Widow - Anne Stuart [37]
She jerked her face up to his, and then stepped away. He let her go, of course. But she could still feel his hands on her arms. She didn’t like to be touched. Not by men like him.
“I assume you’ve checked this level,” she said, refusing to show how shaken she was, “but we may as well go through the rooms again, just to be on the safe side.”
“Lead on,” he said amiably. “I just hope we don’t find anything.”
“I thought we wanted to find the paintings? Otherwise why are we here?”
“I do. But not here. It’s cold and damp, and God knows what kind of damage they could have incurred. Pompasse’s estate is already looking shaky—if those paintings don’t show up then you’re going to have a rough time of it. They were some of his most valuable pieces.”
“Do you know which ones are missing?”
“As far as I can tell there are three famous ones that are unaccounted for. Charlie When She Left, Awakening and Amber Moon.”
“Those are all of me,” she said, uneasy.
“So they are. The question is, are any later ones missing, as well? Lauretta and Tomaso say no, just those three. I’m not convinced.”
“Why would my paintings be the ones that were taken?”
“I can think of a number of reasons. Maybe somebody doesn’t like you,” he suggested cheerfully. “Or maybe they’re worth more than the others. Money talks, you know.”
“I don’t like it,” she said.
“Neither do I. That’s a lot of money unaccounted for.”
“Sweet of you to worry. If the paintings are here they wouldn’t have been here long enough for them to be destroyed. I’ll worry about the estate—your job is simply to detail the assets. Isn’t it?” She kept thinking about that computer screen, with her name on it. Not the widow, not Madame Pompasse or Ms. Thomas. Charlie.
“Sure thing, love,” he said.
She turned. “You want to stop calling me that? Love, honey, sweetheart? It’s condescending and annoying. You know perfectly well I’m not your love or your sweetheart.”
“Maybe it’s wishful thinking.”
“Yeah, right,” she scoffed. “And don’t call me lady, either.”
“Ah, but there’s no doubt that’s exactly what you are. An overbred lady faced with a down-and-dirty bloke like me. It obviously drives your fastidious soul crazy.”
“I couldn’t care less about you!” she snapped.
“Glad to hear it, love.”
Charlie turned from him with a suppressed snarl, giving up.
She hadn’t really expected to find anything on the first floor—Maguire struck her as a thorough man, and he would have searched the place. Not that he couldn’t have missed something, given the rubble of stonework that cluttered the shattered ruins of the building. But he hadn’t found the stairs to the lower level, the old catacombs. It was blocked by fallen roof timbers, hidden in the shadows, and he hadn’t even realized there was a door there, one of the few still in existence in the old church.
Together they cleared the way, the dust rising around them. The door was stuck, but Maguire used brute force, yanking it open, and another shower of dust covered him. He looked less like a pirate and more like a ghost, and in other circumstances Charlie might have been amused. Not here, not now.
“Watch out for the rats,” she said as she started down the dark, winding stairway.
“Don’t you think we need an electric torch or something?” he asked, not moving. “It’s dark as pitch down there.”
“You want to go back and get one? I’m not afraid of the dark, but if you have problems…”
He started after her down the narrow stone stairs, and she let herself grin in the darkness, feeling childishly smug. In the end Maguire was simply a man—easy enough to bait when his pride was involved.
“Your eyes get used to it,” she said as she felt her way down the uneven stone stairs. In fact, it was darker than she remembered, and she kept thinking her foot was going to connect with something long and skinny and furry. She couldn’t imagine why rats would live in the old church—there was nothing to eat there, but she knew for a fact that they did.
By the time her foot reached the rough flooring of the bottom level her eyes had begun to adjust. Light