she were part of this, she would be tried for treason and swing from the gallows. He tried to scrub the image from his mind, but it would not go away.
‘Winter, did you hear me?’
He could not do this with Hart present. ‘I will search for one of his paintings. With the collection my wife is amassing, surely you can see it will take some time for me to locate his work.’
‘I have solved the informant’s identity before you did and yet you will not look me in the eye. If he is the person who hired Mr Clarke, you will be able to put the mystery of this assassination attempt to rest. The vile criminal will swing.’
And that was what Gabriel was beginning to fear.
Once Hart was on his way, Gabriel rang for Bennett. ‘Is Her Grace home?’
‘No, sir, I believe she is at Mr Manning’s studio for her sitting.’
Gabriel closed his eyes and prayed he was wrong. ‘Do you know when she is expected to return?’
‘No, sir, I do not.’
‘Is Colette with her?’
‘No, she was granted the day to visit her mother. I believe Lady Haverstraw is with Her Grace today.’
Gabriel rubbed the ring that had belonged to his father, not at all comfortable with what he was about to do. ‘If she arrives home in the next hour, I need you to keep her from our rooms.’
Bennett did not look pleased and he knew it was taking all of his butler’s control not to say what was on his mind.
‘Do I make myself clear, Bennett?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Bennett replied before Gabriel took the stairs, two steps at a time.
Olivia had mentioned Manning had painted something for her. He paused in the doorway of her bedchamber and knew once he entered, his life with his wife might be changed for ever.
Taking a deep breath, he turned the handle and was met with the faint scent of honeysuckle. He had not been in the room without her in years. The curtains were drawn back, letting the light stream in through the mullioned windows. There were miniature portraits on her dressing table.
That appeared to be as good a place as any to start. He picked up each frame and squinted at the signature on each one. If any of these were painted by Manning, it would be anyone’s guess from the small size of the writing.
He ran his hand through his hair and turned about the room. There was a landscape over her bed and two smaller ones flanking the large one. Who did she say Manning painted?
His entire body froze and his gaze shifted to the fireplace. There it was. Over the mantel was a portrait of Nicholas. His son was sitting on a bench wearing a blue-velvet gown, his arms wrapped around Gabriel’s mother’s spaniel, Caesar. Walking slowly towards it, he found the signature of the artist in the lower-right corner. His stomach dropped when he took note of the distinct curve of the ‘m’.
There was no denying it. Hart was correct. Olivia’s friend was the man who’d supplied the gunman with Prinny’s whereabouts. However, the scrap of paper he held in his hand would not prove a thing in court. They needed to monitor Manning’s movements and hope he revealed his actions.
He knew he should not waste the opportunity to try to find something that might tie Olivia to Manning’s crime. His stomach rolled at the idea.
On the table beside her bed was a stack of books. He went through each one, looking for hidden notes, but found none. Her dressing table held the usual items a woman kept on hand. He checked and found no hidden compartments. Where would a woman hide her secrets?
He entered her dressing room, where just that morning he knew she’d reclined bathing in the warm water he had arranged for her. Even in the early years of their marriage, he had never had a reason to look inside his wife’s wardrobe. Seven shelves of pristinely folded silks, satins and muslins were available for his perusal. How many gowns did one woman need?
Rummaging around the bottom of the immense painted cabinet, his hands touched a wooden box approximately one foot by eight inches. It didn’t take long before he picked the lock. Pausing for a moment, he prepared himself for what he would find. When he lifted the lid, he stopped breathing.
Perched atop a stack of letters that were tied with a red ribbon was the miniature portrait of himself that he had given Olivia shortly after he had asked for her hand. At one time it had resided on her bedside table. Untying the packet, he thumbed through the many letters he had written to her during their betrothal. At the time, he found himself writing to her simply to receive a letter from her in return—a letter he could read over and over again.
She’d kept them. The way she had looked at him these past five years had made him believe she had burned them long ago—probably in a bonfire on one of their estates—or while singing a merry tune, drinking bottles of wine with her friends.
But she had kept them, tied with red ribbon.
There also were pressed flowers and the elaborately designed diamond-and-sapphire brooch he had given to her as a wedding present. He recalled having the brooch reset three times before he was completely pleased with the way it looked. And now it sat in a locked box at the bottom of her wardrobe.
Gabriel placed the contents back inside their wooden tomb and made certain to relock it. Standing up, he surveyed the room again. Going back into her bedchamber, he walked over to her bed and looked underneath. There he found another box. This one was unlocked and held his correspondence with her since Nicholas was born.
There were letters granting permission to order new furniture for the drawing room, his enquiries on the state of Nicholas’s health when he was sick and notices to when he would be leaving town. She’d kept them. But these letters held no love tokens, no gentle reminders of pleasant memories. She hadn’t even tied them with ribbon.
There they sat, the remnants of the last five years of his life—efficient, impersonal and orderly. For five years he’d buried the memory of the morning Nicholas was born. Now he could see her lying in her bed, exhausted. He thought she’d never looked more beautiful. But as he’d kissed her, she’d pushed him away and began demanding he tell her where he had been. He was not about to confess that he had been in a brothel with Madame LaGrange, so he’d said nothing.
Then she began throwing things at him—anything she could get her hands on that was close to her bed. He was so taken aback by this unprecedented outburst that he was stunned into silence.
She told him she had no wish to speak to him or let him touch her ever again. Gabriel was not the type of man to demand conjugal rights of an unwilling wife. So for five years he’d left her alone, waiting for a sign that she had forgiven him. It had appeared in these last few days that she might have found a way to move past his supposed indiscretion. Now that was the least of his concerns.
There was nothing here. He’d looked everywhere and there was no evidence that Olivia had plotted anything with the artist. She considered Prinny a friend. But she had known where he would be the day the shots were fired. Part of him believed Olivia could never intentionally harm anyone. But another
