The most important aspect to this event was to affirm whether the painting was genuine. And if not, did the real one exist at all?
Any…dalliance with Mrs Swift would have to wait until both issues had been concluded to his utmost satisfaction.
With thoughts strictly regimented, he clattered a doorknocker moulded in the shape of a scarcely clad mermaid.
This area, he knew, was mostly inhabited by well-paid mistresses and high-class courtesans – near enough to Mayfair for a quick tumble but far enough so that they didn’t bump into the wife. He’d also established that this house belonged to the missing-in-countryside Lord Astwood.
A suspicion that Mrs Swift could be that wastrel’s latest mistress oozed its way to the fore.
Well, time would tell.
Upon his swift knock, no pun intended, a maid answered the door. Casper recognised her angelic features from their first meeting at his townhouse and narrowed his eyes.
If she were a maid, then he was Byron.
Without so much as a curtsey, she snatched away his hat, gloves and cane to plonk them on the table with all the finesse of a pugilist.
“And yer jacket?”
“I beg your pardon?” She required him to disrobe? What had he ventured into?
“Oh lawks, do excuse me, Yer Grace. That’s me weekend job. Keep yer wrapping and follow me.”
Stalking down the hall after the insolent wench, he noted square, paler patches of blue on the walls denoting absent paintings, although the place appeared well kept, if a little chilly.
Themaidopened a door, stood back and shooed him in, with no attempt whatsoever at an announcement.
Ahead, two men he vaguely knew from previous auctions were gathered around a frame on the wall, blocking his view. They murmured excitedly and he cursed for being late, but Ernest had not returned home last night and so he’d sent men on the hunt, finally finding him asleep on the floor at Prince’s hell – the lowlife one.
He surged forward but halted at a soft murmur. “Your Grace. So pleased you found the time.”
Malapert.
As decorum demanded of a gentleman, he turned.
Mrs Swift wore her hair in a simple arrangement but copper curls pinged out in wild disorder. Her gown today was…serviceable, plain grey and somewhat dusty at the hem, as though she’d been in the attics. White teeth bit on her lower rosy lip and he wished he were an artist, to capture her alabaster skin and many-coloured skeins of hair.
Yet a weariness beset her. Dark shadows plagued her eyes and her cheeks appeared thinner than three days previous. Was she eating? Or ill? Surely her circumstances were comfortable if she resided in this abode with Astwood paying the bills.
He grasped her proffered hand and bowed, the first instance that he’d held her ungloved fingers. They felt cold as marble, and downright perverted fantasies overtook him. To warm her hands betwixt his, to spoil her with venison braised in sherry, to remove the sorrowful expression in her eyes.
Foolish notions, as those lips lied every time she parted them, and as such, he should loathe the jade. He was unsure why he didn’t.
“Are you well, Mrs Swift?” he allowed himself to ask.
She tugged her hand away and glared. “Of course, Your Grace. Would you care for a drink before viewing the artwork?”
Not really, but nevertheless, he nodded and watched her pour.
Those fingers shook.
Why? Because she thought to sell him a false painting?
Both in his study and at the ball, she’d been full of impudent lip and brazen pluck, and he’d supposed Mrs Swift a tantalising coquette, but today that façade had waned and what he now witnessed fascinated him.
Deception, fragility and bravado.
Sampling the pale concoction, he just about managed to halt a contorted grimace through sheer willpower and eleven years at Eton. Gads, it tasted like the Thames at Rotherhithe.
