Chapter 4
Oh, perfidious cockwobbler!
Fatuous bunglewank!
What was that one curse Da sometimes used?
Fooking hell.
Rosie saw the realization flash across Bull’s face, and knew with dread in her stomach what he was going to say before he growled, “Rosie?” in the tone of someone who could not believe what they’re seeing.
Perhaps he cannot. Your mustache is quite luxurious.
His grip tightened on her upper arms. “Rosie,” he hissed, shaking her a bit. “Swear to Christ, tell me I’m wrong?”
Her chin went up. She was not about to be cowed. “You are not,” she announced in her normal voice.
His lovely gray eyes flashed with what looked like pain, then closed briefly. “Fooking hell.”
Her mustache twitched. “Exactly what I was thinking.”
His eyes snapped open and the glare he sent her way could have melted butter. “What the shite were ye thinking?” He yanked her closer, to peer down at her face. “Rosie, ye could’ve been—”
Been what?
Ruined?
Hurt?
Exposed to the scandalous excesses of art?
Her brows drew in and she stiffened, trying to pull herself out of his hold. “I could have been many things, Bull, including ignored by you.” She succeeded in stepping away from him, or perhaps she’d shocked him into releasing her.
Rosie did her best to glare up at him. “Or, if Merida and I had come to you and explained that yes, actually, I have spent the last five years studying exactly what you need to know…” Where had she been going with that sentence?
Bother, he really was delicious. Oh yes. “Would you have accepted my help?”
Bull gaped at her, waving his hands wildly as though grasping for something to cling onto. “Ye—ye wanted to work for—ye didnae want paying?”
What in all the hells was the point of that? “Of course I do not want paying,” Rosie huffed in exasperation. “The subject of Allie’s painting looks just like my mother, Bull! This is my investigation now as well!”
He frowned down at her in confusion, his fingers flexing as if he wanted to reach for her, and she took pity on him.
It was hard not to. “I am sorry I lied, Bull—”
“Bullshite,” he growled, and as he opened his mouth to say something else, an imperious voice broke through.
“Well? Bull, dear, are you not going to go after the nefarious evil-doer?”
Rosie’s gaze swung toward the old woman toddling toward them, the one she’d been introduced to earlier.
The Countess was leaning heavily on the arm of a butlery-looking man, and was waving toward the foyer. “Go! Go, Bull, see if you can catch him!”
Bull looked torn, his gaze flashing between the old woman and Rosie. Finally, with a growl, he stepped backward. “Get yer hat,” he hissed to her. “And meet me out front!” He inclined his head to the Countess. “I’ll update ye, Eliza.”
He didn’t wait for a polite dismissal but turned and bolted for the foyer, rushing after the thief who was now long gone.
Leaving Rosie standing in the middle of the gallery room—a hysterical young woman clutching a sketchbook being comforted by the three scholars while a countess and her companion limped closer—searching for her disguise’s hat.
Oh! There it was. She scooped it up off the ground, jammed it on her head, and remembered her manners in time to turn to Lady Mistree.
She did not, however, remember that Robert Hoyle wouldn’t curtsey, and thus, when she sunk into a quick respectful bob, he had to turn it into an awkward bow on the way up.
“My lady,” she murmured gruffly, shuffling backward out of the room. “Have a good day.”
“Yes, goodbye, Robert.” The old woman seemed entirely too cheerful for someone who had just witnessed a robbery, an uncomfortably knowing glint in her eyes. “Have a lovely afternoon!”
As soon as she reached the foyer, Rosie clapped her hand to her head to hold onto the hat, turned, and bolted for the front door. She might have gained the suspicions of all the staff milling around, chattering in alarm, had she not again run smack into Bull’s chest.
Every inch of her burned.
Oh dear.
“Hoyle,” Bull growled, his hand closing around her upper arm. He raised his voice, bobbing his head to the uniformed man he’d been speaking to on the front steps. “My art expert and I will continue this investigation at my office, Sergeant. Ye ken where to find me?”
“Aye, Mr. Lindsay,” the rotund man was saying as Bull hustled her down the steps. “We’ll be expecting your notes by tomorrow!”
“Who was that?” Rosie asked breathlessly, concentrating on not tripping over the too-large men’s boots Merida had insisted she wear.
“I regularly take cases for the Metropolitan Police.” He flagged down a hack, not looking at her.
“Since the theft seems entirely too coincidental, I have to assume it’s related to my current case.
I’ll give them what information they need.
” As the vehicle came to a stop, he shoved her toward it.
“Get in, be quiet, and keep yer head down.”
My head down?
Frowning, Rosie did as he’d commanded, her heart pounding in irritation and quite a significant amount of worry. She hunched in the seat, her hat hiding her features from anyone who glanced their way. Bull’s attention remained on their surroundings.
“What are—” she began, but he cut off her words with an impatient slash of his palm, without turning to look at her.
“Keep yer head down and yer mouth shut, Robbie. We’re going to my office.”
Well, that told her little, didn’t it? Rosie crossed her arms over her chest and slouched in her seat.
Yes, she might appear to be pouting, but she told herself she was just following his idiotic orders.
A million years later, the hack was trotting down the proper street lined with pleasant red brick townhouses. When it pulled to a stop, Bull leaned past her without hesitation, causing her to shrink into the seat, tossed a coin to the driver, then reached in to take her arm once more.
“I can walk myself, you know,” she snapped at him. It wasn’t that his grip hurt, but it was rather demeaning. She was hardly a child.
“I dinnae trust ye to disappear.” Bull didn’t even look at her as he marched them both up the interior stairs. “Ye’re no’ supposed to be here. Ye cannae be here. Therefore ye’re an apparition, and if I dinnae hold ye here, ye’ll flit away like ye’re bloody well supposed to!”
That last part was said as he kicked the door to his office closed behind them. Only then did he release her—only to turn the lock on the door and stomp across the room to yank the curtains closed on the large window overlooking the street.
Rosie’s brows rose.
He seemed a little…worried, did he not?
Was that a good sign? Did she want it to be a good sign?
She pulled the hat from her hair and clutched it in front of her, watching Bull as he stalked around the room, lighting each of the lamps. Finally, he turned and crossed his arms and leaned his arse against his desk.
“Ye’re still here,” he accused.
Rosie peeked over her shoulder, fighting a strange inclination to laugh. “I could leave if you preferred.”
“Dinnae even consider it, Rosie.” Bull jerked away from the desk as if ready to reach for her again, then stopped himself with a muttered curse and switched his attention to the hearth. “Rosie. Fook me, I cannae believe ye’re even here.”
She tried to keep her tone reasonable as she explained again. “If Merida had told you who her expert friend was, would you have hired me?” When his scowl deepened, she shook her head. “No, forget hiring me. Would you have even listened to me?”
He wasn’t looking at her.
Well, that answered that question. Rosie took a deep breath, dropped the hat to her side, straightened her shoulders, and stepped toward him. “Bull. This is what I do. It is all I am good at—”
“Dinnae be stupid. Ye’re an accomplished—”
“Oh, yes, I am, very accomplished.” Could she help it if her words came out bitterly?
“I can play passable piano, paint a moderate watercolor, and plan a dinner party for fifty, if I were ever to find that a necessary accomplishment at a place like Endymion.” She shook her head with a scoff.
“The very idea of Da letting more than five people at a time across the threshold unless held at butterknife point by Mother is preposterous. But anyone can do those things. Art theory, though? That is me. That is a talent I alone can claim.”
She shrugged. “Well, not I alone. I learned from some rather wonderful teachers. And of course there were the authors of—”
“Rosie.”
She glanced at Bull, only to see him frowning at her. “What?”
Something sparkled in his eyes, even as his frown continued. “Please, I cannae take ye seriously while wearing that mustache. The haircut is bad enough, but the mustache is an affront to mankind.”
Her fingers brushed against her upper lip. “It is not that bad.”
“Any male in London—the ones who arenae blind, at least—is mortally offended by it. Hell, even a few of the blind ones.”
Her lips twitched, and she was pleased he couldn’t see it beneath her affront to mankind. “And what is wrong with my hair?” She patted the shorter locks with the hand not clenching the hat. “I like it.”
“It looks like a man’s hairstyle,” he told her bluntly, his gaze flicking over her head. “Too blocky.”
Oh. Well, Bull did know fashion. She’d always admired his outrageous waistcoat collection.
Still. He didn’t have to be so…so dismissive.
Not that she cared. Blundering feckerminge!
“What I look like does not matter,” she told him firmly. In fact, that was the whole goddamn point of this disguise, to prove that the Rosie he knew was capable. “Do you want to know what I learned at the Gallery?”
Bull grunted, then swung to move behind his desk. He didn’t look at her as he flicked open a notebook and made a note with a short pencil. “Go.”
Go? The cheek. Well, at least he was listening to her. “In the miniature at the Gallery, our mystery sitter—”
“Who?” Bull’s gray eyes cut sharply to her.