Chapter 13
He sat in the drawing room unshaven, reading the same parliamentary minutes on the Customs and Inland Revenue Act for the third time when Aoife walked in. She must have entered the house with her key, for Matthews was given leave on Mondays. More significantly, her narrow face looked troubled when few things short of murder troubled Aoife, if that. He came to his feet right quick.
“I need a drink,” she snapped.
She looked unharmed; her movements were fluid. But she had carelessly plopped a hat atop her cropped hair rather than bother with pinning a braid to the back of her head. Definitely trouble.
“Could you make it a double? That would be charming,” she said when he went to the drinks sideboard to select a Scotch. She took the glass from his hand as she paced past with a murmured thanks, and then she said, “My house has been ransacked.”
Ransacked. Hell. “Are you all right?” he asked sharply.
She gave a dismissive wave. “Wasn’t home. I was at the music hall with Susan and then stayed at hers. When I returned this morning, I found chaos. So it must’ve happened between eight o’clock last night and nine o’clock this morning.”
It was ten o’clock now; she had come straight to him. “How bad is it?”
She half emptied her tumbler with one gulp and grimaced. “In terms of what’s been stolen, too soon to tell,” she said, “though all the rings and cuff links I kept on my vanity table are definitely gone.” She chopped at an imaginary neck with her hand. “Susan gifted me some of these pieces, and I want them back. In terms of damage, now, this is where it’s interesting.”
“Interesting how?”
“There’s two types of break-ins, isn’t there: either the place gets smashed up, or it’s done on cat’s paws and you won’t notice until days after the fact. But this—this was a strange one. Looked as though they started out carefully—just delicately sniffing around hoping I’d never know—but then they thought, Hold on, a proper burglary needs some chaos. So they knocked over a few lamps and vases and broke open my desk drawers. But the scattering, and the way things were knocked over, was odd. Oddly halfhearted, like an afterthought. I s’pose if I wasn’t used to seeing properly burgled places, it wouldn’t have looked so off, but to my eyes it was off.”
“Could have been a distraction done by an amateur,” Lucian murmured, “or someone wanting to appear amateurish. Where was your doorman?”
“In bed, sickly. Makes me think the house has been watched.” She finished her drink and returned to him for more since he was still holding the bottle.
“You have anything that could be of particular interest to anyone?” he asked while he poured.
“Always,” she said. “But I haven’t had any trouble for years. I’m on no one’s side, neutral ground. Whoever pays gets information from me. And now this is what I get.”
Her anger was palpable. Like him, she was attached to her shiny objects and the absolute privacy of her home.
“I’ll put a man on the case,” he said.
He sensed the wariness in her sideways glance. “Police?”
“No. Carson.”
“Thank Christ,” Aoife said. “The peelers make me nervous. Luke, I was wondering if they might’ve been after something of yours.”
He paused with his own tumbler halfway to his mouth. “What makes you think so?”
“Don’t bloody know,” she said, and shrugged, “just a hunch. Seems odd that it comes right at the heels of your wedding, which was all over the news.”
The list of people who knew of their connection beyond that of an informant-client relationship was short; they both diligently protected their relationship from the shadow world. Still, he considered his potential adversaries: the lords who owed him, the crooked art dealers or fellows from Scotland Yard who wanted artifacts in his possession, disgruntled figures from the past he had blackmailed or otherwise harmed … none of them a plausible suspect. But not impossible. The murkiness of the situation added fuel to his already simmering frustration, and he set the bottle down too hard. A jade figurine on the other end of the sideboard was shaken off balance, and he had to watch it topple into a crystal decanter and push the decanter over the edge. It smashed apart on the tiles with a terrific noise. He cursed.
Aoife was watching him with growing intrigue. “Why, you’re in a mood. It’s not all that bad—probably just a regular burglary.”