Since the Surrender Read Online Free Page A

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    There was a woman standing alone in this room.
    She was apparently riveted by a painting covering about threequarters of the back wall. Tall. Slim. An air of suppressed vigor, as though stillness was an unnatural state for her. Her pelisse fell from her shoulders in the sort of effortless line only certain modistes seemed able to achieve—he had sisters, he’d kept a mistress or two, he recognized the difference; perhaps they paid crews of seamstresses to massage the fabric into languid compliance. She wore a hat with a feather in it—a subtle hat, a subtle feather—brown and fluffy but not at all fussy. Pretty hat, the urchin had told him, and he’d been right. From bonnet to boots she was, in fact, dressed in rich shades of brown, from chocolate to the dark gold trimming the pelisse. The overall effect should have been one of camouflage, given the old wood and muted light surrounding her. But she was the sort of woman who had no hope of remaining unnoticed regardless of where or how still she stood. She had presence. Given his gait, he, for that matter, had little hope of remaining stealthy.
    He stepped forward. The floor gave an irritated squeak against the press of his walking stick.
    She didn’t turn.
    She appeared to be drinking in the painting.
    Chase casually paused before a painting called The Miracle, at least according to a brass plate affixed to the frame. The artist was an Italian whose surname was nearly as long as the painting itself and primarily comprised of vowels. He supposed it would be considered pastoral—there were trees clustered in a meadow, with two muscular black cows and two improbably fluffy sheep arranged beneath them—and in the sky were two winged cherubs so fat that surely the miracle in question was how they had gotten aloft at all. They would have needed to have the wingspans of albatrosses, not those foolish wee flaps sprouting from their shoulders, he decided, irritated. One of the cows was looking up at them with what he fancied was an expression of surprise and alarm. Which was precisely the expression he would wear if he’d suddenly noticed two fat cherubs bearing down on him.
    Now, a fine James Ward picture of a horse, or an Antoine-Jean Gros battlefield scene, even if it depicted Bonaparte doing something fraudulently benevolent with lepers, something practical, visceral, something of actual life…
    Though doubtless Colin would have been enthralled by that cow, he thought sardonically.
    He threw a quick sharp glance sideways. Interesting: the feather in the woman’s bonnet was quivering as though someone had sighed over it. Had she turned so quickly to look at him that he’d missed it?
    It seemed unlikely.
    Her face was still aimed at the painting; her back was still aimed at him. She seemed rooted to the spot.
    He began to need to get a look at her face.
    From somewhere in the museum he heard what sounded like…was it a giggle? A female sound. Ethereal. A trifle eerie, but then the whole damned place was. Doubtless a member of the cleaning staff taking inordinate glee in her work, since no other woman had signed the book apart from “Mrs. Smithson.”
    He craned his head toward the painting that transfixed Mrs. Smithson: it was large, blue of sky but otherwise comprised of glowing celestial shades of pink and gold and pearl, and crowded with all manner of things, trees and livestock and whatnot, and it had cherubs, too. A bloody swarm of them, like bees. His sister Genevieve, an expert on painters of nearly every provenance both popular and obscure, would likely know the reason Italians seemed to want to put them on everything. Maybe he should ask her when he returned home.
    If he deigned to return home.
    He was gentleman enough to wonder how he ought to approach an unescorted woman of apparent quality…when she finally moved. Subtly, yet discernibly: a restless tilt of her head, a slight roll of one shoulder.
    She might as well have driven a boot heel between