I had no doubt he would. 'They may not be in the house at all,' I said. 'Easton might not have risked bringing them here.'
'That is true.' Cooper's eyes glinted. 'I thought of that, sir. That's why I sent a couple of men to look over your house.'
I stared at him. ' My house? What the devil for?'
'It's reasonable, sir. The house is empty, no one to bother it. You haven't been there in a donkey's age-it's been shut up since your dad's death. No one goes there, now.'
Lady Breckenridge would be going there this afternoon. Not for several hours yet, but what if she grew impatient, or annoyed at Lady Southwick, and decided to make the journey early?
I put down the paperknife and headed down the stairs without a word to Cooper.
The man followed me. 'I'll just go with you, sir.'
He would whether I liked it or not. I gave him a grim nod. 'Fine, but hurry.'
An excited shout stopped me from charging out of the house. Cooper brushed past me on the way to the dining room, and found one of the pugilists pulling a rolled canvas from behind a few ripped-out boards of paneling.
'Give that to me.' Cooper snatched the canvas from the man's hands and unrolled the large thing across the dining room table. He went carefully, I was happy to see, understanding the consequences of damaging Denis's loot.
All the men had stopped working and came crowding in to see. An incredible painting spread itself before us. Colors glowed against a background that brightened from sable on the left to a golden light on the right that surrounded two rather muscular angels. A group of round-cheeked women faced the angels with expressions of astonishment, their gowns vibrant red, lavender, and blue.
I'd seen, in my travels, copies of paintings of the great Rubens, enough of them to realize that he'd painted this one himself.
'Good God,' I said. ' This was thrust behind the paneling?'
'Keep hunting,' Cooper said to the other men. 'We need the rest.'
I touched the paint that a Flemish genius had stroked on two hundred years before. 'Amazing.' This should be hanging in the drawing room of a king-and maybe once had been. 'How did Brigadier Easton get hold of something like this? And why would Denis trust him with it?'
'Couldn't say,' Cooper said. 'Are you staying or going? Sir.'
'Going,' I said.
It hurt to look upon that beautiful painting and leave it here with Denis's men. They'd roll it up and cart it off to him so that he could sell it to a rich banker who didn't mind buying stolen goods. War-wrecked Europe was an open market to James Denis and others like him, who stole from the weak and sold the booty to the very rich. Rubens was dead and gone, and all the people who'd owned this painting were probably dead and gone as well.
Cooper still insisted on accompanying me. The other men must be quite trustworthy if they could be left in a house with one and possibly more priceless pieces of art.
I rode the horse I'd borrowed from Lady Southwick's stables. Cooper didn't like horses and didn't ride. He walked along beside me and insisted I pace him. I did, because I wanted to keep an eye on him as much as he wanted to keep one on me.
The rain had finished, and wind had sprung up to send away the mist and open the sky. As a lad, I'd loved the enormous skies arching over the farmland that rolled to miles of marshes and gray sea. This was the land of my childhood, where I'd played among the tall marsh grass and hidden in fishing boats so I could go out to sea with the men. The fishermen had taught me to fish, and I'd brought the spoils home to our cook, who was careful not to tell my father where she'd obtained them.
I'd roamed fearlessly, brought home when I strayed too far by farmers, villagers, fishermen, or the publican at Parson's Point. I'd found many ways to elude the nannies, tutors, horse masters, or whatever teacher of the moment my father saw fit to employ. None stayed long, and he'd always try to cheat them out of their fee.
It was in this land that I'd learned the lure of the fairer sex, the first in the form of a barmaid in Blakeney the summer I'd been fifteen. She'd been older than me-sixteen-and I'd thought her the most beautiful creature I'd ever seen.
I'd reveled in the conquest until I returned to school at Michaelmas, to later learn that said young woman was quite loose with her favors. Ours would hardly be the love of legend. She'd married at eighteen and gone to Suffolk with her husband, and was there now for all I knew.
Cooper said nothing on the road, a man with a habit of silence. I who never liked talking for the sake of it started to find him restful.
We went through the gate to the weed-choked drive. Cooper glanced about askance as he climbed over bracken on the way to the house. A cart stood in front of it, the horse let loose to graze as he liked. I dismounted, removed my horse's saddle and bridle, and let it join the carthorse.
I heard the sound of pounding before I entered the front door. No one was in the main hall, but the banging went on below us. I opened a door at the back of the house and descended to the kitchens and servants' quarters, where I found two men tearing out the walls.
They looked up when I came clattering down, saw that it was only the captain, and returned to smashing. Cooper came down behind me.
'Anything?' he shouted.
'Not yet,' one of the men said.
'This paneling is fifty years old, and intact,' I said over the hammering. 'It's doubtful anything will be behind it.'
Cooper shrugged. 'No stone unturned, sir.'
I ought to have been far more upset to see them bashing away at my ancestral home. However, the memories I had of this house were far from pleasant, and it was a wreck in any case. The best memories were of this kitchen, in fact. The cook would secretly feed the ravenous appetite of a growing youth when my father had thought a little starving would make me more obedient.
I surveyed the wreckage for a time then said, 'Pull out all the paneling, every bit of it. We'll take it up to the stable yard and build a bonfire. Then you can start on the upstairs.'
The men looked at me in surprise. Cooper nodded at them, and they turned back to the task with more gusto.
I picked up an axe one of the men had laid aside. Cooper kept a keen eye on me as I approached a wall they hadn't yet touched. I raised my arms over my head and let the axe slam into the wall.
The white-painted wood splintered. I hacked at the paneling until it began to come away from the solid stone that had sat on this spot for more than two hundred years.
I drew a breath, wiped my brow, shucked my coat, and raised the axe again. I moved to the next patch of paneling and struck another heavy blow.
There was release in the destruction, a sort of joy. I pounded at the walls again and again, until sweat ran down my face, and I was laughing.
Lady Breckenridge did not arrive until late afternoon. She reached the house twenty minutes before the appointed time, which was the only indication of her curiosity. She arrived in a luxurious carriage-Grenville's-and Grenville came with her.
One of the men had moved up to the entrance hall, and he shouted to me that I had visitors. I came upstairs and went outside in my shirtsleeves, too hot to resume my coat. I left the axe behind.
'Good heavens,' Lady Breckenridge said, looking at me.
Grenville, out of habit, raised his quizzing glass and ran his gaze over me, but he looked slightly envious. Someone like Grenville could not roll up his sleeves, open his collar, and do a bit of honest toil without the entire world commenting on it.
Lady Breckenridge lifted her skirts and strolled past me and inside, as unafraid as I thought she'd be. My first wife had been dreadfully timid-though I came to learn that she always managed to have her own way despite that. My second wife, it appeared, would not be bothered by timidity.
