Chapter 21
“An Italian woman. In London. How difficult can that be?” Quentin set his coffee down and leaned back in his chair.
They sat in the window alcove of Quentin’s favorite coffeehouse on St. James’s Street, two days after the Atherton ball, and Evander had just finished laying out everything Madame Fontaine had told them.
“More difficult than you might think,” Evander said. “London is not short of Italian women.”
“No, but it is short of Italian women who frequented a pleasure house in Hampstead with the regularity your brother apparently maintained.” Quentin drummed his fingers on the table.
“She was well-dressed. Not one of Fontaine’s employees.
That narrows the field. We are looking for an Italian woman of some means, or at least some standing, who moves in circles where a young lord could meet her. ”
“That still leaves half of Clerkenwell and a good portion of Soho.”
“Ah, but there is a shortcut.” Quentin’s eyes sharpened.
The simple charm receded, and beneath it emerged the mind that had earned him a first at Cambridge before he decided academics were too dull for a man of his talents.
“Artists. If there is an Italian woman of any distinction in London, an artist will know her. Painters, musicians, sculptors. The Italian community here revolves around the arts. And I happen to know a painter who has made it his life’s work to know every beautiful woman in the city, regardless of nationality. ”
Evander physically stopped himself from rolling his eyes. “Of course you do.”
“His name is Alderton. He keeps a studio in Fitzrovia.” Quentin finished his coffee and stood. “But first, let me think. An Italian woman, well-dressed, not a courtesan. Connected enough to have met your brother through society, or adjacent to it.” He paused. “The opera.”
“What about it?”
“Two seasons ago. I attended a production at the King’s Theatre.
Dreadful seats, excellent company. There was an Italian soprano.
Magnificent voice. She performed only a handful of times before she left the stage.
I remember because Alderton was in the box beside mine, and he spent the entire third act sketching her instead of watching the performance. ”
Quentin reached for his coat. “If she is still in London, Alderton will know where to find her.”
Less than half an hour later, Evander and Quentin had arrived at Alderton’s studio.
Alderton stood at his easel in a studio that smelled of turpentine and linseed oil, a paintbrush tucked behind one ear, his smock spattered with colors that had no business occupying the same garment.
He was a thin, distracted man in his forties who spoke about women the way other men spoke about racehorses: with reverence, specificity, and an encyclopedic memory for their finer points.
After some inane small talk, Quentin went on to present him with the reason for their visit, and Alderton’s eyes lit up with recognition.
“Lucrezia Fierro. Yes, I know her. She sang at the King’s Theatre.
Two seasons ago, as you said.” He wiped his hands on a rag and crossed to a stack of canvases leaning against the wall.
He flipped through them until he found what he was looking for and turned it around.
“I painted her from memory after the performance. The light in that theater was criminal, but the face stayed with me.”
The portrait showed a woman with dark hair and dark eyes and the kind of face that commanded attention without asking for it. Evander studied the painting and committed the features to memory.
“Where does she live?” Evander asked.
“She keeps rooms on Percy Street. Number fourteen. Above the bookseller.” Alderton replaced the canvas. “She left the opera to pursue private tuition. I believe she offers voice lessons for the daughters of the gentry. A waste of her talent, in my opinion, but it pays the rent.”
“Thank you, Alderton.”
“Give her my regards.” The painter picked up his brush. “And tell her I would still very much like to paint her properly. The offer stands.”
They left the studio and climbed into Evander’s carriage.
Thankfully, Percy Street was a ten-minute ride. Evander sat with his hands on his knees and his jaw set, and the familiar tension coiled inside him, the same tension he carried into every lead, every alley, every dead end. But this felt different. Closer.
“Whatever we find,” Quentin said, reading him as he always did, “we find it together.”
Evander nodded.
“Number fourteen,” Quentin murmured as they stood on the pavement.
The building was narrow and well-kept, wedged between a bookseller and a linen draper. A window box on the second floor held geraniums. The door was painted black and recently polished. Simple, but not poor. The home of a woman who valued order.
Evander knocked.
Footsteps on the stairs. The door opened, and a woman stood in the frame.
Dark hair pinned loosely at her nape. Dark eyes.
High cheekbones. She wore a plain dress of charcoal wool with a shawl across her shoulders, and she held herself the way performers did, straight-backed and composed, as though an audience might appear at any moment.
Her gaze moved from Quentin to Evander, and she went still.
The recognition was immediate and unmistakable, followed along by resignation. Her lips parted, and her hand tightened on the doorframe, and she looked at Evander the way a person looks at a letter they have been expecting but hoping would not arrive.
Evander opened his mouth. “Good—”
“You had better come in,” she said, cutting him off.
The apartment was small, tidy, and warm.
A sitting room with a pianoforte against one wall, sheet music stacked on every available surface, and a vase of fresh flowers on the table beside the window.
She gestured toward the chairs and crossed to a sideboard, where she poured three glasses of brandy without asking whether they wanted one.
“My name is Evander Brightshaw, Duke of Blackholm,” Evander said. “This is Quentin Hale, the Marquess of Suntley.”
The woman set the glasses before them and curtsied.
“Lucrezia Fierro. Though I suspect you already know that, or you would not be here.” She sat across from them and folded her hands in her lap.
“I’ve been expecting you, Your Grace. Not today, specifically.
But eventually. Richard told me you would come. ”
The sound of his brother’s name in this woman’s mouth sent a jolt through Evander’s chest. “You know my brother.”
“I love your brother.” She said it without hesitation, without apology, and the certainty in her voice made clear she had considered the cost and chosen to pay it.
“We met six months ago, at a concerto in Mayfair. A mutual acquaintance introduced us. Richard was…” A smile crossed her face, quick and private.
“He was unlike anyone I had met in this country. Open. Reckless. Kind in ways that surprised me.”
“Kind men do not abandon their families.”
“No.” Lucrezia’s gaze held his. “But desperate men do.”
Evander leaned forward. “Tell me what happened.”
Lucrezia turned the brandy glass between her fingers. “Richard and I became close very quickly. I knew he was engaged to another woman. He never hid it. But the betrothal was arranged, not chosen, and by the time we met, Richard was already struggling with the weight of it.”
Evander’s jaw tightened. Quentin placed a hand on the arm of his chair, a quiet signal.
“About five months before Richard disappeared,” Lucrezia continued, “His fiancée came to him. Privately. She told him she could not go through with the wedding.” She paused. “Because she was carrying another man’s child.”
The room tilted. Evander heard the words, processed them, and felt the ground beneath the entire story he had built over the past six weeks shift and resettle into a shape he did not recognize.
“Another man?” he repeated.
“She begged Richard to disappear at the same time as her. If they both vanished together, the scandal would attach to both families equally, and no one would look closely enough to discover the truth about the child. Richard agreed because he cared for this woman, and because disappearing gave him a way out of a life he felt he was failing at.” Lucrezia’s voice was steady, but her hands gripped the glass.
“He did not leave because he was a coward, Your Grace. He left because Charlotte asked him to and because he believed it was the only way to protect her.”
Evander stared at her. The brandy sat untouched on the table before him. His mind worked through the implications with the same methodical precision he applied to estate accounts.
Except the numbers would not add up, because the foundational assumption he had carried since the morning a basket appeared on his doorstep, that Tommy was Richard’s son, was crumbling.
“You expect me to believe this?” His voice came out harder than he intended. “You were my brother’s mistress. He would have told you whatever story suited his purposes.”
Lucrezia’s chin lifted and her eyes hardened. “I know what you see when you look at me, Your Grace. An Italian woman. A singer. A convenient explanation for your brother’s failures. But I am telling you the truth, and I will prove it.”
“How?”
“Because I know where Richard is.”
Quentin sat forward. Evander went still.
“We have been in contact since he left London,” Lucrezia said.
“Letters. Carefully routed. He is safe, and he has been waiting for the right time to return.” She rose from her chair, crossed to the writing desk beneath the window, and took out a sheet of paper.
She wrote for a minute, then folded the paper and held it out to Evander.
“He is staying at a cottage in Sussex that I bought during my more prolific season. He has been staying there since he left.”
Evander took the paper. The directions were precise: a village name, a lane, and a description of the property.