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dinner hour had approached and he hated to serve his food late. “But it is one thing for a man to have
radical notions, and quite another for him to steal a young girl from her home.”
“He is so much older than Anne,” Tess said hollowly. “I believe he might even be married, although
heaven knows where or who his wife might be. I simply never foresaw any of this.”
Ah, but I can easily imagine his whole pattern, Trevor thought. He has undoubtedly gone from girl
to girl for years, declaring each one to be his muse. Muse. That’s a proper load of rubbish.
They’re more likely meant for his amusement, I should think. He seduces and then abandons them
and the girls either disappear from society entirely or their parents go to great lengths to hide
their disgrace. Thus his victims collude to conceal his true nature, and that’s how the wretch has
continued to get commissions to paint the daughters of London’s better families.
When Trevor pulled away from his thoughts, Tess was looking hopefully at the settee where he and
Rayley were sitting. “You shall help me? It shouldn’t be more than two or three days of
inconvenience. Just long enough to ensure my daughter is well.”
“I like the idea,” Rayley said.
“I don’t,” Trevor said, with a snort. “You wish us to put on painter’s smocks and cavort around the
snowy countryside stealing food like a bunch of gypsies?”
“Don’t be silly, Trevor,” Geraldine said. “It hasn’t snowed all season.”
“And we must do something,” Emma said, her own tone as sharp as Geraldine’s was mild. “Men
who prey on women cannot be allowed…” Her voice trailed off and she jerked her small pale chin,
using both hands to push her hair from her face. Everyone in the room knew what Emma was thinking
about – her sister Mary, who had been the last victim of Jack the Ripper. While LaRusse was no
Ripper, Trevor silently conceded that Emma had a point. Threats to young women lurked everywhere
and, having failed to capture Jack, Trevor supposed that he and his team were doomed to chase his
shadow for the rest of their careers.
“Think of it as one of our experiments, Welles,” Rayley said. “You and I were bemoaning just last
week, were we not, that neither of us has ever had the slightest experience in working undercover or
assuming a false identity? This is our perfect chance.”
“What I recall about last week’s discussion of the matter,” Trevor said drily, “is that we mocked
those officers who were so eager to play charades. That we compared them to children at a
masquerade party.”
It was true. He and Rayley had laughed uproariously at a photograph of the celebrated Murder Squad
of Scotland Yard, all of whom had embraced the mania for investigative disguise with a passion. In
the photograph, the eight detectives had sat proudly posed in the costumes they had created for their
undercover work: Cat whiskers and eyepatches and uneven boots designed to give them a ludicrously
exaggerated limp. These so-called disguises, Rayley and Trevor had concluded, had the primary
effect of making sure everyone you passed in the street stopped and stared. Thus they were abject
failures when it came to the true goal of undercover work, which was to blend in, to do nothing to
draw the eye.