Knight’s smile was unpleasant. “He’s unaware of my claims, but let me just say that he is persuadable, once one knows how best to persuade him.”
More blackmail, she thought distantly. And more compelling than letters, which even if theywerein Bolton’s hand could be dismissed as a poorly placed brag. That would have been challenging, but perhaps she would have risked it. Prinny was friends withher, after all, not some upstart like Mr Knight.
But if Thomas Hyatt could be persuaded. If he supported Knight’s claims . . .
“That’s not all,” Knight said, evidently enjoying her discomfort. “I have in my possession two of your paintings.”
“Bolton’s paintings,” she corrected.
“So you might think, but no. One has Bolton’s signature, to be sure, though its subject matter is . . .” He clucked his tongue. “Well, no lady ought to be painting these things.”
One of her erotic pieces, then. Unfortunate, but she could still claim it was Bolton’s work. After all, who would suspect that a delicately bred lady would ever think to paint the male nude form?
“The other, however, is by a certain Louisa Picard,” he continued. “I had the pleasure of viewing it in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition several years ago, and since purchased it. A distinctive work, I would say. A self-portrait, perhaps.”
It was not a self-portrait, but Louisa knew the one to which he was referring.Domestic Bliss.At the time, it had set thetontalking, and although she had never directly claimed it as her own work, it had a smallLPin the bottom corner. Louisa Picard.
She had painted it after her mother once again talked about her duty to her husband, as though the goal of domesticity was all a lady should aspire towards. As though domesticity could only be a woman surrounded by her children in her home. Not, as she had depicted in her painting, an employed lady.
Not once had she imagined that the painting, auctioned off when her father died, could ever have been held against her in this way.
She raised her gaze to Knight’s. “Forgive me, sir, for not taking you on your word alone.”
“You would like to see the paintings with your own eyes?”
“I would.”
He nodded and rose. “Follow me, my lady.” There was a mocking note to his voice, and she had the thought that she probably should not follow this man into the bowels of his house. It would be so easy for him to overpower her, and she had come here clandestinely; no one knew of her whereabouts.
Then again, if he harmed her, he would not get her money.
She followed him down the corridor to a tired drawing room, the furniture scuffed and almost certainly rented. The receiving room had been well dressed and elegant; everything else in the house felt worn. Her suspicions were correct: he truly was in need of the money.
Then she turned and her thoughts about his furniture left her body. There on the wall were the two paintings he had mentioned, side by side. Like that, the commonalities between them were marked. And she had forgotten in what detail she had painted the sexual acts on the canvas before her. Her face almost heated, but at the last minute she dismissed the shame. Here was evidence of what she had done to survive. If anyone was to be ashamed of it, it should be Lord Bolton.
One of the girls in her second painting had the same face as inDomestic Bliss. An accident, but notable, the same way an author might repeat a phrase between books.
For a moment, she had the wild idea that she might be able to destroy them. Throw herself at them, find flint and steel or a match and set them ablaze. But there was no recourse for that now.
“You see,” Knight said from behind her. “The similarities are unmistakable.”
They were indeed, and it would be easy enough to find proof that she had painted the first and presented it to the Royal Academy.
If the second were connected to her, and if the Prince of Wales was convinced beyond all doubt that she had been the one to paint it, no respectable person would ever entertain her again. Caroline would no doubt think it all a big joke, but Louisa had built a life here in London. She would have her fortune, but nowhere to spend it.
“Well?” Knight asked. “Do you agree to my terms?”
This was so much worse than she could ever have imagined. And to think the key to her ruin lay in such a grubby house.
“It seems,” she said, never looking away from her first painting, made when she had still been so young and innocent of the world, “that I have no choice.”
Henry had not known it was possible to be so wearied by another person’s company in so short a time. Yet here he was, facing his brother over his desk, two minutes into a conversation he already knew was going to take a toll.
Oliver was not the brother he remembered from nine years ago. Now eighteen, he was accustomed to being the baby of the family, coddled then set free upon university life to do as he wished.
And what he wished was, apparently, to raise all sorts of hell.
Henry was not often made to feel old, but he felt ancient to his bones when he was faced with his fresh-faced baby brother.
