowry. The little sister of a countess might look better to us blue bloods than shipping an heiress from America.”
Though his face tightened in a grimace, Cole ceded the point. “I suppose, but … a nurse? It’s just so bloody obvious. The man was still mad for his saint of a dead wife. I can only imagine that lust or lunacy could have driven Anstruther to marry again, and if that was the case, couldn’t the man have found a decent-looking debutante who’d know what to do with his legacy?”
“Who would settle for decent-looking, when a man could have a ripe beauty like that making his last few months on this earth merry?” The laird chuckled. “I love my wife’s mind, her wit, and her soul, but they’re not what I’m appreciating when she’s trouncing about with no blouse on.” He gestured to the shamelessly garbed woman, who now held a paintbrush in her teeth as she used a cloth to correct some mistake on the canvas.
Cole supposed some men would find her beautiful. Indeed, they might see the way the sun had moved the shadow of an elm to dapple her bare shoulder in dancing silhouettes and appreciate the honeyed hue of her smooth flesh. Or they’d find the arch of her darker russet brow charming as it accentuated the depths of her concentration. Perhaps the bow of her full lips would be considered excruciatingly sensual to some as she nibbled on the tip of her paintbrush whilst inspecting her work.