Chapter 2
Caroline, the Duchess of Aylesmore—Caro to her family and closest friends—took the pale card that Singleton, the household’s butler, presented to her. On it an engraving of a picture frame enclosed the words:
Eamon Stone, Esq.
Assessor, art collections.
Paintings, sculpture, objets d’art.
Valuations, estate sales, art placement.
Very small letters at the bottom declared: No fee for consultation.
The very reason Caro had hired Cheswell’s gallery was because they would send someone to value the paintings at no charge. Mr. Cheswell had assured her in his last letter that they would take their fee from the proceeds of any sale.
“Who is it?” the dowager duchess demanded imperiously from her favorite corner of the sitting room. Her voice retained the aristocratic French lilt from her girlhood. “The picture man at last?”
“It seems so,” Caro answered. “They’ve sent someone called Mr. Eamon Stone. Do you know him, Maman?”
“Stone.” The dowager lifted her keen blue gaze from the novel she perused.
Her face was thin and pointed, her figure as elegant as the day she’d married the Fifth Duke.
“There were the Bedfordshire Stones, but no, they fled to the Continent years ago, to escape their creditors. Living in Lucerne now, I believe, near the lake. Beautiful land. I traveled there when I was a girl.”
If Cheswell’s gallery didn’t purchase a few paintings from the ancient Aylesford collection, Caro and the dowager, along with Caro’s son, Leo, might find themselves fleeing to Lucerne as well. They’d learn to eat goat’s cheese and climb about the mountains behind their tiny chalet.
Caro had only a dim idea where Lucerne was in Switzerland, but mountains were bound to be nearby, as well as chalets. And goats.
“This Mr. Stone is here in London,” Caro answered.
“Then I do not know.” The dowager lightly touched her lip. “I find that odd. Ask him who he is when you speak to him.” She returned to her book, unbothered.
“Where have you put him, Singleton?” Caro asked.
The Grosvenor Square house of the dukes of Aylesmore was vast, with a complex hierarchy of rooms into which visitors should go.
The first-floor drawing room was for dukes and duchesses and the occasional royal visit, while the second-floor drawing room housed lesser nobility.
Various nooks and crannies existed for everybody else, based on lineage and rank.
Singleton knew every place for every person.
“Ground floor reception room, Your Grace,” Singleton answered in his lugubrious tones. He wasn’t an ancient specimen, his hair still black, his gait sprightly, but he’d cultivated an antiquated air. “The blue one.”
Caro felt sudden pity for Mr. Stone. “Oh, dear. That bad, is he?”
Singleton looked down his long nose. “He has no precedent, Your Grace.”
Which meant Singleton hadn’t known how to classify him.
A man who assessed paintings for a gallery likely was not much more than a tradesman, but Singleton’s hesitation indicated that Mr. Stone might exist in the space between tradesman and impoverished gentleman struggling to earn a living.
The end of the long war with France had returned many such men to England.
“Well, it’s a pleasant enough room.” Caro kept hold of the card as she moved to the mirror and forced a stray lock of dark hair back into its severe knot.
The dowager’s head popped up again. “The blue reception room? It isn’t pleasant at all. It’s dreadfully cold, and the chairs are hard. Apologize for it, my dear. We don’t want the picture man to rush off.”
Caro turned from the mirror. “Are you certain you still wish to sell? These are paintings from your husband’s collection, after all.”
Caro had never met the Fifth Duke of Aylesmore, who’d been gone before she’d married his son. By all accounts, he’d been quite a man.
“He liked looking at the damned things more then he enjoyed talking to people, including me,” the dowager answered decidedly. “If he could have married them, he’d have been very happy. Sell them, my dear. We need the blunt.”
As always, Caro’s mother-in-law spoke to the point.
“Very well.” Caro tucked the card into the pocket of her everyday gown and left the room, followed deferentially by Singleton. “Send him to the second-floor drawing room,” Caro instructed the butler.
By Singleton’s intake of breath, Caro knew this was a breach of protocol. Only barons and above went to the second-floor drawing room. But a worse breach would be for her to descend to the blue reception room to greet Mr. Stone herself. Singleton would faint in horror if she did that.
Caro and the dowager—the former Eugenie Duval, daughter of a French marquis with a very long title and surname—had been reposing in the private sitting room on the fourth floor, a level Caro rarely went below these days. Her bedchamber was directly above this floor, with the nursery above that.
This cozy sitting room held a large shelf of books, and the dining room was next to it, so Caro had all she needed.
She’d resurrected the out-of-use dumbwaiter a previous duke had installed so Singleton didn’t wear himself out climbing multiple staircases to serve meals or bring the dowager her cup of chocolate.
Caro skimmed down two long flights of the wide stairs to the second floor.
The staircase filled the middle of the house, which had been the largest on the square when built.
Other townhouses had squeezed against it in the intervening years of the last century, but this abode remained grandiose and immense.
The May day was warm, and the second-floor drawing room, which Caro hadn’t entered in ages, proved to be stuffy. Caro went to the window once Singleton left her, ready to admit some fresh air.
The window latch resisted her tugs. Caro struggled with it, at last forcing the brass catch out of its slot.
When she’d first married Aylesmore, ten years previously, the house had swarmed with maids and footmen who’d have opened the window for her.
Now there was only Singleton, the cook who never left her demesne below stairs, and Jeanne, the dowager’s lady’s maid, who’d made it clear she did not perform manual tasks.
The window sash proved even more stubborn than the latch.
Caro wasn’t feeble, being rather tall for a woman and what she’d heard others call sturdy.
Plus, she’d been chasing Leo about this big house, the park outside, and Mayfield Hall—the Aylesmore estate—for nine years, which had given her stamina.
Even so, as much as she wrenched at the window, it wouldn’t budge.
“Open, you blasted thing.”
A pair of strong hands in well-fitting leather gloves landed on the sash on either side of hers.
“Allow, me, madam.”
Caro jumped, and crashed into a man’s body that was as solid as his hands.
She looked back and up into a hard face that held a crooked nose and summer blue eyes filled with warmth. The man had dark hair as unruly as Caro’s and a clean-shaven face framed by a high collar and a simply tied cravat.
His arms hemmed her in, his body enclosing hers. The scents of cashmere, smoke, and warmth clung to him, hinting of dark nights, firelight, and intimacy.
Caro flooded with unaccustomed heat. She had no idea where these images came from, why she had any business mixing the word intimacy with this man, who’d sprung from nowhere.
He regarded Caro with amusement as well as curiosity. She sensed a watchfulness behind both those emotions, like an animal who was never certain it would be accepted or kicked aside. If he was accepted, his eyes promised, he would provide her an experience like no other.
Caro had no idea where that thought came from, either.
She made herself come out of her frozen stance and duck from beneath his arms.
The gentleman politely stepped aside for her, then attempted to sweep the window upward with a magnanimous gesture. The sash resisted. He gave it two mighty heaves before the window finally screeched open a few inches, then stuck fast.
Caro laughed. She couldn’t help herself.
The man’s answering smile stole her breath. His gaze fixed on Caro, as though she were the only being in the world, the only person he ever smiled for.
But of course, that couldn’t possibly be true. He must bestow his smile on any he thought it would affect.
This, Caro whispered to herself, is a dangerous man.
From the doorway came Singleton’s aggrieved tones. “Mr. Stone, Your Grace.”
Mr. Stone started when Singleton said Your Grace, and stared at Caro in shock.
Any tradesman who’d accidentally been in a near embrace with the lady of the house—a duchess, no less—would have backed away hastily, apologizing in consternation.
Duchesses came attached to dukes who could make a tradesman’s life hell if they chose.
Though Caro could assure this man that the current duke was nine years old and a sunny-natured boy.
Mr. Stone only studied Caro all the more closely, then made a courteous bow.
“Your Grace.”
His voice was deep like a rich wine.
Caro gave him a nod she hoped was regal. “Mr. Stone.”
Singleton hovered in the doorway, a terrier ready to leap to Caro’s defense.
Singleton hadn’t much approved of Caro when the Sixth Duke had first married her, but he’d soon converted from long-suffering enemy to staunch ally.
He’d been a rock when Leopold had died suddenly, leaving his wife, mother, and little boy with a vast estate to maintain and a staggering amount of debt.
“Thank you for coming, Mr. Stone,” Caro said. “Singleton, would you bring coffee while I show Mr. Stone the paintings?”
Singleton obviously did not want Caro to lead Mr. Stone down to the gallery herself, but who else could do it? The curator of the duke’s collection had been one of the first to desert them, when he’d realized his salary wouldn’t be paid. More retainers had rapidly followed.
“Yes, Your Grace,” Singleton said stiffly.