Free City of Secrets by Elisabeth Kidd Page A

There was a desk and chair at one end, and all around the canvas walls hung paintings, in numerous styles and mediums, but all depicting horses. There were horses posed between carriage shafts, horses romping in fields, horses peering over stall doors, and horses garlanded in roses after a race victory. They walked around the collection, the display of which, Devin explained, had also been Mrs. Keppel’s idea, in case the weather should be inclement and the royal party be reduced to taking their luncheon under the tent where there were no natural views to make conversation about. At least Alice had stopped short of inviting the prince’s favorite horses to lunch, he thought.
    “Who are the artists?” Maddie asked.
    “No one of note. One or two are by gifted amateurs, local Suffolk and Cambridge people. Some are by Mrs. Keppel’s and Sir Ernest’s daughters, I shouldn’t be surprised.”
    Maddie paused without comment in front of an obviously childish watercolor of a favorite horse who seemed to lack hindquarters entirely, then passed on to another which she could not let go unremarked.
    “Hangin’s too good for that one,” she observed in a perfect imitation of Florence Wingate’s honeyed way of registering aesthetic horror.
    Devin laughed, then kicked himself for it; he would have preferred to keep his righteous anger burning. He had intended, as well, to berate her for associating herself so publicly with Kropotkin, but none of these intentions had survived his first contact with her—with the firm slenderness of her arm beneath the sleeve of her dress, the sweet soapy smell wafting gently from her hair, the narcotic effect of the faint sound of her breathing as they walked among the pictures in silence. She had, he realized now, the same kind of unfluttery, unselfconscious femininity that Alice Keppel did—and a similar reserved sensuality that promised a good deal while revealing little.
    He was more disconcerted to discover that the attraction he had felt toward her on their first meeting was stronger than ever, as if it were the most important thing to come out of that meeting, far outstripping the common sense that told him it was too soon—if it would ever be soon enough—to do anything about it. Now it was more likely that she would rebuff any advance he made or, worse, take advantage of it in much the same way she had wielded her checkbook on that last occasion. He would have to curb his impatience. He ought to know how by this time.
    “How did you meet Kropotkin?” he asked finally, dragging himself back to duty but barely arriving there intact.
    “We were introduced by a mutual acquaintance.” She gave him a sidelong glance from those deep brown eyes, and he consciously had to straighten the smile from his own mouth. “Why do you ask?”
    “I thought you might have been pumping him for news of your husband.”
    “And if I was? I see no reason that I should not pursue my own inquiries.”
    “Then I don’t know why you hired me.”
    She laughed, showing a flash of white teeth in, he thought, a maddeningly triumphant smile, as if she knew he disliked her meddling and delighted in provoking him. He took a step closer to her, but she moved on, almost as if the slight pressure of space narrowing between them propelled her away from him.
    “So tell me what you have been doing in my behalf,” she said, pausing again in front of a watercolor of a horse and its jockey. “When you have had time off from whatever you do for the Prince of Wales, that is.”
    “That is another matter. It has nothing to do with your case.”
    “Obviously,” she said, acerbically. He winced, but he could not reply to that one.
    She turned to look up at him, then seemed to decide against pursuing that. “Have you read the Pinkerton report?” she asked instead.
    “I have. Furthermore, I have written to the Paris police officer in charge of the case of the body in the Seine, to make an appointment to discuss the